:: wet wet wet

"A month of rain in just one day" says the headline, and yep, that's about how it feels. This morning when Bertie and I set out on our marathon walk (nearly to Kirkliston and back) the fog had lifted a bit -- you could see most of the bridges -- and the old lady we passed was optimistic. "Seems to be clearing up!"

But during the walk the thunder started to rumble, and the radio newsreaders spoke ominously of flooding in England. On the way back, rain started splatting down and basically it hasn't stopped since, though I managed to get Bertie out for his afternoon walk between showers.

The drive to work was hair-raising, great pools of water across the road in several spots. There was a bus behind me on the motorway, and in my rear-view mirror I saw it throw a gigantic wave up over a poor cyclist struggling along in the bike lane. I hope it didn't knock him over. The next pool I drove through swept up over the bonnet of my car on to the windscreen -- scary!! I'm not looking forward to the drive home.

:: how weird is this?

Synchronised swimming solo event. Did I miss something? Synchronised swimming is strange enough, but solo?

I thought of something rivetting to talk about then was interrupted by work and forgot what it was. Well, that was interesting.

Some good news on the website front finally -- according to Steve at easynet support, I now have a 15Mb limit on my "unlimited" webspace. I still find this bizarre, that they says it's unlimited then dole in out in little chunks. Why not just give me a 100Mb limit? Anyway, it will probably be enough for the blinking helicopter pictures. Stand by for further announcements.

I'm being foreign editor for the next few days, which means long hours, lots of stress and a crabby dog. I may see if I can get someone to walk him in the afternoons. He's feeling better after all his recent traumas but I'm thinking I might try and find some obedience classes or perhaps have private sessions with a trainer -- I'd like to have more control over him in the vital seconds before he loses his mind in a crisis situation.

:: rain rain go away

Yes, it's raining again. During my days off it did stop raining long enough for me to weed the front garden, where the convolvulus was staging a comeback. It's looking quite spiffy out there; the St John's Wort bushes that had been choked out to just sickly sticks are flowering well, and the hydrangea I moved from the back garden is also blooming, a lovely blue. I dotted some dark blue lobelias around too, and they all look lovely together. Along further there's a rock rose I got from the "Search and Rescue" section at the garden centre, it's doing really well too.

I moved all the Spanish bluebell bulbs I could find from the big bed to the narrow one by the wall -- they look good for about five minutes while they're flowering, but they grow so thickly their leaves block out anything smaller, and then there's just bare ground where they've been. I thought they'd be good with the bushy plants and would help fight the dreaded convolvulus. We'll see. If they're a pest there I'll move out the back up under the trees. They'll grow anywhere, apparently.

I dug some ericacious potting mix in around the daphne, to help it along -- it's still sickly despite all the spraying. It has more leaves, but they still eventually go yellow and spotty and fall off. I'll give it until next year before I try moving it to the back.

I've been working hard on Pinky's new website and also on a new design for mine.

On Sunday night I went to the movies, saw Minority Report -- it was ok. I went to the cinema at a newish shopping complex at Leith, it's the one that has the Royal Yacht Britannia tied up outside. And this time, just along the dock from the Britannia, there was The World.



To quote from the website: "It is the world's first residential ocean liner. It is a temple in Thailand, a seaswept summer in Newport, an ancient journey through the Greek Islands, and New Year's Eve in the South Pacific - all without leaving your home." Yes, all very well -- but it's also a rainy afternoon in Leith. Plus, it's an ungainly-looking thing, like a floating block of flats (which is basically what it is).

More traumas for Bertie, and for me, today. I was waiting to cross the road with him after his walk. A bus was just pulling out up the road and a boy was running down the hill to catch it at the next stop, round the corner. He flew across the road right at us, and Bertie panicked. I grabbed his collars and his hindquarters, but he still managed to drag me out into the road -- right into the path of the bus. Luckily the driver saw what was happening and had slowed right down and stopped.

It took five minutes to get Bertie calmed down enough to carry on home, he was rattled to his core. Then as we were on the home straight, a couple of boys came past on their bikes, larking around, and one of them actually hit me. More panicking from Bertie, but not as bad.

We had an altercation last night over a hedgehog. Bertie caught it on his late-night walk, and refused to drop it. I tried prising his jaws apart, but they just tightened. I tried pinching his nostrils, but he just breathed harder through his mouth. I couldn't get a grip on the poor animal, of course, so I had to just walk around and wait for Bertie to get tired of carrying it.

Then as soon as he dropped the hedgehog we had a furious scuffle as I pushed it into the undergrowth with my foot and he tried to pick it up again. The hedgehog made a run for it, which I was happy to see. Very unhappy dog though.

