Mum was sitting in the greenhouse enjoying her morning cup of tea, after planting out a tray of seedlings.  Albert was enjoying sitting on her lap getting his ears scratched, when he suddenly leapt off, to quote mum', as though he had a banger up his arse', and shot outside.  There followed an opera of catwauling and yowls and a few minutes later he trotted back into the greenhouse and dropped a huge dead rat at mum's feet.  Rat had put up a valiant fight but Albert is a very fine ratter and the outcome was inevitable.  Last night, he was munching a mouse under the dining room table. ..

Mum and I were standing in the garden on Saturday morning, and I could hear a very loud bee.  I was one of those big, fat bumblers, as fat as a thumb, stuck in the greenhouse, buzzing against the glass trying to escape.  As it scrabbled against the glass we noticed a spider of equivalent size stalking it.  Spiders are not my thing, and this was particularily large and ugly.  I can't stand the way they move, and here was this huge specimen advancing malevolently toward unsuspecting bee.  We're watching this little drama of life and death in the arthropoidal world,  both yelling for Dad to come and tackle the brute... I'm shouting 'Save the bee! Save the bee!' ...but dad is up the field and won't make it in time, so as the spider inched slyly forward, mum got in with a broom and lifted the bee to safety...much rejoicing as it droned off across the lawn.  The damn spider fleed back into the pile of boxes in the greenhouse so is still lurking about in there somewhere.  

...and this morning, my journey to work was delayed by David Harris driving his sheep along the road...he was bumping along in quad and directing the sheepdogs who were steering ewes and lambs along the road.  Lovely to see the dogs working the flock.  

May is so beautiful.  This is just the loveliest time of year with trees in their new green and the hedgerows sparkling with bluebells, primroses and pink campion.   In the shadier sections of road the verge is deep with wild garlic in bloom...    

I should be in Whitby: I'm not.  I should be well and productive: I'm not. 

...But I have just sobbed my way through the Beeb's 'Miss Austen Regrets' and loved it.  I notice that no name is ever given to the illness that took her at 42, because a) it didn't have a name then, and b) even if they'd been anachronistic enough to give it it's modern moniker you would have had an entire nation go 'w'uh?' when they said what it was.  But they did get the details right - including the 'little pieces of ivory two inches wide' which damn near broke my heart. 


...meanwhile, although I don't have nearly enough stock made for upcoming shows, I have put together some patched waistcoat fronts.  Making two lengths 'Drummond' for short people, 'Bruin' for taller ones.  I'll knock out some skirts too...and hopefully a few waspies as they take less fitting for off the peg than overbusts...

...and inbetween rainstorms the garden is looking lovely - lots of pots of Queen of the Night tulips and happy faced pansies.  I have such a thing for pansies.  Indeed I spent all my money until payday on the most beautiful ones at the garden centre on Saturday.  So no mney for milk, but I do have  bowl of the most delicate buds on the window sill about to burst forth into watercolour shades of peach and tea rose...

Dad was of a disposing disposition yesterday and took it upon himself to clean out one of the sheds.  Didn't amuse Mum when he dropped the one one box that contained nice china, so I've been trawling eBay for replacments.  However,  stuck way at the back was a box of my stuff that's probably been there for the twenty-odd years we've been at the Mill.  Found one my O Level certificates in it, plus my then boyfriend's A Levels -turns out he lied about his grades!  I shal lenjoy burning that this evening.  There were piles of my A Level course work from Dress - loads of carefully done 1/4 scales for pattern cutting homework of designs with big sholder pads and peplum jackets.  

Even more nostalgic was finding old photo albums full of picture of me and friends feeding baby sheep and playing in the garden, all in that strange golden light that imbues 70's filmstock.  Found a pile of 'reels' of tapes for a Disney viewer device which amazingly still works - my espcail favourite is the one with the dragon from Sleeping Beauty, the firt movie I ever saw - ah, the days before home VHS and DVD, and several cards for those 3D glasses - have no idea what they're called, bit like Victorian stereoscopes - you slot in a disc of photos and see it in 3D on looking into the headset thingy - mostly wildlife and strange plants...(Primitivepeople, I thought of you)..and finally, like excavating my childhood in geological strata, was a 1985 Phaze catalogue which I must have had to buy new clothes for starting 6th form and pictures of Robert Smith torn from Smash Hits which I remember making a drawn copy of...  

so, assorted trtesures include odd fungi, dragons, rat skulls, catalogues of winkle pickers with bat shaped buckles, Robert Smith icons and the autographs of the contemporary Blue Peter team...and people wonder why I turned out as I did...

..so unexpected delivery of shirts from China, plus another warehouse sale, means I can't get to London next week to see VAST.  Can anyone out there in ether-land use the tixs (I have two up for grabs).  It's next Weds eve, but off hand, can't remember the venue...

Leave a comment, or text on 07986 595 025, but I've left the damn phone at work so won't pick up until tomorrow

Today, I have been mostly.... hiding in trees...

The 'd' key on this keyboard is sticking, so typing is fun today.

So, driving...I seem to have the hang of turns-in-the-road and reversing into parking bays, but as I was overtaking a tanker full of cream on the A30 - yes Roddas have cream tankers and I mused on what the news report of one of those over-turning would be like ...hoards of people of people brandishing scones and jam converging on the carriage way for a flash-mob tea party...anyway, back on subject..as I was passing this lorry mirror-signal-manouevering,  I was thinking on the whole process of me learning to drive, and how it seems I am not good at this sort of taking on of instruction...

