I have visitation rights
In May of 2019, I bought £50 worth of Bitcoin for a lark. I flirted with the idea of throwing another £5 in every month, but then all my photo ID expired and Coinbase won’t let me play any more.
I must fix that. It’s probably not legal for an immigrant to be without valid ID.
Anyway, they let me visit my money – they’d even let me take it out, if I wanted – but they won’t let me buy any more. That’s made this account the perfect way to make sense of the ups and downs of BTC.
I check in on it every once in a while, when there’s been something in the news about crypto. That there is the real number earlier today – £404.31. Although shortly after it lost £2 then made £1.80 back again. That’s all from my initial £50 (though I think I did earn a few pounds taking surveys or watching videos).
Puts it in an interesting perspective, don’t it?
August 25, 2021 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 4
A peck o’ trouble
I read the old lady’s words – and they do say there be a witch in it, and if you let un out there’ll be a peck o’ trouble – in the correct regional accent. Which probably means I’ve been here too long. Or I talk to too many spooky old ladies.
I’m pretty sure her granny gave her this and told her it was a witch bottle, and she assumed a witch bottle is a bottle with a witch in it.
It’s not. It’s a bottle made by a witch to ward off evil. It was a big Elizabethan thing here, though spells in jars go way, way back.
I still wouldn’t open it. It’s most likely full of rusty pins and pee.
Amazon, Etsy and Ebay all claim to sell witch bottles. Sadly, they’re little pill bottles full of oregano with a pentagram tied on. Show a little creativity, Ebay witches!
A better picture of this particular witch bottle here. Object is from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
August 16, 2021 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 5
It’s never what you expect
I’m desperate for one of these. Yes, it’s a whisk broom. You know that, I know that, but these demned Limies don’t seem to.
Which is weird, because I’m sure that’s the sort of thing Jeeves used to brush down his employer’s coat, am I right?
Amazon has a proper Rubbermaid one like this, but at a price that appears to reflect shipping it over from the States. Anyhow, I don’t shop at Amazon any more. Call me crazy, but I’m doing my best not to give my little crumbs of money to billionaires who hate me.
The generic name for such a thing here seems to be a corn broom, but my experience of British brooms in this shape is that they’re not wrapped tight enough. They aren’t serious kit. The sort of thing we call a broom they call a besom and they regard them strictly as props to go with your witch costume.
For general use, they use use push brooms, like shop brooms, and small brushes on a handle.
I managed to get a proper, good-quality, US-style kitchen broom at a feed store here once and the girl behind the counter, who worked at a stable, breathlessly told me she had bought one and how wonderful they were for getting into corners.
Yes. Quite.
August 10, 2021 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 7
Best buds
This is an eryngium or sea holly. It is a pretty beast and not necessarily easy to grow. We have another in the nearby back border, but it is a totally different variety.
Where did it come from? Who knows? But it’s growing out of a crack in the pavement narrower than my little finger. The article says it likes poor soil. I guess!
But wait! There’s more! Growing out of the same little bit of a crack in the pavement is also a mint plant. There are dozens paving slabs all around the house, but these two are thriving entertwined in one little sliver of soil. I don’t understand gardening at all.
Bananas. I think these two are honorary banana plants.
August 4, 2021 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 8
We have trailer parks too, you know
They call them caravan parks here, which sounds so much more romantic.
Though I think these guys are mostly city boys. This is a selection of the men locked up in Sussex in July. It was a bumper month, because of the pandemic backload.
Nothing particularly interesting. Drunk driving and sex attacks. Except the first asshole in the article, the Brighton Cat Stabber, a security guard who murdered sixteen cats. May he rot. He got five years, so here’s hoping his cellie is a cat person.
Incidentally, Scotland Yard ultimately decided the Croydon Cat Killer was actually a series of random fox attacks.
Back to our upstanding citizens, number thirteen is amusing, if you overlook the fact it’s a hit and run with serious injuries:
Fenton, aged 40, self-employed, of Lower Waites Lane, Fairlight, ran away from the scene but was later returned by his mother, having changed his footwear. […] he was sentenced to a total of three years and eight months’ imprisonment. But the sentence was appealed, and at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday 6 July, it was increased to five years and three months.
