Important sheep update
Sorry for the crappy cellphone pic, but you’re looking at something extremely rare. One of our neighbors woke up to a newborn lamb in September. I asked him how often that happens. “It never happens,” he said.
That’s not, obviously, because sheep are biologically incapable of reproducing at other times of year. It’s because farmers carefully control when rams have access to ewes, so the lambs all come at the same time. In fact, the gentlemen are out doing their duty at this moment.
Rule of thumb, in case you ever need to know: one ram for 50 ewes. Any more than that and the rams fight. Any fewer than that and some ladies get left out. How the rams keep track is anyone’s guess.
Sheep are moved by truck from field to field over the year, everybody in together. So there’s your answer – one of the ewes that didn’t ‘take’ in the Fall got a second chance in the Spring, bumping along in the back of a transport lorry.
I hope they keep this little girl.
Oh, also, we’ve had our first Satanic ritual sheep killing. At least, that’s what the police think. At least, I guess it’s the first.
One of our other neighbors found a ewe in the field, decapitated. Head missing — cleanly removed with one stroke — body (you know, the part that’s worth money) still there. No blood.
Of course, that’s the neighbor with badger troubles.
<shrug>
November 23, 2011 — 11:37 pm
Comments: 20
Hey, how about a tall, frosty glass of…
What the hell…?
Angina?
Mangina?
Well, actually, it’s Orangina (and very nice it is, too), but I have to stop and remember that whenever I open the fridge.
Wednesday is Life Drawing class, so I’ve been spending the last few hours staring at a naked lady. The model was a couple of minutes late, and she swept in with a little old blue-haired lady in tow.
“I have my mother with me tonight. She can just sit in the back, if that’s okay.”
The whole class froze. The embarrassment threshold of British people is generally set somewhere well below sea level. Then a little voice to my right piped, “I’m just going down the pub. See you in a couple of hours!”
November 16, 2011 — 11:23 pm
Comments: 37
When smart people go stupid
Okay, so why are the individual nations of Europe hanging onto the EU with white knuckles, throwing the last of their money down this dry hole? Two things underpin it, one sensible and one not.
They are absolutely terrified of another war. The last war still looms over everything here, fresh and vivid and awful in the minds of pretty much anyone old enough to be in government (all of them, when the EU was being cobbled together).
The not-so-sensible thing? A huge number of those people are convinced that what caused both World Wars was nationalism, by which they mean what an American would call patriotism. They are so sure of this, it’s not even an argument; it’s simply obvious to everyone.
They are horrified when Americans chant “USA! USA!” at sporting events. At best, it’s an appalling Neanderthal faux pas (much as if we were screaming racial slurs). At worst, ZOMG! ZOMG! Shut up with the nationalism, you’re going to get us all killed already!
Seriously. They think they can (and must) break people of being tribal. They think they can unite them all behind the United States of Vague Geographic Proximity. The pictures on Euro banknotes are of generic landmarks that don’t actually exist.
This is why Angela Merkel can survey the break up of European project and casually observe that peace cannot be taken for granted. It’s a perfectly sensible remark to her and her kind. This isn’t an economic union to them, it’s survival.
In reality, the technocrats of the EU have not banished human nature. You won’t stop a Brit poking fun at a Frenchman, or a German looking down his nose at a Greek. People who speak different languages, worship in different churches and have been raiding each other’s stuff since the Ice Age will not willingly pull together in harness for long.
Unless maybe aliens land and start shooting up the place.
November 15, 2011 — 10:55 pm
Comments: 50
Boo!
Okay, okay…Ray Villafane, I ain’t. But I couldn’t find my modeling tools. Also, I suck at pumpkin carving.
Hallowe’en wasn’t a thing here when Uncle B were a lad. It is now. Not a huge thing, but a very definite holiday, much in the style of the American version.
If I had to guess, I’d point a finger at retailers, yearning after that sweet candy-and-costume money. Older Brits mill about confusedly at Hallowe’en, muttering questions.
Is there any special food we eat on the 31st? Do we send cards? Is there a greeting? They worry about these things.
Happy All Hallows, anyhoo! Our clocks changed already, so we’re a bit out of synch tonight. Oh, and…BEAK-BEAK-BUTT-BUTT. Pass it on.
October 31, 2011 — 11:29 pm
Comments: 21
aiiiiiiii! Saber tooth Bambi
I cannot beLIEVE the Daily Mail would do a feature on highway strikes by muntjac deer without mentioning the lurid fact that these adorable critters HAVE GINORMOUS HORRIBLE SLAVERING FANGS. Well, the males do.
Seriously, are there any other herbivores with huge pointy canines? I mean, other than that other Chinese deer with the pointy teeth? It’s a male aggression thing, like horns. I mean, they don’t roam the countryside tearing the throats out of unsuspecting hikers.
Muntjacs are an import. They got away from a wildlife park in 1925 and, like so many accidental imports, they’re loving the temperate climate of England. Multiplying like bunnies (which are also imports, by the way).
Also, Wikipedia tells me “The Indian Muntjac is the mammal with the lowest recorded chromosome number: The male has a diploid number of 7, the female only 6 chromosomes.”
Okay, I just threw that last bit in to get Oceania’s motor running.
October 18, 2011 — 11:23 pm
Comments: 41
Oh, now, REALLY
Welp, there it is, folks. The final, definitive, can’t-argue-with-that, nail-in-the-coffin proof that crop circles are the work of a vastly superior alien intelligence.
That there is a crop circle of a classic bug-eyed alien smoking a pipe. And it’s not even a hookah or a bong or something interesting. No, it looks like a boring drugstore briar pipe made for Ward Cleaver to toke up some vanilla Borkum Riff.
