March Archive

Thursday, March 31, 2005
To anybody here about Perplex City...
If you've been on the wiki you are probably thinking "Where's all the ppc stuff". This blog is at least as up-to-date as the other two. Do a Technorati Search of the site and you'll find stuff.

Oh and by the way I've just become an ARGolonist if that means anything and solved a challenge - so woot to me.

Think that should be 'truncated' guys.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:48 AM 8 comments

We're drinking my friend to the end of a brief episode...
... make it one for my baby and one more for the road.

It's still a relatively sensible time across the pond. Out across the pacific it's about time for a cup of tea and way down under it's nearly time to be thinking about a spot of lunch.

Here in dank old Plymouth, Devon, England, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, Europe, the World it's 2:27 in the morning and we are not drinking anything. That is to say I am not drinking anything. A doctor once told me that all I had to do was to learn to drink normally. Isn't that the whole point you arsehole?

The rest of the she weevil brood are abed, infact I've just heard the patter of tiny footsteps heading to Mummy and Daddy's bed, so when I exorcise whatever this is that you are about to become subjected to, there will be three in the bed and the little one will say "I don't want cubbers".

Talking to a nameless friend started it I suppose, airing our respective dirty washing over the madness you find in acadaemia. I try not to think about it often - it just seems like someone else's life. That person just about made it through university for many and varied reasons, including sole responsibility for two children, a landlord from hell and an extremely dangerous house, a court case, a fatal attraction to alcohol and meeting the love of her life - I almost forgot, and the madness of the aforesaid academicians. When she left she was vital and excited and sure and enthused. She knew life was going to get better.

Watching Jamie's Kitchen this evening finished me off. I describe myself on various blogdirectories as an erstwhile scrubber. Last year I took a job as a cleaner. They were quite surprised at me wanting the job with my qualifications but it suited me at the time. Later on their cook left and I changed roles. I worked bloody hard and I could cook them all into a cocked hat but my face didn't fit. They got the opportunity to hire the person they had wanted for the job in the first place and they sacked me. It took me two months and the threat of legal action for me to get my severence pay and holidays etc paid; they weren't going to pay it at all. Then we had the lovely saga of the house, then Christmas, the stroke, the heart and now, Jesus, I feel unemployable.

I said I'd stop doing this but I'm sorry tonight you are my buddy - so just listen a minute will you? I don't know what the hell to do, I don't know which way is up. I don't know how to make thingsdifferent: I don't even know where to begin.

posted by She Weevil @ 1:23 AM 3 comments

Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Book stick
Well this became, in my head at least, the big bad book stick. The big, guilty, bang you over the head bookstick. It almost took on the dimensions of my big, guilty bin-liners-full-of-expensive-knitting-wool-that-I-can't-bear-to-throw-away. And why would this little, unassuming meme have gotten me so wound up and angst ridden? I suppose because I'm ashamed I don't read enough. I used to read all the time. After my degree it took me three years to even pick up a book. Now I read sporadically. Thanks Cheryl for nominating me.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Well, I answered this over on Badaunt's page in her comments. I did have a kind of asexual crush on Jo from Little Women. The part where she cut off her hair was truly horrific to me and at the same time so noble. I loved her for it plain and simple. It did irritate the shit out of me the way she called her mother Marmee, though. Male crush would have to be Inspector Rebus. He's just so flawed. Please ignore the truly awful TV version and the miss casting of John Hannah - Rebus is distinctly more flawed and has obviously eaten a few more haggis suppers than John Hannah

The last book you bought is

This was a charity shop find. I love charity shops for books they are always dirt cheap and you find some interesting things that someone has cherished enough to take along rather than just bin. Anyway the book in question was Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I bought it for The Painter because he loves the film All the President's Men. Obviously it's about the final days of the Nixon administration. I haven't read it yet and I can't at the moment even locate it we have so many, some would say too many, books in this house.

The last book you read

The last book I actually read was The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen. Sounds lofty but it was just lying around and I thought I would improve my mind. Not with this though. A very strange little tale about a man who escapes reality into a kind of Narnian attic. I suppose if Ibsen were writing it now the protagonist may end up blogging himself into obscurity instead. Translation is always a problem and I'm not sure that this edition had been done very sympathetically but it was infinitely better than Candide by Voltaire.

I had embarked on Bjorn Larsson's Long John Silver when the whole stroke situation kicked off but it was tidied up by The Painter after he got out of hospital. I hate that. I hate people picking up after me (do it yourself then, you lazy cow - internal monologue). Now I keep looking at it on the bookshelf and glaring at it like it was the book's fault.


Five books you would take to a deserted island:

The first, as I mentioned over on Badaunt's gate-crashed entry would be Cohesion in English by Halliday and Hassan. I would take it to the island and really coherently (pardon the pun) demonstrate why their theory is wrong. I attempted to do this for my Bachelor's dissertation (Text: a question of cohesion). My tutors were distinctly unconvinced giving it only a 56 - the external moderator was obviously a woman of some sense as she marked it up to a 64 (that's a big leap guys, my vendetta theory seemed somewhat less bizarre when I found that out).

The next I would take would be the Norton Anthology of Poetry. This is an American publication and so there is some bias in its editorial but it is a very thorough collection of poems in English and the chapter on versification at the end is a useful toolbox for any poet.

