More dosas

Susan is very keen on dosas at the moment.  And as the food preferences of pregnant ladies have to be respected, I shouted her, Paul and Matthew a dosa lunch, with an adjournment to my sitting room afterwards.  Paul seems to like the atmosphere of my sitting room.

Paul is a bit down in the dumps at the moment after having made a big loss on mining shares so the lunch helped brighten him up a bit too.  He actually feels quite chastened by his losses and is now strongly impressed by how much unpredictability and unknowability there is in life.  He started out conservative and his own experiences have reinforced that.  Leftists, of course, think that they know it all.

We discussed hybrid cars, Italy and the strange ways of the English.  I pointed out the large class gap between the English who go to Spain for holidays and retirement and the English who go to Tuscany.

I have recently been reading Kate Fox's book on the English so passed on a few things that she had reminded me of. "Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour" is, I think,  the funniest book I have ever read.  It repeatedly has me in tears of laughter.  As an Australian who knows the English well, I can recognize the truth of her observations without being embarrassed by them.  And there is one sentence from her book that sums up the English well: "Everything is embarrassing".

During the course of the discussions, I think we agreed on a name for the forthcoming daughter, though Paul is keeping his options open at this stage. I have been recommending names for the in utero daughter  that would suit the upper levels of English society.

Susan is a very crafty lady so was making little colourful crafty things while we were talking. But she was still able to take full part in the conversation at the same time.

Matthew spent a lot of time with balloons again and was a bit upset when he punted one right out the window at my place.

We talked briefly about nursery rhymes.  I mentioned that nursery rhymes deal with death rather a lot and can sound rather ghastly to modern ears  -- but that trying to shield kids from all that is a big mistake.  It turns out that Susan has been studying nursery rhymes and traditional children's stories (Die Gebrueder Grimm, for instance) rather a lot recently so heartily agreed with me.  So Susan's children will get a good dose of traditional culture in due course.

Susan is a bit fussy about what she will drink.  Apparently at home she and Paul mostly drink milk.  Joe is a milk fiend too and I like milk so that is a bit of a coincidence.  Anyway, today I found something that Susan will drink at my place.  I have recently started to use one of those water-filtering jugs to give me good mixer water for my gin and Susan was happy to drink purified water from that.

So it was a very relaxed and pleasant lunch and afternoon with quite a lot of laughs amid more serious dicussions about money etc.



A crafty creation by Susan