Honestly, what more proof do you need — likenesses of the Three Stooges miraculously tramped into the winter wheat overnight?
The circle appeared in Cherhill this Summer, under the White Horse (don’t bother looking for the crop circle on the map, though — it’s too new. Though if you pan around, you might find some other interesting features. Wiltshire is a very spooky place).
The White Horse, by the way, was cut into the hillside in 1780 by Dr Christopher Alsop (“the mad doctor”), who stood at the foot of Labour-in-Vain Hill shouting orders through a megaphone. The horse may have been inspired by his friend George Stubbs, an 18th C artist who somehow got famous painting really freaky-looking horses.
Yep. I’ve caught the Crazy Train for Crazy Town, for sure.
September 29, 2011 — 9:07 pm
Comments: 30
Homeless movie star fetches up in East Sussex
Available for adoption: um, this dog.
Starred in The Prisoner of Azkaban (a film I saw but totally do not recall) as Gary Oldman’s fursona. He also did some TV shows in the UK. Now he’s too old to work and his stuntman owner travels too much to take care of him.
Personally, I think that’s pretty shitty. If you take on a dog — working dog or pet — you have a life-long obligation.
On the other hand, maybe he comes with a nice little nest-egg from his Hollywood days and they’re afraid to say so for fear of drawing the wrong kind of applicants.
Anyhow, free dog!
What? Oh, not us. We’re confirmed cat people.
In the Sylvester’s Granny sense, not the Nastassia Kinski sense.
September 28, 2011 — 9:59 pm
Comments: 13
Fork, you say?
So, Uncle B has a birthday coming up, and the only thing he could think he wanted was…a really good fork?
Yes, I am QUITE sure I didn’t mis-hear him.
We made the rounds of the local garden centers (or gardne centres, if you prefer), but nothing impressed. Finally, we were standing, staring at the forks in a local hardware shop (dear twelve-year-old me: you are not going to beLIEVE…) when a little man sidled up and whispered these aren’t the forks you’re looking for.
All the modern ones, he told us, are rubbish. The stainless steel ones are made in China and brittle. The British ones aren’t finished right. What we really needed to do, he said, was check out the refurbished tools at this one particular local antique store, for whom he happens to refurbish tools.
So we did that.
Hoo! I cannot tell you how lovely these old things were. Are. We bought a fork and a spade. Heavy. Wickedly sharp. Great slabs of oak handles polished by who knows how many man hours of human hands, doing work. For about what we would have paid for modern rubbish.
Oh. Yeah. I was going to post about the Obama team’s inability to find Colorado on the map, but my max graphic size isn’t enough to do funny state names justice. Also, I couldn’t think of any.
September 27, 2011 — 8:37 pm
Comments: 34
Satan’s early warning chicken
Still feel like crap. The way my colds go, I feel awful at the beginning but don’t sound bad, and when I start to sound hacky and snotty, I’m actually feeling a lot better. So never with the sympathy when I need it.
Anyhow, I forgot to tell you…yesterday, mid-morning, Mapp started to alarm call. This is the sound they make when there’s a fox or a cat or a tractor or other threat they’re pretty sure they can take on. You know, the bok-bok-bok-be-GAAAAK bok-bok.
She doesn’t usually do that. She’s the quietest of the four. But she kept at it, and suddenly…there was a knock at the door.
Muffled voice: is this house really four hundred years old?
Uncle B: Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Muffled voice: muffled response.
-=SLAM=-
Yeah, British JW’s! Who knew? There are quite a lot out here, and they’ll come right into your back garden (that’s a really severe British no-no) and everything. I couldn’t think of a less British idea than sending religious missionaries out to challenge a Limey’s private space, but they do.
From what I’m told, the Church of England is a little snooty and high church for some, so out in the country there are flourishing colonies of JW’s and Strict and Particular Baptists and whatnot.
Anyhow, we got us an Early Warning Chicken!
September 15, 2011 — 8:14 pm
Comments: 36
The fat lady, singing
Saturday night was the last night of the Proms AKA Mr Robert Newman’s Promenade Concerts AKA The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC AKA The BBC Proms.
In 1895, Robert Newman, manager of the Queen’s Hall in London, decided he would sucker the general public into liking highbrow music by offering a series of cheap but excellent concerts, starting with popular music and getting snootier by the day. One of those worthy Victorian deals.
Together with a conductor named Henry Wood, he put together a whole season’s worth of music (a shilling – 5p – for a single concert or £1.05 for the lot). There were Wagner nights and Beethoven nights and new music and young performers. People were allowed to eat and drink and smoke and mill around. It was an altogether superb idea, and it stuck.
Today’s Proms are eight weeks long (70 concerts this year!) and are held in the Royal Albert Hall (and on television, of course). They still feature new works and young performers (Wagner, not so much) and it’s still pretty informal.
At least, the last night was. That’s the bit everyone watches. The lefties have been trying to stick a sock in the last night of the Proms since forever, but they haven’t kilt it yet. They end the whole thing by dressing stupid and waving flags and blowing horns and singing patriotic songs and letting off fireworks. I mean, the audience, too.
This lady (here she is swinging an axe for some reason) led the crowd in Rule Brittania. And there was God Save the Queen and Land of Hope and Glory (we know that one as Pomp and Circumstance) and Jerusalem (Blake’s schitzy vision of Jesus walking around England).
Not just in the packed Albert Hall, but there was a crowd of something like 300,000 crammed into Hyde Park listening in, too. It did me a world of good to see all those happy, pasty faces waving flags and singing their little Limey hearts out.
September 12, 2011 — 9:30 pm
Comments: 34