...I have forgotten things between one lesson and the next. It was the same with dancing, I don't learn steps well - any sequence of manual manoeuvers just doesn't seem to stick easily in my head, and yet I have a lot of manual dexterity and can do quite fiddly things even with silly nails.  Wil sit in the car, and I go blank...just have no clue of the first series of actions necessary...and I get cross ith myself because I'm far from stupid, and there are some pretty dumb people out there that seem perfectly capable of driving safely...

Academic learning I have completely sorted - pulling things from books, assembling evidence for an arguement, and collating information I can do with ease, but anything requiring learning physical things I find inoridnately difficult.  Does this mean I'm too cerebral?    

...I should have a permanent chaffeur, so I can just look out the window at the daffodils....

so...this morning, I'm just checking my email before work this and an IM message pops up with an 'hello'.  It's no-one I recognise, but the name suggests someone I might know, so being a basically polite person I say 'hello' back again.  

It's not who I think it might be, and for some reason he thinks I'm in the US but when I confirm I'm actually UK based,  he - at this point presuming it's a he - asks how my morning is going and if I'm getting ready for work.  I say that so far all I've done is get up and feed the cat.  I get back a IM saying 'oh, so you've already taken care of your pussy today..fnarr!'.  I reply with a 'hmmm' . Unimpressed but this could just be inappropriate humour.  But no.  Basically it's foolishness to ever assume people who randomly IM you are ever after anything but cyber-sex.  Next message arrives rapidly as 'sorry but I woke up with a stiffy this morning'.  I reply that that is in no way my problem, and hit 'block sender' .  I don't even have the energy to tell him he's being a jerk.   It's only just 7.30 in the morning.  

My yahoo profile clearly states - actually quite bluntly states - that I am not interested in finding a date or up for cyber sex sessions with strangers, and yet they all seem to think that that doesn't apply to them.  I shouldn't have to keep my profile so private that people I do know can't find me but all I seem to get is lunatics.  

What is wrong with these guys?  There are services they can call if they want to whack off with someone at the other end of the phone cheering them on, why pick on me?   The short answer is of course that they don't want to pay.  I suspect that while tightfistedness is a factor, part of it is also that talking to a real person who's not charging by the minute counts as a more 'authentic experience'...but this person you've picked on is a stranger.  Would they walk up to someone they fancied in a pub and ask if they could just maintain eye contact for a bit while they had a quick hand-shandy and not expect a punch in the mouth...but the internet makes people brave in their  insensitivity.  

The rest of the day hasn't got much better but has at least sucked for different reasons than inappropriate conversations before I'd even eaten my cereals.

So yet again on Saturday I was up early to beetle around Bodmin learning how to control a car without killing myself or anyone else.  I am never going to like driving, but at least it seems to be something I'm capable of doing.  Have been working on the manoeuvers I'm likely to get in my test - starting with 3-point turns, or whatever it is you're supposed to call them these days - and this week bay parking.  Bay parking I worked out pretty easily, and seem to have the hang of turning the car around as well.   It seems I will make a perfectly competant driver,and my instructor thinks I should put in for my theory test.  I don't know if it's faint praise, but he thinks I'm doing really well.  What would help would be having a working vehicle to practise in at home, but working on that...

However, as i was tanking up the A30 at 60mph, I was boggling slightly that you're allowed to do this.  I'm watching in my mirrors as I match speed and filter onto the duel carrigeway, but really, I don't have much clue what I'm doing...and on my first lesson, we just got in the car and set off on a public road, with all the other numpties out there when I barely knew where the pedals were.  This seems CRAZY to me...  So far, I've had eactly ten and half hours worth of instruction and time behind the wheel, and had NEVER driven a car in my life before this, and yet you are allowed to just take charge of this lethal piece of equipment and join all the other road users.  Even crazier, you don't actually have to have lessons with a qualified instructor, just you need to have someone in the car who's had a driving licence for three years.  I'm amazed.  Surely the public highway is not the place to test whether someone is mentally capable of controlling a car for the very first time?  Shouldn't we have to bump about on a disused airfield or something for a bit before let out on the road?  But I suppose if I, car-phobic as I was - can get in and not crash (yet) then the system must be working.  I still think cars are a fundamentally stupid idea anyway... 

...and now people expect me to have an interest in cars, to have opinions on them; I don't.  Mum asked me what kind of car the instructor had, and I honestly couldn't even remember the colour of it.  All the information I care to retianin my head is I want one that's realiable, automatic, and runs on biofuel.  Anything else and my eyes glaze over.

Actually, it's worse than that, I actively don't want to  know anything about cars...it's a waste of brain storage capacity, and as my memory seems to be shot these days I can't spare the space. 

 Chap rings up out the blue at work yesterday offering to quote us for our carrier bags.  I have a rather nice chap that I deal with already at a very good price for the highest of European environmental standards for carrier bags, but we are coming up to the point of needing to re-order so chap-on-phone has chosen a fortuitious time to call, only he goes on to say:

'We supply bags for all sorts of the most salubrious of brands'.   

When he then asks if he can out in a quote I tell him he's only allowed to pitch for my business if he can give me the correct definition of 'salubrious'.  He gets it wrong.  Nice-chap-who-already-does-our-bags probably gets to carry on making our bags for another year then....

This is how I stop myself from going insane at work; baiting telesales people via lexicographful pedantry.

 My birthday is horribly near. People have asked what I'd like so this post just to gather links for parentals to browse

...as this makes me avaricious...wishful shopping during lunchtimes.   I have been careful with money in recent months working on getting debt free before college, and Christmas was beyond miserable, so feel a few treats are allowed.

'I grow old, I grow old'...

So fantasy shopping list:

So yes, decisions decisions...a small amount of naughtiness is allowed...normal programming will return soon, with some actual content. not just shopping.  And of course am looking forward to birthday treats of tea and museum visiting in London while I practise denial that this really is my last year in my 30's.