Dinked

Events of note at work so far this week:

• Group of Japanese tourists arriving at 7am, buying fuel for their car, and then photographing each other outside the shop, collapsing in helpless, excited laughter at our coal bunkers.  

• Man buying coffee from the coffee machine and then demanding I add more coffee, as it wasn't coffee-y enough.  I was tempted to chew up a mouthful of coffee beans and spit them into his drink, but I managed to refrain, and merely made him a fresh cup, which was apparently "fine."

• Being handed a crumpled five pound note with wet cowshit on it.  This happens far more often than is acceptable.

• Man buying a pasty, then remaining at the till to harangue me (and other customers) about the terrible recent case of a young girl who was found dead after a row with her family. He was bellowing "She was hanged!  There's more to that than we're being told!" at a polite man trying to pay for his diesel for quite a long time.  

• Being asked many technical questions about putting oil in a car by someone who has no idea whether their car is a petrol or a diesel, and aren't even sure if it needs oil, but "a light has come on so it probably does."  All this while a long, impatient queue of people builds up behind them, while they ponder what they actually want at their leisure.

• Woman wanting a gas canister, then wanting to do complicated stuff about changing from one canister size to another, which only our managers are allowed to authorise, and then getting hugely annoyed when told how much the canister she asked for in the first place costs.  There was a degree of huffing and flouncing, which made the man in the queue behind her roll his eyes expressively at me.

• Woman running into the shop and asking me "Did I just put petrol in my car??" When I said no, she said "I've been swimming in the sea, it's messed with my head!"

Ah, people.

In other news, Mr WithaY and I (and the dog) went to visit some very dear friends down in deepest Sussex earlier this week.  They live in a cottage on a rather excellent country estate, so we went for several dog-walks through the meadows and woods.  Their dog is a charmer, and he and ours played together most endearingly.  Our dog retired to her basket when we got home, and slept for about 18 hours solidly.  She can't party like she used to.

I wanted to take photos of The Big House there, because it is a beautiful (possibly) Elizabethan manor house with a Horsham stone roof, but I felt that  might be a bit intrusive and gawky, so you will just have to imagine it.

We travelled down in Mr WithaY's new truck, which is far more comfortable than the LandRover was, and much more practical. It's a double-cab pick-up with a roof on the pick-up bit at the back, so there;s room for 5 people and tons of stuff too.  He's very pleased with it.

But what happened to the LandRover, I hear you ask?

Well.

Several months ago, Mr WithaY was off to the woods to work, where he planned to be for a long weekend.  He packed all his kit into his car, said a fond farewell to me and the dog, and headed off.  Some hours later, I was at work, and he came into the shop to ask if he could borrow my car.

"What happened to yours?" I enquired.

"Crashed it," he replied somewhat tersely.  I gave him my car keys, with a stern injunction not to crash mine too.  He disappeared again, returning several days later with a sad tale of bouncing off a woodland track at 10 miles an hour and hitting a tree.

Unfortunately, the age of the vehicle, and the substantial nature of the damage inflicted - lights smashed, bonnet crumpled, side panel dented, bumper broken - meant that the insurance company wrote it off, hence the need for a new truck.  The tree, you will be pleased to hear, was undamaged, not even getting a dent in the thick moss covering the trunk.

Oh, and Mr WithaY was fine too.

While Mr WithaY was away over that long weekend, we had a new fence put up.  It replaced the horrible tatty broken fence which ran along the side of the gardens, front and back.  A team of charming young landscape gardeners came to erect it* and worked like Trojans from morn** till night***, pausing only briefly for cups of tea.

On the eventful Friday afternoon when Mr WithaY had broken his car, I was in the house, having been at work all morning.  There was a knock on the front door.  One of the gardeners stood there, looking anxious.  If he'd had a flat cap on, he'd have been tugging nervously at the peak.

"Hello," I said.  Have you finished already?"

"No," he replied.  "We've dug a hole for the last fencepost, but it's full of water."

"Oh, never mind about that! Our water table round here is really high. I bet it'll be fine."

He agreed with me, and said they had some finishing off to do, and could sort out the last bit of fence in an hour or so, once the water level had dropped again.

An hour or so later, there was another knock on the door.  He looked positively anguished.  The flat cap would have been clutched in nerveless hands, wrung with despair.

"Come and look at this," he said.  That's never good.  I followed him around to the side of the house where the fencepost hole was brimming with water, and a stream had formed running down onto the back lawn.

"Fuck."  I said.

He nodded sadly.

To cut a (very) long story slightly shorter, it turned out that our water main runs down that side of the house, and in digging the hole, they had managed to somehow disturb the pipe and cause a massive leak.  Several hours of panicking, phoning plumbers, phoning Wessex Water and trying to build makeshift dams with breeze blocks followed.

Thankfully, Wessex Water were able to come out the following day and fix the problem, but they suggested that if we ever win the Lottery we might consider having all our external water pipes replaced.  Cheers for that.

It is traditional for some domestic disaster to occur when Mr WithaY is away, so I'm pretty used to it now.  I ought to make a Domestic Disaster Bingo Card, and keep myself amused guessing what will happen next.











*Sorry.

**About 8am-ish
***About teatime

Trousers

Many of our regular customers in the shop wear what is loosely termed "Country Attire."  This may consist of a filthy pair of John Deere overalls, or ancient Wellington boots over waterproof trousers, or rigger boots and moleskins.  A lot of them wear shooting breeches, as they are involved with one of the local shoots.  Many customers are keepers, or beaters, or even guns on the shoots, so it makes sense.

Last weekend I was at work, serving a very elegant lady.  She was in raptures over the local honey, and the fact that we sell part-baked baguettes.  As I packed her stuff and took her money we chatted about this and that.  Whilst this was happening, one of the regular customers came in, and I handed him his newspaper from beneath the counter.  He smiled and said thank you and walked away.

I apologised to the lady for having interrupted our conversation, but realised she was staring in wide-eyed amazement at the departing customer, who was walking back to his car.

"Are you alright?" I asked her.

"I'm fine," she said, then she laughed.  "Did you see his TROUSERS?"

I glanced out of the window at the chap, who was sporting a fine pair of tweed breeks, which probably cost a fortune.

"Um.  Yes." I looked at her, she was still laughing.

"I didn't think anyone actually wore clothes like that!"  She was genuinely amused.

I asked her where she was from.

London.

Mmmmhmmmm.

Magnums

Hello....hello....anyone there? Yes, sorry. It's been ages, hasn't it? I wish I had a really good reason for not being more frequent with the posting, but the sad truth is that I just seem to have lost the ability to write stuff down. As a result, this might be really dull. If it is, sorry. Again.

