Mari Mathias – “Tŷ Bach Twt/Milgi Milgi” (Little Tidy House/Greyhound Greyhound).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Continuing the Celtic music week on here, today I decided to share with you a song (or two songs, actually) from Mari Mathias’ debut album Annwn (underworld) which I really like and which is all kinds of interesting. This is a medley of two very popular nursery rhymes, although before coming across this album I didn’t even know that the latter was a traditional nursery rhyme, I mean it’s obviously a children’s song but the only version of it I knew was by Plu and I didn’t know if it was their creation or something traditional or someone else’s or whatever. The first one has very easy lyrics so I was able to translate it for you without even having to look up any words or anything, but the other is more difficult and for a long time I only knew that it has to do with a greyhound and a hare but not much more really, and only suspected that it’s about the former chasing the latter or something like that. But over time, as I listened to it many more times, I was able to figure out more and with a little help from my dictionary plus seeing the lyrics written down I was able to translate it this time as well. The Mari Mathias version has fewer verses than Plu’s so the Plu post will be updated to include the translation as well. 

  I have a little tidy house, tidy house, tidy house,


I have a little tidy house,


With the wind blowing in its door every morning.


With the wind blowing in its door every morning.



   I have a little tidy house, tidy house, tidy house,


 

I have a little tidy house,


 

With the wind blowing in its door every morning.


 

With the wind blowing in its door every morning.



 

 Open the door a little bit, a little bit, a little bit,


Open the door a little bit


So that I can see the sea and the waves. 



With the wind blowing in its door every morning.



And here I will be happy,
Happy, happy,


And here I will be happy,


With the wind blowing in its door every morning.



With the wind blowing in its door every morning. 

 

On top of the hill there is a small hare,


all through the night he’s grazing


With his speckled back and white belly


not worrying about a greyhound
Greyhound, greyhound, greyhound, greyhound,


give more food to the greyhound,


Greyhound, greyhound, greyhound, greyhound,


give more food to the greyhound.
And having run a little, little bit,


He’s running really badly


And one ear up and the other down,


saying goodbye to the greyhound.

 

   I have a little tidy house, tidy house, tidy house,


I have a little tidy house,


With the wind blowing in its door every morning.


With the wind blowing in its door every morning.



 With the wind blowing in its door

With the wind blowing in its door

   Mari Mathias – “Tŷ Bach Twt/Milgi Milgi”

Y Bandana – “Byth yn Gadael y Ty” (Never Leave the House).

Hey people! 🙂

Today I have for you another dose of Welsh rock. Since one of the members of Y Bandana was Gwilym Bowen Rhys (one of my faza peeps) I’ve shared a few songs from this band before. But in case you haven’t heard about them before I’ll say that they were, similarly to Y Trŵbz whose song I shared yesterday, largely a family-based group, consisting of two brothers (Tomos and Siôn Owens) their aforementioned cousin Gwilym Bowen Rhys, and Gwilym’s school friend Robin Llwyd Jones. They started it out as teenagers and were very popular on the Welsh-language music scene especially with young people and quite characteristic for their catchy melodies and funny, often a bit cheeky lyrics. The band is however no longer a thing since a few years, as they’ve all moved on to different things that they do with their lives. While with Gwilym I’m mostly fascinated by all his folk-related activity, I also really like Y Bandana’s music as well and they’re one of the very first Welsh rock arts that I listened to and that got me deeper into this over time.

A lot of their lyrics sound interesting, but I often have a bit of trouble getting them fully, I guess because there’s a lot of such slang words and contractions and stuff that I haven’t been familiarised with yet. I still have trouble with them even though it’s been over five years if I’m counting right ever since I’ve got the faza on Gwilym. This song is one of those that I’ve been particularly interested in, because I myself am someone who believes that if you have a house, a room that you love, that you put a lot of effort into making it your own space and the way you like it, what’s the point of leaving it unless you absolutely, necessarily have to? And I was curious what’s their (I guess they wrote lyrics collaboratively) reason for not leaving the house.

