:: make it stop!

The rain is starting to get me down. This morning was bright and sunny and hot, so I bundled Bertie into the car and went to Blackness, planning to mow the lawns when I got back. Fantastic walk, very peaceful. Just as we were heading back, the first drops fell.

By the time we got home it was raining steadily, with occasional torrential bursts.

I went to the supermarket instead of mowing the lawns.

Tomorrow, if the weather is still horrible, I'm going to force myself out to do some clothes shopping. A certain dog tore the sleeve of one of my favourite white shirts on Friday night. When I had a close look at it, it was actually worn quite thin. A lot of my clothes end up like that, worn thin because I'm so reluctant to shop for new ones. Some of my trousers need replacing too. So there's that.

If the weather IS good, I may go for a sail in the afternoon. I haven't been out for ages, and I want to try out my new buoyancy aid. The lawns can wait.

Then I'm doing a Sunday shift as foreign editor, 11am to whenever, 9am probably -- we've got early deadlines because of the festival. I've got one story lined up already, about a man in Bulgaria who's changed his name to Manchester United. His dog is called D. Beckham.

The paper's become famous in Bulgaria since our Moscow correspondent visited there and wrote a story about King Simeon. Here's what a Bulgarian acquaintance of the reporter wrote to him: "The day it was published, the Bulgarian Information agency, the National radio, Dautche Vele and probably some others radio stations gave it to he public. Next day all the national newspapers had some bits of you, or had published all the article. It could be read also on the main www agencies. The day after - today - I read in the "24 hours" newspaper some kind of "investigation". The author had interviewed some people from The Scotsman."

By contrast, an earlier article about Bulgaria focusing on the plight of dancing bears tortured by hot coals -- thrown in as a desperate space-filler on a slow news day -- evoked this response from A. Bulgarian: "I am sorry, BUT THIS IS A LIE!!! I do not know which is the sourse of this discusting libel, but the dance on hot coals is not played by bears. This dance is part of our nationality and culture, as well as the stripped skirts in your country. It is a part of our folclore. This dance is played by HUMANS, usually at our national holidays. We believe that with this spiritual ritual the evil forces will be sended off our lands."

It reminds me of how New Zealand used to be: amazed if anyone took a blind bit of notice of us overseas (apart from sport, obviously). And horribly offended if they got it wrong, of course.

Quite a good American greyhound site, with a discussion forum and articles: A Breed Apart. In one of the forums an Englishman mentioned that he walks his greyhound through central London without a leash. You could nearly hear people sucking their breath in! Is he mad? But apparently his dog is very well behaved. Maybe it's not a greyhound...

Later: On closer inspection, there isn't a post on any of the forums since 1999. Maybe there was a mass alien abduction of greyhounds and their owners.

:: good morning sunshine ...

... and good afternoon fog. Or rather, good afternoon haar. It came drifting in from Fife at about lunchtime, blotting out the ends of the bridges and chilling the air. It was also quite blustery, which is unusual with a haar and may mean it'll be blown away.

Weather gets to be very important when you have a dog -- nothing as dispiriting as glancing out the window at the rain/sleet/hail/fog and thinking, time for walkies.

We had nice walks today though -- met up with lots of Bertie's large fan club. Like Alastair, who works on the road bridge and has a Lhasa Apso called Jasmine. "No' so great when I take her to the pub." And Bridie from down the road with her short, fat terrier, Butch -- Bertie's scared of him but loves Bridie. Then there were George and Sheila, from down the road and around the corner. They have a corgi and a guide dog, because George is partially sighted. They live above what used to be a pet shop, and today they were telling me about how many shops there used to be, before the Scotmid supermarket opened. There were three butchers, three grocery shops, a bakery and a wool shop. Now it's all knick-knacks and tartan tat. And of course Scotmid is suffering in turn because now an enormous Tesco has opened nearby.

So yes, that was interesting. And then I got busy and swept up the dog hair and dirt littering the floors, and washed the dishes. A very suburban day.

I'd had very little sleep -- Bertie got up crying and carrying on at about 5am. I let him outside and he went out and started eating grass, so I suspect a stomach upset. He wouldn't come back in so I left the door open and went back to bed. I'd just dozed off and he came back inside grizzling and crying again. Argh! This time I ignored him. Today he's fine, after a slow start.

Work has been ok today, no major dramas.

:: 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

All my technical problems are still live and kicking. I gave up nagging on Friday, just shifted my car out of the garage at the break (in case you missed the start of this saga, my access card to the garage at work has been misprogrammed, so I can get in ok but can't get out after midnight).

I'll start nagging again tomorrow in earnest about my website, I'm seriously annoyed about that. I had a plaintive email from some fans today asking what the problem was and whether it was something they needed to fix. (Hi Mum!)

Yesterday I weeded the garden, which is just as well because today it's been raining steadily all day. Last week I washed my parka, following the instructions on the label. I didn't have any pure soap flakes though, so I grated up some bath soap. That might have been a mistake, because today I discovered the parka's lost all its waterproofing. Yup, I got soaked through.

I'm feeling very tired for no apparent reason this weekend; yesterday I even had an afternoon nap, something I hardly ever do. It's a pain, because I have so many things to do.

Oh, Leslie Van Houten didn't get parole after all.

Court TV Watch real court cases, live on TV! In the US that is. For the rest of us there are only still images from the case du jour.

Tonight, I'm hanging out for the verdict on whether Leslie Van Houten gets parole. She's one of the Manson gang; she's 52 and she's been in prison since she was 19, for the LaBianca murders.

How wrong can a quiz be?

How wrong can a quiz be? Which Pixies song are you?

"You're always the one who stands out in a crowd. People look forward to seeing you. You're well dressed, well-mannered, but spontaneous enough that it's very easy for you to make friends. Your interests include the paranormal and government conspiracies, but you also enjoy sitting back and eating a good meal. You probably have a lot of pets that you take care of obsessively."

Well, you know, apart from the UFO and pet things .... and the food ....

Update: the link is broken, obvs.

NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think easynet has deleted my whole entire website. SIGH. This blogspot is housed elsewhere, thank goodness, but the pictures were with easynet.

I phoned the support folk this afternoon about yesterday's problems and was told I'd exceeded my space limit. But hang on, haven't I got unlimited space? Er well yes, but it's limited to 2Mb so they can check and see if you're abusing the privilege with a commercial enterprise of some kind. My space has at some point been increased to 5Mb, I've no idea when or how, but the helicopter pictures pushed it over the edge. And just how was I supposed to tell I'd exceeded my limit? Ummmm... I can't. I have to guess.

But anyway, the boys at easynet are lovely and helpful and kind and started work right away sorting things for me.

