:: spring snow

Brrr, it was freezing today and there was a bit of grotty snow still left when I got up this morning. But then the sun came out. I very nearly got caught in a hailstorm yesterday, while out walking at Blackness:






But it struck while I was in the garden centre buying gravel boards for the extension to the raised bed. Oh yes, it's going to be a duplex. The problem is that I built the original too far back in the garden, so it's too shaded by the trees over the fence. I think I'd get a row if I hacked down the neighbour's rowan (plus it's supposed to be incredibly bad luck), so I'm just going to build another patch. Not this weekend though, too lazy.

I had a flutter on the Grand National yesterday and won £50! The horse was Comply or Die, which sounded quite a motivating name. Win or you're dogfood! I bet online, which was interesting - it took about half an hour to set up an account and get a bet on, so it would have been quicker to walk down to the bookies in the High Street. And then when I went to collect my winnings, they wanted me to confirm my age - by either paying them some more money via a credit card (which you can't get if you're under 18) or by emailing them a photo of my passport. Crazy. And it will take four days to transfer the money (by donkey cart?) - again, the bookie would have given me cash money right away.

:: pix

Just being lazy - a couple of pix here from the World Cross Country Championships at the weekend (Andrew was in Glasgow so came through and we had lunch and then watched the finals):






And this is from an excursion down Rubbish Alley, which is apparently where shopping trolleys go to die:

:: change of plans

I've done it - cancelled the Tibet trip. The deciding factor was the train - the Free Tibet people have an excellent web page for ditherers like me and after giving all the pros and cons on the ethics of visiting Tibet they flat out call for a boycott of the train. So, that was it really. I feel bad now that I was really looking forward to the train journey! I love trains.

But however, I am consoling myself with another trip. I'd already paid a deposit, so rather than lose it I applied it to a tour of Bhutan, aka Land of the Thunder Dragon, aka The Last Shangri-La. The trip starts in Calcutta and also takes in Darjeeling and Sikkim, so it will be pretty interesting. The scenery of course is spectacular and the people seem pretty charming.

Tibet

My dreams of a visit to Tibet are receding ... even if things have calmed down by September the current events will have soured my feelings. The stories that are coming out are heart-rending - here's one from a sound technician with a film crew. He wasn't actually in Tibet, he was in a border area that's mostly Tibetan. It's an amazing account, well worth reading.

I even dreamed about Tibet last night! The trip had been cancelled and I decided to go to China anyway, under my own steam, to see if I could get to Tibet by train. I was at the railway station trying to find the right train and met a Tibetan woman who was crying and distraught ... and then I woke up.

Some more links: Free Tibet, Friends of Tibet (NZ)

I'm eating so much better these days...

The canteen at work shuts at 8pm now, long before I get a break, so I've been taking a tasty, nutritious meal in instead. Lovely salads mostly, with home-made coleslaw and carrot sticks. Yum. Now and then I go for a hot meal (there's a microwave in the canteen) - couscous and roasted veg, or pasta. Today it was pasta - organic spinach rinkidinkis (or something) with a nice meat and veg sauce left over from yesterday.

So I put the pot of water to boil and sat down to look through my seeds and plan what I'm planting this year. Then I went into the kitchen to get something and noticed a strange sound. Oh the pot of boiling water! Right! I tipped in the pasta and made a mental note not to forget it.

Ha ha ha!!

Much later I was out in the garden preparing the vege patch for the first seed-planting when I smelt something burning. Hurtled into the house, snatched the smouldering pan from the stove and raced around flinging open windows. Every room had a foot-deep lid of smoke and the smell was incredible.

Bertie was startled by the sudden burst of activity, but didn't budge from his comfy spot on the rug. Until the draught got too chilly and he headed off upstairs. Pause. Imperious bark. I went up to see what the problem was and the problem was smoke: every room was filled with a pale haze, top to bottom. Bertie was on his bed, looking aggrieved. Obviously I cannot rely on being dragged out of the house in the event of a proper fire.

