eu adoro (soap bubbles)

Today I had a shower. Ces i gawod heddiw, I think - I think that’s correct, linguistically, I mean. Showers are no big news around here (I was reading about bullet journals the other day and was very surprised to see ‘have a shower’ as a personal hygiene goal for one’s day - like, it shouldn’t be a goal, it should be a reality?... Well, but I suppose that, if you're depressed...), but this one reminded me of, of course, Wales. Bar of soap gone (scent of guava flower, L’Occitane - one of the very few things I can, or rather could, afford to buy from them -, its Brazilian line, really worth one’s money, trust me), I remembered I had one (actually, many, I have many) from Cardiff and went searching for it. I was taken back to the city the moment its aroma reached my nostrils (all bruised inside due to a crisis of rhinitis and a cold or something of the kind). I’m not joking (or aiming to write a poor woman’s version of Proust’s gustatory epiphany - and he mentions the Celts!...). In the blink of an eye, I was there again.

Afternoon in Bute Park

(something like 'Prynhawn ym Mharc Bute' in Welsh)

*all photographs by Liz*

First, the Riverside Farmers Market, where Liz and I bought, besides our lunch (a couple of things which I believe were savoury pies, plus a bottle of apple, I think it was apple, juice and two packets of fruit and seeds covered in chocolate and yoghurt for dessert), some bread and two varieties of cheese for our little Picnic for a Perfect Sunday (we bought some wine too, but that was later). So what about the soap? It also came later [no, it didn't, from the picture, it didn't, it was the same day - and I forgot the other dessert], on another Sunday (the market happens - can I say a market ‘happens’? - every Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm in the street where my hostel was, Fitzhamon Embankment, and in two other places on Fridays and Saturdays), when I was about to leave and also bought some lip balm (the soap, honey scented, I reckon, didn’t impress me much in terms of fragrance - it reminded me a bit of the dishwashing soap my aunts make from used frying oil -, but the balm is just perfect in its little tin, I don’t know what I like most, the container, the smell or the texture) - and, c’mon, it’s me we’re talking about, some food again.

Lunch! = Cinio!

Then, the National Museum, where Liz and I explored the Quentin Blake (remember Roald Dahl? Mr. Blake was his illustrator) exhibition (it's still on, guys, it's still on!...) and bought about five pounds worth of stones (yes, stones, gems?, those some associate with good luck and all sorts of magical powers - we were more interested in their colours, in fact) each. My Sad Book, a wonderful piece illustrated by Blake and written by Michael Rosen, is from that visit as well (one of the greatest illustrated books I’ve ever seen?...). Finally, having invited another classmate to join us, we headed for - guess where - Bute Park, one of our favourite places in the Welsh capital city (well, I don’t know about you, Liz, but it’s definitely my number 1 place in Cardiff, the one where, speaking of the supernatural, I wish my soul would go to after I died - could it alternate between my grandma’s house and the park?... -, a little like what is said in that song by Audioslave, lol. And he mentions stone! LOL) to start the second part of our perfect day (have I already mentioned it was a Perfect Day?).

Food! = Bwyd!

Oh, the tomatoes, the beautiful, tasty tomatoes we bought at Waitrose (photo from a blog, which I haven't actually read, called 'Japanese loves Cardiff' - oh, this Brazilian here does too!) together with the wine - I nearly forgot them, and they were so pretty, with their stem and all, so different from the way they’re usually sold here in Brazil. So we had a bottle of red wine, a big loaf of bread, two good pieces of cheese, several bright red tomatoes and two bags of chocolate- or yoghurt-coated fruit and sunflower seeds. And we had our stones (not my Sad Book, which I’d left at the hostel, ‘I should’ve brought my Sad Book,’ the second, or was it the first?, sentence I said which made Ioan suddenly sit up from his lying on the grass and taking a nap or something - the first, or maybe the second, being ‘I need to drink more wine so I can look at my stones.’ Inspiration, I was trying to find inspiration - for what to do with said stones - in the wine, that was all). Ioan left rather early (something tells me he found his laundry or whatever it was he claimed he had to do safer, not to say more amusing?, than spending the rest of his Sunday around two stone-watcher women), so he missed a scene which I was recently told happened again to Liz, now in the USA (parallel lives, we’ve been living parallel lives - OK, I’ll stop before someone suggests committing us, yes, to a mental health facility).

