G’night, folks
Tonight we went to supper with the neighbors and drank a great deal of wine. A great deal of wine was drunk. Also, wine.
In lieu of post, please enjoy this photograph of the cat, what Uncle B took yesterday morning. She’s sleeping in a drawer. Because, cat. And, drawer.
August 3, 2011 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 17
And today’s field trip was…
Great Dixter. It’s a house.
A hundred years ago, a rich man bought a falling-down 15th Century house in Northiam. Then he bought a falling-down 16th Century house in nearby Kent, had it dismantled brick-by-beam and moved back to the first house. Then he got the great Victorian architect Edwin Lutyens to stitch the two together into a faux Tudor manor house, with big dollops of 1910 sauce.
If that sounds a bit snarky, it’s because I haven’t made up my mind about this sort of thing. Two decaying Tudor buildings were saved, so there’s that. And the resulting house really is lovely, so there’s that. The modern bits don’t stick out at all.
But there’s something a bit too Disney’s Magic Kingdom about the whole business. And something too much like vandalism.
Lutyens bought ancient carved blanket chests and had the backs and bottoms removed to put over the 20th Century radiators. Just, ew. There’s still no shortage of ancient chests in England, but…ew.
Years ago, we visited Hever Castle, which was Anne Boleyn’s childhood home. One of the Astors got hold of it in 1903, gutted it and rebuilt it to the 1903 notion of what Anne Boleyn’s childhood home should look like.
Ew.
I don’t know. I think these stately old homes cease to be homes and die. And then elderly people come and buy overpriced cups of tea and artisanal chutneys and tea towels with the birds of England in the gift shop.
Sometimes I feel like I’m something unpleasant swarming over the mummified corpse of something that was once great.
p.s. There was a garden.
August 2, 2011 — 9:44 pm
Comments: 13
Breakfast in bed
So this morning, I open the various chicken run doors, and all the chickens tumble out except Vita. I worry about Vita — she’s the big, beautiful, shy chicken all the others peck on. She lives in a state of perpetual, panting anxiety, does Vita.
So I looked in the house, and there she was, sitting on the floor, panting anxiously.
I lifted her out and sat her on my knee and was having a good look at her when something hot and heavy landed in my lap. “Great,” thinks I, “Monday morning and I’ve already been shat upon.”
But, no — it was a egg! Poor Vita was trying to lay one when I swept her into my lap.
Her second, not her first. Her first was day before yesterday. I knew it was coming because this usually shy bird was all over the place, under hedges, hopping into the kitchen cabinets, flying onto my arm, clearly looking for a quiet spot. I popped her on the nest in the big girls’ house, and soon she disburdened herself of a perfect tiny egg.
Instinct is a wonderful thing.
August 1, 2011 — 10:18 pm
Comments: 11
Something to chew on for the weekend…
Okay, this is kind of neat. Project Euler is a website that hosts series of individual, discrete math problems (currently 344 of them) that each require a short computer program to solve. Individual problems builds on concepts in previous ones, so the idea is that you quietly learn both math and programming as you go along.
To be honest, if I had run across this on my own, I’d’ve been all “yuck, math! Ew gross, programming!” but I read this article in the Atlantic that made it sound like a lot of fun and…it kind of is. I’ve done five and I enjoy it — when I have a CLUE where to start.
I cheated on Problem 3. I was looking for methods and accidentally found the actual answer, but I was floundering anyhow. I still don’t understand why my answer wasn’t right. But, hey, turns out I independently invented the Sieve of Eratosthenes trying to figure it out, so I worked out something a chiton-wearing olive-slurping boo-boo knew two thousand years ago. Yay me, I guess.
Hard to believe my grandma was an algebra teacher.
Good weekend, everyone!
July 29, 2011 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 42
I’d hate to have to dust
I drawed you a picture and everything, but then I decided it wasn’t very good and I threw it away.