Next I would have to take two books as one choice. I know this is cheating but the two books were bought together in a second hand bookshop. Okay, okay, I'll make them count as one each but you have no soul. They had been presented together as a prize in a race in 1911 or some such and included a newspaper clipping of the race results (YMCA Manchester Harriers v YMCA Oldham Harriers). The pair of books are The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns and the Life of Robert Burns by JG Lockhart published by JM Dent and EP Dutton (1910). I first bought a copy of Burns Poems and Songs aged 6 at a jumble sale and read it for many many years until it fell apart. To be without this copy would be unthinkable; to part the copy from its mate would be inhumane.

The fourth choice would aptly be The Coral Island by RM Ballantyne. Again this is as much about the edition of the book as the story; it's a colonial tale and as such is not very politically correct in these post colonial times but the strangeness and the beauty of the South Seas islands comes through very strongly. It would act as a kind of survival manual too and as long as I didn't have to eat long pig I think I'd be okay. The copy I have is covered in a blue/green shagreen and has thin pages. It smells, when you open it, like a missal or a hymnal. Lovely.

My fifth and final choice would be 101 Dalmations by Dodie Smith - don't even speak about the various Disney travesties - please read the real thing with paper pages. It would inspire me to find a way home.

My book stick nominees are the weird and wonderful Rantz, Ally over at Ducking for Apples and of course the other Ali over at Alastair Campbell. (He won't answer - too busy running the election but I'll chuck the stick at him anyway.)

posted by She Weevil @ 11:34 AM 10 comments

Lax
I have been very lax over the Easter weekend. Could this be because the Weevil was busy making her Easter devotions, all gongs and incense. No, sadly not. Just been exceedingly slothful.

Bloglines feeds haven't been working properly either, so blogdom seemed eerily quiet. Thanks Rantz for leaping to my defence yesterday. My rude visitor (yesterday's comments) was in fact my lovely mad sister. She's been doing all the running around with mum because she lives nearby. She is lovely. She thinks she's funny. What is funny is that you can't make a Simnel cake with hate in your heart: it just won't rise or cook. The marzipan will act like some kind of weird insulating blanket/Duvet thing. You will end up with a Simnel pancake.

I have another sister. She is also mad and when I don't mention her and tell her she's lovely she gets huffy.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:02 AM 1 comments

Sunday, March 27, 2005
Lionel Ritchie and ....
... the Comedones.

And their hit single "Squeasy like a Sunday Morning". Please do not click the link above unless you have a strong constitution and are not easily shocked.

posted by She Weevil @ 3:34 PM 3 comments

Friday, March 25, 2005

Borage

posted by She Weevil @ 11:43 AM 2 comments

Mary, Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow?
Well for some time now I've intermittently told you about the loss of my lovely garden when we moved and how difficult I found it.

We applied for an allotment as soon as we moved in but we were put on a waiting list. Yesterday we got notification that we've been allocated a half plot and so I snapped it up. Just in time, too, with the growing season almost upon us.

So I spent a very pleasant evening trawling through my lovely Thompson and Morgan catalogue and find lots of yucky, I mean lovely, vegetables to grow in the garden. Yes thta's right I love growing them and garden fresh are as good as it gets but I'm not the world's biggest vegetable fan - give me a lump of meat and I'm happy.

Here's what I've got coming:

Bean : French Bean : Purple Teepee
Bean : Broad Bean : Express
Courgette : Salad Collection
Lettuce : Freckles
Carrot : Fly Away F1
Broccoli : Summer Sprouting Wok Broccoli
Squash : Winter : Avalon F1Hybrid
Lathyrus odoratus Astronaut Mixed
Lettuce : Colour Shades Mixed
Giant Strawberry Maxim - 6 Plants
Herbs : For Windowsills

I'm going to get some seed potatoes, onion sets and tomato plants locally as I've left it a bit late for ordering; needless to say it feels like Christmas not Good Friday.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:59 AM 7 comments

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Twenty-three reasons to blog about Alastair Campbell

Most of the following are personal impressions or taken from Alastair-Campbell.blogspot.com

Woman of a certain age find him oddly appealing yet at the same time vaguely irritating
He has red hair - he is not a ging
He has a strong aversion to Piers Morgan
Rumours that he was a riviera gigolo persist despite the fact that he bangs his fist and pouts about it
Brusque and northern
Clever
On the wrong side of the Blair/Brown divide (apparently there is no such thing)
The Painter alleges that he is the lapdog of a tyrant
He is a devisive character
He very nearly advocates the kicking of King Charles ... spaniels
He runs marathons - the man's a nutter
He supports Leukaemia Research
He was played by Jonathan Cake in "The Government Inspector"; hunky but not like the real deal
Controversial
He wasn't daft enough to join the Wrens (or female enough for that matter)
He read modern languages - I think the ability to speak another language is cool in anyone. I only speak very bad French and even worse German.
He doesn't apparently like dogs; does he like cats?
The thinking woman's Sean Bean
Almost as sexy as the thinking woman's John Prescott (Gordon Brown)
Sexier than the thinking woman's David Icke (Tony Blair)
Spells Alastair with an internal A but no D
The name Campbell comes from the gaelic: twisted mouth
Alastair is an anglicised form of the gaelic form of the greek

posted by She Weevil @ 1:51 PM 4 comments

Over on the Alastair Campbell blog
"To anyone who caught that Politics programme yesterday I warn you to ignore the advice given by Derek Draper about tactical voting. That wanker suggested voting Lib Dem or even Tory in marginal seats to try and get rid of Tony. For starters why the fuck would you want to get rid of Tony? It would be a very dangerous idea to vote like that as the Tories could get in by the back door or even worse we could end up with Gordon Brown as PM. Do not think that the British people would be that stupid to heed someone like that’s advice anyway. " Alastair Campbell (apparently)

Still haven't made up my mind about this. In some ways it doesn't matter whether it's him or not. Makes for (or would if more people were looking at it and commenting) quite a nice sounding board/unofficial focus group. I think there's just me and Cheryl so God help him!!

posted by She Weevil @ 8:48 AM 1 comments

Monday, March 21, 2005
Perplex City
Just another of the things I fill my mind with in order to almost completely shut out reality seems to have begun in earnest this morning. Following an email from ARGN.com announcing the launch of a new ARG Perplex City. They send us all to www.perplexcitysentinel.com who have the article from which all the clippings collected from the Earth newspapers over the past few weeks and the bits from Dinah and Alice too.

