Quick pictures!

frozen blossom
defrosting drop by drop
crystal spider

More Road-to-Damascus type stuff in the woods
Fran's new toy :)

Cor! I never saved anything so quickly in my life!
Umm, think I'll stop now while I've still got power...there's a bit of a gale getting up out there and I expect we'll have more cuts just as I get.....
to....
the end!

Made it :)

just thought I'd say quickly

the power keeps going out.
I had done pictures but they all vanished into the aether!

Cooling down

Father in Law has been ensconced in the sitting room during most of the time he's been here. This is good because I find it hard, if there are people around, to concentrate on important things that I ought to be doing. Like letting Barney do lots of cooking and tidying up after him. But it's bad because FiL likes warmth. well let's be accurate here. He likes HEAT. The fire lit, the central heating on and the door tightly shut against stray draughts and any kind of air movement.

So we all fell asleep after dinner, watching Benny Hill (No, I had nothing to do with this choice of viewing) and I'm really not sure if it was the hot airlessness or the tepid humour which sent us all off. But it was nice having a little doze and even nicer emerging, opening several windows and having a large drink of water.
Well, so I'm waiting excitedly for my new lap top to arrive and fill up lots of happy hours trying to make it work and connect to the internet (I can't wait for this bedtime blogging - at one point when Eldest and I were discussing various options and Eldest said well that one's £900 which is £100 saving on that one and Barney said...as well he might...£900??!!! What do you want this lap top for??? Somehow I didn't think that blogging in bed would make him feel all cosy about lap top buying. No, we didn't go for the £900 one :)
I'm also waiting excitedly for Photoshop CS2 to arrive so I can play with the beta version of CS3.
And then, after New Year, when there's a bit more time, I can go and have my free lesson with my NEW SEWING MACHINE....(nearly as magnificent a present as the lap top) and then do some sewing.
In fact there's so much excited waiting going on here I may expire from the sheer...erm...excitement! But I mustn't do that before New Year as we've invited lots of people for the festivities. Sadly, not the bloke we invited last year who proved a bit over-excitable about fireworks and erratic in directing them...such that a rocket passed between Eldest and the person he was talking to. Between, in fact, their two faces. Inches to spare I gathered afterwards. All unaware that he's regarded as a danger to life and limb, this person has been angling for a repeat invitation with increasing lack of subtlety for the last month...a further indication of unsuitability.

Other things that have made an impression in the last few days include a set of plates we bought. Well, Barney bought them actually, together with new cutlery. I'm not quite sure why he wants matching sets (I thought we were perfectly happy with the random assortment we've had for years but it seems we aren't) but they are very nice though also VERY BIG square white plates. Too big to go in the dishwasher and so heavy that you risk wrist strain every time you pick one up. The shop was three short of a set when we bought them so we ordered the rest and quite predictably, they didn't arrive. After a number of phone calls to complain (made easier and more effective by the fact that I personally don't care very much if we don't get another three very heavy plates to handwash) we ended up with abject apologies and, somewhat unbelievably, a free set of slightly smaller plates! I mean free! (these plates cost as much as they weigh).
When the manager made this offer I was so stunned I made fish noises for a minute or two (bloop blopp gurgle gulp) and had to restrain myself from saying "You're joking...Oh no really there's no need to go over the top...I don't want the plates that much honestly...where's the catch".
I think the moral of this tale is, if you want something a lot and it doesn't happen, get someone else, who couldn't care less, to complain for you and they will be rewarded on earth (I guess none of us will be rewarded in heaven) on your behalf.
Or, all sorts of things come to those who get a good and disinterested intermediary to complain.
Or, Camp Hops are jolly good people and they really care about our custom.
Or, Barney did thatch Mr Hops' roof a few years ago...can they be hoping for a better rate when he needs patching?
I feel a bit of a fraud really. It's not as though we often spend lots of money there. I think we once bought an armchair cheap in their sale. sometimes I wander round the expensive clothes section and drool a bit. Now and then I buy a packet of safety pins or a bit of elastic in the haberdashery department. And I really don't think we're going to follow up our plate buying with any other major purchases. (I did vaguely mention that if only they'd told me the plates weren't coming before Christmas I could have got them at Bentalls...did that hit a nerve?).
Oh enough of this rambling. I need to clear up dinner and have now cooled down so much that I also need to get tucked up in a warm bed. And it's nearly time to start panicking about NYE. Or even thinking about it.
I'll post some pictures tomorrow :)
Goodnight.

