perlmonger | Entries tagged with personal

pome
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

Well, a bit of one perhaps. I took advantage of the first fine Spring day (if you can have a Spring day in February) yesterday to pootle off on my bike, after putting laundry out (yay!), and frying and eating bubble'n'squeak with ~~green~~ eggs and ham.

Months worth of used water filter cartridges went to Dyers for recycling in the mall formerly known as the Galleries, thence to Montpelier via the PRSC to take this photo (having failed to do so in anything but an artistically blurred way on my cameraphone last Saturday). Back down to East Street for some veg and black pudding, then to Sainsbury to get

ramtops a sweetener refill packet. A distressing phone call along the way: Mac told me that the duck (quack) that we were planning to have that evening had gone terminally off. Lessons Have Been Learned (ie. don't keep ducks complete with giblets past their useby in the fridge), and it was Time To Move On to a tub of emergency beef and orange from the freezer.

Mac was going to make an apple pudding, but calamities compound and I found, on going to fetch them, that the apples stored in a box in the study wardrobe (well, where would you keep them?) had gone far beyond soft to a point just short of mulch. The co-op sold me a surprisingly edible strawberry cheesecake, so all was not lost, and we ate our unexpected dinner over Red Nose Celebrity Strictly Cum Dancing (yes, yes; I know, but it was worth it to see Robert Webb doing Flashdance in drag: utterly splendid, and Good Legs too). Seeing Dick and Dom doing a surprisingly good Blues Brothers routine led to an inevitable movie choice (though The Commitments came a close second and will have to be watched soon).

Today, I've put more laundry out, changed the pond filters and put badblocks to work on 500GB of SATA disc - our in-house server barfed on it being added to its RAID, but I'm hoping (and from other evidence, expecting) that the disc's fine and the problem lies with (perm from) the controller/PSU/cable. Yesterday's photos are on flickr, and I'm left to wonder about the uses to which this might be put, out in the wild as it were (link courtesy

ed_dirt).

Another cup of Keemun now, I think.

I was down with flu over New Year last year, and come Christmas Eve this time round my adenoids decided to assault that specific spot in my throat that triggers my swallow reflex. Thankfully nothing fluish has developed, but I've still got a bastard dry cough that (through empirical tests) has proved immune to Pholcodine, hot whiskey and lemon, and Night Nurse. Separately and in combination. I hit it with good old-fashioned Benylin last night but even the third of a bottle of that I swigged overnight didn't stop me spending an hour awake and coughing around 2am. ramtops is suffering from something related - less coughing but more chest pain and tightness of breath - so between us we've managed to do virtually nothing of the things we'd planned for our fortnight off work. Ho hum.

Anyhow, here's all your traditional end-of-year trivia, in one, easy-to-ignore, post.

( 12 months of LJ )
( Books finished )
( Films/DVDs watched )
( Resolutions! )

Happy New Year to you all; may 2009 be better for you than 2008, both in its best and its worst moments.

I'm really not sure how to interpret this
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

ramtops and I had a small whiskey each (Bushmills 10 yr old malt, what we call a "restorative", because it is) Tuesday night after Aliss died.

Yesterday morning, as I stopped in the kitchen before going out to dig her a hole, I spotted that my glass, abandoned on the worktop the night before, was loaded again: somebody (no names, no packdrill, ~~Iggy~~) had very neatly refilled it, hardly a drop outside the glass. It must have just happened as Mac had been down not long before to make some tea.

Whatever it means, I remembered as I was processing this photo that the glass (and the glass Mac used) were engraved with images of cats by Iain, of Olive and Iain (of Nemorez) who bred and sold us Aliss a few months over nine years ago. It never occurred to me last night, as I picked them out of the cupboard, but it seems fitting now, somehow.

Anyhow, Aliss' body now rests under the ground at the end of our garden, zipped up inside an empty 10kg sack of Basmati rice, with a piece of string and a strip of cloth to guard with her eternal vigilance.

We had tickets for a gig last night: Show of Hands at St Mary's church in Marlborough. Both exhausted, we still went as getting out of the house felt like a good idea; we're glad we did, as Steve, Phil and Miranda were as fine as ever and a church as venue allowed for acoustic wanderings around the audience to superb effect. Feeling much better, if still battered and weary, we drove home on a pissing wet and windblown M4 to the three remaining Tribe members and bed.

