pumpkinstrokemarrow

In this case computers and capitalism. Generally thought to be a good thing but the combination of which can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. The beef this morning being the elaborate fare structures that some industries go in for - my electicity utility and mobile phones being the two in mind. On Saturday I got a letter from EDF offering me a fixed price tariff for next year - which appeared to be some 15% more than the current tariff. But the whole thing came with an elaborate package of premium rates, seasonal rates and nectar points, the overall effect of which was that I couldn't be bothered to wade through it all. Not too mention elaborate provision for notification of tariff changes and cancellation of contract being explained in small print somewhere. Now in the days before computers, a utility could not bother with all this stuff. Its antiquated billing systems would collapse under the weight of tariffs.

So bring back the days when there was just one electricity company which was, no doubt, a bit dossy, but it had one rate for selling electricity and which one could trust not to rip one off too much. At least not by making large profits or paying their senior managers a lot more than I ever got paid. And even if they did make a large profit they were a nationalised industry so that was just a form of tax and so that was OK too.

But a mild counter stroke comes to mind, in the form of a short piece, I think from the Evening Standard, from the days when there was an Evening Standard and an Evening News, about how the divisional directors of London Buses did themselves OK, in a very discrete way, with elaborate panelled dining rooms and chauffer driven rollers. I guess this is all swept away now in the days of SouthWest trains the bosses of which no doubt go in for buying small Carribean Islands and hob-nobbing with P&B's. Maybe a bit of discrete self-indulgence was the lesser sin. I suppose the rich have a bit of a quandary here. A main point of being rich is to be richer than the next chap. And this does not have nearly so much savour if you don't know that the next chap knows it. But this also excites envy which might have untoward consequences. So do you enjoy your riches in private and bask in the dim glow of public approval or do you go for celeb-ration?

Yesterday, force majeure, we went in for a slighly novel recipe for the sage and onion stuffing with which to stuff our virgin reared organic vegetarian chicken from darkest Wales. Possibly from a subsidiary of the Duchy Grocers, definately via Cheam. The problem being that we had no sage - at least no more than a teaspoon of dried and no fresh - and no hazel nuts. We were reduced to using dried marjoram (which did not seem to smell of anything much at all) and Brazil nuts. Quite eatable but not, I think, quite up to snuff. Chicken went down OK though and the bones having been boiled for soup are now en-route to the compost bin. This last being a two stage process: into the bucket under the sink. From there to the dustbin on the patio. From there to the compost bin. The trick being to remember to empty the dustbin before it gets too heavy.

Yesterday our back lawn was more or less water-logged, although short of standing water. Very squishy to walk on, as I discovered when I went looking for the aforementioned sage. So this morning, when I finally have a slot to get back onto the allotment, is the ground going to be good for anything? Still, at the very least, I can take the cabbage cages to peices.

And I am now ready for the slugs. Decided not to spend £50 with Geo. Kelly on copper strips, rather to recycle the reel of 5 amp cable that had found its way into my garage roof. Maybe 50 meters of the stuff. I discovered that you could rip the white outer cover off: a good pull and one did about 60cm. Given that I had taken on some alcohol during the day, quite sweaty by the time I finished this first phase. Then left with a red plastic strand, a black plastic strand and a copper. Neither red plastic nor black plastic seemed to rip off so I had to take it of with a knife. Slightly faster - per strand - than the white stuff. Peel off a segment of the red (or black) cover, rather like peeling a potato, and the cover pulls off as easy as pie. Maybe 120cm at a time. All done by 2000.

I think I shall use the cable twisted into three, as it has been put back on the reel. Then make the twists up into L-shaped lengths. Maybe a metre long with 10cm returns. These can then be assembled into thin rectangles guarding the rows of seeds, pegged down at two of the four corners.

50m metres of three strands gets into what looks like quite a tangle on the extension floor. But resisted the temptation to meddle and it all pulled out OK. Remembering the Boy Scouts' adage that the worst way to deal with a tangle is to try to untangle it. (There is a proper word for this sort of thing but I can't remember what it is. Something of classical flavour. Aphorism perhaps? Maybe it will come to me by the time I next post). Learning, by the end, that the earth strand was, over the 50m, about 30cm longer than the shorter of the live and nuetral strands. With the longer being about 15cm longer than the shorter. Was this some quirk of the way that the stuff is made or was it some quirk of the way that I wound the three coppers back onto the reel?

By someone who looks as if he takes his camera seriously. http://liangchengzeng.blogspot.com/. Looked better on his site than here. Maybe it is too small.

On two occasions now we have been pleased to have no important messages from the talking computer on Southwest Trains on the North bound, outbound journey, only to find that the computer has found its voice by the time we get to the South bound, return journey. Is there some glitch in the program which is sensitive to direction? Or are Southwest Trains taking pity on us to the extent of random suppression of talking computer on North bound journeys?

We also found that the Saturday Sun is getting almost as fat as the Daily Mail. One pullout for football and another for something else sporty. But despite the fatness we could find nothing about yesterday's boat race. One understands that the Sun might make a point - or even a parade - of not covering a toffs' sport - but it is a bit odd all the same. A reasonably major sporting event.

Following the visit to Uncle Vanya reported in February, have now been back for a second helping at the theatre at Guildford - where it seems that they do as much business selling food as drama. The large food area very full when we arrived, maybe 45 minutes before the off. Play much improved by the two months touring since February. The thing has shaken down and was all much more convincing and satisfying. It had become what I think is called, in luvvy speak, a proper piece of ensemble acting. Much more physical. Sonya more frantic. Yelena came to life. Astrov almost came to life through his lecturing. Vanya was fuller. And the pace was differant. Rather than climbing to a climax at the end, this time the climax came at the beginning of the third act, when Yelena tells Vanya that she must go forthwith. Which worked rather better, with one not being left a bit up in the air at the end of the show. All in all, one can see how one might get into the habit of going to the same show lots of times. Lots of interest in the variations on the theme.

Came on to rain about 5-10 out from home on the way back from Cheam today. Does one put one's cape on or not? After having got wet, decided that I would. After which it more or less stopped raining. Couldn't be bothered to take it off again before getting home. But then it started again as I turned into Manor Green Road. Mr Sod did not rule after all.

Despite the rain, today is the first day that the celandines at the bottom of the garden have made any kind of a showing. I had thought the flowers had been eaten - as they are some years - but it must just have been the cold keeping most of the flower buds closed. But today looking really good - making up for the rather poor display of daffodills this year. And we have a second clump coming on, about 10 feet from the first, which last originated in an Exminster hedgerow and which seems to have survived the move from Devon OK. Cookoo pint coming on well. First yellow flowers on the variegated nettle like plant. Chestnut buds starting to open. All we need now is a few dry days so that I can get back on the allotment and plant a few onions.

