Journal Entries
Another journal thing, BBCish orientated.
Posted Jan 26, 2011
This journal might not make a lot of sense because I'm aware I'm pretty unwell, and people are telling me I'm not making much sense.
But it helps to post here because I love h2g2.
But it's occurring to me that it really is finally end of Empire. It's embarassing to realise how upset I am about it. But its good to be honest. BBC World Service is to be castrated.
Thank god I found this version of Land of Hope and Glory on YouTube. Of course its sung on the BBC last night of the Proms. I love the BBC proms, wonderfully filmed and of course there's ace music.
There's this north American guy, dunno if he's a Yank or Canadian, conducting it, and he totally gets that this is a nation built on tea, because he says that just before the encore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpEWpK_Dl7M&feature=related
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Latest reply: Jan 26, 2011
I'm more distraught...
Posted Jan 24, 2011
I'm more distraught than I can possibly express about the end of BBC hootoo. It's so symbolic about the end of something cultural.
When the whole pathetic fanfare of new hootoo was announced..I posted,
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, [emphasis added]
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
(It kind of helps me to keep reading that..)
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Latest reply: Jan 24, 2011
posting test in new H2G2 journal
Posted Jan 23, 2011
Well anyway it didn't work from my POV.
Did anyone else catch it?
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Jan 23, 2011
A proper French Oyster knife
Posted Oct 9, 2010
Someone has sent me a proper oyster knife. It's French and very solid, the real McCoy. I eat Oysters very occasionally. They sell them in the fish mongers up the road. 1/2 dozen are about £3..so not too expensive for a meal with bread and a bit of salad.
Have just popped up there for 1/2 dozen..along with a couple of lemons. Am also making a nice hot chilli thing with my homegrown ones to splash on them with the lemon squeeze.
I'm so looking forward to opening them, oyster chucking I think its called, with this knife, rather than pliers and some old bendy knife I've done previously, in all the wrong way. And I always seem to cut my fingers. Have looked on YouTube as to how to do it with the proper knife; cutting through the hinge and twisting.
It's amazing the amount of oyster shells you see on the embankment of the Thames at low tide..apparently in Victorian times they were the food of the poor, so I imagine many of those shells are from those days, because you can also find plenty of willow pattern fragments and some clay pipe fragments from those days..
So its a Dickensian tea for me, thanks to my lovely French oyster knife. 
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Latest reply: Oct 9, 2010
Manic sparrows
Posted Aug 12, 2010
I spent most of today digging up the couch grass areas in my garden ready for next year's attempt at a grass/wild flower meadow; I'd already zapped it from outer space a few weeks ago with glycophosphate. I wanted to remove the dead root remains..and that which even resists nuking from space 
. It'll mean I'll dig out any stuff sprouting between now and next March and the winter rains should leach out nutrients from the soil, and I'll rake off any autumn leaves. The secret of creating a traditonal meadow is soil with low nutrients and next year I'll need to repeatedly mow/cut it to mimic grazing.
Anyhow I sat outside for a while admiring my hard work, and was amazed at what I saw of the sparrow behaviour. There's now a flock of around 20 living in the hedge on the left. They kept zooming down to the pond en masse, drinking and bathing; zooming over to the freshly dug soil for hysterical dust baths, interspersed with flocking back to the hedge, every time a plane went over, (they think it's a sparrow hawk 
)...but then suddenly they descended on my desperate to flower, chilli pepper plants in pots, and attacked the leaves, pecking at the leaves crazily it was like something out of Hitchcock's The Birds or the description of the attacking birds in Suddenly Lst Summer.
Their high spirits were brought abruptly to an end when a real Sparrow Hawk descended Really though, sparrows are the funniest things. All that squabbling, shreiking, flying and pecking. But I do love them 
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Latest reply: Aug 12, 2010
Effers;England.
Researcher U1508701
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