I tried again -- still the same problem. I phoned back and listened to a baroque version of Twinkle Twinkle while the boys conferred. Finally they told me the new files were corrupted and would have to be deleted. I'd already tried to delete them and failed, so I told them that was ok and to go ahead.

Then I went to work.

Just now I tried to call up my website and got a horrible nasty surprise: go and look for yourself. There's nothing there! It's all gone. Those bad boys! It's not a total disaster, I mean I do have everything backed up. But uploading it will take HOURS, literally. Grumble grumble grumble. I have better things to do, definitely.

Major irritation of last 24 hours was sitting up really doing helicopter pics and thumbnails and webpage, and deciding to upload them rather than be sensible and go to bed. Uploading took forever and a day, and right at the end I got a message saying "Uh, by the way there's been a problem? With one or all of those files you just tried to transfer?"

Grrrrrrrr. There certainly was a problem ... I don't think any of the pictures got through. I can't tell because the damned webpage didn't go through either.

Apart from that, a lovely weekend. I went to the Royal Highland Show on Sunday, a tiring but enjoyable experience. Man, those country folk are bolshy though! Great banners everywhere demanding FREEDOM -- freedom to kill wild animals mainly it seems. There was a foxhunting display -- two haughty chaps on horseback surrounded by a mob of friendly, excited hounds. No foxes of course.

I loved the big parade of Clydesdales and ponies, and my total favourite was going round the stables patting them. I didn't pat any Shetland ponies, they're too freakishly low to reach over the doors. But most of the Highland ponies were lapping up the attention, licking and nibbling at everything in case it turned out to be food.

The exhibition hall was just a big sales exercise, but there were lots of free nibbles and I bought some wild pork and apple sausages. I love real sausages, they're a meaty treat. Also visited the flower show and bought a delphinium. And watched some chainsaw action but not the sheep shearing.

Time to go home -- more later.

Today I finally fixed my printer, which has been malfunctioning for months. I had it on the USB connection, which should work fine but didn't. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, I tried plugging it into the USB hub, directly into the USB port and with a boosted USB cable. I even reinstalled Windows. Nothing worked.

Today I finally gave up completely and installed the printer on the parallel connection. I got a new cable yesterday and connected it up this afternoon. It works! Hurrah!

I spent an hour printing out piles of pictures for various frames I have kicking around and then hung them. Very satisfying. I've got a long weekend coming up, and I might spend a few hours of it clearing out the study. It's a mess in there, needs a good sluicing. What tends to happen though is that I start out with good intentions and end up playing The Sims for hours.

New! Improved! and now with photos ...

At last, the secret can be told. I went back up to the farm at the weekend because it was Jenny's 60th birthday and Andrew organised a spectacular treat for her: a half-hour helicopter trip. There was one spare seat, and Andrew invited me to fill it. I said no at first, because I only had Saturday off. But then the second choice said no as well, so I changed my mind.

It was well worth the extreme effort -- it was wonderful.

I'd had to start out just after 7am in order to get there in time, which meant getting up at 6am -- this after finishing work after midnight. I was feeling reasonably perky, considering. Bertie was astounded to find himself back in "heaven", but less than delighted to be bundled into a bedroom and left on his own half an hour after arriving. Jenny was surprised to see me so soon after the last visit. "Have you come to get your flask?" she asked. She had to be hustled off to get dressed, and even then she got changed again after being told that although it wasn't a "smart dress" occasion, photos would be taken.

The helicopter was a Squirrel six-seater -- pilot and one passenger in the front, four in the back. John went in the front on account of his leg, and he took the map and acted as navigator. Jenny and I had window seats, and Andrew and cousin Grace took the middle seats. We all buckled in and put on our headsets, then had a surprise: the helicopter lifted off backwards!


Sharing the back seat with me, from left: Jenny, Andrew and Grace.

Once we'd cleared the airport traffic we banked away south towards the farm. Collective squeals of excitement as the horizon dipped and swayed! Andrew fell silent after this -- later he said he was wondering whether to throw up on his mother or his cousin. Happily he managed not to throw up at all. Grace also felt queasy, but the rest of us enjoyed every minute.

Just north of the farm we spotted a car stopped by the side of the road and two tiny figures waving madly -- it was Anne, John's sister, and her husband Chris. We buzzed them and carried on, over the farm and up across the moorland to the trig point on Carn nan Tri-tighearnan, which marks the highest point in Nairnshire (2016m). It was very wild and bleak up there, dotted with peat hags and lochans.


Following the burn up the hill.


Whee! Swooping into a turn at the top of the hill. John is navigating.

We came back down the burn and hovered over the farm for photos, then headed across country to Nairn -- pausing briefly to wave at Jean and Bunty.


The farm from the air.


The new house at Rehiran Beag -- the old house and garage can be seen at the back.


Cawdor Castle and its formal gardens.

After circling Nairn we went back to the airport.


Aerial view of the town.


Group portrait taken by the pilot at the end of the trip.

We were all frothing with excitement (or nausea in some cases!). John was thrilled to have flown over the trig point -- he said he and Andrew climbed up to it ten years ago and he'd often wondered when he'd be up there again. To add to Jenny's day of thrills, we were home in time to watch England beat Denmark 3-0.

I had an hour's lie-down later in the afternoon, but otherwise the rest of the day was energetic. Lots of walks, including one on the beach at Nairn (bare feet on warm sand, bliss) with Grace and Andrew's old school friend Ally. And of course Bertie. We had takeaways for dinner, then watched a bit of TV before I dragged off to bed. Andrew kindly walked Bertie, and pushed him through the door later on.


The Mediterranean? Caribbean? No, it's Nairn, on the Costa del Moray. Bertie, Grace, Ally and Andrew.

Sunday was Jenny's actual birthday, with more surprises planned -- a new garden seat and TWO birthday cakes with candles. There was a minor kerfuffle when Aunt Di arrived and left again abruptly, but otherwise everything went as planned. The double seat is magnificent and perfectly suits the position Andrew chose. The cakes -- one baked by Grace in a secret expedition -- were delicious. I managed to drag myself away just after midday, and drove like a mad thing to get back to Queensferry in time to shower, walk the dog, and get to work. I was a bit late, and VERY tired. But happy.

Yesterday was busy too, though it was my day off -- I had a lunch date and a visit to the dentist to get a crown cemented back in after an in-car toffee incident -- and today I mowed both the lawns, in honour of the rain stopping for a day. Frances next door did hers too, we were both working flat out to get it all done as the first drops spattered down.

Tomorrow I'm going to loaf, really take it easy.

I'll put the photos in next week.