Having discovered that chicken and fish go quite well together, invented a new sort of E-number soup. Take one packet of chicken noodle soup and add about twice as much water as they say. Add some smoked haddock (which in this case, despite being from the man from Cheam, I suspect of being the dyed sort rather than the smoked sort, so plenty of E-numbers instead of nature's nicotine). Add several thinly sliced carrots and bring to the boil. Remove haddock, skin, flake and return. Add thinly sliced crinkly cabbage and bring back to the boil. If you have any mushrooms (which I didn't) add them. Serve.

Slightly alarmed to read in yesterday's DT that a 22 year old arms dealer is having a £150m contract with US and/or Iraq revoked or reviewed because of poor quality produce. Something about elderly ammunition from China - but thought to be good enough for the infant Iraqi army. What sort of a person does one have to be to wind up doing that sort of thing at the tender age of 22? Decent people are still protesting or making love not war at that age.

Excel continues to crash occasionally. And this morning had a whole new problem in Excel VB. A variable, called 'a', the input parameter of the subroutine in question, got set to null all by itself. The operation that caused this setting was a simple string operation not involving 'a' on a variable called 'b', an output parameter. And it only seemed to happen when on a recursive call to this routine. Might have been caused by editing code in debug code. Restarted Excel and the problem went away. So the mighty Excel continues to wobble down in Epsom.

Failed to find any art sites today so had to settle for the commercial stuff. With thanks to http://vinzdesigner.blogspot.com/

A birthday present for the BH from BT. Wake up this morning and all the green lights are on on the little black box and we are online again. Maybe they have a batch of spare lines they dish out in emergencies, that is to say when the 48 limits given to valued customers are running out. Let's hope it hangs together for a bit longer this time.

Thinking more about the Chinese whispers, find it all a bit alarming that such things are floating about the ether. First, that someone should start such a rumour maliciously. Although, if it really is Chinese whispers, no one individual created the whole thing. But no-one along the way thought to check it. Second, that I did not think to check it until after the event, and then only as an afterthought. Third, the rumour was cunning, in that one has heard before of places like the University of Kentucky - at least schools in that part of the world - getting embroiled in nonsense about the creation or not in seven days. Or right to life. So entirely believable that people in that part of the world would go in for something stupid. As The Square used to say in his thrillers, if you are going to tell a lie, it works much better if the lie is built upon the truth. A free-standing lie does not have any foundations. This being, perhaps, the clue to successful rumour generation.

And I have passed this particular Kentucky lie on to some more people who may not get to the retraction posted here - so the stupidity not confined to the place of origin. While I went through the motions of saying I ought to check it, this was just going through the motions. It did not occur to me that the check might fail. If it is out there, in print, in some sense, it is true. In the same way that one continues to believe what one reads in the DT, despite the volume of misprints - never mind about bigger mistakes.

I was reading recently about the cyber-vandalism of Wikipedia. A propos of which it seems that there is a large industry out there of people working either for or against Wikipedia. Large numbers of people going around vandalising articles - quite often in a witty way - in the way that the better graffiti are quite arty - but vandalistic none the less - and large numbers of people going around clearing up the mess. Reams of material about governance of same. A sort of suburban tennis club committee or trade union branch committee gone completely mad. Nothing quite like the committees that amateur bureaucrats set up. Real labours of love.

I then thought that there must be people in my old department responsible for keeping the department's Wikipedia entry in good shape. There certainly is one. Maybe an entire team - since Wikeipedia may well be the sort of place that a journalist would go to get a bit of background to pad out his more or less news-free article on the dreadful Darling. I wonder if they have entries in MySpace, Facebook, Second Life and all those sorts of places? I seem to remember reading that the more media-whorish politicians do, so why not institutions of the same colour?

All rounded out by a bureaucratic dream the other night. I was filling in some elaborate form -the sort of thing I was rather fond of designing once one had packages like Word to do it in - but I was getting in a right lather about it. The form had a layered structure - shops within villages within county sort of thing - with the second level involving large stainless steel bolts - say about three or four inches long - and their correct insertion in the form depending on cutting the heads of the bolts into the right shapes. I was getting quite worried about how exactly I was going to do this. My hacksaw would not really be up for steel of this weight. The third level seemed to involve engraving the required information on the shanks of some more bolts, but this part is all rather vague. Bit of a mystery where all this came from, although it is true that I have designed a form in Word recently and that I did buy some cheap bolts from a hardware store in Tunbridge Wells which was closing down recently - although I think buying the bolts came after the dream, so maybe the latter really was prophetic.

New tax disc from DVLA turned up safe and sound yesterday. So that part of their computer system is up and running. Maybe the trick was not to have any people involved in the customer facing part of it.

Google tells me that the story about Kentucky is quite untrue. Part of the provenance of the story was someone along the way mistaking the abbreviation 'UK' for the University of Kentucky - who do, as it happens, run a unit - History 323 - on Holocaust studies. Apologies to anyone who might have beleived that bit of the previous posting. I am reminded of a commandment from school: if something is odd or interesting it is probably not true so check it.

After two days happy surfing, my BT Broadband Extra service (only £45 a quarter) collapsed again on Easter Sunday. Left it alone until Monday, then, after a good breakfast to get me good and relaxed, back to the good people of Bangalore. I think they must have marked my card because they were very full of very sorries and we quite understand that you are getting a bit fed up and would sir mind terribly playing with his black box just once more. So I do my model customer bit - having on this occasion got ready with screwdriver, large paper clip (with which to reset the black box on the word of command) and mobile phone. Go through the whole rigmarole again. Ah they say. We have to refer you to the line fault help desk. Wait for about five minutes while they raise a call with these people - clearly rather more involved than 'click here to transfer the current call to the new owner'. Where do BT get their help desk software from? Then the operator comes back on the line and explains that the new call owner will without fail contact me within 48 business hours and I am not to bother them before that. And against the unlikely event of this not happening here is a PIN number to quote. We are getting near the 48 business hours point and not a flicker from either the black box, Banglalore or anything else with a BT flavour.

In the meantime I thought I would try harassing the billing people. How about a discount on my £15 a month for the lost two weeks and all the bother? But I give up after ploughing through various 'key 9 if you do not want any of the foregoing' instructions and then waiting on a ringing tone for another five minutes. A wait interspersed with various messages every bit as irritating as the unecessary announcements on SouthWest trains. Clearly the Banglalore Help Desk software is up to telling the accounts department exchange not to take any calls from my number. So the system is joined up where revenue is concerned. All a bit of a waste of time but I felt better for trying.

