A-Z Challenge ~ J for Jails ~ Updated

 ⚠ Warning! This post contains the answer to today's Wordle ⚠
⚠ Proceed at your own risk ⚠

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.

Today my starting word is Jails.
The average today is 4 or modertely challenging -- I am above average, but want to blame my starter word:

Wordle 1.757 5/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Jails and travelling do not have much in common, unless we include some time travelling in this - but this story'll have to wait, I'm busy and just jumped in to post a bit delayed.

Jails are not normally mentioned in the same breath as travels. But let's travel first just a bit and then far back in time.

The frst Jail
- For many years I lived in Elsinore. Late one night I visited the pub, where I drank chocolate milk and played pool. Just before closing time I had a pineapple soft drink. I took the half filled bottle with me when the pub closed and began walking home. I did not make it far, walking in the pedestrian inner city, before a police car pulled up next to me and an officer told me I was under arrest. I asked why, and he told me that I very well knew. I did not know of any crime, and raked my brain ... what did I do? I only felt guilty of the very minor crime of stealing the soft drink bottle from the pub (they were, and still are, subject of a deposit of like 0.20 €).
At the police station, I was sat on a stool, asked to take off my outer garments, empty all pockets and hand over all this and my bag - containing a diary/poetry/drawing book, some pencils, a scarf, cigarettes, a lighter, a bike lamp, and some paper towels - as far as I remember. I was allowed to keep and drink the soft drink after the officer sniffed at it.
I sat on the stool for a long time, now and then the officer, that sat typing away at the desk looked up at me, and I looked back at him. I tried asking him why I was detained, but he only replied that I was under arrest, and he was not allowed to answer any questions. I asked to use the toilet, but no, I could not.
After a couple of hours -- it was now nearing four o'clock in the morning, the cathedral almost next door marked the passing time with bell strokes every quarter hour -- the two original officers from the car returned and said that they were very sorry, it was a case of mistaken identity, I was free to leave.

Elsinore is famous for Castle Kronborg, the castle where Hamlet plays. We only visited when we had visitors form far away, strange thing that you never visit the sights of your home-town.
    Deep down in the dungeons there's a small, very disgusting jail reserved back then for tough criminals, and the king's enemies. It is triangular, the bars making out one of the sides of the for a start equilateral triangle. But the bars were movable, and were moved steadily closer to the back walls, so that the prisoner in the end was not able to lie down, and if he did not break down from this, water from the moat could be led into the underground cells. The prisoners here did not survive for very long.

This was today's rambling time travels.

And now for today's Wordle:

A-Z Challenge ~ I for Inlet

 ⚠ Warning! This post contains the answer to today's Wordle ⚠
⚠ Proceed at your own risk ⚠

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.

Today my starting word is Inlet. This was the solution Wednesday -- Strangely the same thing happened last year with Hazel. But unlike then I did not make a fake 'solve in one' for today. That I solved it today at all was sheer luck. I did not even know the word!
The average today is 5,3 very challenging -- I am still average:

Wordle 1.756 5/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Inlet and travelling fits nicely together.

When travelling to Africa we drove all the way there - meaning that we went through DDR (GDR), Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Syria - I was there with a group of people in a bus, we belonged to a Danish travelling school.

I remember one beautiful morning ... we had been driving through the night, and now it was early morning, somewhere in Czechoslovakia. The dawn broke, and it was like in the song, Morning has broken ... I had to stop the bus and admire the view over the mountains, down to a lake with trees all around and a small, sea green boat just leaving an inlet, bright and clear in the sunrise.
We all went out of the buses and just stood there looking. It was as if the world was created all anew just for us.

And now for today's Wordle:

A-Z Challenge ~ H is for Hamam

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.

Today my starting word was to have been Hamam. But unlike in Danish and Turkish, Hammam in English has two m's in the middle and thus did not fit. I solved today's Wordle using another travel-related H-word, but I'm going to stick with hammam for my short story.
The average today is 4,3 -- I am still average:

Wordle 1.755 4/6
⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Gnome and travelling - how does this fit together?

When travelling to Africa we drove all the way there - meaning that we went through DDR (GDR), Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Syria. We spent a long time in Turkey, driving almost all the way to the Turkish-Iranian border. This was because the original plan was to go to India, but we reached there mid-November 1979. Remember the Iran hostage crisis? So we turned around, bound for Africa instead.

Driving through Turkey in November was tough, it snowed, it rained, mud and snow made for lots of vehicle pushing, the vehicles broke down and needed repairs. In short, we were often in need of a bath. And luckily even the smallest of hamlets normally had a hammam. Beautiful buildings, with vaults and water, lots of water, hot water, and soap, and towels. Heaven for the frozen and dirty traveller. In the smallest hammams boys and girls were separated in time, in the larger we had separate wings, but anywhere, big, beefy women or men - according to your sex - stood ready to scrub you clean with big chunks of soap and dry you off with big, coarse towels. The hammams were not always impeccable, but the towels were pristine, and all of one's body tingled afterwards. A glass of hot and sweet tea tea at the nearest tea parlour finished off the treatment.

