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Well, that’s horrible

Well, that’s. Hm. Really ugly.

According to the auction listing, it was made in Sussex in the Thirties, not licensed by Disney, and was therefore subject to a vicious patent dispute. Hence, they are rare (£80 – £120 kind of rare).

Where have I seen this nightmare-inducing figure before? Oh, yeah. My blog.

August 31, 2021 — 7:23 pm
Comments: 3

Summer fade

We went to the third of three church fetes today (there were four, we missed one). It’s the last long weekend of the Summer and that’s probably it for the small local happenings. If we’re lucky, there will be a country show or two still.

It was PACKED. We go to this one every year, and there were at least twice as many there as usual. Maybe three times.

To be honest, it was a little too busy. I don’t like crowds at the best of times and this is hardly the best of times.

I saw one mask, Uncle B saw another and he saw a hand sanitizing station. That was it. Other than that, it was 100% the old normal and nobody cared. They’re going to have a hard time if they try another lockdown, I predict.

Do you recognize the illustration? Would you if I revealed the two airborne objects at the right should be green? They were recolored gray in this instance; I doubt the original had any meaning for the Brit who pinched it.

August 30, 2021 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 7

Besties

We went to see my friend with the pet turkey today. This is her with her best friend, a rescue hen. They cuddle. (D’awwww). They’re largely inside pets now.

Yes. I asked. They just wipe it up. Bit of a hippie, this one.

She had a whole flock of rescue chooks at one time, but the fox got most of them. This girl was spared because the other chickens didn’t like her so she was asleep on the porch by herself when tragedy struck.

There’s some kind of life lesson there, but I can’t work it out.

Miz Turkey was amazingly vocal this time. It wasn’t gobbles, either. It was little whistly sounds. She was trying so hard to talk. Then she walked over and got a big beakful of my upper arm and gave it a good shake.

Ah. Hungry.

The lady would maybe like to take one of my four cockerels and I’m tempted, but they do seem to have an awful lot of accidents re: fox. I’d have to live with the fact I sent my boy into the danger zone. Also, these two are so sweet together, I wonder if a loud-ass rooster is really wanted in the mix.

I’ll have a think. Good weekend, everyone!

August 27, 2021 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 5

Bringing in the sheaves

The day they bale the hay always feels strange. I can’t really explain. It’s a cinch a little black and white photo won’t give any sense of it. The color version isn’t much better, either. I need Uncle B’s fancy new lens. Or a drone.

Or 70mm Technicolor!

The actual field is about three times the size of the color pic and the way the bales are dotted along it makes them seem meaningful. Like Stonehenge. The hay, it speaks to me!

They’re baled, not rolled up into those giant rolls, because this was a dwarf wheat crop. I don’t think the stalks are long enough to roll. You can see a few unharvested ears left in front. Didn’t even come to my knee.

Harvest service this Sunday. Here comes Fall!

August 26, 2021 — 7:23 pm
Comments: 13

I have visitation rights

In May of 2019, I bought £50 worth of Bitcoin for a lark. I flirted with the idea of throwing another £5 in every month, but then all my photo ID expired and Coinbase won’t let me play any more.

I must fix that. It’s probably not legal for an immigrant to be without valid ID.

Anyway, they let me visit my money – they’d even let me take it out, if I wanted – but they won’t let me buy any more. That’s made this account the perfect way to make sense of the ups and downs of BTC.

I check in on it every once in a while, when there’s been something in the news about crypto. That there is the real number earlier today – £404.31. Although shortly after it lost £2 then made £1.80 back again. That’s all from my initial £50 (though I think I did earn a few pounds taking surveys or watching videos).

Puts it in an interesting perspective, don’t it?

August 25, 2021 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 4

This creepy-ass fox

Welp, I’ve gone back to Skyrim. I was largely inspired by watching this lady play.

Note to self: if you thought you could stream games and your gimmick would be “old lady plays games”, you’re late again.

I like watching her because she doesn’t necessarily play the game the way she’s “supposed” to. If she can’t find out why that man wants her to assassinate his wife, she is by-god not going to do it. And she interacts with NPCs like she’s playing with Barbies. It’s a hoot.