:: Swirled News

I thought crop circles had died out. How wrong I was. What interests me is that the X-Files types get furious when anyone suggests they're man-made -- but I think it would be even more amazing if they are in fact man-made (which I think they are).

They're beautiful, intricate, cleverly crafted and all completely pointless. Acts of pure genius.

:: poor bertie

Bertie had a terrible time yesterday -- an actual live baby came to visit. He was overwhelmed with outrage and horror, but managed not to lose his head and didn't bark, just huffed and paced and rolled his eyes a lot.

Then in the afternoon, someone threw a rock at him. I didn't see who it was, I was too busy controlling Bertie, who was screaming with fear and pain. Luckily he was on the lead, otherwise I'm sure he would have tried to run home. He's got a huge bruise on the inside of one of his back legs, just by his "knee" -- no padding there whatsoever, no wonder he was shrieking. It's still sore today, so he's been on short walks and plenty of sympathy.

While we're on the subject, here's a nice pic of him:



Isn't it a great photo! It took about ten duff shots to get that one but it was worth the wait. Here's another one, a rare picture of him on the lawn:



Oh and go on, here's an update on my garden:

:: getting there

I've just finished moving most of my website over to the old space. No need to bookmark it, because I'll be leaving an index on hockadilly that will point to the other site. I haven't done that just now because it's nearly 2pm and I have a thousand better things to be doing.

There still wasn't room for all the helicopter pics, but there's at least a page of thumbnails to look at.

And look! Here's my gaudy new doorstep and door combo!

:: ticked off

My To Do list is going really well -- sorted car insurance today, that just leaves the tax next week and the car's dealt with for another year. Went to the podiatrist and my orthotics will be arriving in the next few days.

Just now, I phoned easynet and they've increased the easyweb space to 10Mb and have said they'll look at increasing it to 15Mb once I've put an index page on the site. Which, duh, I couldn't do yesterday because I'd run out of room. I've got the page ready to run -- I updated all the web pages while waiting for the pictures to crawl through the phone wires.

Tomorrow I'll send the pages over and the last few photos, check that everything works, and that should be it, sorted, ticked off the list.

Next most urgent item on the list is the Nautilus website. Then ... oh yeah, I have to go into hospital.

I'm in at work early today because we had a union meeting at 2:30pm. I went home after the podiatrist, walked Bertie and went to the meeting; I hope he's ok being home alone for an extra couple of hours.

The podiatrist was interesting; she says she's not surprised I'm having aches and pains, considering the state of my feet. They're extremely flexible, apparently an inherent thing -- some people have more flexible joints than others. In feet it's a bad thing, it makes you unstable and prone to pronation. To complicate things, one foot is pronating differently from the other. The left foot is worst, so that's why there's more wear and tear on the joints in that leg, because the stress rotates the knee out and that impacts on the hips and pelvis.

The orthotics will straighten the feet out as they hit the ground, and therefore the knees and hips will also be straighter, rather than rotating outwards. Sounds good to me. I have to start out just wearing them an hour a day, increasing gradually until I'm wearing them all the time.

:: grumble growl thunder

I've been sweating away transferring my pix over to the easyweb site only to discover I'VE RUN OUT OF ROOM AGAIN!!!!!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So I've sent a very very nice little email off to easynet support asking please very nicely extend the limit on my unlimited web space. And do it NOW before I get really CROSS.

Pretty please.

:: froth froth froth

I just tried to upload some pictures and couldn't, not even one. Sigh. So I got back to easynet and now I'm reeeeeally annoyed. It seems last time, when I thought I had everything sorted out, I actually didn't.

1. The size limit on easydomain IS capped, at 5Mb. If I want more than that, I have to pay extra.
2. There is no size limit on the easyweb service, however.
3. The space currently allocated for me on easyweb is 7Mb. My website is currently 5.3Mb, but it's on the easydomain server so it's over the limit.

Are you following this?

What it means is that I have to move my website off the hockadilly easydomain and on to the easyweb space. But don't worry! You don't have to bookmark anything! Because what I can do is put an index sheet on the easydomain that points to the easyweb domain. That was my idea, by the way, not theirs. James, the poor support boy, had no clue. So I'm not entirely sure if this is legal and will work, given what's gone before, but I'm willing to give it a go.

The blogspot is unaffected. Bless.

:: summer

Yesterday was summer, and very enjoyable it was too. Addled by the heat, I scrabbled around in the bowels of the shed to find the paint I bought months ago, and painted the back door and the front and back doorsteps. It wasn't a total success: the door paint is a brighter green than the label on the tin suggested, and the doorstep paint is bright red. The result is garish to say the least, and very shiny.