Where was I? Oh yes, Christmas :)

*
***Well the Christmas panic and aftermath is more or less over (though Father-in-law is still enthroned in the sitting room occasionally suggesting it might be time to bring him a small pefectly formed snack or a carefully prepared drink**).
*Presents have been exchanged, opened , scattered, gathered up again, left behind, returned and sat on from time to time.
*The most entertaining present was probably the digeridoo given by Youngest to Eldest, the most frustrating was probably the unusual puzzle box given by Youngest to Barney. One of my personal favourites was a story :) Though the warm slipper socks come close behind and the memory foam pad is following me round the house to have various parts of me snuggled up to it experimentally. Possibly the most used was the tiny camcorder given by HF to Frangelita....I must check whether any of it is on her blog yet :)
**The most magnificent (still in processing since it was only chosen and paid for last night, on line) was....
A LAPTOP! for me!!!!. (Well half a lap top anyway :) YAY. I will be able to blog in bed, travel to relatives and be staggeringly boring and unsociable while they are playing games (or being ill).
All of which was organised against a backdrop of noisy, cheerful offspring and their partners and a brief exploson of spring-offs of offspring (Youngest, her new partner and their 3 children of their two earlier relationships).

Many hours were spent by me and eldest, poring over laptops and Photoshop CS3 (which sadly is only a trial beta and has expired). Trips were made to look at laptops in PC World (all pronounced unsuitable and expenesive by eldest). Eldest has fixed my internet and reinstated the wireless router ready for the arrival of the NEW LAPTOP :):):). It seems to be working.
Large tracts of my computer have become unrecognisable thanks to reorganising and introductions of things I really ought to have (the gospel according to Eldest).

Marvellous food has been consumed in HUGE quantities. the turkey came with a pop up cooking timer which assured us the beast was cooked at least an hour and a half before it was...fortunately we didn't believe it. Frangelita brought the most delicious pate (which I've just had on toast for breakfast; not all of it, just a little bit as it was very big)

Boxing day involved a practically gourmet dinner with youngest and her partner (but no small people as they'd all gone off to their other parent for the rest of the Chrissie bit)

Yesterday the sun came out slightly :) and although Frangelita and HF had gone home the rest of us went to my brother's house for yet another splendid dinner.

Today it's possible the recycling people will come and make space for the New Year's paper and bottles though they're either very very late or they came very very early (hoping to catch us all asleep, I expect).

This morning I saw Eldest and partner off on the coach back to Lancaster, laden with bags and clutching the digeridoo and then went to assure the bank that, yes, I really did intend to spend vast sums of money on line at 1.30 in the morning. And to check that they weren't trying to tell me that actually someone had stolen my identity and fled the country with the contents of my bank account. (they phoned me this morning to ask me to confirm all sorts of stuff just as we were about to rush off to catch the coach). That was ointeresting by the way. during the course of various purchases, 1 penny and £1 had been deducted from my account by a couple of people I'd ordered things from. It seems that these are amounts deducted by online shops when you place your order, to check that your card is valid. Hmm. They never told me they did that.
Well now I've got to wash up. More later maybe :)

*Most of the pictures on this post have little or nothing to do with the text nearest them! don't expect to look at the picture and think Oh well that must be youngest or eldest or a partner. It's all random :)
**Father in Law just phoned me on his mobile from upstairs. He went up to fetch something from the bedroom and it looked so inviting, he's decided to stay there for a while :) I always knew those mobiles would come in handy one day :)
***I don't know why these astereisks have come up blue and underlined....but if they appear as links, let me know where they go ?