At the moment there seems no way to subscribe - if YOU know how please let me know or the forum at unforum.

posted by She Weevil @ 11:18 AM 2 comments

Fanstory ... again
Well the other reason I've been quiet on here is because I've been over on Fanstory. Contrary to popular opinion, I can't mop the floor and wash the windows at the same nor can I write on here and on there.

I write my drivel here and I put my self-indulgent drivel over there. It's all Madbaggage's fault. She started it all. This weekend we both ran into a lovely chap on there with quite firm opinions about most things in the universe.. Here's what he had to say about a piece I'd written:

"This was a decent piece of writing, but there simply wasn't much of a story. I think this could be developed much further. Good job overall. Below are some suggestions. XXXXXXX

"... then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink." I wouldn't capitalize these words (unless they are in that actual book)"

I did respond that it wouldn't have occured to me to misqote Keats, at which point the conversation stopped. I welcome anyone's review; he just has all the social graces of a teenage boy. Funny that.

What is a freshman in high school?

posted by She Weevil @ 8:48 AM 2 comments

Monday, Bloody Monday.
Been quiet all weekend on here. Probably cos Rantz shamed me over the backups thing. Well to understand my pathetic justification, I guess you had to be here. No, I don't mean here in our delightful (and only pissed stained on the outside) local authority flat. No. And not even walking a day in my shoes is close enough. You have to be right here, inside my head, to get it.

Saturday mum phones me. Not that unusual. She's won the premium bonds - only £50 -better than a poke in the eye. When I ask her how she is - she says not so good. A few chest pains. Bronchitis? No, and pains in her collarbone and down her arm.

I try telling her that taking an aspirin and having a sit down isn't the best plan of action but she' a bit pigheaded. She tells me she'll phone the doctor in the week and make an appointment. I know this is the best I'm going to get out of her for the moment.

I phone Sunday and she's had another two episodes in the night and one in the morning. I try and persuade her to call the doctor. Apparently she won't get an appointment at short notice. Anyway she's got grow houses coming by courier from Argos - she couldn't possibly phone them and put them off. She assures me she'll phone as soon as they have been delivered.

I sit pondering the conversation, wondering why she told me in the first place (she doesn't like to worry people and normally keeps things to herself); thinking about dad up on his cloud glaring because he doesn't actually believe e in heaven or the afterlife, yet here he is stuck on this fluffy construct waiting for everyone else to join him (morning, dad, BTW). I phone her back and say "You know you are having a heart attack, don't you. The doctor's surgery will have to see you if you tell them what's wrong." She tells me of course she knows she's having a heart attack, she's not stupid. Gets quite irritated and goes.

More pondering. A discussion with The Painter. He mutters things like "fucking ridiculous" a lot. I ring my sister and then my godmother, all the while thinking she's never going to speak to me again. Thankfully my godmother and her other oldest friend both go to see her and I get a phonecall at lunchtime to say they are off to A&E. Dribbles and trickles of information - has she, hasn't she? Apparently she probably has had at least one heart attack but they won't be able to confirm until later.

I phone the hospital this morning to see how she went over night and I get to speak to her, sounding better than she has done for ages. She even laughs when I tell her the treadmill they are going to get her to go on this morning has nothing to do with her heart condition - it's attached to a huge dynamo and powers the whole hospital (well, she is my mum - someone's got to laugh at my pathetic attempts at humour). She's still convinced she's going home today - she's still worried about the Argos parcel and her seedlings, but hey, she's in the right place.

I kept my promise Dad.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:04 AM 6 comments

Friday, March 18, 2005
Ain't no mountain high enough
So - I've been quiet for the last few days. Not really quiet, you just couldn't hear me screaming and swearing at the computer. It started with an infection of the viral variety which I thought I had quarantined and dealt with, an hour long conversation with a very nice techy guy at AOL and a format of my hard-drive.

This was not as straight forward as it sounds as my desk is (or was) somewhat like the Scafell Pike of paperwork. It did actually look like somebody had taken an office's waste paper and tipped it on the desk but I knew where things were (okay, I knew their general location). Included in this melee were, somewhere, operating disks et cetera, et cetera, all necessary for the afternoon's events. The external CD writer that we have with this clockwork powered pile of pooh is of course not connected. It sits like a little shrine to house dust under the desk in the vain hope that someone will actually one day attach it to the computer and make it useful again. There are a number of reasons why this hasn't happened and they are all down to my dreadful manana state of mind. NEVER DO TODAY WHAT YOU CAN PUT OFF UNTIL TOMORROW.

For the benefit of those of you visiting from North America or anywhere that has lots of mountains, Scafell Pike may not seem much more than a bump in the ground; I grew up in Cornwall, the highest point of which is Brown Willy - no, really, it is, height 1375 feet.