Bada used to crawl under the covers on cold nights (or when she just felt like it), as did Zool (and her tongue: don't go there) before her, but last night, for reasons unexplained, Lilith and, later, even Iggy ventured under the duvet briefly. It's a time of change, I guess, and the social dynamic of our home is in flux, but it's all very disconcerting to say the least.

Many thanks to everyone who's posted sympathies and thoughts for our losing Bada, here, on

ramtops' LJ, on the the cats' blog, on my Facebook, on IRC, and in real life.

I'm not having what you could call the happiest of birthdays today, but you've all helped as much as any help other than the passing of time can do. Life (and its inevitable end) will continue, but can we please not lose any more of our tribe quite yet, please?

What's the effective impedance of a week? Can you split it with a t-piece?

Saturday morning, we went to CostCo, to swap out the faulty 20kg bag of basmati that I'd discovered a couple of days before when emptying it into its storage box - blueish green lumps of compacted mouldy rice isn't something I wanted to eat. They were happy to refund, once they'd found the original transaction in their database though, as

ramtops found, they are a lot less efficient at crediting refunds than debiting for purchases (they had both beurre d'Isigny and kabanos, which were out of stock last time we went, and we bought a fair wodge of other stuff too as well as replacing the rice).

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Jeremy Scahill

That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, Bernstein Sycamore

In the afternoon I went veg shopping on my bike, to the Sweet Mart as we needed coriander and that's as good a place as any to be guaranteed lots of good, fresh green stuff. I bought a 5 litre can of Spanish EV olive oil and sundry other bits as well; that left my pack pretty much full up. Cycling back toward St Werberghs, I was reminded of the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair that I had managed to forget all about (there was a particularly fine red and black banner on the cycle bridge across the M32). So, to the community centre, which was pretty much invisible under its encrustation of overlapped and interlocking bicycles. I added mine to the only clear bit of railing I could find (thought I might have to lock it to the centre's eyeball for a bit) and joined the throng inside. And outside. Lots of folks, and a lovely positive friendly atmosphere, but (and probably just as well) my already loaded backpack could only accommodate a couple of books - Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, by Jeremy Scahill and That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, by Bernstein Sycamore.

Thence to the wholefood shop for muesli which, bizarrely, they had run out of in the combination: loose innatub, worth eating. So, on to Wild Oats up the top end of Whiteladies Road and I was feeling that oil+books by the time I got up there, and even more so on the (thankfully mostly flat or downhill) way home. FWIW, the pack weighed 30lb (slightly less if our scales weighed right; slightly more if they're still 4lb under as they used to be when I used to compare them with the gym).

Later, there was fine food and too much alcohol+chocolate raisins, but I managed to start the process of baking a loaf - starter dough left overnight. Sunday, I finished the loaf and we watched huge quantities of B5 (interspersed with cutting the it's-mostly-green-so-I-might-as-well-call-it-a-lawn): from about half way though S3, we finally bugged out 2 eps into S4, though the temptation to continue was only barely resisted.

But now it's Monday, way after lunch, and I suppose I'd best get back to coding…

ramtops and I pootled down to Nailsea Folk Club on Friday night, to see Reg Meuross and Phil Beer. A very fine night it was, opened by Mike Scott whom neither of us had encountered before for all that he's been working the folk circuit for some 30 years: anyone who can sing a song about Brenda finding a floater of a morning must have something going for them. Reg and Phil worked well together; we've not seen them together before, in fact we've only seen Reg once, playing with Miranda Sykes at Trowbridge two years ago, but he writes a good song: deceptively simple and well crafted. Recommended.

We got home just before midnight, decided against a whisky and episode of B5 and headed for bed. In the bedroom we found a wasp: large, yellow, going "bzzzzt"; this is suboptimal, so by the careful manipulation of light switches, we persuaded it into the bathroom with door shut and window open. By the morning it was gone.

Saturday, we needed to do a bit of food shopping, so headed to North Street and did so finishing by indulging in a lunch at Café Ceiturica (which astonishingly still doesn't seem to have its own web site; perhaps we should pimp ourselves to them). Good food, served by friendly staff in an unpretentious environment, as always. Mac had a monstrous tower of split bagel, salad, burger and goats' cheese; I had Persian lamb curry with butternut squash, roast lime, prunes and lentils. Looking at the specials board, they were serving Barramundi cod accompanied by, amongst other things, aubergine caviar: I think I should suggest to

ursulav that she paint eggplant rising up a stream to spawn.

