L is for Love

from Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies

Many recent conversations, about many different things, have come around to the one theme...  and that's today's L:  Love.

But it's not the love for your spouse, or your partner, or the one who broke your heart.  Nor the love for your child/ren or your parents or sisters/brothers/cousins/aunts/uncles/nephews/nieces... 

Nor the melting you feel for your puppy/kitten (no matter how old they are), or the goldfish/rabbits/guinea pigs/gerbils/hampsters/ferrets.  Or your best friend for whom you would go to any length, any time, without a second thought.  

I'm not even talking about loving The Beatles/Stones/Chisels/Bay City Rollers/One Direction (see how hip I can be, young reader?) or your favourite sports team, for whom you will line up for tickets, spend your hard earned pay and shout (in a good way).

Put away your spanking new gadget because I'm not referring to that either.  Or your car, new or vintage. (I know you rely on it to take you everywhere and you think it defines you...but it doesn't.)

The love I am talking about is what you have with yourself: the longest and most important relationship you will know in your life.  And probably the one most of us give the least amount of attention to because we are so intently focused on all the other things sent to distract us.

design by soph&son

So stop, take a breath and be as kind and understanding of yourself as you can be. After all, if you can't be nice to you, how can you expect anyone else to be?

Love

Sophia

K is for Kinds

from Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

When given latitude and time, I colour code.  Or if I'm a little anxious and things are beginning to overwhelm, I'll begin to sort.  I find peace when things are grouped by type and colour and size and shape.  

K is for kinds.

Not quite everything was ready, but I found myself sorting the M&Ms
as the first guests were knocking on the door...

I don't know when it started.  I didn't even realise it wasn't a thing everyone did until I was in the workplace implementing a new filing system and someone commented on my desire for coloured folders, matching highlighters and tabs.  

What was wrong with the vanilla manilla folders and the regulation hanging files? 

I didn't think there was anything wrong with what had gone before.  After all, the other was perfectly functional and fine. But for me the difference was like appreciating a window, which is a beautiful, functional and welcome thing, when you had the option of having a window that could also OPEN!  

With colour coding there is a instant visual indication of order and therefore harmony.  No need to dig beneath the surface, one glance and the glory is there before you.

And the act of creating that order is akin to putting the world to rights in a way that the world will never be put to rights.  

[I have to pause for a moment to consider the God Complex just described.]

I like boxes and drawers A LOT too because they offer the opportunity to compartmentalise.  A space for everything and everything in its place. The last house I ever rented was actually a house with no drawers (not even one, can you imagine?!), which forced me to Ikea to buy a drawer unit I truly coveted.  I have lots of little drawers with little things squirreled away in them.  Treasures.  Secrets.  Little bits and bobs that would be wholly lost if they didn't have that special place to be... Like my spare car key, or the cat lax, or a cigarette lighter (for birthday candles and blackouts), you get the idea...

This is the drawer unit once we moved to the Porter Street House.

  
So even though I no longer work in offices, I still find ways to colour code and sort, but not to get too crazy about it.  Hanging washing is a great and pleasurable opportunity, particularly with peg selection and ordering what goes where on the strands of line – I do try hard not to go out and re hang the washing when Mum's not done it my way (by the way) because I recognise that's not healthy.  Stacking the dishwasher too, not so much with colour but very much as a sorting and ordering exercise.


All that said, the stuff I haven't got to yet, the stuff that's not sorted and coded, is stacked.  So let it be known that until the items are separated into their kinds and disseminated into their places I have piles.

J is for Jerk.

I know a girl.  She's very nice, sometimes funny  – often when she doesn't mean to be.  She's caring and reasonably reasonable.  She tries hard not to be overly demanding.  She's accommodating and works at being there for all the people she loves.

This girl, no matter what, brings out the jerk in men.  I don't know why it is.  I don't know how she does it (it's not on purpose). But when she embarks on a relationship you can guarantee its going to end badly for her.  Without fail.  Always.

The pattern is always the same:  discarded, deceived, confused.  There have only been two exceptions to this rule: one remains a dear friend of hers, who was the only true gentleman she ever dated, who took the time to break up with her in person and left her with explanations and dignity; the other is not of sound mind.
  
She happily admits that despite not reading self help books she ascribes to the school of "You teach people how to treat you" so she feels she does have to take responsibility for the years and years of heartache and dashed hopes. But what are you supposed to do with that if every relationship is different and you're just being yourself?

Are you just supposed to sit back and take the blame for other people being bastards?

Is it all her fault?

What causes people to act badly?  How or why do men justify to themselves the things they do that are so hurtful to the women they've claimed to love?  I surely don't get it, and I don't have any answers.

I'd like to know what you think.

This post is interactive.

I is for Instagram

from Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies - because I can.