In case I don't have any more time

Because my internet broke and I just did a mammoth back up of half the 38,000 pictures on my computer (38000!!!!!? Yes really)
Then I deleted them, heart in mouth.
Now there's only 15000 but I'm working on getting rid of the dross (masses of it) and sorting the nice stuff.
Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't been visiting much yet again. Perhaps I'll be more organised after the Christmas panic is over? (golly, this is getting boring...I must try and think of a better way to deal with chronic not getting round to other blogs...for one thing I miss them and for another when I do get round there's so much stuff I've missed!)

Have a very very good Christmas, holiday, solstice, celebration, every one.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS :)

It's possible I may be unable to resist a quick post tomorrow night but also, it's possible I may not have time or I may fall asleep under the influence of alcohol, food and being Mrs Santa for the night.
xxx all :)

If you go down to the woods today

(Or at least if you'd gone this afternoon) you'll find they're having a religious experience (or you would have done if you'd been rushing off via a woody detour to avoid a traffic jam) and then you'll be late for meeting a daughter and all things subsequent. I was.
There may be more on this subject another day.

There have been things going missing

I was beginning to wonder if we had a smoking, literate magpie in the house as well as rats, flies and ants. (Ok, the flies have been vanquished, the ants will shortly be dealt with in a decidedly non-green way and the rat hasn't been seen hide nor hair nor droppings of since the first evening but it's more entertaining to imagine a house seething with uncontained vermin than a merely untidy one).

First my turquoise pen went missing, then several cigarette lighters and finally, this morning, my tobacco pouch.
After a quick search of all the places I might have left it (though I know exactly where I did leave it but one wonders, often, at my age, whether one is 'losing it' yet*) I became convinced of the guilt of a certain person and stormed the office...leaving my glasses behind me. The office (Barney's sanctuary and smoking corner) yielded nothing.
I began a fruitless and increasingly outraged search of the house, cursing my memory, my failure to put things where I know I can find them next time I want them and the fact that I now couldn't find my glasses either! After stamping around for a while, I put on my driving glasses, found my middle distance glasses, and then tried again in the office...where I found my turquoise pen, (broken) 3 lighters and, of course, my tobacco pouch, cunningly concealed on a shelf where such things as tobacco pouches are not usually kept.
There are times when one suddenly feels that husbands are BAD people.
Not because of the casual borrowing...not even because of the (unintentional) breakages and concealments but because dammit, I wasted half an hour searching for something which I had left where I could find it and I hadn't foolishly mislaid my turquoise pen or my 3 lighters.
When I was little, I used to lose things, precious things, inconvenient things, all the time. There was a terrible occasion when Mummy and Daddy and I had to drive to the lost property office in London because I'd left my school satchel on the bus. The time I lost Muffin the Mule 'somewhere on the golf course'. The beloved and irreplaceable book I was reading during the French lesson and which no one ever returned. the blue plastic ring which looked good with everything and which I left by the wash basin in the toilet at work (what sort of a shit colleague pinches a ring from the toilet at work?).
This habit of losing things whether I might care about them or not instilled in me a sense of deep anxiety about my ability to keep anything I cared about...the losses seemed so random as if my head had temporarily developed a blind spot (it's possible, I suppose that I had a touch of ADD, can you have a touch of that?) and as a result I've developed a few odd habits, like when I'm out I hold my lighter all the time (all nice and warm in my hand) because if I put it on the table either someone will absent mindedly walk off with it or I will absentmindedly walk of without it. And I feel slightly hysterical with rage if someone takes a pen from the pen place and leaves it in the other room. And I often buy two identical pens or a dozen identical lighters in case I find myself deprived. Oh and if I lend someone a pen I surreptitiously watch them like a hawk until I get it back safe.
Anyway after 40 odd years I finally learnt to keep things in their places and pick them up before going away without them (mostly - when we're travelling I get a bit itchy if I have to put my bag down in case I forget to pick it up again because it could still happen) but it does mean I have to set up little practice rituals to make sure that I always put the glasses in one place and the pens in another and the keys in another. And if I put them there it does something terrible to my psyche when some other agent takes them away!
So this evening I told Barney he mustn't borrow my tobacco unless he's going to leave it where I can easily find it and picked up my lighter ostentatiously from the sitting room mantelpiece and added "and you broke my turquoise pen". He looked suitably chastened but he doesn't really understand!
My life would be so much easier if I became Sunnyasi** like the Hindus (?) and owned nothing at all.
Bampton Church, a sunny day in November
St Mary's Marlston on a grey day in December

*because of my chronic absentmindedness I find this euphemism for senility particularly worrying :) I'd hate to lose 'it' among all the other valuable stuff I've lost over the years.
**Say what you like about Rudyard Kipling, he wrote a mean bit of prose.
Extract from 'the Second Jungle Book' concerning one Purun Dass who became Sunnyasi.

