Hard sums

So, apart from my car being expensively broken, and me whining on and on and on about it, what else has been going on, you may be asking?

I like to imagine people are actually interested, you see.

Mr WithaY's Landrover is sat on the drive again, but is not really fixed. The axle he bought off the on-line scrappie is apparently a bit rubbish, the diff was full of water. It still makes a horrible screeching noise when he drives around, so he now thinks it might be a brakes-related issue rather than a diff-related issue.

Who knows? Not me, that's for sure. Any readers who have experience of Landrover Discovery-related problems, and have helpful advice to offer, please feel free.

Also, big news...saw a rat in the garden. Went to dump a load of stuff in compost bin #2** and as the lid was lifted off, saw the back end* of a rat scoot down a hole in the compost. Mr WithaY deployed some garden tools and a vigorous forking*** ensued.

Time to go and buy more poison.

Ooh, also, used my funky new peg bucket today. Spring really has sprung, the washing is out in the garden to dry.

Noticed this afternoon that the price of diesel in the garage over the way has gone up to 122.9 a litre. That's a rise of 3p in 2 days. Fuck's sake.

For the American readers out there, it is now costing me about £50 to fill my fuel tank, so that's what, about $100? And that gets me about 350 miles. Getting about is becoming very expensive. Had a chat with a lovely on-line mate the other night and he was grumbling becasue fuel now costs him $4 a gallon. Pah.

How much are we paying a gallon now? Um (mental arithmetic.....arrghh) 5 litres to the gallon, so, um, £1.22 x 5, so about £6 a gallon, so about what, $12 a gallon?

I am sure the maths wonks out there will set me right.



*I assume the front end had already gone.

** Compost bin #1 is almost ready. I'll keep you informed.

***Nothing like a vigorous forking in the garden on a nice afternoon, I think.

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Visitors

We've got a visitor. He seems to have taken up residence in the front garden for the time being, under the Vibernum (sp?) bush.



He looks pretty grumpy, and is limping like a pirate, so I wonder if he's been winged on a shoot somewhere. He's safe enough in the garden though.

We have some other visitors in the back garden too. Not as cute as the pheasant, and a lot more destructive.



(Image nicked from here )

After months of picking the buggers off one at a time from the Window of Doom, Mr WithaY finally agreed to put down some poison.

So, a jolly trip in the pissing rain to the ironmongers, where he bought a huge box of Rat-B-Gone and I got some blue hyacinths in a basket. And some Christmas-tree-shaped biscuit cutters. And a sparkly candle.

Its a great shop. Everything you need, and then some.

Also went to the opticians where he was getting new lenses for his diving trip in January. I amused myself by trying on lots of glasses (one pair at a time, not all at once like Professor Branstawm ). Found some I may get after Christmas. I'll keep you informed.

While I was sat waiting patiently, flicking though one of the many magazines in there (and I noticed they all had small text - how cruel) a woman and a small boy came in. They were greeted by one of the staff, then sat down next to me to wait their turn.

The boy started messing about with the camera machine thingy - the one you can take on-screen photos of yourself with to see how you look in different glasses. He started off just pressing the buttons and making stupid faces.

Fair enough. I mean, I'd been doing the same thing myself not five minutes earlier.

But then, bored with this, he began messing about with the Zoom function, and jumping back from the camera, each time getting nearer and nearer the racks of glasses behind him.

Eventually, inevitably, he jumped back and crashed into one of the stands, knocking all the glasses to the floor. The woman (I assume his mother) leapt to her feet and rushed over saying "Oh! Have you hurt yourself?" To which the little oaf replied in a fake-sad voice "Yes, I have rather hurt my back."

I was dumbfounded.

In fact, I was sorely tempted to give him a sharp ding round the ear and say "And now your ears hurt too. Sit down, stop causing trouble and wait quietly."

However, I decided an afternoon being questioned by the police for assault and battery was not likely to be much fun, so thought better of it. But it was so, so tempting.

And then that bloody woman clucked and fussed around him, checking his back was alright (yes of course it is, he's faking it and is hoping not to get into trouble you stupid fool) before half-heartedly picking up some of the glasses. Gah.

And then we went to Lidl. I love that shop. If you've never been, go. They have more amusing sausages than is entirely reasonable.

Long and mousey

This post. Not my hair. I mean, it's long, but not at all mousey.

Anyhoo.

Drove into work this morning on autopilot after a day at home yesterday feeling crap and another poor night's sleep. It's very very tiresome*, not sleeping properly. Makes everything else feel ten times more difficult and wearing than it really is, and every molehill turns into a huge mountain.

Still, the sun is out and I am wearing a very lovely pink sparkly scarf over my otherwise all-black work outfit and three different people have told me how (and I quote) glamorous I look. So hurrah for that, at least.

Off to the gym after work if I can summon up the enthusiasm, but to be honest I still feel pretty low so might leave it till tomorrow. I have a guitar lesson, so it will be a bit of a mad rush to do my stuff at the gym, get home, get showered and changed and be bright-eyed and all ready to play guitar and eat biscuits with my lovely teacher by 6pm. And we got cow biscuits in specially.

So it might be a session tomorrow and one on Thursday as planned instead.

Badgerdaddy's post about the mouse made me think about our own vermin slaying experiences. And we have lots. Our previous house in Salisbury had a bit of a mouse invasion one winter.

We didn't realise it for ages.

I was home alone for a week while Mr WithaY was away for work, and I was sitting on the floor in the sitting room, no music, no tv, all very quiet, reading an improving book**. After a while I realised I could hear odd scratching, tapping noises. I looked out of the windows, nobody about. Went into the kitchen, nothing going on in there. Sat and listened again, but the noise had stopped.

This happened several times over the next few nights. I'd be sat quietly, and would hear this odd noise, get up to go and try to find out what it was, and it would stop.

Many months later we were redecorating the sitting room. We moved a small shelf unit that the stereo*** lived on, and hey presto, behind it was a Tom and Jerry stylee mousehole. Some fucking mouse had been busily making his way into the fabric of the house! He'd eaten the wallpaper, channelled his way into the bricks and gnawed all the rubber insulation from the mains electric cables for good measure.

What I'd been hearing night after night was him doing his little mousey home improvements. Lucky he didn't eat right into the power cables and burn the bloody house down.

After that we kept an eye out for further evidence, and sure enough we started to find mouse poo in the kitchen. In the fruit and vegetable basket, to be exact. We binned all the fruit and veg, noting that the only thing the mouse had had a go at were the chillies. Not the apples, or potatoes, or carrots or even the onions. Just the chillies. Odd, eh?

We set a trap. The next day there he was, dead as the proverbial, his teeth buried in a fine lump of stilton (as a last meal, Mr WithaY thought it was appropriate that it be something a bit special).

I must admit I had a bit of a lump in my throat as we slung him in the bin. The mouse. Not Mr WithaY.

The intermittent rats in the current WithaY garden get no such sentimental treatment. We spot one stealing the birdfood, the sniper on the grassy knoll is deployed, we very soon afterwards dump the twitching carcase in the bin (the grey one, not the green one).

Mr WithaY sometimes makes me take photos of the really big ones. It's nice to share things, I think.




*heh, see what I did there?

**improving book: i.e: not porn

***are they still called stereos these days? Will the younger readers know what I mean?