Friday I drove up to the farm -- the weather was terrible on the way up, with some heavy rain. But further north it cleared, and then round about Aviemore, it suddenly became very warm. When I got to the farm it was sunny, a beautiful day. No-one was home -- though a neighbour was there picking dandelions for his peacocks. Bertie and I walked round to Ruallan, where John and Andrew were putting up a new fence.

There's a whole long saga about Ruallan, which I won't go into now. Suffice to say there are two houses on the property -- one owned by Andrew's aunty and the other by a couple who've just bought it. The husband was there with his two spaniels and Bertie had a run with them. I don't think we did anything that night, just had dinner and talked, went for walks, that kind of thing.

Next day we also went for walks -- after Andrew had finished his farm chores we went to the machair east of Nairn, a lovely stretch of salt flats sprinkled with flowers. Bertie spent a lot of time chasing oystercatchers; I guess they were decoying him away from their nests, because they flew low and just fast enough to stay a little ahead of him. He was so sure he could catch them he ran and ran and ran, poor thing.

Saturday night, what did we do? I can't remember. It stays light up there until 11pm or so. I think we goofed around in the garden -- was that the day Andrew mowed the lawn? I think we also went back to Ruallan, and Andrew's aunt was there this time. She took me off into her house and plied me with grapefruit squash and chocolate biscuits, showed me prints of some of her paintings, which are in hospitals all around the world.

Whoops, it's time to go home. No time to tell you about going to see Spider-man, or the grand tour of the new house at Rehiran Beag, which will have to be renamed because it's anything but beag; or about Ed and Lou and the baby and their pictures of canoeing on Lewis; or going out to dinner at the Cawdor Tavern with cousin Grace and Ed's parents; driving up to Drynachan to gawp at the fancy-pants summer cottages where the famous stay; or driving madly back south in time for work.

I'll update again next week.

I've not had time to update with gorgeous photos of my weekend on the farm -- great time was had by all, apart from the farm cats -- and now it looks as if I won't have time until next week. I can't tell you what I'll be doing this weekend because it's secret. It will be worth the wait, however.

Another energetic sailing session this morning, complicated by a delay at the marina office. It turned out that the city council leisure card I'd been gaily claiming discounts on has been expired since July last year. No-one had actually ever swiped it through. The old cards used to have the expiry date on them but the new ones just have a bar code. Hee hee!

The marina staff know me so well they hadn't bothered checking -- even this morning they just gave me the discount and told me to come back later and update the card. "I know where you live, I'll come and bang on your door if you don't pay up," one said. It's gone up to £37.50 a year -- the first one I got back in 91 or whenever was about £12 I think. Still a good deal though. Especially if you let it lapse for a year.

So yes, the sailing was good -- Colin wanted to practise gybing, so we bombed up and down the river in gusty winds. I crewed, which is a fair amount of work when tacking but hardly any when gybing.

Bertie on the other hand has had a rubbish day. Very short, unexciting walks, plus an interminable wait at the marina office this afternoon while I got a new discount card. I fully expect to find something has been destroyed when I get home. He usually rips up a magazine or newspaper when he's feeling hard done by.

Some interesting websites:

True Crimes -- The Ultimate Crime Resource. Subheadings include organised crime and missing persons as well as homicide. It's addictive.

Dead or Alive? -- Updated daily! It's very useful and endlessly interesting. Who knew that Chiang Kai-shek's widow was still alive? I didn't. She's 105. Astounding.

All Music -- Facts, factoids, music clips, reviews ... it's all there and more.

Anyday -- This one's plain weird. But at least now I know that today (June 7) is Tom Jones's birthday. And the anniversary of the United Colonies changing its name to United States (1775).

I'm off to the farm tomorrow! Hurrah! I haven't packed or anything yet, so I won't be making an early start. I also need to stop off and get some nice thank-you-for-having-us gifts. Maybe I'll get them a puppy...

The Barcelona Review -- What a great find ... an "International Review of Contemporary Fiction", with short fiction, excerpts from novels, interviews with authors, and yes, reviews, in English, Spanish, Catalan and French.

It has the first chapter of a book I bought today, The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy.

The weather finally cleared up enough on Saturday for me to get into the garden, and get into it I did -- all day. I weeded the whole front garden, mowed the lawn and planted out the lobelias I bought at the fair. Then I moved to the back, where I weeded and planted lobelias (it was a big tray). I broke only for dog-walking and lunch. It all looked good after I'd finished, and then as a bonus it rained, so I didn't have to worry about watering anything.

Last night I went out for dinner with Fiona, visiting from London, and a friend of hers who is over from the US. We went to Sweet Melindas, now firmly my favourite restaurant. It's mainly seafood but there was also venison and chicken on the menu, and their puddings are superb. I also like the ambience and the decor. I always enjoy catching up with Fiona and last night was no exception, great conversation. I must go and visit all my London friends some time soon.

Tomorrow morning I have to get up early, I have an appointment with my mortgage lender for a two-year review. Then Thursday Colin and I are going sailing in the morning, 10am-noon. And Friday I'm off to Cawdor, for a farm visit through until Tuesday morning. Bertie loves going to the farm, all those wide-open spaces and wonderful smells -- and the 12 cats lurking in the coalshed.

As a defence mechanism I'm trying to take an interest in the FIFA World Cup, and the official website may well swing it for me.

It's interesting! Really, it is. Check out the archives -- you can watch entire classic matches on screen. You'd need a fast connection, but still ... amazing.

More sailing drama today, I'll write about it later.

Oh, oh, oh, I found Suipi!

While searching the net for something else entirely, I found a whole new card game. I started reading the instructions and was quickly bamboozled. But it sounds a lot like 500, with an extra suit of trump cards added -- five suits altogether -- and a whole raft of extra rules, possible bids etc.

One site I looked at said people who start playing can sometimes end up thinking the others are just making up the rules as they go along -- which reminded me of Sonny trying to teach us to play sweepi. So I looked that up on the net and only found one passing reference -- and they called the game sweet pea.

Hey, here's a site where you can download 500 for your computer. Looks pretty shonky, but.

I used to play cards a lot -- in fact when I lived in London, a whole network of us had regular card evenings. The host house put on a lavish spread, set up tables and off we went. Euchre, Pontoon, 500, Black Bitch, Fan Tan, Gin Rummy and, when worse for wear, Snap or Cheat. If there were only a few of us, we would lie on the floor and play manic rounds of Racing Demon, which can get pretty physical.

Then when I was away on a work trip in Vanuatu, with the army medical corps, I was sucked in to a kava-fuelled grudge-match vortex called Star Euchre. On holiday in Vanuatu it was another form of Euchre, I think -- my opponents ceremoniously presented me with the score sheets when I left. At home when I was a kid it was always 500, endless games at the crib, with the Tilley lamp hissing and popping and the tension rising. I played 500 in Kenya too, with some Australians in the Kakamega forest.

