Journal Entries
The sloes are ready - or rather, bluey-purple
Posted Aug 25, 2007
It's that time of year again, when I used to go out picking sloes ready to make the sloe gin. There are eye-catching patches of purple with that dusting of what I guess is some sort of yeast - that you see on grapes sometimes. And little pearls of blue and purple are twinkling amongst the bright green leaves. Lovely. When I got home I had a look at the blackthorn growing in my back garden (must have grown from one of the rotten or maggoty ones I rejected from the gin operation years ago) to see if it had any. This year it had half a dozen blossoms for the first time. None of them had survived to fruit though 
. Never mind. Maybe next year. I did notice that the birds have been feasting on all things purple: mainly blackberries and elderberries I guess. The usual boring monochrome poo has been transformed. I suppose they must eat sloes as well - or if not birds then what? Never actually seen a bird eating sloes and sloes are very sour so probably not much energy value - unlike grapes, blackberries, currants, cherries, plums and other fruit they like. A hedgerow full of deep purple sloes does look very fetching. If I had a soul, the sight of those green and purple hedgerows would definitely soothe it.
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Latest reply: Aug 25, 2007
What ever happened to Consumer Durables?
Posted Aug 20, 2007
Is it just me, or has the concept of consumer *durables* disappeared? I can remember my mother having a simple but efficient washing machine (I think it was called a "Goblin") and a thing called a "Flatlie Drier" from before I was born until I was a teenager. Our black and white telly (at least 14 years old) was still working just fine when dad bought our first colour telly - which was still working when I left home. Mum's vacuum cleaner just went on and on for years. Dad fiddled with it occasionally if it misbehaved and restored it to perfect working order. We had the same fridges from the time I was born till I left home. Same with the radio and telephones. Dad only changed cars as a bit of self-indulgence, not because they wore out. On top of that, when something needed fixing, dad could usually sort it out - and if he couldn't, he'd just telephone some bloke who would either come round or tell him to bring it over and it would be back in working order in no time.
Now the things that used to be thought of as durable seem to have faults and obsolescence deliberately built into them. The first sign that you can expect nothing better is when you buy some piece of equipment and are advised by the shop assistant to take out an extended warrantee on it - sometimes costing more than the item itself. I've been caught this way a couple of times (anyone remember Time Computers) with things that seem to go wrong every few days and you can spend days telephoning "help" desks, navigating telephone labyrinths, waiting, listening to "music", holding, eventually speaking to a clueless zombie and being cut off. Or else they send someone out to fix it but you have to stay in all day waiting for the engineer to turn up - which could cost as much as the thing to be repaired in time you've had to take off work. I don't buy those warrantees any more, secure in the knowledge that the thing will probably pack in the day the standard warrantee runs out. Then what? If the fridge, washing machine, telly, DVD player, CD player, digital radio ... go on the blink, should you find someone to come and repair it? No! You throw it away and buy a new one because it's cheaper.
I only mention this because my telly is on the blink and it irks me to have to throw it away and buy a new one that is unlikely to be any more reliable.
So much for recycling.
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Latest reply: Aug 20, 2007
The price of security
Posted Aug 17, 2007
Just managed to drift off to sleep in the early hours of this morning when I was woken by a loud racket. Thought someone's alarm must have gone off. I was right. It was mine. Had it just over 14 years. It was "serviced" once during that time (I put "serviced" in quotes because the man just looked at it and said it was okay). That's how long the battery has lasted. Now the battery is dying.
I came downstairs and keyed in the code and it stopped howling, but a fault led stayed alight on the keypad. Didn't know what else to do so I went back to bed. Couldn't get the image of that red fault led out of my mind. Right again. Twenty minutes after the first din, it went off again. Dogs very worried. One hiding under a chair. Keyed in the code again and it stopped. Stood there glaring at the keypad and wondering if it was worth going back to bed. It went off again. Went through the process of keying in the code about a dozen times with the time between it going off and me keying in the code getting shorter each time. In the end I fished a screwdriver out of a draw, unscrewed the indoor racket-generating-thingy box and ripped it off the wall. Then I unscrewed the box with the control gubbins in to see what more damage I could inflict. There were two likely looking bunches of wires that looked as though I could disconnect them and reconnect them if it proved disastrous. Yanked them out. The bell on "the front elevation" (as the alarm engineers call the front wall of the house) went off. The neighbours must have been blessing me. Reconnected the two bundles of wires quick. Called the alarm company. Now (almost 4pm) I'm at home instead of at work, waiting for the man.
