This hamster broken
I was out late at a Parish meeting tonight. Not the official Parish Meeting — that’s in May — just a little one where we divvy up chores and gossip.
I suggested a chicken theme for the flower festival. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Just a guess.
So hurrah for the tiny hamster with his widdle weg in a cast, courtesy of a veterinary clinic in Petrozavodsk, Russia. And you guys said Twitter wasn’t good for anything.
February 12, 2019 — 10:23 pm
Comments: 7
There I was, shopping for antiques…
When all of a sudden…GIANT FRENCH STONE LAWN SNAILS! And only £650 each.
I don’t think Uncle B would appreciate the joke. Snails are a scourge upon his horticulture.
If you’d like to see the sort of antiques you can get over here, it’s pretty cool. Even here, there’s a general movement of antiques from East to West. Quite a lot of the stuff we see in Britain comes from France at the moment.
Not my favorite stuff. I like local rustic furniture, appropriate to our local rustic house.
February 7, 2019 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 10
Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’
Go check out the pictures in the article. It’s a real thing, not a practical joke — at least, that’s what Google tells me.
When the wind and snow are just right, it rolls the snow up into big ‘bales’. There are even what look like tire tracks (or, I suppose, tyre tracks) in the wake of the thing (but no footprints). Six of them were spotted in a field in Marlborough yesterday (not far from Stonehenge, woo).
I guess it’s like those big rocks that get pushed around Death Valley.
Can confirm the wind was fierce and strange today. It blew over some stuff at work with an unsettling bang first thing, before I had my coffee.
February 4, 2019 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 12
Horseshoes
Another one from a country show. Farmers hereabouts turn these up all the time, ploughing the fields (a neighbor of ours has an impressive personal collection).
The guy identified the approximate age by the style. Forgive me; I don’t remember. Most of them are Medieval.
The asymmetrical one upper left wasn’t corroded into that shape. It was for a horse with an asymmetrical hoof. So I was told.
Even these people’s garbage is interesting…
August 28, 2018 — 9:01 pm
Comments: 3
The exciting lamb races
All orphan lambs. The farmer said he went out early in the season when there was snow on the ground and found the first two newborns huddled next to their dead mother. Their hooves had frozen to the ground.
They’re okay now, obviously. Thus they were named after characters from Frozen. The one with the O is Olaf.
The winner, best two out of the three, was Gaston. Yes, I know that’s Beauty and the Beast. They ran out of Frozen.
August 23, 2018 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 4
The plain of bones
Ladies and gentlemen, the British Deer Society (I really wanted a BDS t-shirt, for reasons I didn’t care to explain to them).
The sign says something like “for display only — these deer were killed in traffic accidents or died of old age” or something like that.
I have to tell you, though — for an animal advocacy group, they displayed an awful lot of dead bits of their favorite ungulate. Including bits that were for sale.
I offered to buy Uncle B a deer-hoof door handle, but he inexplicably declined…
August 22, 2018 — 10:00 pm
Comments: 13
Worst case of coffee table rings ever
This again. Though we’ve had some rain now in our little corner of Jollye Olde, it’s still pretty dry and droughty everywhere. And we know what that means: 1,500 newly discovered archaeological sites poking out of the dry grass.
The one in the picture puzzles me. The article describes it as “a circle of pits, and later burial mounds and traces of a settlement.” But the circles look too neat and round to be super ancient. And they overlap so much! This was a very busy place over a very long time. For some reason.
‘Retha Franklin has joined the choir eternal. KMM takes the dick. You know what that means: NEW DEADPOOL FRIDAY.
August 15, 2018 — 8:03 pm
Comments: 19
Spooky
This room is in the attic of a Seventeenth Century stately home in North Yorkshire. There’s an old, old legend that a woman called Mad Mary was once locked up in it for life.
In 1839, Charlotte Brontë was working nearby as a governess. She toured the house, heard the legend and BOOM, Jane Eyre.
The staircase (at right) was paneled over in 1880 and the room was lost. It was only rediscovered in 2004 when the current owner began major renovations. They have supposedly left it just as they found it.
Here are a couple of articles about it in the Telegraph and the Independent. The story is several years old, but I only ran across it today and was sure you would love it.
August 14, 2018 — 9:14 pm
Comments: 10
Wheat fire!
This is a thing that is happening this Summer: crop fires. This one was fairly near us, and there was one in Canterbury last week. Probably others; these ones are close enough to make the local news.
I don’t recall this happening in the States. Grass fires, yes. Wheat fires? Not that I recall. No reason why they wouldn’t, I just don’t remember it.
Drusillas is an exotic animal zoo. We’ve never been. It’s stupid money to get in, and the pitch seems aimed at kids.
It doesn’t look like any animals were hurt, though they evacuated the people.
July 25, 2018 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 11
It’s a plane!
Okay, not my picture. I stole it from this Sun article from Armed Forces Day. But that is totally what it looked like.
We were at a village fete, standing in the churchyard, when we heard the most extraordinary noise, and THIS went over. Low and slow.
It’s a Lancaster bomber, and it had an escort of Spitfires. It was spectacular.
Wikipedia tells me there are seventeen of these left and only two airworthy: “Of the 7,377 aircraft built, 3,736 were lost during the War (3,249 in action and 487 in ground accidents). Today 17 remain in complete form, two of which are airworthy, and eight of which are in Canada. Only four of the surviving 17 – KB839, KB882, R5868, and W4783 – flew combat sorties over continental Europe during the War.”
Where we are, the sky was black with these once. This one was flying commemorative events all weekend. We saw it again on Sunday, when we were driving to the cat sanctuary. I managed to whip out my phone and take three pictures of a completely empty sky.
I almost lead with one of those pictures, but I actually like you guys.
July 24, 2018 — 9:18 pm
Comments: 19