Legends of Olde Englande
Oh, aye. When a man in a Santa-hatted gorilla suit playing a drum kit salutes you with a banana stump, sure an’ it’s goin’ to be a long Winter and hard.
Yeah. These people are weird.
I’m having trouble finding my rhythm; stand by for adjustments. I was always a morning poster ’til now, but I need every ounce of daylight to do house-y things. After which there’s Tea Time then Nap Time then Booze Time. My cup runneth over.
Tomorrow morning, the neighbors behind are cutting down a line of trees in their garden to get rid of the rooks — who are, I admit, very noisey. But it’s a shit thing to do. In December. Corvids are extremely fucking clever animals, and rooks are social and attached to their trees. I’m going to miss the bastards; I hope they take up residence in nearby trees, owned by somebody less keen.
On a happier note, the same neighbors told us there’s a stoat living under their back porch. A stoat, in case you haven’t Googled, is what the Brits call a proper, full-sized weasel.
w00t!
December 9, 2008 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 25
Putting the ‘suss’ in Sussex
Well, you didn’t think we’d put the ‘sex’ in Sussex, did you? Too much hard work.
I have to be cute about the exact town, since that plus the name of the house (not really Badger House) is sufficient unto a mailing address. Houses with names are common here, but our whole neighborhood is houses that are named but not numbered. That’s just how special we are. I think I can safely say Sussex.
Heh heh. Weasel make funny. The county of Sussex is so wide that, for administrative purposes, it has been divided into West and East Sussex since the Twelve Century. Had to be, since you couldn’t ride a horse from one end to the other in a day.
The motto of Sussex is “We wun’t be druv” — which means I shall end my life as it began: in the company of stubborn, illiterate rednecks
Badger House is walking distance from the nearest good sized town and a few miles from the English Channel. On a clear day, we can stand on the shore and see France, but not well enough to get a missile lock. We are surrounded on all sides by acres and acres of sheep. This is serious farming country, for reals.
Our usual roaming territory is wider, stretching from Canterbury in the East, where the Cathedral is, to Salisbury Plain in the West, where Stonehenge is, to London in the North, where there are no British people left at all.
That covers many impossibly cool places and things, about which it will be my pleasure to blog — as I am all politicked out for a while and sick to death of the stupid economy.
December 8, 2008 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 26
Splashing out
Today begins Woolworth’s last, agonal 50% off sale. Or, I should say “50%” off sale. The signs blare ALL STOCK 50% OFF and, in tiny letters halfway, “up to.”
Our local Woolies is crap in good times, so we took a drive to a posher neighborhood. It also was crap, but in a posher neighborhood. I’d estimate most things were discounted by ten percent, making them a slightly less attractive bargain than the markdown bin in the supermarket. But with crazy people and very, very long lines. Still, I got a few things. Needle and thread. Clothes brush.
And this item, which floats around in the bath and displays the water temperature in degrees C and F. Now I can finally learn metric degrees, while simultaneously discovering if the water is really 200ºF by the Weaselfeets and 40ºF behind Weaselass Dam.
Uncle B says I could just feel with my hand, but That Would Not be Science.
Happy Friday, you poor ol’ working stiffs! Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition — cheers!
December 5, 2008 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 25
Pragmatic in the attic
Imagine the excitement when I discover the rough wooden door to the attic, high in the wall in the oldest section of Badger House. Imagine the delight when I discover that it contains a cistern.
Yes, this is the thrilling plumbing post that I promised Brigette earlier. Sweasel.com is all about the minions.
Houses in Britain are generally designed with a cold water storage tank in the attic. This is filled from the mains (what we’d call the ‘city water’) and in turn is fed by gravity into the bathroom taps, toilets and the hot water heater. Only the cold tap in the kitchen sink is fed directly off the mains.