But I won't jump ship quite yet. An informant in TB tells me that he was with the bearded virgin and he had no service for a month after someone put a spade through the line. The answer in his case was to terminate the direct debit - a bit drastic in my case as that might shut off the phone as well as the Broadband.

I read today an allegation that Kentucky University has withdrawn Holocaust studies from its carriculum because it offended the local Muslims who do not believe that the Holocaust happened at all. Extraordinary and outrageous if true. I think I will check.

On the same vein, I read yesterday that while the author of Maigret was spending a quiet if unheroic war with his family in the Vendee, he was visited by a particularly unpleasant policeman who was, it seems, concerned with sniffing Jews out of their hiding places. He was quite convinced that the author was one, but ungraciously accorded him a month to get his elderly mother (who lived in Belgium) to retreive birth certificates back to his great grandparents, from their originating churches. It would have been a good gesture to say: 'Yes I am a Jew you c***, and you're a dead Goy', shoot him and run for it - although maybe one's family would not be too impressed - including in this case a young child. In any event, gun was not forthcoming and somehow the mother managed to get hold of the required paperwork. So Maigret continued to flow.

Last week, in the rain, to London to see the art crack at the Tate Modern - a place which I still have yet to visit properly having decided, sight unseen, that they only display rubbish there. The generator hall is indeed an impressive space, but marred by the ramp, the purpose of which could surely have been achieved in some less intrusive way. The art crack was attracting lots of interest and, I believe, has had lots of arty words written about it. A symbol of the alienation of everything from everything else in this post-Iraq post-family post-modern world we live in sort of stuff. My take was that it was all quite amusing but ridiculously expensive for what it was. Let's hope some of the money gets back to worthy causes in the artist's native Columbia.

It was not even a very proper crack, with the wire mesh on which it had been moulded clearly visible in places.

At least one more tree down on the way to Cheam over Easter, a middle sized dead one. And my first sighting of a green finch this year - in much the same place as where I saw a fledgling green finch sitting on the road last year. Maybe they like this spot for some reason. They certainly don't like the garden where I have not seen one for years. Consumption of hot cross buns continues to climb. Must have broken the family record by now.

Not sure who he was, but it is certainly very cold in Epsom today. Even a bit of sleet and snow a few minutes ago. The coldest run - with a very cold and vaguely North Easterly wind - to Cheam that I remember. Took the last two hot cross buns from the baker as a reward and a black pudding with the Paschal Lamb from the butcher. Half the black pudding, lard fried, went down well for a late breakfast, served with the finest Cheam pseudo-French round loaf and the finest Brita water. Have to ponder on how best to cook the lamb. Not something that we are particularly good at. Never seem to be able to strike the right balance between overcooked and undercooked.

Now completed my dip into the Odyssey. It seems that the marriage rules of the ancient Greeks were a bit lax. One chap had six sons and six daughters and paired them off, keeping the whole lot in the parental palace. Another married the daughter of his brother. And in a seldom published sequel to the Odyssey, it seems that the son of Circe by Odysseus went to Ithaca and murdered his father in the course of a raid on his sheep or goats or something. He then married his father's lawful wedded wife Penelope. Meanwhile, Circe married Penelope's son by Odysseus. Otherwise their morals seemed to be about the same as those of the Beowulf lot a couple of thousand years later in Northern Europe. OK to rape and pillage. Steal cows and goats (this last, it seems, being the main point). OK piracy. But it is also proper to show proper hospitality and generosity to a guest. I guess the trick was to get to the guest list from the visitors' book while you were still alive. I seem to recall that near-modern Bedouin worked along the same sort of lines - with the addition that once someone was a guest, he was OK for three days. I forget what happened after that. Maybe they gave you a fifteen minutes start before setting the armoured camels out after you.

Interesting dream about breaking into a ship recently. Some sort of large warship, moored up somewhere, and I seemed to be with someone although the someone never showed. So don't know who it was. The rear superstructure of the ship was a sort of wooden hump, covered in some kind of thick gray material. The hump might have been prompted by the chipboard-plus dormered roof being put on the block of shops and flats being put up next to TB. Break a person sized hole through the hump, exposing some rather naff stud work. Find oneself in the sort of room that would serve as a bed-sit in a university hall of residence. Amongst other furnishings were some spears, of the same type that we have acquired, by indirect means, from Kenya. The same distinctive, flattened portion of shaft. Move from the room into some sort of machine room or control room. Are shown something being fired up. There is a large viewing window onto the something. Escape back through the bed-sit and wake up very concerned - but not sweaty - about what the captain is going to say when he finds that the inspection team broke in through the roof. Vague thoughts about how it was a spot check so breaking in was OK.

And a dreamlet about being overtaken on the little roundabout at the junction of Hook Road and Waterloo road, while turning left into Waterloo road from the Epsom side. The point of interest being that the thing doing the overtaking was a large Snap-on (http://www.snapon.com/) van towing a trailer of the same size, in the same red and white Snap-on livery. Never seen such a thing in real life. Perhaps prompted by anxiety about whether I was going to manage to fit my new brake blocks all by myself - the current bicycle being more complicated in that respect than the one on which I last changed any brake blocks.

I learn this morning that the French were already frying their fries in oil, unlike the Belgians who were into lard (and the Brits who were not mentioned but who were (and sometimes still are) into dripping), just after the first world war, well before we were hit by healthfoodism. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they were just as faddy about their food as we are, but in differant clothes. Some of this from the intimate thoughts of the author of Maigret.

I have also recently finished my very fat tome on Louis XVI, purchased in October from the National Library over there. Well over a thousand pages long so not too bad a rate of progress. Interesting read. It seems that while Louis was not a particularly bright spark in company (a talent which mattered a good deal in those days), he was not a fool either. He knew, for example, all about navies and locks. A keen huntsman. He made an exemplary end. But he was not a politician and he might have survived had he known when to be firm: his refusal to use force on fellow Frenchmen when he had force was one of the causes of his downfall - and the subsequent massively fatal use of force by his successor Napoleon. And some of the force used in between times was of an unpleasantly barbarous sort - some aristos being ripped apart in the street by delirious mobs. Maybe a spot of drinking of blood and cannibalism. Not the sort of thing that happened in England - at least in so far as I am aware. A hundred years previously, Charles II had a few people hung, drawn and quartered. But that was judicial butchery of some of those responsible for the execution of his father; not quite the same thing as butchery in the street. And Louis knew all about the fate of the father - not that it did him any good.

