One last time, with feeling
You’ll have to excuse me for tonight, folks. This fascinating pile of wombat shit is the makings of my third and final visa application, form SET(M). AKA the Indefinite Leave to Remain.
It wasn’t actually due for another couple of weeks, but the civil service has scheduled a strike for June 30, which includes the UK Border Agency. Judging by past strikes, the UKBA won’t cut me any slack if my visa runs out while they’re on strike. Because everyone knows there’s a strike and should plan around it. Also because fuck you, American Weasel.
Thing I do not want to be when I grow up: illegal alien.
So here I am filling out forms and writing a check for £972 (that’s $1,555.20 in people money). Actually, poor old Uncle B had to write the check as I can’t move that much moola that fast.
In theory — assuming I haven’t filled out something in blue ink instead of black — this is it for me. When this comes back, I’m done. Finito. Fully paid up.
But when I’m eligible for citizenship in November, I’m going to go for it. What the hell — my people are from just up the road, originally, until my umpty great grandfather got a hankering to trade in tobacco. Or became a Quaker. Or poached a deer. We’re unclear on the point.
And if I take the oath I can vote.
Also commit felonies and not get deported.
June 22, 2011 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 28
Oh, I say! Plinky plinky plink
So I mentioned a while back that I had seen something interesting in an auction house window. It was this, the weirdest damn banjo I’d ever seen. (Actually, it was a model like the one on the right, a Wilmshurst. The one above is a Cammeyer, photo gleefully nicked from Save The Banjos).
Google revealed unto me, this is a zither banjo, a uniquely British(!) instrument. The Brits went mad for banjo at the end of the 19th Century.
Huh. Who knew?
Characteristics of the zither banjo: smaller head which fits inside a solid back, strung with some or all gut (now nylon) strings. Open peg-head, like a classical guitar. In fact, it was played and sounds rather like a classical guitar.
BUT it’s a bog-standard 5-string tuning, including the fifth drone string, so if you feel like letting rip a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown or Cripple Creek, go right on ahead.
Makers didn’t like asymmetry, so they often have six tuning pegs for the five strings. To be honest, I suspect it was because they could get three-on-a-side guitar pegs for cheaper than customized pegs.
But here’s the coolest bit. A bluegrass banjo has a fifth string that starts at the fifth fret, with a peg stuck out the side, right? Well, a zither banjo has a fifth drone string at the fifth fret, too, but it’s attached up at the peghead, feeds into a little brass tube under the fret board and pops out — poink! — just before the fifth fret. No awkward friction peg to stub your thumb on.
Huh? Huh?
Eh, I guess you have to be a banjo player.
For reasons I do not understand, they are not well liked by many banjo players. Which is good, I guess, because you can get them on the cheap (though zither banjos were such a popular instrument that they churned out a lot of crap ones). But it’s sad, as the best are beautiful instruments. The most I’ve seen one go for is around $500 (you can pay thousands for a bluegrass banjo).
Anyhoo, go have a gander at this lovely instrument, and listen to Rob McKillop tear off a few classic banjo tunes from Alfred Cammeyer, the American dude who may or may not have invented the zither banjo.
June 21, 2011 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 24
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: 25
Another neat thing money can do
I forgot to tell you. We read in the paper the Red Arrows were going to put on a display over Rye last Saturday. Which is weird, since Rye is a little medieval hill town kind of in the middle of nowhere, but it’s one of our favorite places in all the land. So, had to go.
The Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team and they are AWE. SOME. I saw them at an air show in Rhode Island a few years ago and came away sockless.
Nine jets. Impressive. And they do things like put on a show for you with six or seven jets and while you’re gaping at that, the rest sneak around behind you and come screaming in right over your head.
Yeah. The sheep loved that.
Funny thing, though. Much of the land around Rye was reclaimed from the sea in Tudor times. It’s flat as a table. Perfect for an air show. But they kept flying formations up and around this one hill near the town, where half the spectators at any one time couldn’t see.
Turns out, some rich bugger up on Point Hill bought and paid for the display as an anniversary gift. At the very end, two jets turned on the red smoke and traced a big heart in the sky over his house. Rumor has it he paid £35,000 for it. Rumor, sadly, didn’t tell us who he was. (Not that we’d know him, but we’d kind of like to, if you know what I mean).
Love and money. What a splendid combination.
Good weekend, all!
June 17, 2011 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 25
Don’t mess with Number One Chicken
Lucia was always…the boring chicken. Pecked stuff. Made quiet clucking noises. Kept out of the way.
Then she started laying eggs and became a whole ‘nother bird. Still a steady, quiet chook (and a reliable five-eggs-a-week layer), but she is — no doubt about it — Boss Chicken.
First thing in the morning, everybody gets one good peck (just to remind the flock who’s boss), and then it’s happy family for the rest of the day. (Except Mapp. Clearly fed up with this broody bullshit, Lucia gets a big beakful of Mapp’s neckfeathers and tugs until the poor crazy bird runs ’round and ’round in circles shrieking).
Uncle B tried to shoo Lucia off the vegetable patch the other day, and she reared up to full height and stood him down. Like, “young man, do you know who I am?”
She has one vice: a fascination with sneaking in the kitchen door. We’ve never scolded her for it, but she’s quite furtive. We have to watch ourselves in the morning, as we are apt to find her unexpectedly underfoot.
I suspect my crap housekeeping is to blame; all those delicious bits of cheese and potato chips, just lying around for a chicken to find.
I don’t care. She’s never yet shat upon the floor, and she’s a hell of an automatic floor sweeper.
Heh. My Roomba makes breakfast.
June 16, 2011 — 10:28 pm
Comments: 20
Madd Mapp
Mapp has always been our most eccentric bird. Vocal. Excitable. Flappy. Chases dickie birds. Chases cats right out of the yard. She’d probably chase cars if she had the chance.