A pack of cards is such a small thing, but it's a Tardis -- it billows out into long evenings of pleasure, intrigue, strategy, betrayal and triumph.

Gad, I'm so far behind with this. After writing the last entry I went for a walk with the dog and found an interesting-looking pamphlet lying sodden on the grass. It turned out to be a programme for Raft Race Day, to be held the following day, Sunday. The programme printed on that glossy paper that sticks together when wet, so I couldn't read the vital bits. I went on down to the chandlery and they had nice dry copies.

Lo and behold, there was a whole page devoted to the Reaper. It's a 100-year-old Fife herring drifter, based at the Fishing Museum at Anstruther. I went and visited the next day and it's just great. I'll put up some photos later on. It was all set up by then and they'd raised one of the sails. A beautiful boat.

The raft race was a hoot. The entrants didn't make their own rafts (not like us resourceful kiwis -- though I suspect the Lifeboat Association, for which it was a fundraiser, didn't want any adverse publicity), they paddled big rubber inflatables. Most of the men were dressed as women, of course. Those excessively macho blokes will seize any chance they get to put on a frock and some makeup, and pinch other men's bums. There was a fair too, with stalls selling homemade cakes and secondhand books, and some fair rides. I got a tray of lobelias, nice dark blue ones. The weather's been so dreadful I haven't been able to plant them yet.

I managed to mow the back lawn at the last minute on Saturday night, the rain was spattering down as I roared through the final few feet. It was about six inches long in places, I'm not kidding. The weeds are totally rampant in the front garden -- the convolvulus is taking over the border under the wall! I must get onto it on Saturday.

So anyway on Monday I went to see the new Star Wars film -- what a load of rubbish! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Though I felt a lot of sympathy for a gang of little kids in the front row who squirmed around restlessly during the love scenes -- time for another rocket race! Blow something up! I hadn't realised Temuera Morrison was in it, that was a lovely surprise. And of course hilarious to hear that awful dialogue delivered "un Newzild".

Yesterday morning Colin and I went sailing, though not in his yacht. We'd intended to hire a Topaz each, they're small single-handers. But the tide was so low the end of the hard was out of the water so we couldn't launch them, and we had to take a Wanderer instead, they're bigger boats they keep on the pontoon. The forecast was for force 5-6 winds, which is quite strong. But in the event it was barely a three, just enough to scoot along on.

Then the storm broke. A proper thunderstorm, with jags of forked lightning slashing down into the sea. The air was filled with the smell of burning -- thankfully not us. It was very thrilling. The rain that went with it was less thrilling, because after a couple of heady squalls, it killed the wind.

We're going sailing again tomorrow morning. I'm quite the morning person since my week off, I haven't slept past 10am.

Nearly forgot -- today there was a new boat tied up in the little harbour, what appears to be an old fishing boat, the Reaper. It has lovely big red sails -- I'd love to see it on the water.

:: visit to oxford

Whew, what a whirlwind few days. It took only six hours to get down there on Monday, pretty good time. I stopped a couple of time for a stretch and a bite to eat.

Faye and I had a day out in the centre of the city on Tuesday. We went on a walking tour of the colleges and a whirl on the open-top bus (hilariously awful -- we couldn't understand anything the guide was saying, apart from his crap jokes), had lunch in a church cafe and took in the view from the tower.

Pictures:


The walking tour -- we only went into one college, Keble, one of the younger ones. It dates from the 19th century, the first to be built in brick. The guide was very good and the group wasn't too big.


The bus tour -- what's that you said?


View from the tower of St Mary the Virgin.


Detail on the church -- Oxford has some wonderful gargoyles, but you need a telephoto lens to get pictures of them.


Faye overcomes her fear of heights, but keeps a good grip on the railing.


Halfway up the spiral staircase a pigeon has chosen an unfortunate site for her nest.


One of the statues outside the Radcliffe Camera.

Wednesday was Faye's main day off, so we went to Blenheim Palace first, very interesting monster stately home. I especially liked the story of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the American heiress whose mother was determined to marry her off to an English dook. She interviewed several, but plumped for the Dook of Marlboro, who was on the bones of his arse but had Blenheim Palace and a whole bunch of titles. Consuelo, age 19, was horrified and balked, so Mommy Dearest locked her in her room for five days on bread and water till she gave in. The Dook was only 5'4", Consuelo was 6'1". She gave him "an heir and a spare" before divorcing him. He went on to marry someone called Gladys, who communed with spirits and eventually went mad.

Blenheim's other delights include a cafe (lunch), a miniature steam train that takes you to the butterfly house and herb gardens, and lovely walks in the aboretum, around the lake and in the formal gardens. Whew.


From Blenheim's butterfly house. Photography was banned inside the palace, sadly, and my photos of the outside aren't marvellous. See here for info and galleries. It was impressive but OTT -- at least I learned that when I gild the ceilings 24 carat gold ages better than 18 carat.

After Blenheim we wended our way randomly through the Cotswolds, marvelling at the beautiful little villages -- the houses are all built of the local golden yellow stone, with slate roofs, and most are dripping with wisteria. We had dinner at the Trout, a nice ye olde pub on the Thames (oops, sorry, the Isis, as they call it in Oxford) complete with peacocks. We had trout -- delicious.

Thursday I went into Oxford for a solo visit, tromped around the Ashmoleon museum and did some shopping. In the afternoon I gave Faye some computer lessons and we got her hooked up to the internet.

Friday we went on a pilgrimage to Tolkien's grave (just down the road from Faye) and a walk in the local park. It has an aviary that has rabbits and guinea pigs rushing around in all the cages. Bertie would have loved that -- a little Jack Russell had to be dragged away, he couldn't believe his eyes! Lemme in! Then we had lunch at a local garden centre before I headed off at 1pm.


The Tolkien grave. Fans have left little tokens of their regard -- pixie and fairy necklaces, a couple of rings, some notes (bleached by the rain) and a tiny Australian flag.

The trip back was dreadful, I didn't get home until nearly midnight. The Midlands was just one big traffic jam -- stopstartstopstart for hundreds of miles! Crawling along at 20mph. Then up through the hills by the Lakes District it was hosing down with rain so heavy the wipers nearly didn't cope, ditto the Borders. I took a wrong turn near Glasgow & ended up in Stirling! Look it up on the map! Finally I got to Dunfermline and phoned for directions to the friends' place where Bertie was staying -- had to phone twice because I got lost again. I was exhausted. Bertie was quite pleased to see me but I think he's really missing his new "owners" now, he's been quite mopey.