So while I understand far from everything here, I’ll share with you what I do understand. I believe he (that’s how we’ll be referring to the lyrical subject for simplicity’s sake) feels a bit ambivalent about staying at home all the time, and has a fair bit of distance to it. That feels pretty clear even with all the gaps I have in understanding it. He says he has too much free time, and spends his time sitting in front of the telly, playing football (I guess, or perhaps more like playing with a football but not necessarily playing football as such, I’m not sure), staring at the screen for hours and avoiding thinking about the homework he has to do. I’m not sure if I’m right but it seems to me that he’s not necessarily happy with his monotonous and unproductive lifestyle. He says that he’s never liked going out, and clearly considers staying at home a better option because even when it’s raining outside, it’s always nice at home and you don’t have to care about weather conditions. There’s also some girl in the picture that he’s crushing on or something but it’s tricky as you can imagine. He’s trying to “follow” her, but “it’s too sudden/abrupt” for him, whatever that might mean. So the thing with the girl also makes him feel rather unhappy in his situation and he wants to be with her or something but doesn’t want to go out of his comfort zone. Moreover, I’m not really getting that sentence entirely but he’s concerned that it won’t last more than a day but I’m not sure what – his feelings to her once they start dating, her feelings to him, their relationship…? – He has a devil on his one shoulder and an angel on another and they’re telling him what to do. The devil tells him to go out and the angel tells him not to dare.

So yeah, we had some songs on my blog that I said in my opinion could be good candidates for an introverts’ anthem or something like that, and perhaps this song could make it as a relatable anthem for agoraphobics, or hikikomori people.

Trollguten – “Pell Deg Ut”.

Hiya people! 🙂

So last month I have already shared

one song

from this young and quite surprising Norwegian artist with you, and I was intending on sharing some more of his music, so that’s what I’d like to do today, as, in my humble opinion, the music that he’s made that is actually good is really underrated compared with how much attention his less ambitious stuff seems to be getting in Scandinavia.

This song, just like the previous one from him I shared with you, has interesting and kind of weird lyrics. I like weird, creative and genuine. As you may know, lately I’ve been playing around a little with Norwegian and I find it fascinating how this language has such a load of dialects and how cool it is that people don’t have this kind of shame about speaking them as some other nationalities with a lot of dialects often have. He wrote his lyrics under this particular stage name in what I believe is the Stavanger dialect or something similar from the southwestern Norway, and I was able to pick up bits and pieces of this song via my Swedish and some knowledge I’ve recently gained in Norwegian, so I had a basic idea of what it’s about, but I decided to sit with it before writing this post and try to figure out as much as I could from these lyrics when seeing them in writing so I could give y’all some idea. I didn’t understand everything, but here’s what I gather from it. He/the lyrical subject addresses some girl who lives in his house, presumably renting or something like that, who sounds like one huge disgusting nightmare to share your living space with. She eats and drinks like a pig, leaves crumbs of food on his sofa, doesn’t flush the loo, carelessly sits on his guitar, doesn’t pay rent and seems to be a real fart factory or potentially shitting herself ’cause that’s how bad it apparently smells, and it sounds like some default state for her to smell of sweat and poop. Ew! It sounds like a super weird arrangement if you ask me because she not only lives in his house essentially for free, but he also cleans up all her mess and even makes food for her! :O And she won’t even say thank you. It’s not surprising, given all that, that finally the lyrical subject had enough of it and decided it’s time to kick her out. So he told her to pack her bags and beat it. Except when she did pack her bags, he discovered that half of the tings she packed were actually his.

As an introvert who hates parasite people and considers my private space extremely important, this sounds like quite a hell for me to put up with, even though at least I don’t practically have much sense of smell.

Oddly enough, despite I think I understand quite a fair bit of it (which I consider great since it’s a dialect and not standard Norwegian and since I don’t actually speak Norwegian as such), I have no idea what the title means literally. I mean I can guess it’s something like get out of here or something, but I don’t know what the verb “pell” (which is probably pelle in the infinitive) means exactly.

Question of the day.

Are you excited for the summer months?

My answer:

