Happy Fourth, ever’body!
Burgers, beer, fireworks…we did the lot!
We bought the fireworks at a news agent in town who is the famous local source for fireworks. Oh, it’s legal (Uncle B was always amazed that I could legally buy a .357 magnum handgun in Rhode Island, but not a roman candle). At least, the stuff he’s selling over the counter is legal.
We bought the £10 garden collection and the vendor threw in what was probably a £5 rocket “in honor of Ronald Reagan.” Our grand finale. And very nice it was, too (though at gone 11 I’m not sure the neighbors would agree).
They’re not as far gone here as the Daily Mail tells you, you know.
Happy Independence Day, ya’ll (or, as Uncle B calls it, We Finally Got Rid of You Religious Nutters Day).
Edit to add: I misunderstood what the shopkeep said to me. He gave us the rocket in honor of the statue of Ronald Reagan they unveiled in London yesterday.
July 4, 2011 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 27
Happy Solstice!
Okay, the Solstice is tomorrow, but I post late so you’d miss it. Ten o’clock here, and still light enough to walk around the garden.
Tomorrow is the only day of the year they close Stonehenge, so the silly hippies can dance around it and pretend they know what our ancestors did there. Which is more than usually silly because a) we have no idea what the Stonehenge people were up to and b) Stonehenge is fake.
Okay, maybe not fake fake, but it was significantly reassembled in our time. The circle saw reconstruction projects in 1901, 1919, 1920, 1958, 1959 and 1964, with stones being winched into place and set in cement. And if you can’t trust a site called www.ufos-aliens.co.uk (with ads for London hotels and an online casino embedded in the text), who can you trust?
Well, really. Constable painted the above in 1835, and massive umpty-ton stones don’t just right themselves, do they?
So, now that I think about it, it’s perfect: tomorrow, people will perform a ritual they hope is something like the original around a ring of stones archeologists hope is something like the original.
June 20, 2011 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 24
Surprise! Not a chicken picture…
This one was an idea by reader OU_Gryphon. I can almost never pull off other people’s ideas (boy, that was really helpful in my career as an illustrator), but this was too easy. I love easy.
‘Nother day spent dozing and chicken rassling. I worried maybe Mapp was egg bound instead of broody, so I soaked her in a bucket of warm soapy water for half an hour. You know that expression, “mad as a wet hen”? Wow. Yeah. No shit.
Still broody. Still no egg. I’ll keep dunking her until morale improves.
Owing to England being an explicitly for-reals Christian nation, this is a national four day weekend, starting today. We have a whole bagful of hot cross buns in there. And…I dunno…Jew on a Stick.
Have a good Easter, everybody!
April 22, 2011 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 27
April Fool!
Right. Back to normal. If you missed my April 1 abomination, you’ll find it here.
April 1, 2011 — 11:26 am
Comments: 35
Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Not an Irish bone in my body, but I do drink. So yay!
Changing the subject, if I’m reading this WSJ article right, the New York Times‘ second go at a paywall isn’t as retarded as it sounds.
They’re making around $100 million per annum on advertising (not too shabby!). They didn’t want to screw that up, so they looked at the numbers and worked out that 85% of their readers read 20 articles or fewer in a month.
That’s where they put the cutoff. Free front page and 20 articles a month. Print subscribers get full digital access, so they’re really just trying to squeeze a little juice out of whatever slice of the 15% heavy users aren’t already covered.
They’re asking stupid money, but they’re asking true believers. Non-story, really.
Not like the poor old Times of London. If Murdoch’s paywall was supposed to stop the bleeding, it failed: print circulation of the Times has dropped almost 15% this year. Pretty much on par with everyone else. Plus, their online readership (and the lovely advertising moolah that goes with) has dropped from 20 million uniques a month to to 50,000 subscribers.
Ow.
March 17, 2011 — 11:09 pm
Comments: 35
Happy Groundhog Day!
You’ve gotta know that fucking groundhog is so fucking sick of this Groundhog Day shit.
I ran over a groundhog once. In a rental car. I felt terrible, but the nice thing about hitting stuff in Tennessee: there’s always going to be a truckload of Sons of the Soil coming along behind you to clean up your mess.
Also, I ate groundhog once. In stew, I think. I don’t remember it at all, I just remember my mother complaining for years afterwards about how greasy it was. Mother was big time into making us eat weird back-to-the-land stuff.
Not possum. Thank god, not possum.
I don’t know about where you are, but where we are — no fucking way that fucking groundhog saw his fucking shadow today. If we had the fucking things here.