Instagram's a funny old thing.  I recently started using it after I heard someone talking about how it was a GREAT tool for promoting one's business (www.sophandson.com) particularly image based businesses (like mine).  It dawned that I may well be missing a really fabulous (not to mention) free means of putting my artwork "out there".  So, resurrecting my elderly and dormant account, I fumbled about in the unfamiliar architecture and got myself to posting the odd design.

And while I tried to get the hang of hashtags and filters, enter stage left Puppy Pluto.  And well, you know, animals and Instagram go together like dog-sausage* and stinking farts (sorry to be uncouth).  So before I knew what had happened I had daily Instagram fodder.  And new people "liking" my pictures.  And it was good and fun.

Puppy Pluto, 10 April 2015

Every time the phone would ping to advise that someone new had "liked" a picture I'd experience a happy and expectant little tingle and I'd click on their name, be they oskarcutiepaws, xplosivepants666, marsiegarcia, cultapparel or getlikesalot (no judgements here) to see who they are and whether I'd like to follow them...  

What I found was largely unexpected.  Sure, there were a number of entities who fitted the demographic  I expected my artwork and/or puppy photos would appeal to –  which is cool and makes sense.  But there are also

• a disproportionate number of very saucy ladies with photos of their bikini'd bottoms and close ups of their bosoms, at dusk, at the beach; 
• several continental and middle-eastern young men with what I can only imagine are aspirational stock images of luxury cars, jet planes and extreme close ups of their three day growths (very manly!); 
• a few very enthusiastic and seemingly successful American Pentecostals with only a couple of posts but thousands of followers (not that I'm impressed by numbers but how do they DO that?);
• more foodies than you'd think;
• quite a few party girls who post photos of themselves drinking a lot with their party girl, gal pals; and
• quite a few stoners with pics of smokey, hazy, leafy, darkened rooms.

It's very strange out there in Instagram world.  I don't quite feel yet that I've landed properly.  I'm confident at this point that I've got enough of a grasp not to commit some heinous gaffe or naive mip to be swallowed up by the thing as I may've had Instagram been my first social media foray. (That's a whole other story for a whole another day.)  But that said, I'm standing outside the process watching the oddness, because that's what this is.  It's strange.  I rejoice in it most of the time.  But sometimes it gets a bit scary...

*Dog sausage is not sausage made from dog (heaven forbid) rather, it is that rolled meat stuff that used to be called Chub and smells like hell - and that's before it's even been through the dog's digestive tract.

H is for Hector.

Despite my family going back eight generations or so into the priesthood (hence Papageorge - Father George), this branch, my branch, are Hellenes and are no longer Christian, so all our names are from historical or mythological rather than biblical sources, so we go to lengths to find names outside of the box (or the book) so to speak.

There was a suggestion when my brother was born that he be named traditionally.  That is, as the first born son, named after the father's father which would've made him Cosmas Cosmas.  Not to put too fine a point on it, Dad thought that was a bit of overkill in the Cosmas department.  So another option was sought.   

He was eventually named after my Aunty Ethel's husband, Hector (not to be confused with Dad's childhood dog, who was also Hector).  The human Hectors were differentiated in the family as Big Hec and Little Hec.  And so they were.

* * *

 
When we watched Romper Room in the '70s, Hec always bemoaned the lack of Hectors amongst the abundant Jameses, Johns, Judys, Janes, Katies, Rachels, Rebeccas and yes, even the occasional Sophie in Miss Helena's Magic Mirror.  It was the first grave injustice of his life.

Miss Helena and the Magic Mirror on Romper Room

In fact, the only time Hector was ever represented in popular culture was in the form of "Hector the Road Safety Cat", who even in his prime, had a particularly, unfriendly, uncatlike voice and was very, very daggy.

Hector the Cat
You can watch the video!

Despite this, in fact, because of its rarity, Hector eventually grew very fond of his name: a noble prince, bravest Trojan warrior and favourite of his totem Apollo.  Not to mention (although I am) an instantly recognisable, one-namer: in the club with Madonna, Elvis, Cher, Sting, Bono, Twiggy, Liberace, Prince, Oprah...

And there he was also a contradiction, because unlike what his name has come to mean in contemporary terms, he was the person least likely ever to hector, badger or bully.  Instead, blessed with extraordinary wit and skill, he'd just scratch the very top of his tilted head with his middle finger and the diplomatic way forward would simply come to him... La!*

Hector
July 3, 1966 – March 8, 2012

*For example, as my companion at a raucous Hunters and Collectors gig in 1987 (was there any other kind?) where I was being buffeted quite violently, rather than telling a giant meat–axe he was standing on me and to back off and give me room, Hec very gently explained to the drunken giant that it was I who was standing UNDER his foot and would he please oblige by shifting ever so slightly so I could get myself out of his way?  And perhaps, as I was short, could I stand in front so I didn't bother him again.  And before you knew it, Hec was cracking jokes and making new friends.  And the M'Axes then protected us from the rest of the crowd for the remainder of the gig and bought me drinks, so I had a nice time.  Finesse.  That's what that was.  But it wasn't a con.  Hec was sincere.  He knew how to reach people.  And he did.