WHY this is so, I haven’t discovered. Not definitively, anyway. So that individual households had a supply of water in case that nice Mister Bonaparte came calling, maybe. To avoid everyone in London getting up at six in the morning, enjoying a fulsome dump, flushing the toilets simultaneously and whooshing the whole United Kingdom down the Thames some morning, perhaps. Anyway, they’ve done it this way for a long time.
Modern water storage tanks are completely enclosed plastic dealies, but the older style cistern is open to the air. I’m going to have to get a ladder and find out what’s what up there. I might be brushing my teeth and washing my face in mousewater. Yum!
It’s probably modern, though. We know Badger House was without indoor plumbing until as late as the 1960s and major renovations were done in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. As per law for historical buildings, the inlet and outlet pipes are all exposed and run across the ceilings and down the walls. From the time we get up in the morning and begin using water, Badger House gurgles and chuckles to itself as water moves around the pipes.
It’s like living in the alimentary canal of a big dozy beast.
December 4, 2008 — 5:35 pm
Comments: 33
A lit-tle too clever for my own good…
When they get wind I’ve left the country, my credit card companies will cut me off. I had to have cards to get here — there were a thousand little, and not so little, moving expenses that wouldn’t take cash — so I didn’t let on. I’ve paid my bills online for years, I figured. I’ll call up from the UK, get my final balance and cancel the account from the warm safety of the Fortress of Solitude, I figured.
Ha! Guess what? 1-800 numbers don’t work from outside the US! Well, they sort of do. They work part way. They string you along. They tease.
You know what it’s like to punch in a boring twelve-digit account number and wend your boring way through all the boring choices in a modern boring automated phone system? Well, imagine you had to poke in twenty digits to get in, and a dial tone cut you off at some random point in the process.
You think this post is boring?
Ummm…you’re right, actually.
December 3, 2008 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 25
S. Weasel proudly presents…
Weasel’s playing hou-owse, Weasel’s playing hou-owse!) remindened me of something I hardly needed remindening of: it would be a HELL of a lot easier to approach Britain if it were just a little more frankly foreign. When you’re stuck up the Zambezi or the Po, you damn well know you’re not in Kansas any more (I assume) and you adjust accordingly. Britain is like…Kanzace. It’s so almost-but-not-quite right, it makes my nerves hum on a low, uneasy frequency.
Some of the differences are deliberate, for god knows what marketing reason. You can buy britches at TK Maxx. You can rub Oil of Ulay onto your face. Same companies, a tiny bit utterly fucking wrong.
Some of the differences are because we are not as same as we think we are. Brits and Yanks watch so much of each other’s television, share so much of each other’s history, that we forget the 200 years and 3,500 miles that separate us.
It’s inevitable — for some months, anyway — that this blog will be about an American houseweasel in darkest Britain. The trivial, pointless shite on which I thrive.
But what the hell. You don’t really want to read any more blogs about politics right about now…do you?
November 28, 2008 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 86
Side trip
Heh. Cool. I told myself I’d Google image search Nashville and take the first image that popped up. This is it, from a travel site.
Going to see my dad in Nashville today. He was originally supposed to come to Jollye Olde and do the whole father-of-the-stoat thing, but he’s at that awkward age where one broken vertebra leads to another. His dog knocked him over last month and took out his shoulder, which spelled the end of his mobility. He’s still perfectly compos mentis, but he’s gone from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair inside a year. We’ve got to find something for his huge, throbbing weaselbrain to do or it’ll tear itself to pieces on idle.
Weaselbrains are like Lamborghinis. Pre-Chrysler.
Anyhow, my plane leaves at 6, which means I have to be up at three. And I’m checking a six-shooter in my luggage, so that’s always fun. It has to be inside a locked case which is inside a locked case which is inside your luggage — but before you can check it, you have to prove to the ticket agent that it’s unloaded.
That’s no problem with a semi-auto: you transport it completely disassembled. My old S&W 5-screw doesn’t come apart, though. I’ve only done this a couple of times, and I live in fear some security guard across the room will see me pull that thing out of the case and give me two in the hat.
