April (part) Archive

Monday, April 11, 2005

Bronze fennel by John Morris

posted by She Weevil @ 8:50 AM 0 comments

And now for something completely different ...
When I’m not banging on about games, I spend a lot of time thinking about gardening. If you visit regularly you will know that we have just got a tenancy on an allotment. No big deal to some, I know, but we live in a flat and have been used to having a garden, so to us it is.

It’s not really a tortuous process, it just seems like it. John’s gone to get the key this morning but we did visit on Saturday morning and measure up. The plot’s long and narrow (about 50’ x 14’ in old money) but it’s got a nice open aspect and the soil looks like a good fertile loam.

The plot has been cleared as well which is a bonus and turned over. I’m hoping the rain’ll keep off for a couple of days so that the weeds don’t all spring into life. Now furnished with the actual dimensions I have spent the weekend drawing anally retentive scale diagrams and planting schemes and trying to get my head around crop rotation. We had more of a potager affair at the old house. The garden there was mainly perennial flowers – a typical cottage garden really – with fruit trees, herbs, roses some potatoes and courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines and chillies in pots.

Going from that to a garden where only 10% can be ornamental is quite a contrast but something we are really looking forward to. We are not food snobs; that’s a lie, we probably are. We enjoy good food cooked with fresh ingredients – we understand the pot noodle horn we just don’t get it that often.

Anyway, over the course of the weekend I found a great new magazine called Grow Your Own – it’s only been out for a couple of months and it looks really excellent. There is loads of info on chickens and bees (two pipe dreams) and lots of advice and information on different vegetables, including the problems of fennel as a companion plant.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:42 AM 3 comments

Geeks of the world unite, you have nothing to use but your brains

So, you must all be thinking I’m some sort of geek now. Well you would be right in a way. I think we all have a geek quotient; just some of us are more prepared to reveal it than others.

I’m at ease with this; the geek is my ‘authentic self’ to quote Dr. Phil.

I did sit for 23 minutes trying to work out what the hell Rantz was talking about in the previous entry’s comments. No, that’s a lie; I decided to blog about it instead. I will try later on, but it’s still morning here and the caffeine hasn’t quite kicked in.

Why do I waste my time on these puzzle/game/conundrum type thingies?

A number of possibilities really:

I have the mind of a thirteen year old boy and the attention span to match;
I am a thirteen year old boy masquerading as an old hag called Sheweevil and that there physiog is a picture of my mum;
I am interested in the power of the collective mind.

Judge for yourself. I found Perplex City through a site called Collective Detective (which now seems to be mainly a marketing tool), through a puzzle called Virtuquest puzzle cube. Our Colony was through an approach on here.


I’ll try not to bore you with it all but to paraphrase a friend, Millysoo (you know who you are), we don’t need to be penis-enabled or pubescent to flex the old, grey matter now and again.


posted by She Weevil @ 8:14 AM 0 comments

Sunday, April 10, 2005
20000 CMWKTRW
Hello to everyone visiting from Our Colony.
posted by She Weevil @ 9:44 AM 10 comments

Friday, April 08, 2005
Wet Patch @ Zygote in My Coffee in May
I'm published, I'm published! Onwards and upwards. It isn't London Magazine but it's a start. This is thanks in part to the Madbaggage, you know that rambling one and to Gremlinsmom at Fanstory. It will spur me on to bigger things. Just need to go and sharpen my pencil.

Oh and here's my poem (again):

Wet Patch

You know
love has lost its lure
when the wet patch
is no longer
the romantic demonstration
of his spent love;

once it becomes
a clammy presumption
it's time to throw in the towel.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:40 AM 4 comments

Thursday, April 07, 2005
Hooray for Plymouth City Council ...
Park Services department. We got our tenancy through this morning for the allotment, backdated to 1 April. My seeds have also come and I'm very, very, unusually excited. This may be strange behaviour for a woman of a certain age, I admit it, but I don't care. Of course the weather looks pretty awful: typically British April showers with the possibility of snow thrown in for tomorrow. I don't know what the weather pixie is saying about this (she does sometimes lie) but it's looking a bit black outside. It'll probably chuck it down in a mo.

