Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Broad bean campaign 99% complete
Good weather continues so another 2.5 rows in - less three beans - and that's the lot. So another4.5 was a bit optimistic. Leaf beet tomorrow.
Rhubarb nearly ready to pick.
The willow at the bottom of my allotment cut down to about a foot from the ground a month or so ago is pushing out shoots hard. Not broken yet but definately on the move. The willow posts - about 10 foot high by 2 inches thick and maybe a foot in the ground - used as intermediates for the deer exclosure - are also sprouting. Sprouting at the top, presumably because water is still pushing up the post without too much regard for what is happening at the bottom. The top does not know that the bottom is dead. Maybe that will cause an air lock. But maybe they are not dead at all.
The baker has acquired another Eastern European assistant - a Polish girl - now into her third day. Cheerful and willing even if her English could do with some work. I tried to explain that 'do you want some plastic bag' is not quite right and that 'a' is the correct article for a single object. Only thought of the right way to explain how all this works after the event so we will see in the days to come how well she learnt the lesson. Quite Asian in appearance with slanting slit eyes - presumably reflecting rape and pillage by marauding Mongols in the not so distant past. Pale blond in other respects. But I have also noticed eyes of this sort on Irish girls which one can hardly blame on Mongols.
One can get quite excited about the differance between indefinate and definate articles. Ladies' magazines and assistants in ladies' shops like to use a definate article to impose on one. 'Do you want the scarf now?' suggesting a shared understanding about mandatory scarfs, rather than the more neutral 'Would you like a scarf?'. A shared understanding of the right way to do things which separates us off from the riff-raff. We're posh, we know how to do things properly. Or put another way, a bit of flattery to encourage you to buy the thing. I'm sure men are good for this sort of thing too but can't think of a good example just now.
A postscript on two people with one body. Google thought I was asking about the proverb 'two heads are better than one' which seems to attract a good deal of material. Including the word siamese did the trick. Fair amount of stuff came up including a peice in Wikipedia and a longish video clip from YouTube - this being the first time that I have used the thing. And all being triggered for me by press coverage of a television programme which went out in February, part of their attempt to ease themselves into the world. As ever, it seems that things are more complicated than at first appears. The two people started with two bodies which fused. The bottom half merged in a reasonably clean way, the middle is a bit of a muddle with odd numbers of some organs and the two tops remaining separate. The forked spinal cord must be a bit tricky. They sound suprisingly together and are hoping for a normal life but I guess they will be very lucky to get it. Although the original Siamese twins did well enough, both getting married (as I recall) and running a farm for some years.
Rhubarb nearly ready to pick.
The willow at the bottom of my allotment cut down to about a foot from the ground a month or so ago is pushing out shoots hard. Not broken yet but definately on the move. The willow posts - about 10 foot high by 2 inches thick and maybe a foot in the ground - used as intermediates for the deer exclosure - are also sprouting. Sprouting at the top, presumably because water is still pushing up the post without too much regard for what is happening at the bottom. The top does not know that the bottom is dead. Maybe that will cause an air lock. But maybe they are not dead at all.
The baker has acquired another Eastern European assistant - a Polish girl - now into her third day. Cheerful and willing even if her English could do with some work. I tried to explain that 'do you want some plastic bag' is not quite right and that 'a' is the correct article for a single object. Only thought of the right way to explain how all this works after the event so we will see in the days to come how well she learnt the lesson. Quite Asian in appearance with slanting slit eyes - presumably reflecting rape and pillage by marauding Mongols in the not so distant past. Pale blond in other respects. But I have also noticed eyes of this sort on Irish girls which one can hardly blame on Mongols.
One can get quite excited about the differance between indefinate and definate articles. Ladies' magazines and assistants in ladies' shops like to use a definate article to impose on one. 'Do you want the scarf now?' suggesting a shared understanding about mandatory scarfs, rather than the more neutral 'Would you like a scarf?'. A shared understanding of the right way to do things which separates us off from the riff-raff. We're posh, we know how to do things properly. Or put another way, a bit of flattery to encourage you to buy the thing. I'm sure men are good for this sort of thing too but can't think of a good example just now.
A postscript on two people with one body. Google thought I was asking about the proverb 'two heads are better than one' which seems to attract a good deal of material. Including the word siamese did the trick. Fair amount of stuff came up including a peice in Wikipedia and a longish video clip from YouTube - this being the first time that I have used the thing. And all being triggered for me by press coverage of a television programme which went out in February, part of their attempt to ease themselves into the world. As ever, it seems that things are more complicated than at first appears. The two people started with two bodies which fused. The bottom half merged in a reasonably clean way, the middle is a bit of a muddle with odd numbers of some organs and the two tops remaining separate. The forked spinal cord must be a bit tricky. They sound suprisingly together and are hoping for a normal life but I guess they will be very lucky to get it. Although the original Siamese twins did well enough, both getting married (as I recall) and running a farm for some years.
# posted by Jim @ 8:29 AM 