Meh, neither excited nor unexcited. I used to accord great importance to summer back when I was in school, especially at the blind school, ’cause summer obviously meant holidays and holidays obviously meant that I’d be at home for the whole two months, so I really looked forward to summer each year. Even later on when I was going to schools closer to home and was at home every day, I still kind of enjoyed the summer because of not having to go to school and deal with school work which I usually found rather boring and uninspiring and preferred to learn actually interesting things instead, and school socialising always drained me to some extend. Now I’m glad I don’t have to care that much about the time of year and actually summer is probably my least favourite season because my heat tolerance is not very high, I deal much better with cold temperatures, and the room I have now overheats in no time even with temperatures like we’ve been having this week, 19-25 C, because my window is west-facing. I got a blind put on it last year which helps to some degree, and this year I’m finally going to invest in some good AC, which I keep thinking of for a long time but now I’ve actually had an AC guy look at my room to figure out what will be the best location for installing it and I think I’ll have it in a few weeks’ time. This overheating thing is a real downside to our current house, and I’m not gonna change rooms any time soon. Even if I wanted/could swap rooms with one of my siblings, their rooms are east-facing instead, which is kind of better because they only heat up for the morning and then they cool down, whilst my room starts heating up in very early afternoon and normally won’t cool down until late evening, but at the same time the idea of waking up in an overheated room is not very tempting to me at all and I’d be afraid that it would trigger more migraines for me, or even if not, it feels so icky to wake up and feel like you’re roasting. 😀 I can see that it definitely doesn’t have good influence on Sofi as she’s lousy in the mornings now, has trouble waking and getting up, and when she has her classes online, she usually does the first hour from her bed, half-asleep, and I don’t think she retains a lot of what she’s learning this way. 😀 Other than that, I just don’t like the idea of changing my room because aside from the heat problem, it’s the best room in this house, for me anyway.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

How many times have you moved house?

My answer:

Two. The first house we lived in was built by my parents and grandad some time after my parents married. My Dad didn’t really have the best job situation and it didn’t look like it was about to change any time soon, if ever, he also worked a lot abroad, and my Mum was studying before I was born but she didn’t really have the heart for it to begin with. After I was born, she felt she needed to stay at home with me, she started getting the benefits because of being my caregiver, but the strange thing with caregiver benefits in Poland is that they think once you become a caregiver, your only identity and your sole life purpose is being a caregiver, and if you even start working part-time or from home or something, your whole benefits will be taken away from you, even if you make a lot less than what you receive from the benefits. When I went to school the authorities did take the benefits away from her because apparently I was no longer under her care, but, with no higher education aand Olek being born, it would be even more difficult for her to find a job then. So my Dad, me and my siblings got used to the state of things, she accepted the situation and never ended up finding a paid job and has become a home manager as she calls it, and holds this position to this day. Thus, at the beginning of their life together, my parents struggled financially, so it was just a small house, with a kitchen, a living room and a very small bathroom downstairs and one big room upstairs which was my parents’ bedroom, and after my and Olek’s birth it was ours too, there was enough room for three beds, each in a different corner of the room. So I didn’t have my own room until I was 10, which I remember really amazed some of my school friends. 😀 My parents still considered themselves lucky – well, at least I know my Mum did – because they got to live close to my grandparents, they had help with the house building, a huge backyard they could use, they didn’t have to pay any rents etc. just for the heating, which would probably still be a lot less than if they had to move somewhere else and live in a flat or something like that. – My Dad’s financial situation improved drastically after a few years – my Mum often says she brings people luck and here it definitely sounds like it must have been the case, because I’m sure it wouldn’t happen without her intervention. – My parents were thinking about moving somewhere else entirely, but then my grandparents encouraged them that they could just build a new, bigger house on top of theirs. That sounded like a good idea to them so that’s what they started doing, but the whole process got complicated by several things, and also in the end it turned out not to be such a great idea. The family dynamics – with my Mum’s family – have changed in some respects, my Mum’s sisters started their families and decided they’d happily live on the same backyard as well and the more people, the more conflicts y’know. – Also the plan of how my parents wanted this house to be like didn’t fully work out. The whole building process was dragging on forever from what I remember, my parents were very stressed out and I was convinced that it would just never be built. 😀

Finally we moved in there shortly after Sofi’s birth, although we were basically forced to move out of our previous house asap so the new one wasn’t fully finished yet. Olek and Me had our rooms downstairs, mine was huge, and my parents had their bedroom up in the attic and after some time a small room for Sofi was added next to it. Sofi, however, didn’t spend much time there beyomd sleeping, as she much preferred playing downstairs close to Mum, and even if she napped during the day both she and Mum much preferred if she was somewhere closer so that Mum, or anyone really, could hear her crying. When she got a bit older Mum was also concerned that she would fall from the stairs or out of her crib when no one would be up there. I don’t remember if that was the ultimate reason why, but eventually, after about four years, we switched rooms with Sofi, to both of us’ euphoria and delight. I actually preferred living up there a lot more. This room had a nicer atmosphere to me for some reason and I made friends with it right away. I liked how it was so small and quiet and friendly and seemed more my style in terms of design, while my previous room was much better suited to Sofi in this aspect. I liked that I had practically my own loo up there – it was a small room inside my parents’ bedroom but they only used it at night, and it was perfect when there were a lot of people downstairs and I didn’t want to have to deal with them just for the sake of ging to the loo. The only downside was that the ceiling in there was very low so for the first few months, the first thing I’d do after getting up was hitting the ceiling with my brain, and sometimes even later on if I’d be too sleepy and forget about it being so low and get up quickly. So I’d often use that with people as a reason for why I’m so weird. 😀 Sofi, meanwhile, was also very happy to live downstairs and have enough space for all her toys and a huge wardrobe for all her clothes, which she always loved acquiring and changing as frequently as possible, or just having them for the sake of having.