Anyhow — I’m off the grid until late Sunday night. Don’t trash the place!
November 21, 2008 — 3:12 am
Comments: 51
You can take the Weasel out of the MoonPie, but…
The phrase “RC Cola and a MoonPie” came up two threads down and, because I totally have nothing else to do, I hit Google. Turns out, it’s another fine culinary innovation you can thank Tennessee for. You’re welcome.
The MoonPie was invented in Chattanooga in 1917. It’s two big round soft graham cracker cookie things with marshmallow filling, dipped in a sweet coating. I only remember chocolate and banana, but Wikipedia says there was also vanilla and strawberry. And, in modern times, lemon and orange. MoonPies are unspeakably vile.
Royal Crown Cola was invented in 1905 and is apparently also still around. The company renamed itself Nehi in 1925 — you may know them from the truly awful grape and orange drinks — and were later responsible for Diet Rite, the first diet soda. In the mid ’90s, RC came out with a “draft” cola — a 12-ounce premium cola made with cane sugar like the old days. Sales were disappointing due to distribution problems, and the line was dropped.
In the ’50s, an RC cola and a MoonPie became the standard workman’s lunch across in the South. You could get the combo special RC Cola and a MoonPie for a dime, which is one giant asswad of sugar and food coloring for a mere tenth of a dollar. Jesus. Wikipedia reminds me that some would buy a packet of peanuts, empty it into the cola, drink the cola then eat the peanuts. Damn you, Wikipedia! I had successfully papered over that memory!
This filthy combination was so wildly popular that it was set to music repeatedly, beginning with Bill Liston’s 1950s ballad “Gimm’e an RC Cola and a Moonpie” (which is where I’m guessing my mother picked up the phrase) and ending with the recent children’s record — I so totally and completely am not even a little bit shitting you — “Weezie and the Moon Pies.”
The little town of Bell Buckle, Tennessee has an RC and Moon Pie Festival every year that features deep fried MoonPies and crowns the Queen of…no, it’s no use. I can’t bear to paraphrase. I quote:
The 2008 Queen is Dr. Phyllis Qualls-Brook, Assistant Commissioner of Tennessee Community and Industry Relations and the King is actor/director Lane Davies who will be directing the 1st Annual Tennessee Shakespeare Festival to be held in Bell Buckle the two weekends following the RC-Moon Pie Festival.
Taking center stage as always is the wildly popular Synchronized Wading extravaganza, lovingly referred to as “dry humor on a wet stage”. This year’s performance will be “A Midsummer’s Nightmare” starring who else but the lovely little Moon Pie and the charming RC with unfortunate guest appearances by GooGoo Cluster, Coke, as well as a host of fairies and soldiers. Director and choreographer Carla Webb who is also known as the First Lady of Bell Buckle says that this year’s Synchronized Wading performance is one of the best since she began performing in a kiddy pool over 13 years ago.
Some things are unforgivable even in jest. There is also a more recent association of MoonPies and Mardi Gras, with some krewes throwing miniature pies into the crowd. You have to show your tits to make them throw beads, I don’t EVEN want to know what you have to show to make them throw MoonPies.
And people wonder why I’m changing my name and moving thousands of miles away to a country that makes puddings out of sheep guts.
November 20, 2008 — 6:47 am
Comments: 45
The Taj Mahkitteh
Today’s Hair Across Weasel’s Ass: plane-legal pet carriers. A regular, take-her-to-the-vet-sized pet carrier will not do (never mind that mine is 30 years old, solid as a brick shit-house and served perfectly well to fly a bigger cat than Charlotte from Tennessee to Rhode Island). If the airline doesn’t turn the cat away, there are grievous fines on the UK end for shipping an animal in a container they consider too small.
And so, of course, they provide really precise instructions for choosing the appropriate carrier.