So instead, I thought perhaps you’d enjoy seeing a picture of my grandfather in his den. The tow-haired moppet on the chair looks just like me, but isn’t — I was an infant when he died. One of my cousins, I guess.
He had many a weird and wonderful thing in his collection — fossilized dinosaur tracks, a six-shooter that belonged to Jesse James (the grips were all burned away), a shattered and re-melted glass bottle from Hiroshima — it was a proper Victorian cabinet of curiosities. Though gramps was an uneducated country boy, so I won’t swear he didn’t get ripped off for a curiosity or two.
I should like to draw your attention to an object in the upper right corner of the picture. That is a stuffed possum playing a bass fiddle.
Taste and refinement, my people.
July 28, 2011 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 22
Diminished.
Wow. This guy just gets smaller all the time, doesn’t he?
So, he gives this press conference and asks us to call our Congressman? WTF? Can’t he just walk across the street and talk to them himself?
If you haven’t seen the compilation video of various people riffing on him, it’s worth your time (though why it ends with Colbert taunting West, I do not know).
Keep it up, Mr President. Little man graphics are easy.
July 27, 2011 — 10:10 pm
Comments: 20
She has a point
There’s a display of royal wedding memorabilia gone up at Buckingham Palace this week, including the Duchess of Cornwall’s Cambridge’s [thanks for the correction, Mrs C!] wedding dress. You know, Kate Middleton.
Kate and Her Maj got a sneak preview, and Herself apparently called the effect “horrid” and “creepy.”
She has a point (video here). The room is dark, the dress is lit up with twelve spotlights and the tiara hovers over a mannequin with a stump neck. It looks like a nazgul.
The Royals are a little sensitive about headless queens.
July 26, 2011 — 9:53 pm
Comments: 18
Happy Flying Ant Day!
Ahhhhhhhhh….the driveway is full of flying ants!!!!
Also, the front garden, the back garden, the bit on the side by, and pretty much the whole of Britain. Today, one day only!
This is the day allllll the Lasius Niger on this big ol’ island get laid. Then the males lose their wings, wander about aimlessly, waste away and die. While the females lose their wings, wander around looking for a place to hole up lay eggs for the rest of their lives, mostly fail and die.
G’night, kids!
It’s not the same day every year (not like those showoffy swallows in Capistrano), but it tends to be on a warm, muggy day toward the end of July. Which this is.
I don’t usually freak out about insects, but the last time I saw a cloud of flying ants, it was the advance guard of termites that ate the back half of Mother’s house. Happily, these dudes don’t do anything worse than get in your hair and die all over everything.
Yeah, yeah…it’s a nature blog now. I can’t bear to post about Anders Breivik today. The BBC are rolling around in this one like a hog in shit, in the most sick-making display of political opportunism. Cannot. Deal.
July 25, 2011 — 5:26 pm
Comments: 23
Holy god those are some big buns
We lunched with these two ladies today. One of them is a new mother of seven. Not sure which one.
The other one apparently never heard a rabbit joke in her life; she utterly spurned the attention of the hired stud buck. Which is probably just as well. What on earth are they going to do with nine of these monsters?
They are British Giants. And how.
Have a good weekend, everyone. And remember …
July 22, 2011 — 8:55 pm
Comments: 38
Be glad this blog’s in black and white
Wow. I know Hillary’s touring Bali at the moment, but I think when you’ve reached the muumuu level of fashion degradation, you need to stop digging.
Huma isn’t taking very good care of her lately. She’s off her game.
Yeah, it’s the same shot Drudge is going with. I’ve got absolutely jack shit today. Never left the house.
I know I shouldn’t complain, what with most of the US at or over 100 degrees at the moment, but it’s been miserable here lately. Cold, gray and wet. Day after day of it.
This is my third Summer in the UK and the first two were lovely. Sunny. Cool breeze. This is my first taste of what England can do to a vacation.
How miserable? It’s wet and mid-fifties and we’ve lit the fire.
I think I’ll go upstairs, throw the blankets over my head and strike until the sun comes back.
July 21, 2011 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 23