The Sturdy Soapbox

Every irksome task deserves a reward

For some reason that's still a mystery to me, I signed up for another online course, this one's "Equality and diversity".

Everyone I've told that to so far has sniggered and it's possibly because the general school of thinking is that this all works if you are the sort of person who goes through life thinking everything and everyone out there is nice.

Anyhow, I have a deadline of tomorrow which I have beaten by completing assessment one of the course and e mailing it in today.  If you wimp out, you get billed a hundred quid.

I didn't wimp out of the IT course I did and was actually on schedule and I still got a bill, which I returned and told them what to do with it.

So after I waved goodbye to assessment one, I had me some orange flavoured sugar free jelly and there's another dish of it in the fridge with my name on (at about 10 calories a serving).  I doubt it will bee there in an hours time.

I didn't capture very much rain this morning, but at least the carnies were out in it and are wet.  Peppers are coming along nicely, the leaves are all above the top of the tray now, from where I sit a regular carpet of green.

Been a bit miserable most of the weekend, because both my neck and my side are giving me lots of trouble.  Neck causing dizziness and nausea and my side just cramping up on a regular basis which altogether makes you just want to lie down, which I did on Saturday afternoon, then caused me to go to bed at 8:45 on Saturday night (it wasn't even dark or a school night), then yesterday afternoon for three hours.

Been a bit better today which is why I galvanised myself into finishing this assessment before time.

The jelly was a fitting reward.  Really deserved ice cream though !

Playing a blinder

Three days later and these guys are going for gold.

On Friday, I got a kit for spring onions from Poundland.  Planted the seeds up, put some water in and the compost was of such poor quality, it just floated on top of the water, so I had to mix it up with some of my good stuff and now hope for the best, because if the dirt was pants, were the seeds up to anything ?  Time will tell.

Pleased to see I have some new growth on the parlour palm I got via freecycle, as the plant wasn't in the best of nick when I got it.  Three new stong shoots.

Bob the Butcher's gone off to Cornwall for a few days see his brother.  His insurance paid out and he has another Chrysler PT Cruiser, this time in dark blue, looks very nice in that colour.  No repeat performances on the M5 near Clevedon Bob please.

The plans to go see the Daleks have again been scrapped.  They'll be gone come the end of June, boo hoo.

Seeing April from CAMRA on Tuesday and OBC coming over with Val on Wednesday, so I have a busy week to come.

 

Come on me babbies

The chilli pepper seedlings are beginning to get their act together, well two rows at least.  They are different varieties so I expect the ones still asleep are a needing a longer germination.

Got me a cheap baby conifer in Tesco this morning and am now on the hunt for some lavender and some rosemary (anybody got any cuttings) ?

 

I'm going to be a bit famous

A while back, I had a permission request from someone at Cornell University, to use one of my pictures of a Venus flytrap in one of their CDs and a forthcoming book on animal and plant communication.

I get a credit but as usual with my brushes with celebrity, that's all.

I was quite pleased today to get an e mail telling me I will be getting a copy of the hardback book, which is quite nice..

Today my photo of a Dionaea muscipula, tomorrow the centrfold of Playgirl magazine wearing just me socks and sandals !

The scar 2 years on

I rarely talk about this apart from the trouble it still gives me 2 years after the surgery, but this morning I decided to hold the camera round the back and try to capture something I am even too scaredy cat to look at in the mirror.

The crinkly bit on the left of the picture is the bit which covers the area I get most trouble with, this is the location where it cramps up the most.

I'm surprised that it is still the colour it is, but possibly answers why I still have the problems I do.

This isn't the whole of the scar, it actually carries on downward and ends up close to where my appendix is, which I am sure they could have whipped out at the same time.

When I saw the surgeon last year, he told me that I was one of the pioneer subjects of this procedure which is why they had to cut a hole as big as the Mersey tunnel.  Very soon these nephron sparing procedures will be done laproscopically.

Not long after the surgery, Staff Nurse Jess (who was a Dalek fan) saw it and said "it's the same colour as your T shirt" which I found a bit scary as my T shirt was a sort of rusty orange.