I'm mostly fully recovered from my surgery in January, although I went to the doctor a few weeks ago as I was anxious that I was still very tired, and very sore.  She said "When did you have your operation?" I told her, early January.  She said "Well, yes, but don't forget that there's a good six-month recovery period, it's all perfectly normal."

Six months?  But the hospital literature (and the surgeon) told me a six to eight week recovery period, I said.

The doctor explained patiently that the six WEEK recovery period is from the effects of the general anaesthetic and the actual mechanics of the surgery, the six MONTH recovery period is from the total procedure. She also made the point that just because it was all done via keyhole surgery, and thus left me with several teeny little external scars, there's been a lot done internally, and I probably have hundreds of stitches which all need to heal up, and muscles which take ages to repair and so on. Pleuk.  I had some blood tests and am "perfectly normal" which is nice to know.

So. I'm pretty much ok, although I'm still unable to climb hills without it making me very sore and exhausted the next day.  It's fortunate that we live in the middle of a large area with plenty of dog-walking opportunities which don't involve strenuous hill-climbing. I have discovered a new skill in falling in the mud in the water-meadows as a result.  There are several beautiful water meadows nearby, and I love to take the dog down there, as long as there are no cows in the fields.  She gets to race around like a maniac, and I stroll through the flowery countryside, watching herons and egrets and buzzards, and sometimes having the shit scared out of me by almost treading on a partridge or a duck lurking in the undergrowth.

There is (as the name implies) quite a boggy basis to the water-meadows.  If you walk along the semi-defined paths it's mostly alright.  Sometimes it's a bit wet underfoot, but if you're wearing wellies there's no problem.  However, if (for example) you see a friend walking along a different path and decide to strike out across the middle of the meadows in order to catch up with them for a chat, there is a real risk that you will put your foot down on what seems to be solid ground, sink in to the top of your Wellington boot, fail to pull your booted foot out of the mud, and end up standing on a tussock in your socks, hauling at the stuck boot with both hands while your dog licks your face joyfully and your friend is beside herself with laughter.

That aside, it really is a lovely walk.

Other news: I have volunteered to be a helper at Stonehenge.  The new visitors centre is open, and the Neolithic houses that Mr WithaY was involved in building are due to be opened to the public very soon, and they want people to come and assist with the visitors.  So I sent in an application, was invited to a "this is what it's all about" morning, then a full training day, and I am planning to start in the next couple of weeks.

I get an English Heritage fleece and everything.

The new visitor centre is spectacular. I'd only seen it from the main road and had decided I disliked it, but once you get close to it, and see how it fits in with the wider landscape you appreciate how cleverly it's been designed.

People have been complaining about the increased admission prices, which I had wondered about too, but apparently Stonehenge almost solely supports the rest of English Heritage financially.  Also, I think a lot of people don't realise that the monument covers more than just the ring of stones.  If all you look at is that, as part of a rushed coach tour of the entire South of England in a day, then yes, you're going to feel short-changed. But if you come for the day, walk around all of the site, check out the Neolithic houses, go through all the exhibitions and galleries, and really get a feel for the sheer scale of the place, I think you'd feel like you'd had your money's worth.

Avebury is part of the same site, which I hadn't been aware of.  They've built a model of the area where you can see all the various barrows, the cursus, stone monuments and so on, all linked together over miles and miles of the countryside, and it is astonishing.

So. Go and take a look. And if you see me there, say hello.

I've also picked up a part-time job in the garage/shop in the village.  It's rather nice, I see loads of people, hear all the gossip, and have learned a great deal about the buying habits of the sole business traveller.  Magnums, Red Bull and Haribo sweets.  That's what blokes travelling around for work seem to live on.  Farmers live on pasties, Lucozade and Mars bars.  Women buy wine.  Kids buy Caleppo ice lollies when they get home from school in the afternoon, but middle-aged blokes in company cars buy Magnums and Red Bull.

One of our neighbours came in and bought an ice lolly, and told me he planned to walk home via the river, where he would sit on the bridge while he ate it.  How charming.

Me:  That sounds idyllic!  I hope you enjoy it.

Him:  I will.  Mind you, the other day the wind caught my Magnum and blew it into the river.

Me: .......

Him:  I went in after it!

Apparently it was still in its wrapper, so he squelched home triumphant, soaked to the knees, enjoying his ice cream.

Unexpected item in the bagging area

I popped in to the supermarket last night after work.

Scene: The checkout.

Cashier:  Hello!  Can I help you with your packing?

Me:  No, I'm fine thanks.  (Loads shopping onto conveyor belt.)

Cashier:  Ooh, sprats.  We don't see those often.

Me:  No?

Cashier:  Ooh, Ciabatta.  I love Ciabatta.

Me: Yes, me too.

Cashier:  Monkey nuts!  It's funny.  I never really thought of monkey nuts being a Halloween food thing.

Me: .....

Choppy

Hey, hello!  Remember me? I used to post stuff on here fairly regularly.  More than once or twice a month, anyway. I hope at least some of you are still hanging in there, waiting for something to appear.  I'd still do it even if it was into an empty, echoing void, but it feels somehow friendlier to imagine one or two people reading what I write.

So. What's new with me, I hear you ask?

I now have TWO part-time jobs, as well as the fledgeling catering business, so my spare time is far more limited than it has been for the last 18 months or so.  I'm really enjoying both jobs, one as a cook and one as a waitress/barmaid in a pub, both within walking distance, both of which get me out of the house and allow me to interact with lots of people.

The new business progresses slowly but steadily too.  We've had some business cards printed, have advertising arranged in a local publication, and have a few jobs already in the calendar. We have to get some dull statutory stuff sorted out before we start "properly" but we've got plans for that too.

One of the things that needed doing was setting up an account with the local Cash and Carry store.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a Cash and Carry is a huge warehouse full of enormous ENORMOUS boxes of foodstuffs and catering/hospitality supplies which you buy at prices far below those charged in supermarkets.  The idea is that businesses are able to effectively buy in wholesale quantities and thus make a profit when they retail the products, or use them in their hotel, or pub or whatever.

You have to have joined the organisation and have been sent a membership card before you are allowed to shop there, and in order to join the organisation you have to be able to prove that you have a business.  So.  It was a big day when I was able to go to Trowbridge and fill in all the paperwork which allowed me to take my giant industrial shopping trolley round the aisles.

Well.  It's like Aladdin's Cave in there.  If you imagine Aladdin's Cave to be full of 100kg sacks of rice, and giant multi-packs of cotton wool, and mustard in vats you could bathe in.  We scampered round the warehouse in high glee, exclaiming over the things we found.  Huge pots of jam.  Teeny tiny pots of jam in packs of 100.  Gallon jars of pickles.  Ickle teeny tiny individual plastic containers of pickle, sold by the box of 250.  Bazillions of napkins.  Booze.  Varied and interesting catering equipment.  It was fantastic.  Honestly*.