There was an account of his attempt to escape to the safety of one of his frontier fortresses and his recapture at Varennes. An attempt which was well organised and which might easily have succeeded but for the king's foolish failure to preserve his incognito and the incompetance of some of those detailed to provide support along the way. For those like myself firmly in the what-if school, interesting to ponder on how things might have turned out had he made it. He had already conceded enough to make him a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch, and things might have taken a better, English course.

Another account about how the pre-revolutionary French won the American War of Independance for the Americans - with provision of men, materiel and money - money which it seems the Americans forgot to pay back in their rush to make friends with the English again once they had their independance.

But the one I feel sorry for was Marie Antoinette. So she was not the brighest spark either, but what chance did she have, dropped into the snake pit at the age of 17 or something, for a husband of about the same age but who took some years to claim his rights. Being foreign (from a country regarded by most French as the enemy) , pretty much everything she had known until that time was taken away from her. These days I dare say it would be called child abuse.

On which topic, not impressed with the amount of effort we continue to pour into hounding teachers. I dare say there are a few bad apples, but is it really sensible to deploy a crown court with judge, jury, bell, book and candle for a middle aged teacher who is alleged to have kissed a 17 year old girl after a few wines at some school social function? Should this be a matter for criminal proceeding at all? Could the matter not have been dealt with in some more summary way? Do we have to arrange things so that teachers caught up in muddles of this sort are, for practical purposes, guilty until proven innocent? Which might take some time. All this effort thrown at teachers but we seem quite unable to control the bad behaviour of their pupils on buses?

Now back on the air at darkest Epsom. On the whole, not a bad experience from the people at the BT Broadband "we are here to help you and your call is important to us" Corporation Inc, but they could do with a bit of joining up. Maybe the people at Banglalore should be connected electronically to the people who do the telephone lines.

So, for the full story read on. On Wednesday afternoon, this being day 5 of cold turkey, pleased to see two vans and two engineers at the bottom of the road. Deeply engaged in some rather uncomfortable hole. Ah they say. Water in the hole. Very old fashioned hole. Much rewiring needed. But you should be back on the air. Back to house. No telephone or broadband. Back to the hole. Oh dear. That's odd. Not too long later, the telephone reappears. But no broadband. Sorry guv. That's a matter for the broadband people. When you ring them up, say that you need a broadband engineer not a telephone engineer. Then we get into Banglalore again. Their call record must be getting quite long by now, far too long to be read by a tired help desk operator. Would you like to try connecting the grey cable to the black box again? No. Much muttering in the background. We are very busy you know. Some minutes later, some rigmarole about how I have got to get in touch with the telephone people in order to close that part of the call off before the Broadband people in Banglolore can take the matter any further. And you had better leave it until late morning tomorrow give the chaps time to check in with the work that they have done today.

So having done much deep breathing, phone the telephone people mid morning today. Much would you like to key in your telephone number and for security reasons can you tell me the name of your father in law's poodle. Eventually they explain that all this is nothing to do with them and I really ought to be talking to the Broadband helpdesk at Bangalore. More deep breathing, then once more into the breach. No. I do not want to play with the grey cable, or the black box, or my screwdriver. Oh dear sir. How are we supposed to help you if you don't want to play? (I do sympathise. But being asked for the n-th time to check something, when you are fairly sure it is working OK, gets wearing). Heavy breathing at my end. Would sir like to hang on while we test the line again. After a few minutes of silence I hang up and they phone me back. Would sir please hang on. After about 10 minutes of this the broadband connection mysteriously reappears, and with my not having played with my screwdriver at all.

So the thing is fixed, for now at least. And I do feel sorry for the poor saps in Bangalore - who must, if all this is anything to go by, get a lot of abuse. There is no-one else to shout at. But the system could do with a bit of TLC.

By way of contrast, renewed my car tax disc over the phone. This involved no humans at all, did involve a certain amount of please key in the 16 digit reference number on page 2 of your reminder letter, but did work first time. And to make this really easy, they had cunningly arranged to have access to my MOT and insurance records, so I did not need to key in any 16 digit references numbers about that.

Back at the allotment, the broad beans are starting to show. So progress on that front. And we should be able to get some onions in tomorrow.

And some very fine hot cross buns from Cheam. Not very yellow but light and fluffy. Maybe try some toasted tomorrow.

Broadband failure on Friday afternoon. The second time in getting on for 18 months, so not too bad. Reappeared for about 5 minutes on Saturday morning then off for good. Phone the number in the book (luckily retained) and 5 minutes of key 5 if you have a problem and key 8 if you have a blue problem. Then got onto the (helpful) help desk lady in Bangalore or somewhere within a few hundred miles of there. 5 minutes on have I plugged the gray cable into the white box and have I turned the power on. Do I have a small screwdriver to hand? What about a long thin spike or a mobile phone? Much running around and crawling underneath the desk. Then 5 more minutes with Bangalore calling me on my mobile, at the end of which they said they would call me back after doing more remote tests. Phoned back Saturday morning with the announcement that there seemed to be a fault and would I like to get in touch with the BT PSTN people. Not clear why their wonderful help desk support system could not do this bit. Phoned them and logged a fault. Two similar text messages at 0800 on Monday morning announcing that an engineer was on the case. Phone call at 1100 from an engineer saying he had arrived in the area. Phone call at 1600 saying he had found a serious fault - something about water on the line. I wonder if the cable television people with their newer infrastructure have less of this? He needed to consult. Phone call at 0900 Tuesday telling me that the person he needed to consult was not in. But the fault would probably require a hole to be dug in the road. So all in all, quite attentive to the customer, but it looks as if I am going to be offline for at least a week, maybe a good bit more if Easter gets in the way.

So into cold turkey big time, so this from Garratt Lane. The good news was that this Internet Cafe was indeed in Garratt Lane but nowhere near where I remembered it to be. But at least it was on the route to Wetherspoons.

Had an odd experience in a Wimbledon Wetherspoons yesterday. The bar I was at was not particularly busy, but I had to wait maybe 5 minutes while the young barmaid served maybe half a dozen customers who had arrived after me but around the corner. They say you start to feel invisible in the face of the young as you get old. Pleasant enough barmaid but hopeless. Dim and slow. But while I was waiting, I suddenly got the urge to hurl an empty pint pot into the elaborate display of alco-pop bottles behind the bit of bar at which I was standing and then walk out. Quite a strong urge; not had anything like it since 35 years ago when I had an urge to wallop an allotment busy who was complaining about my dandelions or something. I was holding a large Irish-fashion heart bladed spade at the time so it was just as well that he was berating me from a safe distance. No idea how close to the throw I was. Let's hope not too close in case something of the sort happens again!