PhotoDude's Web Log: Brain Dump & Pixel Pile

I've probably said this before, but PhotoDude is one interesting fellow.

On my home computer my "favourites" folder is practically empty; I don't surf much at home, and I keep doing things like reinstalling Windows, changing browsers and even buying new computers -- stuff like favourites gets lost.

This is where the blogspot comes in handy, as a kind of portable favourites folder. Which is mad, because weblogs (blogs for short) were originally devised by people who wanted to share their internet finds with an audience. Whereas I started keeping mine as a kind of diary thingie.

I do have a separate blog for links, but it seemed silly to keep two when one would do, so I don't post there any more. I should merge them, but I don't know how.

Today's news: there is none. Walked the dog twice, did some washing, watched ER, came to work.

Meanwhile, the trip to Oxford is suddenly looming large -- I'm looking forward to it, but there's a lot to organise before I head off. I don't even know how to get there. I'm told it will take about seven to eight hours, which seems an awful lot. I hope the car holds out.

As I speak, other family members are gathering in Wellington for the Great 80th Birthday Bash. Lucky buggers! It sounds like a great weekend. Here's me whining about organising a simple trip south -- the birthday organisation is nothing short of awesome. I'll say no more, because some of it's SECRET.

Underground Photoshop Tennis

This is just fab; I love tinkering with Photoshop but these guys take it to another level.

Welcome to eHow.com How things get done

This is bound to come in handy one day. Everything from "How to Clean Blood from Carpet" to "Getting Started in Rocketry". Less useful: "Make a Faux Stained-Glass Sun Catcher" or "Refuse a Dance at a Formal Ball". Still, you never know ...

Later: Aiee! This site really is something else. You have to register, but it's free and it's worthwhile. Here's a taster from the Relationship section:

How to Pick Up a Sailor
If a mate in uniform is who you seek, go where the sailors go....

Steps:
1. Visit port towns or cities with large, rotating sailor populations.
2. Frequent bar and restaurant establishments in the vicinity of docking areas.
3. Visit areas that hold Fleet Week celebrations or similar U.S. Navy-based military events.
4. Keep apprised of current world affairs and the U.S. military's involvement in those affairs.
5. Learn key sailing terms and become well-versed in navy terminology.
6. Get a clerical job in the US Navy so that you will have access to ship schedules and personnel records. But don't be a stalker; the Pentagon might be watching.

Avast me hearties! Arrr harrr! Heh, in my home town the boatie girls just stood on the wharf in short skirts; I don't think they kept apprised of current world affairs and I doubt the sailors were bothered.

The subject of today's lecture is Nostalgia.

I was set off by a radio programme; some worthy gent banging on about the lovely spot he lived in and how the developers were going to ruin it by gasp, building houses.

Listening to him go on about how he'd have to find somewhere else to live or else perhaps kill himself, I could feel my blood pressure rising. At what point does this man want history to stop? Right now, that's where. "This is as close to paradise as it gets," he intoned.

Most people would prefer an earlier date to call a halt at -- without, of course losing any of their own creature comforts. They want their village to look, say, mid-17th century, pre-Industrial Revolution, but they still want a TV, stereo, washer-drier, dishwasher, fridge-freezer. Bury the power lines and put the satellite dish under the roof tiles. And erect the mobile phone masts over near that ghastly council estate, thank you very much.

It's all down to taste, snobbery, a kind of middle-class fascism and my pet hate -- nostalgia. They yearn for "simpler times", these people, before the hedgerows were all ripped up, before the mucky moral dilemmas posed by genetic engineering, before traffic jams and mass tourism. They may trick it out as a concern for the environment, like the man on the radio programme, but it's not.

Is he living in a wattle-and-daub hut with no running water? I doubt it. Leaving aside the fact that the meadowed landscape he so admires was once thickly wooded. Charcoal burners laid waste to Britain's forests hundreds of years ago. What he objects to is people, people who won't share his "good taste", his appreciation of the beautiful landscape. He fears progress in his face. He wants a fridge, but he doesn't want to see the ugliness that produced the fridge.

I've seen this kind of poison working elsewhere too. Like in Zanzibar -- I spent a week there once in an idyllic spot, a guesthouse in a tiny village on a beach. No electricity, one standpipe providing all the water. A group of us tourists were invited to dinner by a local shopkeeper, who told us how they hoped to get a power supply soon.

One of my fellow tourists was most upset. "It will all be spoilt," she wailed later. For whom, exactly? She was going to go back to her flat in Frankfurt or Paris or wherever, with all mod cons; she wasn't going to have to cook her dinner over an open fire by the light of a hurricane lamp, walking half a mile to fetch water. She wanted the villagers to stay the way they were so that in a couple of years' time she could come back for another week of "paradise".

Nostalgia poisons architecture too, especially domestic architecture. The new houses being built up the road from me could date from the 1950s, or even earlier. Here it is 2002, but there's not a solar panel in sight. (The main thing that shows they're modern is that the sections are so small.) Stop history, we want to get off! cry the British. Maybe the failure of tower block living put them off Brave New World experimentation, I don't know. But I do miss the quirkiness of New Zealand homes -- you can tell when they were built so clearly, from the colonial weatherboard to goofy 70s and 80s round windows and taradiddles.

There are modern homes here, but they're rare and very daring. Modernity is mainly reserved for public and commercial buildings. Even there there's a lot of nostalgia-driven timidity. Prince Charles is at the forefront, tut-tutting at anything dramatically new. I bet he'd love to turn the clock back a few hundred years!

It is the nostalgic attempt to recreate the past and the dismissal of the achievements of the 20th century - apparent at Poundbury and in the prince's speeches - that has earned him enemies. Among them the architect Piers Gough, who says Poundbury would have been an interesting experiment in 1802 - but not 2002. 'He doesn't seem to be interested in culture,' Gough says. 'He doesn't seem to be interested in the world going forward. He wants it to go backward.' -- From Architecture Week

I'm in a loser state of mind -- first I lose the dog; then today, the car. Or rather, I lost the street where I parked it while I had my hair done. I went to a church book sale across the road from the salon, that was my big mistake. I got disoriented and ended up wandering the streets for over half an hour, in the rain. So much for Sandy's careful blow-drying, it was all rat-tails.

The book sale was a good one -- I got a 1945 edition of Wind in the Willows for 20p, very austere little thing with no illustrations but plenty of conversation; a guide to ballroom dancing from the 50s, I bought it for the diagrams of dancing feet, 40p; and something I can never resist, an 50s recipe book full of photos of radioactive food. Sensible buys were Cold Mountain (haven't read the book or seen the movie) and The Tulip, a history of the Dutch bulb mania. I resisted The Complete Home Doctor, which I only wanted for an X-ray of "torso with toy bicycle impacted in thorax".

