Category: General

Although not as spectacular as the drought in the mid west, we too have been having it pretty dry.  It has now got to 40 days and nights without a drop falling from the sky.  Needless to say with our own well and a garden I have been watering every day, all day to keep the beds going, bugger the lawns!  Unfortunately we are on fluvioglacial outflow overlying boulder clay.  To the uninitiated that is one very, very thirsty soil that dries out all too quickly.  Good for bulbs and that’s about it without constant adding of humus and water.

Well then!  Yesterday being the beginning of our Bank Holiday (and sod all happening until Tuesday) what happens, yes, the well pump becomes incandescent and stops dead.  American houses do not have holding tanks.  No well pumping, no water, just like that, not one bleeding drop.  As luck would happen a friend was visiting, he is the water man of the Nooksack tribe.  So he and spousal unit set out to investigate.  The well is so old and solidly built they could not get it apart.  Nothing to be done until Tuesday then!  Mass planning how to save the greenhouse, veg garden and potted plants, forget washing and showers!  Serious panic but only on behalf of plants!  Everyone else can drink wine!

Continue reading “Drought becomes personalised.”

An early start this week.  A plural award because no civil servant – yes, it’s the civil service, again…is anyone surprised?…is named in this latest example of snivelling bureaucratic lunacy.  A man, a University Professor, who can trace his British ancestry back to the 14th century faces deportation because he was born in India – to British parents when India was still part of the Empire.

Meanwhile, a bunch of raghead terrorists are to take the gubmint to court, whining about how their human right to blow people up in the name of their lunatic branch of organised superstition is being suppressed.

Good, innit?

Link.

The friends for whom I was dog/house sitting for the last three weeks are Hong Kong Chinese.  On posting abroad, they had prudently laid in a year’s supply of staples to bring with them, all their favourite HK brands – or brands that are popular in HK – of course.  I neglected to take toothpaste with me and was given a tube of this brand…

I used to use this brand myself when I was in HK – a bit of nostalgia.  There is, however, a story

I hadn’t intended to enter.
I’ve been up to my ears summer-through.
Then I saw there were only four entries,
Ara, Pseu and both Januses too.
Continue reading “What I Did on My Summer Holidays 2012”

This morning on a motorway in Poland we were chosen as possible victims by a car load of Roma.  They waved frantically at us – mother, father and grinning children – that we should pull in to the hard shoulder.  Yeh right!  We continued on to the service area we had already decided to stop in, pulled up at the pumps and the Roma, in a tatty old German registration vehicle, pulled up alongside.  Husband spoke English, but I spoke German, asking what the problem was. “ Was ist los?”  I might as well have shouted “Heil Hitler”, because they took off like a scalded cat.  They obviously have a healthy respect for German.  I know that with fair hair and blue eyes  and a good knowledge of German, I might have appeared intimidating.

Now I realise that these wicked Roma are only a tiny percentage of the whole population.  But obviously the solution is to send the whole bunch back so that the angelic 99.9% can show the remaining 0.1% naughty ones the error of their ways.

Because of overwhelming demand* I advert to the charioteers the return of this popular feature.  This week’s winner put in an outstanding effort to achieve this notable distinction.  I give you Ms Abbie Booth, neighbourhood housing officer of Stockport City council who has informed residents of a block of flats in that fine city that they are to remove  ‘obstructive’ or ‘combustible’ items such as pictures and doormats (!) from communal areas because they could, wait for it… potentially pose a fire hazard.

You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

* Well, I like it.

From the Daily Mail.

Next time we watch Chinese gymnasts performing it might be well to remember this: