Let battle commence!

Glorious weekend weather meant only one thing: the first mowing of the lawn. Despite the fact that our lawn is largely moss and weeds, there were some straggly clumps of grass loosely embedded in the surrounding mud, so I got out my push mower. And promptly cursed it. The undulations of our lawn and the weird grass mix make mowing it a real chore, even if it does look considerably better afterwards. Much cursing, swearing, and sweating was involved; I really must remember that Sunday passers-by in the lane probably don't want to hear the fishwifely torrent of abuse that I aimed at the wretched mower and weeds.

Apparently, it's a lot less bovver with a hover, so it's off to B&Q (or another chain of DIY store) to get one at the weekend. Sod the environment.

I wish Blogger had Smellovision

One unexpected bonus of attending the talk was the half-time raffle. Once again, my small investment in a couple of tickets paid off, and I selected a set of gorgeously scented primrose plants. Over the past week, I've been planting them out in "junk" containers, as per my new book, "New Container Style" I'm rather pleased with my reuse of a couple of empty Vanish containers, a biodegradable bowl with a split in it, and two Tate & Lyle tins ... and so far, the plants seem pretty happy with their new homes. Or, at least, they haven't died. Yet.

I blame the farmers ... and Thatcher, of course

Off to the conservation group meeting on Tuesday for the AGM and a talk on the River Itchen, our local chalk river. Interesting stuff -- the nature of ephemeral pools, the ecological disaster that is the American crayfish and its destruction of the native English crayfish population in all but a few areas, and the challenges that rivers face in the UK. Unsurprisingly, farmers and fishermen are often to blame: the former ploughs massive fields in the wrong direction, causing huge amounts of topsoil (240 tons) to be washed into the river during heavy rainstorms; fishing clubs over-manicure the banks of rivers, so their members can pretend that they're actually fishing from their lawn; and fish-farms over-stock areas, causing an abundance of predators to turn up, seeking the riverside equivalent of KFC or a drive-thru Maccy D's. Let nature take its course was the message of the evening -- although that would also mean that two-thirds of Portsmouth and one-third of Southampton being under water in 50 years' time, pretty much everything up until the M27. No great loss, given the parlous state of the Southampton's football club and the new traffic jams occasioned by the opening of the new four-floor IKEA? Well, perhaps -- although it would also mean the loss of some large areas of (currently) freshwater wetlands and the M27 is pretty handy for getting about the south coast.

Most impressive, as with the barn owl presentation last autumn, is the passion that the presenters show for their topic. They may not be the most expert of PowerPoint slide creators -- as an editor, the multiple fonts and sizes had me sitting on my hands, feeling very tense -- but they live and breathe their particular area of expertise, working in the same field (or rivers, in this case) for 30 years. Sod the celebs and footballers; these are the real heroes.

Kitchen woes and miracles

On Sunday, I broke my favorite knife. It was a small ceramic knife that I bought in Tokyo back in 2004 and oh so carefully imported back to the Netherlands. Sunday afternoon, I was using it to open a pack and it slipped from my grasp and broke on the floor. Ceramic knives: wonderful for chopping things, never go blunt, extremely easy to break. Boo!

"Suddenly, I'm not half the knife I used to be ..."


Monday evening, I managed to tear off part of the nail on my little finger with my vegetable peeler. I've cut into the nail bed and now have the fingertip wrapped in a rapidly greying plaster. Yes, it is painful.

On the plus side, however, I have achieved my goal of perfect mashed potato. Mash is my favorite food, bar none. When it's good, it's sublime; when bad, a lumpy waxy mess. The key is the potato ricer. On Saturday, I finally purchased one at the Steamer Trading cookware shop in Bournemouth, and I used it for the first time yesterday. Bliss! Ordinary boiled potatoes were quickly and easily transformed into a pile of riced potatoes; hot butter and milk were beaten in, generous amounts of salt and pepper added, and then the whole lot consumed within minutes. Fluffy gorgeous mash -- just like the Best. Mash. Ever. that is served at Quaglino's. Roll on a carb-tastic 2009! Potato ricers: You owe it to yourself to buy one. You won't regret it.