What to do first though? Well get some tools would be a good idea. All my tools as well as all my plants are at the old house. Sigh.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:31 AM 3 comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Even more boots

posted by She Weevil @ 9:52 AM 0 comments


Boots again

posted by She Weevil @ 9:32 AM 3 comments

Monday, April 04, 2005
These boots are made for walking ...

Not a favourite with the Chavettes, this is what Arty Daughter was given for Christmas by The Painter. Eat your heart out Julie Birchill

posted by She Weevil @ 4:00 PM 10 comments

Hieland Coos
or Highland Cows as you might also say, have been an enduring favourite of mine since I first met them in Edinburgh Zoo when I was a very little Sheweevil indeed. As far as I can tell from their website they don't have them there anymore. Let me know where they've gone if you know. Because of my thick red hair it was a pet name.

And I'll link to any blog with a picture of one on, like the PS Life blog I found courtesy of Rantz' sidebar. I love them.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:53 AM 1 comments

ol school ... gimme 30
If this means anything to you please leave a comment.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:07 AM 1 comments

A message to you ...
I wrote to Scarlett this morning:

Hi Scarlett

Just extending Earth greetings to you on your lovely blog. I've blogrolled you and put a piece about your blog on my own blog (the link below). I've got you in my bloglines too so I can keep up with all your news. I'd really love to have a look at some of your stuff in The Column; do you have a URL for this? If you need to contact us at all you can always leave a message in the comments on my own blog.

Really lovely job.
Sheweevil

and got this reply (the auto respond email thateveryone is getting)

Hi! Thanks for writing to me. I've been receiving so many emails lately, I'm not going to be able to reply to them all, but I will be reading every one :)
Love,Scarlett.

as she says, she's reading everyone. Be nice if this became a bit of a conduit.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:04 AM 0 comments

Saturday, April 02, 2005
The Scarlett Kite
Yes, I realise that my various, slightly obsessional meanderings into the depth and breadth of the internet are displacement activities. But there you are.

You will also know, if you read here regularly, that I keep banging on about a place/thing/game (I can legitimately call it that now) called Perplex City.

Perpelx City is a game. To be more specific it is an ARG. There was a pregame teasy bit where they set up their staff and put the game together and gave those who were interested tantalising tastes of what was to come.

The game started in earnest earlier this year with a series of newspaper adds in the classified section of major Earth newspapers. Each add contained a snippet of an article, effectively a jigsaw puzzle to piece together. The Perplex City Sentinel went live on March 21. More tantalising titbits. In amongst the furniture, some clues. The word Scarlet spelled out in a list of personnel. And now this.

I don't claim to be the clever so-and-so that found it (Brat-sampson was the first to post it) but I bet I'm the first to blogroll it.

The site is well designed - nice and clean, lots of white space for ease of reading. The cartoonist has been busy again coming up with some pictures of Scarlett. She got a page for media links which she says she's got to update. As for looking further into what she says: she says that everything she gets goes through the Academy so maybe we do need to place a classified add, here on Earth and tell her where it is. Just a thought. Iona Rodie may also be an avenue to pursue.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:27 AM 1 comments

Friday, April 01, 2005
Weather Pixie


posted by She Weevil @ 4:42 PM 4 comments

Prince Charming, Prince Charming ...
... Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.

What is going on with the Prince of Wales? A life spent as an understudy must surely include an element of frustration. The goodwill that the heir to the throne was the subject of for the first part of his life has largely been squandered.

Is this a product of a cynical and unkind society or is the cynical and unkind society a product of an establishment who took the goodwill of the people as a birthright? It may be that the people's faith has always been misplaced and abused but in an information rich environment like we have today and with a populous that is, on the whole, to varying degrees of efficacy, literate, you have to behave with a decorum and poise in order to maintain a respect earned on the coat-tail of somebody else.

If you do things that reduce the respect people have for you don't expect it not to be news worthy. If people feel that you betrayed not only your wife but people who believed that you were a good man, fit to be King, don't be surprised if they are not interested in your personal happiness. If you live like the rabble then expect the rabble to subsume you.

Don't be surprised when they turn around and dismiss your problems with the press as a stick you have cultivated for yourself, organically of course.
posted by She Weevil @ 11:06 AM 3 comments