Three days off and I'm exhausted. Saturday the weather was great, sunny and warm, so I did a spot of gardening, lots of walking and saw The Warrior -- what a great film. Sunday I went sailing and it was fantastic, just a nice amount of wind. The first sail of the season is always a bit nerve-wracking, because I'm sure I've forgotten how to do it. But it's like riding a bike, it all comes back and it's bliss. Sailing's funny though, because it seems sooooo easy ... but you don't realise how much work you're doing until later on -- ow! aching muscles!

Today I had a loafsome morning and then took Bertie on a nice long walk, to Kirkliston. I don't know how far it is, but it takes about an hour and a half, mainly along the route of an old railway line. Just as you come into Kirkliston the track goes under a bridge, which carries a road into the village. That's where Bertie disappeared. Vanished! I followed him up the path to the road, yelling at him because he's not supposed to go off the track. No sign of him. Standing on the bridge was a chap with a dog, who had been on the path ahead of us. He pointed up another road. But he had a speech disorder -- maybe he'd had a stroke? -- and I couldn't understand what he was saying. "White dog" and "farm" was about it. But he was pointing very insistently up the road.

I set off up the road in the direction he was pointing, calling and whistling, but there was no sign of Bertie. I came back down the road and walked along the track a bit. Went back up the road, back down to the track. Checked the streets of the village. Went back up the road, back down the track. He had vanished. What to do? His collar has a tag with my phone number on it, so I thought it would be best to go home and see if someone had phoned. I caught a bus back, and sure enough, there was a phone message.

"This is Mrs Unintelligible from 5 Unintelligible Unintelligble and I have your white greyhound here. I've called the police and they're sending someone round, but then I saw your number on his collar so... oh, and my phone number is 333 unintelligible."

Argh!

I couldn't phone 1471 because Andrew had phoned after Mrs Unintelligible, so his number was the last called. I listened to the message a dozen times. I scoured the phone book for names that sounded likely that matched a 333 number but no luck. I phoned the police, but they didn't have a record of Bertie being reported found. On a map I found an street in Kirkliston that could concievably be Unintelligible Unintelligible, so I drove there. I asked at the Post Office and the Kirkliston vet. No joy. I went home again. The police had suggested phoning the cat and dog home and also checking the local police station. Cat and dog home didn't have him. I plodded down to the police station but they didn't have him and didn't have a record of him being reported found.

I went home again and hurrah, Mrs Unintelligible had phoned again, so this time 1471 worked and she was able to give me directions to her house, which is in a converted farm steading, further up the very road the man had been pointing at. Bertie was curled up on a blanket on his rescuer's front doorstep, looking very woebegone. She said he had been very timid at first, but wouldn't leave her door -- especially after she gave him some biscuits! She has a dog too, but like Bertie he's not neutered, so she kept B outside because she wasn't sure how they'd get on.

When I got home I had to phone the police and report him home safe, then go to the police station and tell them he was ok. Tomorrow I'll phone the cat and dog home and let them know -- everyone has his details! In the course of all my to-ing and fro-ing I'd bumped into both my next-door neighbours, so they knew the whole story too. Rosemary even offered to come and listen to the phone message, see if she could understand the accent better -- but by then he was home again. He's been following me around the house like a clicking shadow, so maybe he thinks I abandoned him.

Andrew had phoned to check when I was going up to the farm again -- and it's official, we're going up at the beginning of June for a few days. I'll see if I can take some more time off. There won't be a lot of farm work, so we'll be able to go for some good walks.

Right now I'm going to have a long bath -- I'm aching all over! Have to get up early tomorrow too, I'm going to have my hair done.

Hmm, I tried to post an entry yesterday but it didn't work. Seems to be ok tonight though. Not much to report, it's been another quiet week at Salty Towers. I'm now officially on a waiting list for the fibroids thingie, looks as if it will be September before I go in. The hold-up is partly because of a shortage of beds in gynaecology; partly because Dr Gillespie and his colleague will be on holiday for most of July and August, and in meetings for most of June; and that there are three other women ahead of me on the list. In the meantime I'm going to go back to the herbalist for some of her magic potion.

I'm going sailing soon, first time this season. I'd loaned Colin my wetsuit for a course he was doing and he returned it last week. Most embarrassing -- I thought he was going to drop it in in the afternoon, on his way to work, but he showed up at midday, with his girlfriend in tow. I was still in my nightie, having a long leisurely breakfast in the sun. Caught slacking! Jenny was there to meet Bertie, who's going to be staying with them while I'm in Oxford. "Gosh, isn't he big," she said nervously. I reassured her that he only looks big indoors. Yes, I'm sure that's reassuring.

So anyway sailing, tomorrow or Monday. I mowed the front lawn today to make more time at the weekend for leisure pursuits, but mowing the back lawn seemed a step too far. I really am extremely lazy. I'm going to go and see The Warrior at some point too, just my kind of movie "shimmering beauty" and "old-fashioned storytelling gusto".

The "virus" problem is solved: it was a combination of the ISP's servers going down and my thinking that meant my password had been stolen again and changing it, and my home email program, Eudora, being unable to cope and giving me weirdo error messages. Why can't it just say "wrong password" rather than "Shhhh! Don't tell anyone." It sounded like virus talk to me.

The mad thing was that the first emails I got after sorting all this out were infected with the Klez virus. Norton grabbed them and stuffed them away before they could do any harm, but still!

Today I went to a funeral. One of my dogwalking acquaintances, Sandy, died suddenly last week. One of my neighbours (who also has dogs) called in this morning and offered me a lift there and back, which was nice. There was a good turnout -- Sandy didn't have much in the way of family, but he had loads of friends. I think the dogs should have been there too though ...

Crematorium funerals are quite odd. They try very hard to be as solemn and respectful as possible, but you can hear the clock ticking. We had to wait outside until the previous funeral ended and when we filed out there was another group of mourners gathering. The minister gave a nice little sermon, but it's kind of "funeral lite" -- a hymn, a couple of prayers, a homily and Bible reading and off you go. After the service we drove back and Lisa told me about how her husband died on the third day of their "holiday of a lifetime" in the Far East. They'd been married 38 years, very sad story.

Bertie had quite a traumatic walk -- a couple of little kids came scrambling up a bank with their mother, right under his nose, and he went mental, leaping around like a lunatic barking as if they were ... I don't know, monsters. Once I'd reassured them the children weren't too frightened -- "Give him a biscuit!" one suggested. The mother had a cap-gun and "shot" at him, which went down well! I managed to drive Bertie away from them in the end and get him on a lead. Then we met a whole class of children on the street and he backed out into a busy road in a big panic -- argh!

