One perfect pointed pepper
Peppers are a tough crop for England. Even in a greenhouse, there’s not enough sunlight and heat (and we’re in the sunniest county in the country). So it’s always exciting to pick the first pepper of the season.
Speaking of cold, we’ve put the central heating on tonight. I think we’ve had the heat on at least two days every month this summer. I’ve had an abiding dread that I’m going to see myself out in an unusually cold era, and it does seem to be coming to pass.
I mailed off my request for an absentee ballot today. I’m cutting it finer than I like, but I lost the email with the address I had to send it to. I tried to get this in the post in June (yes, I did eventually find my house on the map), but I should get everything in and back in time.
Anyway, that’s it for another week. Have a good weekend, everyone!
August 30, 2024 — 7:30 pm
Comments: 5
I spy with my little eye
It’s been getting harder and harder to read signs at a distance with my glasses, so I scheduled an eye exam for today.
Turns out, my eyes have gotten better. Like, a lot better. My glasses aren’t working because they’re too strong for me now. Weird. My dad’s eyes improved in his sixties, so I’m not shocked.
I also paid £5 to get a 3D scan of my eyeball (the basic exam was free because old woman + socialized medicine). The scan lets them fly around your eyeball like Luke Skywalker over the Death Star.
I have the beginnings of a lamellar macular hole. It showed up two years ago on my first 3D scan. The optometrist explained it to me then but didn’t give it a name.
This lady (who was Russian for some reason) said for god’s sake don’t Google it and think you have macular degeneration. This has nothing to do with that. It’s a little bubble in the retina and if it breaks through, I might have some blurred or distorted vision.
I have a little eye chart to test for it. The Amsler chart, it’s called. Which is also used to test macular degeneration (but seriously this isn’t that). They gave me one last time but didn’t tell me why, so I never bothered. I might still not bother.
I’m sure he didn’t name it last time because he didn’t want me Googling it and freaking out.
The pic is from the same church as yesterday. I figured you’d rather look at that than the inside of some gross eyeball.
August 29, 2024 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 9
Details
This lovely old church door. An old lady stood and admired it with us for a moment. I know we’ve stopped and stared at it before, because three years ago I posted a closeup of the stone carving on the left side.
Up close, it looks like a weasel sucking his paw.
This time, Uncle B noticed this little metal plate in the door. It didn’t look like it was covering a keyhole, so I’m not sure its purpose. It’s the silhouette of an oak leaf with an acorn superimposed. Pretty little thing.
The main structure is 13th C, but this church has had a lot of work over the years, so who knows how old it is. This church has a very fine 20th C lychgate, one of many built to commemorate WWI.
It’s funny the ancient buildings we visit every year, and every year we notice some new detail.
August 28, 2024 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 2
I have a glut of beans
What, that? That’s not a glut of beans, that’s a serving for my dinner tonight. No, Uncle B has a whole raised bed of beans that’s likely to bean up before Winter. (He planted it to fix nitrogen in the soil. Very scientifical, these badgers).
I’m thinking of drying them. Have you ever? Brave AI tells me dried green beans are called ‘leather britches’ in the South. As a Southerner, I’m astonished. I know Leather Britches as a banjo and fiddle tune. I always thought it referred to something exciting like a blacksmith’s pants.
I might’ve known it would be beans.
The recipes agree that they need to be blanched for 5 minutes, but they differ on how to dry them. Some expect you to leave them on racks for weeks, but I have neither the space nor the climate for that. I think it will have to be a job for the dehydrator.
They call them French beans here and nobody knows why.
August 27, 2024 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 7
Why, yes, that’s a badger made of flowers
The last few church flower festivals were this weekend. Reminder, the church picks a theme, people in the village make flower arrangements around the theme and show them off in the church, they have a little festival in the churchyard with tea and refreshments and junk stalls and used books and cake stalls. It’s the most English thing ever.
The theme of this one was ‘novels’ – but everyone seems to have picked kids’ books. This is Wind in the Willows, obviously.
We bought some very nice things in the cake tent, which had been forced to accommodate two tombstones inside. The English have a real “in the midst of life…” attitude about such things.
And with that, it’s nearly over. I don’t think the circus is coming this year – it usually marks the end. There are a couple of country shows left.
Then comes the long slide into darkness. We’ve got to come up with something to do with ourselves this Winter or we’ll go mad, I tell you!
August 26, 2024 — 5:20 pm
Comments: 9
Am I about to spend a buttload of money for this one game…?