Next month, when the city had returned to its sunbaked quiet, he did a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the world’s affairs went, he died. The jewelled order of his knighthood went back to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of General Post began in all the subordinate appointments. The priests knew what had happened, and the people guessed; but India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K. C. I. E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyasi, or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary. He had been, as the Old Law recommends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter, — though he had never carried a weapon in his life, — and twenty years head of a household. He had used his wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth; he had taken honour when it came his way; he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honoured him. Now he would let these things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs.

Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown coco-de-mer in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground — behind him they were firing salutes from the bastions in honour of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that life was ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears to a colourless dream of the night. He was a Sunnyasi — a houseless, wandering mendicant, depending on his neighbours for his daily bread; and so long as there is a morsel to divide in India, neither priest nor beggar starves. He had never in his life tasted meat, and very seldom eaten even fish. A five-pound note would have covered his personal expenses for food through any one of the many years in which he had been absolute master of millions of money. Even when he was being lionized in London he held before him his dream of peace and quiet — the long, white, dusty Indian road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twilight, where the wayfarers sit at their evening meal.

When the time came to make that dream true the Prime Minister took the proper steps, and in three days you might more easily have found a bubble in the trough of the long Atlantic seas than Purun Dass among the roving, gathering, separating millions of India

Kipling saw a very different India than the one we think of today.

Printing frenzy in progress

Also Christmas shopping.
Isn't it just busy busy busy at this time of year?

I've printed 33 little pictures for which I only have ten little perspex frames from Muji. Looks as though I'll have to go to Reading again. Oh dear :) And 125 odd cards..well not cards this year but (thin) bits of paper with a picture and a nice message saying we've bought 1/2 a goat instead of 125 cards so you've all send about 100th of a goat to somewhere where goats (even parts of them) will be appreciated.

Also ordered a million things from various places such as Wiggle and Amazon and bought £100 pound's worth of book tokens. Not to mention several rabbits, a sheep and some parts of a goat for my lucky family to give to people in Africa and other such hot, hungry places...it's all bulk buying this year.

I also seem to have an intermittant fault in the left foot. As soon as I decide to ring the surgery, it stops hurting and I can march around ...not exactly like a spring chicken but briskly and there's no point in going to the doctor and saying "well it hurt a lot yesterday but today it doesn't". Not till after Christmas anyway.

Anyway, as usual, it sems to be time I went back to bed so I will...after taking the dog out for a last attempt on my life (I mean a last pee and pooh of course).

Hope you're all enjoying the Christmas panic too. I won't ask if you're ready; if you are I don't want to know and if you're not, we're in the same boat :)
Have fun :)