 

G is for George

From Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

The name "George" is significant to my family.  As mentioned in an earlier post, [here] my family name, before it was changed in the 1950s to Cosmas was Papagiorgiou or Papageorge or by by the time Dad was at school in the 1940s and '50s, just George.

There was also my Papou's older brother George.  He was a bastard.  Not literally, but the sort of psychotic, evil, misanthrope that you're not really surprised when you hear he's driven someone to murder. Him. And not just that. To cleft him in twain, so to speak.  Leaving his head in a sack in one place, and the balance of his person in another place. Quite different.  Quite remote.  Quite damp.  Quite definitely sure to be left undiscovered until it's riddled with maggots and other creepy, crawly critters the likes of which you'd like to see feasting on a person like George.

He wasn't nice, you see.  He was a troublemaker.  He took after his mother, Madeleine.  She wasn't nice either.  

As the story goes, George's sister, Sophia, had married a lovely fellow from a neighbouring village. Let's call him Andrea (Andrew)*.  Sophia and Andrea hadn't been able to have children but they were a lovely, loving couple, and he was devastated when Sophia, without word or warning, upped and died.  

Now, according to local law, if there are no "issue" from a marriage, the family of the bride is entitled to reclaim the dowry. So barely was the last sod turned on her grave, literally that very day, dear George, attended bravely by his posse, knocked at the widower's modest door, to demand return of the cutlery, linens and goodness knows what other else bollocks had been given with Sophia when she and Andrea had been joined together in their heavenly lifelong union.  And from which he had been cruelly, prematurely and most suddenly wrenched.

Incredulous at the gall and insensitivity of his brother-in-law and out of his mind with grief, Andrea threatened to kill George! And sure enough, before the week was out he found himself secreted in the bushes on a lonely road waiting for his quarry to pass.  As the light faded and George ambled past on his way to a small hut where he would sometimes stop to spend the night, Andrea jumped out, and DID HIM IN and then CHOPPED HIM and BAGGED HIM and DUMPED HIM HITHER and YON.

And of course he wasn't found for days and days because everyone knew he'd gone away and no-one missed him, so he was well and truly as rotten dead as he was alive by the time the sacks of his remains were located. 

Poor Andrea didn't get away with the deed though.  He had made the threats to kill in front of George's friends who, of course, were more than happy to testify against him.  The court didn't take any extenuating circumstances into consideration, so Andrea was hanged for murder, and one can only hope he was reunited with his darling Sophia in the afterlife.**

***

Ever since Uncle George I don't think there have been any subsequent George's in this branch of the family. He tortured my Papou; drove him out of home when he was just a little boy, enough to leave quite a bad taste!  And probably another good reason our family name was changed. Come to think on it.  Hmm...


*We don't actually have his name recorded and I'm still on the hunt for it - but half the men from Pitsilia seem to be called Andrea, so it's a fair guess!


**No good came to the hanging judge and the foreman of the jury. They both met untimely deaths shortly after Andrea's hanging. They were cursed by a member of his family for the lack of compassion they showed Andrea at the trial, and one way or another those afflictions were realised and thus it didn't end well for them.

F is for Frustration

from The Gashleycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

Frustration

I was going to write a moving piece about feeling like a foreigner in your homeland.  But I'm not in the damn mood. For the last three days we have had at best dribbling internet.  Dribbling that eventually stopped.  In that time I have been trying to make the deadlines for this blog challenge, and I have also been trying – even more importantly (I KNOW!  What could be more urgent?) – to get my elderly Dad checked in online, to his overseas flight to ensure that his precious, hard fought for, aisle seats are not given away.

This afternoon I was finally advised that the assurances I'd been given about technical failures in the area and overloads due to the introduction of Netflix were indeed a shiteload of malarky because there's not a thing wrong with the line or the network or the exchange or the provider or the wholesaler or any body.  Nothing.  What has failed, it seems, is my own freaking modem.

So I've gone and bought a new modem and now I'm trying to connect it.  And I've hit a stinking hurdle because I don't know how.  And I'm waiting for the ISP helpline to call me back while I cook dinner before I take Dad to the airport.  And why the heck is the puppy chasing his tail?  The sound of the tappy tappy on the tiles is making me stupidly tense.  And why are those little stars twinkling just within my periphery?  I don't have time.