Early cut tonight, they're working on the presses again. Phew.

I've been having problems with my email -- I thought it was a virus, but it turns out it may be a problem with my ISP's servers, because I just phoned the support line and they're in a big flap. So ... email to bjagnew@hotmail.com in the meantime. Sigh.

I've just come back from seeing the radiologist who'll be doing the embolisation and it was very interesting. He had all the MRI scan pictures up, wow! My poor old innards. He's not sure when it will be done, says it may be early June or September. July and August are out because he and his colleague are on holiday and May is out because of various meetings. The radiologists don't have much of a waiting list, the main hitch is gynaecology beds. The radiology department doesn't move to the new hospital until next year, so the procedure will be done at the old hospital, then they'll whizz me out to the new one for a few days.

I took photos of the scans, ta da!


These ones are in cross-section, the round black blobs are the fibroids. There are loads of them, all the way through my uterus. Ewwww!


And here's the side-on view. The dark shape in this one is my poor bladder, squashed down on by the big bag o' fibroids. Double ewwww!

The radiologist wasn't fazed at all by my interest -- doctors have changed so much! He wasn't patronising in the least. The big revelation was his use of the phrase "chicken soup" in relation to the discharge I might experience. Guess what I won't be eating again in a hurry...

Stop cheering up! It's not good for you!

By WILLIAM L. HOLMES
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) – Mildly depressed older women tend to live longer than those who are not depressed at all, a surprising new study suggests.
The findings are contrary to most other studies on the link between depression and mortality. Those studies have generally shown that depression increases the likelihood of death within a certain time period.
“This is totally counterintuitive to what you expect to see,” said Dan G. Blazer, a Duke University professor of psychiatry and behavioral science. “We know that depression in younger populations is very clearly associated with mortality. It’s not so clear in older populations.”
The results might support the theory that mild depression is a survival mechanism, he said.
The Duke study, to be published in the May-June issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, is the first known examination of mild depression and death, Blazer said. Other studies looked only at people with severe depression.
The Duke study was based on a group that started with 2,401 women and 1,269 men, all older than 65. They were interviewed about their health at roughly three-year intervals from 1986 to 1997 and were separated into three categories – depressed, mildly depressed and not depressed – based on their answers to a 20-question test.
Blazer said 10.5 per cent of the women were considered mildly depressed.
The women with mild depression were, on average, 60 percent less likely than other women to die during any three-year period, Blazer said. Researchers took into account age, chronic illness and other factors in calculating the mortality rate.
The researchers found that depression had no influence on the mortality of men.
“We don’t want to make too much out of this except that it’s a very interesting finding,” Blazer said.
Blazer said the study may support a theory advanced by University of Michigan psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse that says mild depression may allow people to cope more easily with their problems and remove themselves from dangerous or harmful situations.
According to Nesse humans may need “low mood” or mild depression to deal with failure and disappointment. “People who don’t have it waste their whole lives trying to do things they won’t ever do,” he said.
A psychiatrist not involved in Blazer’s work, Dr. Richard Schulz of the University of Pittsburgh, questioned the findings, noting that previous research has shown that both mild depression and severe depression lead to increased mortality.

That reminds me of something else I read recently, that high self-esteem can be more of a social problem than low self-esteem, because ... well I forget now. I think it was that highly self-confident teenagers are more likely to go joy-riding than self-pitying pimply nerds. That kind of thing.

But the study itself is a bit depressing, isn't it? People who aren't depressed "waste their whole lives trying to do things they won’t ever do,” says Mr Nesse. But how wonderful if you succeed against all the odds! And people do, don't they? Whatever happened to "nothing venture, nothing gain"? Blimey -- imagine living in a world of mildly depressed old ladies...

Forgot to mention, I haven't managed to get the wee "movies" I can take on my camera to play on the television. I'm not sure why it's not working, it should according to the instruction booklet. I'll keep trying.

Despite a slow start and some rain, I've managed to get a lot done today. Weeded the front garden, mowed the back lawn and painted the retaining wall. I decided against using the antifungal wash -- reading the label it sounded so ghastly and lethal I thought I'd rather live with a bit of moss and slime than risk slaughtering the wildlife -- or Bertie.

So it's very smart, but probably only for five minutes. Here are the before and after shots:



Out the front things are looking pretty good. The daphne (below) is looking slightly healthier after its dousing with copper sulphate, though it might need another go.



The hosta isn't dead after all -- in fact it's coming up very vigorously, like a rhubarb, in fat buds. It's hidden by the bluebells at the moment. The himalayan poppy is also coming along very strongly.

Here are another couple of photos, while I'm at it: one of some blossom and one of the road bridge.

I keep meaning to post more pictures here and then forgetting. I made some more movies today (hah! movies! they are 30 second clips) and I'm going to experiment with the AV plugs that came with the camera. I think this means I can watch the movies on TV, because my new TV has AV sockets on the front.

The big question is, can I then record the result on a video tape? Brace yourselves for Bertie, an experimental film made according to the Dogme (hah! Dogme! woof!) rules: shooting on location (no imported props or sets); sound and image produced together; a handheld camera; natural light; no optical work or filters; no superficial action (murders, weapons); no temporal or geographic alienation; no genre films; no signature.

Sadly mine will have no plot, either -- or a very doggy one: eat! drink! run! sleep! eat again!

Woooo!

The universe is about 13 billion years old, slightly younger than previously believed, according to a study that measured the cooling of the embers in ancient dying stars.

But a lot older than Edwin Hubble thought it was, apparently. Back in 1928 he put it at two billion years old, give or take a few million.

In other news, this story has my dander up. Sounds all very well on the face of it, but then you get into the fine print.

The American church leaders said they would recommend a special process to defrock any priest who has become “notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors.” In cases that are “not notorious” they would leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children and should be defrocked.

Oh, and apparently “a link between celibacy and paedophilia cannot be scientifically maintained”. Eh? Elsewhere, the good cardinals say “attention was drawn to the fact that almost all cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true paedophilia”.

So let's see -- they'll think about defrocking a priest if he molests lots of really young kids and everyone knows about it. If not many people know about it, then the bishop will decide.

Here's my suggestion: call the police, put the alleged molester on trial and let the court judge the evidence. That should make it nice and easy to decide who should be defrocked.

Shop shop shop shop shop shop..... drop.

I had a megashoppng session. Bought a new TV -- a cheap and cheerful little Goodman portable. Bought some headphones so I can watch TV late at night without bothering the neighbours. Bought a new keyboard and speakers for Faye's computer. Bought dog food. Bought paint for the doorsteps, front and back, for the retaining wall at the back, for the back door, plus sandpaper and brushes.