I haven't painted the big doorstep outside the livingroom doors because I'm not sure if there's enough paint left. There's loads of door paint though, so I might paint the shed doors even though they're falling apart.

I also dug over the new vege bed, raked in 80 litres of soil improver, covered it all with more newspaper and fenced it off with a little bamboo trellis thingie, to keep Bertie off. Ha ha. Then I cleared all the grunge and dead grass and bricks and stuff from outside the shed window, to see if it's worth replacing the broken glass. The answer is possibly not -- the frame is all rotted away. An interim solution is to patch the broken bit and get some of that "No More Big Gaps" expanding foam filler to plug the hole underneath it. That will at least keep the shed reasonably dry.

There's a ceiling light in there that doesn't go -- I tried changing the bulb and I checked all the fuses. The fusebox is reasonably new so maybe when that was done, the shed light didn't get wired in. The cable from the switch is cased in a metal tube which disappears into the concrete floor, no idea where it goes from there.

One day I'd like to get the shed sorted as a workshop, with a power point as well as a light, maybe knock the coalshed in together, but it's looking like a bigger and bigger job. So maybe not.

After all that huffing and puffing and breathing in paint fumes I was hot and exhausted, so after washing and changing into a frock (horror), I retired to the lawn with a rug, a stack of cushions, a book and a tall drink clinking with ice. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Poor Bertie though, he hates the heat. He spent most of the day inside, asleep. He sloped out a couple of times to see what I was up to -- most disconcerted to find me lying on the ground. "Are you ok?" But he soon went back upstairs -- outdoors has too many annoying insects. I took him for a good long walk in the evening, when it had cooled down.

I'd wanted to go to Devdas, a Bollywood extravaganza that's showing at a cinema in town, but I couldn't drag myself away from the garden. It's light until so late, and the sunset was gorgeous. Not so much the sky, but the beautiful golden light from the setting sun -- it gives everything it touches a surreal feeling, an extra lush depth and glamour.

Today it's back to weather as usual -- cloudy and grey, with a heavy sultry feeling like a hangover from yesterday's sunny excitement. It's so tragic, the weather this summer! Even yesterday people couldn't fully enjoy it: "It won't last," they'd say, with a grim glance at the sky.

I'm ordering 100 onion sets and some more garlic for the new bed, all autumn planting. The raspberries are ripening and being eaten as soon as they do by the birds, but the blackcurrants are a bit slower. I pulled all the garlic this morning -- mixed results there, but I think the next lot will do better.

:: boooooooring...

Mmmm, nothing much going on. Slightly frustrating day today -- I took my car in for the repairs it needed for the MOT (warrant) in the morning, walked the dog and did some computing. The mechanic had said he would phone to say whether he needed to keep the car overnight but he didn't of course. So I phoned the garage and the woman in the office said he'd told her I could pick it up at 4.30.

I was there at 4.20, but the mechanic wasn't -- he was on his way back from Bathgate. The car was ready though, so the office woman said she'd make up the bill; though I'd have to come back tomorrow for the MOT certificate. She was sooooo slooooow! Fiiiiiinally it was done and I paid and the boy brought the car round and fiddle-faddled around wiping the steering wheel while I fumed and fizzed.

Then the traffic was horrendous, backed up for half a mile at the city outskirts, plus I nearly had a prang at a roundabout. I still can't believe it -- a taxi driver waiting at the next street to my right flashed his lights and waved his finger at me to indicate he was letting me out first, then drove right at me!!! I had to stop in the middle of the roundabout with all the other drivers glaring at me, while the taxi driver didn't give a backward glance. Must be some kind of sick game they play.

Nostalgic trip to the supermarket in my break: I went to the Tesco Metro near where I used to live. Tesco is a big supermarket chain, and Metros are its little central city branches. I'd forgotten what a buzzy little place it is! Full of students, many languages being spoken, plenty of startling fashion statements and almost no children. Fab. There was a near-riot in the bread section when they started marking down the fancy goods -- four bagels for 10p! The down-side was that of course they didn't have a lot of the stuff I wanted, but it was such fun that didn't matter. I even got caught out by the eccentric queuing system, I'd forgotten all about that -- everyone queues between the aisles, leaving the runway by the checkouts clear. Newbies look at the checkouts and think, wow, no queues! But dozens of pairs of eyes are burning into them from behind. Actually the customers there are very laid back and accept an apology without rancour.