In other news: Well, nothing really. I've been dull and duller. Still plugging away at the gym but with minimal effect. I've started doing rowing and some weights, which makes it more interesting. Yes, that's how dull things are ... a rowing machine is interesting.

Happy New Year!

Hogmanay was damp and I was working too hard to even step over to the windows and watch the fireworks, tsk. I went to see the Loony Dookers, but this year for some reason they dooked at ten to 12 instead of noon, so I just saw the tail end.



BUT, I did have Christmas off, and spent it in a lovely cottage tucked away in the Highlands.



It wasn't the whole house - just the little original farm cottage on the right of the building. The farmer said it dates from the 16th century. It's near Tomintoul, the highest village in the Highlands and it was cold. Very cold.



I had four days at the cottage. The second day was windy - brrrrrrrrrr. Old cottages are leaky! Poor Bertie suffered - he loved the peat fire, and learned to sleep under a blanket.






There were many temptations for him at the farm - a lamb in the garden and an 18-year-old cat strolling around like it owned the place. He actually managed to get loose one night, eeling out the door when Louise came calling, and there were a panicky few moments when the cat came bursting into the cottage to get away from him. Louise had to run and get Gavin because she was carrying her wee boy and anyway she doesn't like cats. But I managed to catch Bertie and shut in one of the bedrooms and lure the cat out from behind the sofa before there was a tragedy.



I had some great walks - there are loads of paths in the area. One I especially enjoyed was to Scalan, which once upon a time was a Catholic seminary. If it hadn't been so insanely cold I might have walked further - I will have to go back in the summer. The other thing about highland winters is that it starts getting dark at 3pm!



Apart from bracing walks I mostly lay around reading and watching TV. The cottage has Sky! I hadn't expected that. I watched Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, but apart from that it seemed to be the same rubbish as regular TV, just a lot more of it.

It was a wonderful break.

:: back on board

I was going to wait until the new year, but what the hell - I've got a spare minute at work so I'll update a bit...

The plum blossom became a plum, which I ate. It was delicious.

Faye moved to the Black Isle for a job, but it didn't work out so she came back down and stayed with me for about six weeks while she looked for work. She's back down in Oxford now, working for an agency.

I had a restful autumn holiday on the west coast, staying in Dunoon and foraying out from there.

This is Bertie in the car on the ferry to Dunoon. He's not crazy about boats.

I joined a gym and have been going regularly enough to feel the benefits. It's a university gym, so full of young, extremely fit people - often whole sports teams clatter through. Oddly enough, that makes it more relaxing than the hotel gym I used to go to - I'm completely invisible to them. The facilities are great too - individual TV screens on each machine. Though I prefer my iPod.

Oh yeah - I got an iPod. My first ever Apple product. It's fab.

Bertie is well, though he gets more curmudgeonly every day. He throws a wobbly if his bed is rumpled, won't eat cheap biscuits, won't play with eager-beaver puppies. He loves his walks though, and is very fit and healthy. Touch wood.

Time to go home!

The day after tomorrow I'm going to Tomintoul, where I've got a cottage for Christmas. I'm looking forward to a few days of rest and relaxation - I'm taking a pile of books and DVDs and the cottage has an open fire. Bliss.

Happy Christmas everyone!

:: Hockadilly is taking a break

Not in the holiday sense, just ... taking a break. Who knows when I'll be back (don't wait up).

 

:: playing catch-up

Yay, the plum tree has blossomed! I have no idea if plums will follow, but I'm thrilled to see the flowers all the same. It's now leafing out healthily, so it's hopefully happy it its new home.

Elsewhere in the garden there's more new life. I checked the raised bed this morning and the mange-tout seedlings are showing. Time to build them a little scaffolding of twigs, I think. And next to them there's a line of tender green where the perpetual spinach is coming up. At the weekend I bought a tray of "Swiss chard" - aka silver beet! Yay! I love silver beet but it's not sold in the shops here for some reason. Also doing well are the purple sprouting brocoli seedlings, despite the fact that I dropped the tray. And several sunflower seedlings have survived being chewed on by some critter or other. I haven't decided where to plant them yet. The sweet peas are growing well and starting to cling on to things. This weekend I'll plant some French beans and courgettes, I think, and that will do it for this year.