Digging the bed for the onion sets continuing on the current allotment, with the ground in pretty good condition for same. Should be ready to start banging them in some time over Easter. No signs of broad beans yet but there might be enough rhubard for lunch on Easter Sunday. Leaves a fresh green colour, quite differant to the fuller but duller green you get later in the year. Peach in flower; flower buds swelling on the rest of the fruit trees.

And for the tweeters, we can say that it the season for large thin thrush like birds - at least two of them - to land on our lawn. Mid brown backs, pale very speckled chests, long thin necks and long thin beak. Not, I thought, a regular thrush, not that we get very many of those. Ergo, some sort of a Spring traveller. I wonder what? The name fieldfare comes to mind for some reason.

Various interesting snippets from a recently acquired New York Review of Books: a generally good magazine, a cross between the TLS and the LRB with plenty of good quality writing. Maybe a bit light on the lit bit for some, but that does not bother me. One snippet being the factlet that a good proportion of the slaves who went from West Africa to the Americas had not been abucted in some raid, but had been expelled by their home village or tribe for some civil or criminal offence. They had nowhere to go and so were easy pickings. Not being in the home village was pretty much a death sentence anyway. I suppose that in such a tribe or village, the range of penalties was a bit limited. Death, fine or expulsion. Prisons and ASBOs not really options. And if we suppose the crime rate to be much the same as ours - perhaps rather higher given the stress of life in general in those parts in those times - that might easily lead to many expulsions. So, we get the picture of a very much nastier version of our sending people to Australia.

Derived from the Shaw translation. A route map for those with fading memory and fading memories.

Came upon me while tucking into the luncheon steak and kidney. That is to say, 12 parts steak, 6 parts ox kidney, 3 parts onion and 3 parts elderly mushrooms. Smidgeon of lard and a gudgeon of water. Served with mashed potato and white cabbage (crinkly cabbage having mysteriously vanished earlier in the week). Towards the end of this lot, mind turned, prompted by the DT coverage of the budget, towards poverty traps.

Definition: minimum income (MI) is the minimum amount anyone is allowed to take home.

Definition: taxable income (TI) is the level above which the take home pay is less than the gross pay. The subject has moved from spongeor to contributor.

Definition: f(x) is the net pay for gross pay x, x assumed to be non negative.

Rule: we must have more so there must be an incentive to earn more. Put another way, f(x) must increase with x. Or put yet another way, df(x)/dx must be positive.

Rule: be nice to the poor. Put another way, f(x) must be greater than MI.

Rule: screw most people. Put another way, f(x) must be less than x for x greater than TI.

Rule: screw the rich big-time. Put another way, the rate of contribution should increase with x. Or put yet another way, d2f(x)/dx2 must ne negative.

There are plenty of good solutions when TI is greater than MI. For example f(x)=MI+ x*(TI-MI)/MI is almost a solution, and with a bit of adjustment will meet the last rule. But it all falls apart when MI is greater than TI. Must see how all this plays into the DT analysis of the poverty trap.

Which brings me onto stricken lawyers, not I think for the first time. The DT tells us of a lady lawyer who was, in her first job, earning around £150,000 a year. Something to do with property development. She had two other jobs and two disabled children. She falls out with her employer, plays the sex discrimination card and is said to be in line for in excess of £10m. First thought, people who want to play hard-ball and earn lots of wedge, should stick to the rules. Sex discrimination and other rules of that sort are applicable to soft-ball not hard-ball. The three estates: hard ballers, soft ballers and spongeors (see above). We should all remember which estate we are in and play the game accordingly. Second thought, I guess she wound up with too much on her plate, became a bit of a pain and her employers became a bit of a pain back. Tears all round. Third thought. All down to greed. Some people just want too much. Puzzle: if she is a lawyer, why did she have to sell £3m worth of house to fight the case. Why couldn't such a hot-shot lawyer represent herself before some low-grade sex-discrimination tribunal? Hardly the High Court of Appeal.

Invented a fine new sauce yesterday. The nearest thing to junk food that has been in our kitchen for some time. Fry some chopped bacon and onion in butter. Stir in some flour. Cook for a bit. Stir in some milk (full skim to reduce the guilt). After a while stir in some cheese. Serve on top of brussells sprouts. Very good, if a little heavy for a lunch time snack. The sprouts in question were very large, maybe 3cm in diameter. Firm things - and altogether very unlike the ones that I managed last year. One day I will find out how they do it.

Windy ride to Cheam today. Gusting sort of wind which catches one unawares as one comes round a corner or over the brow of a hill. But did discover that it is about time that I renewed my brakes. I wonder how long it will be before I actually get around to it? I dare say on my smart newish bike they will cost a good bit more than they did on my ancient Dawes. But one has to allow that they do work a good deal better.

Reminded when overtaken by a flashing blue ambulance when coming down to the Ewell by-pass, of being overtaken by a flashing blue fire engine - the tender sort - on the M25 recently. One of those Dennis things (http://www.johndennisfire.co.uk/). The point being that it only seemed to be able to do 70mph on a reasonably open road - or there is an understanding that large emergency vehicles do not break the speed limits.

Reminded again of the curious way in which our world is organised. The DT is bleating about economic meltdown because of collapsing retail sales. On closer inspection below the headline, it turns out that the collapse is the fact that February sales were only 1.5% more by volume than those of the previous February. First thought on seeing this was that we are in a bad way if we need to grow in that way to stay in a good way. A thought which contains sense of a sort. But on mature reflection, maybe the population is growing at 5% - what with all our friends from parts East - and a 1.5% increase by volume is actually something like 3.5% decrease per capita, which one might reasonably be unhappy about. I think not exactly because of a denominator problem which I can't quite rise to at the moment.

And intrigued by the case of the civil servant being hunted down for inappropriate blogging. First point, the DT claims that the blog has been taken down. So why would the provider do that? Maybe, in the case that the law was being broken, but that seems unlikely in this case. So not any of their business. Second point, while one might think that the civil service blog police are being a bit stuffy, I guess it is reasonable for an employer to get a bit stuffy if they are being slagged off, vaguely in public, by one of their own employees. Not so reasonable in the case (my own) of an ex-employee, provided one sticks to comment on things in the public domain.