We loaded up the trolley with about 200 different things, including antibacterial hand-wash (pack of 6), a catering first-aid kit, some smart white aprons, a box of bars of dark chocolate**, assorted flours, sugars and butters, and headed to the checkout.

The system is basic but effective.  A cheerful man with a hand-held scanner swiftly beeps everything in on the trolley, hands you the bill, and then you go across to a lady behind a glass screen to pay for it all.

The temptation is to spend far more money than you need to because everything is a BARGAIN.  I will go infrequently, armed with a shopping list, otherwise any money I'd save on low prices will be negated by the sheer quantity of things I buy.  They have ENORMOUS jars of Nutella.  I'm only human.

I've also been buying BARGAINS at the farmers market.  Most recently it has been ginger.  I picked up a 12 kg box of fresh ginger for £2.  TWO QUID.

Once the thrill of cornering the Wiltshire ginger market faded, I had to decide what to do with it all.

I've crystallized a lot, for sale as part of the catering business:

I made a batch of Japanese style pickled ginger, which I hope will turn pink in due course.  The recipe promised that it would:

And, ahahahahahaaaaaaaa clever, I grated a lot of it, froze it in ice cube trays in 1-teaspoon portions, and now have them all bagged up in the freezer for when I need fresh ginger for something.

Some of the crystallised ginger has since been richly enrobed (oooh, get me) in dark chocolate, and I have to say it is pretty spectacular.  I think a lot of people will be getting ginger-related gifts for Christmas.  

One thing I learned: if you chop and peel a lot of ginger, it makes your fingers burn, and if you later rub yourself in the eye, it REALLY burns.  So try not to do that.

Top tip there.

I've also made plum jam - 2 types - and my first ever batch of Chinese plum sauce.  Readers, it is delicious; tangy, not too sweet, heavily scented with star anise.  I will definitely buy another box of plums and make more.

As part of ongoing business development  I bought a box of proper matching jars (and lids) in two different sizes, and it's amazing the difference it makes to see chutney or jam or whatever all in the same type of jar, rather than in recycled (as in the ginger above) pickle or mayonnaise jars.

What else?  The dog, of course.  She continues to be a delight, despite the occasional bout of stomach trouble.  The colitis has cleared up now, and she seems to be back on top form. Although we did have The Day of Vomit the other week.  I gave her her breakfast, which she scarfed down in a matter of moments, then promptly brought the whole lot back up again, in its entirety, onto the rug in the sitting room - the only carpet in the whole of the downstairs.  Perfect target identification, dog, well done.

So, I thought "Ah well, she can wait till lunchtime now," and we carried on with our day.  She ate her lunch and seemed fine for a few hours, dozing peacefully at the top of the stairs outside my study.  I was working hard*** on the computer, and I thought she was fast asleep, until I heard odd wet slurping sounds.  I went out onto the landing, and was greeted by a thick rope of dog vomit, consisting predominantly of grass, which the horrible, horrible animal was about to try and eat.  Re-eat?  Whatever.

I cried out in disgust, then (in even more disgust) picked up the solid lump-o'-vom and carried it outside to the bin.  Gah.

Again, she'd managed to barf it all up onto the carpet, rather than either the tile, stone or wooden floors in the rest of the house.  Well done, dog.  She's so clever.  I'm very proud.  Here she is, placing her order for a walk.

"I'll take this one please.  With extra cowshit for me to roll in, and a plentiful supply of grass to eat.  Oh, and some partridges to startle.  Make it so."

Good job we love her.   She likes to sleep like this, stretched out against the sofa.  It can't be comfortable, she's twisted like a corkscrew.  That white thing under her head is her fleecy blankie that she brought with her from her parents' place when she moved in.  She goes and fetches it from her bed when she wants to go to sleep.

I recently loaded Instagram on my phone.  I can take brown 1970s stylee photos like a pro now.  This is from one of our favourite walks:

Other news:  I have had a drastic haircut.  I know I mentioned it before, but here are photos.  You lucky people.

I'm fortunate to have naturally thick, wavy hair, which has (mostly) retained its natural colour, apart from the occasional brilliant white one.  As my hair is very dark, the buggers really show up.  Bah.

For about the last 10 years I have had it fairly long, which I liked.  However, a few weeks ago I was sitting reading a book, and I realised that my hair was irritating me.  It had got long enough that when I leaned back in my chair, I leaned on it and pulled it, and when I leaned forward it fell over my face and got in the way.  I went to put it up, and as I did so I thought "I always wear my hair up nowadays."  It had got too long to wear down, so it was always clipped up off my face.  And in a blinding flash of inspiration, I thought "Hey!  I could have it cut off, and wear it loose again!"

I had 10 inches cut off.  Look, here it is:

And here's the end result, please note the extra-attractive red anxious face.  Hair is much shorter, and I think rather excellent.  It's easier to manage, only takes 5 minutes to blow-dry rather than 25, and if I brush it upside down it looks like I've spent ages styling it.  So. Hurrah for impulse decisions that pay off.

It occurred to me several days after I had it cut that I could have saved all the cuttings (clippings? trimmings? whatever) and donated them to that charity that makes wigs for children who've lost their hair.  I was really cross that I hadn't thought of it at the time, as my hair was un-dyed, un-permed and in jolly good nick.  Next time I have a lot off I will do that.

Other head-related news: Mr WithaY made a fox hat.

He worked very hard on it, cleaning and treating the skin to make sure it wasn't going to rot or shed, and then designing the hat, cutting it out, and sewing it together by hand.  I refused to let him use my sewing machine, I have to admit.

Anyhoo.  One evening when I was working in the pub, he came in for a drink and was telling the chaps at the bar about his new hat.  They encouraged him to go and fetch it to show them.  He did so.

They, being farmers and robust Wiltshire country chaps, were very interested in how he'd turned a dead fox into an item of attire, so Mr WithaY was explaining the process.  I and the (much, much younger) barmaid listened in.

Mr WithaY:  ...so once you've cleaned the skin, and dried it a bit, you have to tan it, which takes ages.

Farmers:   Oh yes.  Yarp.  Oo-aarrrr.  (etcetera.)

Mr WithaY:  ...and once it's been tanned you can start cutting it out.

Youthful barmaid: Tanned??  What....with fake tan?  Why did you do that to it???

I think she was imagining Mr WithaY trying to do a makeover on the fox.  Some fake tan.  Eyelash implants.  Painted claws.  Vajazzle the tail a bit.

