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Ouch

I had this weird dream last night that I twisted my knee.

The weird thing is, I got out of bed fine and by mid-morning my knee was in near-agony, for no obvious reason. It's still a bit sore.

Ouch!

The bricks are finished

And haven't they left it in a lovely shape?

Photos are from the back bedroom - you should get a reasonable idea of how it will look once the grass grows.  Can you find the oil tank?

March of the bricks continues....

After seven days of work (allowing for rain-breaks), the bricks are going curly.




Right class, if the width of the circle is ten feet draw a scale diagram and use pi=3.14 to find the area of bricks used.

I've been reading...

Well, I've been reading lots and not blogging it. In brief, the following are worth a read:

The Five Pound Look - Tom Houston, inspired by Prince Philip in the 1950s sees the world on a Fiver.

A Generous Orthodoxy - Brian McLaren is a liberal to the fundamentalists and a fundamentalist to the liberals, and quite thought provoking.

Poldark - miners in 1700s Cornwall. Quite good.

That'll be all for now...

Northern Ireland - Stalin's dream lives on

I've been wondering why the people in Northern Ireland are so passive when it comes to government. We have Peter Hain laying down the law when it comes to local taxes, water charges, education and a whole host of other things and... nobody cares, it would seem. In France, they'd be burning buses. In GB - well, remember the Poll Tax riots. Nope, we simply get on with it. We might moan and complain, but there's no serious talk of a mass campaign to simply refuse to pay. For what it's worth, I would refuse to pay the water charges if I thought anyone would back me. However, knowing NI people, they are more likely to look at my face in the paper while I am led away to spend 30 days in HMP Magilligan to reconsider and ask "Who does he think he is?"

Listening to a programme about the former Soviet states under democracy has made it all clear. Northern Ireland is the last outpost of distant dictatorism. Yes, we have local politicians who we vote for but how much say do we have in Westminster? None, whatsoever. I never had the option to vote Tory or LibDem to oust Blair. Indeed, I never had the option to vote for Blair to oust Major.

Maybe this is why we have gone to the extremes. We have brought in DUP and SF who will not work together, thus continuing the distant dictatorship. Like Georgia, we are so conditioned to having the thinking done for us we have no idea how to cope when left to make decisions for ourselves. So Peter Hain makes decisions that are really bad for NI in an effort to make the locals do something better - yet he has possibly not realised, we have no inclination to do something better.

We are as powerless as a hen-pecked husband after 40 years whose wife goes away for the day and all of a sudden he realises that simple decisions, such as deciding what socks to wear, are beyond him. Our democratic muscles have wasted away and we deserve no better than what we are getting.

The ongoing saga of the garden

After the excitment of the brick circle, it has become obvious that a plague of bricks intend to take over our garden.
 


The bricks have even covered our step!


What next?  A brick oil-tank?

Found the oil tank!

Hurray, we've found the oil tank!



brick circles?

The other garden

Regular readers will have seen the chaos that is currently our back garden. Had the builders left it in proper order, we wouldn't in the middle of all this. For example, what nutter thought the logical place for an oil tank was slap-bang in the middle of the garden? What nutter thought three inches of muck on top of stones constituted decent soil?

Anyway, the back garden is being sorted. The front... well, that's a different story. It slopes in many places and in many directions. The same genius that thought we'd like an oil-tank in the middle of our back garden put a pair of drains in a stupid part of the front garden, rised up on some sort of 2" high concrete plinth. Barking mad. It makes for fun while cutting the grass.

Ah yes, the grass. With the wife in town and the sun in the sky I cut the grass for the first time in two weeks yesterday. Normally it takes a box-and-a-half worth of cuttings. That reminds me, I have a black plastic bag full of cuttings to dispose of. Anyway, yesterday's grass: in meadow-like condition in parts; covered with shamrocks spreading furiously in other parts; littered with 'parsley' in others. It's no really parsley and I wouldn't put it on a salad, but imagine a garded plastered in parsley and you get the idea.

So I crank up the lawnmower. Actually, I press a button and the Flymo starts up. Good grief it's thick! I consider putting the strimmer to parts of it first until I remember, I've been getting a new nylon-strip-blade-thingy since October. The Flymo it will be - a direct line from the front door to the far end. Yes, it seems illogical and I know up-and-down starting at the edge might make sense, but our garden doesn't. It's shaped more like the ace of spades, so I put a straight line up the middle and work outwards. I turn at the top, back down to the drains (I tidy round them properly later). Turn again and.... the box is full after around a quarter of the grass it cut. My arms are sore. Inside, I'm praying for rain though I know that would make things worse. The thickness of the weeds/parsley/shamrocks makes the grass look easy.

Note to self - investigate the box of 'Feed and weed' in the shed later.

The box emptied, I start again, passing close to a dandilion with a bee doing his work. He better move because I've just turned at the top and I'm coming for him - he moves just before his flower is decapitated, hovering away from side-to-side, drunk on the nectar and unable to rise more than a few inches above the ground. I turn again and we're onto the stones. Not my stones as much as my neighbour's, but his car has sprayed them off his drive: another salute to a creative architect who gave little thought to maintenance.

I see a brown scampering ball of fluff out of the side of my eye- another neighbour's 'dog' (eight inches of terrier fluff) comes over, licks my foot and is called away. This sets off the rottweiler. I remember my wife's initial "awww, the cute little puppy" around eight months ago - it is now a slabbering beast built like a Shire pony. I restart the lawnmower and it canters away from the fence it has been looking at me through.

The mower goes over something, liberating the stench of the Shire pony. Yuk.

Another neighbour waves - by now I am onto cutting-box 3 of 4 and my arms are killing me. I go round the drains and investigate the feed-and-weed. I am told to first apply it three days before cutting and at least three after cutting. That gives me something to do on Tuesday night. A crow cackles at me and I pack everything away.

Wife comes home. Cycle. Cider. FA Cup. Winning on penalties. Mixed grill for tea. Perfect day.

Who stole our oil tank?

First they  steal the garden - now some fiends  have taken our oil tank!  Look in the previous photo - it should be just in front of the gap between the wall and the fence.
 

Who stole our garden?

Seriously - who did steal our garden.  We arrived home from work to find this:


Okay, the rear end of the yellow digger gives it away.  The guys who are sorting our our garden came a week early.  Oooh, exciting!

Babysitting

The other night we were babysitting Nephew 1 and 2. 2 was easy - he's at the sleep/eat/poo/look around/sleep/eat/poo/look around stage. By the time we arrived (around 7.30), he was sound asleep in bed and going to stay that way till around 6am.

Number 1 (almost 3 years), we were told, would be easy work too. According to his Dad, he would put on his sleepsuit, do a couple of jigsaws and make his way up the stairs.

The jigsaws... 6 Thomas the Tank engine jigsaws. He got them out himself and asked "Sad" (my wife) to help. Sometimes I lifted the wrong piece "Awwww, Duuuuuuck!" and he pretended to slap my hand. When I left the room and came back he called "Stop!", giggled and laughed and then letting me come in. He has a cool sense of humour.

Just before 8, when the jigsaws were done, he put them away himself, pushed past us, up the stairs, climbed head-first into the cot and was almost asleep by the time we caught up. Me creaking on the floorboards an hour later did not stir him.

Such a well-trained child!

Definition of bad luck

Bad luck: Your wife, your girlfriend and your mortgage are all 30 days late, at the same time.

Thanks to BBC R4