The day began well with a call from Mr Straus who had arranged a new appointment for our German client whilst on his way to the Wine Fair. Adopting the new position of head magician, he then proceeded to pull a few more out of the hat during the course of the day. It was therefore a cruel stroke of fate that led to the disappearance of his valuables whilst travelling on the Light Docklands Railway in the evening. Whether theft or misplacement is yet to be established, if ever.
It being a Tuesday, the afternoon was occupied with my continued education in the art of Chinese Brush Painting. Today, the new subject was the Wisteria. The elements required to paint this utilise skills learnt in two of the four friends: The flower strokes were similar to those learnt for the Orchid; the racemic leaves were composed of short brush strokes, not dissimilar to those used for Bamboo leaves, just shorter.
Our teacher Mrs Evans also demonstrated the rose for me, the petals being composed of strokes similar to those used for Peony. I had presciently taken my videocam with me and, with Mrs Evans's permission, filmed both the demonstrations with the intention of upoloading the films to YouTube in the near future.
This evening, I sought to start the culture of a pineapple plant from the fruit purchased yesterday as part of the weekly shop. Previous attempts had all failed, this time I sought more information on the web and found a new method at http://www.rickswoodshopcreations.com/Pineapple/pineapple.htm.
The first step was to remove the crown from the fruit by taking a firm grip on it and the fruit and twisting off the crown. This left very little (practically none) fruit attached. The end was then carefully sliced until the small, millimetre crescents of hidden buds were visible close to the central hard core on the cut surface. The lower leaves were then removed carefully by tearing off, leaving circa 1cm of stripped stem. The thus treated crown was then left overnight for the cut and denuded 1cm to dry.
A late night check on the Kindle Desktop Publishing site showed that the status of my test publication, Monty Bear and the Chocolate Egg, had changed from Reviewing to Publishing. Amazon do state that the publishing process takes around 24 hours however it is no less frustrating for that.
The key news of the day was the successful first day of the Queen's visit to Eire, the first by a British Monarch since independence. I felt a certain trepidation when the gun salute went off and again when the Officer approached Her Majesty with a drawn sword; there are still memories of the violent reactions in the late 20th Century and terrorist activity still occurs as an undercurrent from a small minority.
Uploading this article to the internet is currently not possible as for some reason, the internet connection of the server is failing to access the service.
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