Put out more flags

You could grate cheese on my rough scaly gardener's hands; it must be Spring.  There are other clues, of course.  The birds are yipping and chaffing in the early mornings, the sun is shining more often than not in the afternoons, there are bees and bugs in the garden, and even some butterflies.

By which I mean that my hands are rough, not that you should grab the very nice chap who comes in now and again to help us manage our acreage, and forcibly try to grate Parmesan on his hands.  That would just be weird.

Anyhoo.  Mr WithaY and I had a spot of financial good fortune - we won the Lottery!  Yes, £51, aaaaaaaall ours.  We won't let it change our lives though.  There had already been a conversation about what to do with the garden, so we decided to spend that nice little windfall on some fruit bushes.

The Great Planting was as follows:

10 strawberry plants, 5 each in a large tub on the back patio.

2 redcurrant bushes, planted at the side of the house where the cold frame now sits, and the lavender bushes we put in last year are flourishing.

2 Ceanothus bushes, which we hope will attract butterflies and bees.  They've been planted in the front garden, where we'll be able to see them from the sitting room.  I also put some Oriental poppy seedlings under them, which had seeded themselves from the gorgeous pink one in the front garden.

2 parsley plants, one flat-leaf and one curly-leaf, both added to the herb garden in the back garden.

1 woad plant, in a tub, all on its own in a state of high honour.  I am slightly anxious that Mr WithaY will nurture it, tend it, coax it into flower, and then make a shitload of dye to paint himself blue and run around the woods naked like an Ancient Briton.

I moved the blueberry bushes from the fruit bed in the back garden, and put them in their very own bed   on the other side of the garden.  Hopefully they'll have better luck without being stifled by the giant raspberry bushes, which seem to be intent on taking over the entire garden.

Mr WithaY planted carrots, radishes, pumpkins, aubergines, several varieties of courgette and sage seeds, some in the vegetable bed, some in pots in the greenhouse.  We moved the greenhouse to a different spot in the garden where it can be accessed without having to cross any wet muddy patches, thus making watering things easier.  Hopefully it means things won't just DIE like they did last year.

Oh, and Mr WithaY mowed the lawn, without losing any fingers.  Hurrah.

In other news, I am busily preparing for the cakes and crafts sale this Saturday in the village hall. I have promised to make some cake, and am also having a stall of my homemade crafty stuff to sell.  It will be interesting to see if anyone buys anything.  I hope they do, or I am giving all my friends the same things for Christmas and birthdays for the next 10 years.

Today I am making bunting.  Yards and yards and bloody yards of it.  It's strangely therapeutic.  And it will come in handy for the Jubilee/Olympics/summer barbecue parties I hope we will be having over the summer.

Oh yes. At the risk of sounding like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, what the fuck  has happened to the quality of writing at the Daily Telegraph?  Eh?

Check this out for quality highbrow journalism, found on their on-line site yesterday:

"The court was told that the man Laura Johnson, 20, was seeing had jumped into her car and forced her with his two pals into driving them as they stole a haul of electrical goods, fags and booze. "

Putting to one side the inevitable Name, Age thing that all newspapers seem to need to do, since when were "fags and booze" the terms of choice in this context?  And "pals" too.  Sort it out, you lazy, tabloid-esque skivers.  Oh, and I have not altered the punctuation either.  Yes, it really is that bad.  It's barely comprehensible.

Gah.  And pah.

I know it's easy to criticise and that anyone who spends any time reading stuff I write will undoubtedly find plenty of semantic and grammatic errors, but hey, I don't get paid for writing, and I assume that most Telegraph journalists do.

Bastards.

Reportage

It comes a a bit of a shock to a Telegraph and BBC news website reader like me when you find a link that leads you to a story like this. 

It's not so much the story, I suppose, it's the style of writing.  As I read it (and believe me, I read it right to the end) I couldn't help but admire the skill with which the journalist had picked their words. Short words, granted, but all of them doing exactly what was intended.  To make the reader feel both repelled, outraged and sorry for the woman and her family. 

Well, maybe not sympathy for the woman in question; the article is pretty strongly taking the "she was scoffing pie and chips and screaming for cake while the nurses begged her not to kill herself with lard" line of approach.

However much I dislike this style of journalism, it really does get the job done.  Now I feel like I need to boil my eyes in bleach.

Anyway, on a less depressing note, I have picked this up from Fweng at I Hate The Earth.  When he's not whingeing he's rather amusing, especially when writing about people shoving things up his arse*. 

A wishlist.  Seven Things I'd Change About Myself:

1)  Dexterity and grace.  Maybe then I'd fall over a bit less often, slice a few less lumps off myself and not have so many "walking into lamp-post" moments.

2)  Non-bloodshot eyes.  I've always had eyes that look like they've got maps of the Central Line tattooed on my eyeballs, which, according to my optician, indicates healthy bloodflow, but I'd rather have pure sparkly whites.  Maybe I can get them bleached, like teeth. 

3)  A longer attention span.  I blame the Internet...hey...a Polo!

4)  More intelligence.  I know I'm not stupid, but I am woefully ignorant in oh so many areas, and the stuff I do know only makes me aware of my lack of knowledge. 

5)  Perfectionism.  I am not a perfectionist.  Well, not in any way that matters.  I get arsey if napkins aren't folded up nicely, or, to pick a random example from the ether, if someone leaves his tie rolled up on the coffee table when he gets in from work, but in general I am too relaxed about stuff.  Some stuff.  I could do with a bit of completer-finisher perfectionism.

6)  A better sense of the appropriate.  I am too often the only person laughing when something untoward happens.  That's not good. 

7)  The ability to turn a three-line great idea into a 600 page bestseller.  And then two more. And then a second trilogy, cashing in on all the die-hard fans.  It'd be great.






*I think it's a perfectly natural human reaction to find that funny.  And if it's not, well, I don't want to know about it.