So -- tomorrow if it doesn't rain I'll get into the garden. If it does, I might go clothes shopping. I'm also going to the movies, come what may. I fancy this Bollywood spectacular that's coming out this weekend, sounds delicious. That or Minority Report, because it's sci-fi.

Bertie's had a good couple of days, meeting several friendly new dogs and their friendly people and chasing lots of rabbits. Last night -- well, in the early hours of this morning -- as a treat I took him up to the field. All the rabbits were out and unwary, and he had a ball thundering around neeeearly catching them.

:: see what I see

If you go to the Scotsman's webcams and click on the Scottish parliament one, you can see what I see as I sit at my desk. Except of course you don't see the desks and computer terminals and colleagues in between me and the window, because the camera's outside. But roughly. Oh, I just looked at it again and the camera pans around. Woo!

There's also a Forth Bridge cam there, but it's at North Queensferry and angled so you can't see South Queensferry. It doesn't seem to pan.

Took the car in today for its MOT (WOF) and it failed miserably. Lots of its bits are about to blow, like the front exhaust pipe and the brake pipes and a compliance bush. Six bulbs had to be replaced! I had no brake lights! Not expensive taken one by one, but all together it adds up to a goodly chunk of money. There's also a tire that passed this time but won't next time. I'm happy to get everything done though, because he's a good mechanic.

So that's all being done on Friday. If it doesn't rain, I'll take advantage of the early rising and get out in the garden, start spreading around all the dirt I bought the other day.

Quite a quiet weekend, mainly due to continuing horrible weather. I did manage to get the lawns mowed though. And I went and bought a whole load of different potting mixes and soil improver. I'm going to spade over the new bed at the back, and plant some potatoes or something. I've got some ericacious mix for the daphne, some regular potting mix for indoor and patio plants, and some seed mix for ... seeds, duh. I got so much because some of the bags were damaged and were half-price. At the moment the 80-litre bag of soil improver is still in the car, because it's too heavy to carry in. Don't worry, I have a plan...

What else? I've been working a lot on Pinky's new website, which has been frustrating and satisfying about equally.

Today I went to a chiropracter to see about my feet/ankles/knees/hips and he's passing me on to a podiatrist, says I'm a "classic pronator" and will need orthotics, special corrective insoles.

Bertie is fine. He chased a deer the other day -- we went to the usual field in the gloaming, and the deer was standing right out under the bridge. When I've seen them before they've been around the edges. A year ago Bertie would have ignored it, but now he's game to take on just about anything except cows. Alan showed up just a few minutes later and was quite put out -- he's never seen deer in all the years he's been coming there, while "everyone else and their dog" has seen them.

I am not paranoid

Today I started work at 11am instead of 5pm, since I am doing my boss's job, and by pure coincidence it is gloriously sunny and warm outside.

Um, I need to fix the template...

The title bar is up HERE stoopid

D'oh, I just noticed why the title thing didn't work. I missed the title bar box.

I've tried another experiment but it doesn't seem to have worked either.

More new stuff

This time I've added a title, let's see if it works....

Er, no, it doesn't.

Oh damn, I've broken my blog. I upgraded to BloggerPro, and putting the new button on the page I must have deleted more code than I meant to. Normal service will be resumed once I've figured out what I've gone and done. Tsk.

Hee hee, I fixed it! Bet no-one even noticed...

Jimi Hendrix Lyrics

I am actually doing some work in between this spot of research.

Classic Lyrics Server

This has some great numbers, like After The Goldrush.

Well, I dreamed a saw the silver spaceships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun
The were children crying and colors flying
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home

Dylan lyrics

This is all for me, by the way -- I emailed myself a load of song lyrics once then lost them all in one of my many software reinstallations.

I want to make myself a songbook, want to start singing again. I've discovered that vocal chords are like any other muscle, they get rusty with disuse.

Flatt and Scruggs Song Index

Oh yes, it's all coming out now...

This song is one of my all-time favourites. The tune I learned was different from the one in the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

I am a man of constant sorrow
I have seen trouble all my days
I bid farewell to old Kentucky
The State where I was born and raised

For six long years I've been in trouble
No pleasure here on earth I've found
For in this world I'm bound to travel
I have no friends to help me now

You may bury me in some deep valley
For many years where I may lay
Then you may learn to love another
While I am sleeping in my grave

Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger
My face you'll never see no more
But there is one promise that is given
I'll meet you on God's golden shore

Carter Family Songs

Oh wow -- I love the Carter Family and this has all my favourites.

