h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yeah, I'm still here. Covered with paint and cobwebs, and kneeling on the floorboards in the attic in order to reach the keyboard, but still alive

Sea Bean Cottage has been giving me its usual runaround; there's actually nothing wrong with the internet connection, just the decor. A nice man from Manx Gas came to have a look at my boiler, jetted a large quantity of grimy water all over the floor, remarked that it wasn't supposed to do that, and disappeared after advising me to get the boiler replaced as soon as possible. (Well, *duh*)

One exciting thing, though: I now have a table. It's a nice, solid oak one from a second hand shop a few doors away, bought for a snip and now occupying most of the ground floor. This is something of an epiphany: I've never actually had a table since I left home. The boat didn't have one, as such, the caravan didn't, I never got round to getting one in my last house, I just used to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and use the next step up as a table/work surface. The untold freedom of work space has gone to my head, and I spent most of the weekend, not rearranging the damp furniture and rescuing the computer, as I should have done, but spreading out loads of books and papers on the table. Not to read, you understand: just because I could!

My mistletoe berries from Cambridge have now been planted on my colleague's garden apple trees. She inspects them regularly for signs of growth despite my pointing out that they could take two or more years to germinate...

My you paint a pretty picture.
A table of your very own!
I know the feeling. My partner and I have travelled around the country a fair bit, and only started accumulating posessions a couple of years ago. Due t a shortage of work, I had to do some temping, and spent a day with a removal company. We were getting rid of the desks from an IT firm, and they wanted us to dump them all.
We kept a few aside, found homes for others, and I managed to talk the guy I was working with into delivering a desk and a table to my house, which he obligingly did. The 'puter is sitting on it now. It looks like it belongs on the Death Star. I love it. Lots.
Frogbit.
ps, why is your keyboard in the attic?

Because the computer is in the attic

just braved the howling gale this afternoon (after all, when isn't it blowing a gale in this place?) to have a walk along the cliffs at Maughold. Went through the churchyard and admired the ancient Celtic stone crosses. Most are over a thousand years old, but the knotwork patterns are in remarkably good order. Some Norse stuff (Loki lurking) and some Goidelic (inc. some rather worn Ogham script). The finest are in the Manx Museum, unfortunately, and not all on display. Even so, they're impressive. What would their architects think of the morass of celtic paraphernalia which now adorns so many websites, some of which use patterns copied from those same stones?

oooh, who knows?
Probably cobblers. Hard to tell.
I (used to) carve Celtic and Pictish designs into sandstone and beerstone (much preferable). Most of the modern takes on this kind of thing are based on the Victorian, romantic, views of what our cousins were up to. The poets of the day were fascinated by the more etheric connotations of this period, and harked (harped?) on about the glorious this and the glorious that of an age which was primarilly concerned with bashing people. Yeates was concerned with bringing forth the artistic (undeniably) attributes of these chaps, whilst pushing forth a modern day rebellion against the English. Deserve it or not, it was still fighting talk.
Can we reduce this artistry to a conflict which essentially promoted the bashing of skulls? Probably. A lot of bronze age archaeological evidence pointed towards bloody conflict, so why would it be different in the iron age?
There's a place near me, Mere, on the Somerset Levels, where evidence of Iron Age lake villages was abundant. They weren't the stilted villages found in Iron Age Switzerland, but little villages founded on foundations of split logs puched down into a peaty bog.
Given the #heritage' of the area, they were automatically associated with Arthur and his clan - a veritable Camelot on the lakes of Avolonia (apple land?)
But when you think of everyday life in a marsh, it must have smelled bad, slow running water, sewarge and fish guts - a long way from the court of King Arthur. There's loads of dry land a (long) stone's throw away from the district that could have been settled. The home-steads were either seasonal, for the fishing, or the inhabitants were there because they were unwelcome elsewhere - brigands.
Modern day interpretations on such long-gone sites is futile.
If you read my Glastonbury entry on the subject you will find that 'pyramids' covered in Ogham script were arrayed in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey, but destroyed by Henry's men in the reformation. It seems they were objects of confusion 400 years ago - a good 400 years since the last was built - what chance do we stand of precise interpretation now?
Wow. This red is good. Yours,
Frogbit (also a Henry).