The situation with my Mum’s family kept getting hotter, perhaps no dramatic arguments or anything like that, but all of us started to realise that, while family is a great thing to have, it’s also good to have more space between each other, or things can get quite unnerving and people get each other in the way, trying to be the one in charge, lecturing each other’s children and “borrowing” each other’s things indefinitely without the “lender” even being present at home. Such small things, over an extended period of time, can get extremely frustrating, especially if you’re the type of person my Dad is, with a heightened sense of individuality and need for territorial sovereignty. So my parents started thinking about finally buying a house elsewhere. Well, actually, they did almost ever since we’d moved to this second house. At some point they found a house in the town nearby that they kinda sorta liked, nothing special in itself but, in my Mum’s opinion, who is very interested in interior design and people has always envied her the skills in this area that she has and how differently our houses always look from everyone else’s, said that it could be made into something a lot better than it is. This is where we currently live. The whole process of moving here was never-ending as well, due to a lot of formal and familial issues, and rearranging a lot of things inside and out. We would probably also linger with this a lot longer, if not the fact that the furnace in our previous house broke suddenly in late autumn, and we knew we’d be about to move in a few months, so my Dad didn’t feel like buying a new furnace, therefore we used a… gosh, I think I knew how it’s called in English but now I can’t remember, either a compressor or a supercharger I think, anyway, we used that for space heating and that obviously wasn’t ideal as it couldn’t go on 24/7, and even if it would, we’d probably go deaf. 😀 So most of the time it was quite interestingly freezing and that definitely made us move out sooner, after about a week I guess. There is no tradition of naming houses in Poland, but my Mum did call our house Acacia River, since we live by the river, it’s flowing through our backyard, and our street is named after the acacia trees, which inspired my Dad to plant a lot of them here. This is definitely my favourite of the three houses we’ve lived in, although at the beginning I was sure I wouldn’t be able to love a house that other people lived in previously, and it wasn’t just me feeling this way. But of course over time we’ve made it feel ours and I guess it likes being ours too since all the people who’d seen it the way it looked before, when the previous owners lived in here, vs now, they say it’s a lot more beautiful. I like that it’s spacey and has its own spirit, and I love my room very much, and that we don’t have to share the house or the backyard with other people, not even family. I like that we live in a town so it’s close everywhere, yet because we live in the outskirts it’s really quiet here, no traffic, and actually feels fairly rural because it’s very green and there’s a park close to us, plus a lot of people actually do either some kind of gardening or farming here, so we didn’t feel like it was a major transition moving here from the countryside. 😀 But I also think I simply like this house the most because so far, living here has also been the best time in my life.

If you wanted to be exact, you could probablyy say that I moved around a lot more, because I was going between home and boarding school for many years, plus at school I’d also moved buildings in which I lived a couple times while staying there, but, while that contributed very strongly to my feeling that I was constantly on the move which I definitely didn’t like, I don’t think any of that counts for proper house moves.

You? 🙂

Question of the day.

How clean is your house/appartment right now?

My answer:

Well, it’s right after Easter, or, actually, here it’s still the second day of it, and most people do a huge cleaning before Easter. My Mum didn’t really, but that’s because she is a full-time house manager, as she puts it, and also she can be very pedantic, so there was no need for a real big cleaning here. Still, she did clean it more than usual out of a strong sense of duty, so you can imagine it’s extremely clean now. My room is more messy than most other parts of the house. Not like dirty messy, but just kind of disorganised to an outside observer I guess, which is its normal state that I like and am okay with ’cause it’s more interesting, and I’m not a perfectionist. If it’ll start to bother me, I’ll clean it up, but no sooner than that, usually. I guess only Olek’s room can compete with mine, and he’ll win, most of the time. Sofi, on the contrary, despite what you could think based on her very impulsive and spontaneous personality, is almost as pedantic as Mum. People often are surprised when I tell them that I’m quite messy and like it this way, because I have a lot more important things on my mind than being orderly, as there’s a – very true – conviction, that mess and chaos can be very confusing when you’re blind. Sure, only the key part is about who is the one making the mess. As I always say, I’d rather live in my own chaos than someone else’s order. One of the easiest ways to make me mad is to tidy my room without telling me about it, so that it looks like some Bibiel museum and I feel as if I were actually long dead, everything is in what YOU consider its place and looks very neat, and then I come in here and need something specific from here right this very minute but have no clue where you decided to put it so that the room would look as aesthetically pleasing to you as possible. 😀

How about you? 🙂

Mari Mathias – “Ysbryd Y Ty” (Spirit of the House).