Can The Circle Be Unbroken

I was standing by the window
On one cold and cloudy day
And I saw the hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away

Can the circle be unbroken
Bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye
There's a better home a-waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Lord, I told the undertaker
Undertaker, please drive slow
For this body you are hauling
How I hate to see her go

I followed close beside her
Tried to hold up and be brave
But I could not hide my sorrow
When they laid her in the grave

Went back home Lord my home was lonesome
Missd my mother she was gone
All my brothers sisters crying
What a home so sad and lone

Yep, they were a cheery bunch. The word "lonesome" comes up in a lot of their songs.

Risa Song Lyrics Archive This one seems better, though I haven't had a good look through yet.

Traditional and bluegrass songs -- Not many lyrics, but worthwhile.

Insurgent Country Homepage

Some country lyrics.

Lyrics.com -- Music for your head

Yay! The lyrics to all those songs you want to sing along to.

Yankee soldier
He wanna shoot some skag
He met it in Cambodia
But now he can't afford a bag

Yankee dollar talk
To the dictators of the world
In fact it's giving orders
An' they can't afford to miss a word

I'm so bored with the U...S...A...
But what can I do?

Today I got a letter from the hospital announcing the date for my op -- 20 August. There was a bit of confusion in that it said I was to present myself at the new hospital at 8am, when I know that the procedure will be carried out at the old hospital. But I cleared that up with a couple of phone calls, and it is the old hospital I'll be going to. Still 8am, ugh, but at least it won't take two buses to get there. After the procedure I'll be shipped out to the new hospital by ambulance.

It's good news, because I'd been expecting to have to wait until September.

It rained on my day off so I spent most of it in Ikea. I thought it would be empty, but I'd forgotten that it was a bank holiday plus they have a sale on, so it was in fact very busy.

Main purchases were a new desk for my computer and a little trolley thing for the CPU. The desk is very cute, it's just a white melamine table basically, but with bendy white legs that have big castors on the bottom. I also got a white CD shelf, but I'll need another one too I think. It all looks very spiffy. Yes, I set to and built everything and put up the shelf when I got home. Most satisfying.

The slight drawback is that most of the junk I had squirrelled away in and around my old "desk" (a couple of home-built shelf boxes with a plank on top) is now stacked up on the other side of the room. So one side is all space-age minimal, the other is rat's nest maximal. I have to do some serious pruning and stowing. Sigh.

The perfect holiday for Bertie! I may just volunteer his services as hedgehog exterminator supreme.

ISLAND HEDGEHOGS MAY FACE CULLING
Thousands of hedgehogs in the Scottish islands may face a cull, it was confirmed today.
Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) confirmed it was considering carrying out a cull of hedgehogs, which have destroyed nests of native wild birds in the Western Isles.
Environmental experts claim that North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist support important populations of breeding wader birds including dunlin, ringed plover, redshank, snipe, lapwing and oystercatcher.
However, the population of birds is at risk from the growing number of hedgehogs.
Hedgehogs were introduced to the Uists when a homeowner brought four in 1974 and a further three a year later to control garden pests.
There are now thought to be more than 5,000 hedgehogs on the islands.
In a report, SNH disclosed that surveys in 1995 and 2000 found ‘significant decreases by all species except oystercatcher’ and that six years of research has proved that declines in dunlin, redshank, snipe and lapwing were ‘due to high levels of egg predation by hedgehogs’.
Between 1995 and 2002 on South Uist and Benbecula, snipe, dunlin and ringed plover numbers declined by almost 60%, redshank by 40% and lapwing by 30%.
An SNH spokesman said: “It’s not something we would choose to do – it is something of a last resort.
“People who are fundamentalist animal rights people are going to find this horrific – and we understand that.
“But we are already controlling mink in the Western Isles and I would say that we have not had a response about them.
“These are animals that were written about by Beatrix Potter – people superficially might find that it is difficult to comprehend.
“It’s the cuteness factor, there will be people out there who will object to a hedgehog cull purely because they are cute, and not about the mink or crows which are controlled.
“We are quite keen to do something to stop the bird numbers declining as they are – we like hedgehogs too, but on the mainland, where they belong.”
The SNH spokesman said that a decision would be taken by the SNH board at its next meeting near Perth on Tuesday.
Other options include sterilisation or contraception to control hedgehog numbers, and removing them to the mainland.
The spokesman insisted that reintroduced hedgehogs would find it difficult to adapt to territories on the mainland.
He added: “The hedgehogs would be very stressed by that, they are very territorial animals and there are already local hedgehogs on the mainland.
”We feel that quite a lot of hedgehogs would end up dead, so we feel the least cruel thing would be a cull.
“The board will decide on Tuesday whether to go ahead with the cull or not.”
Ends