pumpkinstrokemarrow

I have a sneaky feeling that I have moaned about this before, but until I can afford an editor I guess we are going to have to put up with the odd quirk. Anyway, the moan in question is about the bushes that grow in the outer verge in some parts of this estate. The outer verge in question is outside one of a group of 20 year old infills (which no doubt, in their day, occasioned much blood, sweat and tears from the planning protest group), each of which is worth, perhaps, £750,000 or more. Now the owner of this one is happy to let the box bush outside - something bigger than a cubic metre - to become steadily infested with blackberry runners and ash seedlings. Last year it would have been the work of minutes to remove them. This year it might take hours. Next year who know? But the council contractors who cut the grass clearly think that box bushes are no part of their contract. And the house owner clearly thinks it is no part of his. I don't live in a stonking great house to house to sweep the verge outside. That's for peasants. So with the owners of such houses setting such a poor example of civic (or even neighbourhood) spirit, what chance do we have with the inhabitants of social housing on the other side of Hook Road? Although, saying that, I remember reading about the decent poor of yesterday, the wives among which would run a very fierce contest for the best polished doorstep. Wives like that did not have verges or bushes in them, but one might suppose that they would care for them if they had.

Prompted to a childhood memory this morning by the bath. Or to be more precise, the bath plug chain becoming detached from its point of attachment on the overflow. A few minutes with a couple of pairs of dental pliers and job done. The memory being of this being a regular task in my childhood bath. Even to the point of having to tie the chain to its attachment with a bit of wire. Maybe I had had to bend the fitting supplied so much that it gave up the ghost.

And this follows the serious DIY in the extension where the stove hole in the wall has now been rendered over to within half a centimetre of the surface - having decided that the modest amount of mortar in the hand was better than a huge bag of bonding in the shop. So all ready for that tricky stuff, finish plaster. Which I have not touched for many years. Wickes only sell that in 10kg bags - maybe three times as much as I want - so I will have to shop around. I don't think the stuff lasts too long and at £11 a bag, worth checking out B&Q for a smaller one. I am sure I have seen very small bags somewhere. The trick being not to undershoot: not too clever to run out half way through on a piddling size patch of this sort.

Stewing steak soup worked OK. Had to vary the plot the day following as the supplies of pearl barley had given out and had to use posh small greeen lentils (puy?) instead. Not quite as pretty to look at but entirely edible.

And the DT has a very 'Titbits' like feel to it today. We learn of the bronze monument to enemas in some Russian spa town. Of the Putin fanzine, on the back of which it would be fun to spoof a Brown version. Brown in a lap dancing bar puffing on a suspiciously fat and loosely rolled cigarette? It also seems that calling Putin a vampire is serious praise in today's Russia. Of the brother of some huge crim in Naples, recently confined for his natural, who modelled his lifestyle on that of some huge, but fictional crim, in some film called 'Scarface'.