After an afternoon and evening of B5, drop scones, tea and cake, we found the damned wasp back again, in the study this time. Enough. This time, as it finally headed into the bathroom (as opposed to buzzing against the glass pane above the door),

ramtops helped it on its way with a few squirts from the cats' can of Acclaim. She found it lying on the floor with its legs in the air this morning, so it seems that flea spray works on wasps too.

What I don't understand is what a singleton wasp was doing in the house, twice, in the late evening. I don't know how to sex wasps, and don't particularly want to find out, but I do wonder if it was a queen scouting out for possible nest sites; if so, I'm glad the thing is dead: I've witnessed wasp nest disposal once in my life, and that will suffice. Thank you.

Current Mood: bzzzzt
Current Music: bzzzzt

companions
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

We got a phone call this morning from the vet in Nailsea: Pepper was hit by a car and killed on the main road through the village late last night.

There's not a lot I can say right now; I feel raw. She was the Prettiest Cat In The World, the most vexed, and the most charming. She'll never come running into the house sounding like a fishwife again; she'll never lie on my legs in bed attached, grumbling, like a Klingon no matter how much I turned around in the night; she'll never be assaulted by Mustrum, her abusive partner, again.

Go well, Pepper, you would have been on this planet for nine years next month: I'm glad I spent those years with you.

So here I am, back at my desk.

This weekend, though,

ramtops and I went out! To that Lunnon!! To a party!!11! This may not seem extraordinary behaviour to you, but believe me it is: dragging us out of the house at all is unlikely; getting us to travel 120 miles to a social gathering is (August bank holiday aside¹) vanishingly unlikely, Still, we've decided to at least try to be less hermit-like, so off we drove on Saturday to Croxley and

margotmetroland and

drpete's party.

And it was good.

Even the weather was fine for us, though if the lunar eclipse was visible, I don't think anyone thought to look up for it. I've no idea who most of the people I talked to are, but I enjoyed talking to you all anyhow; the chances of me remembering names are tiny at the best of times, and after the quantities of fizz that I necked, they reduce to well below the noise threshold. I did at least finally meet

easterbunny,

aca and the splendid

ebonyrae, and also

sneerpout! yay! whom I've wanted to meet for pretty much as long as I've been on LJ.

Huge thanks too to

ladymoonray, who ferried us, with

tamaranth, back to our ¿hotel? in the early hours; a generous and very welcome gift.

We drove back home yesterday feeling a lot less bad than we deserved, and collapsed in an exhausted slump on our sofa for the rest of the day, departing only as far as the kitchen to prepare a pasta bake based on the portion of the veg sauce

ramtops extracted from her meatball preparations last week. No further drink was taken.

¹ August bank holiday, of course, is summer camp in deepest Wales chez

geoffcampbell and not to be missed under any circumstances.

Hardly anyone who reads this will know WTF I'm writing about (I'm not going to elucidate), and those that do are mostly the principals, who are old enough to sort their lives out for themselves, so this isn't likely to be aimed at you, gentle reader.

However.

Self-righteousness is the root of all evil; self-righteousness when you don't have sufficient data to make a judgement,even if it's intended in defence of someone you care about who's hurting, is ugly, stupid and (more to the point) unhelpful.

But hey! this is TEH INTARWEBS so what else can we expect? ;)

Too hot.

I cycled off to the shops first thing Saturday, before the weather went from Too Hot to Batshit Crazy Hot: to Whiteladies Road for a lens cap and skylight filter for the Nikkor 50mm; not to the bike shop in Cotham (it hadn't opened yet); Gloucester Road for ankle straps and a quick steering bearing adjust from the poncey bike shop, sausage from the Polish grocer, and a two-for-one pair of fly zappers from Maplin. Thence to St Marks Road past Montpelier Station, where I took the crappy photo adjoining (now immortalised on the Bristol Traffic blog) after having to circle on the pavement around the three cars blocking the end of the road, more sausage from another Polish grocer, and squit, coriander, chilis and a jar of cornichon from the Sweet Mart. Finally, back home via St Werberghs (cheddar, apples, bananas and mushrooms) and the Centre, Anchor Road and the Floating Harbour.

Up to 25° as I got back to the village.

ramtops and I decided that now was the time to divest the pnod of its infestation of underwater Leylandii in the form of reeds and a lily that between them rendered it impossible to see the fish, and barely even feed them. I should've taken photos: the whole lot came out as a single, huge and heavy lump that had covered pretty much all of the ledge in the pnod - maybe 3 or 4 foot round a curve and a good 18" across. Sawing the fucker up for disposal took the rest of the afternoon: that was wood in them there roots, and the four housebricks buried inside the mass demanded a degree of care in the sawing. I split most of it, but extracting the plastic pots that the two plants originally emerged from had to wait.