FYI, Steamer Trading was excellent; lots of stock, friendly staff. Of course, in retrospect, I really needed to go there on Monday, AFTER I'd broken my ceramic knife -- as they had a wide selection of them. Curses.

Swede

It's not the most exciting vegetable to turn up in the veggie box, swede (or rutabaga, for my American friends). It's yellow, slightly watery in flavour, and generally lumpish. It makes a decent-enough addition to a stew, helping to bulk it out, or can be made into a reasonable mash, with a generous dose of cream and butter, but apart from that? It's just swede.

Until now.

Last night, I opted for my fail-safe method of treating anything bland (e.g., tofu, fish, potatoes) and boiled some slices till tender, coated them in egg and spiced breadcrumbs and then deep-fried them till crispy. Served alongside some coconut rice and leftover Asian-inspired coleslaw, it was SWEDE!!! Wonderful, wonderful swede!

Stick to the roads, lads!

A beautiful spring day; a walk in the countryside; an encounter with some furry beasts — some cute ...



Others slightly more scary.



In fact, the bullocks looked harmless enough, sans horns, but we decided not to chance walking through their field -- largely because we weren't entirely sure where the path ended up. Dangerous place, the countryside.

I predict a diet

Off to the vet's yesterday morning to check out a rather sore eye on Shin. Shock! Not only does she have conjunctivitis, which requires me to squirt viscous grey eye "drops" onto her eyeball twice a day, but he said she was overweight! Not by much; she's not dangerously obese, but definitely too big for her size. We've always known that she eats more than her sister, but it was a bit of a surprise.


moar funny pictures

So, being responsible pet owners, we've started to restrict Little Miss Porky's food intake and to encourage plenty of exercise -- rather than her more typical climb up the stairs after a feed, leaping onto the bed, and snoozing there for most of the day. First up, it's the Krypton Factor for cats. She's not so hot on the IQ tests, but she's going great guns on the "Climb the bit of decking propped up against the tree" contest.



Nin didn't want to be left out, so we decided to play boules; she very graciously agreed to act as the jack.



Next week, we'll hang some ropes from the trees and see how they get on with those. Should be entertaining (for us), at least.

Woodn't it be nice?

Spring is definitely in the air. The mornings and evenings are getting lighter, the dawn chorus is up and running (the noisy little swine), and it's warm enough to spend a couple of hours in the garden with risking frostbite. That means, of course, it's time to start gardening again. Last year was all about wreaking death and destruction on the various weeds (and weed-resembling plants) -- and I see no reason to change just yet. Task No. 1 on the list? Get rid of the ENORMOUS tree root that has been squatting malevolently in my border. Just look at it:



And let's zoom in on the tape measure.



That's right -- 31 inches across. This is a sizeable lump of wood.

Our neighbour had advised covering it over to dry out, then setting fire to it. Tempting though that option was, it seemed unlikely to succeed. First up, securing a tarp over all the new saplings, ivy, and fungus around it was no easy task. Secondly, it's actually quite hard to get this sort of lump of wood to burn, as my recent failure with our woodburner demonstrates. No, it was time to call in the experts. Luckily, our local directory had an ad for the Romsey Stump Grinder -- I like the sort of business that is very clear about what it does. No "Bringing visionary technology to apply to your forestry-related challenges" rubbish. Just "stump grinder" -- nice! He arrived with a couple of lads and a large, petrol-driven grinding machine, took off an enormous piece of root with chainsaws, and then proceeded to grind the remainder into oblivion. Or rather, a mountain of wood chips. This was what it looked like at the halfway mark.



Our vain hope was that it would prove to be rotten within, but that was not the case. Tea and these fantastic biscuits were consumed, and grinding resumed. We ended up with this:



Luckily, the lads loaded the vast majority of this heap into a flat-bed truck for disposal elsewhere; I have enough to level off the ground and use as a temporary mulch.

Next stop: clearing the rest of this border. Time to research chainsaws.

