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.