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Neither the nut loaf nor the napkin

Well, I hope everyone made it through December.

I went through to Leaf's place last Saturday, dropping by the supermarkets on the way to buy the supplies for Monday's Christmas Dinner. Preparation and pre-cooking were all done on Sunday to avoid a mad rush in her small kitchen on Christmas day.

Leaf's large flat was a renovation when she bought it well over a year ago and she's been redecorating constantly since then. We had to serve dinner in a room where the walls and ceiling are stripped bare, waiting for the plasterer, so we spent most of Christmas morning trying to make the place presentable. She laid down some rugs for the floor while I mounted a selection of oil paintings, watercolours and printed artwork on the walls. We dragged in a huge wood and stained glass cupboard to occupy one particularly bare corner, then she found a set of lanterns that she'd bought in Brighton so I used adhesive strips to hook these to the wall. Although the room was quite dark, candles on the tables and in shelving recesses provided just enough light without revealing too many wall or ceiling cracks. In the end the whole thing had the look and feel of a rustic Italian farmhouse.

During the morning we received reports of minor injuries, illnesses and travelling problems but a very manageable seventeen turned up for a dinner menu of festive fish pie and trimmings. This rebellion against the traditional Christmas fare seemed to go down quite well with her family and of course, the great advantage of fish is that the supermarket's are full of it at this time of year and it's very easy to cook. Rice, couscous and vegetable dishes alongside a couple of poached salmon six pounders helped everyone fill in the gaps and provided nibbles for the late arrivals. Everything was eaten and the emergency sausage rolls, chicken pieces, cheeses and nibbles weren't even needed. Most importantly, Leaf - not an easy person to please - seemed happy enough.

It would appear that my reputation as a chocoholic may have leaked out - click the parcel to see what three young persons heaved half way across the country and up three flights of stairs to present to me.

Quite an honour really.

I'm not at my most upbeat right now but I do wish everyone well, and I sure wish I could hug and squeeze every blogger I know. You each have my very genuine thanks for helping me reach the end of the year intact - and that means all of you, even the quiet ones out there. Take care.

Listening to: Cocteau Twins, "Persephone"
Hoping: you're all alive and kicking.

Dear Santa's Helper

Do you think Father Christmas keeps up with a changing world? I wonder if he employs lots of little blog readers to sit and chatter away happily while reading all the world's blogs, looking for prezzie requests?

Dear Santa's helper,

Thank you for coming to read my blog. I hope you're tucked in all snug and warm up there in Lapland under the northern lights. Would you please be kind enough to pass my Christmas list onto Santa?

A box of chocolate flavoured tea bags
A small teapot
A teacup
A bunnygirl

Thank you,
Bunnyman

Deader than I've ever been before

Leaf is now working in a different country - albeit a mere half-hour flight away. She only found out last week. "We've deleted your job but don't worry, you can have this new one. It's just across that little sea over there. Get packing, you start Monday."

I had no idea these things could happen so quickly and neither had she, but there isn't much point in kicking up a stink because she's actually a bit better off now. Not so much financially as for her state of mind. She's working in a buzzing capital city full of night-life, bright lights and colourful accents; a real change from the dour, grey excuse of a capital city that so depressed her before.

So that's all been a bit of a shock. She was relieved when I called her yesterday evening because she hadn't been able to phone home - forgetting to preface her numbers with the 44 international dial code for the UK, silly thing.

I wanted to explain about my last minute booking, a Christmas experience on the Orient Express ... which meant of course that I couldn't cook Christmas dinner for her entourage of 26. Unfortunately I'm not a very good liar, "Bunnyman, if you don't turn up to cook, you'll be deader than you've ever been before."

?deader than before? Hmm, golly, that's a threat to get you wondering, isn't it? Just how many forms of death are there? Have I already been dead and not realised? What a puzzle.

Anyway my attempt to get out of Christmas day has so far failed miserably. I wonder whether the local chemist would consider selling me a highly contagious disease?

Listening to: Pink Floyd, "On the Run"
Looking for: well pretty much any old excuse now. Any ideas?

Golden Oldies Against Trident

In the company of a dozen other mature Leicestershire residents, 94 year old Alice Beer has made the news by joining more than 60 people to demonstrate against the Government's decision to continue with Trident, the UK's submarine-based Nuclear Deterrent. Alice and her group of GOATs (Golden Oldies Against Trident) have joined the Faslane 365 non-violent protest for the weekend, just outside Helensburgh. Alice makes pottery, writes poetry and has seen through two World Wars. In Vienna during the 1930's, she campaigned against the rise of fascism.