Hey people! 🙂

Today I’ve got a song from an exciting artist for you. I’ve first come across Mari Mathias on radio Cymru FM, and the song I’m sharing with you was the first one from her that I’ve heard and instantly liked its folksy but at the same time quite contemporary and indie feel, her voice is also great. I had a listen to more of her music and also really enjoyed it. But still, that first song, which generally seems to be the most popular of hers, is my favourite.

Billy Lockett – “Empty House”.

Hey people! 🙂

I decided I’ll go with the flow and share yet another song by Billy Lockett that I particularly like. I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

Question of the day (15th November).

How was your day, or how is it going, if it’s much earlier where you are than here? What about last week?

My answer:

Today is okay-ish I guess. I’ve been feeling kinda shitty lately, mainly because of depression I guess, but I can’t even describe exactly what’s been going on, the main point is that it’s getting better. By this time last year, I had my MIMRAS sent out, but things have been a little chaotic for us here as we’d had a bit of a house renovation and MIMRA went on the backburner for a while as it’s my Mum helping me with the practical side of things and she’d crash having to do everything at once. We planned to finally order the MIMRA cards today – we’ve made friends with a company who makes them for me the way I want, when it’s possible, lol. – But it didn’t work out so hopefully we’ll do that tomorrow. That being said, plus the fact that the mail in many countries seems strained by Covid, there may be a fair bit of delay in MIMRAs arriving to their recipients, so apologies to all the unofficial winners, as I know they can take a long time to arrive even without a delay on my part.

As for the week, as I’ve said it was a bit chaotic with the renovations, even though they didn’t directly affect me as it wasn’t my room that was renovated. Sofi’s got a lot of changes in her room and while the works in her room continued, she temporarily lived with me. As you probably know if you’re a regular reader, we have a strong and generally good relationship with Sofi, but we’re also very different which causes a lot of emotional short-circuits between us sometimes, and I’ve gotten out of habit of living in the same room with other people I guess so it was a bit mentally exhausting and I was euphoric last night to be able to sleep alone in my bed. 😀 Sofi not so much, she loves having company even at night, and even tried her best to invite me to sleep with her in her renewed room but that was not an option as far as I was concerned, may be later when I recharge a bit. We also had the workers around all days and that felt kind of unsettling and awkward for me long-term, I hate having strangers in the house for longer periods of time. And some things in our house have changed now, so I had to adjust to it. It wasn’t a huge or very scary change but it did require some effort from my spatially disoriented brain and was a bit frustrating as changes tend to be.

How has it been for you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hi people. 🙂

My question for you today is:

Where have you been?

My answer:

I’ve been to Dreamland last night, finally. It wasn’t a very restful night for some reason but I did get some sleep and am not a Zombie anymore.

I’ve been living here where I live for almost 4 years now. Unbelievable! And what is more unbelievable when I look back at it is how quickly I adapted to living in this house. I’m very happy that I no longer live on the same backyard with my Mum’s family, and that we live in such a lovely place. In a town, where everywhere is near and you’re anonymous, but almost like in the countryside – on the outskirts and a lot of people are actually farming here so it doesn’t feel like a real town, not in our area of it anyway. –

I’ve been to four foreign countries in my life, not that many I guess. Lithuania, Slovakia, Czech and Sweden. All apart from Sweden were only day trips, but I enjoyed staying in all of those.

I’ve been to loads of wonderful and scary places in my brain world, and I’m sure there are still many that I haven’t discovered yet.

How about you? 🙂 Feel free to answer this question in whatever way you like. 🙂

Question of the day.

Did you share bedroom with any siblings?

