Do you know why the Brits talk about the weather so much?
Because their weather is fucking psychotic, that’s why.
I was minding my own business, weeding the driveway (my driveway is BRICK! Hahaha! But it hasn’t been weeded in a thousand years). It was sunny, warm, if a bit windy.
And then this spooky bastard blew up, pelted me with hail for five minutes, and flew off again.
I was like, “WTF?! Did anybody get the number on that bus?”
Then it was sunny again. Stupid England.
Happy Friday, everyone! (Yeah, funny that. Even when you’re unemployed, it matters).
March 27, 2009 — 8:47 pm
Comments: 41
Voyez le musée de papier hygiénique!
Uncle B is kind of a hoarder. Not the pathological kind of a hoarder, thank goodness, but…let’s just say we have sufficient canned beans to qualify as Mormons in good standing.
He says he got the acquisitional bug in the Seventies, when Britain lived through a series of strikes and Soviet-Union-style goods shortages. The kind of deal where he’d call friends and say, “ZOMG, there’s sugar in the market on my corner!” and everybody would swarm over and buy them out.
This is before the Blessed Saint Margaret of Conservative Principles rode into town and started kicking socialist butt, obviously.
Anyhow. Dude is stuck on buy.
Toilet paper is a particularly desirable inventory item. Lots and lots of toilet paper. I have to admit, he goes through it at a great clip. I’m pretty sure he goes into the loo in the morning, constructs a warm, soft nest, curls up for a nap and then flushes the lot away. This scenario meets the known facts exceptionally well.
Even after we moved and I discovered the hidden Federal Reserve of TP, I couldn’t convince him enough was snuff. So I took all the rolls out of the pantry and arranged them on the handy display shelf in the back bathroom. Why the hell there’s a shelf near the ceiling of the back bathroom, it doesn’t bear thinking of, but it worked. Beholdening his great stocks of fluffy non-wovens turned off the toilet-paper-buying machinery at last.
Mostly.
So today we have this exchange:
UB: “You know, we actually need to buy more toilet paper soon.”
SW: “You just bought a twelve pack two days ago! I couldn’t fit it on the shelf.”
UB: “Oh, that doesn’t count.”
I see. It has now become a shelf-stocking exercise.
Sometimes weasels are too damn clever for their own good.
March 19, 2009 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 29
feeling faint…haven’t…eaten in…many many…minutes…
Had my first experience of the NHS last week. I brought some blood pressure meds from the States, but I knew I’d have to dive into socialized medicine when that ran low.
I am happy to report that they did not lower my blood pressure by hacking off one of my limbs with a rusty circular saw. Staff was professional and polite; appointment was timely. In fact, my experience so far has been indistinguishable from America-with-corporate-health-insurance (including having to pony up a co-pay on my meds).
For the record, I believe the US had the most sensible public medical scheme in the world…thirty years ago. Do you remember what we did before the invention of the HMO? We paid for the small stuff ourselves, out of pocket, and bought relatively inexpensive catastrophic health insurance for in case we did something extravagant like step in front of a bus. Best cost/services trade off ever devised.
I voluntarily went back to that old system for a while, maybe fifteen years ago. Several big HMO’s in a row went bust on me and I got sick of changing doctors. So I said screw it, opted for the indemnity insurance with a high deductible, picked a doctor at random and paid for the routine stuff myself.
A typical office visit was $60. A tetanus shot was $35. A thorough blood workup: $110. At year’s end, I spent less on my health than on car maintenance. I stopped when I did the math and realized my employer was charging me more to do it this way. Bastards. Stupid, stupid bastards.
The idea behind the Health Maintenance Organization is that patients getting routine medical care should spend less on health care in the long run by catching small problems before they become big problems. But in the short run, such a scheme would obviously cost more. So the state was asked to subsidize HMOs at the start. Can you guess if those projected savings ever materialized?
And is the very HMO concept viable? It seems so logical that regular, routine care is a good idea that I was shocked to read Theodore Dalrymple (in a…book…the name of which I don’t recall…that is in a box somewhere) asserting that it is not. Medicine is not without risk: there are drug conflicts, doctor errors, hospital infections. Many conditions get better on their own. Some diseases are less dangerous than their cure (slow-advancing cancers in the very elderly, for example).
It’s a matter of absolute chance whether you’ll be the poor bastard who comes down with something that needs catching in the nick of time, or whether you’ll catch something that would have been better let alone.
