Fun in the garden

I have ordered myself some fruit trees and am ridiculously excited about them. I'm mad I know - anyone who believes 10% of what they say in a newspaper advert is being over optimistic, but I can't help it. When an envelope arrives with 5 fruit seeds instead of the five foot trees I'm expecting my bubble will burst but until then...

It's late October now, the clocks have changed and it gets dark at about 4:30, it's certainly pitch dark when I get home from work, so the only time I have to garden is at the weekend, unless I invest in some floodlighting

So if I want to clear a bit of the wilderness to receive these trees I have to do it this weekend hail, rain or shine and rain is what we've been promised. This morning I saw a gap in the clouds and decided to get cracking on the weeds, maybe clear a couple of feet of ground. So out I went and I actually found the weeds were coming up quite easily. The ground was quite loose and the fork was able to scoop the greenery off the top. For some reason the fork wouldn't go very deep into the ground though...

When I started to pay attention to what I was doing I realised the soil was very sandy here - and the barrier was a sheet of plastic (2 actually) I had discovered a sandpit! Complete with little plastic toys, a plastic rake and at least one melamine plate that didn't enjoy being buried for several years and had degraded into bits. My heart sank.

I would have to find the edges of the plastic layer, remove all the sand, pull out the plastic layer then dig up the base, and mix the sand back in (Is that a good idea for my trees?)

It took me 3 half hour sessions, the first to clear the weeds and assess the extent of the sandpit, the second to clear away about a third of the sand and start pulling up the plastic. At this point I took a photo break


The third was the most satisfactory. I focussed on shovelling sand and chucking it in a pile. On reflection it would have been wiser not to build the mountain on the edge of the plastic liner. I had to undermine my mountain to get the last of it out, but get it out I did. So now I have a hole, a sandy hill and no energy at all!


Now I just have to dig it all over and sit back and watch the weeds take over again

Your Teeth Are Fine But Your Gums Will Have To Come Out

I am a complete coward when it comes to dentists. I know it's irrational and they are gentle creatures who don't inflict pain without fully anaesthetising you first, but the thought of visiting one fills me with terror. This has had an adverse impact on my mouth as you can imagine ;)

A further complication is that the good old NHS has done something really weird with dentists contracts over the past 10 years or so with the result that NHS dentists are now as rare as hens' teeth and for some reason they are dead keen to remove you from their lists. There must be some benefit to them in being a rare species, maybe they get funding from the world wildlife fund or something.

Anyway, the key point being I had a right dose of toothache last weekend and on Monday discovered I had been de-registered by my dentist. The combination of pain, fear and having the means to end the pain taken away from me increased my stress levels dramatically. There followed a bit of slapstick concerning a single vacancy on my own dentist's list, an elderly couple waving a �20 deposit and a rush to the counter to try to secure the magic place on my behalf. They failed. I was out in the cold with panic gripping my heart.

Fortunately our Health Board has a fallback in place. You phone a number and tell the nice girl on the end the nature of your emergency and she arranges an emergency appointment for you with distressing speed. So by lunchtime on Monday I was heading off to a health centre in Galashiels, quivering in my boots and with no time to head to my doctor to try to extract a couple of tranqillisers from them. (I use them once every couple of years, only for dentists visits why are my doctors so reluctant to prescribe them?)

Anyway, the upshot of all this was I saw a nice young dentist (probably just out of college - why doesn't he have a proper practice? Don't think things like that Heather, he has the power of pain over you) who looked in my mouth very gently and pronounced the tooth is fine, there was nothing to be done. Relief? Horror? So what about this pain then? The problem is my bone is receding, and the tooth is coming loose, the roots are exposed and if anything touches the root it hurts. He packed a bit of filling around it but implied it was like putting a plaster on a gaping wound. I have to be careful with it and watch for food getting caught under there and it getting infected. If an abcess develops they will treat it and remove the tooth. But for now I can take paracetamol and wait for it to go away.

So I have been given official confirmation that my usual practice of ignoring things and hoping they go away is the correct action in this case. I'm surprised, every other episode of toothache I've had has been pain that escalates dramatically until a dentist makes it go away. Although this tooth did hurt during the summer and it did go away again, and currently it has reduced to a slight ache so here's hoping...

New Toy - Peg Loom

This week I got a new toy - a peg loom. I think you must call it something else in the USA because the only sites I've seen with a peg loom like this are British. It is a strip of wood with holes in it, into which sit a number of pegs. The pegs are weaving sticks, with holes at the end, a bit like blunt wooden needles.



You warp it up by threading the warp yarn through the holes at the end of the pegs and then standing the pegs up in the loom. My loom has a warp anchor bar to keep the warp yarn untangled, I threaded the pairs of threads through the bar and tied it off.



You weave your weft yarn (or rags or even raw fleece!) in and out the pegs until you have filled the pegs.



Then you lift out the pegs (a few at a time) and slide the fabric down the pegs onto the warp threads.



Then keep going, tie off the warp threads when you're all done and Voila!



Too small to be a blanket and too thick to be a table mat! Beautifully soft though and not bad for a first attempt. Now what can I turn it into?