Of printers and inks and stars and dogs

So I took the magenta cartridges to Cartridge World and showed the nice young man my pink prints and my greenish black prints and the empty cartridge and (Oops, wrong one) the new cartridge and he said it's the print head. This is good, the reason why I invested in this particular printer was because it had a removable print head which could be fixed when something went wrong (like losing it's marbles as the old one did). what's more it transpired, I could, myself, alone at home, remove this printhead and bring it in to be 'cleaned'. GRRREAT!
So I did that and today I collected it and came home all eager to put it back and put all the ink cartridges back and get to work.
Well, I don't know what he meant by 'cleaning'. Not, obviously, removing ink from it, since, as it came out from its sealed plastic bag, so did a lot of black ink. How fortunate then that my previous experiences with printer parts should have led me to prepare kitchen roll and plastic bags.
Ok. I eventually remembered how it should go back in and it did.
Got out the bag of cartridges and found that they'd run into each other. Particularly the black into the yellow. Stupid me. Should have realised they neded to be stored upside down. Got out the new cartridges (I always replace as soon as I run out because there are few things that make me more furious than not being able to do stuff because I forgot to replace things)
But I can't find the magenta. There should be a bag with one dead and one new magenta cartridge. I've put it somewhere. Probably somewhere quite sensible. (This is one of the few things that makes me even more furious than the other thing)
Oh well, while I was turning the house upside down and shaking it to see if any magenta ink fell out, I found some earrings I had planned to cannibalise (last week) so that would have been good if I'd found them last week.
Bugger it. I'm going to watch LOTR
I enjoyed that.
Later, I thought it would be fun to take a picture of Orion* but first the dog unexpectedly nearly broke my neck. (this, it turns out is another thing that makes me even more furious than the earlier thing....it's being a slightly frustrating day) . He's feeling a bit sorry for himself now as he's been well and truly berated by an indignant person sitting at the bottom of the steps in the garden in the wet frosty grass.
I'm going to bed. It will possibly be safer and less exasperating there than anywhere else. And I can get my feet warm again.
*I notice today that you can only see Orion after dark, I mean on the screen. Well in real life too, of course. So that's very umm, realistic right? I think my monitor needs cleaning.
Update: It's working. The printer I mean. Yay!

Dante's Equation*

I'm reading this book in which the discovery of a 'wave form' equation (which I believe is supposed to be a mathematical representation of something to do with the fabric of the universe) and it's subsequent, secret testing by two not very sensible scientists in a spare basement underneath the university where they ought to be working properly and above ground, leads to an unbalancing of the life/death, good/evil, growth/decay behaviour of normal matter.**
It's not very good, in fact the bit I've got to is getting a bit tedious as the protagonists are all carefully fitted into various character types as described in the Torah (after a Jewish Rabbi spent too much time performing some kind of sudoku/word search rituals on it...Kabbalism...is that right)? And now they've all been transposed into universes which fit their character types and are doggedly pursuing their own different kinds of damnation (all except the nice guy who fell into the same universe as the nuttier scientist with whom he is in love, which is why he carried on assisting with the foolish, matter-disturbing research).
I supppose they must all be about to discover some way of disturbing matter again so they can all get back to their own world though it's going to take some heavy plot manipulation to get them all to find the necessary er, equations or kabbalistic thingies to get home.

Anyway, As I said recently, we had a plague of flies. Then an invasion of ants.
Today *curses, shudders and utterances of outrage* I surprised a rat in the larder. It surprised me a bit, too.

Is the balance of the universe disturbed?
Has somebody in the vicinity been surreptitiously testing a way of affecting the waves of matter.
Is it because I am reading this book?

Well if I'm about to be translated into another dimension, I'll try and let you all know about it. I just hope my personal version of hell contains laptops with internet access.

And meanwhile I'm looking for wire mesh (so we can have the larder window open) and rat traps.***

A moorhen and a toy duck...Oh no, it's a real mandarin duck!
A slightly mad looking Golden Pheasant
Stormy sky

**It's not very convincing and it's not even very confusing which would have been fine...I'm not a scientist so I'm perfectly content to be confused by the scientific underpinning to a good SF novel but I don't like being unconvinced.
***humane I suppose, though I do wonder why we should treat rats as if they were humans. wouldn't it be more considerate to treat them as if we were rats?

I don't think this old tree is bothered about rats though it may object to having its matter waved.

Update: Actually the people in the book turned out quite well. But the cats are taking a predatory interest in the area around the boiler so I think the rat is still there.
Backdate: I forgot to mention the power cut didn't I. well there was a power cut too...WHILE I WAS READING THE BOOK!
Well I suppose it would be more accurate to say I read a bit of it during the power cut. But you can't create really daft cause and effect nonsense without being a bit flexible about the order in which they happen

Short and sweet

that's this post and me in that order :)
I've had a fabulous few days and I'm absolutely exhausted (yes it's very late).
But I just had to say... er..how silly, I've forgotten what.
Oh yes, I'll be tied up in knots this weekend so visits will have to wait till some time next week.
Back soon.
Have a lovely weekend.