Unfortunately there's another disconcerting news item from yesterday - 20 anti-nuclear protesters from Leicestershire arrested. It seems the UK government doesn't care much for non-violent protest. I hope Alice wasn't among those arrested.

Listening to: Suzanne Vega, "Left of Center"

Not enough sleepsies

I finally managed to nod off at 5:00 this morning but then woke an hour later, drifting in and out of sleep until the alarm clock started its daily altercation at 9:00. Tried burying the pesky thing under a pillow and pressing the sleep button every five minutes but in the end staying in bed seemed pointless. Throwing off the duvet, I caught the alarm before it tumbled onto the floor then sat up and managed to bang my head against the wall. Ouch! A slightly shaky start to a fresh day.

Outside is a wonderful, strange world of daylight - not a cloud to be seen. After a week of short days filled with gloomy wet skies, it's a reassuring change to see the Sun and feel a cool Winter breeze.

Is this the last Sunday? The last one before the Christmas and New Year Bank Holiday madness, I mean? I guess it must be. You know, if I hadn't written this post I would probably be blissfully unaware of just how close it all is. This business of blogging, of making you think, it's not always a good thing.

Peek-a-boo

Following Google's strange behaviour as reported in my last post, I've been playing a bit. I stumbled on givemebackmygoogle recently which claims to give "Google™ results without the annoying affiliate links". Taking a little peek under the bonnet, it seems that it strips out links to price comparison sites such as Kelkoo and Pricerunner from your search results.

An example: say you wanted to search for stereo headphones. The first results page Google returns includes places like Comparestoreprices, Ciao and Dooyoo. But what if you're not interested in price comparison websites? All these links can be a real annoyance. Give me back my google, or GmbmG as it calls itself, strips them all out.

What I find interesting is not the site itself which, in all honesty I probably wouldn't use, but the way it works. It uses a known Google search feature called -inurl that simply excludes one or more websites from your search. In fact you can type in your own -inurl keywords. This is a really useful idea because you can use it for all manner of other things.

For example, if I want to find information, say on the book, Sabriel by Garth Nix, but I don't want any Amazon nonsense listed in the results, I can type this in the Google search: sabriel -inurl(amazon)

What this does is to exclude results for amazon.co.uk or amazon.com because any link that contains the word amazon in the url is stripped out. I can exclude results for more than one site by separating each word with the "|" character (that's the vertical broken bar character that's to the left of the 'z' on a UK keyboard, or somewhere over to the right on a US keyboard).
So I could do something like this: sabriel -inurl(amazon|ebay)

The result is a better search with fewer distractions :-) So that's good isn't it?

A howling wind

This post can now be found over here.

Problems with Bloglines

Since the problems with 20Six over the weekend, a number of my subscribed feeds at Bloglines have broken and haven't been updating. This includes subscriptions for all the 20Six blogs listed in my sidebar Blogs list.

Normally following problems the feeds sort themselves out within a day or so but that's not happened this time.

I mailed Bloglines using their contact form listing each broken feed and was surprised at their quick response - within 2 hours. Not bad considering I only have a free account.

They reset all the feeds I listed and these are now updating correctly. If you use Bloglines you may want to check your own subscriptions. Each broken one may have a [!] marked against the feed property page.

Happy feed nibbling.

Winifred's not well

It's been quite a busy week. I've been off visiting people who apparently needed visiting (I think it's called keeping up appearances), fixing a broadband and email connection for a friend of the family, and helping someone else replace his dial-up connection with broadband.

And all this damp weather seems to be bringing on Winifred's arthritis. I tried giving her the usual loving care and attention but she's still creaking a bit at the joints. Might have to get the stethoscope out over the weekend and find out what's wrong. Have I mentioned Winifred before? Perhaps not. Okay then this is probably a good time to explain that Winifred is actually my car. She's normally quite a healthy little motor so I hope it's nothing serious - could do without the expense of having to take her to the car surgery right now.

There's a special treat for me this evening - BBC2 are showing a documentary about Wheatfield with Crows, one of the last paintings completed by Vincent Van Gogh before he took his own life. It's on at 9p.m. and someone is taping it for me so I should get to see it sometime tomorrow if all goes well. A full size, framed print of this painting is hanging on the wall beside me and it's probably my most prized possession after my climbing boots, computer and broadband cable. I'll be very curious to see what the program has to say about it.

By the way, has anyone noticed that Bloglines has been playing up a bit recently? Every now and then have to shut down their feed reading service for maintenance, but this week it seems to have been happening quite a lot. Maybe it's just the cold weather? There was also a problem getting onto 20Six yesterday - I received the slightly upsetting message that my blog didn't exist any more. Quickly checking some other 20Six blogs, I was relieved to find that at least I hadn't been singled out; they'd all been zapped. Maybe it was a server failure and they were having to restore everything from a backup? Seems to be okay now though.