The point of that was when you start carving this stuff, you can't stop. Maybe that's all they were up to.
Went on a fossil hunt the other day. Found loads of irridescent ammonites, too large to shift. Got one 12" bu 10" slate, which, when split open, revealed about a hundred small ammonites. Am in the process of cleaning it up - will post the url of my fossil site soon. Braved cold winds, and discovered a long stretch of cliff composed entirely on alabaster. A lot of this cliff had fallen down onto the beach, spraying it with orange, white and red alabaster shards. People had been down there with pneumatic tools to break up the ammonite beds. Sad. Will not tell anyone where this site is, except perhaps you, if you e-mail from the address on my userspace.
LOL,
Frogbit.
Ps, returned home tonight to hear what I thought was an old man expiring in my garden. Went down with a torch to find the pond brimming with frogs in full mating call. Dressed in my raincoat, carrying a torch, spotted a frog trying to enter the water with another attached to its back - bit early isnt it? Let me know your thoughts.
Again, good red, and goodnight.
Sleep well,
Frogbit.

Hmm. Just had an email from the mod squad informing me that my personal H2G2 space has been "switched off" - due in this case to a broken URL. Whilst it's useful to know that a link is no longer any use, I do check these fairly regularly, and it's slightly creepy to get a message at home informing me that my page has been "seen to". Akin to coming home and finding that someone's corrected the spelling mistakes in my diary (well, not quite as bad as that). I've edited the offending link, and my "Little Green Island in Cyberspace" has mysteriously reappeared. (You've got to admire this software)

Sounds as though you've been carving winestone.
I used to live in South Wales, and still have one or two nice ammonites picked up from the beach, tastefully framed in grey stone. One of my neighbours had one the size of a cartwheel in her garden - slightly cracked, but much envied nonetheless. A good ammonite site is quite a find. Fair game, though, unfortunately. NB Whilst at Maughold I saw someone using a metal detector on the hillside; he was wearing a fluorescent jacket and may have been from Manx National Heritage, doing some research, but I doubt it. I shall have to do the nosy neighbour thing and mention it to MNH tomorrow, I think...

Out in your raincoat, hoping to catch a glimpse of frogs "at it" eh? What would the neighbours say.
No, it's not too early for the frogbonking season - usually from Feb through March, but occasionally in January. They run a bit of a risk at this time of year, and have possibly been fooled by the sharp weather followed by a longish mild spell. Might be worth checking for toads as well (the latter absent from the IoM, unfortunately: we have to eat our own garden pests). Toads usually breed a couple of weeks after frogs, though.

If you hear a sound in your garden which sounds like two asthmatic octogenarians *in flagrante delicto*, then congratulation: you also have breeding hedgehogs. (Or very well-preserved neighbours)

The frogs have really been going for it this last week. Writhing around in bundles, or just in pairsm the water fair seeths with passion. Apart from a single toad who just hangs in the water, like someone who's turned up at a party and is the only one in fancy dress.
Tonight though, something's changed. They're all sitting around the pond, out of the water, croaking in at it.
Spawn appeared yesterday, but only one glob.

Whoa. The weeks are going alarmingly fast at the moment. I blame work. Also the rabid weather conditions: outrageously high waves, millions of squids worth of damage, force 11 gales, boulders and seaweed everywhere. Half Peel turned out to watch the massive waves breaking against the castle walls last Friday. I have been most impressed by the choughs that peck around on the nearby hill. Their ability to fly in a howling, eddying gale is almost supernatural. They have very finely-fingered wings that look as if the wind would tear them apart; but instead they manage to pin themselves to their place in the air without any sign of effort. Amazing.

More jet-setting: off to Bristol tomorrow for a computer mapping course. The first of my allowance of two bits of training per year (I still can't get used to this: in my previous jobs I don't think I got two training courses in 10 years...)

Hope your place hasn't suffered any wind-damage or flooding. Ironically, given the horrible sewage flooding of last year, Sea Bean Cottage, and Peel prom in general, haven't actually been flooded in the recent torrents. Which just goes to prove that dodgy street plumbing, not bad weather conditions, was to blame...

This still hotly denied by the contractors, of course.

Ecotype!
I'm so behind with correspondance I've run out of excuses. OK, just for you...
Ok well, I'll just tell the truth. I've had an Aunt burried, and a favourite dog friend pass away. Now Spike Milligan's joined in.

The storms sound fantastic. I've been walking around with that image in my head, desperately trying to work out where it came from. Now I know. Any pics?

Choughs? It's just you and Cornwall now isn't it?

As far as flooding goes, the Levels have been pretty lucky this year. We haven't had the endless days of rain that characterised the closing days of 2000.