I'm afraid I bellowed with laughter in a most unladylike manner, and had to go and stand far away till I'd stopped.

Continuing the wildlife theme, the mole has been wreaking havoc in the front garden.  Not content with building a scale model of Silbury Hill in the middle of the lawn, he seems to have reconstructed the entire Western Front trench system in the flowerbeds, and thrown up several smaller hills around the edges.

Bastard.

Life is, in the main, very good.  We're both still enjoying life away from the full-time rat race treadmill thing, and are finding plenty to do to occupy ourselves.







*We don't get out much
**For making cakes. No, really.
***Playing World of Warcraft.  I know, I know.

Cheese. Thousands of them.

Autumn is definitely here. The misty, cool mornings.  The evocative smell of woodsmoke on the air.  Birds massing in the sky in a slightly menacing manner.  Hedgehogs and that.

And what happens at the start of Autumn, lovely readers?  Why, the Frome Cheese Show happens.  And I was there.  Well, me and Mr WithaY.  And the dog.  We were all there.

Last time we attempted to go, we left it a little too late in the day - about 11am, as I recall -  and were thwarted by ridiculous traffic tailbacks which went on for miles and miles.  We turned tail and came home, disappointed and annoyed at our lack of forethought.

This year it was different.  I bought the tickets in advance, saving us 6 quid in the process, marvellous, and we were up early, turning our shining morning faces to the sun, dog all fed and brushed and ready to go, cheese money burning holes in our pockets.

We do like a bit of cheese in our house.

The dog was very excited.  Well, we all were really.  We left home at 8am-ish, drove the short distance to the showground - no traffic - and in we went, unimpeded by queues or hassles of any description.  It was quite misty, and the grass was soaking wet, making everyone* pick their way through it, grumbling about wet feet.

The first thing we spotted was this:

I think it's a tribute to Thelwell.  The children were all fiercely determined, grim-faced and focused as their teeny ponies trotted back and forth in an endless competition of some kind, more or less under control.  It was just lovely.

As you can see, the mist is already burning off, and the blue sky behind it can be glimpsed.  We decided to go and look at the cheese tent.  We took it in turns, one of us standing outside with the dog while the other one went in and admired the cheese. And by Swansea it was admirable.

This one looks like the winner of the CSI Somerset Crime Scene Reconstruction section.  I was tempted to draw a chalk outline round the grisly remains, but there were many burly cheese officials wandering the tent, and I lost my nerve.

Some of the cheese categories were baffling.  At least to the uninitiated.

Lemon meringue?  Really?

I did like the shy mozzarella, which is like a badger cub on Springwatch, needing to be coaxed out of its bag.

I expect the judges used high-quality crackers to lure it.

Competition categories were inspired.

I wonder who the cheese-judging celebrity was this year?  And how do they phrase the invitation.

"Hello - Elton?  Are you busy on the first weekend in September?  No?  Would you like to come and judge a huge tent full of cheese in Somerset for a morning?  No?  Really? Are you sure?  Hello...?  Hello...?"

This sign leaves little to be queried:

I assume the competitors have to make up their "cakes" before they arrive, rather than forage around helping themselves to cheeses which look the part.  But I do like the idea that there are people casually pocketing cheeses as they go round, thinking "This one is shaped just like a teeny bridegroom! Perfect!"

This cheese captured my heart, just because it's so completely mad.

It was big, too.  About the size of a watermelon.

This category was nicely specific.  I imagine the judges measuring each entry and flinging those on incorrectly-sized boards out into the pony-competition ring in a fury.

Some cheeses had the look of a cheese which had been made to take part against their will, under protest.

"But Muuuuuuuum!  All the other cheeses are way bigger than me!  I'll be laughed at!"

I bet they were told, "Oh, you'll be fine, stop making a fuss."

Ha.

Exhausted by so much dairy produce, I went and watched the dog obedience teams while Mr WithaY went and looked at the cheese.  The dog was supposed to watch and learn.

I don't think she was taking it all in, to be honest.  She certainly didn't seem too keen when I suggested she had a go jumping through the hoops of fire.

The day was heating up by now, and we had bought quite a lot of cheese - which gets heavy - so we decided to go and look at the animals for a bit, where it might be shadier.

I love the Tent Of A Thousand Goats.  Sadly, no dogs allowed, so I popped in and admired the poultry tent while Mr WithaY took the dog to see some tractors.

Again, a wide selection of competition categories, some stranger than others:

Gosh, that's a bit, well, harsh.  Surely beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and one man's ideal egg is another man's marginally less ideal egg?  Although that one is a corker, I must say.

It's an EGG.  What do they expect to be inside it?  A previously undiscovered novel by Dickens?  A jewelled clock?   Shergar?

Cuh.

I suspect foul** play here.  Not only has an element of the category title been redacted in a professional, indeed an almost FBI-like, manner, the eggs themselves are missing.  Where are they?  Stolen?  Kidnapped?  Currently making up part of a prizewinning Victoria Sponge?   I demand answers.

How Victorian.  A freak show.  Again, note the sinisterly empty egg plate in the top left corner.  I hope the hens who laid these at least got a cup of tea or something afterwards.

This is just a very pretty little decorated egg which I wanted to photograph. Awwh.

Ah, even here, the cult of shallow shell-deep beauty permeates.

Mind you, if I was brought a boiled egg or two on a tray looking like this, I'd be thrilled.

Fantastic.  I wonder if they all came from the same hen?  And if so, what are they feeding her?

Personally I preferred the one with the blue eggs, but hey, I'm not an egg judge.  Ohhh, I've wasted my life.

By the time I had finished wandering through the poultry tent, making admiring noises and chuckling to myself, it was getting really hot.  I went and found Mr WithaY and the dog, and we all sat in the shade having a drink and a bit of a nice rest.

A little bit more wandering through the show, and it was time to head home.  I was deeply gratified to see the massive queues of traffic, stretching all the way from the showground, far across West Wiltshire, cars full of hot grumpy people who hadn't got up as early as we had.  Bwahahahahahaaaa.

In other news:  The dog has been a bit poorly, so I took her to the vet yesterday.  He diagnosed a bout of colitis, which apparently is really common in young dogs, particularly the ones which hoover up anything and everything in their path when they are out for a walk.  So, she's got some special anti-squit medicine to help sort her stomach out, and some goopy brown stuff I add to her food to restore her internal bacteria balance.

Last night, for the first time in several days, I only had to get up and let her out into the garden once (at 4am) rather than on the hour, every hour, as it had been recently.  A huge relief for both her and I.

Other, other news:  We've had the go-ahead from the environmental health lady and so our catering business is officially up and running.  We have our first job booked for October, but this week we are going to get some business cards sorted out and some adverts in the local press, and hopefully pick up some more bookings.