You've got to agree they're pretty (pert), aren't they?

(Can you guess which belong to Liz and which belong to me?)

Here it is: with most of the wine gone and our stomachs mostly full, Liz and I were happily killing time at the park when two huge dogs came in our direction (two BFDs, Big Friendly Dogs, just like the giant in Dahl’s novel, exactly) - more normal girls (of the type that doesn’t read sad books or buy colourful stones) would’ve focused their attention on the dogs’ owners, who seemed very friendly too (don’t ask me about their looks, they were standing against the sun and the dogs were lying on our laps, so, hard to tell), not exclusively on the dogs, but I reckon you’ve noticed just what kind of people Liz and I (who’d been living parallel lives up to the day we met - I said I’d stop, sorry) are by now. We were both so excited at the prospect of playing with cute gigantic balls of furry bliss that we couldn’t save the chunk of cheese, the best of the two, because he had to have a nice taste in cheese, that little thief, one of the dogs quickly and very cunningly stole from us. We were lucky to save the other piece from (and the cups of wine from being toppled by) him. Still, they were wagging their tails while lying on our laps - I’d have given them one of my stones each had they been of the stone-eating sort. To make things even better, not worse, for once (oh, but things were extremely congenial in Cardiff, I, for one, can’t complain at all), we walked into a little frog (or was it a toad? Can’t remember and don’t really know the difference - I’ll post a photo so you can decide for yourselves) while leaving the park in the evening. I’d never held one, I’d never even touched one before, so I was truly thankful that Liz had asked me whether I wanted to and put it on my hand, my left hand (because I’ve got two, obviously, or luckily?, duh). It was such a lovely little thing, that frog\toad\amphibian (and it was so cold, poor little thing, and helpless in the middle of the path - we did leave it somewhere green and safer), a perfect end to a perfect day.

Hello, beautiful.

('Helo, hardd,' says Google Translate -

BTW, hardd is a false cognate, as I hope you've noticed.)

It seems like a lot, too much, even, but that’s all that that bar of soap took me back to as I went about part of my daily personal hygiene routine today. Hence (to use a word another ‘Latina’, and a native speaker of English at that, has been recently forbidden to use [diolch am y ddolen, Gwen!] - and, talking about identity, I remembered the day, our first wine-in-the-park day, when Carol and I immediately replied in unison ‘But we are white!’ to a comment made by Charles, poor Charles, who had no idea how weirdly Latin Americans, Brazilians in particular?, might react when the subject is an attempt at people-classification by the colour of their skin - yes, yes, I did wonder what that reaction may say about us in terms of racial [because the word is ‘racial’, apparently, despite the fact that we’re all one single race only, the human one, yes] prejudice, of which we both like to believe we’re completely free; are we?) the thought, ‘Buy books and read them, do courses and revise them; these are all great ways to keep a place in your mind and heart. But literature and workbooks are deliberate. If you want to be surprised, if you want to go on an unexpected ride down memory lane, then buy some soap instead, or too, buy books, and courses, and soap as well.’ This shall make your showers (or baths - right, Genia?) all the more enjoyable (and frequent, if you’re one of those who need to add them to your to-do lists in your bullet journals, yes).

*This is (nearly) totally unrelated, but I love it so much: ‘Olha lá uma bolinha de sabão, e vem outra bolinha de sabão. Uma, duas, três, são bolinhas de sabão, eu adoro ver bolinhas de sabão…’ (yes, it’s a song about soap bubbles).