We discovered that one of the new zappers was dead. Checked the unit to be sure: 630VDC on the grid; 240VAC on the socket; nada from the UV bulb. Maplin said they'd replace just the bulb if I took it in, which seemed fair.

Sunday, after Mac's nasty but, thankfully, consequentially constrained fall on the grass bank by the pnod (she's written about it elsewhere), and aching somewhat from the previous day's exertions, I finished the splitting and greenbagging of the triffids. The pots were cut free, but there was no way that either would ever be separated from the solid mass of root it contained, so they went in the car as was. The idea was that the whole lot could go to the ~~tip~~recycling centre, along with our current load of plastic bottles and sundry other crap; this we did after swapping the UV bulb (they had to extract one from another unit; I'd assumed they had bulbs in stock when they said they'd swap it ;) and buying a tenpack of solar powered LED garden lights at Maplin, and getting the key that Mac had cut on Saturday filed down so it might actually work at Sainsbury.

We went on to Cleeve, to buy a few aquatics to fill some of the new space around the pnod (and perchance to keep the Tribe off the fish and frogs; well, we can hope); we got a couple of garden plants and tomato feed while we were at it. The afternoon saw

ramtops and me mostly gardening, front and back. This is all getting horribly traditional middle-aged weekend occupation, but it's probably best if I don't think about that too much. Still, everything looks much better now post weeding and planting, and the day was ended wonderfully by a sharp rainstorm just after full dark. We sat for a while on the patio under the awning with last drinks listening to it fall and looking at the lights scattered around the garden, before finally going to bed.

A good weekend, on balance.

I have a new toy this week, or rather an old toy that's new to me: a gloriously manual 50mm Nikkor lens that's now sitting happily on my D70s. It's well travelled, coming as it did from

spride in NYC, who in turn had it from DHM; my thanks and gratitude to both, because it's lovely.

No metering, so that's an iterative process of test shot and check histogram, starting from a guess that should hopefully converge with the desired end-state over time. My only focus aid (other than sadly failing eyesight) is a tiny green dot that appears at the bottom left of the viewfinder when the camera reckons the focus area is about right. It works, but holding the shutter half-cocked (to stop the display timing out) while focusing is fiddly. It's times like this that I really miss my old ME Super.

But it works, a damned sight better than the crappy kit lens (second iteration¹) that came with the body. And I need to think about what I'm doing with the camera, which is a very good thing: freedom and creativity are defined in large part by their constraints. I'll never be a great photographer, or even a particularly good one, but I know that I'm liable to take better pictures, all else being equal, without a zoom and automated everything doing my thinking for me.

Now all I need is to allow myself the time to go and actually take photos. The few I've taken by way of testing, I've uploaded to flickr

¹ second, because a few weeks ago I dropped my camera onto a concrete surface: it landed lens-first, onto the lens hood, which likely prevented damage to the body, but did the lens no good whatsoever - "sproing" is the operative word here, I think. I've inherited

ramtops' old D70 kit lens, which she no longer uses.

We are returned, packed (eventually) like sardines into one of BoggerAir's¹ 737-800s yesterday evening from Shannon to Bristol.

What is there to say? It was the West of Ireland, there was Weather, there were ferry trips to islands, the impacted tar and dead nanites clagging the lungs of my soul were blown away; maybe only for a short while, but blown away they were and are for now.

I may write more later (though likely not) but highlights?

» It's Ireland! People talk to one another as they pass in the street. Without blinding myself to its downsides (though the Church seems to loom now less than ever), on a day-to-day level there's much to be said for living in a country where people aren't all thrussened up as they are here.

ramtops and I would move tomorrow if only the idiot tax would oblige.

» A (too short) day walking around Inishbofin. We've said this before, but next time we will stay there at least one night so we don't have to think about ferry leaving time as the afternoon progresses.

» Staying again at Rosleague Manor which, though the food wasn't quite up to the standards of last time and the rebuilt conservatory isn't perhaps as friendly as it was, still served me my best meal of the trip and was a wonderful base for the three nights we were there.

» The Blue Nile in Galway! That was, after all, our reason and excuse for going in the first place, and a very fine gig it was too. Paul's voice seems to get a little more fragile every time we hear them, but more poignant with it. The Radisson's ballroom is an odd venue, but it was packed, friendly and enthusiastic, and seated where we were (seating was unassigned, and

ramtops picked the best possible place just behind and to the left of the desk), we probably had the best sound in the house. Not that Nile gigs ever have bad sound, of course.