Also, I have had my hair cut short.  I decided that I was bored with it - I've had long hair for at least 10 years now - so went into Salisbury last week and had about 10 inches cut off it.  It's quite liberating.  I realised that I almost always wore my hair up, and it seemed a bit pointless having long hair if whenever it was down I just got annoyed because it was in the way.

So, a new look, a new business, a new season.  Oh, and I've lost a stone, thanks to walking the dog.  Hurrah.





*Everyone not wearing sensible boots or shoes with gaiters.  I had fabric shoes on, and my feet were SOAKED.


**heh

Sparks

I went out last night.  Yes!  Out of the house, right out of the village, even.  Ooh, get me.

Mr WithaY got home from his week living in the woods on Sunday night, had a swift shower and change of clothes to try and mitigate the smell of mud/wood-smoke/squirrels, and then we scooted over to Salisbury City Hall to watch Rich Hall perform.

He was hilarious.

My favourite joke (also one of the few I can remember) came while he was talking about visiting Graceland, and being asked to leave for laughing at something he was looking at whilst the tour commentary was talking about the death of Elvis.  He said "Anyway, if he was The King, why was he buried out in the back yard like a hamster?"

The young woman sitting next to me had the loudest laugh I have ever heard, almost to the point of pain, and she found pretty much everything he said hilarious.  Well, most of it was.  I scooched away from her as much as possible, ending up leaning on Mr WithaY cosily, if a bit uncomfortably.

It made me consider the etiquette of such a situation.  What do you do?  What would YOU have done?

(A) Say "Can you please stop laughing so much?"  It was a comedy show, after all, and I was laughing too. I'd have sounded like a miserable old bag, for sure.

(B)  Say "Can you please try to laugh more quietly?" Again, she was having the time of her life, and there was no reason for me to try to make her feel self-conscious.  Also, miserable old bag-ness.

(C)  Say "Can I have some of that white wine you're necking please?"  I think that may have contributed to the non-stop screams of hilarity she was emitting.  Greedy, but less miserable old bag, potentially.

I should have gone for option C.

To be fair, her boyfriend/partner was nudging her when she was in danger of shattering the light fittings, but he was laughing his head off too.  Well, everyone was.  It was lovely.

We drove home in a fine mood, admired the glorious stars for a bit in the front garden and then came in to a ridiculously late supper of lemon chicken, pasta and grape salad.  Nom nom nom.

Today the electrician has been here, replacing the light in my study.  I had a funky lampshade made of millions of bits of metal, like tiny mirrors on springs, which I liked a lot, but it had a single low-energy light bulb in it.  Fine when I am sitting at my computer, right by the window.  I can work in comfort, enjoying an abundance of natural light and the many car accidents and near misses I get to see out of the window.

However, when I am sewing, my sewing table is at the other side of the room, far away* from the window, and the lighting is appalling even in daylight. I realised I had to do something about it when it took me almost 5 minutes to thread the needle in my sewing machine because I just couldn't see the bloody thing properly.

So. Now I have a smart little 3-halogen spotlight, providing me with task lighting for my desk AND my sewing table.  It also lights up my guitars beautifully.  The Rickenbacker is on a stand now, next to the Les Paul, both looking rather gorgeous.  If only I could play them with anything approaching real skill.  Hey ho.

I have put the funky million mirror lightshade in the spare bedroom, so I can still admire it when I want to.

The electrician had also been asked to look at one of the lights in the kitchen.  We have v posh downlighters under the cabinets on the walls, and one of them packed up a few months ago.  We replaced the bulb, we replaced the replacement bulb, we tried the non-working bulb in other light fittings where it worked perfectly, and we eventually concluded that the actual light unit was broken.

The electrician listened to this tale of woe and said "Ah, it's probably the transformer."

I had visions of Optimus Prime putting together light fitting ineptly, thus causing the problem, but no, he meant the little box of electric magic that sits up on top of the cabinet, out of sight.

He got up on his stepladder and waggled the cables about till the transformer came into view.  He inspected it and said "Hmm, looks ok."

Then he turned the lights on, and hey presto, bastard corner light worked.

Mr WithaY almost had kittens.

So.  A loose connection. Probably.  If it stops working again, we may have to get a new transformer.  But we may just need to get the electrician to come and waggle it about a bit.  Much cheaper.

Today I have applied for a couple more part time jobs, but with no great expectations of being fortunate.  I think I am too old and/or too over-qualified for a lot of the jobs I see advertised.  I am also picky.  I want something part time - not more than 25 hours a week, ideally - within 15 miles of home.  That limits me considerably.  And I don't want to do anything dull.

I read this article with interest the other day.

This quote in particular struck a chord:


Ministers are determined to change the culture of the civil service in which “lazy” staff are allowed to get away with poor performance because their managers are unwilling to have “difficult conversations”.


They also say:

Another minister, with a background in business, said there were “real problems” with the quality of the civil service. “It is far too big.  They are lazy. There is no leadership. You can’t get rid of people,” the minister said.

Sacking 90% of staff and paying the remaining 10% high salaries would revolutionise the way some departments work, the minister suggested.

Yes.  Yes it would.  For example, I suggest that a lot of Departments would simply grind to a shuddering halt, with the remaining staff squawking in terror as the sheer volume of work overwhelms them because no fucker has had the forethought to cancel projects, or cut out entire workstreams which no longer have the resources to complete them.

Be nice, too, if they remove the multiple layers of externally-imposed measurement and reporting schemes which took up about a quarter of my time in some jobs.  All "important" and "urgent" and "mandatory" so you had to spend fucking hours filling in Dashboard Reports and Progress Plans and Transition Staircase Reviews rather than actually delivering anything.

....aaaaand breathe.....

In the almost 23 years I was employed by the Civil Service, I only knew of one person who got fired, and that was for breaching the rules about publishing information on the Interwebs, the fuckwit.  I did, however, encounter a number of people who were lazy, dishonest, cunning, under-performing and sometimes downright mental, all of whom kept their jobs because they were able to play the system and make sure that they got transferred to be someone else's problem before they were put on formal disciplinary measures.

I worked with a chap once who was suspended for looking at porn on his laptop in the office.  Whilst several colleagues were in the same room, me included.  Yes, that's right.  ON HIS WORK LAPTOP.  IN THE OFFICE.  DURING WORKING HOURS.

He continued to do so after several of his colleagues asked him not to.  Eventually - after a couple of polite requests were ignored - he was reported to his boss, and then to the head of the team.

He got put on "gardening leave" for fucking months and months, there was an enquiry, he was reprimanded, he dropped a grade in pay, and then came back to work in the same office, tanned, fit and gloating about how nice his garden was looking after having all that time off to look after it.