Also spotted some animal footprints in the raised bed ... surely not a dog's footprints, surely not. There's only one dog in the place and he's a GOOD dog. Time for some fencing strategies. I've already planned to string some old CDs above the bed as bird scarers, so maybe they'll act as dog scarers as well.

Today I've been recovering from last night's election exertions. I was at work until 4:30am, didn't get to bed until 5:30, and didn't get up until almost 1pm, feeling as though I'd been drinking heavily. I've just about recovered now, but didn't do much this afternoon. It was a fun shift, though - there's always a cast of thousands in for the big night, and the place is buzzing with excitement. There was plenty of controversy, with about ten per cent of ballot papers spoiled. I'm not surprised: when I went to vote I had to really look at the forms and read the instructions carefully. There were three votes altogether, on two forms: one for the MSP and the party list and one for the city council. The city council vote was done on a different system, so that on one form you were putting an X and on another you were numbering candidates in order of preference. I managed to do it all properly, then blotted my copybook by folding the forms in half, when it said very clearly NOT to.

Tomorrow will be pretty much taken up by chores, and I'm working on Sunday, so not much of a weekend to look forward to. The following weekend I have three days off though, so I might go away.

Faye came round last weekend for a computing masterclass. She's gradually getting to grips with her machine, though she's finding it a steep learning curve. I'm learning too, because it's got Windows Vista, and I'm still on XP. She's on holiday at the moment and is spending a lot of time looking for a new job.

:: moments when I wish I had brought my camera

There I was at 1pm, outside the local police station with three, count 'em three police officers, me with a garden fork in hand and all of us looking dubiously at the scraggly rhododendrons in their "garden". One of them took the fork off me and started digging up a clump of past-it daffs.

PC1: Don't dig it up! Don't dig it up!
PC2: Why not?
PC1: You'll have to get all those stones off first. If you dig anything up, all the stones will just go into the soil.
PC3: There's plastic underneath too, look.
Me: Oh dear.
PC1: You need a rake or a broom or something.
PC2: A broom?
PC1: To sweep all the stones off.
PC3: You should probably come back on Saturday morning...

Yep, so that's what I'll do then. I got the e-mail saying to turn up to dig up all the plants in the police station garden, but not the other email saying not to bother. All the tools were there and I was willing to give it a go, but cooler heads than mine prevailed. Saturday was supposed to be the planting day but I guess now it'll be the digging-up day. Unless the PCs get motivated. Personally I'd find gardening in a stab vest a bit warm.

Right now I'm off out to plant some stuff in my own patch.

:: progress report

Today I battered in the stakes on the raised bed and screwed the gravel boards in place. It wasn't too easy - most of the stakes ended up at slightly different angles for a start. But once I'd heaved in the two bags of dirt it looked a lot better. The third bag is still in the car boot - didn't have time to heave it out today.

While I had the drill out I completed another little project I've been procrastinating on and put up a washing line. The previous owner for some reason took down one of the three concrete posts set up for a traditional line (and left the post where it lay! it weighs a ton & can't be reused), so today I bolted a hasp to the tree to act as the third pole. Hurrah! I'll hang out my first load of washing tomorrow.

Some photos:



Planted some sunflower seeds....



.... which were much appreciated by the enterprising wildlife.




This is the raised bed earlier in the week, before I finished building it.



My nice compost bin - it's German, very cunningly designed and made from recycled plastic. I have a worm bin too.

:: nearly finished!

This afternoon I finally whanged in the posts on the raised bed, screwed the planks to them and tipped in the two bags of dirt I've managed to haul in from the car (one still to go; bad news is I think I'll need another few bags). It looks great! Not perfect - it's hard to whang the posts in straight - but certainly dirt-proof.