Listening to: The soundtrack to Lord of the Rings
Wondering: why the colours black and yellow go so well together ...

Golf ball syndrome

I've not been a good blogger. Not been updating my wordiflossbag. And I've not been writing, you know, written words on paper, the act. For someone who can't even write in the first place, this probably isn't good. Not being regular like, well it leads to constipation and in my case something called golf ball syndrome (no, you really don't want to know).

So it's probably important that I write something every day, even if it doesn't make it in here. So that's what I'm going to do. Well at least I'll say so.

Hopefully I will then.

And that's it for today. No point in being over ambitious is there?

Actually, I'd better write that down. Tomorrow: an appointment with a piece of blank paper and a pen. Sounds kinda scary already.

And I must work out what I'm supposed to do with all these colons ':' and semi-colons ';' and dashes '-' and things, 'cos I really ain't sure.

Oh, and you know what? Someone looked at one of my pages through AltaVista's Babelfish translator, isn't that odd? I wonder what this nonsense translates to in German? Ich wundere mich, was dieser Unsinn auf zum Deutsch übersetzt?

Listening to: California Guitar Trio, "The Good the Bad and the Ugly"
Feeling: not good, so it must be either bad or ugly?

Intelligence measured in Arcseconds

It seems that as well as electing a new premier and discovering hip-hop, the japanese have been busy in space. They actually have a spacecraft up there, the Hinode, and it's been taking a peek at the Sun. Here's a piccy (you can click through to enlarge).

Image copyright JAXA

Each one of these little nugget-like lumps is a cloud of quite hot gas, about the size of Asia. I guess this means then, that the Sun is quite a chunky old feller?

The Hinode spacecraft is a project by JAXA and you can find out more about it here if you're interested, as well as see lots of colourful and informative pictures of the Sun.

It was launched only last month, on September 22. Curiously, this was the same day (in 1982) that Billie Piper, of Doctor Who fame, was born and also the day (in 2890) that Bilbo Baggins of the Shire was (or is it 'will be'?) born. I wonder if the sight of this rocket, engines burning bright in a Japanese Saturday morning sky, set Billie in mind for her time and space travelling role with the Doctor. Certainly it would have made a nice firework for Bilbo's birthday celebrations.

What I found particularly interesting is the Hinode's high resolution telescope. Apparently it can achieve "a very high angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds". For those (like me until a minute ago), who aren't sure what an arcsecond is, "One arcsecond is an angle equal to 1/3600 of a degree—or approximately the width of a human hair held thirty feet away".

Okay so let's have a think about this. A continent sized cloud of quite hot gas on the Sun, must be like the width of one fifth of a human hair, held out at thirty feet? But how would I hold a human hair thirty feet away? My arms aren't that long, you see. Hmm, I seem to be getting a bit confused about these distances and widths. Perhaps an arcsecond might be a useful unit of measurement to assess the width of my single brain cell. In fact I wonder what it might tell me about my IQ, if I went off and stood in front of the Hinode's, Solar Optical Telescope? Well I mean thirty feet away, of course.

Listening to: Leonard Cohen, "Winter Lady"
Dreaming: that I got dizzy and fell into the Sun

Jools, Ivor and the dreadful PGTip

Jools' Later on Friday night was pretty much this week's little highlight. Next Friday though, I'm in danger of being spoiled because in addition to Jools there's a profile of Ivor Cutler, a quirky Glasgowegian poet, actor and musician. I imagine the few people who are familiar with his performances have either passed on or are far too old to be bloggers. What a little gem of originality he was though. Have a listen to this short but amusing piece of his wisdom.

Note to self - Friday evening (Saturday morning really) on BBC2 at 00:40. Don't miss it!

The PGTips pyramid tea bag has to be one of the most annoying inventions of the 20th Century. I don't know whether the science behind the invention is also at fault, but what I can say is: when they came up with their supposedly revolutionary idea - a pyramidal tea bag, they forgot to put nice tea inside. Their marketing material suggests that because these tea bags aren't flat, because they "act like a miniature teapot", the tea gets a chance to mingle with the water, inside the bag and then out pops a well mingled brew. Well why is it then that my cheapo brand of Organic Fairtrade tea, in quite flat round bags, tastes trillions of times better than these daft and horrible little things?