Not very impressive.

I've also worked with people who had social skills presumably learned from bonobo chimps.

Scratching.  Hands waaaay too deep and too active in pockets whilst talking to female colleagues.  Inappropriate "adjusting" of parts whilst in meetings.  Nose picking.  Farting.  Belching.  Taking off shoes to share the stench of old socks with the rest of the office.

Yes, it was pretty much all there bar the shit flinging, and given the right combination of canteen food and boredom, I expect that could have happened.

I might not be earning much money these days, but by Swansea I am far, far less stressed and unhappy and frustrated than I was for the last 5 years of my corporate career.  






*About 8 feet.  It's a small room.

Playing Chicken

I went to my first ever village planning meeting the other week.  Well, I say planning.  It wasn't really.

It was a consultation exercise, chaired (I use the term very guardedly) by the Parish Council, to discuss the planning impact of a proposed new agricultural development a mile or two down the road.  There's a disused chicken  farm, which has been disused for at least four or five years, maybe more; the owners now want to redevelop the land to put a new all-singing, all-dancing chicken farm there.

When I say "all-singing, all-dancing" I don't think that'll be the chickens themselves.  I may be wrong, of course.

Anyway.  The plans said that there would be a large number of lorries travelling through the village (narrow roads, few pavements, already awkward to get through when there are large vehicles coming the other way) which was hotly contested by the increasingly furious village people at the meeting.  There were also concerns around the removal/disposal of "foul waste" - chicken shit, I guess - and presumably dead chickens that failed the assault course and swimwear sections of the final rounds of their training.

The meeting was loud, poorly-managed and grumpy.  Things were not improved by the arrival of the local pretend police at the start of the meeting, sauntering in casually in their stab vests.  Nice touch.  Nothing like some not-really-police-officers arriving in uniform to reassure the disgruntled attendees that things will all be lovely.

So. The upshot of all the ill-tempered arguing was that the people who own the current chicken farm are pretty much adamant that they will be developing their property, and it will be a huge battery "broiler chicken" farm before much longer.

At one point the chap representing the developer said "Well, it's all very well to protest about it, but you all like this sort of chicken!" to which there was a loud, sustained roar of "No we don't!" from the audience.  It was like the world's most middle-class pantomime ever.

I'm not vegetarian, or anything like a vegetarian, but I do buy eggs and meat that are British, free range and locally-reared, preferably from one of the independent butchers we have in town.  I am aware that I am fortunate in being able to make choices based on my personal ethical preferences, rather than price.  It was, however, very amusing to see the look of dismay on the chicken farm owner bloke's face when he realised that most of the people glaring at him were not his target market for two-for-a-fiver chickens.

In other news, I went to the market this morning.  No lemons this time, sadly, but there were bargain tomatoes.  A huge boxful for a fiver, which have been transformed into nine large bags of chopped tomatoes (stashed in the freezer) and four jars of extremely spicy chutney.  I followed a recipe which was called "Spicy Tomato Chutney", but would more accurately be called "Suicidally Hot Tomato Sauce, Eat In Very Small Doses, It Would Help If You Like Mexican Food."

They were lovely, and not one was blemished.  This is about a third of the box.

I also bought a large lump of fresh root ginger and four huge aubergines (for another fiver) which I plan to turn into (respectively) apple and ginger jelly, and a moussaka.

Maybe two moussaka.

Moussaki?

Moussakas?

The weather continues to be shit, with torrential rain and hail at regular intervals.  Today it's windy as well, just for some exciting variety.

Last week, while Mr WithaY was away, I went through a bit of a miserable episode, mostly my own fault for not going out and doing stuff.  I was busy with some sewing work - proper for-someone-else sewing - and thus ended up not leaving the house (or garden) for about three days, and by the time I realised why I was miserable, I was really miserable.  I self-medicated with chocolate and Futurama, and made a full recovery, you'll be glad to hear.

I also made a determined effort to get on with some of the boring housekeeping jobs which I have been putting off for ages.  I have a voice in my head which says "You might as well do the ironing, you're already grumpy," and I tend to listen to it.

So, with a zesty spring in my step, and my sleeves rolled up purposefully, I took the arm caps off the big sofa and handwashed them.  This was by way of a test, as they have labels saying "Dry Clean Only", but I wanted to find out if they would fall apart, bleed colour or shrink to buggery if they were immersed in water.

You'll be relieved to know that they didn't collapse into threads, lose all their colour or turn into jaunty egg cosies, so I stepped things up and put the actual sofa covers into the washing machine, with a devil-may-care attitude.

That's how I roll.  Like a 1930s housewife, with a bad-ass attitude and a Dyson.

Wrestling the covers back onto the cushions took longer than it should have, and would probably have been a prizewinning video clip on You've Been Framed, had I had the foresight to film myself doing it.

Which reminds me.  The other week, before the weather went all shitty, I was out in the back garden, pegging out some washing.  In a bizarre Norman-Wisdom-esque sequence of events, I managed to get my glasses caught on the rotary washing line as I was turning it round, half dragging me along, before flicking my specs into the currant bushes.

You couldn't make it up.

Contains nuts

We're in the middle of a spell of glorious Spring weather here, sunshine, clear blue skies, chilly evenings which make the warm day feel even better.  Marvellous.  It's lovely to sit in the garden with a cup of tea, watching the bees and butterflies doing their thing in among the flowers.

hello tree. hello sky. hello clouds.  all are full of joy in the springtime.

This is my little herb garden where I sit in the afternoons and drink tea.  It's very pretty, in a "things in pots" kind of way, I think.  The sad squished looking things in the smallest pot are oriental poppies which I am trying to grow from seeds which I saved from the one that flowers in the garden already.  They don't seem very happy.

This weekend we planted more stuff - I know, I know - including some sage plants, half a dozen sweet pea plants, a new climbing rose bush and a dozen little lavender plants.  I have decided that I will try to do more rose and lavender flower-drying this summer, weather permitting.

Also at the weekend, it was the grand Cake and Craft and All Kinds of Other Stuff Event in the village hall.  There were a few of us there with stalls, ready to sell our various wares to the clamouring public. There was a HUGE cake sale, with dozens of different cakes available, as well as cakes you could buy just a slice of to have with a cup of tea and a chat with your neighbours.  I'd like to point out that my coffee and walnut sponge cake went very quickly.  Yes, it was THAT popular.

Unlike my Clementine and almond cupcakes which paled into insignificance next to the gorgeously glittery decorated cupcake offerings of the village yummy mummies.

The event was very successful.  Dozens and dozens of people came along, everyone seemed to be either eating cake or carrying round cakes to eat later, and we raised a good chunk of money for Sport Relief, which was the aim of the exercise after all.

