Gypsy Caravans are Cute

The horse is off munching grass somewhere

I know what you are going to say, but--aha! The majority of Gypsies in the UK are not Roma but
Irish Travellers, a whole different branch. And the contemporary culture of Irish Travellers is now a staple of British television, thanks to the popularity of "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding."  Meanwhile, the average 40-something Irish traveller woman looks exactly like me, only more expensively dressed.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law is a real Romanian, so I don't want to hear any more of this BBC "Romanian" nonsense. Gypsies are Roma, Irish Travellers and New Age Hippies, not Romanians.

The most amusing episode of the show, incidentally, included a Gypsy beauty contest. This contest featured a pile of Irish Traveller girls and one drop-dead gorgeous, very Polish-looking, Roma girl. The Roma girl won.  The Irish Traveller girls sulked.

Anyway, when I think about Gypsy caravans, I am not thinking at all about the trailers and illegal building sites of today but about the glorious wagons of yesterday.

Naturally, I want one. And I have a wonderful fantasy in which B.A. and I travel all over rural Poland with a glorious painted caravan and a horse. Sadly, neither of us can play the violin. And even more sadly, B.A. is not that interested in Poland. But there is nothing to stop me from travelling all over rural Poland in a glorious painted caravan in my imagination. And perhaps one day I will have one to put in the garden. And a garden to put it in

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Thank you for telling me about Pinterest. Of course I have heard of Pinterest, but it hadn't occurred to me before to sign up. So I have signed up and you can find out what I think is cute by looking up my account (hint: under my real name).

I have discovered  that not only that a few minutes of finding cute things on Pinterest gives me a long-lasting emotional lift, but just contemplating cute things I have found on Pinterest calms me down. For example, today when I was worried I may have lost my wallet, but there was no way to check, I contemplated gypsy caravans instead and felt much, much better. Of course, the Gin and Tonic helped, too.