I mostly posted this so you could appreciate their intelligent faces.
August 3, 2021 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 8
Won’t stop raining
If you’re not sure what this is, look for the beak in the lower left corner. It’s a damp Spoon.
I’m not believing this weather. Another miserable, cold, wet, clammy, demoralizing day. I think we might put the heat on tonight, like we did multiple times in June and July.
Summers here aren’t always like this. In fact, most English Summers are beautiful, at least down here in the sunny South.
This blows, though.
August 2, 2021 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 6
I’ve been here so long
I ordered a new laptop for work. Mistakenly, it came with the plug on the right. I’m ashamed I spent three days thinking, “Looks funny. Is this a European plug of some kind? Dutch, maybe?”
It’s American, Weasel! That there’s an American plug!
The one on the left is a British one. Yes, all their plugs are like this. My electric toothbrush charger has a honking big dryer plug on it. And it has a fuse in it. And every electric outlet has an on/off switch at the wall. Electricity is scary here.
Uncle B says engineers have ruled the UK plug the safest in the world, but it just looks like overkill to me.
I took the picture to send to Deepak, the Dell customer service representative, but I thought I’d share it with you. Good weekend, everyone!
July 30, 2021 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 17
Wet hare
Uncle B was out watering in the garden just now and called out that there was “an animal of some kind” in the cold frame. Animals of some kind are my department.
Turns out, he thoroughly watered a healthy bunny which was crouching under the plants trying to be very still and invisible. Fortunately, no cats were around, so he managed to escape with a cracking story to tell.
My first attempt to find a picture of a wet bunny took me to this article from the Dodo informing me that bathing bunnies is unnecessary, cruel and might even kill them. Okay, then.
My second attempt turned up the picture at right, the title of which was wettlauf-des-igels-und-des-hasen.
The “wet” in “wettlauf” did it. It’s two people in 1864 dressed up for a fairytale ball, representing Grimm’s The Race Between the Hedgehog and the Hare.
If you don’t know this one (I didn’t), hare challenges hedgehog to a footrace. Hare bounds off, hedgehog takes a few steps and vanishes into the grass.
At the end of the row, Mrs Hedgehog pops up and says “I’m already here!” As she looks exactly like Mr Hedgehog, the hare thought he’d been beaten. Mystified, he demanded a rematch. So they did the same thing in reverse. This happened over and over until the hare fell over dead.
Sweet dreams, children!
July 29, 2021 — 7:25 pm
Comments: 8
Lockdown has been harder on some
It never occurred to me that lockdown would be especially tough on…Jehovah’s Witnesses? They haven’t been able to go door to door for sixteen months so looks like they’ve been reduced to handwriting letters. This came in the post today addressed to “the Resident” but had our full address and a stamp. Poor silly bastards.
Inside was also a card with a QR code which I imagine whisks you away to their Zoom meeting. Anyone want it?
JW’s are common where we are, which surprised me. They’re aggressive canvassers. Not nasty aggressive, for the most part, but they’ll walk up to you in your garden. This is very much Not Done – the English are fierce about their back gardens. You don’t walk around the house uninvited.
I’m told Witnesses (Witnessers?) caught on here because the Church of England was seen as snooty and highfalutin. Alternative churches flourished in the country. JW’s, Strict and Particular Baptists, various flavors of Methodists. John Wesley preached his last sermon in Winchelsea, not too too far away from us.
I have to laugh when English people get caught up in proselytizing religions. Walking up to strangers and blurting out scripture is so inimical to the national character.
I hope they earn double Jesus points for it.
July 28, 2021 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 11
Dishwasher broke
New one Friday. I’m okay with that. I don’t mind doing dishes for a few days.
The picture is not actually my sink, though. I spent most of my life without a dishwasher and I learned that the easiest approach is to wash things as you use them, as much as you can, so you don’t end up with a giant, depressing pile of them to do at the end of the day.
Of course, that’s easier with one.
My mother used to sing the Dirty Dishes Blues while she did dishes. It’s not an especially good song. I don’t particularly like it. I’m just saying it brings back memories.
July 26, 2021 — 8:07 pm
Comments: 4