Make your own game is a thing you can do in open world games. There’s a man who plays Far Cry 5, which is set in current day rural Montana. He doesn’t care about the storyline at all, he just wants to go into the woods and shoot bears. With a handgun. That’s the game he wants to play.

Anyway, main stories like to make you do things that are uncomfortable. I don’t know why game designers are like this. No, Skyrim, I don’t particularly want to be co-opted by a cannibal cult. No, I don’t want to crush a political figure to death on her wedding day, while she’s giving a speech to her guests.

And no, I most definitely do not want to beat a priest to death over and over (a minor godling revives him for the purpose) for the sin of treating victims of the plague. Even if I get a really good mace for it.

My first time through Skyrim, I realized I was doing fewer quests and spending more time in the wilderness to hunting, then back to the city to sell my stuff and buy more arrows. Basically, I had a job. But it was a really fun job.

There are 273 scripted quests in the game. But there are 343 locations big enough for a map icon (and about the same number too small for an icon). You can just walk around and mess with things, forever.

August 24, 2021 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 6

He’s outdone himself this year!

Uncle B is the gardener (my mother used to say I have a purple thumb – every plant I touch dies). This year’s back flower border is especially superb. Everything the right height, all in bloom at once, lovely harmonious colors.

No, of course I’m not going to ask you to judge by that manky black-and-white snippet. Here it is in color.

Picture shows about half of it and doesn’t do it any kind of justice, though. So much so, he went out and bought hisself a wide-angle lens to capture it the lot Sadly, by the time it came, things were going over a bit.

August 23, 2021 — 5:49 pm
Comments: 12

And at the other end…

Check out Albert’s spurs. This is the weapon roosters use to kill each other in the ring, though they are sometimes equipped with wicked metal cockspurs to increase the damage.

He can do plenty of damage without. The tactic is to leap in the air and come down spur first on your opponent’s vulnerable bits. Shins, in my case. He can actually poke bleeding holes in my flesh right through jeans (somehow, mysteriously, without poking holes in the jeans themselves). If he catches a joint, he can cripple me for a day.

Two of my other boys also try this gambit, but they’re such fuzzy lightweights it’s merely amusing.

That leaves the blessed Mo, who has never been aggressive. The girls love him and he leads them all around the garden. Wot a rooster is Mo!

I never go out there now without a walking stick that I keep between Albert and me at all times. He almost never gets past my guard now.

God, aren’t Poland legs ugly?

Good weekend, everyone!

August 20, 2021 — 7:29 pm
Comments: 10

My chicken is purple

I don’t know if the Ivermectin is helping Albert or not, but I noticed a couple of days ago that the bald spot was bleeding. Chickens will do that. Even though he’s a strapping big brute, it’s not out of the ordinary for a fellow chicken to sneak up behind him and have an experimental peck on an odd patch of skin.

And once blood is drawn…chickens are absolute piranha with a bleeding chicken. That’s when chicken keepers pull out what we call ‘purple anti-pecking spray’. I bet you’ve guessed what that is already.

Gentian violet.

It acts as a disinfectant and the purple color isn’t nearly as attractive to chickens. Holy hell it goes everywhere, though. And, of course, indelibly stains anything it touches.

When I was a kid, it was seen as a last-ditch treatment for poison ivy. My brother, who was terribly terribly allergic, spent most of his Summers with purple legs.

When my mother was in nursing school, one of the med students was getting married. They chased him down, stripped him and barber-striped his penis. (His fellow male med students, not the nurses).

If that story is apocryphal and every med student knows it, please don’t tell me. I like it too much.

Oh. Right. Purple chicken. Sorry for focus. Albert is never still.

August 19, 2021 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 13

There’s a fungus among us

This idyllic forest scene is brought to you by…the wastewater pipe in the downstairs bathroom? Yeesh.

This is the room we lovingly refer to as the Tudor crapper. Sometimes, living in a 500 year old house has its disadvantages.

August 18, 2021 — 7:45 pm
Comments: 4