Masses of spawn in the pond. Gave a bucket to Mum and Dad to take back to the pond I built for them in Sussex. Re-lined it last summer - a terrible job. Iris roots had colonised the sides, shrinking the pond over the 8 years since it was first dug. This fooloed me as to the scope of the job. By the time I'd dig out to the liner the pond was a lot bigger than I remembered. When I measured the hole for re-lining it was 14ft by 7.
When I dug the hole originally, I used the spoil to build a hillock at one end, turfing it with the sod from the hole. It's about 3 feet high - my parents garden opens onto the Sussex Downs with a view of the Long Man of Wilmington (if you look really hard), so it makes a neat observation platform. I dug another pond into one side, at a higher level from the first. The big pond duly had fish dumped in it, while the smaller one was kept 'au naturelle'. Well I say pond, it was actually a hip-bath. But when I re-lined the big one, I put the water from the bath into it (to give it a kick start)and got rid of the bath - lining the hole with plastic instead. When I turned the sludge out of the bottom of the bath, I did so under a running hose-pipe so I could rescue the hordes of dragonfly larva and the odd welcome newt.
When we'd filled the pond, we transfered some of the larger pond water over to try and help that one along as well.
Anyway - the Somerset spawn is in there now, so hopefully they'll have frogs from now on.
Rambling now.
Frogbit.

Hi - I've been more or less offline for a couple of weeks, after a more than usually hectic patch of work (hence no sneaky H2ing) and patchy access at home. As usual I got plenty of stuff done, including some much needed house things. I am now the proud owner of a food cupboard! Prior to this epiphany everything was stored in a large plastic crate. I've been happily opening and shutting the cupboard door (rather like Eeyore happily lifting the balloon into and out of the jar). Whoops - lit reference, sorry.

I've been whiling away my hard-earned overtime dosh by investing in some fantastic organic essential oils. They are a real revelation: I now say: Accept no substitutes. The freshness of the scent, just as refreshing as sniffing the freshly-crushed herb or perfect flower. I'm impressed.

Other recent adventures included hosing the sand off my bicycle and attempting to ride it along the wind-blasted, impossibly steep Manx roads. Conclusion: I'm flabby

Sorry to hear about your losses. Some winters are just like that: they make you wonder what's coming next. In my case, that would be last winter. It started with the loss of my faithful and long-suffering German Shepherd bitch; this turned out to be a warm-up exercise for a steady stream of unpleasant news. Hope things improve for you...

I made an astonishing discovery whilst peering into what passes for a pond in my yard, to try and ascertain whether anything was still alive in there. A tiny little fish was present, quite lively and apparently healthy. I can only assume that it is a surviving offspring from the four tiny white cloud mountain minnows that I put there last summer in order to catch some rays (and munch mosquito larvae). They were removed before it got too cold; but I guess their legacy lives on... They like temperate water; not truly tropical, but not too cold either. I'm amazed a tiny minnow is actually alive in there after this winter.

Both my cats have cottoned on to the fact that I can see something of interest in the pond tub; I don't think they can actually see very far into the water, but every time I go to check on the little fish, they solemnly follow me out and peer into the water beside me. Copycats.

So, is Spawncam up and running then?

Will write more later, but for the mo...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/360/360/A687684

Thanks for drawing my attention to this. Everyone's horrible to the BBC but I'm pleased that they can still be persuaded to shell out for this kind of thing. There are all sorts of interesting corners of the BBC websites that are really worthwhile.

I'm staying in today: gale force blizzard this morning, then a sunny lunchtime, now marble-sized hailstones that sound as if they're about to crack the windows. My plants in the yard have been battered to a container shrub version of pesto.

Hi Ecotype.
I have no problem with the BBC funding H2G2 or 360 or any website. I'm glad my license fee is being spent on something worthwhile. 360 looks great, but is somewhat empty - I think it's just me and Vogonpoet there at the moment - I feel like a goose honking disconsolately into the fog.
Weather sounds great, as long as you can stay in, or have a fire to return to. What's the pesto like?

(*recovering from spending nearly all Sunday at work*)
What's happening to time this year? Why is it suddenly going miles faster than it usually does?

The impromptu organic pesto is just fine, thanks, if a little gritty.

Latest thrill: just booked flight to Finland, to stay with my aunt & uncle who are promising a trip to Lapland. Other relatives who have been there (I've been wanting to for years but couldn't afford it) have informed me that, if I miss the return plane, I could always hitch a ride on one of the mosquitos. But I shall not be put off!

"Latest thrill"? Lets clarify that: only thrill for a considerable period of time.

Have you been yet?

Nope: it's booked for July. My only excitement in the interim was a trip to the Natural History Museum last week (not good timing for a trip to London unfortunately). The Earth Galleries are still good for a look round, and the Ecology exhibition thingy was fun. Also I noticed that they hadn't made the technical mistakes that basic ecology education often does. But then I'd expect the NHM to get it right: their plant experts are pretty much the best, after all. Can't vouch for the geology accuracy, but the presentation was good.

All my time and fretting power taken up with a planning appeal just recently, but I'm re-emerging now that this is dealt with. Busy year...