I don't really wish bad things on anyone but I do wish, right at the point when Mr PGTip bag inventor was about to kindle his idea, that maybe he tripped over, or someone knocked him and that maybe he sprained his tea-pouring wrist or something. And maybe after that, just to distract him some more, that he had to go work at the North Pole for a while. Perhaps he could have come up with a new type of snowball design. Anything but the PGTip!

Listening to: Cat Stevens, "Sad Lisa"
Feeling: drained

Burnt me nuts

I just burnt me pine nuts again!

I'm always burnin' me pine nuts. Why is it that when you watch them under the grill, they never do anything but as soon as you turn your back to wipe your greasy finger on a tissue, they burn? I mean, it was only a few seconds!

I turned round and there were those wiggling whispers of smoke curling up to the ceiling and creeping over to where the smoke alarm is. Quick then you got to rescue your nuts, open the back door, grab a tea towel and whirl it round and round under the smoke alarm, quick, quick, just like an airplane rotor, whisk all the smoke out before the thing goes off and wakes the neighbourhood.

Phew!

While I was adding me burnt nuts to the pan (they are still edible, you know, just a bit black), the radio started playing an old Maggie Bell song. Maggie Bell eh? Would you believe it? Bringing those memories all the way back from 1978. That's funny, -1978-, see that's almost a straight ... or is it a flush? No a flush is suits isn't it? Must be a straight. Well, almost.

...

Still, at least the pasta didn't go soggy this time.

Mmmm, pasta, pine nuts and saucy bits, yummy. I need a nice hot cup of coffee beans now ...

Listening to: sorry, didn't catch the name of that Maggie Bell track
Wondering: where this little moment of limpidity came from

FAITHLESS - Bombs

I just saw an advance play of the new Faithless video for Bombs on Channel 4. Bombs is the new single from the "To All New Arrivals" album due to be released during November.

I don't want to rave but ... but I have to rave. This video is, is, is f******g magnificent. The worst part is that I can't find a link to it anywhere on-line although I've been searching for an hour.

There are some instrumental demos of the album and you can hear the FULL single as a Real Player stream here and I'll put the lyrics in this post.

The video shows warfare taking place in the same streets we live, while we wash our cars, while we eat our meals, it shows what happens when armed soldiers blow a hole through the side of a school, it shows nuclear warfare. Achh my words are useless.

SEE THIS VIDEO

It is simply the most accurate portrayal of the world I live in today. The single is good, but the video IS A MUST WATCH

BOMBS - lyrics:

We think we are heroes
We think we are kings
We plan all kinds of fabulous things
Oh look how great we have become

Key in the door
The moment I've longed for
Before my bag hit the floor
My adorable children rush up
Screaming for a kiss and a story
They've a gift to this world
My only claim to glory
I never knew sweeter days
Blows my mind like munitions
I'm amazed

So much heaven, so much hell
So much love, so much pain
So much more than I thought this world could ever contain
So much bought, so much sold
One man's loss, another man's gold
So much more than I thought this world could ever hold

We're just children, we're just dust
We are small, we are lost
And we're nothing
Nothing at all

One bomb
Whole block gone
Cant find my children
And dust covers the sun
Everywhere is noise, panic
And confusion
But to some another fun day in Babylon
I'm going to bury my wife
And dig up my gun
My life is done
So now I'm going to kill someone...

So much heaven, so much hell
So much love, so much pain
So much more than I thought this world could ever contain
So much bought, so much sold
One man's loss, another man's gold
So much more than I thought this world could ever hold

an update

I'm still having trouble remembering how to blog. Is there a medication for this type of painless but frustrating ailment? Perhaps a laxative of some kind? I must have a look through the bathroom cabinet, bound to be something there, maybe behind the out of date cough mixture. Meanwhile here's some bullet point blogging.

I'm very relieved to see that Riverbend posted this week. Following her 10 week hiatus I had feared the worst. Her subject matter doesn't make fun reading but nevertheless I'm much happier knowing she's still alive and able to post, though that in itself must be incredibly difficult.

The BBC's 2006 Children in Need appeal is under way. This aims to help fund selected charities, supporting children who have been abused, bullied, or who may be disabled, ill or homeless.
I have knowledge from childhood, of both bullying and abuse, so any and all support directed at these types of charity gets you a gold star here and maybe even my last chocolate too.

The Goldfish has posted an excellent article which provides a much needed reality check on the current veil debate.

Sadly, spam is bombarding this blog constantly now, so although I'd prefer not to, I've left the spam filter enabled for comments. I'm really sorry if this is a pain for anyone.