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Latest reply: Aug 17, 2007
Feeding birds and not feeding grey squirrels
Posted Aug 11, 2007
A few years ago my back and front gardens were overrun with grey squirrels. They chased off the birds, destroyed their eggs, evicted their chicks, wrecked their nests, ate their food and damaged my bird feeders. It was all a bit vexing and difficult to know what to do. Apparently, the biggest killer of our garden birds is not predators or disease or cold, but starvation - so I'm determined to feed them, come what may. I'm fond of animals, including grey squirrels but the fact is, just a few (about a dozen) of these little fellows were introduced into Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century and in the 150 or so years since then they've multiplied and spread as efficiently as a rodent with a careful military plan of invasion. It's not their fault that they've driven our sweet-natured little reds to the edges of the country and the edges of extinction. They didn't ask to be kidnapped from Canada or North America where they had other big, burley squirrels (several different species) to compete with and their own predators to keep their population in balance. They didn't plan to out-compete, bully or infect our timorous little red with a disease that they, themselves are immune to. They are far from the only enemy of the indigenous British birds whose numbers are plummeting. Humans, their pesticides, herbicides, cats (another introduced species), buildings, destroyings and alarming population increase are far more to blame. So at the same time I feel angry with the squirrels, as I gather up the damaged bird feeders, or fling open a window to hurl an empty plastic pop bottle (if you just shout at them they take no notice after a while) at them, I also feel angry at the idiots who brought them here - half a dozen pairs with the express purpose of encouraging them to go forth and multiply. And I realise that my anger at the grey squirrels themselves is just a ridiculous, misdirected burst of negative emotion.
The plague of squirrels disappeared almost abruptly about two years ago. Evidently everyone in the neighbourhood was sick of them. I was only annoyed about what was happening to the bird population and my bird feeders but other neighbours were having different problems. Gardeners didn't like the way they dug up their bulbs. House holders with trees and shrubs in close proximity to their roofs didn't like what the squirrels were doing when they gained entry to their lofts. It seems that a concerted effort was made by the gun owning members of the village to eliminate the pestilent critters and they had a 100% success - or near enough. It was a relief not to see any for the next two years - a relief spoiled by a feeling of guilt in my case, at having my wish to see the back of these charming little vandals granted.
I knew they'd be back sooner or later. They didn't spread across almost the whole country in 150 years by not being adventurous travellers. The first one chewed the bottom off one of my front garden peanut feeders about a month ago. I'm back to the squirrel-proof feeders (that aren't very squirrel proof) and holding perch pins in place with elastic bands because otherwise they just work them free and spill the food all over the garden (great for rats). The squirrel-baffle on the bird table no longer works I notice, because a stone garden ornament (a gift that I'm stuck with and is too heavy for me to move) now provides a convenient launch pad for these impressive athletes. I wonder how long it'll be before the beauty of the dawn chorus will be followed or punctuated by the sound of shooting again. Apparently early morning is the best time to shoot squirrels. Ah well, here we go again.
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: Aug 11, 2007
A ramble concerning what a person can or will tolerate
Posted Aug 7, 2007
It occurs to me from time to time, usually when I'm in intolerable pain, that I can't stand any more of this. But then I do stand it - or more accurately, curl up in a tight ball or lie flat as a board not daring to move - because there's no other tolerable choice. In the context of something completely different, I was talking about the unfortunate experimental frog a few days ago. Apparently, a frog, if dropped into hot water, will hop straight out, without hesitation. However if the poor little blighter is placed in cold water that is then slowly heated, it'll just stay there till it boils. People are a bit like that. A person who is physically, mentally and materially well off - or at least not badly off, has some very definite ideas about what they would and wouldn't put up with. I remember being such a person. You might hear such a person say: "I'd rather die than put up with that." or "I'd go to whatever lengths were necessary to avoid this or achieve that." And if something suddenly happens to plunge that person from their blissful state of okayness into some hellish abyss of physical, mental or financial pain, they might well struggle heroically to re-establish their former contentment. Alternatively, calculating that the hole is just too big to climb out of, or the condition can only get worse, they might decide to end it all. However if, like that unhappy frog, they don't perceive the danger until it's too late and their state of body and/or mind have reached the helpless, hopeless stage where they just wait for the water to boil, the idea: "I can't stand any more of this!" becomes meaningless - even though the thought persists in shuddering through their slow, fragmented mind over and over, like a cracked record.
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Latest reply: Aug 7, 2007
Tibley Bobley
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