While I had the electric drill out I attacked a tree with it. The traditional clothes-drying arrangement in Edinburgh and environs is a to have special posts and a line strung between them. At some point before I bought my place, one of the posts had been taken down. It's an enormously heavy concrete thing, so reusing it isn't an option (yes, it's still there! I managed to heave it to the back of the section but it was a major struggle. There are two others, but they're both on the same side so useless). So I have screwed a heavy galvinised bracket to the pine tree at the back and strung a line to one of the remaining posts. Cool!

It's a stunningly sunny and warm day, the first real warmth we've had this year, what with all the haar.

The sweet peas have sprouted in their pots in the spare bedroom. I think they're sweet peas anyway. I didn't label them, oh dear.

Chris, Julian and wee Ella arrive on Sunday night (or Monday afternoon, depending on whether they break their journey up from Oxford). Chris is looking forward to seeing the raised bed because she's planning to build one herself. I'm looking forward to meeting Ella!

:: ow ow ow

Gardening is hard! Saturday I trailed around various garden centres looking at log rolls, before finding the perfect fixings for a raised bed at the Homebase in Linlithgow. Gravel boards and pointed stakes. Gravel boards are planks that have been pressure treated to prevent rot. What could be simpler? bang in the stakes, nail the gravels boards on to them and bingo! A raised bed.

I started out with three planks and six stakes, intending to cut one plank in half and make a rectangular plot. The first challenge was getting the sawdusty planks into the car - move over Bertie! - but managed in the end. Bonus: the car smells lovely.

But when I got home, I realised the plot would be too small, and I should get another plank and have a square plot. OK. By now it was too late to go back to the shop; not only that but I'd missed the first episode of the latest Dr Who series. Tsk.

So, Sunday I set out for the DIY shop again, and got the extra plank, plus two more stakes and three big bags of dirt. How big? Eighty litres. Why do they measure dirt in litres? Very odd. I might be more helpful to express it in stones, so you'd know you were picking up the equivalent of a dead rugby player. I tried to put one of the bags on my trolley and it fell on the ground. I couldn't get it up again. That was a clue I chose to ignore. A staff member hurried over and heaved three bags on dirt on to the trolley, and another staff member heaved them from the trolley in to the car boot. I drove home, suddenly feeling like I was piloting a barge.

I left the dirt in the boot while I dealt with the bed-building. Easy-peasy! Mark out the space, dig up the "lawn" (actually peed-on yellow spots and moss), bang in the stakes and nail on the planks. Digging up the lawn took a long sweaty hour. It turns out there is an amazingly healthy network of buttercups crisscrossing the backyard, roots like hawsers. So then I banged in the stakes. Bang bang bang bang bang ... ARGH! What I really needed was a Russian weightlifter and a sledgehammer, not puny old me and a joke mallet. Blam blam blam blam bangbangbangbang. I managed to get most of them firmly battered in, albeit at crazy angles, without having a heart attack.

I only really lost heart when I discovered that I didn't have any nails big enough to hold the planks on. And it was too late to go back to the shop, whew!

Today I thought I'd better get the dirt out of the boot before the suspension gave way. I don't have a wheelbarrow or anything, but I had a cunning plan! The brown recycling bin had just been emptied, so I'd just load the bags of dirt into it and trundle them round the back. Perfect.

The bin is chest-height, so I laid it down on its side next to the car and posted two bags of dirt in. The flaw in the cunning plan presented itself. Strain as I might, I couldn't lift the bin upright. So I heaved one of the bags out on to the footpath and this time got the bin rolling. Trundled it round the back and heaved it up the steps to the lawn. Repeated with the second bag, more slowly this time. Couldn't. Manage. The. Third. Just. Yet. So it's still in the boot.

Here's the scunner: With two bags of dirt laid out next to the bed, it's apparent that I'll need at least another three bags to fill it. I think this time I might see if Homebase delivers...