I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten anything in almost a hundred and thirty two minutes. I went to pains to have my annual blood work done before I left but it turns out, they use different measures here and I have to have it done again. Tomorrow. And it’s a fasting test.
Ummm…vodka isn’t food, right?
March 16, 2009 — 5:35 pm
Comments: 10
Okay, I’ll take the headshot. But only if you let me pay for the bullet…
Did you see this article today? “A well publicized report this week that an estimated 1.5 million American children experienced homelessness in 2005-06 did not use the federal definition of homelessness. Instead, it used a different definition that grossly inflated the actual number.”
The National Center on Family Homelessness put together the study in question using a definition of “homeless” that includes kids staying with relatives or temporarily relocated (e.g. after Katrina). By this definition, they spin the utter bullshit statistic that 1 in 50 children in the States is homeless in any given year.
Whatever. My question is, who the fuck is National Center on Family Homelessness? Not them specifically. I mean, half the news stories I read every day were generated by the American Council for Healthy Knees or the Coalition for a Gluten-Free Tomorrow or Americans United in Cotton Underpants…thousands of the bastards, staffed by high-level, full-time employees and supported by PR firms and websites. And maybe with offices and company cars and annual meetings in Aruba. That’s a hell of a lot of money going down the wishing well. WHO PAYS FOR THIS JUNK? And why?
The peppery proprietor of Devil’s Kitchen has started to poke around the British world of fake charities, with a site called…ummm…Fake Charities.
Turns out, many of these organizations get, like, 1% of their money from real people donations. The other 99% comes from government — either the British government or the European Union. These are groups lobbying for things like higher booze prices or lower speed limits or restrictions on the internet. Paid for with our money (because government has no money. It maketh not, neither doth it sell).
So. Government wants a law, government funds “charity”, charity recommends law. Plus, many useless lefties with junk degrees get sweet jobs. Bonus!
With their dying gasp, newspapers tell us we’ll miss them when they’re gone — them and their original reportage. Well. If they were doing any, we might. Instead, they lazily regurgitate the latest position paper from the Won’t Someone Think of the Children? Foundation without ever troubling to tell us who they are and why we should care.
Some days, it’s enough to make a conspiracy nutcake outta me.
March 13, 2009 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 29
Not THIS shit again…
Hey, guess who gets to take her driving test again? And guess who isn’t likely to pass it on the first go?
Yeah. Apparently, no matter how experienced you may be — and I commuted fifty-ump miles a day down the I-95 corridor for a quarter of a century — the British driving test is no gimme. They recommend you take lessons. From an instructor.
It’s not about learning to drive, it’s about learning to pass the driving test.
Like histrionically checking all the mirrors before pulling out. And putting on the handbrake at stop signs. According to the handy self-study DVD Uncle B bought me for Christmas, the average successful applicant has spent 20 hours studying the manual and 45 hours driving.
Driving on the wrong side of the road. Roundabouts. Driving Uncle Badger’s car.
I am so screwed.
I took my first driving test in Smithville, Tennessee. I had to drive once around the public square. Took about ten minutes. Along the way, my examiner asked me to do several things that were highly illegal, like park blocking a driveway. I wondered if he was testing me, but it turned out he just didn’t want to get his shoes wet in the puddle by the legal spot.
Oh, I am so screwed.
March 11, 2009 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 20
Half past Dickens and a quarter to Hogarth
I’ve also kept away from politics lately because, situated as I am in dark heart of Olde England, I am obviously expected to provide an American viewpoint on British politics. And…I am…completely unable to wrap my head around that. My every attempt to understand (let alone explain) British politics devolves into a mushy, superficial on the one hand this, on the other hand that shopping list of unhelpful observations.
It’s even harder to nail down since Drudge and Fox began linking to Daily Mail stories so much. The Mail describes a Britain that is batshit, racing headlong toward bugfuck, crazy. Well. Kind of. The Mail is an incredibly low-rent populist rag that makes its coin promoting that particular loony vision of Britain. On the other hand, they don’t make this shit up.
I want to say Brits are more cynical about government, but certainly Yanks can be plenty cynical. I am plenty cynical. But Brits somehow seem to expect their government to let them down. They accept tyranny, perfidy or incompetence as what government does the moment you look away. Whereas the American attitude seems to be, “we bled real blood to put you bastards in office because you said you were different.”
And yet British politics is fundamentally miles less corrupt than the American kind.