Photos will follow, when I've extracted, processed and uploaded those few that might be worth the attention.

Lowlights? We've both been bitten (of course), the aforementioned airline, and the horror that's "electronic stabilisers" on the Aran Direct ferry to Inis Mór: replacing natural movement with the waves with a complex, non-periodic lurch and judder is not an improvement and made that journey something to be endured, when the sea trip is something I've always looked forward to (whatever the state of the sea).

As usual, I'm going to make little if any attempt to catch up with LJ or other blogs; if there's anything you think I'd want to, or should, see from the last week, please let me know.

¹ HTT to

ianmcdonald - it could perhaps be said though, that by making the process of flying as vile and miserable as it could be (thus discouraging their transportees from enduring it again), and by packing their tin cans full to brimming with presumed human bodies (and so minimising per-capita resource usage and environmental impact), they might actually in some way be to be commended. It wouldn't be said by me, however.

On this grey and drizzly summer solstice, here's a winter solstice gift of darkness and light for you all from The Book of the Night:

The finger of the moon touched the face of the rose window and suddenly, as if in answer, a thin film of flesh covered the bones of the abbey and the bones of the abbey became rounded and soft, and the towers became … what is it … knees. And the crack of doors, a human, fleshy ass, and the rose window—the great seat of birth—burst open with the light of birth as a living eye. A cathedral of flesh, the abbey became, her belly the roof of it all. I raced from the barn but stopped at the Tree of Life and hid, somehow, in its shadow. (Aah, Nicholas, you fool.) There I saw her navel, the nave, her arms outstretched into the apse, and her head as altar. Her woman part opened in the red-gold of light. I saw her and knew that I looked upon a woman with her knees in the air, giving birth to living light. What had been the soft gold reflection on the glass, now became her own fire. I watched. Stars rested on her fingers and glinted on her kneecaps.

And then she stood and shook stiffness from her limbs and the transparency of flesh became solid and she walked along the Street of the Dead down toward the sea, past me, knelt, dropped her long dark hair into the pool of sea, and washed herself. And then she stood and spun over the fields, her robes of moonlight twisting about her, twisting until she became a triangle of light, five parts four, four parts three, shimmering, and the moisture from her hair dripped as dew on the fields. She lay down again where the abbey had been, lifted her knees to the sky, stretched out her arms across the fields, opened herself, her woman part, and was stone again. Doors, towers, window, stone. The moon rose above her knees as if it had been born from them. I saw the miracle, that night, only once, but I knew then that the true light came from the darkness and it was to the darkness I must go. I could not hide.

[ via

lpetrazickis ]

The 5 Love Languages quiz:

Score	Love Language
11	Quality Time
9	Physical Touch
4	Words of Affirmation
4	Acts of Service
2	Receiving of Gifts

How to interpret your Profile Score:

Your highest score indicates your primary love language. Your second highest score indicates your secondary love language. If two scores are identical, you are bilingual (you have two primary love languages). If the scores of your primary and your secondary language are close (for example, 10 & 9 respectfully), it indicates both are important to you. Whatever a significant other does to express love in either of these languages will get emotional points with you. The highest possible score for any language is 12.

( part two )

Via rozk,

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)

You scored as a Existentialism

Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
--Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”
--Blaise Pascal

More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

Existentialism

90%

Hedonism

70%

Utilitarianism

60%

Justice (Fairness)

50%

Nihilism

45%

Kantianism

35%

Strong Egoism

25%

Apathy

15%

Divine Command

No surprises there; I'd probably choose "Phenomenologist" if I were to choose a label, but I guess that's more metaphysics than philosophy. Hedonistic Existentialist it is then.

ETA, in utter irrelevance, that "Bubo" is a good name for a rat.

Current Music: John Cale & Terry Riley - Church Of Anthrax

The bike trailer that

ramtops found and ordered for me on eBay (from this retailer) arrived this afternoon from Germany. A small w00t! at least is in order; I've been wanting such a device for quite some time, and it means that pretty much all of our shopping from now can be done without firing up the car. The thing even has a waterproof cover so, within reason, weather can be disregarded.

It weighs 7½kg, and you hardly know it's there when pulling it (empty at least; the load limit is 40kg :) though it's a bit of a pig getting through bollard chicanes. I took it for a test run along the village cycle path and up Glebe Road, which is enough of a hill to judge how much work the thing is going to be in practice: I dropped a gear (middle 2nd AOT middle 3rd) getting to the junction at the top, but it really isn't nearly a gear's worth of extra effort.

