Bluebells

blue700About time.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My little eye

relevant

Posted in My little eye | Leave a comment

Plus, they drive on the right

…Don’t watch TV begins Michael J

mfox

no, Smith, over at Stop Me Before I Vote Again. Don’t even watch TV news clips on Youtube, if you value your sanity.

(Too late.)

After watching some coverage of the manhunt — the ludicrously ill-managed and foolish manhunt — for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I was neck-deep in the Slough of Despond about my fellow Amurricans. Considering learning modern Icelandic — I did the mediaeval version some years ago — and moving there. Hot springs! Tall capable blondes! Debt renunciation! What’s not to like?

Haven’t managed to google anything unlikable yet. They even handled their bank meltdown in a way that gets my stamp of approval.

Why, if I still had a little boat, I could practically sail there, given a good stretch of weather…

Well, it goes on.
Another blog bookmarked.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Scenes at the museum

beardjudging

Posted in Scenes at the museum | Leave a comment

It’s all a foreign film to me

subtitles

Yes. Yes I do. Watching without subtitles always makes me think that I’m going to miss something. Odd, as the transcriptionists seldom catch everything either.

Above is a scene from The Thick of It. Though I like writing my own, that’s an original.

Posted in Screenshots | Leave a comment

Not of this Earth

The recent discovery of a tarantula “as big as your face”

facehugger thanks for the image, guys

has me examining my new arachnid relocator device

spidercatcher500 ladybugs too? really?

and wondering if they make an industrial model

brodyspider

Posted in Creatures featured | Leave a comment

The Great Escape

A lamb made its way into our garden. I was about to go out and give him a lift when he found a hole in our obviously insecure perimeter defences.

escape1
You can do it

escape2

escape3

escape4

Posted in Creatures featured | Leave a comment

In the news

april13fool

Celebrate her death? No. Though as Glenn Greenwald put it:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn’t change simply because they die. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history.

A critical overview of her policies is more constructive than dancing. Ken Livingstone:

She created today’s housing crisis. She created the banking crisis. And she created the benefits crisis. It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefit rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly full employment. She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed, and the benefits bill, the legacy of that, we are struggling with today. In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact that she was fundamentally wrong.

Even better, Simon Schama:

For the doctrine that market capitalism, cut free from the sentimentally invented, morally enervating, fiscally crippling obligations of state-run social institutions, whether in education or health, can be the elixir of high-flying growth, sleekly self-regulating, managerially energetic, and perpetually dynamic, seems, in the face of our flatlining economy, a dark, sick joke. The sclerotic old system which Margaret Thatcher dispatched has been, in the end, replaced by an equally inert and complacent new one. So perhaps the best tribute that could be paid to the spirit of her life in politics (if not the letter of its law) would be if someone, somewhere, could come along in British public life – hell, in Europe – with the Thatcherian gumption to say, again, but this time to the unswerving disciples: this does not work, this will not stand. You have had your time; you have had your chance. Now be off with you.

Posted in In the news | Leave a comment

Scenes at the museum

harrison

Posted in Scenes at the museum | Leave a comment

The Leeds Leek

POTHOLES WINDOWS TO THE PAST
Resurfacing impedes archaeological discoveries
Spurred by the recent find of Richard III in a car park, councils across Britain have been easing off the repairing of potholes in the hope of uncovering illustrious bodies without going to the expense of digging for them. “It’s win-win for taxpayers,” said Elliot the Unready of East Sussex. “Anybody we find will bring tourists flocking. Meanwhile we save money to invest in better things, such as the arts.

Although all monarchs are apparently accounted for except for Edward V, whose remains are believed to have been accidentally used as snuff by George IV during his regency, there is “a veritable treasure trove of minor royals and lost celebrities” lying just beneath the surface.

bighole
Refilling of this moderate-sized pothole in London was halted after the discovery of Lord Trafalgar Square in a compromising position

Leek morgue

Posted in In the news | Leave a comment

Foyle’s War

They’re back.

foyle1
That’s former Detective Chief Superintendent to you. He’ll be needing a 00 now.
Inset pic from Brimstone & Treacle – which from the title alone sounds like a good next Michael & Honeysuckle vehicle.

foyle2

foyle3

foyle4

foyle5

Posted in Screenshots | Leave a comment

Spring lamb

springlamb

lambs, lambs, lambs

Posted in Creatures featured | Leave a comment