Despite wishful thinking (not entirely without bottled help) about rain shadows, it has rained a lot here in the last twelve hours or so. The garden pond's guardian duck was blown down. There is water running down the garden. A large branch has broken off the willow tree in our neighbour's garden. A fair size lump, the biggest that has ever broken off. At perhaps 20 cubic feet at 50lbs to the cubic foot (including due allowance for rising sap) it would have made quite a mess of our garage had it taken flight East, rather than dropping down dead.

Oddly, taking a chance and cycling to Cheam for bread in a gap (just long enough as it turned out) between blusters and showers, nothing as big as our neighbourly lump to be seen. A few small hedge trees blown over on Howell Hill, a few twigs here and there and that was about it. But a nasty cross wind coming out of Banstead Road on the way down Howell Hill. Not sure quite why, but maybe something to do with the open hillside to one side of it. Nothing to break the wind. Reminded why cycling in the wind - leaving aside the extra work involved - is not always a good idea.

Excel playing up again. The year old laptop with Windows XP and shiny new Office crashed three or four times in the same number of days last week. Didn't lose much work but all a bit tiresome - not least because of all the extra saves one puts in while one is calming down again. While one stops worrying about whether one's file has got corrupt - something which I think ought to be less likely now that they have moved to XML encoding, away from some fiendishly complicated binary encoding.

Maybe I shall have to move the laptop to Vista and see if that does any better - the new desktop which does have Vista having yet to crash. Maybe new Office works better with new Windows. But things are not so bad that I am going to start poking around the Microsoft support site yet. Let alone attempt to make a support call.

Not too impressed to see over the weekend that three or four members of the BBB are staunch Catholics. Given that my betters spent centuries acquiring the now basic freedoms of the country we live in, I am not about to say that this is not permitted. But makes it even less likely that I will vote for them (the BBB gang that is) next time around than it was last time around. When I was sufficiently uncivic not to bother to vote at all. As an aside, I wonder if Mr Blair's task in Northern Ireland was made any easier by his being almost a Catholic. Did they care?

And on a slightly differant tack, was prompted this morning to read something called the seven penitential psalms. And rather heavy weather I made of them too. So I am not at all sure that it is wise to let all and sundry try and decipher the things. Psalm 51, for example, leaves me without a clue as to whether burnt offerings are a good thing or a bad thing, despite their being mentioned twice. Maybe we do need fully qualified sky pilots to lead the way through. The protestant protest that we can all find our own way through Holy Writ does not seem to wash today.

Now taken possession of a shiny new version of Google Earth, which appears to confirm that while the Khyber Pass might be the gateway from the Near East and/or Afghanistan into Pakistan, it is not really the gateway from Pakistan into central Asia. To the North of Kabul there are mountains coming in at around 4,000 metres while Kabul is at 1,000m and the pass runs from that height down to around 600m at the Pakistan end. The pass looks, from the pictures supplied, pretty grim, but is said to be the only way through, so presumably trying to get through the Pakistan tribal lands lying to the South West of the pass and which look fairly innocuous from the sky, would be even worse on the ground, that is to say very grim. Presumably very grim place to live, which might explain their grim customs. Maybe the fact that there are no pictures or other sign posts is a clue.

Two examples of possibly over-zealous policing have come in over the last couple of days. First, I hear the the police in Berwick have prosecuted somebody for stealing bandwidth. That is to say by sitting outside someone's house and sending an email over that someone's wifi connection to the Internet. Nothing said about trying to hack in and do anything unpleasant. In which case not obvious that a prosecution is a good use of police resources. I wonder what the charge was? Maybe the email was huge and detracted from the householder's Coronation Street viewing and calling the police was easier than stepping outside and moving the villains on.

Second, a shop keeper in Epsom was raided because some of the advertisements on postcards stuck to the inside of his window were thought to be defamatory or perhaps inflammatory of race hate. It seems that the window in question goes in for funnies and that the one that caused the trouble was offering stoning services or some such. This was thought to be a step too far. The postcards have now been impounded by the men in blue, presumably for further (and expensive) consideration by their friends in the CPS.

On a more elevated note I now learn that wine does not just come in 1er cru. According to the Rubbing House on the Downs, you can also have 4me and 5me crus. No mention of 2me and 3me. Having a little difficulty finding out what exactly this is about. But the story might be that at the top of the wine heap you have classified crus. Maybe these run from 1 to 5 with 5 at the bottom of the top of the heap. 4 & 5, from memory, came in at around £40 a pop, so maybe half that in a supermarket. The next layer down is something called cru bourgeoise and below that appellation controllee. Sadly, I don't know any wine tarts who would be able to quote chapter and verse on this important matter. Have to see what I can do in Tooting.

Seven rows of broad beans now in, with no recent excavations by animals large or small. And I have about 10 seeds left from the last packet so judged that pretty well, seven being the desired number of rows. Pleased to have got them all in before the rains scheduled for tonight - although it may turn out, as it often does, that Epsom is in some kind of rain shadow land, and the rains will pass us by. Watch this space. Wrist got a bit stronger in the course of all this - the dropping of the pneumatic drill bit (maybe 5kg?) in the ground followed by the double twist to consolidate the seed hole being excellent training - and quite hard work for the first few rows. Next stop the onion sets.

Willow hedge planted last year now in full flower. Very pretty. I think the plan must be to cut it down to six feet high and three feet wide each Autumn or it will very soon get completely out of hand.

Some months ago I was sent an analysis of the criminal activity of members of the Canadian legislature. It seems that of the couple of hundred of them a suprising number had been convicted of all kinds of things. Smoking near a public lamp post, various forms of partner abuse, greivous bodily harm (where not included in the foregoing) and so on. All looked a bit grim, but then it was one of the ex-colonies. More recently, I was sent a similar analysis of our own legislature. Same catalogue of crime. But then I looked more closely and noticed that the list of crimes was exactly the same, although the numbers were differant. Which suggests some collusion in the production of these things. Are the same things crimes in both places? Do we categorise them all in the same way? And how does one find out? We don't have a register of criminal interests in the lower house, and while conviction in a criminal court is normally in public, I am not aware of any public list of the results of courts. That is to say, if one troubled to sit in every such court, every day, and made such a list oneself, one would presumably be free to publish it wherever one wished. Subject, perhaps, to our rules about convictions expiring after so many years, in so far as disclosure to potential partners, employers and the like is concerned. But the government make no such list available to all and sundry - although they do work hard to make sure they have one (with varying success). My point being, how were these particular two lists compiled? They might be right, but how do we know. Clearly a case for the compiler attaching a note on methodology to the bottom of the list - the length and turgidity (to go by the standard of such things in respectable magazines) of which might make the whole thing rather less amusing.