Staggered home, set up new TV, walked dog. Now I'm dropping into a hot bath. Whew.

The new TV is great -- I didn't realise how awful the old one was.

One thing I didn't get that's on my list is a new monitor. I'm still fighting the temptation of a TFT monitor, one of the skinny flat ones. They're quite a bit more expensive than the regular ones, but don't take up nearly as much space. Can't decide.

Cathy emailed me an age calculator -- sadly it didn't work, but I was intrigued so I scouted round on the internet and found this one.

It is truly freaky watching your life whizz by in milliseconds.

Whew! Busy or something. The gas man came today and drilled a big hole in the livingroom wall. It's about the same size as the airbricks in the other rooms but it's down near the floor. It has a grille on it but outside there's just a hood thing, so I should be able to stuff a towel or similar in it to stop the flow of freezing air across the livingroom floor.

This is as close to crazy as it gets -- I pay them £200 to make my home safe from noxious fumes, then I fix it so it doesn't work. But really, it can't be energy-efficient to have bloody great holes in your walls. It's medieval.

My television's starting to go on the fritz -- the sound and colour go very high or very low without input from me, and the remote only works if you're standing right next to the set. I'll shop for a cheapo replacement on Saturday. I've had this one for years, nearly ten years I think, and it was second hand to start with. I want a portable set with Teletext, a SCART socket and a headphone socket. Should be able to get one for £100 or so. (Yes -- Currys and Dixons both have a Sanyo for £110 with all that.)

My trip to Oxford next month is firming up. Colin is OK to look after Bertie -- I have to leave him behind because a) he can't stay at Mrs Kahn's and b) there won't be any room in the car for him and his luggage. I'd wanted Colin and Jenny to have a practice run at hosting Bertie before I go into hospital anyway, so it works out well.

Speaking of hospital, there's still no word on when I'm going in. I'm supposed to meet the radiologist first, but I haven't heard from him either. They have moved out to the new hospital already, so maybe they're still getting themselves sorted out. I'm quite glad they've moved -- there's been an outbreak of the "superbug" at the old infirmary, all the cardio patients got it and one died. Brrrr.

I added a picture to The Mirror Project. It's a fun thing to do -- I have a couple of others to submit, also of reflections in water, I just haven't gotten around to sending them in.

Long day at work today -- 11am start and I'm still here at 9:30pm. I'll go home soon, just waiting for our Jerusalem correspondent to file some copy.

I absolutely must have this drug.

This is my favourite quote from the article: "It is possible it could become a drug of abuse because it would enhance the performance of athletes," he said. No! You really think so?

This site has a link to what it calls "a hugely inappropriate animated tribute to the Queen Mother".

I think it's sort of sweet, in a South Park way.

The weather continues to be glorious and I continue to spend most of my time off outdoors rather than writing to my family. Sorry about that. Today I washed the car -- after walking the dog in a solemn manner befitting the solemnity of the solemn event I was missing on the telly. The lull that fell over the land was quite noticeable, as was the feverish buzz of activity once the funeral was over.

Tesco was shut from 10.30am to 1pm! So was Marks & Spencer! Amazing! The local co-op supermarket Scottishly made do with a two-minute silence.

The gas man visited this morning to fix something I think is called the flue annulus. The previous gas man had quoted me for that work and for drilling a hole through my wall because the window vents are substandard (even after I nagged and nagged at the window firm to make sure the ventilation was up to scratch); but he said I didn't need to get the vent done, it was the flue work that made my gas fire AT RISK (as the yellow sign said that he left attached to it).

But (sigh) today's gas man said no, there's a regulation to say that you can get the ventilation put right without having the flue done, but not the other way round. The bill will be £200 rather than £67.

I gave in -- ok, just drill a bloody hole in the wall, I don't care. I'll care more next Thursday when they do the work, and even more than that when I get the bill. Joys of home ownership.

Saturday I spent at a wonderful spot north of St Andrews, Tentsmuir, which several people had recommended. It's fantastic. The forest borders the beach, making it perfect for walking Bertie. He enjoys running on the sand for about half an hour, then he's sick of it. At Tentsmuir we walked along the edge of the forest, so he was in amongst the trees hunting rabbits, and I was in the dunes enjoying the sunshine and the sight and sound of surf.

I took loads of photos, will post some soon. I have to do some work now, spot you later.

I love this story. How many chihuahuas is your child worth?

[Sadly the story's vanished off the Washington Post's archives -- a woman had tried to swap her baby for a chihuahua. The dog-owner only dobbed her in after she upped the price to two chihuahuas. Or something.]

Back at work, sigh. It's not so bad, I guess. The printing presses threw a wobbly and our deadlines were brought forward, which made for a last-minute frenzy; on the positive side I get to go home early -- and the early deadlines are in force all week.

The news is mainly depressing -- the Middle East situation just about reduces me to tears. I went through a strongly pro-Zionist phase as a teenager, after reading Exodus but gradually changed my views and now I'm more sympathetic towards the Palestinians. As sympathetic as you can be to people willing to blow themselves up in cafes crowded with families. I just don't think the Israelis' increasing aggression is going to do anyone any favours. They're reaping what they sowed.

Back in my mundane world, yesterday I dragged myself off to the shops to get some new clothes. It's an ordeal! I did very well though, I got two pairs of trousers (black), two blouses (one red, one pinkish stripes) and three t-shirts. Favourite purchase is probably a red long-sleeved t-shirt. The blouses are both the same style: short, fitted, with three-quarter length sleeves. This is a real departure for me. I'm paranoid about the size of my bum, so it's risking severe trauma to wear anything bum-revealing.

The paranoia's not entirely unfounded. I was in the changing rooms at the swimming baths in Edinburgh once when a little boy said in a piercing voice: "Mummy, come and look, there's a lady with a really, really big bottom!" And then last year I was strolling down the esplanade wearing comfy loose trousers and a short t-shirt a bloke behind me said: "There's a big arse arse arse."

So I'm trying to re-educate myself to accept my body and not feel bad about the harsh things ignorant people say, and not to cover up the bits I don't like. The blouses are cute. OK, I'm not wearing one of them today, I'm wearing a loose white linen shirt, but I WILL wear them.

I got a great book as a reward for getting through the gruelling task of clothes-buying (hey, it's hot in those changing cubicles!) -- The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. He's one of my favourite SF writers, but most of his books are grounded in the here and now, even his series on the colonisation of Mars. My favourite of his is Antarctica -- even if you don't like science fiction you might enjoy this.

Time to go home!