It's really well thought out: it folds flat when it's not in use and is remarkably simple to set up and collapse. You pull it along with an articulated tow bar that mates with bracket that sits neatly inboard of the back wheel quick release, held on with a pin and circlip (and emergency strap). My only minor quibbles (apart, of course, from the beast being utterly insecure: order of shopping is going to have to be taken into account) are that the knobs holding the crossmember in place are irritatingly overendowed with thread and there's no strap or other mechanism to hold the folded trailer closed, or its detached wheels to the rest of the machine. Oh, and there's nothing to hold cargo in place, but a suitably sized bungy spider will fix that.

Turns out, of course, that we don't actually need anything bulky from the shops this weekend, but its time will come soon enough…

Recommended.

Current Music: Philip Glass - Changing Opinion

Pertwee is Orange
Originally uploaded by perlmonger.

My Stokke Wing is over 20 years old now, and its second incarnation (reupholstered by a ~~friend~~ some years back) wore through a fair while ago.

As you can see, it's been running on emergency repairs: there are trouser-wrecking spikes sticking out of that ply, hence the strapped on cloth.

We finally got round to ordering new pads from Back in Action a few weeks ago when we went in to have a peer at MBT shoes, and they arrived today. A quick whizz to College Green on my bike and a bit of hot Allen key action, and I can haz bouncy orange intelligent sit! And restored use of a couple of belts too.

( spoilers )

I've not posted anything for a while - not even about last weekend's rather fine Eurovision-fest with

agc,

purple_peril, Pat'n'Dave WANOLJ joining

ramtops and me - so here's a completely pointless post to prove to anyone reading that I'm still in some sense alive.

Today,

ramtops and I went to the garden centre in Cleeve, for hanging basket plants and basket liners, and some herbs. They had sold out of 16" liners, which we need for the largest basket that's going to be filled with strawberry plants, normal and (Blessed Be!) metsämansikat, we bought along with a whole raft of other herbiage from D the LibDem. So, we stopped at the Brockley farm shop on the off chance they had some (they didn't) and walked out with a punnet of strawberries, a tub of cream (we already have chocolate cake; these will be combined later tonight :), a small loaf of bread-with-roasted-peppers, some sossidges and a pack of locally sourced pig bits which we're going to consume tonight.

We stopped to drop some of Mac's surplus shoes (yes, you read that right) at the village charity shop and discovered a small but perfectly formed crisis as we got back into the car: it turns out that Mr Rodda is less than conscientious about the fastening of his tubs of cream (bad bear!) and about a third of the tub had redistributed itself in the bag, on the floor of the car and on Mac. Thankfully, home was only a few hundred yards away, and cleansing wasn't too traumatic.

The bread, which was exceeding good, was consumed for lunch, with apples and cheese.

This afternoon, I cycled home » Ashton Court » chocolate path » centre » Slavers Quarter (where I sent water filters for recycling at Dyers in the Galleries) » Easton » St Pauls » St Werberghs (refilled washing up liquid bottle, buy more Greens cheddar, porridge and dishwasher tabs) » Ashley Hill » Montpelier » Gloucester Road (apple and blackcurrant juice, round rye crispbread (but no thin rye crispbread, and neither did the scoopshop up the hill)) » Redland » Cotham (yay! thin rye crispbread, and some green tea) » Clifton » Leigh Woods » Ashton Court » home. Weather: hot and humid; your correspondent: likewise.

Minor mishap on the cycle path through the village: I had to stop quite suddenly to avoid ploughing into two people just round a blind right angle bend; I stopped, went to put my feet down, and found that I hadn't stopped and in fact continued gracefully sideways with my bike onto the path. All most undignified (and down to not taking enough account of a raised centre of gravity caused by my fully loaded backpack), but no real damage to me, bike, shopping or (concerned!) pedestrians.

Tonight: food, wine, Dr Who and likely more West Wing (we've finally got a couple of DVDs into S4).
Tomorrow: gardening, lots of.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

dead brains don't dance

beyond the last visible dog

What? A real post?

2008

cold at the edge of time

Thanks…

weekending

Wasp Factory

go well

Party!

Apropos something

Weekending

old to me

returned from the West

Watching the abbey dance

[baaa] the lexicon of love

dead trees

[baa] my philosophy, innit

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)

Trailing

Pertwee is Orange

Teh Moff

Pointless what-I-did-today post

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July 2013

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