Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Business as usual
Back to the allotment after nearly a week for one reason or another. Arriving there reminded me what a good thing it was! Deer fence still up. So weeded three of the 17 trees and bushes inside. I try to keep each in the middle of a 3 foot disc of cleared ground. Apparently, in 1790 at least, the US custom was not to do this, while the French custom was to, on the grounds that grass around small trees slowed growth. A factlet remembered from the memoirs of one Marquise de la Tour de la Pin - a lady from the ancien regime whose husband took up farming in the US during his exile from France. So not all of them were hopeless cases.
On the catering front, taken to Japanese green tea, a gift from the Cambridge connection. Good stuff - which does not need added lemon like the Earl Gray (or Grey?) I have been drinking for ages, so I can withdraw from the organic (that is to say no wax sprayed on skin) lemon market. One snag is that it contains quite a lot of twigs that float so we have unearthed a not particularly gracious tea strainer.
Done two whole Sodukus today, one intermediate and one easy. For once the easy one did seem easy and I got to the end without seeing a mistake. Still wondering how they generate the clues. Is it as easy as do a hard clue, then add a few numbers to the clue to make it an easy one?
One senior moment when I started to fill the tea pot with cold water rather than the kettle. Pretended to BH that I was washing it out.
That apart, found the Telegraph today full of tat which could have been worked up into proper Sunday rag stuff, including some interesting ideas for nannydom.
First, it seems that there is a major health and safety scandal to be made with stair lifts which are not small person proof. The answer is clearly a new Big Office for the Regulation of Stair Lifts (perhaps said Borstal) to be based in Buckingham Palace Road, perhaps in those fine offices that the Department for Energy used to have. Such a big office would be able to publish voluntary codes of practise, to work with standards bodies, to have lunches and to ban advertisements. That ought to be good for some newsprint and a few more pensions.
Second, there clearly needs to be a massive expansion of the Court of Protection to another Big Office which can manage the relations of children with their parents, the former of which, it seems, are commonly ripping the latter off. Under such an arrangement, when elderly aunty gives one some ancient tea set because she does not have the heart to throw it away herself, one puts it into escrow while completing some elaborate form for scrutiny the the big office, followed, it goes without saying, by home visits and interviews. This would have the added benefit of providing jobs for all those solicitors who do not have enough to do because of the goings on at the Land Registry. Perhaps also a national database for elderly persons at risk, accessible by any authorised (at least three key authenication) person from anywhere in the country - or indeed out of it for that matter. Social workers are entitled to holidays too. This would have the added benefit of providing jobs for all the contractors working on the identity card database when that is wound up.
Third and last, the RSPB with all its inheritances and endowments should buy a migratory bird patrol boat, something like the fishery patrol boats we used to have - and may still have for all I know. This could be stationed off Malta and deal sternly with any Maltese gentleman caught mistreating a migratory bird that has visited the UK and is therefore British. For the time being at least, while Gibralter does not have home rule, it could be based at Gibralter. It seems that the Maltese are rather backward in this department and the Eurocrats from Brussels are trying to do something about it. But while they plod forward, a patrol boat from those that care would be the thing.
Perhaps more bizarre was the tiger being brought up on pigs' milk to make it tame and cuddly -so cuddly in fact that it is happy to mind baby pigs. Is this more cruel to the tiger or the pigs? Or do we have a dry run for April 1st?
On the catering front, taken to Japanese green tea, a gift from the Cambridge connection. Good stuff - which does not need added lemon like the Earl Gray (or Grey?) I have been drinking for ages, so I can withdraw from the organic (that is to say no wax sprayed on skin) lemon market. One snag is that it contains quite a lot of twigs that float so we have unearthed a not particularly gracious tea strainer.
Done two whole Sodukus today, one intermediate and one easy. For once the easy one did seem easy and I got to the end without seeing a mistake. Still wondering how they generate the clues. Is it as easy as do a hard clue, then add a few numbers to the clue to make it an easy one?
One senior moment when I started to fill the tea pot with cold water rather than the kettle. Pretended to BH that I was washing it out.
That apart, found the Telegraph today full of tat which could have been worked up into proper Sunday rag stuff, including some interesting ideas for nannydom.
First, it seems that there is a major health and safety scandal to be made with stair lifts which are not small person proof. The answer is clearly a new Big Office for the Regulation of Stair Lifts (perhaps said Borstal) to be based in Buckingham Palace Road, perhaps in those fine offices that the Department for Energy used to have. Such a big office would be able to publish voluntary codes of practise, to work with standards bodies, to have lunches and to ban advertisements. That ought to be good for some newsprint and a few more pensions.
Second, there clearly needs to be a massive expansion of the Court of Protection to another Big Office which can manage the relations of children with their parents, the former of which, it seems, are commonly ripping the latter off. Under such an arrangement, when elderly aunty gives one some ancient tea set because she does not have the heart to throw it away herself, one puts it into escrow while completing some elaborate form for scrutiny the the big office, followed, it goes without saying, by home visits and interviews. This would have the added benefit of providing jobs for all those solicitors who do not have enough to do because of the goings on at the Land Registry. Perhaps also a national database for elderly persons at risk, accessible by any authorised (at least three key authenication) person from anywhere in the country - or indeed out of it for that matter. Social workers are entitled to holidays too. This would have the added benefit of providing jobs for all the contractors working on the identity card database when that is wound up.
Third and last, the RSPB with all its inheritances and endowments should buy a migratory bird patrol boat, something like the fishery patrol boats we used to have - and may still have for all I know. This could be stationed off Malta and deal sternly with any Maltese gentleman caught mistreating a migratory bird that has visited the UK and is therefore British. For the time being at least, while Gibralter does not have home rule, it could be based at Gibralter. It seems that the Maltese are rather backward in this department and the Eurocrats from Brussels are trying to do something about it. But while they plod forward, a patrol boat from those that care would be the thing.
Perhaps more bizarre was the tiger being brought up on pigs' milk to make it tame and cuddly -so cuddly in fact that it is happy to mind baby pigs. Is this more cruel to the tiger or the pigs? Or do we have a dry run for April 1st?
# posted by Jim @ 8:31 AM 