February 2, 2011 — 9:53 pm
Comments: 32
Merry Christmas, pretend internet friends!
Y’all are the best imaginary friends EVER, and I’m not just saying that because I have a snootful of Uncle B’s excellent champagne.
Have a lovely day tomorrow, and please remember the true meaning of Christmas — PRESENTS!
December 24, 2010 — 11:20 pm
Comments: 42
It’s evilicious!
My Hallowe’en pumpkin looked MUCH eviller after a few weeks of neglect. (Note to self: wear glasses in the house more often).
This is not the pumpkin implicated in the making of pies. That was a nice, fresh one and it turned out very well, thankee. Though the recipe I used was a bit loose. And one tiny pumpkin made enough for, like, THREE pies.
Don’t know if it’s true, but while I was researching recipes, I read that the stuff they sell as pumpkin in cans in the States is actually butternut squash. Believe it or don’t.
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! Much to be thankful for. Start with the fact you ain’t dead yet and move outwards.
You ain’t, air ye?
p.s. November 25, 2008, I arrived at Gatwick airport strung-out, jet-lagged, with one suitcase and a box with my terrified cat in. Hard to believe I haven’t touched ‘Merican soil for two years, but there you go. I’ve forgotten what decent pizza and Whoppers taste like, but I haven’t started to talk all retarded yet. So there’s that to be thankful for.
November 25, 2010 — 9:18 pm
Comments: 18
Winchelsea Mark II
Saturday’s bonfire was in beautiful, haunted Winchelsea.
The original Winchelsea was an important shipping port next to Rye, on the edge of Rye Bay. Probably. Nobody’s entirely sure, as the sea came in and ate it up one day in the 13th Century.
They saw it coming, though, and had time to build another one. Edward I ordered the new Winchelsea built in a grid pattern, high on a hill nearby.
It was quite a large town by Medieval standards, but it was sacked by the French a couple of times. And then, you know, there was the Plague. That sure wasn’t good for tourism.
Winchelsea today is a tiny place, a fraction of what it was. Walk half a mile over empty, rolling, sheep-covered grass and you’ll find what used to be the farthest town gate.
It’s tempting to call Winchelsea luckless, except what’s left of it is absoLUTEly lovely. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that every building in the town is listed. And everywhere, the sweet, pervasive, inescapable, permeating smell of contemporary money. Gobs and gobs of it.
Winchelsea being Winchelsea, their Guy was a guy. In a Guy Fawkes costume. The good citizens gathered around the town well and put on a little pageant, with the Himself, two guards in 16th Century armor and a narrator. Then they trussed Guy up in a cart with a rope around his neck, and we all marched him around the town to the commons behind a small pipe and drum troupe from the local prep school and had a jolly good bonfire and fireworks display.
They replaced dude with an effigy for the bonfire, of course, but Winchelsea being Winchelsea, it was a really good effigy. Highly realistic. There was more than one gasp and nervous laugh when the Guy caught fire and burned up all convincing-like.
November 8, 2010 — 11:31 pm
Comments: 19
Remember, remember
England isn’t lost yet; these people love them some fire and explosions.
Happy Bonfire Night! Remember, remember the fifth of November — 1605, when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the houses of Parliament. Parliament, king and all. He and his buds hoped to make England a Catholic nation again.
Problem is, the last time England was a Catholic nation — 40-some years earlier, when Bloody Mary was on the throne — a good 300 Brits were burned alive for the heresy of Protestantism.
They’re still grouchy about it.
Still, any excuse to dress up, parade around with torches, drink beer, set off fireworks and have a hellaciously huge bonfire with an effigy on top. I think only Lewes still burns an effigy of the Pope every year — 17 Lewesians were burned at the stake during the Marian persecutions — but everybody burns somebody.
In Sussex, they don’t have Bonfire Night, they have Bonfire season. From September almost through to Christmas, local village bonfire societies take turns having bonfire celebrations, so we can all turn up to all of them. Or lots of us turn up to lots of them, anyway.
On the fifth itself is our favorite: Icklesham. It’s a tiny town near Hastings, but they have a robust bonfire society, the Robin Hood Bonfire Society (out of the Robin Hood pub). And they charge £3 admission, which goes towards next year’s festivities. They always put on an excellent show.
They did it again tonight — though it was a bit a mizzly out and attendance was down, which may affect next year’s celebration. Still, the beer was my favorite!
Pull up a toasted Catholic and join us!
November 5, 2010 — 11:25 pm
Comments: 41