After the Festival

All the left-overs have been duly dispatched. The last batch of chicken stock made into soup or frozen. We found our praying mantis lying on his side on the stoep today. The girls thought he might be sleeping. He feebly waved a leg at us and when we attempted to put him upright, he fell back over. This evening the girls held a funeral for him, burying him with flowers and ceremony in the circle. For me it symbolised the end of our spring celebrations and it felt rather sad, until I noticed a large, equally handsome one clinging to the wire wastepaper basket in the bathroom. The herald of a new cycle? Or maybe it is just praying mantis season, warm spring weather bringing them out in droves? They do seem to resonate strongly with spiritual life though, the Bushmen had it right. I also have strong memories of reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and other Animals - his memories of life as a child on Corfu with his eccentric family. I still remember his accounts of a praying mantis battling it out with a gecko on his bedroom ceiling, even though from my place in the English countryside I had never seen one. Now they are part of our daily life too, but still seem as mystical as ever.

I was tagged for this meme by Jenny and have been struggling with imagining answers to the ancestor questions but had no trouble thinking of weird things about me! So here it is as far as I've got and as for tagging five more people..just consider yourself tagged if you haven't already done this one..sorry for breaking the rules by not doing it properly!

RULES: List 5 weird things about yourself or your pets.
Tag 5 friends and list them.
Then these people need to write on their blogs about 5 weird things, state the rules, and tag 5 more people.
Don't forget to let the people you tag know by commenting on their blog!

5 weird things about me:

1. I have an irrational hatred of dishwashers. I would rather wash up 40 of everything by hand than give in and get one. My husband differs on this, so it is only a matter of time before I relent in favour of convenience.

2. My long term investment strategy is limited to a belief that it is a good idea to buy a house on a hill, in case of sea levels rising in the future.

3. I save half used birthday cake candles in a tin just in case they are needed for a science experiment one day.

4. I often start reading magazines at the back and work forwards (Meredith’s answer to this meme reminded me of this)

5. I’ve only recently begun to allow dishcloths to re-enter my life. A pathological avoidance of them began after a biology experiment in my teens revealed the amount of germs they harboured. Ever since I have advocated drip drying. It might also have been a convenient ploy to escape drying-up duty as a teenager. Only the enormous quantities of washing up provided by our feasts and the point mentioned in 1. has made a supply of clean cloths seem like a good idea.

Next part of tag: Can’t think of any intelligent answers to these right now, but I’ll leave them in in case any one else wants to have a go.

1. Which famous person would you most like to learn that you're descended from?

2. Which famous person would you hate to learn you're descended from?

3. If you could be an ancestor to any famous living person who would it be and why?

4. If you could go back in time and meet any known ancestors of yours, who would it be and why?