So little time, so much to talk about

I was beginning to think I'm an old hand at this blogmeet thing...but in fact I haven't done it on my own before! Neither have ever I actually made a plan and set off to do the meeting thing. Before, it was a jointly organised with me and Frangelita (such a cosy pair we are) and lovely Thursday nobly travelled all the way to meet us and we happened to be in Oxford when we met The (delightful) Beep, arriving all without warning at his stall!
Cheating really!
So as I set off after a brilliant morning in Kew Gardens, with sun and clouds and thunder and sheltering under trees from sudden downpouring rain, naturally the first thing I did was take a wrong turn and end up crossing Kew Bridge in two directions and HEAVY traffic which took up 20 minutes of the half hour I'd given myself to get there. Oh my god I thought, she'll be waiting perhaps in the cold and I'm going to be LATE (I've drafted a post recently on this very subject and it will now have to be drafted some more).
So then I arrived and no blog like person was in the warm cafe...it had to be the one outside in the freezing cold!!!
And it was so we went into the warm cafe and it's so odd to know so much about a person and yet so little about how the talking is going to go. But you get a feel, don't you, and I trust those feelings so I wasn't actually scared to meet her. Well you wouldn't arrange in the first place if you didn't feel fairly sure you'd get on.
We didn't have enough time! We could have talked much longer and been so much more relaxed...I'm afraid I chattered on too easily and didn't leave enough space for her. (not having my wise daughter to keep me in check). I wish I'd listened more but we did have that kind of talk where half of one sentence sparks off a dozen other topics and there seemed to be so much we could have talked about if we'd had more time. It seemed to me we had lots and lots in common. Starting with the fact that neither of us expected the way we looked in real life! (Neat! she said I looked neat! Wow. Nobody has ever said that about me before...I must look at me again in a new light)
On the other hand, the person I met was exactly the person I was hoping to meet, rather less anxious and uncertain than the blog persona but just as interesting and stimulating and imaginative. And tall, slim and blonde (not tiny and dark) with warm dark eyes (and an occasional look of slight astonishment)! A little bit fragile but a sweet and thoughtful person (lovely little gifts..Oh the heart shaped biscuits with glitter and a basket to pass on to Gorgeous Babe when I've eaten the chocs and the chutney And best of all, a tiny notebook :) And all I had, damm the printer, was some pretty bits from Kew).
And I got to see the pictures for her next book and the lovely printing, it's even more wonderful than on her blog.
And now I've got a face and a voice to put to the words...Oh I wish I could hear the band, then I could hear the lyrics in her voice...I imagine a very rangy voice, a bit bluesy but a some high sweet tones.
I do hope we'll have another time I:) I hope I didn't make you too dreadfully late to meet the children and I hope I didn't rattle on too much :) Oh and I hope you weren't chilled to the marrow...but I really did need to have a ciggie :)

Have to say the London Wetlands is fabulous...how wonderful to have two (in fact three, if you think of Richmond Park) such beautiful green-rich places nested in the curve of a river and in such a big city.

Well, it's made me think a bit. I'm sure a blog meet can simply be an extension of the blogging connection, I feel sure those big blog meets must be like that a bit. And that would actually scare me much much more than meeting one person. But the trust involved in meeting a single person or just two or three is much bigger. A first meeting is a lot about expressing that trust and isn't all about getting to know. In fact beyond thinking, "thank heavens it wasn't a mistake, I don't think I've broken anything imortant, I was right to feel sure we'd get on". It's a first step. Just like any other first meeting. Uncertainties remain but possibilites expand (that was rather succinctly put I feel :)
Oh whatever! I'm quite knackered.
I really do hope we can do it again I. thankyou for a delightful meeting and for the thoughtful gifts and for being so lovely :)


Before the storm


Shelter from the storm

Warm cafe
Cold, windy sunset
Goodnight :)