They're lucky they're so cute

The car was filthy. In fact, it was feeelthy. Covered in a mixture of wood dust, gritting salt, and thousands of muddy little kitty paw prints, it looked disreputable and somewhat embarrassed amongst the bigger, brighter, shinier cars in the short-term parking at Terminal 3 yesterday. Time for the car wash. We headed over to Asda, joined the lengthy queue -- other people clean their cars on a Sunday, too? Who knew? -- and shamefacedly slunk through the wash cycle. Hurrah! A lovely clean new car!! Instead of paw prints, you could just see the scratches from their claws! Bliss! I headed home, parked up, took the shopping in, unpacked it, and returned to the garage to put the bags back in the boot just a few minutes later.

Guess what?

No, really. Guess what I saw on my return?

Paw prints. On the roof. How? How was this possible? I thought they were indoors, playing in the bags as I tried to unpack. But no, they had obviously run through some dirt, jumped onto the car roof, danced around for a bit, and then headed in. Or, they'd projected paw prints onto the car using only the power of their evil little minds -- in which case, I for one welcome my new feline overlords.

This is not, of course, the only example of the sheer delight they can bring. Yesterday, Shin helped me plant some seeds in my new seed trays. And when I say help, I really mean get in my way, put her paws in the potting compost, and then try to eat the newly planted seeds.



Then, it was time to fold up the sheet that had been drying in the conservatory. Look how she helped with this -- before curling up and falling asleep on the duvet cover formerly known as washed and clean.



And while I was gardening today, they kept running back and forward past me, coming with a whisker of having their, well, whiskers removed by my fearsome shears. But then Shin curled up on my lap whilst I was having a restorative cup of tea, sitting on the step and listening to the birdsong over the roar of the M3, and how could I stay angry with her? She's off the hook ... for now.

Back to the home county

Off to Norwich for a weekend of Norfolkness -- we went to Holt to go antiquing on Saturday, followed by a jolly pleasant if somewhat chilly stroll along the river side in Norwich on Sunday morning. It's been more than a year since my last visit to this fine city, and some things have changed for the better. The stretch along The Quayside has been opened up, its trading heritage nicely highlighted in some street sculpture; traffic has been banned between St Andrew's and Colegate, which is always a good thing. The cathedral precincts remain as medievally delicious as ever -- in fact, the whole area around Riverside is packed with quaint alleys and lanes, ancient houses, and stacked skylines, reflecting its impressive history.



For global insurance companies, however, history counts for naught. The decision to "rebrand" Norwich Union -- our most notable employer -- as Aviva is evidence of this; you may have seen the annoying ads trumpeting this lunacy. Why take a respected, well-known name and replace it with a bland, no-meaning word like "Aviva"? It could be air freshener, it could be a travel company, it could be anything -- except an insurance business trading for 300 years and HQ'ed in East Anglia. At a time when consumers are looking for local products (for local people?), this change is expensive, pointless, and fat-headed. Idiots.

I remember why I don't bother watching the news

For the first time in years, we watched the BBC News last night, as I wanted to see amusing pictures of Britain covered in snow -- y'know, people sledging on tea trays, cars stuck at the edge of motorways, the few people with sensible boots in London walking to work. And while the Beeb provided all that, they also proved themselves to be total killjoys. Over fun aerial footage of snow-drenched fields, they pointed out the cost to the economy of everyone taking a snow day. It's hard to figure out why anyone would feel a sense of responsibility toward shoring up the remains of an economy that was largely pissed away by a handful of greedy, stupid (and unpunished) bankers -- taking their hard-earned jobs, pensions, and savings with it. If, for a couple of days, a lot of very stressed people felt more cheerful because they were out building snowmen or playing with their kids in the snow rather than slaving away under the threat of redundancy, surely that's a boost to Britain's Gross National Happiness index and therefore a good thing?

A (snowy) tribute to Tennessee Williams

Cat on an icy plastic roof:

Burning down the house

Well, not quite -- just yet. We have burnt old kitchen units, doors, bits of shed, bits of mantelpiece, decking, old logs, The Guardian, egg boxes, the Sony Bravia manual (very dense), Amazon boxes, and the Christmas tree, and we're always on the lookout for new flammable objects that will fit into our wood-burner. In fact, I was watching an old Poirot the other morning and as David Suchet scuttled through the countryside, he went past a huge pile of chopped wood -- and I (momentarily) was envious. "Oooh, what lovely wood! I wish I had some like that." It's very sad.