My answer:

Yes, for some years. The first house that we lived in was in the countryside, we shared the same backyard with my maternal grandparents and my Mum’s two sisters and their gradually developing and growing families. My grandad has built this house for my Mum. It was pretty small. There was a kitchen, a mini bathroom, and a living room, and from the living room you could go upstairs. There was one big, sort of open plan room and we all lived there, that is my parents, me and Olek. Me and Olek slept in one part of it, and my parents in the other. Strangely, as much as I’ve always had an enormous need for privacy, this particular thing rarely bothered me much. In a way I even liked it because it was easier to deal with my night time anxieties when I had my family all around, and my Dad snoring his lungs out every night (now I couldn’t sleep with that level of noise). Sure, I liked the idea of having my own room and I envied a little bit other kids who did, though I also remember that it was normal to me to not have your own room, and I remember feeling genuinely surprised hearing from other children for example at school that they have their own rooms. It wasn’t something I desperately wanted or dreamt about every night though. I think it was also good because then it let me get used to sharing bedrooms with roommates at school, which is a different thing than sharing a room with your family but I think it made it easier for me than if I went to school without having that experience before, especially with my need for privacy and adjustment issues I had there. Some time before my Mum was pregnant with Sofi, at least a year before Sofi but I think it must have been a few years, my parents got an idea of building a new house, technically on the roof of my grandparents, and a much bigger one. This whole thing lasted for years, because they had real bad luck with the people they hired and other stuff kept going wrong, it was really exhausting and affected all of us in a bad way, I wouldn’t believe building a new house could affect your entire life and your whole family like that if someone told me and if I didn’t know from my own experience, I thought we would always be just building it and will never really move in there, as I said I don’t even remember in which year or at what time it had started because it felt like we’d been building that house since forever. And then when Zofijka was 2 months we moved to our new house very spontaneously, though it still wasn’t fully finished, and I had my own room there, and at this point, I can’t imagine sharing a room with someone else all the time, not even a sibling.

How about you? 🙂

Naomi Pilgrim – “House Of Dreams”.

And here is the second song from Naomi Pilgrim that I want to show you. I LOVE the lyrics, that’s the main reason I like this song so much. I’ve heard it for the first time only yesterday yet it’s still in my mind and I feel like listening to it over, and over, and over again. If I’m honest with you, at the beginning, when I listened to it for the very first time, it didn’t sit right with me really. I’ve said that I appreciate Naomi’s way with harmonies, the way she creates her music, the way it is produced. And I could see that the harmonies in this song were also really interesting to hear, very captivating, but I have that sensory thing with some sounds, not only with sounds, with harmonies too. Sometimes I just hear a song and it may be even beautiful, interesting, cool, but… ick, at some point there is something in the harmonies, that I guess other people don’t perceive the same, I’ve asked dozens of people believe me, that gives me a quick adrenalin shot, the dose depends on how bothering it is, and it just makes me feel kind of anxious… uncomfortable… I don’t know how to explain it… I guess as if it was incompatible with my brain. 😀 It’s not about disharmony, just certain types of sounds and harmonies, or maybe sequences of sounds I should say, I don’t know if there is any objective rule or a specific kind of things that can make me feel this way. It’s a weird feeling. But that’s just one of my sensory quirks. Usually, if I get that, it’s not passable, and I know I should avoid the thing that triggered this feeling in me, especially if it’s strong because it can get worse and make me feel just more generally anxious and unsettled. But I kept on listening to this song, because I was curious, and it felt like with time it actually stopped bothering me so much. Maybe because I focused on these great lyrics. And at this point, I can ignore the stuff that doesn’t agree with my brain, and now as it doesn’t bother me so much, it feels like it makes the song more intriguing. I wish I could do that with everything and with much more intense stuff. 😀 Weirdly, soul seems to be the kind of music that very often contains such harmonies and sequences that make me feel unsettled more or less. I do love this song  overall, and I do love the dream-like feel of it and Naomi’s vocals and, as I said, the lyrics above all. Dreamers unite. 😀

Question of the day.

How big is your house?

My answer:

Bigger than we need, as my Mum often likes to notice, but we all seem to like it this way, and my Mum prefers big houses. We have a very big living room, which is actually divided in two parts, one is like a lounge, with the TV, sofas and stuff, and the other is more like a dining room but we use it only for some extremely festive and stately occasions like when there are many people coming for dinner or some holidays like Christmas or Easter meals or big family events, normally we rather don’t eat there. From the living room you can also go to the terrace. We have a kitchen, a fairly small one, well it’s big but it’s also divided in two parts and one isn’t actually the kitchen any longer but a dining room where we eat all the meals. It’s open, so it feels like almost the same space with the kitchen. We have two tables there, but usually eat at only one, now as I think of it it seems quite weird to have two dining rooms and two tables, wait, three, one in that other dining room in the living room, and eat in only one place, at only one table. 😀

We have a very small but very neat-looking loo there downstairs, like it’s a normal loo but almost everything there is wooden and someone said that our loo is probably the best looking one in the whole county. 😀 That may be true. We have a big big cellar, which we use as a pantry, laundry room, a separate cell for Misha, where he is thrown in if he’s too whiny, and Mum does ironing there and sometimes just sits there on her own and God knows what she does, probably just rests, she certainly must need it. There is also a shower and you can get from there to the garage and to the furnace or go out.

