pumpkinstrokemarrow

As a former public servant, I feel I must join the chorus on this subject. In my day, significant fiddling on the expenses was one of the few things you got the rapid push for. Significant cock-up on the work front and you might get shunted to some backwater (I remember being told when I was young that the traditional backwaters for no-hopers were premises, statistics and personnel. I was statistics) but you would not get fired. Now in this case, the fiddling is insignificant, accidental even rather than deliberate. And apart from the fact that sex and money in high places is always good for a laugh and a joke, I do believe that it is just one more nail in the coffin of disrepute into which our governments have been falling for some time. Something which eats away at the core of our democracy, something which has had awful consequences in the past. It also draws attention to the fact that the way that pay and rations are managed for our politicians is risible, and while the linkage is unfair (given that most of them do not actually do anything apart from putting money in their relatives' pockets, patting babies in their constituencies and other good deeds of that sort), it does not increase one's confidence that other, rather larger amounts of public money are being spent wisely.

Better luck on the domestic front. While I was surfacing this morning, BH mentioned that the washing machine was taking rather a long time about its business. Maybe time to buy a new one. This really galvanised me into action and on return from the baker a few hours later, dragged the washing machine out of it hole. Disconnected the electricity. Removed the waste pipe from its holder. Then inspected the back of the thing to find that that the back did not come off in the way of its predecessors. Reduced to reading the manual (thoughtfully kept by BH in a plastic bag on top of the machine) where I learn that there was no need to have dragged the thing out of its hole at all. This fine new machine has a waste water inspection hatch at the front. So I open the hatch - something that does not even require a screwdriver, phillips or otherwise - and drain off a bit of water containing a bit of gray gunk. Then open up the pump chamber to find three peices of bent wire, a legacy of some bit of outdoor DIY or other which had got stranded in a shirt pocket. Maybe they account for the strange behaviour? In the meantime I collect a few points for trying.

Two of the three new ponds definately on the move now. The sedge is growing, albeit slowly, and its water has cleared. The marigold in growing rather faster, is now up to three or four bright yellow flowers and its water has cleared. But the third pond, that with the water lilly, is still rather murky and there is no sign of lilly action. On the other hand, the surface of the pond is covered in an interested green pattern, made up of green foam. It reminds me rather of one of those arial photographs of the Amazon, mainly green but with various waterways wandering around. A linked archipelago of bright green, floating on a sea of dull green. Odd newt bobbing about. But what is making the green foam? Waste products of newts? Algae? Decomposition of failed lilly?