Freddie! (Not my cat.)

I oiled all my wood furniture and it makes the house interior shine. 

I also “fixed” the earwig hotel. The wooden latch on my gate that I use a lot becomes an earwig hotel at night. Each morning, when I lift it, thirty-to-forty earwigs scatter. The earwigs are not the problem. The hinge that holds the latch to the gate has never worked so yesterday I fixed it.

And the meeting with the Arts Council E.D. went excellently. She was totally up for all my recommendations. Because—and I’m not surprised to learn this—the Council is operating on a line of credit. I came home and wrote up a storyline for a campaign and did a timeline. Today, I’ll refine the campaign copy. 

The E.D. loves my plan, my enthusiasm for fundraising and my optimism. I’m rebranding the organization and I’ll start going to board meetings as a consultant; I’m very happy to be doing something I’m good at for such a delightful woman and such a worthy society. 

Drumbeg was lovely in the afternoon. We met Molly, a seven-month old puppy with whom Sheba ran a marathon. She came home exhausted and I was elated. I celebrated with a nice long session in the spa.

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When I went to Tanzania to spend fifteen days in a truck, I booked a week in a hotel on the island of Zanzibar for R&R afterwards. 

All I saw as I landed and all my first impressions during the drive to the hotel had me convinced I’d made a dreadful mistake. I liked my hotel very much, but nothing else and life on the street was challenging. However, after checking in and checking out the hotel, I took myself out for a walk.

The first joy of discovery I had was an English bookstore that had an extraordinary and vast collection of books by African writers plus books by authors from all over the world about Africa. I knew I’d be fine after that.

I bought some books and continued my walkabout and my second immense jolt of joy came from happening on the childhood home of Freddie Mercury.

I loved Freddie. I loved otherworldly talent and showmanship; his interest in music was so all encompassing. If you ever want to hear something lovely, listen to Monserrat Cabalé talk about Freddie. (You can hear their collaboration Barcelona, here.) And my love was somehow deepened by his death. It broke my heart that he died of AIDS. 

I stood in the street in Zanzibar and read the plaque about Freddie and wept. From then on, everything that happened on Zanzibar was wonderful.

Yesterday I watched a bunch of videos about the making of Bohemian Rhapsody,  the biopic about Freddie (and Queen) starring a rather remarkable actor named Rami Malek. The man’s performance as Freddie is completely believable. It, too, makes me weep.

The movie comes out in November.

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Since my computer problem, I’ve been using Apple’s Mojave  operating system. It’s been an almost seamless transition except that I could not use Photoshop. It crashed every time I opened a document and I dreaded another remote technical session with Apple. But instead of the stress of that, I solved the problem on my own—thanks to Google and an article published on the MacWorld  website.

I’m very relieved inasmuch as I’m about to start designing stuff for the Arts Council.