Mum and Dad’s room is on the landing and it’s also fairly big, Mum has also a separate part of this room used as a sort of cloak room or dressing room or I don’t know how to call it properly. And they also have the door to the terrace in their room.

And on the floor there is a bathroom, with a less representative loo as guests usually don’t bother climbing there and are not encouraged to in most cases, 😀 mostly because right beside the loo there is my room with loads of scary stuff in there which is not for everyone’s squeamish nervous systems. 😀 The bathroom is medium I guess and my room as well, though having lived before in a tiny room in the attic it feels rather big to me compared to that and even with all my scary and not scary stuff I don’t use up all the space in here so Misha shares the room with me. Here’s a great evidence how quickly people’s views can change, even three years ago I would flinch at even the mere thought of sharing my own, private room with someone, and now I’m sharing my room with Misha. Next to mine is Olek’s room which is very big with a very big or should I say long bed. Mine is actually a double bed so not the smallest either, but Olek’s bed is really really long, as he is very tall himself. And he also can go out to the terrace from his room. And on the far left is Zofijka’s room, which is big but apparently not the easiest to design so it feels rather packed. Zofijka has actually two rooms, one big, and one small, which is a sort of hole in the wall, you can go in there (on all fours because the ceiling is very low) and it’s a nice hiding place and ZOfijka plays there and sometimes makes her homework. There’s no window but otherwise I think it could be also a nice place to sleep in.

So yeah, our house is certainly big, but I’ve also seen bigger ones, so I guess it’s not very very big overall.

How about yours? 🙂

Question of the day (3rd February).

What’s the most symbolic item in your living room?

My answer:

I guess it depends what you mean by symbolic. Hmm, maybe the telly? 😀 For my Dad and Zofijka it’s definitely symbolic. 😀 But other than that, I guess we don’t have many symbolic things. 😀

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Do you have an attic, basement or cellar?

My answer:

We have a cellar, though we usually call it laundry room because there is a washing machine, an iron and other stuff, but we also have a freezer there. It isn’t actually like most cellars that I’ve been to, it’s quite cosy and I like to be there with my Mum and chat with her when she’s doing something there. We used to regularly drink whisky there at weekends, now we don’t do that very often though. Misha likes to go there too and it’s a very intriguing place for him. It’s near the staircase and you can go straight to the garrage from there as well as to the boiler and my Dad’s smokehouse. We also have a shower in the cellar so when you come home and are really dirty and sweaty like I usually am after horse riding you can come inn through the cellar and have a shower on the way instead of taking all the dirt and smell with you inside, and we can just use it as a second bathroom which can be sometimes very useful when everyone is hurrying up to go somewhere at the same time as it often happens in families.

In our previous house in the countryside, we used to have both a basement and an attic shared with our grandparents, which you entered from the backyard, I liked that attic a lot, I generally seem to like attics for some reason, although that one was always very dusty, but somehow atmospheric. Also we had a small attic of our own, at first only my parents had their room there, then there was also Zofijka’s room added, but when Zofijka grew a little she turned out to be too nosey and sociable to be able to live and play upstairs while all the life was going on downstairs without her knowledge. So we changed rooms and she got my room downstairs which was way too big for me and I was very happy to take Zofijka’s small but beautiful room on the attic. I really liked it and this way our rooms suited us much better. Now we don’t have an attic though, and I think that’s a pity. 🙂

How about you? 🙂

Song of the day (15th December) – Unni Wilhelmsen – “Farmors Hus” (Grandma’s House). Unni

Hi guys. 🙂

Here’s the song I chose for yesterday but had quite a chaotic day so didn’t post it finally, I think it’s very interesting. It was originally performed by Wenche Myhre, but the first version that I’ve heard was Unni Wilhelmsen’s and I guess I like it more.

My ideal home.

What would my ideal home look like?

I really like our current house, and I think I’d like to have a lot of things the same way as here.

