Category: General

Last week I started reading Tove Jansson’s “Travelling Light” while on the Northstar Line between Big Lake and Minneapolis. One paragraph reminded me so much of our Ms Osborne that I couldn’t help but laugh maniacally.

“Dear child, make sure you bring your young man so I can have a look at him, but don’t go buying some expensive and unnecessary gift. At my age, I’ve got pretty much everything I want, plus better taste than most of my progeny. And I don’t want to leave a load of rubbish for others to clean after I’m gone. Just pick out something simple and affectionate. And don’t go bring art into it — you’ll only mess it up”.

We are well used to canine kniptions and explosions of manic barking, people, eagles, coyotes all set them off.  To be fair, they are not discouraged, it is their job to alert us to approaching ‘threats’.

The goats normally live behind us, five acres away and are ritually visited for a bark up a couple of times a day.  No great threat just a canine ritual.

Continue reading “Beware of goats.”

Is it me or pensioners being demonised by the government and the press, especially the Biased Broadcasting Company?

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see some report or other telling me that pensioners must repay this allowance or that benefit; or how pensioners have the audacity to expect hospital treatment for their illnesses. Continue reading “Pensioners are the people to hate”

Thank you to Araminta for giving me the privilege of judging the May photography competition.

The topic for the month is: let’s do the things we normally do. Submissions should be of life’s normal occurrences. Taking walks, cups of coffee, roasted wild boar, etcetera. The deadline is 18 May at midnight British time.

Needless to say, when we bought our house last year we had the property inspected for all the usual things… no problems there. We also asked the over-paid ‘experts’ to check on the wooden retaining walls which ran down the length of the house and across the back. We asked the right questions: was it properly built? was it safe? was it legal? We were assured that it was. Right questions – wrong answers.

It all began when I called someone in to clear this area and plant some bushes along the fence.

“I’ll certainly do that for you”, said the landscaper. “But, you’re wasting your time, the retaining walls are failing”.

Even I could see what he was talking about! Even worse, the ‘lawn’ was completely uneven. Continue reading “Talking about Gardens”

Just blame Janus!  As you all know, I have nothing but gardens on which to blog.  Holding most other activities in anathema, having declared ‘fatwas’ in all directions and holding most appurtenances of modern life to be ‘instruments of the devil’, there is sod all left!  Then there is the other side to that coin-  When you live in ‘God’s little acre’ why the bother with anywhere else?  We actually did emerge this week to go to the tulip festival in Skagit County (one down) with friends.  Wonderful tulips but the multicultural aspect proved too much for us, it was mobbed by more of them than us.  Vancouver had emptied across the border to view tulips en masse.  We retreated to lunch.  I didn’t bother to take any pictures.  So, just for a change you get more of what is in bloom right now in the garden.

Continue reading “Insufficient Buggery, Dammit, Bloggery!”

We’ve just returned to France after a few days in Italy, no thanks to French railways. Normally we accept that as soon as we set foot on an Italian train, the entire railway system collapses.  Not this time.   Arriving at our local French station to catch the 9.24 train to Ventimiglia we found a scene of chaos.  There was a local railways strike and some idiot had left a case in the middle of the concourse to boot.  Station staff were thinking of evacuating the station, so we rushed on to the platform before they could chuck us out.  Time passed and the 9.24 disappeared off the board.  Lots of would-be passengers simply went home, giving up any idea of travelling that day.  When we finally got to Nice about an hour later, we learned that the next train to Italy would be in four hours time.  That’s the EU in action! Do not hesitate to cause problems for other member states! Continue reading “Passenger profiling and the Schengen agreement”