Nonetheless, it was not working. I was forced to try and get the collective detritus of four verbose individuals and their accounts on to three floppy disks. There are some of you out there who have probably never even used a floppy disk. Trying to do backups to them has always been a pain. Yesterday was no exception. To back up My documents was going to take approximately 380 disks. I had 12. They were old and reformatted but I was going to give it a go. After disk number five had successfully finished and prompted me for no six, the floppy drive decided it didn't like the disk and asked for another. Apparently I took too long complying and computer said no. The backup stopped and I was left with five disks full of meaningless crap.

I changed tack at this point and started breaking tasks down into smaller, more manageable chunks. This, as has emerged, has been somewhat successful apart from (bien sur) the accounts. I backed these up individually and on coming the restore them, the backup software tells me there is no catalogue on the disk - task aborted.

So if I'm quiet again for a few days, think of me in my stout climbing boots, pushing on towards the pike, bar of Kendall Mint Cake in hand, in a valiant attempt to rebuild my life and my big box of cookies.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:52 AM 3 comments

Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Paddy's Wigwam ...
They speak with an accent exceedingly rare; meet under a statue exceedingly bare and if you want a cathedral we've got one to spare ...

Over on the Perplex City forums, there is an amount of debate about where this picture (the one in the top left-hand corner) is. There is, it has to be stated, also an amount of discussion as to whether or not it is important.

The candidates at the moment are London or Liverpool. It was considered to be London for the longest time but someone pointed out that the two small barely visible bits on the skyline might be St John's beacon and the Metropolitan Cathedral (affectionately known as Paddy's wigwam).

If you know where this view is, where the picture was taken from and where the missing cube is please just leave a message here or on the forums mentioned above.

If you don't know what I'm talking about but would like to, go here. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by.

posted by She Weevil @ 4:46 PM 3 comments

Boy(s/z) in the hood ...
I can't pretend that I know where the hood is.

In my mind it has something very vaguely to do with Will Smith but that's about it as far as locating it into time space or anywhere else the person that tidies the hood away at the end of the day might have put it. I know that a lot of the young men around here seem to think they come from or are going to the hood. I didn't know that I was (should that be woz?) currently living in the hood and I don't have anything in my wardrobe that approximates the requisite item of clothing (a hoody).

The yoof round here have a lot, in a wide variety of colours of grey; they only appear to wear the hoods up if they are also wearing a baseball cap. I'm not sure where these come from or why they are here. As far as I can elicit, on the large green in front of my asbestos tower there is very little evidence of any kind of sport at all. Once in a very blue moon you might get a couple of lads knocking about a football of the association variety but more usually there's just a lot of schlepping, spitting and swearing. Certainly no evidence of any kind that they have the slightest interest in or knowledge of the noble sport of baseball (sad sham that it is of the nobler sport of rounders). Speaking of the NRA, there's another nice link to it over on coppersblog. What? It's not a link to that NRA? You mean there's another one? To do with guns? Why would a British police officer link to that?

I read him quite often. He never fails to meet my expectations.

Back to the asbestos tower. We got a letter from the council.. They are conducting a stock condition survey. They have discovered asbestos in properties like ours but only in the living room and airing cupboard ceilings. Don't worry. Nowhere we really use.

Having been part of a stock condition survey a number of years ago, I do know that asbestos in situ is per se nothing to worry about. You only have to worry about it if is in poor condition or has been disturbed or damaged. There's a hole in the corner where someone who either didn't know or didn't care about asbestos exposure has drilled a hole for the TV aerial to come through and there was that patch in the middle that was a different colour to the rest. I could become paranoid but what would be the point? Needless to say we won't be doing anything to the ceilings.

Back to the yoof in the hoods. They may not play baseball but they do enjoy word games. I know this because they practice their post-modern version of hangman at the foot of our stairs. They may not have actually coined a new verb but they have kindly brought it to my attention.

To meat: as in Gemma Cop is gunna get meated. I presume this is not a spelling lapse or an erroneous use of the verb to meet. I assume that Gemma Cop has not arranged an assignation with any of the hoods.

I have my own presumption about what it means and it offends me. I presume that because the term has not yet made it to the dictionary (OED please take note) that it does not count as graffiti of an offensive nature and that is why it is still there.

If anyone does know the exact location of the hood perhaps you could let the yoof down stairs know. That way they can go back to kicking footballs and tin cans and stop spitting, swearing and stealing cars and remember that they live in Plymouth, err, Devon.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:44 PM 0 comments

Monday, March 14, 2005
Something yummy this way comes
As if I needed an excuse to talk, think, dream about food, I am carefully minding my own business over on blogexplosion when I stumble across these heavenly delights: Southern Kitchen. Delicioso!

posted by She Weevil @ 1:20 PM 2 comments

Happy Monday
I have been neglecting you. So sorry. Quite caught up with Fanstory and got a bit lost on here. That business with the blogger comments was a real bummer. Don't they realise that these things interrupt the flow, destroy the synergy.

Anway, in an attempt to recapture mine, I've been doing a bit of blogging this morning. That was the intention anyhow. I got as far as Present Simple and became a bit blogged down. Quizzes and riddles have always done it for me and this was a game with words - even better. It may surprise you to learn that my favourite prog is University Challenge. What an old bore.
Complete silence is the rule and you can only give an answer if it is an attempt at the right answer - unless it is a maths question when anything goes because after Paxman's first three words my head has begun to swim around as though full of candyfloss. I can hear Rantz calling Social Services as I type - yes the children have to sit in complete silence!

Inhumane, my arse.