And now for today's Wordle:

Words for Wednesday ~ April 8

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over as a moveable feast with many participants supplying the Words.
    When Delores closed her blog forever due to other problems, Elephant's Child (Sue) took over the role of coordinator.
    Now, after Sue's demise, River has taken the mantle of coordinator upon her shoulders.

No matter what, how, where or who the aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to our mind.

This month the words are to be found at Mimi's blog: Messymimi's Meanderings.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please leave a comment on Mimi's or River's blog, then we can come along and read it and add a few encouraging words.

It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

And for today we were given
Elegant
Limited
Spontaneous
Bother
List
Pin
    and/or the following phrases:
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch (meaning do not rely on something you are not sure of)
Par for the course (meaning what you would expect to happen)
A piece of cake (meaning a task which is easy to accomplish)

After digging up Susan's trip to Sweden, I felt like returning to Unicorn Farm. I also took up my old challenge, to use the words in the order they were given. The story ran away with me, and ended up quite somewhere else than I imagined. I hope you enjoy it anyway. I did not use the phrases, this might or might not happen later on.

Thora entered the classroom, elegant as ever, Susan envied her, she always felt clumsy, not dressed for the occasion or somehow sticking out. On the other hand Susan did not care enough, she could easily find more interesting use for her limited free time than ironing shirts or skirts or doing her hair. Also she had a propensity for spontaneous trips to the woods, the beach or to a farm, and she did not like her clothes to hamper or bother her in these endeavours. She ended her line of thoughts with more points to her own casual style as Thora swished her wand, and a long list of strange ingredients appeared on the blackboard in Thora's usual flourishing golden letters.

Susan read along, as did many of the others, Kalle and Anna were in the middle of one of their sibling rivalries and sat quietly pinching one another, while Marja and Paula, the Birch sisters were demonstratively inattentive.

Thora did not acknowledge the disturbances with as much as a raised eyebrow.

When the stylus stopped writing, Thora asked the apprentices on the green team to pinpoint the odd man out on the list.
Small papers flew through the air, and Susan looked at hers. It read:
- Which ingredient:
- Why:
- Bonus. What should it have been:

Susan read through the list once more and decided that stinkbug wings did not belong. Now she had to find out why. Very soon it came to her. All the other ingredients were inanimate or plant matters, this was the only animal part. She wrote this down too. And what should Thora have listed? Hmm, the stink-part seemed correct, but she did not know any stink plant. She looked through the window, thinking. She did not hear Anna and Kalle moaning when pinched by animated lobster claws, of course conjured by Thora, neither did she notice the creeper vines that not so slowly wound around the birch sisters, tying them to their chairs.
Of course! A stinkhorn! that was what was missing, Now it was clear to her, this was the ingredient list for the stinking cloud-potion. She wrote this and the stinkhorn on her paper and looked up.

Then the began having second thoughts. It had been too easy. Where was the trap? She started re-reading the ingredients list on the blackboard, but then she noticed the tied up sisters and the claws snipping at Anna and Kalle. She knew the possible cause for their being punished -- their eternal sibling bickering - but what had the Birch sisters been up to? Anna was beginning to tire, and the big claw came nearer and nearer to getting a good grip on her thigh. Before Susan could get to her wand, Kalle noticed his sister's plight, and turned his wand and his warding spells at Anna's claw, which promptly disappeared in thin air. Anna was a fast learner, so when Kalle's claw dived in for a nip at his nose, Anna gathered the last of her powers and made it go away.

"And now," Thora said to the Swedish siblings, "now I'd like you to use your brains on today's problem instead."
Red-faced and shameful they both began reading the list. Susan also returned her attention to her paper, only to realize that it had been  magically prepared to return to Thora when filled out. Now she could do nothing more than hope that her first intuition had been right.

A-Z Challenge ~ G for Gnome

This year again I choose an easy way out. Each day I'm going to solve the Wordle of the day, using as starter a word beginning with the letter of the day. I hope to post every day at noon my time (GMT +2. Dang you DST!).

As the alternative badges, as supplied by Lissa suggest travel I'll prefer travel-related words as starter words, and if at all possible, I'll avoid words containing the same letter more than once.

I'll maybe add a few words about my chosen starter word if fancy takes me and I have time and energy for it, else I'll just post the solution - or not in the case that I did not solve it.

Today my starting word is Gnome. It was not that bad, and as the average today is 4,8 I am average once again:

Wordle 1.754 5/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Gnome and travelling - how does this fit together?

When traveling to Salzburg with my family , long time ago now, only the two biggest Owlets were brot back then, we visited the Gnome-garden (Link in German, but with pictures). Some of the gardengnomes carry baskets, and e put the Owlets into them and took pictires - oldfashioned paper ones, they can't be shown here.

Salzburg has a special meaning for me, because just like Maria von Trapp - yes the one from the Sound of Music, I have sat on the green benches at Rezidenzplatz, wondering if my future lay up in Nonnberg with the nuns, or in a family. You can read my old post in this here.

And now for today's Wordle