An aspirational orange

Here you see an orange which clearly aspires to be a pumpkin; maybe it even aspires to being turned into a coach for Cinderella. Back on Granny's home island it is the pantomime season, after all. It probably isn't the pantomime season on Gran Canaria, the island which this aspirational orange comes from. It is, though, the season for breeding oranges like this one; all quite unlike the neat Valencian breed of orange that have taken over the orange market and fill all the supermarkets in the UK; to the detriment of other orange producers like the Mallorcan ones and the Greek ones. And the Canarian; though the Canarian production hangs on in the Canaries themselves. Even if Granny has never before seen even a Canarian orange aspiring to pumpkindom, they are never tidy fruit. They go their own way -and shape and size. They are sourish but flavoursome. Granny likes them.


Here on the other hand you see a chicken quite happy to be a chicken; she so very nearly wasn't one. Meet Daisy. Granny wishes her photograph was better; but Daisy has a habit of moving at the wrong moment. Clearly she has no interest in being the poultry world's answer to Kate Moss.


Here you see a Beloved also quite happy to be where's he at. Cooking in this case. Making food for the New Year's Eve dinner. Which was delicious thankyou. And included 'HAPPY NEW YEAR spelt out atop a succulent mushroom puree.


And here is Feline Houdini; quite happy being a cat; but not happy at being a still unwell one. Two steps forward; three back. He has taken to bedding himself down in unlikely places; like the bath; or on top of high cupboards up onto which he can jump, but then can't quite jump down from. Granny's new year's aspiration for him is that he returns to being a well cat. ('Stop worrying about him,' orders Beloved. Alas she can't quite manage to. Silly her.)


And here is Granny. Her you will just have to imagine. Wishing she was thinner, more beautiful, wittier, more talented, nicer, once more twin-breasted and definitely YOUNGER. What's new? What's it matter? More generally - more importantly - she wishes everyone - most people - well for the new year; starting with her family; going onto all her friends; continuing with her internet friends. Of the tourists... well she doesn't wish them ill either: or only in passing. She has just been to take the Attic Woman out for a New Year lunch. Unfortunately this involves traversing the national (volcanic) park. Wonderful to view from a distance, but not easy to ride through in a hurry; what with tourists going at two miles an hour in the middle of the road (especially the British ones); or stopping - on bends usually, or the brows of hills - to take photographs of themselves, their spouses, their children, their mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and All disporting themselves on lava fields; or queuing up in long lines to go up to the Park Centre to eat chicken grilled on volcanic flames (which tastes no better than other chicken, in case you're interested) thereby turning the road into one lane; or trying to come past above queue the opposite way to you, hooting indignantly; or riding bicycles in gaggles of straining buttocks and beetle hats; or causing exasperated locals to career past the lot never mind if any of the above blocks their view of what's coming the other way. (Dangerous that.) Etc. Happy New Year to all of them too. Really. But somewhere else.

For the world generally, Granny aspires... well peace. etc. What she thinks of these times probably best summed up by the following.

She agrees, firmly, that those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it. Historians therefore should be listened to; Simon Schama is a very good historian and still better writer. She apologises for leading you to so long a piece. Never mind, stick with it. We bloggers. like it or not, are in some respects part of his warning. (Join granny's Iblog anyone?)