highs and lows and clean towels

(no pics. but lots of links to other peoples' ....)


The high point of my summer -

my stay in Nyack with Ched:

days in New York city and in Brooklyn,
wanderings in beautiful New York state
and a weekend in the Catskills - all with Ched, and at times also Steve

Our Catskills weekend included a visit to a giant kaleidoscope, and Hippiefest 2008 in Bethel
(pics and vids here and here and here)


Ched's blog has more posts about some of our wanderings, (posts between July 26 and August 8th) and I will post some of my own pictures when I get back to London in 10 days or so.

When I get a chance to start sorting through them.


I did manage not to leave my camera on the plane this time.
This is good.
During my 12 day visit I took over 1,700 photos.
This is not so good.
I think my photography habit is getting dangerously out of hand.


There were other bloggers I'd love to have seen, but sadly couldn't. But I made firm friends with Dennis (after a few days) and with Chedwick himself (after a few more days) and fell firmly in love with Eddie in no time at all.


Lows of the summer have been health-related - trivial in relative terms, but quite miserable at (intermittent) times.

I'd had an allergic reaction to my hair-colour way back in June I think and was left with nasty allergic dermatitis on my ears which at some points have been inflamed and swollen to about twice their usual dimensions, with a range of other symptoms far too unpleasant to be detailed to such nice people as yourselves. I have felt quite freakishly elephant-mannish at times.

Twice I was at the point of full recovery and then suffered a relapse - the second relapse just after my return from the States, which I think was due to hair-dye left on towels in our bathroom after LG's own summer hair-dye experiments. Me being in the US at the time, the towels were left to fester rather than being washed. No comment. LG had learned from my experience and did a proper allergy test, so she was fine thank goodness (and her hair looks great) but I was less careful than i should have been about checking towel cleanliness.....

its clearly not enough to know where your towel is
you also need to know that it is clean.

The old elephant ears were mainly in recovery while i was in the US, I took to wearing little ear cosies cunningly fashioned out of medical gauze and was otherwise pretty much fine and healthy, and no one openly laughed at me. In fact, maybe I have added an indefinable something to the reputation of Brits in New York?

Anyway, post-return from US and post-2nd relapse, the ear cosies evolved into substantial dressings and my system seemed to crumble a bit with various lurgies and infections attacking face neck and eyes.


Its felt rather like a (trivial) greek tragedy with a not-very-hidden moral about vanity and clean towels.



I'm currently blogging from Jersey, Channel Islands where I am lolling about in invalidesque mode and hence finding myself unexpectedly without any inclination or energy to go out (not even to go and take photos on the beach), but with computer time.

We are visiting M's family, and staying with Dizzy, who is a dear friend, too busy to blog these days, and an Ayurvedic practitioner.

How handy - she is providing me with a full ayurvedic care package which seems to be working very well, and which includes a sticky drippy paste on my ears made up of neem oil, honey and turmeric.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I think I may be leaving Dizzy's towels less than clean.....