What isn't sad is the heat the fire gives off, the comforting glow that keeps us cosy while "credit-crunch Britain" suffers through this "Arctic Blast". While London may have given up the ghost, life in the Shires continues much as usual. The post came today, as did -- eventually, admittedly -- our two pints of semi-skimmed. Buses (of the non-bendy variety) have been running through the village. We even managed to get out for a walk this evening; four inches of snow isn't enough to render us housebound! My new Wellington boots and even newer Wellington boot socks have been put to good use already and proved far superior to PJ's ancient Cat boots with their super-slippery soles. The cats, while far steadier on their feet, approached this newfound white stuff with initial trepidation but have subsequently spent good parts of the day outdoors frolicking, periodically returning to warm their paws on the hot-water pipes upstairs. They're in now and will -- I hope -- perform their secondary function of furry hot-water bottles, sitting on our laps and keeping us toasty as we eat hearty stew and get quietly sozzled.





The snow of course does highlight the one big problem with working from home: No snow days! Everyone in London can just pretend that it's impossible for them to do any work -- no buses, no laptop, no IT support, no clue -- but us homeworkers are expected to struggle womanfully from bedroom to office and put in a full day at the coalface. Boo!

A tail of two kitties*

* All credit to PJ for the pun-tastic title.

Lady Bountiful

When we moved into our new home, nearly a year ago, we discovered a bunch of stuff that we didn't want -- radiator covers, a wooden fireplace surround, that sort of thing. We shoved it into one of our sheds and forgot about it. Today, however, we ventured into the world of giving stuff away -- Freecycle. I composed the messages, uploaded some pictures, and sent our stuff out into the ether to find a new owner.

Wow! We got lots of emails for all of the items within just a couple of hours! What a great service! But then, doubt sets in. You have to choose who is going to get the radiator cover, the fireplace, the CRT TV. Suddenly, you slip into the mindset of a Victorian Poor Law Guardian. Who are the truly deserving poor rather than the merely indigent -- or, in this case, those members of a shady netherworld of dealers who lurk on Freecycle, pick up your stuff, and then sell it on? Lists of criteria start to form in your mind: How polite are they? Do they mention specifically what they want to use it for? Can they use punctuation correctly? (I am an editor, after all.) And then there's the big challenge for the emotionally empathetic -- how can I say no to so many (nice-sounding people)?

No wonder Bill Gates set up a foundation to deal with all this. It's exhausting and emotionally draining.

"It's called home ENTERTAINMENT"

"Do you want to watch The Dark Knight?"

I think about this. I know that I ought to. It's the second-highest-grossing film of all time. Lots of people clearly loved it. Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart are good actors, and Christopher Nolan's made some interesting films that I've enjoyed.

I think some more. The film is going to be long, it's going to be loud, and it's going to have lots of set-piece chase sequences and explosions. I hate noisy overblown films. I find the sound design to be deafening, the dialogue muddied, the character development and plot consistency thrust aside in search of BIGGER! LONGER! LOUDER! fight sequences.

No, I don't want to watch it. I didn't enjoy the first Batman film in this series. I don't want to watch another bloody film with The Joker chewing scenery left, right, and center. I only liked the Tim Burton one with The Penguin and Catwoman; no penguins, I'm not watching.

"You don't have to watch it. It's not supposed to be hard work, it's supposed to be entertaining."

I decide not to watch it, and the decision feels right. There's something terribly satisfying about deciding that you no longer have to watch what all the cool kids are watching. I just wish I'd said the same thing about Sin City. Actually, I did want to watch Sin City; I just wish I hadn't once it was over. A highly stylized exercise in male wish fulfillment, full of violence and with all the women being scantily clad prostitutes? Not my cup of tea. At all. And it FELT really long, with people "dying" and then waking up, and lots of drawn-out, repetitive fight sequences. At the end, I couldn't believe it was less than 2 hours in duration; it felt like an eternity. By contrast, we've watched Ice Age and Ice Age 2 in the past week and really enjoyed them. Fun stuff.