On a related note, I read in today's TLS that the Kyber pass is the key passage through the Hindu Kush, leading from the subcontinental plain into central Asia. By chance, I thought to consult the map (rather small scale, in the Britannica atlas. Must consult Google Earth). The Kyber pass appears to be well to the South of the Hindu Kush. So while I recall pictures of said pass showing it to be a grim place where a few well placed men with guns could stop large numbers of other men getting through and while it might be a gateway to Kabul, in the Southern foothills of said Hindu Kush, it is not a passage through. It all goes to show you should not trust something just because it is in print, even when printed in a respectable place.

And then just the other day in TB, after taking on some pints of the brown stuff, we were talking about stone age forestry operations. I recalled a passage I had read about experiments with stone axes and how hopeless they were. This was capped by someone reporting from a Timewatch programme, where they had made stone axes out of flint, making use of the services of the world's foremost authority on flint napping (University of Beccles & Bungay, I think), which did very well. They broke the odd axe shaft but got the trees down. Now both stories came dressed in respectable clothes and one might have hoped that both would be right.

The following morning I thought I would check. I thought I remembered the book in question and consulted the index. No entry for either stone or axe. In fact, not much of an index at all. Flicked through and, luckily, chanced upon the thing. The report was of extensive experiments in Amazonia, the result of which was that stone axes were an impossibly slow way to chop down trees, the consequence of which was that the stone agies did not get around to chopping down the rain forest. They went for some softer option like growing runner beans up the rain forest. Perhaps the answer is that there are no flints in Amazonia - this despite other people around there making extensive use of obsidian which I believe to be a flint like volcanic material, entirely suitable for making very sharp knives. Don't know about axes though.

Then I wondered about how one would make an index for a book of this sort - 300-400 pages about ancient Americans by a journalist. It would be a very tedious business in the olden days, but now with computers ought to be a lot less so. All you have to do is read the thing on-screen flagging up the bits you think ought to be indexed. A bit of flapping around while you tell the computer how this particular nugget ought to be indexed - under stone, axe, weapon, forest ecology or what, and on to the next nugget. The very cheap alternative of an index which did every word would have its points but apart from being bulky might not do the business. There might be far to many noise occurrences of stone to deal with.

All this on the strength of a rather fine lunch consisting of potato pie with curly cabbage and hot bread pudding. Not exactly slimming, but good gear.

from art person at http://www.ruudvanempel.nl/.

Overtaken by a red Ferrari on the way back from the baker today. Ferraris always seem to be red so there must be something in the theory about the aggressiveness of the drivers of red cars. That aside, the thing made a rather unpleasant rasping, coughy sort of noise. Accompanied by twin puffs of smoke, one from each exhaust, whenver the driver put his (or possibly her) foot on something. So, an unimpressive performance. I thought the whole idea of posh cars was that they purred, giving the impression of unlimited power lurking underneath. Not coughed. I recall that Ian Fleming - who went to a lot of bother about the details of these things - went in for full throated roaring. Which sounds well enough, but on reflection, is not enough like purring. Purring might be a bit wet but roaring sounds like the car is struggling which is not the idea at all.

Later on stuck behind one of those cherry picker things mounted on a van, being used to do something to the street lights. Which caused splendid tail backs in and around Hook Road. While I was waiting, I get to wonder how the thing worked. It had four joints and four rams and a basket in which the operator was to be found - which last was not hanging free in the manner, say, of a compass in gimbals. Plus a swivel for direction. So activating any one ram by itself would put the basket out of horizontal, which I am sure would contravene something in Health and Safety Regulations (cherry picking for Poles) Annex 5iv (March 2007 revision) - assuming, that is, that the operator in question was able to take the tome in question out of the library for perusal at home, over a couple of tinnies and a fag (still permitted at home). So, to continue, to keep the basket horizontal when moving the thing about would require some subtlety. Now does the operator operate the four rams directly, one lever for each, plus a wheel for the swivel, or is there some computing going on which converts some more natural controls - perhaps a joystick for direction and a lever for height - into ram controls? Or is the ram next to the basket driven autonomously by some gadget, connected to a level somehow and which is then able to maintain the level irrespective of what the operator gets up to with the other controls?

I also wonder about the eventual fate of a pair of houses on the other side of Epsom, on the way to the Downs. A semi-detached pair, around 100 years or so old. Great big red brick things, maybe twice the size of your average three bedroom suburban villa. Now one was in good condition and with a large Wellingtonian (or some such large sequoia tree, as large as the specimen we saw the other day in Kew) in the front garden. Rather dominant there. The other one was very run down, was to let and there were four or five cars in the unkempt front garden. Is the owner of the second letting it run down to the point where the council and his neighbour give in and let him knock them both down for flats? What about tree preservation? In our road you are apt to get the busies (if that is how lovers of Taggart spell the word) round if you chop down a large apple tree, never mind a large endangered species. Will preservation of the species allowed to stand in the way of houses (or at least flats) fit for heroes?

Yesterday's bread was a little overcooked, if entirely palatable. But good bread today. Cooked just right with a firm crust and fluffy, slightly damp, interior. A reminder that on a good day our bread is every bit as good as the stuff from over the water (Eastwards, not Westwards. I am told that North American bread is generally terrible) - although it also seems to be true that the quality of white bread declines with the distance from London. Peripherals don't seem to be able to manage it at all. Often able to get good white rolls, but generally bad loaves. But they can manage granary, along with supermarket bakeries - so I guess granary must be more forgiving.

Must be feeling poor today as I spent half the ride to the baker being irritated by all the people who have made a lot of money out of the excess credit fiasco. That is to say, feeling very moral about all those people who have made a lot of money out of lending money to people to whom they should not have - given that the people themselves did not know any better. These people, the victims, might, have been greedy too, but to my mind the perpetrators carry more guilt. In particular, the late boss of Northern Rock who sold his shares at peak (possibly at a time when he was getting windy about whether the good days were going to last) and made £10m or so - enough to cushion his decision to spend more time with his family - and the saleman from California whom I read about somewhere, a recent immigrant from somewhere in the Middle East as I recall, and who made a good deal of money - perhaps another £10m or so - selling mortgages to people who should not have mortgages, on commission. Enough to make one a lefty all over again.