I've been avoiding a software update to my PC (Linux) for months, afraid of losing the ton of electronic data that's sitting precariously on my hard disks. Unfortunately, during a fit of paranoia I built a customised operating system which, although very secure, was ridiculously complex. The process to untangle this complexity is likely to be time consuming, but rest assured that if I don't post or comment for week or two, it won't be because I've expired.

Listening to: Pink Floyd, "Echoes"
Wondering: whether I really need female hormone therapy in order to multitask?

... blank

Trying to blog but it isn't working. After a few days spent driving around attending to work related drudge, got back yesterday, but all I've managed is one comment. I go like this sometimes, vegetable like and empty-headed. There's no pain and everything else is dory-hunky but my mind is ... blank. In a way it's quite good because I can't even focus on feeling stressed or depressed, I'm just relaxed and blob-like. There's probably a Bunny strutting around somewhere, screaming his head off with frustration, but I can't find him right now.

Current theories are:
- lack of alcohol
- sugar imbalance
- some other form of chemical confusion
- dementia
- possession, by an egg white

I'm sitting with a cup of coffee and two dates, not sure why. They just seem to have appeared from somewhere. Assuming consciousness ever decides to reappear, I might be able to write something more useful ... soon ... or sometime.

Listening to: some funny French thing
Feeling: ... eh ... erm ... tries, tries hard ...
no sorry, it's all a blank.

um, bye for now?

A week

It's been a hard week.

I don't mean the daily grind, routine gripes, sleep struggles, but with the fabric, with life's latticework.

Since Tuesday, I've been trying to write two posts although to be honest, they're so interwoven they could be expressed as one. After my 12th draft, I feel no closer to completion than at the beginning. If I'd befriended a deity, that deity would presumably have been patiently watching me go through this torture. Unfortunately, no deity I've met to date has been willing to act as more than a passive voyeur.

This is becoming a serious blockage, one that I now have to put aside. Others have written these things before and found ways of doing so. I must go, read, find my way over this particular hurdle, take some inspiration, steal an idea.

Every week needs balance, but balance this week is proving elusive.

The experiences of others can sometimes help us gain perspective on our own trials and for that reason, I'll include the following quote from a blogger.

"I just wish they would take the oil and go..." - Riverbend

oops, I fixed the comments now

What a twit I am.

I just noticed a problem with the "POST A COMMENT HERE" link on my individual posts after switching this blog from Blogger to Blogger beta - the link broke as a result. I hope it's now fixed, but there's a possibility that it may have stopped at least one person from commenting. I can only offer my sincere apologies.

It wasn't Blogger's fault, just my own bungling failure to update something in the blog template.

I wasn't trying to stick my tongue out at anyone, honest. I feel terrible now. I'm sending myself down to wash the dishes and scrub the floor.

Feeling: quite embarrassed.

Black tie and sh---

I've had a couple of days of an embarrassing and unsociable mini-ailment that's kept me mostly indoors.

... okay then I've had the shits.

Feels like a family of miniature Alien life forms, battling it out to see which will be first to rip open my stomach and pop it's little head out. And there's this racket coming from my music speakers - a chant by some Buddhist monks. I have a lot of respect for Buddhism but this isn't a good day for inner peace, in fact these particular monks have become so annoying that I've now given them the day off and switched to very early Tangerine Dream: mildly chaotic but soothing.

Yesterday I had to wear my black tie and funeral face. They're odd things funerals, it's hard to associate all the ritual and ceremony with the person who's gone, much easier to say goodbye to the spirit, alone and in private. I'm probably alone in this feeling though, the others seemed to need the event and the presence of the body to help them say their goodbyes. In this case, a faulty body for what had been an alert mind.

On a much brighter note, I'll always remember him with a smile. A kindly, bright and friendly soul.

He would have laughed, me going to a funeral with a stomach rumbling intermittently like an old style coffee percolator. Quite a challenge in the silent moments.

Feeling: physically unsettled.

Refreshed

I'm back and feeling a little refreshed. Had a great time in the Lakes and even managed a 'perfect day' that I must try to write up. Took one or two photos which are still in my camera, not sure yet whether they're any good.

Meantime life has been busy, not least here in blogland and lots of things are queuing, waiting to be posted but as always with me, the 'goings on' in my head have to be prised out and translated into written language, a slow process at best.

Before I can get on with that, there are some things I have to do. First off is to say that I'll miss Arete's blog and her thought provoking writing. Arete is moving on and moving forward and I wish her the best.

I also need to do a few other bloggy things, catch up on some practicalities, such as drying the tent, then find the time (and words) to write. Back soon.

Excerpt from the Little Holes dictionary:
Soon - Within a short time but possibly extending to longer depending on brain capacity, energy levels and how much chocolate has been consumed.