Well I Found It Funny

More to be found here at xkcd.com

Health warning:
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

- and they're right about the maths!

Tesco Sucks

Tesco is a UK supermarket, and I believe is the third largest supermarket in the world, it's certainly the largest in the UK, has a presence absolutely everywhere and is popularly believed to be almost single handedly responsible for the decline of high streets throughout the UK. They certainly make plenty money. A large company like this is often a target for dissatisfied members of the public.

A protest sign on Blaikie's Hill, Galashiels
© Copyright Walter Baxter and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The farmer who erected this Tesco Sucks sign put it up because Tesco pulled down a beautiful 19th century red sandstone building to build their hideous excrescence and despite it being part of their planning permission that they rebuild it, after over 2 years of trading they haven't shown any sign of replacing it. He says they have ruined his view of the town and when you look below - you can see his point.

Galashiels Town Centre Redevelopment
© Copyright Walter Baxter and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The white splodge centre right is a massive three storey white block and it looks just as obtrusive close up. The slightly lower white splodge at the bottom left is another supermarket that opened at the same time as Tesco but it is an unashamed white shed, single storey and doesn't pretend to be anything else than a white shed, and it was built on the site of a former railway station so is no real loss. (If anyone's interested the long building 2/3 of the way up the right of the picture is my old school and until Gala became supermarket central I think it was the biggest building in Gala.) So that's why Tom Douglas thinks Tesco Sucks - but why do I agree with him?

My husband recently had a major operation and has been left rather weak, and lacking in the energy to trochle all the way around a huge supermarket. Today we decided to visit Tesco for a change, and I tried to get a key for a scooter.... After waiting at the customer service desk for the lone woman to deal with 2 customer complaints I asked for a key for a scooter, she grabbed one, glanced around and collared a security guard some way away, he said he would help once he had finished fiddling with something at his desk.... after a short period steam started coming out my ears and I grabbed my husband and plonked him on a chair in a display of patio furniture thinking to myself "these bloody scooters are for people who aren't able to stand around waiting for your convenience!" but being stoic and British I bit my tongue for a minute or two. Next thing I saw Mr Security Guard helping some other person with something or other, I watched in horror as he made a phone call and chatted away to the customer, then once he had finished with the call I walked up to him and said incredulously "Shall I take the key and just get it myself?" he said to me nicely "Oh that would be really helpful" and I stormed up the shop thinking "I'm the customer, you're supposed to be the helpful one!" Being such a disabled friendly store, Tesco keeps its scooters at the other end of the shop from the disabled lifts, and entrance. (I thought the days of hiding disabled people away were over but obviously not in Tesco-land) Having reached the 3 scooters I picked one, switched it on and nothing happened, I grabbed another tried it but it was obviously needing charged, I tried the third one thinking I was losing my mind and again not a sausage. I made my way back to the customer service desk, and told the girl I couldn't get it to work. She looked around in an anguished way but Mr Security Guard was deep in conversation with his customer who by this time was obviously his pal because they were chatting away like old buddies. He was far too busy blethering to help. She asked another 4 members of staff but none knew how to work the scooters although one did say she would come and try, having had comprehensive instructions from Ms Customer Services. Put the key in, turn it and press the lever. I told Ms Checkout Girl I had already tried that. The two of us spent several minutes fiddling about with the scooters and guess what? Nothing worked. Then another checkout operator who also had no idea how to work it came over and couldn't get any of them to go. By this time I noticed the time and realised my husband had been sitting like a lemon in the patio furniture display for over 15 minutes and my blood pressure was going through the roof. I stomped off in disgust leaving the girls to it and would like to say that I left the shop without buying anything but we had come for something that couldn't be got anywhere else. We did however, for the first time in recorded history buy only the items we came for and made not a single impulse purchase. I think if I had followed my impulses at the time I would have left the shop on a policeman's arm, not my husbands!

So yes, I fully agree with Tom Douglas, more power to your elbow Tom - Tesco definitely Sucks, and so does Scottish Borders Council for trying to get you to take your Tesco Sucks sign down.

Neighbours

...everybody needs good neighbours!!!

But do your neighbours lean over the wall and nibble on your roses?

Here he is wandering over for a snack -




and with a few members of his harem

BBC Books people lie about having read

The BBC figures most people will have on average read about 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
Copy and paste into notes. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tally your total below. Movies don't count!

This should be interesting....

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X .....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible ^ .............well I've worked my way through the New Testament, so half a x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ..............uuurgh no!!!
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X (poor tess)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X .......... hated the first couple of chapters then Loved it!
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare .........come onnnn!
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks .......... no but Charlotte Gray was DIRE!
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ....... tried twice - never got past the first page.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (see 10)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X (Capitalist tosh!)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X (Dear God yes - I hate Dickens for a reason you know)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X (all of em even Sanditon and the Watsons!)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X (Must Read)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy X
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons X
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon X (Utter Utter Sh*te)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Is this the druggy one that I fought my way through? nope that was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (Tried several times aaargh!)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Life's too short - dried up before anything happened)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X (see 56)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X (Compulsory in the 70s)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X (at school so it must count)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Tally: 47 and a half