But on the a note of international co-operation, is it only Britain that still has UC. I know it was invented in America; is it still running? I could google it but why when I've got you lot to ask? Oh, and who's your host? Consider it a starter for 10.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:03 PM 2 comments

Friday, March 11, 2005
The roll of the dice ...
I was reminded yesterday, whilst trogging through the blogosphere over on Blog Explosion, of the concept of living by the roll of a dice. I was surfing through the random pages, at times appalled, amused, abashed and afraid, when I came across a page where a man posted about a blog poll to decide his wife's hair colour. Normally at this point I would link to said blog in the manner that is expected in blogdom but I can't find the link. I'm sure I bookmarked it but can I find it? No!

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I'm sorry - if anyone knows leave a comment and I'll cite the blog properly.

My imagination was taken by a person using blog polls to decide their life. I'm sure this would have occurred to Luke Rhinehart if he had written his book now. If a girl can sell her virginity in order to pay her way through college, surely someone will decide to live by blog survey.

Any ideas for an initial survey?

posted by She Weevil @ 1:23 PM 3 comments

Wednesday, March 09, 2005
A new thingy ...
Thanks to Spud King over at instantmash for the nifty little gizmo in the side bar (yah boo sucks, Madbaggage, you mock AC stalker). He was the first to respond to my request for interviewees and the questions are trickling into my head as we speak.

posted by She Weevil @ 7:20 PM 7 comments

Tuesday, March 08, 2005
A legend in her own lunchtime ...
Thanks to Melinama over at Pratie Place for setting me the following, rather daunting, questions.

1. Tell us about your love of obscure industrial folk music. Start with, what is it?
I was fortunate, or unfortunate depending on your pespective, to have been brought up on a diet of the work of A L LLoyd, Ewan MacColl and the collected works of many other folk artists who made music about the lot of the working man and woman in our (British) industrial past. These records were loathed by my two sisters and not really my mum's cup of tea but I loved them. I like lots of folk music but these seemed to be about something tangible, not gypsies and princesses. I was especially taken by the number of women's working songs there were. We think of women working outside the home as being a twentieth century phenomenon; that just isn't true.

Many of the songs that I particularly like are songs of weaver-lasses and I'm particularly partial to a bit of Gaelic mouth music. Much of this is words and sounds put to a heavy beat to aid the women as they made the tweed.

If you want to hear any of the stuff I'm talking about look out for albums called The Iron Muse, Steam Whistle Ballads and an artist called Isabel Sutherland. It is an acquired taste but I acquired it and sing the songs to myself and to my children.

So break my heart and make it sore
So break my heart my dearie
And I'll lie in the cold green ground
For of single life I'm weary.

2. I see you like plastic surgery programs. Have they inclined you towards or against getting some yourself? What do you think about plastic surgery?
I have always been fascinated by medicine and I suppose that's where my interest started - I will watch anything factual and medical. I'm a bit sqeamish when it comes to rhinoplasty and liposuction but most procedures just fascinate me.
I suppose it's the psychology behind it that also fascinates me - you se people who are sometimes quite disfigured being given the ability to be somewhat less remarkable. Again you see people mutilating themselves. If young girls didn't starve themselves maybe they wouldn't "need" breast implants.
The only thing I would contemplate is breast reduction. I have no problem with my body really (it could be a bit smaller, it could be a bit firmer, I could make it that way I just haven't) the problem I have is with men talking to my boobs. I am 6'2" and they are at eye level for some men, I suppose. It's difficult to be cogent when someone is staring at your tits. Apart from that no I wouldn't have anything done - I like me as I am.

3. In "This is the She-Weevil's Lot" you described some zig-zags in your path. I think of this also as the "That's Good, That's Bad" syndrome - sometimes the thing you think is going to be great is awful and vice versa. Do you have another example?
My grandmother had a saying that what was for you wouldn't go past you. It's a fatalism that has been useful in seeing my life as on the whole positive - I could see it - and have chosen to on many occasions - as a catalogue of disasters. If I do this it negates the good things in my life. They are not numerous but their value is immeasurable.

I am lucky to be alive. At 18, while in the Wrens and whilst very drunk, I climbed 4 storeys of scaffolding attempting to get back into my room in Wrens Quarters because I had forgotten my key. When I got to the top someone had shut my window and I had to climb down again. The whole WRNS thing was a disaster in so many ways. It was supposed to be a safe environment - it was what I felt I needed at the time but with hindsight it very nearly brought about my demise.

4. You haven't written about The Painter for a while. How is his recovery going?
I think the phrase is up and down. I haven't written so much I suppose because I feel a little more self-conscious now. He's sitting behind me as I write and perhaps he won't like being discussed. It was cathartic before - maybe I feel like I'm not so entitled to that catharsis now. I don't know. His recovery has slowed. That in itself is an adjustment we didn't appreciate we would need to make. He started getting better; we assumed he would continue. He has reached a plateau and that is a little difficult to accept.

5. What question do you wish I had asked you? You get to choose number five.

You're so ravishingly beautiul, Sheweevil, and obviously so talented is it possible you just sit at home and write this stuff for the love of it?

So in the spirit of the above if there are any willing victims (max 3) out there just leave a comment and I will endeavour to be as searching with you.

posted by She Weevil @ 7:50 PM 3 comments


Rose study - calm.

posted by She Weevil @ 1:05 PM 0 comments

It's a zebra-fucking-crossing-you-eejit ...
You get some wacky types here in blogdom and they often say some weird and sometimes frightening things. But on the whole they are a sfae distance away, somewhere undefined on the other side of some plate glass (or perhaps , if they are snazzy gadget jones' and they have no children to put their fingers through it, they have one of those plasma screens). They are unlikely, however little they think of you, to run you over in their car.