I am tempted to say British resentment feels likelier to boil over into violence. And yet, the British public has already absorbed insult after terrible insult without demur. I am puzzled by that. I think a lot of Brits are puzzled by that, too.
The British. Famously unflappable, right up until they become howling savages.
Or maybe that spirit has been thoroughly kicked out of them.
I don’t know. I’m a foreigner and everything seems scary and strange. But that thing that gives me the jim-jams about politics right now? It’s worse here.
And that’s really all I know.
March 10, 2009 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 15
Bring me more junk!
Britain would be a fabulous country to be rich in. I mean, rich is good everywhere, but here your coin will buy things that look like Harry Potter picked them up at Voldemort’s dad’s yard sale. For the same cost as pricey but ordinary new furniture, you can snag antiques that be a-blowin’ of the mind.
Well. Not that rich, me.
But even better, maybe, is the ancient household stuff you can get for not very much in junk shops and boot sales. There is SO MUCH old crap here, it’s simply not at a premium.
I particularly love ancient tools: turned wood screwdrivers, rosewood planes, ivory rulers scribed in ink, cut glass graduated cylinders. Geek pr0n.
I bought this old nutcracker in a junk shop over the weekend, partly to thank the nice old dear who let me use her telephone — and mostly because I thought it was fucking crackerjack. She had dozens of them. I paid a pound and a half for this one; about two bucks.
It’s iron with a dark, velvety, chocolate brown patina. Heavy. Smooth. There’s an ornamental floral motif hand-gouged in the top with a scribe, and the same tool has been used to cut dozens of cuneiform flecks in the inner surfaces. To improve the grip, one assumes.
Pure sex, this thing.
I can’t help thinking I’m not the only callow Yank who gets weak in the knees over these old hand tools. I bet Old Limey Gadgets would be an excellent idea for an eBay store.
And then I realize I’d have to let go whenever somebody bought one. So, that’s a deal breaker, right there.
March 4, 2009 — 9:32 pm
Comments: 12
Honey, the door-to-door funeral salesman’s been…
Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. In sunny climes, they celibrate Mardi Gras with a great wicked bacchanalian festival. In Britain, they make pancakes.
But I don’t want you to think Brits lack all sense of fun; housewives traditionally make these pancakes while running a footrace.
Me? No. I didn’t make any pancakes. I assumed “wifely duties” had something to do with surprise sex. Running the hundred-yard dash while flipping flapjacks in a skillet? Day off to sulk.
Another Shrove Tuesday tradition is to strip the churches of all extraneous decoration, so that services during Lent are conducted with maximum austerity. That means all those leftover lilies from the Weasel/Badger wedding had to go somewhere. Very thoughtfully, someone left them on our front stoop this morning.
I went out to get the mail and, for one dizzy little moment of freefall, wondered if I’d made it through the night.
February 25, 2009 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 10
The fool on the hill
I got nothin’ today, so here’s a snapshot I snagged last week when we went for a nice long drive. I’ve been meaning to post it. That dark thing is the windmill on Hogs Hill near Winchelsea, which was renovated by and is currently the recording studio of Paul McCartney.
Once in a while, McCartney wanders into a pub for a beer. Afterwards, the locals are all, like, “guess who was in for a pint last week?”
“I don’t know, who?”
“Paul McCartney.”
“Oh, aye?”
And then everybody tries to act all casual about it.
It’s really cute.
February 12, 2009 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 41
D’oh!
Welcome to the twenty-four-hour news cycle, President Lucky Magic Sparkly Pony.
Meanwhile, back in Snootyland, Uncle B spotted this headline in today’s online Daily Telegraph. No, it’s not deliberate. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of arguing on the Internet, it is this: if you’re going to indulge in a spelling flame, proofread VERY carefully.
So today, I had my hair done. God, there’s a thing. I’ve had my hair cut before, but I do believe this is the first time I’ve ever had it done. At a spa, no less. It involved candles and plaster Buddhas and massaging things with smelly oils and pinning things with hairpins. Jesus, the hairpins. Oh, it was awful.
It rained and windeded like a bastard all day today. I got home from my do to find flood waters lapping around the front door and just starting to seep into the entryway. The house is considerably lower than the yard, presumably because it’s so old the soil around it has gradually built up, so serious flooding is a constant danger.
I had to slip into my Wellington boots and bail out the doorstep in a howling gale. Five minutes to undo everything the most complex and sophisticated hairpins can accomplish.
That’ll teach me.
February 9, 2009 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 33