Further to the aeroplane irritation at Kew, paid a second visit to Epsom Downs yesterday, inter alia to check on the aeroplane situation there. Middle of the afternoon, very clear, planes landing every couple of minutes or so. And one could indeed see the things on the runway. Couldn't pick out the ancient rotating radar - that is to say the red rotating radar somewhere near the Queen's Building which must have been there at least 30 years. Never seems to stop. Maybe it doesn't actually do anything, just being there to reassure travellers. The real radar is hidden inside something or other. Also able to pick out Post Office Tower, Nat West Tower and several Gherkins.

Which all reminds me to observe that while I don't mind Kew being used as a sculpture park - one would be hard pushed to find somewhere more suitable - I do mind if I don't like the sculpture in question. And I find that a good deal of Henry Moore I don't particularly care for. The rule of thumb seeming to be that the less figurative and the less detail, the more I am going to like it. Like the one outside Riverwalk House on the Embankment. Maybe what I like best is touched up boulders. So the boulder in Hyde Park (from Norway I think, something to do with the war) does not qualify, not being touched up at all. It has to be touched up enough to make it an artefact rather than an accident. And not amused by people who try to blur that particular boundary, like the enterprising artist in New York who was able to sell sculpture that he had sent direct to the customer from the quarry, unseen and untouched by his good self. He may, of course, have left a supply of plinths with the quarry to give his boulders an artefactual appearance. The catch with these ploys being, that once one has done it a few times, one cannot resist the urge to tell someone, perhaps the victim, about the ploy. At which point the bubble bursts. I seem to recall that friend Hirst came a small cropper on this one.

And now it is time to move onto today's edition of pork soup. Pearl barley, pork, cabbage and so on.

Hitherto, the best smoked haddock I knew in London was that to be obtained from the Eastern stall in Tachbrook Street in Pimlico. Or perhaps it is Upper Tachbrook Street - now retired I don't get to visit quite so often. In any event, the smoked haddock was superior to that from the man from Hastings. A whiter fish with a better flavour. However, the Eastern stall has now been knocked off its top spot by a fish shop in Crouch End. Large, posh sort of place, suitable to what has become a rather posh sort of area. Wet fish on the right, other stuff on the left. This last including a choice between very large white fillets of smoked haddock and Finians. Went for the large white fillet and it did very well, saving a peice of tail to make a fish cake with in the morning. This last made by part cooking the fish, skin side down, in butter. Flaking the fish into some left over mashed potato, patting it into a patty and then returning to the pan, with the lid on, for around 15 minutes or 10 minutes on the first side and 5 on the second. Fish cake did very well too.

Followed later in the day by a couple of sirloin steaks on the bone which also did very well. Preceeded by left over lentil soup (the streaky smoked from Cheam having looked good on Saturday) and accompanied by white rice and cabbage - this last being one of the January Kings from the allotment. Had to remove the outer leaves which were both battered and infested, leaving us with the rather bland interior. But could do worse. One also wondered what happened to the various bits which would be left over when sirloins were taken off the bone. A bit wasteful but presumably ended up in sausages.

In between, to Kew, where we almost got off to a bad start. The parking machine in the car park by the river wanted five one pound coins with no plastic option - rather a lot of pound coins to be carrying around - although one rather smug customer explained to us than one should really travel prepared in this inflationary age. Luckily, just as I was winding myself up to a private strop about parking charges in an already expensive attraction (up to £12.50 from the token penny it charged in my youth and the £7.50 less than five years ago), when we discovered that car parking tickets could be bought along with one's entry ticket. So the pain was reduced to that of having to walk back to the car to display it.

Kew itself was more or less its usual self, not being too badly infested with shops and educational material. Plenty of excellent trees and spring flowers. Discovered that some palm trees have their flower buds at the base of their large leaves on the outside and that some have them, again at the base, but contrariwise on the inside, giving the plant a rather differant appearance when they start to grow. Presumably a handy wheeze for the taxonomist. Came across just one smoker in the course of the day, and that was a pipe at that. So clearly the intersection of the 20% class of people that smoke and the 5% class of people that go to Kew is very small. Or, option two, they have banned smoking at Kew. Not quite an enclosed space but it might have been reclassified an educational establishment. Any excuse seems to be good enough in this banning age. Also slightly annoyed to have aeroplanes coming across to land at a very steady rate through most of our visit (on a Sunday). When we last tried to observe same from the top of Epsom Downs (from where one can see the landing runway on a clear day) one recent Saturday afternoon, we could not see a thing. Option one, there was more haze than we thought and the aeroplanes were there but hidden. Option two, airline staff take a break on Saturday afternoons. Maybe all the customers are taking quality time with their families on that day, rather than positioning themselves for the next week's turn at the treadmill.

Fifth row of broad beans now in and only modest signs of digging in the fourth row. Soon be onto the onion sets.

Taken delivery of the first load of horse manure, at some cost to the verges, these last being rather wet and so slippery on the day. Manure of various ages, the rotational arrangements at the stable in question being a bit hit and miss. Chunks of hay mixed with manure which must have been there for some years judgeing by the size of the roots in it. Most of the manure has gone to feed the pampas grass next to where it was dumped. Big old things pampas grasses, and they must suck something out of the ground - but no idea whether manure is the thing.

Now the pround owners of a fine new Excelsior Plus water purifier. Large handsome thing from Germany, with the styling, for some reason, reminding me of a car. Bit big really for the dining table. And because it was German, there were rather pedantic instructions about how to fill it - but maybe the pedantry was the consequence of cheap translation. Maybe that sort of thing gets done by one of those help desks in Bangalore when the lines are quiet. Maybe the thing is actually made in China despite the ownership and Germanic name (Brita) of the maker. So now we have green tea without scum. Great improvement.

On the same expedition (to Exeter) on which the water purifier was bought, we also bought some tea in one of those speciality tea and coffee shops in the fine new shopping centre - which I rather liked. Much better than the Sutton or Kingston equivalents - much easier on the large white pipes which seem to be the dominant motif in both places. The tea shop took itself very seriously and it was explained to me that I should not make the tea with boiling water, rather I should let it go off the boil a bit lest the heat extract all kinds of noxious flavours from the tea leaves. Furthermore, I should throw away the first infusion, thus flushing away more noxious flavours, but drink the second, third and fourth. And they were not in the least impressed by my observation that real tea drinkers add salt. In any event, I shall see how I like (organic) Sencha in due course. I also have a reward card. Those wishing to avail themselves of this outfit should visit http://www.ringtonsstores.co.uk.

The new guardian duck is still guarding the pond OK, erect on the concrete emplacement which used to be the home of the stone tortoise and was originally installed to stop a fox gnawed hole in the pond liner. It is not particularly heavy but the foxes do not seem to be taking any interest in it. Odd.