But if you should venture to Tescos - sorry Relishthecontinental buddies but it is just around the corner and I don't drive - and you have too much shopping for 1 1/2 adults and a TYOG to carry and the bag handle on the cat litter to stop you smelling like pissy old cat woman has just broken, say you just happen to be standing at the zebra crossing waiting like some road aware pack mules to cross, you would think that the genteel looking chap with his wife in the natty little silver grey hatcback would stop, wouldn't you?

You would be wrong. You would be left shouting "It's a zebra-fucking-crossing-you-eejit".

Never go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:31 PM 2 comments

Sleep deprived ...
Another day dawns oyster grey and I feel I have spent the night in a large, padded, floral boxing ring with Mike Tyson. That really is a horrid thought. In reality, though, I have not spent the night fending off advances from The Painter (I practice not being very good at fending) but struggling with the eel-like creature we call the two-year old genius.

He has moderate to severe eczema and at the moment is technically "flared up". Since he was born I have had two (count them) nights of unbroken sleep. Normally this doesn't bother me too much. The constant state of knackerment is just the price you have to pay for having a wonderful, funny child who just can't stop scratching. This morning, though, when I woke up with a start and realised that the two-year old genius (TYOG) had reprogrammed the alarm clock and that the two older ones were going to be late for school because they were going to miss their bus and they were going to become vagrants and live a life of misery, I realised that maybe what I needed was a good night's sleep.

Of course, when I tried to rouse the troops, Surrealo Son was already up watching something very British on UK TV Gold. This is against the rules, bien sur, but there he was, oblivious to the rest of the family in the land of nod, carefully assuming his pipe and slippers position and watching Keeping Up Appearances or, ironically, As Time Goes By.

Does everyone function as dyssly as we do?

posted by She Weevil @ 9:20 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 07, 2005
Everything in the garden is lovely ...
Thanks to Rantz the kind people over at Relish the Continental's foody forum, I am just about able to keep up some kind of interest in gardening. I am trying to let go of my old garden: if I can't change waht's happened then there is really no point in worrying about it is there?

But it is very weird not having soil under my nails. We are waiting for an allotment but where we are obviously gardening is more popular, or maybe the allotments are more popular, than in the inner city where we lived before. We're not exactly in the burbs here, more in the sprawl - Plymouth is a very sprawling small city.

This time last year I had just put in potatoes and had sown lettuce (that were later all eaten by the voracious snails) salad onions, tomatoes, chillies, aubergines and courgettes. Courgettes I recommend to everyone I grew them in large pots and they work really well as ornamental plants they have large exotic looking foliage and lovely yellow flowers. They are very prolific so long as you keep taking the fruit off them. The tomatoes were excellent too and we have a over a dozen jars of spiced green tomato chutney that will remind us for years how delicious they were.

My favourite crop were the potatoes. I grew a red variety - I think itwas an Arran or a Pentland but can't quite remember - sorry. When I dug them up they were the colour of radishes. If you like vegetable to taste the way they used to plant your own potatoes. You can grow them in a tub if space is a problem but grow them. Nothing tastes better than your own patatoes pulled from the earth and washed shortly before cooking.

Try Thompson and Morgan for seeds of all varieties. They ship internationally and usually offer excellent value, customer service and freebies. Try David Austin for roses and Claire Austin for perennials, especially irises.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:50 AM 1 comments

Normal service has resumed ...
... So this morning blazing row with AD and The Painter with me stuck in the middle like some pathetic referree. Just missing the little flag and the whistle.

Oh yes, and the book of rules. The one that says you shall not tell your step-dad to FO. The one that states you shall not end a comment to your step-daughter with the phrase F you. The one that states people who have just had strokes should not engage in neck-vein-popping arguments with anyone. The one that states that sheweevils will go into meltdown if it all doesn't just stop.

She (AD) is about to go into meltdown anyway. The GCSEs are almost upon us and if history has anything to teach us at all, it is that the mood that is becoming more and more apparent, the brooding darkness (a bit like that bloke from the Darkness shrieking) is going to deepen before a new dawn breaks. This will be shortly after the last exam. Sweetness and sunshine will reign supreme until mid-August when the exam results come out.

Do I just grit my teeth and bear it?

posted by She Weevil @ 9:08 AM 3 comments

Thursday, March 03, 2005
Another clue
Fethy Po Fyliel An Gwarry Ha Tra Nahen translates as"Win or Lose, The Game and Nothing Else"

posted by She Weevil @ 12:05 PM 4 comments

Fanstory is an experience ...
Thanks (I think) to Madbaggage for pointing me in the direction of Fanstory (linked above). She is quite reticent about her own proliferation on there. I literally haven't had time yet to read her work; the first I came across had an estimated reading time of 15 hours and the children needed food. I will be going through it all with a fine tooth comb, well what would you expect from a She Weevil.

I agree with the baggage that much of the poetry on bloggs is a bit suspect and I'm happy for you to include mine in there too. You don't put your stuff out there thinking that everyone will think you're a genius, or even a half-wit. You put it out there mostly because you like it and hope others will too.