I’d like my ideal home to be in Wales – it could be in any of my favourite countries but I think as for living long term, I’d choose the UK, and most willingly Wales, particularly north Wales, especially if it could be somewhere in Gwynedd, perhaps in the countryside. I’d like it to be rather bigger than smaller, but not very huge, definitely not bigger than my current house, and this one is rather big. I’d like it to have the “feel”, you know, that you just want to be there, I’d like it to be atmospheric. My Mum is the best interior designer I know so I’d ask her to arrange it for me. It would be a vintage house, with a mix of old, kind of retro things, and new ones. I’d like it to feel cosy. I think I’d make my room in some calmer colours, it could be green as my current bedroom. I wouldn’t have ANYTHING red in my house, but kitchen and living room would be in more warm colours, just to make it more comfortable and homely. I would like my house to be as natural as possible – stone, brick and wood, no artificial stuff or as little as possible. And I think a more natural house would fit the place much better. I’d like it to have a big terrace on which I could go from my room, and from the terrace you could go into the garden, as we can here. Yes, I’d like to have a big garden. If my family would move with me, my Dad wouldn’t be able to exist without a garden, as gardening is his newly discovered passion. That’s all I can say at the moment, but I am sure that if I was building my ideal home, I’d have much more detailed picture of it.

 

Question of the day.

Where do you get most of the decorations for your home?

My answer:

Sometimes in secondhands, sometimes in various shops with some interesting trinkets, sometimes in our nearby Indian shop, and sometimes my Mum makes decorations by herself. It also depends in which room, cos for example Zofijka has a very typical teen room and all is from Ikea, or my brother has hardly any decorations.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

You’re getting to build the house of your dreams, so…
Tell us about the housewarming?

My answer:

Well, is the housewarming really necessary? If I’m honest, I hate housewarmings. My experience in this matter isn’t very rich and I’m sure you can have a very nice one, but what bothers me about housewarmings is how obligatory they seem to be and more a duty than something you do for fun. You get a new house – you MUST make the housewarming, all the people you know expect you will invite them, and that you will make the housewarming. It’s so obvious for them that they don’t even ask whether you will do it but when. And if they’ve ever invited you to their housewarming, they will be deadly offended if you won’t return the favour, no matter what kind of relationship you have with them. So far all the housewarmings I’ve been to were just soooo boring and hopeless. So far I’ve moved houses twice in my life and when we first moved my parents did the housewarming, but it was a complete failure for various reasons, and my Mum said she’d never ever do it again so we didn’t in our current house.

But OK, as I said I am hopeful that not all housewarmings are so boring and awful. I’d make one if I had some nice people to invite about whom I’d know we’d all have fun together, whatever having fun would mean. It’s my house of dreams plus in such a nice area that I am sure there would be some cool people that I could invite. And I would invite you guys. And some of my pen pals with whom I’m coresponding for a while and know them well and get along. I would also invite some people from my Mum’s family maybe.

So actually chances are that it would be quite a big housewarming. Or no… I have another idea. It wouldn’t be too cool if I’d make one gathering for all the cool people I know from all the environments I’m a part of. It would be way too big, so no fun, and people from different environments maybe wouldn’t get along well enough to feel good. Like I can’t imagine for example C. and my gramma on one party. and not only because of the language bareer, which is another huge issue. So I’d made a few smaller housewarmings.

As I wrote earlier my house would be filled with harps, and I would often make some harp festivals and invite harpists and harpers, particularly Celtic, so maybe we’d have some harp music in the background, or any other kind of good music.

I’d ask my Mum to make some very Polish food like pierogi or her very healthy chicken soup full of colagen with noodles if it wouldn’t be too hot, her yummy homemade bread or other things like that, and all the cakes that she makes that people always devour immediately, so good they are. And I’d ask my Dad to make some smoked meat which people always like. Or my Mum would made just a few dishes that she’s always very good at and we’d hire a catering company to do the rest. I’d also like some Welsh food since the whole thing would take place in Wales.

That’s about some basic stuff.

How about your housewarming?

Question of the day.

You’re getting to build the house of your dreams, so…
If you could chose one original piece of art/craft/artefact for your home what would it be?

My answer:

To match the Celtic feel, I would fill the house with all kinds of harps, particularly Welsh ones as my dreamhouse would be in Wales. I would learn to play Celtic harp and I would invite lots of harpists and harpers to my house, make some sorts of harp festivals and I would also design harps on my own. That could be a lot of fun.

You? 🙂