She didn’t start laying last Fall. She didn’t start laying right away in Spring. I always said if she ever laid an egg, she’d be a total drama queen.
Boy howdy. She laid four eggs and promptly went broody. X-treme broody.
“Broody” — for all three people out there not currently keeping chickens — is where chickens go to become mothers. They lay a clutch of eggs and then sit on them day and night for 22 days until they hatch. (Eggs don’t develop until warmed to hen temperature, so they all hatch the same time and same developmental age).
Frequently, though, a chicken will go broody without a clutch of eggs to sit on. And when that happens, how does she know when to stop? She doesn’t. Stupid chicken.
Pekin bantams are famous for going broody. Hard broody. People use them as incubators. Someone told us a horrible story about accidentally mowing his pet bantam to death because she was brooding in the high grass and wouldn’t get off the nest.
As of yesterday, Mapp has been broody for eight weeks. Just sits in the empty nest box all day. Shrieks and screams if anything goes near her.
Once or twice a day, I lift her off the nest and make her stretch her legs and eat something. She sits immobile in the grass for a few minutes, then shakes herself off and develops a kind of chicken Tourette’s.
“NARRRGH!”
“Mnyeh!”
“EEEEEEEEEEERch!”
Which I guess is chicken for “titties!” “pee!” “assholes”
Then she eats something and goes back on the nest.
I think that hen needs a good mow.
June 15, 2011 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 23
Violet: number three and climbing
And then there’s Violet, who is tiny and fearless. I think she’ll always be small (contrast to big, shy Vita).
Voted the Chicken Most Likely To Fly Onto My Head and Tug Painfully at the Delicate Hairs at the Base of My Neck Several Times a Day, Violet is the only chicken that seems to like being picked up and carried. Or riding about on my shoulder (no luck teaching her to say “pieces of eight” – so far).
Though she’ll squeak and run when chased, I’ve seen her pluck treats right out of the boss chicken’s beak.
We’ve taken to calling her “Violence” and reminding her that she doesn’t solve anything and she’s not the answer.
But who are we kidding? That cheeky little runt will be Numero Uno chicken some day.
June 14, 2011 — 9:48 pm
Comments: 17
Profiles in Poultry
It’s a cinch nothing as fun as Weinergate is going to happen this week, so let’s look at my chickens! Chicken baseball cards, as it were. The new girls are coming up on 14 weeks, and already my little flock has established a clear pecking order.
This is Vita. She’s the very bottom of the hierarchy, poor thing. She’s big, beautiful, sweet, shy, slow, clumsy and everybody picks on her. She doesn’t even try to get her share of treats. I throw a few bits her way, but she’s scared of them.
When chased, she honks like a mistreated squeeze box. At rest, she makes a pi-cuck, pi-cuck sound, like an oil can.
I’m hoping she doesn’t have some kind of congenital weakness in her legs, because she’s always been a lumbering, slow thing. Given a choice, she sits. Last week, she actually went lame and limped around the garden pitifully for a few days. Worried us quite a lot, but she seems back to normal now.
Whew. I wasn’t looking forward to telling a vet I had a gimpy chicken.
When she’s all growed up, it’s clear Vita is going to be the biggest and most beautiful chicken in the whole flock. And still they will pick on her.
June 13, 2011 — 10:05 pm
Comments: 20
Can I interest you in a codpiece?
Earlier this week, I spotted something interesting in an auction house window and asked if I could phone in a bid. I was directed to this website.
It’s an auction aggregator, and it’s much cooler than it sounds. Well, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it.
If you think about the sorts of things likely to come up for auction in the UK (and a few sites on the Continent), you’ll get what I mean. That codpiece, for example, is from a sale of historic items from the Stone Age to the Medieval period.
You can browse through individual collections, or do a keyword search across the lot. (To work out the guide prices, today’s exchange rate is $1.62 = £1).
Okay, here’s the coolest part: you can participate in the auctions in real time. You have to register with the site to listen in. (Don’t worry, you won’t accidentally buy an 18th C Chippendale dining set — if you want to bid, you have to jump through extra hoops).
Then go to the Live Auction page and click on any of the listings with a Watch live.
They show you the image for each lot as they go through and you can listen in to the bidding (hit the speaker icon to get the audio going). If you registered to bid in that auction, there’s a bid button, too.
You can also browse recently closed auctions to see how the actual price stacks up to the estimate. Interesting. Looks to me like coins and other small, valuable collectibles are being snatched up well over the guide price. Bad economy and worries about inflation, I reckon.
I’ve not been to many real auctions, but I saw occasional crazy bargains happen when I did. I suppose aggregating sales might put an end to that, at least for desirable or specialist items. But it’s an awfully fun way to waste an afternoon.
June 10, 2011 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 26
Me, I’d be all, like, GRRRRR
No. No, no, no. Huma Abedin’s “more saddened than angry” reaction to her husband’s willy-waving is just not plausible.
Yeah. No. Don’t bother reminding me of other political wives who stood by their men. Those ladies had years, whole lives, children with in their shitbag spouses. They had incentive.
Abedin and Weiner had been married one month when he took up with this blackjack dealer. Married, July 10. First contact on the FaceBook transcript, August 13.
One month. Newlyweds.
Very public marriage. Googlable.
So when he sex-talked this Vegas lady, he effectively said, “sexually, emotionally — my brand new wife doesn’t cut it.”
I don’t care if Huma Abedin hails from a culture where multiple wives is the norm, they still have jealousy where she comes from. “Sad” would have nothing to do with it — I would be incandescent with rage at the insult, never mind the rest of it.
I mean, unless I’d married a career path instead of a man.
June 9, 2011 — 11:03 pm
Comments: 30