Some of the criticism has been very interesting but one in particular stands out. On a piece entiled Sonnet, which can be found by clicking the interesting link above, I received the following:

"A sonnet has three quatrains of twelve lines total, four lines per quatrain, and then an ending two line couplet. I'm not sure if you have the right format here for a true sonnet, since you have 16 lines. Some decent imagery in it, though few may know what a tarantella is. I guess some of the words could be changed around to make it more coy, or move it along better. Those three syllable words seem to get me stuck in places. It is still a decent start. I would write it out and iambicly check it to see if there is a a-b-a-b type of relationship in the syllables"

My response was polite and to the point in a Sheweevilly kind of way:

"Thanks for your remarks. I can only count 14 lines which would make it a sonnet. It is written in iambic pentameter and for those who don't know what a tarantella is maybe they should write and read with a dictionary, I do. Actually the form of this sonnet is an Italian or Petrarchan (c.f. Petrarch) which classically comprises an octave and a sestet. As far as the rhyme scheme goes it's fairly free form. I am sorry you have problems with the three syllable words, the only thing I can think of is a difference in pronunciation? Perhaps a difference in cadence between American and British English? Thanks for your input. I would feel really stupid calling something a sonnet if it wasn't."

Was I too hard?

posted by She Weevil @ 9:44 AM 3 comments

Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Cheating today
Not much time to do anything today. Hoping to hear that the painter is coming home so got to have a bit of a shuggle here. Anyway, tear your thoughts away from my domestic idyll and get your laughing gear around this:

... the little number quiz.
1. 747 JJ
2. 60 SIAM
3. 1963 AOJFK
4. 3 BM
5. 12 IIAF
6. 50 WTLYL
7. 20000 CWKTRW
8. 14 LIAS
9. 24 HFT
10. 57 HV
11. 1066 BOH
12. 101 D
13. 3 STH
14. 42 MOLTUAE
15. 7 DS
16. 7 WOTW
17. 100 CIAD
18. 14 DIAF
19. 666 TNOTB
20. 1666 GFOL
21. 999 EWSP
22. 52 PCIAD
23. 15 MOADMC
24. 1314 BOB
25. 29028 HOMEIF

The prize for the winner is a signed photo of La Sheweevil; the prize for the runner up is three of the signed photos. It has been posted before but no-one was reading then (or not many). Which clever dick will be the first to get them all?

posted by She Weevil @ 7:29 AM 13 comments

Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Walking with my dad ...

A post over on Present Simple inspired this post. Walk down from the cottages on the harbour wall towards where it doglegs. Instead of following the dogleg, in the outer corner where it turns to cliff again there is a little flight of granite steps (careful, quite slippy when wet). Now take your two daughters, both under the age of 5, for a nice bracing walk up the cliff.

Seems like madness to me now but he used to take us for miles to give my mum a break and tell us about the flowers and the animals and the birds. If you look at the top of the picture, you'll just be able to make out a small square building. This is the former coastguard lookout and is near the spot where Marconi made his first transatlantic radio broadcast.

Thanks to Cornwall Cam for the image

posted by She Weevil @ 1:38 PM 3 comments

Perplex City
For all you browsers from Britblog who have arrived here hoping to see something enlightening in reference to Perplex City, since Sente sent the email my husband has been very ill (see Gutted) so I'm just now getting back to it (he's quite a bit better now).

I have posted a bit of wild speculation on the unforum today and I'll probably get trouted or moved or moderatedly reprimanded by Wishi-san. At least I'm trying; it's only a game not a matter of life or death, after all. Or like, football, is it much more important than that?

posted by She Weevil @ 12:14 PM 0 comments

Colour bar
The man in the bed next to The Painter in hospital has a problem with colour. This first became apparent when he refused the fibogel they offered him. It wasn't apparently orange enough: "I have Fibogel Orange, not that muck." "I've got some on the trolley, you can have that" offers the nurse helpfully. "Is it orange? It's gotta be Fibogel Orange! That's not the orange stuff. That's why I haven't been since I got here. My bowels haven't functioned."

But then he really started. "I asked that doctor today. That Indian one" the nurse nods, "the dark skinned one". The nurse isn't really listening by now and who can blame her. "She's got halitosis." This has the nurse's attention "I don't know, I don't think" starts the nurse. "That's what they used to call it. Halitosis." The nurse, a little taken a back retorts "well, she works hard, gets a bit dry and thirsty, maybe ..." "the other one with the blue and the yellow stripe works hard. She hasn't got halitosis" counters the old man. At this point The Painter leans over and says "He called her a Pakky to her face earlier, she didn't bat an eyelid. She's very nice."

"When can someone take me downstairs for a smoke?" asks the old man. Apparently smoking for 70 years have done him no harm whatsoever. If you discount the stroke that put him in the hospital bed and now means he can't go down in a lift four floors unsupervised. Or if you ignore the ventolin inhaler on his night table and the little covered dishes, one with his false teeth and two others containing the frequent and noisy sputum samples he produces. And of course his Colgate-fresh breath. No harm at all.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:57 AM 0 comments

Do you, or don't you ...
like marmite? Not that it's important or anything it just seems to provoke strong reactions wherever this question is posed.

If you don't know what it is, click the link above and it'll take you through to an explanation. Don't like to be guided in your surfing? Just put marmite in a search engine then. Sod you.

Me, I'm in the "get me a strigil quickly so I can clean my tongue" camp. No equivocation here.

The Painter, may the Lord forgiven him, once brought me a sandwich (well, no he's actually done that more than once but on this particular occasion); I had asked for pate and bit distractedly into it while tippety tapping on this thing. The next thing I'm aware of is my tongue protruding from my mouth and not being allowed to return to its place in there. It seemed like my body was spontaneously rejecting my tongue. That couldn't be though could it? No, it was an alien substance and it was hidden in the sandwich: cheese and marmite.

After several minutes gesticulating and trying to speak and not to gag, a glass of water was obtained and the offending article had been hastily removed never to return and I suspect never to be served again.