What with all this heaving and hammering I can barely raise my arms past shoulder height, and I've discovered bruises I don't remember getting.

The seeds I planted aren't doing very well - a scattering of husks on the tray marked "sunflowers" was a clue, as were the neat rows of holes in the tray marked "broccoli" (I thought I'd put that upstairs in pots but it must be something else up there).

At first I blamed the birds, but then I spotted a little wee burrow under the thyme bush. I covered it over and the next day it was back. That might also explain Bertie's digging frenzies: he's after whatever is burrowing in the bed. One of my neighbours has reported seeing rats - yikes, please don't let it be rats. The burrow looks more mouse-sized though, very neat and cute.

Garden pix:


The rhubarb is up! Yay!


Something eats the blue polyanthus every year. Not the yellow, not the pink, just the blue.

I've taken progress pix of the raised beds, will post them eventually.

Tomorrow I can't do any DIY or gardening or anything because I have some IT training at work. Finish work at 1am (if I'm lucky), start training at 1pm - wah!

:: more gardening

The weather over the weekend was good, apart from some haar, so I got out into the garden and did some serious work. I had bought some plastic "lawn edging" for the existing beds out the back - part of an ongoing effort to curb Bertie's digging frenzies - but that was disappointing. It's too flimsy really, and so was a bugger to get in. However, I perservered and it doesn't look too stupid. I also weeded the beds and then heaved on a big bag of mulch.

Out the front I savaged the Christmas rose or whatever it's called, which was threatening to cut off access to the house. I was thinking of moving it, but the trunk is easily an inch thick - not bad for a feeble little twig that cost 50p from the "search and rescue" section at the garden centre. The trimmings completely filled the big recycling wheelie bin, a good excuse for not doing too much more weeding.

I've also planted some seeds: night-scented stock front and back; sunflowers, sweet peas and a herb mix in trays; purple sprouting brocoli in pots inside.

Today there was some bad news though: the quote for the sleeper beds arrived and ... gasp ... it's £495 plus VAT - nearly £600 altogether. So that's out - it's far too pricey, given that it doesn't even include the soil. So I'm back to plan B, which is a DIY solution using log rolls. If that doesn't deter Bertie I could fence it off with chicken wire, which would keep the rabbits and the squirrel out too! The tricky part of all this is the fact that the section slopes, so I have to kind of level out the plot. And I'll have to get on to it soon - the mange tout and courgettes should go in in April.

:: spring prang

SNOW SHOWERS TO CUT SHORT SUNNY SPELL

Forecasters today predicted snow showers and frost to bring an abrupt end to a sunny spell across the UK.
A cold front is bringing gale force winds and blizzards from the Arctic with the temperatures plummeting from highs today of 14C (57F) in the south to minus 4C (25F) in parts of Scotland, northern England and Wales by Monday.
Stephen Davenport, senior forecaster for MeteoGroup UK, the weather division of the Press Association, said: “That’s really quite a drop. Not only that, we will have biting north-westerly winds with significant wind chill to make it feel even colder.
“These north west winds are dragging colder air from the Polar and Arctic regions. Scotland will see lots of hail, sleet and snow by Sunday."
etc.

Uh oh. Lots of things in my garden think it's time to grow crazy - the roses, for example, are leafing out extravagantly.

Snow though! Seriously, how thrilling. There wasn't nearly enough snow this winter. I've been saying in hopeful tones that I remember it snowing heavily in April one year. And here it is only March! Apparently down in Englandshire it's been quite warm this week. Everyone of course puts this down to climate change and rushes around changing their lightbulbs and recycling cardboard. I remember back in the 80s when the scientists who predicted climate change were regarded as nutters. Making changes back then would have really helped, but it was impossible in a way: if we had made all the changes and nothing happened, people would be saying that maybe nothing would have happened anyway. Ach, it makes my head hurt.