Ha ha! Just woofin’ you. Every document describes the requirements s-lightly differently. It should be the height of the cat standing, the height of the cat sitting or two inches above the ears of the cat standing. There has to be ventilation in all four sides, or it doesn’t matter as long as it’s 13% open to air. The animal has to be able to stand up turn around and lie down again (which makes jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton spin up on my mental Wurlitzer). The problem is the confluence of airline regs, US government regs and UK government regs.
I particularly liked this instruction from DEFRA:
Containers for cats should have litter trays which are either heavy enough not to move around or fixed to stop them moving.
Litter trays! Holy pooperscooper! Charlotte needs at least a five foot radius to operate a box properly. She’s a sweet girl, but stupid. She stands with all four feet inside, hangs her ass over the side and pees on the floor.
Whatevs. I bought her the biggest carrier that’ll fit in the Weaselmobile. And it occurs to me I never told you what needs to be done to bring a dog, cat or ferret into the UK. It’s a hell of a deal, but I won’t complain — they don’t have to go through six months of kennel quarantine on the British side now. They essentially allowing the pet to serve out quarantine at home. Zo! In this precise order:
■ Spay and microchip. (Very important — that microchip is checked before every stage of the process. Some people drop a couple hundred bucks for their own chip reader, just to be sure).
■ Vaccinate for rabies.
■ Some time later — twenty days is recommended — draw a blood sample and have your vet send it to Kansas State University.
■ They send back a document certifying presence of rabies antibodies (my documentation didn’t have the official seal, so I had to chase them to send another one).
■ Six months after this date, the travel documents can be applied for. If the rabies booster comes due before you’re ready (ours did), booster and documentation.
■ When the time comes, gather all the documentation and FedEx it to the nearest USDA veterinary office. They FedEx the docs and the stamped travel permit back. This document is good for four months.
■ Not less than 24 nor more than 48 hours before Puss gets on the plane, one last vet’s appointment. She gets de-ticked, wormed (must contain Praziquatel!) and the vet makes a final entry on the USDA and airline forms.
■ Show up at the approved airline’s freight service six hours before the flight. There are, incidentally, one or two government-approved cat-flying airlines for each city that flies to London.
■ After going through People Customs at Heathrow, hop a taxi and drive four miles (oh, the cabby’s going to love me!) to the Animal Reception Center. They say it takes 3-4 hours to process a cat through. Why? I don’t know!
And…umm…ta-dum, I guess. All for the filthy little crooked-tailed, squint-eyed, bug-eating feral Goblin Princess I trapped in my garage five years ago.
Oh, well. One good thing I’ve gotten out of this: pee pads! They’re giant Kotexes for bed-wetters. You put one in the bottom of the travel kennel to mop up accidents. I got a ten-pack of 30×36″ pee pads for six bucks at Wal*Mart.
So that right there is nine wonderful, lazy Sunday mornings I can say to myself, “nah. I don’t feel like getting up yet…”
November 18, 2008 — 1:12 pm
Comments: 36
erm…w00t?
MY FIANCEE VISA WAS APPROVED! AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!!!11!!!!1!!
Confirmed by embassy. Headed my way via FedEx. Made my plane reservations. Charlotte and I are going right from the real estate closing on Tuesday the 25th directly to the Virgin Atlantic Cargo area. We will arrive in Jollye Olde on Wednesday the 26th, just in time to thaw the Thanksgiving turkey (damn right I make him eat turkey. Though it doesn’t take a very hard push, I must say).
But now…cancelling services, final packing, movers. So many phone calls…so very lazy…
I had intended to give you a full frontal Flaming Weasel (eat your heart out, Ace), but it’s all going very fast now and I had barely enough time to Frankenstein this clumsy thing. It’s rough and unoptimized and not really suitable for web work, but you get the idea.
Dream of all the wonderful furry woodland creatures I will set on fire in England…!
November 17, 2008 — 1:19 pm
Comments: 36