I sometimes worry that I'm slipping into middle-age with astonishing speed and ease. When PJ's away, I tend to watch a lot of ITV3 -- or OAP TV, as I like to call it. Repeats of Poirot and Jeeves & Wooster; nice dramas with happy endings. (Although, there's a whole class war issue at play in Poirot; it's nearly always the servants bumping off their masters and mistresses out of seething resentment. Interesting.) Or it's fascinating and mad French documentaries on BBC4 about the house of Chanel. Or QI, either on Dave or the new series on BBC1. Nothing too challenging or depressing.

On the other hand, I really liked V for Vendetta, and I didn't expect that at all. It felt very English for a Hollywood thriller, with a really English vernacular and some GREAT jukebox scenes (an early 60s Wurlitzer, I think). And, we also enjoyed Offside, an Iranian film about girls trying to get in to see the Iran-Bahrain World Cup qualifying match in 2005/6. And tonight we're going to watch Helvetica, a documentary about a font. I know: The fun never stops here in Hampshire!

A time for change

Yes, it's been a long time coming.
Yes, I already feel so much better.
Yes, it's just what we need in this era of "credit-crunch Britain"!

I'm talking about, of course, my new library card! After two years of library-free living, I've signed up with our local public lending library -- and have taken out two books, picked up some leaflets on local adult education courses in digital photography and Chinese, and inquired about the Chandler's Ford Crime Fiction Reading Group. I always feel happy in a library -- all those books to browse and no money to pay.

First up: The Devil in Me, a collection of short stories by Christopher Fowler, and then The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford -- it's on The Guardian's list of 1,000 books you should read, which is going to form my reading list for the year. I've just got to finish Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride first; 100 pages to go and I love it! (So much more enjoyable than Oryx and Crake, which is one of the most depressing books I've ever read.)

Expect Amazon's sales to plummet in 2009. Heh.

6-2

No, not the latest atrocious score from the muppets at Carrow Road, but Shin's ongoing lead in the great mouse hunt of 2008/9. So far, Nin has only pulled in 2 but has managed to leave them intact, rather than decapitating them in a post-kill frenzy.

At least they haven't left them in our beds . . . yet.

Whosawhatnow?

I caught the train into Southampton today, partly because I enjoy train travel and partly because I hate circling the city centre looking for a parking space. As I handed my ticket over for inspection, I noticed that the guard's job title has changed: He/she's no longer a guard or a ticket inspector or even a customer service representative; no, he/she's a "revenue protection inspector".

Protecting revenues -- not customer safety nor the railway company's standards and reputation, but cold, hard cash. At least South-West Trains is NOW being overt about its priorities.

Walkin' in a winter wonderland

It's cold. I mean, really cold right now. I woke up this morning to a completely white world -- sky, ground, trees, the air, everything. And it's not snow, but a very heavy and very beautiful frost. The water in the water butt is frozen solid and even the gnome looks chilly. The BBC Weather Centre has claimed for several days now that it was going to be warm this weekend, but they're clearly still hungover from Christmas.



Wrapping up very warmly, I ventured down to the local garage to buy The Guardian and treated myself to lunch at The Old Forge as a reward for finally doing some exercise. Feeling revived, I tramped back across the fields and up through the woods, with stunning views. The only thing that would have improved the afternoon would have been PJ at my side -- or a dog. Something with a wet nose, either way.



It's now time to build a fire and burn through the scanty remainder of our log pile, while polishing off the last of my best find of 2009 so far -- a hitherto-unread Christopher Fowler novel, Rune. (I love his work; if you like murder mysteries and arcane pieces of London history, check him out -- particularly the Bryant & May novels.) The cats have already positioned themselves on top of the hot water pipes running along the landing and seem reluctant to shift. Good thinking. I'm also contemplating making a plum crumble to have with custard after the remains of last night's veg curry. Sounds good, no?