'Local supermarket stocks foreign food shock'

Well I'll go to the top of our stairs - I went to our just round the corner Sisa this morning for loo roll ( glad I shared that?) and damn my eyes if they haven't introduced a weeny stand with 'foreign food' on it. You probably need to be a non Sardinian living in Sardinia to understand how unlikely this is. And as if in a Muraki inspired dreamscape, after writing about the tea garden yesterday, the first thing I saw was Wasabi Paste. OK, I still have half a jar of horseradish sauce that I bought back from the UK, but you know, I'm eking it out like it's caviar or something. I snappped up said paste and sod the cost but did draw the line at a tub of Sharwoods Hot Curry Powder - nearly six squid is about €4.00 too far. The price list above the stand did promise peanut butter but maybe they sold it all ?? No baked beans in Sisa as yet, but thanks to expat dedicated sourcing, I can pop up the other end of town to Conad for those.

Forgive me a small rant please - why oh why are the lemons €3 a kilo and imported? I mean, they grow on trees here, literally, everywhere. And why don't Italians eat vine leaves like the Greeks?

Oh and apropros of the tea garden - Himself sorted out the 'water feature' this morning - a nice ceramic bowl that has been lurking around for ever - and it has had holes drilled in the bottom..waaaa...now, I'll have to go and buy something, hence I'm sulking on the computer instead of being in zen mode and arranging pebbles and bits of wood. Still, onwards and downwards..tea anyone? without lemon, obviously.

Smallest Tea House of the August Moon ever..

...For some time now, my yard ( or to make it sound a bit more classy - my cortile) has been veering towards the East. I've always loved Japanese style gardens and without being really conscious of it, our patio has taken on something of that look. And when we put up the bamboo fence ( you know, the Day Before THEY Came) the whole thing just fell into place. Talking of THEM, I hear we aren't the only people in the condo who are looking at the builders with a jaundiced eye. Various people are invoking their solicitors for various reasons, I'm certainly not entertaining any thought whatsover of spending money suing their sorry asses but shall content myself with holding back part of the final payment to cover the damage to the brickwork on the ground. No respectable Tea Garden has great big concrete and primer stains on its walkways after all.
So. My idea now is to have a small water feature at the opposite end to the shed. OK a bowl of water then. No carp pond obviously as anything with any sort of vital sign doesn't live long in our garden (witness the amount of geckos I've saved or not these last few weeks). It will be a shallow basin raised off the ground, with some stones, pebbles, bamboo etc as deco, and I'm going to try and find or make something that looks like a rain chain, again just as deco. The Tea House - my new uber romantic name for the little shed - will actually be functional as we are planning to put a camping cooker in there; admittedly this mainly to boil octupus and grill squid rather than have tea ceremonies, but hey ho, lets be imaginative here.

Another decor moment occured yesterday when I spied an impressive amount of driftwood on the beach just round the corner. I kind of hinted to Himself what a wonderful find this was but He seemed relieved that it was in a totally unaccessible place and therefore beyond my grasp. You'd think wouldn't you that he'd know me better than that by now.Where there's my will, there's always a way.

Here's a lush bit of inspiration, designed by Bryan Albright and built by Rhino Rock Landscapes for the Hampton Court Flower Show Courtyard Garden category in 1995. Let's see how the Sardinian version shapes up.....

No, I won't say it....

....and anyway March wasn't THAT long ago for goodness sake. You know, after the debacle of the hard disc being eaten alive by aliens I tried to keep a kind of land-based blog.On paper. Writing with a pen. Oh I forgot, that's called a diary or something. And this was mainly to keep me from wiping down the kitchen work surfaces for hours at a time or talking to the cats or watching crap on the tv at 5.00 in the afternoon....you know, the Desperate Hours when re-runs of 24 seem fresh and new. And didn't I regret reading those Millenium novels in a week when I still had the computer and could have eaked them out a bit? When I could have wasted some of that reading time playing Farmville or doing random on ImdB?

At one point I found myself thinking hmmm this isn't too bad and maybe if I don't get a new computer I could become a real housewife with real life 'interests'. That lasted as long as it took Himself to suggest we went to Trony and checked out prices . I've always spurned lapdog in favour of Big Desktop with Accumuled Junk accessories but this bitty little notebook is growing on me. The touch pad caused a few pangs until after hours of searching 'My Touchpad keeps freezing' and advice relating to new drivers ( what, already?) I realised that I tapping over the on/off light. Sigh. DO take time to read the instructions Frankie, please. And anyway I have a USB mouse now thank goodness. It still seems like I've started from scratch though, as if everything that was is no longer and I should start again. Hell I've even revived the never used MySpace page which is a terrible place to be with no friends. I'll stay away from Twitter I think.

So that real life diary? Apparently I watched 21 grams (superb) and House of the Flying Daggers ( ah Takeshi) and cried in the shower over the building work 9th circle of hell. I actually had to go and make some coffee during The Grudge (is film fear age related?)and that wasn't even the original version. I enjoyed that Tim in Project Runway was dubbed into Italian by the same voice as R2D2 and to brush up my reading in Italian skills I laughed out loud all through the Codice Da Vinci- possible the most stupid book ever written. And this was off the back of Sir Noel Cowards fabulous dear boy Diaries so the culture shock was almost the death of me. But now I have this darling little notebook,all fresh and uncluttered and I'm loving the novelty of having Mahjongg at my fingertips whenever and wherever I want.

And I can't WAIT to get the cute pink bag to keep it in.
Happy Days..............Here's Takeshi seeing to the old bamboo...