He had been sent for by the rich men of the city including Mian Mukkam Din, Muhammad Tahir and Bhai Gurbaksh Singh to rid them of the Bhangi misl leaders, so named reportedly because they drank Bhang all the time. On this day in 1799, a nineteen year old youth sat on his horse and surveyed the gates of Lahore. The Sher-e-Punjab Maharaja Ranjit Singh, being shown a map of India by a European in court.
And that I like to think is the legacy Sharif the actor leaves for a lot of people like me a good guy, a lover, a gentleman. Oddly touching is a quote listed by one of the British papers he said of his hands that they were old but soft, fit only for caressing. Now that he has passed at the age of 83, I am glad that he left us films such as Tamarind Seed where he played another Russian opposite another Julie, in addition to the big names everyone knows. He grew old behind the scenes, away from the public eye and the most recent stories about him were about Sharif the gambler and inveterate bridge and poker player. Which is probably not as bad as it sounds at first reading. He might have replaced Gable as the moustache that many women would not have minded tickling their upper lips but he referred to his relationships with them as communion. He himself seems to have been perpetually amazed at his success saying about the film he did with O’Toole who will go to see three hours and forty minutes of desert and no girls! He claimed have seen nothing but Billy Elliot and ET in the last quarter of a century and I wonder whether he saw himself in either of the two fairy tale films. Now to find someone willing to keep a shirt on and dig some holes and heft a few sacks of compost and rock minerals about, while I sip on a refreshing minty julep or three.
These are the classic corsage flowers, loved by authors of Regency romances and couples walking in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens alike(there is a splendid tree there).They are the Scarletts of the plant world, showy, dramatic, delicate but strong.įrankly my dears, as some of you may know by now, I give many a damn when it comes to plants. I do not lie.īut the one I am looking forward to most is the M.grandiflora, the one with the giant cup shaped white flowers and waxy leaves with brown felted undersides. The waxless seeds are apparently used as purgatives in herbal medicine. The Chinese used to boil the covering away to make candles. The other one is the Chinese tallow, with its three lobed fruit enclosing nuts covered in pure white wax. The Katsura is famed for colour and a sweet perfume from its autumn leaves that is variously described as caramel, candy floss or brown sugar! Imagine, candy floss on the air and not on the hips…!
But wait, there is more as the Sham wow guy says on television. Of the new arrivals, I am especially looking forward to seeing autumn colour on the maples. Trees generally look good in groups, being social things. Why trios? Well, trees look good in odd numbers just like Ganesha statues or shirtless photos of Brad, Salman or Putin.