Meanwhile, for my money the most terrifying news item was this one, tucked away at the bottom of the page as an amusement:

Giant cold water eddy off Sydney lowers sea level

SYDNEY, March 14 (Reuters) – Australian oceanographers have discovered a giant cold water eddy off Sydney which has lowered sea levels almost one metre and impacted a major ocean current.
The eddy, which has diameter of about 200 km (120 miles) and reaches to depth of 1 km (600 yards), lies about 100 km (60 miles) off Sydney, said Australia’s peak scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The CSIRO said the eddy was so powerful it had pushed out to sea the strong East Australian Current.

Someone's pulled the plug! Either that or the currents are changing direction. The sea surface is 2ft lower at the middle of the eddy, which is some comfort to Kiribati I guess.

In my garden, it's all go. The plum tree is in, can't wait for that to blossom (might not be this year of course). Brian from the fencing place came and measured up for the raised bed; no sign of a quote yet. And today the compost bin arrived.
The council sells cheap compost bins - the cheapest ones are like big upside-down buckets open at top and bottom. I've noticed that a lot of these end up heaved over people's fences, so I was more attracted to a slightly more expensive model, which clips together in sections. This allows you to open the bottom to shovel out any compost that might be ready. The design is very cunning - so cunning that I immediately thought hey, if I get six or so of these I could build a raised bed from them ... it's not a bad idea. They are really sturdy. Not as attractive as sleepers, but I could do it myself. Hmmm. Then I'd have loads of lids left over - I could use those to plug the gaps in the hedge where the rabbits get through.

Speaking of wildlife, the squirrel is back. It was absent for a while but showed up again this week, bold as brass, sitting on the lawn. I'm going to get it a one-way ticket to Aberdeenshire, where they are going to cull grey squirrels to protect the native reds. Here's a fascinating fact: once you've trapped a grey squirrel it is against the law to release it. You HAVE to kill it. In Aberdeenshire they're putting them in sacks and beating them with a club. Before I had my very own squirrel I would have been appalled. Now I'm interested. Bertie is completely useless. This morning I saw the pest from the bedroom window, up on the bird feeder helping itself to nuts (the squirrel this is, not the dog). I got Bertie out of bed (he was resting between naps), hurried him downstairs and shoved him out the door. Even though it didn't start running for the tree until he was shooting up the steps on to the lawn he STILL didn't come close to catching it.

Major discovery of the week: If you put your car keys through the washing machine the remote control fob will no longer work. Not only that: if you have been silly enough to misplace your spare key, it will cost a total of £150 to get new keys cut and reprogrammed. I am therefore condemned to putting my stupid key in the stupid keyhole to lock and unlock the doors, just like in the olden days. Tschah! I should just get a new car.

:: loafing around

My second go at machine baking went a bit better. This time I played safe and did a plain white loaf, using newly-bought flour and milk powder, as per the recipe. Four hours or so later, I tipped out a big billowing loaf, light as a feather and with a crispy crust, the very opposite of Saturday's sour, leaden lump. Next time I'll try a mix of wholemeal and white flour, see if I can get something between white fluff and brown sludge.

The answer lies in gluten, I think. The recipe for the disastrous wholemeal loaf specified vitamin C powder, but I couldn't find that anywhere, so didn't dare try another wholemeal recipe. I've since done some research that revealed that wholemeal flour has less gluten than white, which is why you add vitamin C powder, to improve the texture. Some people also pooh-poohed the addition of milk powder, saying it's there to make machine bread more like store-bought, ie soft and crumbly, which is not what I'm trying to achieve - far from it. So I have a suspicion that my ideal recipe might be one with some strong wholemeal four, some very strong white four, olive oil and water. Plus salt and sugar (you need some sugar for the yeast).

:: Staff of life?

Recently I've gone a bit mad on eBay. One of the great bargains I snapped up was a breadmaker, a Panasonic. It arrived yesterday, in a parcel so gigantic the delivery guy nearly dropped as he heaved it through the door. It's enormous, too big for any of my cupboards. Anyway, last night I bought some new yeast and today set out to make some bread. Among the ingredients was milk powder. Hmm. Soya milk will probably do. Vitamin C powder. Nope, seem to be all out of that. Had the rest though - flour's best-before date was 2002 (last time I made bread, heh) but what the hell, it looks ok - so off I went.