Three games came out on the same day this week, two were super woke and bombed spectacularly right out of the gate, and then there’s this new astonishing-looking game out of China that has already sold 10 million copies.
I know most of you don’t play games, so I won’t go on about the first two, although it’s pretty fun to watch someone else play Dustborn. Billed by its creators as the wokest game ever. If you can’t get enough of weak white men, sassy black women and fats, here’s seventeen hours of gameplay. You go, girl!
The Chinese game, though, is stunning. It’s based on the 16th Century Chinese Novel Journey to the West and apparently it’s nothing but a love letter to the source material. Watch the trailer for a taste.
I know, I know…the Chicoms. But game.
They released a free demo so you could test your computer’s ability to run the game. Mine passed the test just fine even though it’s five years old.
And then some bright spark got the idea to try the benchmark with that VR plugin – it only works with games that are built with this one engine, and Wukong qualifies. And it works! It works! On my computer, if I turn the graphics all the way down to crayon, it runs.
Like ass.
I have a sneaking feeling a new graphics card is in my future. Do you know what they cost these days? Oof!
It’s the start of a long weekend. Then there isn’t another three-day weekend in Britain until Christmas. Don’t worry – I make Uncle B celebrate Thanksgiving. I don’t have to push too hard. You have a good one!
August 23, 2024 — 7:15 pm
Comments: 10
Hooray for beer!
Local brewery wins a bunch of international awards. Not my favorite, but Harvey’s is a very good beer and the oldest family-owned business in Sussex – operating since 1790 and there are people of the seventh and eighth generation working there now.
If you read the article, it says the family still has several “tide pubs” – you’d be forgiven for thinking these are pubs that only operate for a few hours a day at low tide. But no, that’s a sign of someone dictating the article, or maybe AI.
What they meant is a “tied house” – a pub that is obliged to buy a certain percentage of their beer and other goods from a specific company. The company owns the pub itself, so it is a cheaper way to become a pub landlord.
The opposite is a Free House, which I suspect most of them are now, since FREE HOUSE is emblazoned on most pub signs. One of the many things I had to have explained to me.
August 22, 2024 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 8
I have a bad feeling I might need it
I joined the Free Speech Union today. They’re the only organization I know (along with Fair Cop) sticking up for those poor bastards arrested for Facebook posts, “it’s okay to be white” stickers or silently praying in front of an abortion clinic.
It’s genuinely scary, y’all. I’m spoiled by a lifetime living under the First Amendment.
The ones you see going from arrest to sentencing in a matter of days, they’ve been persuaded to plead guilty by lawyers who I don’t think have their best interests at heart. I suspect they were told if they insisted on a trial, they’d wait in a jail cell for a year before that could happen.
Lawfare. There’s nothing lower.
The ones that don’t immediately plead guilty, though, the FSU may step in with legal aid. They’ve had some successes, thank god.
I made a resolution this year to spend more money on things I believe in. It’s little enough.
August 21, 2024 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 8
Amazing!
This is Uncle B’s Cereus Peruvianus, also known as the Peruvian Apple Cactus or Night Blooming Cactus. He bought it in the Eighties. Then it broke in half and he repotted it. This is the top half, which will very soon have grown too big for the greenhouse (then what he’s going to do, I have no idea).
And in all those forty years, this is the very first time it’s flowered. He’s so excited.
I mean, I guess that’s a flower bud. The Wikipedia article says it both flowers and fruits, and that doesn’t look like the fruit.
Alternatively, it might be a tiny pod person.
August 20, 2024 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 9
When he was small
This isn’t a memorial post. Albert is still very much with us.
I witnessed the very moment he fell out of his shell. Onto his back, naturally, waving his feet in the air. He was always twice the size of the other chicks. In group photos, he’s way in the back, sticking up like a q-tip.
He eats, he sleeps on the perch at night and he cock-a-doodle-doos with the rest of them. I won’t give up until he does.
When I put let him out into the garden now, he loosens up until he seems quite normal. Sometimes he falls over when he hops up even a little way. Sometimes he has these odd fits where he puts his head down and walks backwards for a few steps.
Years ago, I had a little hen that had those fits, too. After much searching online, I found someone else with a backward-walking hen. They said it was a nutritional deficiency.
So I put vitamins in Albert’s water, but I don’t think he likes the taste. First thing he does when I let him out is go over to the communal water and drink for about ten minutes.
Sadly, I can’t give him that much time out. I have to give the other two cockerels some time in the garden, too. They’re a year older than he is and there aren’t many Summer days left in any of their little lives.
August 19, 2024 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 3