Sick machinery

It's like an outbreak of flu.
First the car fails its annual health check, then the printer refuses to clean its nozzles. I wanted to print some little pictures* and they all came out pink. I replenished the magenta and now they're all coming out green. (but the yellow isn't printing at all so I don't know how they're managing to do that).
So I told it to clean it's nozzles and when that didn't work I told it to deep clean itself and finally I suggested it might try bottom cleaning. Sorry, bottom plate cleaning. Green is giving way to black. With vertical lines.
I'd better not say what I told it to do with itself after that.**
What's next? Will all the light bulbs pop? Will the washing machine break down in floods? (I don't know why but the sicknesses of household machinery always seems to include washing machines, I think they must be neurotic).
Meanwhile there's an unprecedented invasion of ants in the kitchen...in November?
And we have acquired a deep fat fryer. I can't quite work out where in our crowded kitchen it could possibly go but I'm working on it. I may be able to throw out some stuff I don't like...though I did throw out some saucepans but all that did was to make it slightly easier to get the remaining saucepans into the saucepan shelf. Certainly no room there for a deep fat fryer.
I'm not complaining about the DFF, Barney wanted one and the old chip pan is worth its own weight in burnt-on ancient sticky stuff. I just don't know where to put it. No, it can't go on the animal feeding space. No, nor the toaster space.
I think I shall have to take everything off every work surface and shelf and just move them all around till they fit...and I can bear to look at the result.

Well I've got lots to do, places to go, people to meet.
Umm...a book to read.
Glass of wine to finish.
Cup of tea.
Post a few random pictures.



Bed?

*Got some little perspex block frames from Muji (possibly my favourite shop in the world...it's so almost uncompromisingly cool. I'm not sure about some of the toys though). Anyway I thought very small photos in little perspex block frames would be good Christmas presents. They can have a picture facing each way but will be much more...er, cool, than photo cubes. It's interesting choosing pictures that are big thumbnail size. Some rubbish photos look quite good when very small :)
**But if the printer's broke, I'll have to get snappy snaps to do them for me. Pooh!

My kingdom for a horse?

If wishes were horses we probably wouldn't have to worry about MOTs. (though we would probably be buried under enough horse shit to have brought about global boiling by this time).
Which is to say my car has failed. Not miserably but with a good two day's worth of work.
This inevitably has put spanners in several plans I had made and also has made it impossible to visit friend who has a bad back. And means I will have to be very careful to make coffee with whole milk as I need to save the semi for tea (I hate tea with whole milk) since I won't be going shopping till tomorrow evening at the earliest..
What's more I am now a year and several days older (notionally) than I was last time I posted. Which is not a big problem as I can't feel any difference. And Frangelita gave me the whole Lord of the Rings DVD so I can now watch the second and third films to which I will look forward a lot.
But a photo editing programme which I think I might like is running so slowly that I've been getting slightly hysterical with rage at it, now refuses to save ANY of the pictures I've spent all day editing VERY VERY SLOWLY.
Then I got a VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE via my hotmail account and forwarded it to me, at home so I could consider it at leisure, and then replied to it....that is to me, at hotmail.
I am a cross, idiotic bunny. But not hot since it's a bit chilly here.
I have finally solved a problem that's been gnawing at my peace for a long time. I've thrown all my till receipts in the grate and set light to them. When the ashes have been scattered among the roses, I defy any snakey identity thieves to piece them together and steal me. Or any sneaky ones either. So there!
However, I am wondering if the oil will last till the delivery arrives. Wouldn't have been a problem if it the car had passed its MOT since tomorrow I wouldn't have been here. I'd have been swimming and swanning around town and setting off for the lungs of the big smoke (Kew).
Tomorrow I may have to find a few more receipts...well a lot more, those have burnt out already.
OK. Time for coffee and tidying.
Meanwhile this is what life currently looks like....screwy.

And this is what it looked like this morning before I got the news about car failure
Slightly later when I was wondering if I ought to go back because I might be getting good car news any minute


And this is what the woods would look like now if the moon was out and the wind wasn't howling and the raindrops tapping on the windows. Up to the attic room tonight for me so I can watch the sky thunder past and hear the windows rattle and the tree trunks creaking.
Sleep well.