The wholemeal programme is five hours long so I had quite a wait. Went out for a wonderful walk this evening, and when I got back the house smelt great, wow. An hour and a half later the machine beeped and I eagerly tipped out my first loaf:



Uh, ok. Shopping list: flour, vitamin C powder, milk powder.

Very nasty surprise in the post today: I was caught running a red light by the special red-light camera on my way to work. £60 and three points on my licence, argh. My first ever ticket.

:: a little miracle in the garden

The daphne bush that's been struggling along weedily for five years or more is finally flowering! I can hardly believe it.



The brown marks are from a recent bout of frost. It's been a very mild winter though - I wonder if that's it? Or maybe it just needed time. Lots of time.

I still haven't done anything about building raised beds in the back yard. Well, I did go to the fencing place up the road at the weekend but it was shut. I'm now thinking log rolls. We'll see. I thought I'd found the ideal thing in Homebase: sturdy wooden frames hinged at the corners so they fold down flat for easy transport, and clips on the top so they can be stacked to make a higher frame. Sadly it turns out they're not for sale - they belong to the (foreign) company that ships garden supplies to Homebase. Sigh.

It's been raining heavily this week so I've been back on eBay. A breadmaker this time, a Panasonic. I've been thinking about getting one of these but they're nearly £100 new, bit too much to justify. This was £40 - second hand but looks in good nick from the photos. It hasn't arrived yet. I also got a lovely bag for guess who.



How could I see that and not buy it? She is an angel.

Depressing news locally: vandals have burnt out the wooden part of the lovely new walkway through Ferry Glen. It's the second arson attack on the path: last year they burnt the bridge. It was replaced by a metal one, not as nice but at least impervious to fire-raisers. And now this! It's quite a long stretch, and the fire also damaged surrounding trees, as you can see:



Bertie, being a drongo, thinks that because he walked on the walkway a while ago he must be able to walk on it again now, even though it looks and smells funny.

The fight-back against litter also continues. A while back I joined a group effort at the roundabout by Tesco (as a reward they gave us lunch in the staff canteen), and this inspired me to tackle a really nasty corner near my place. I've dubbed it Vodka Valley - there must have been a dozen or more one-litre empties, as well as lots of beer cans, Buckie bottles, crisp packets and Rizlas.



I'm probably going on another joint litter-picking session on Sunday. They're a nice bunch of people and it is kind of satisfying.

:: Phew

The weekend starts here! I ended up working last Sunday as well - Alistair's wife developed a terrible all-over rash in reaction to the antibiotics and had to be rushed back to hospital with a raging temperature. (She's doing a bit better now, thank goodness, but will be in hospital over this weekend too.)

I'm having tomorrow off in place of Sunday, so will have a lovely long weekend. Lots to do too.

{tech stuff}

The new laptop is still working, and I've been going through the hoops necessary to get my free Vista update. Mr Gates is determined to make me prove I have the dogged patience required for a true Windows user. First I had to fill in a form at the Acer website - serial number, special code number from the bottom of the machine, £15 for postage and then got a confirmation email. You would think that was that - but no! You have to fax your receipt to the Netherlands to prove you've bought the machine within the qualifying period. Fiiiiine. But the number on the email wasn't a fax number. Confusion at the fax machine. So I phoned the number and after beeping through the menu got to speak to a lovely French chap, who gave me the fax number (which was actually on the confirmation email when I had a really good look). So finally I got the appropriate bits of paper off to the Netherlands. And now I have six weeks to get my laptop ready for the off. Six weeks!! It can't possibly be that difficult to run off a few hundred thousand DVDs and mail them off. Ridiculous.

