I couldn’t take it any more
Now that Albert is gone, Sam is a loose end. They were frenemies, but at least it was company. Sam has been pecking around the garden calling out to a flock that is no more. He’s a very sociable bird and probably has a year left in him.
I had meant to take a break from chicken keeping, but I couldn’t take this. I phoned around until I found a chicken keeper I knew would have birds. Expensive birds, but birds nonetheless. I bought two.
We were barely out of the car before Sam ran up to the carrier in a state of great excitement. Why yes, I am going to tease the chicken reveal for days.
June 1, 2026 — 6:54 pm
Comments: 6
Albert has joined the Choir Eternal
He’s been looking sorry for himself for the last few days. If I scrambled him an egg, he’d perk up for a while, but this morning he was dead in a heap in the chicken run.
Farewell, Bertus! Not my favorite chicken – I have scars from his young aggressive days.
That leaves Sam, hatched on the 4th of July 2019. That makes him a pretty elderly boy, but I feel bad for him. He’s a very sociable chicken and I forever hear him chattering to a flock that is no longer there.
I was going to give chickens a rest for a while, but I’m going to call around tomorrow and see if I can find him a couple of girls. Let him go out with a bang.
Good weekend, everyone!
May 29, 2026 — 5:56 pm
Comments: 4
They’re not that rare, apparently
Nor are they blue, apparently.
There are two definitions of blue moon: “A seasonal Blue Moon is the third Full Moon of an astronomical season that has four Full Moons. A monthly Blue Moon is the second Full Moon in a calendar month with two Full Moons.”
To have a monthly blue moon, the first one has to occur at the very beginning of the month, because the whole moon cycle takes 29.5 days.
This post was longer, but my server burped and lost it. We’re having…issues.
May 28, 2026 — 3:16 pm
Comments: 2
There it is…
I’ve been waiting for this! Someone uncovered a manuscript – actually, just a piece of paper stuck in a book – with details of 22 peasant survivors of the Black Death.
The WHO says survivors are 30% to 60% for bubonic plague (though the pneumonic form is 100% fatal if untreated). That’s got to be a lot of people who were sick and got better; I’ve always been curious why we hear so little about them.
According to this document, the quickest recovery was a week and the longest nine weeks, but they all came back to working the land.
Picture is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Triumph of Death (and not AI slop for once).
May 27, 2026 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 1
And under that was…bubblewrap?
Early Sunday morning – as I lay tucked up in my weaselly bed – there was an almighty bang. We dashed out to discover – the front of the kitchen had fallen off!
This isn’t an old part of the house. It’s part of extension put on in the 1970s. The front of it was some godawful ugly tile and we’ve talked about replacing it for ages.
Under the tile is chipboard. And under the chipboard, as the builder inspected it, is…bubblewrap? Was that even a thing in the Seventies? I shudder to think what’s under the bubblewrap. There’s a LOT that needs doing in the kitchen, so here we go!
Weasel gets a new kitchen!
May 26, 2026 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 8
…don’t…move
Record breaking warm for May. It was 81. There is a general panic.
Idiots.
First time I’ve felt properly warm outside since last August. I’m’a go outside and sit in the breeze with a G&T.
May 25, 2026 — 6:56 pm
Comments: 5
Our wedding car was a minibus
They’re still digging stuff up at Pompeii. They unearthed a stable complete with the skeletons of two horses.
This ornamental metal thing was nearby; part of an elaborately decorated chariot they think was ceremonial. Possibly a wedding car.
I’m off to set up the Dead Pool. Be here. Or don’t.
May 21, 2026 — 5:22 pm
Comments: 3
…wait for it…
You have no reason to remember, but last year our great thug of a rambling rose had grown to engulf the garage, two trees and part of the house. It was overwhelmingly enormous. It was beautiful, but decided to cut it down at the end of the season before it stoves in the garage roof.
Long story short, we didn’t.
This is the first rosebud to open. There are thousands of them. In a couple of weeks, I’ll show you what that means – if it doesn’t engulf us all.
Yes, Tonyc has won the dick with Bawney Fwank. And what a dick he was. Frank stepped down after his district was redrawn and I’ve always thought the change meant he couldn’t cheat, for some reason. There was always something fishy about an aggressively gay man representing all those blue-collar union types. Dead Pool Friday!
May 20, 2026 — 6:58 pm
Comments: 1
A bit of fun
A Polish man has created Halupedia – a wiki of hallucinated articles. The way it works, you do a search for something and an LLM has been trained to create a Wikipedia style absurdist article on the topic, complete with citations and links to other Halupedia articles.
Once you’ve done that, your entry becomes a permanent part of the growing collection. It’s fun for a few minutes. It’s clear some people have tried to break it, for example by using long strings of one character in their query (there’s always somebody) and it’s going to get ugly if he doesn’t do a bit of housecleaning.
I tried to generate an article and it immediately told me I was over my limit and sent me to buy me a coffee. As I hadn’t generated any articles, it’s obviously pay to play.
You can comment for free, though, and Halupedia will make up an amusing name for you. The image is from the entry on the Ministry of Terribly Wrong Maps. That’s AI for you – the man in the center has a left hand like unto a pig’s trotter.
May 19, 2026 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 6
At our local garden center
Clignotante is blinking. Google gives the translation as “blinking eyes cactus.”
Our local garden centre is full of such tat, alas. That’s what Brits do on Sunday now, by the way. Now that they don’t go to church. They go to garden centers and mill around looking at plants. And tat.
May 18, 2026 — 5:48 pm
Comments: 6