The village hall looked very cheerful and festive with all the bunting.  I took this before the start, hence the lack of people.

And, best of all (for me, anyway) I sold a few things from my little craft stall.  I chatted to people, I saw neighbours I haven't seen in ages, and I picked up one or two commissions for later on in the Spring, so a good afternoon all round.

Mr WithaY and I celebrated that evening by buying a Chinese takeaway with my profits.  We'll never be rich, but we will be full of Chinese food.

Oh, and I won the raffle.  Twice!  I have been taken to task* for accepting two raffle prizes, but my reasoning is that if I have bought 25 tickets, statistically I am likely to win more than once.  I therefore feel justified in accepting two prizes.

Had I won a third time, I would have been gracious and said "No, no, no, please...put my ticket in the bin and let someone else have a turn."  But two prizes? All mine.

Mwahahahahahaaaaaa.

Anyway, one of the prizes was a big box of chocolates.  Like I'd have abandoned that.

Is there a formal laid-down raffle prize etiquette anywhere?

One of the other raffle prizes was this:

A Gruffalo cake!  Brilliant.

In other news, at the garden centre where I bought my new climbing rose and the lavender plants, they had some slightly mental moss rabbits for sale.

Look at the eyes of the one on the right!  He's clearly crazed and dangerous.  He'd be carving his way out of the garden with a trowel before you knew what had hit you, I reckon.  Brrr.

I do like the garden centre.  You can get pretty much anything you want, as long as what you want is deranged.

A giant metal cockerel, standing 6 feet high?  Check.

Paving slabs with artistic interpretations of fish embedded within them? Check.

A statue of Atlas, supporting the world on his mighty stone shoulders?  Check.

Frantic whirling plastic solar-driven butterflies, to strike terror into the heart of any pet? Check.

A solemn Aslan-type stone lion, looking mournfully at you from across the yard?  Check.

Dozens of ornaments made from cutlery?  Check.

Plus they have an aquatic centre where you can buy tropical fish, or marine fish, or snakes, or this...a rain forest in a box.

There's a tiny pond at the base with fish swimming, and then above that there's steamy, foggy mini-jungle with little frogs in.  Brilliant.

In other, other news, I had a go at making peanut butter last week. Why, dear readers, did I decide to do that?  Fucked if I know.

For some reason it seemed like a good idea, and we all know how those ideas generally work out, don't we?  I bought several pounds of shelled (but not skinned, crucially) peanuts and searched out some recipes on the Internet, which, as we also know, never lies.

I roasted the peanuts, and then realised with a cold horror that I had to get all the red skin off them.  Fuck.  That took three hours, and left me with blisters on my thumbs.  Then it was time to put the shelled and skinned peanuts into the food processor.  Well, in fact, as I discovered when I re-checked the recipe, you are supposed to put them into the blender.  I, however, failed to clarify this small but telling detail, and spent 45 minutes watching a pale yellow concrete-like substance forming with painful slowness.

I added peanut oil, as some of the recipes suggested, which didn't seem to help.  I re-checked the original recipe I had used and realised I ought to be using the blender.

Coaxing the thick, gritty, warm peanut-crete out of the food processor and into the blender with a flexible spatula is a memory which will stay with me a while.

Once I started it blending, however, the texture changed quickly to something almost peanut-buttery, and I was greatly cheered.  I tested it, added a dash of salt and a spoonful of honey, an then whizzed it for a bit longer.  It was clumping together around the blades at the bottom of the goblet, so I poked it with my spatula and then turned the blender all the way up to eleven.

Readers, it did its best.  It tried.  It really did.

There was a sudden strong smell of burning, then smoke poured out of the motor.  I turned it off at the wall socket and removed the blender goblet.  Mr WithaY (who had been popping into the kitchen at hourly intervals to ask "how's it going?" before laughing uproariously at my crap peanut butter-making) manfully carried it out into the garden in case it went up in flames.

We left it out there for an hour to think about what it had done.

I decanted the peanut butter into jars.  It's paler than the shop-bought stuff but actually tastes rather good.

I won't be making it again, I think, though.







*Hello Laurie!

Problem in Engineering

I'm writing today's instalment of quasi-realism on my old laptop.  Blimey it's slow.

The keyboard is all bouncy.  And the screen's quite small.  And it's noisy.

Other than that, though, it's great.

The reason for this trip to my technological past?  My PC is in the shop for refurbishment, having its innards tweaked, upgraded, be-jiggered and finally put back into a funky new case, large enough to contain the enormous new graphics card that it apparently now needs.

I wanted to get my system upgraded, as I had started to get error messages - you know the sort - that helpfully informed me 10 seconds before my PC froze solid that all was not well.  Sometimes, for a nice change, I'd get the error message when I rebooted the machine, shortly after it had frozen solid, leaving me swearing at a black screen and a dead keyboard.

Gah.  Technology.

Once again, as I plod wearily through the 21st Century, I ask an uncaring universe why life is not more like Star Trek.  I was promised a glorious, robot-filled future.  Where is it?  Where's my personal replicator?  Where's my teleport system?  Where's my inter-galactic space vehicle?  Eh?

Nowhere, that's where.

In Star Trek, when something technical goes wrong, the Captain calls for an update from Engineering.  Engineering reply immediately, shouting through clouds of steam, sparks flying, people being buffeted across the room by wildly flailing cables in the background.  It's mayhem down there.

The Captain will demand to know what the problem is.  Engineering always know, or at the very least have a working theorem which turns out to be correct. The Captain will ask how long it will take to fix whatever the problem is.  Engineering always have an oddly specific estimate to give the Captain, usually a few hours.  In a crisis situation they might tell him something like "It'll take us at least seventeen and a half minutes, Sir...."

And sure enough, the problem is fixed within the timeframe, disaster is averted and they carry on about their business.

To summarise:  Problem is identified.  Solution is identified.  Solution is implemented.  Problem is resolved.  Tea and medals all round.

It's not like that in real life.

I put my PC on the counter in the computer shop, and the nice man looked at it speculatively.  It's four years old, which in computer terms makes it not quite a vintage classic, but certainly past its best.

Computer shop man:  Soooo....what do you want doing with this?

Me:  It needs a graphics upgrade, and possibly some more RAM?  I don't know, it's got really slow and laggy, and I keep getting graphics-related error messages.

CSM:  Hmm.  Let's have a look inside.

He removed the case and revealed a hellish filth-pit full of precariously-slotted-in computer parts and dust bunnies.  It was disgusting in there.

Me:  Oh no, look how dirty it is!  I'm sorry about that.