I do have quite a lot of preparation to do, because I've discovered that my nice new laptop has a flaw. For some unknowable reason, the drive has been formatted in FAT32 rather than NTFS. I know! Stupid. How can it possibly have a sticker on it saying "Windows Vista Premium Ready" when Vista won't install on a FAT32 disk? Duh. It means that part of the upgrade process will be a reformat. In a way that's a Good Thing, because here's another stupid thing: the drive has been split in two. I HATE this! It's just plain irritating. It means I can't have all my programs and photos and music on the default drive, I have to mess around changing the drive letter when installing things, grrr. So I'll be able to change that. But I will have to back up absolutely everything in a nice tidy way on the portable hard drive (and on the desk computer too, belt and braces) - that will probably take me six weeks, ha ha.

{/tech stuff}

I got the most fantastic present the other day - a rhubarb crown. It's a chunk split off a crown that was being divided. I'm on this Freecycle email group, and it was advertised on there, so I leapt at the chance. The donor, Jim, showed up at the door with a big, heavy rubbish bag. I'll post some photos of what was inside - it's the most amazing thing... HUGE. I said to Jim the original must have been something else and he says it is; his wife got it when she was a girl, it was part of a crown that was 40 years old. Incredible! The roots are like a tree's, thicker than my wrist. I dug a huge hole, sprinkled in plenty of organic compost and covered it over. Jim says I won't get much off it this year, but it should come away well next year.



At the weekend I'm going to start off some of my seeds, feed the roses and do some more weeding. It's been such a mild winter the weeds are rampant. The bulbs Faye gave me are starting to show their heads, and the woods are full of snowdrops. I really love spring, but the weather right now is more like what you'd expect in March, not February.

I've fallen prey to the lure of eBay! So far I've bought two tapestry kits, both for a really good price, and a ceramic coffee filter holder thingie to replace a tatty old plastic one I've been gluing together for years. The first tapestry kit I won in a last-minute bidding war - so exciting! I can see how it gets addictive. The last seconds are ticking down and you've got the winning bid, yay! I'm watching another tapestry kit and a bread-maker, but might not bother fighting down to the wire for them. I'm thinking about selling some stuff on eBay too ... see how it goes.

:: nearly there

Blimey this has been an ordeal. But all that's still to come is the PIN for my credit card. I'll ring the bank at some point and see what's happening on that score.

Best of all, my spanking new laptop arrived this morning (Friday ... see below). I was too cheap to pay for next-day delivery - sloooow delivery was free - so was amazed when it arrived. I only ordered it on Wednesday. It's a wonderful machine. It's quick, has a beautiful screen and the setup was smooth and easy. And it cost a grand total of £570 - £10 more than getting my broken Sony fixed. I did pay another £50 for a three-year warranty, it seems like a bargain. But yes, it's lovely. I was a bit downcast when I took it out of the box; compared to the slick gorgeousness of the Vaio it seemed cheap and plasticky. But once I got it going and it had whisked through its setup routine I began to bond with it.

The real "oh wow" moment was running the Aquarium screensaver: the screen resolution is breathtaking. And when you set up the Windows Media Centre there's an HD video runs that's so sharp it's scary. So now I'm happily loading all my software and files. Right at this minute I'm testing the battery life, which by the way beats the Vaio hands down: the power management system is slick and easy, and the icon says I have three hours left. Yay! I'm a happy camper.


Later (Saturday in fact - I saved yesterday's entry as a draft & never did get to finish it):
Andrew came down from Sneckie yesterday and I'd arranged to have the day off so we could have a big catchup. But I'd had to warn him I might have to go in to work at short notice and so I did. Alistair's wife is very ill; she'd been in hospital and got out yesterday, but wasn't well enough for him to leave her. It also happened that John is away this weekend. I made lunch and we had about two hours to talk before I had to race away. Andrew came into town and met me in my break and we had a drink. He was in bed already when I got home, and had to leave before I got up (he did wake me to say goodbye). He'll be back at Easter, hope we get more time then!

So today I'm having a really good rest. It's cold and wet outside, nice and snug in here. And I have a nice new toy - bliss!