 

Wireless Tone drops by

Remember Wireless Tone ?  aka Sick Tone, Farmer Tone though he doesn't grow anything any more. and Warthog ( his wife calls him the latter).

I always teased him when we worked together as to him a Screwfix (power tools and all that stuff) catalogue was better than a tits and arse mag for manly arousal.  I used to leave rolled up copies of the catalogue behind the cistern for him in the works lavvy.

As you can see here, he's got a butch rubber encased laser guided JCB tape measure.  Like Caterpillar, JCB in the UK make big tractors and diggers.  Tone has worked on their plant lines and I looked after their account visiting the factory in Rocester many times.  JCB have now started doing branded stuff for blokey blokes (like Tone) so as well as a laser guided tape measure, you can get boots, work gear even mobile phones which are rubber encased too and have a heavy duty vibrate so blokes like Tone can keep em down their underpants and double the thrill.  Tone aspires to a JCB phone the models of which have names like "Tradesman" "Site Manager and "Really Butch Fucker".

I couldn't run to a phone for him as they'm a bit pricey, but I did get him some blokey socks which have kevlar reinforced toes (for wearing inside steel toecap boots (the blurb on the pack is well convincing).

So now he's got the branded tape measure, the socks and the wire wool jockstrap, lucky boy.

You'll be the envy of the lads on site tomorrow our Tone !

Charlie Chalk strikes off another year

It's the Chalkmaster's birthday  - I sent him an e card

My day is complete

First it's cool new curtains and then a few minutes ago, I looked into the seed tray which was host to one tiny seedling and I spied about another half dozen poking their little heads out of the soil.

I'll be awash with chillies anytime soon !

Too posh for me

Mrs. OBC (Val) has been keeping an eye open in her family for anyone redecorating and modernising their homes, with a view to copping what they discard for the Regent apartments.

She came up trumps today, with an amazing set of curtains which come with a valance and those things you tie round them to posh em up when they aren't closed.

OBC dropped em off on his way in to work this morning and I was up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe putting them up, which on my own and with my neck problem was easier said than done, but with a few rests in between stages, I completed the job only falling off the ladder once and neck problem quelled with a couple of Diclofenac.

Even these pictures don't do justice to how they have transformed the room, way too posh for me (right down to the matching candlesticks, honest) !

Darlo popped by on Saturday and gave me the boot !  No, she's still going to help with the deocrating, she gave me a planter, which I immediately used to repot one of the spider plants.

We're getting a bit of well deserved rain today, so the carnies will have a watering and I've some bowls out there to collect some too.

Lots of little jobs on the go this week, though today's "soft fabric project" was unexpected, but well worth the effort.

For the chav who hasn't quite got everything

My brother and Anita came over for lunch today, first time Anita hadn't seen donkey.

We had a nice roast lunch (lamb) and they bought over wine and a few nice goodies for me (cos I'm poor). The large piece of wild salmon now in the freezer was unexpected, I was happy enough with the bag of potatoes because it means I don't have to carry them back from the town.

As they left, they asked me to go down to the car as they had one more present, which I was asked to open and then text my reaction.

So here it is:

If you're a chav, especially if you live in a high rise like I now do, it is de rigeur (even if you don't know what de rigeur means), to stamp your nationalistic mark on everything.  The truly committed (or at least those who should be), have bulldogs, St. George flags and the likes tattoed on their useless carcasses.  Then they decorate their habitat, usually beginning with a large flag hanging off their balcony, so everyone passing by knows a "true Englishman" lives there.

Noting that I have begun the decorating phase of the Regent apartments, my brother was concerned that I have no outwardly chavvy accoutrements to stamp my chav individualism on my gaff and so I was presented with this fine precision crafted set of St. George lights, indoor or outdoor (so they can be strung from a balcony).

Maybe not quite yet, but actually I do like the lights.   Notice the box says they are "football lights".  A bit like how Nessum dorma became a "football anthem" the flag of our patron saint now states quite categorically that I'm all there for a pint of Carling Black Label and a fight at closing time.