CSM:  Nah, I've seen a lot worse.  Hmm, you've got a *tech* operating system in here so if I add more *tech* it won't make much difference.  How about if I *tech* *tech* tech* and then it will do *tech* and *tech*?

Me:  Um.  Sure.  Yeah.

CSM:  And you don't need more RAM, but you DO need more power. To supply the new graphics card.  Otherwise it will *tech*, and you won't want that.

He pulled the memory card thingies out and waved them around, wafting clouds of filth and dust bunnies over both of us.

Me:  Oh.  Sure.  Yeah.  (Nodding wisely) Power.  Mhmmm.

CSM:  You've got a good size hard disk, and the current RAM will be fine.  So, just the graphics card and a new power supply?  Oh, and I'll reload the operating system to speed things up.  That'll make it *tech* and *tech*, much better.

Me: (relieved and slightly bored now)  Yes, lovely, thank you.  That'll be fine, I'm sure.

CSM:  But the new card is pretty big.  I don't know if it'll fit in this.

He indicated my computer with a dismissive finger as he said "this."

Me:  Um.  What?

He went across to the window display and pulled a huge graphics card out of the artfully arranged heap of techno-parts designed to lure passers-by into the shop.

CSM:  See this?  If I install one of these, it won't fit.

He put the posh new graphics card next to my poor old PC, and waggled it about, demonstrating how deficient my machine was in terms of space.

It doesn't have a downstairs toilet or a conservatory, his gesture seemed to say.  The bedrooms are too small.  The stairs are cramped and dingy.  And that kitchen...how can you bear it?

I may be reading too much into his waggling, of course.

Anyway, I agreed to have a new, larger case, and any of the old computer insides which survive the new regime will be slotted into it, along with the giant greedy graphics card, which I have no doubt will be ruling the roost, hogging the comfy chair and the remote control, demanding cups of tea and biscuits, gloating about its posh new power supply unit at the meek RAM, over in their squalid little corner.

At least there won't be any dust bunnies in there with them all.  For a while.

So.  In the meantime, I am back on my laptop.

I asked how long it would take to perform all these miracles of techno-rejuvination, and was told "Hmmm, a few days.  Probably five or six working days, as I need to test everything thoroughly." He fixed me with a basilisk stare as he said "Thoroughly."

It's not like that in Star Trek.  NOTHING gets tested.  That's why the shields fail after one shot is fired at them, every single time.

Other news:  I am pleased to report that Mr WithaY had a fab time at his bushcraft training course last week, and is sitting in his study as I type, busily writing up his homework for the next module.  He was very pleased that he passed the "make fire with your bare hands and a bunch of twigs and other materials scavenged from the soaking wet forest floor" test.  Apparently not everyone did, unfortunately.

I've been cooking new things this week, as I was getting bored with my repertoire of meals. Today I made a huge fish pie, containing salmon (which was on offer in Morrisons), smoked trout (caught by Mr WithaY and smoked by a local smokehouse) and prawns (from the freezer, can't remember where we got them from,)in a white sauce, topped with creamy mashed potato.  We're having it for supper.  Nom nom nom.

Last night I cooked a new variation on pork steaks - I cut them up and simmered them for a couple of hours in a sauce made from chopped onions, garlic, several sliced cooking apples (skin left on), vegetable stock, and white pepper.  In the last 15 minutes or so, I added a generous splosh of double cream, which worked well.  Serve with new potatoes, peas and carrots.  Delicious.

And now I'm going to go and make flapjacks.

In the News

I do enjoy reading our local newspaper.  Not only does it feature either the Mayor, the Town Crier or representatives of the various local military units on almost every page, the headlines are reassuringly bonkers. 

It's how every local newspaper should be, really.  Plus, and this is quite an important point, the hilarious "no news is what we're all about" publishing ethos demonstrates how little serious crime we have on a regular basis around here.  So it's funny AND reassuring.

Last week almost the entire front page was covered with the scandalous revelation that the man who has bought the derelict Town Hall building has previous convictions for failing to comply with planning regulations when renovating a different derelict building.  The last two or three years have seen many and varied front page stories about how is is a disgrace - an absolute DISGRACE!- that the Town Hall remains empty and derelict.  Now there's a whole new angle to be outraged about. Our gorgeous pigeon-shit-encrusted Town Hall is in the hands of someone who might renovate it without getting the final sign-off from the planning officer to undertake internal modifications to the building.  I'll keep you posted.

Ahhh, the Town Crier is on Page 2.  All is well with the world.  Something else I love about this newspaper is the way that the publisher - our local stationer - fills all the spare space on Page 2 with advertisements for their own shop.  They sell everything you could possibly need in the stationery line.  Wedding invitations? Calendars? School pencil cases? Maps? Greetings cards?  Books about the local area?  Labels of all types?  Poster paint?  Glue?  Glitter?  Dictionaries? Paperclips?  They've got it all. 

The shop itself is a delight, rambling back into nooks and crannies, all of them crammed with treasures you never knew you needed.  It's staffed by a selection of elderly ladies who know exactly where everything is.  Sometimes they have to get ladders to reach the high shelves, delicately avoiding setting off avalanches of rolls of brown paper and boxes of treasury tags. 

Top Page 2 headline this week: 

Break In  
Nothing Stolen

Fantastic.  On Page 4 we have the almost-as-good Air Rifle Pointed, which hints at all sorts of ill-natured duelling potential.  When you read the story, however, it was a couple of blokes in a van with an air rifle, off out rabbiting probably.  They were "subsequently allowed on their way" after being given some "suitable advice" by the police.

Two stories side by side on Page 8 in an unfortunate juxtaposition. One relates how our nearest cinema, a small independent one in Frome with a bar and everything, has been damaged by fire* and will be closed for a while.  The story beside it tells us that a new cocktail bar has opened in town.  The accompanying picture shows a frosty-glass delicious looking cocktail, with the strapline "Try out a cocktail this weekend."

Why not? You can't go to the cinema, after all.

Page 11 has the menacing Children Visit Biodigester.  It doesn't say how many arrived, or - more importantly - how many left.  I think that's the sort of thing we ought to be told.  Next to that story is Chilli And Tomato Tastings.  I don't know about you, but my appetite vanished at the word "Biodigester." 

The sports pages are great as well.  Every single week, regardless of the weather, the time of the year or the prevailing economic climate, our local teams lose.  This week's football headline is Not A Good Home Day For Town.  It's interesting to see how many different ways the newspaper people can say "They're A Bit Shit, Unfortunately."  The Rugby headline is Better Performance But Still Defeated.

It reminds me of my old school reports. 

Are all local newspapers like this, or are we just lucky, I wonder?





*Probably caused by the manager making everyone a nice bit of cheese on toast to eat during the film.