So do you love or loathe?

posted by She Weevil @ 8:31 AM 6 comments

February Archive

Monday, February 28, 2005
This is the She Weevil's lot
"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known" Garison Keillor

Thanks to my mate Fingerchimp over at BBC Collective for this little pearl of wisdom. It started as a search (a fairly lazy one, I have to say Fingerchimp) for the wit behind the Honda advert "Hate something. Change something" you probably google it an get a video clip or something but that's all a bit to technical for me or my clockwork computer - I'm upgrading to steampower in the summer. It's uplifting and catchy in an odd and morose way. Just like the man himself whenever I've seen him interviewed.

Once, a long time ago, I wanted to be a doctor then a forensic scientist before Kay Scarpetta had even picked up a scalpel. Things in my life,and ultimately me, made it, if not impossible at least, very difficult. All the smarts in the world still can't persuade me that this is what I would have wanted had I known but that was eleven years ago.

Instead of graduating as a doctor at 23 I was newly divorced with two small children few qualifications and no home of my own.

My two small children are almost grown. They are budding and tall and strong human beings with a sense of themselves, a sense of their family and a sense of their place in the world. They have a brother now and a stepfather that we all, it must be quite obvious from the schmalzier bits of this, adore.

If I stayed at school I wouldn't have met and married my children's father. If I hadn't met him I wouldn't have my children. Sure, I might have some children but not them - it wasn't in the plan. If he hadn't met someone else and abandoned me when I was 7 1/2 months pregnant I wouldn't have divorced him. If I hadn't divorced him I wouldn't have moved back in with my parents. If I hadn't moved back in with my parents I wouldn't have rediscovered myself and gone to University and got my degree. And if I hadn't gone to Uni, I wouldn't have met The Painter and have the two year old genius.

The Painter and the little genius are wonderful but it isn't them on their own that would be the absence. It is the whole that is our family that I now realise I wanted all along. The rest of life does matter but only as an adjunct or a facilitator to our family.

posted by She Weevil @ 11:59 AM 2 comments

The writer's blog has been cleared ...
... normal service will resume shortly.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:35 AM 0 comments

Sunday, February 27, 2005
A bit blogged ...
Stuck in a meme because I'm a bit blogged on a post I started this morning. Just so you don't think I've forgotten you I've put this up. Yes, you guys can answer it too. What? What did that Blogexplosion ultra-right wing nut say? It will impune his manhood; well, if he can find it I'll check for him. Which one are you.


Congratulations! You are Susan Mayer, the divorcee
and single mom who will go to extraordinary
lengths for love.

Which Desperate Housewife are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

posted by She Weevil @ 12:44 PM 0 comments

Are you a man or a mouse?
This morning I wake up and am greeted by the above staring at me from the AOL homepage. Yeah, I know all you browser snobs, AOL's not very cool, but for various reasons it suits us.

I also know that this is from a story in the Mail on Sunday, something, thankfully, I no-longer need to give house room. Again, I acknowledge this is a no news story; an attempt to spin the Charles and Camilla story just that little bit. And he's right, the media is profiting from him and his relationship; he didn't seem to mind in the heady days of 1981 when the press was positive. You need to take the rough with the smooth, don't you?

Anyone who has the "personal" wealth, standing or privilege that he has should be unsurprised that your average man or woman in the street would be a bit tired and compassionless about his "private" life.

Okay, money can't buy you happiness, but it can go a long way towards smoothing out the tribulations of ordinary life. His private life has become an industry. If it mattered so much to him he could have relinquished his place in the accession and gone off to live happily ever after a long time ago. If you want to have your cake and eat it, don't you have to realise that some people might find you somewhat greedy.

As for the British public lacking in compassion, their open hearts and wallets say something different.

"The British public has created an amazing £300m fund that is making a huge difference to people from Sri Lanka to Somalia," Mr Gormley said.
"Thanks to their generosity, hundreds of thousands of people who lost everything now have food, clean water and shelter." BBC News

posted by She Weevil @ 8:04 AM 0 comments

It started with this
Inconsequential glances
roam around a room
like unbroken horses
in a high-barred paddock.
And eyes, wild and bright
use myopic disregard
as an excuse.
A look
the tilt of head,
colouration of the skin can
forbid, dismiss, invite observers in.

Across a barren room the
green blur of your eyes
that brightens in my gaze
bids me in, and
though I look to note
the subtle daily changes in your life
I cannot now accept
that invitation which you send;
for though we hold each other dear in mind,
we have seldom met and never spoken.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:07 AM 2 comments

Saturday, February 26, 2005

When I started this blog over on AOL Hometown it was going to be about my life including my garden which, until we moved, was a huge part of my life. It was also going to be illustrated with The Painter's botanical illustrations. We don't have a garden anymore and the waiting list for our allotment seems to be neverending; so if you arrive from blogshares expecting to see gardening and horticulture here, it is in spirit if not in fact. Thanks to Lil' Faerie for her -5 rating in Gardening and Horticulture. If she'd read the whole blog she'd have known.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:41 PM 3 comments

When Saturday comes ...
Well life returns to some kind of normality in the Sheweevil household. AD and SS have, by and large, been fantastic. The two year old genius is being, well, two. He will stand a ten minute visit to the hospital which, as it takes us an hour to get there and an hour to get back on the bus, is a bit of a shame. Really though, he's being good. Daddy is in the hospital for his sore hair. If you saw it you may not disagree.

Today we'll be giving the old place a bit of a huck out - oh fun. We want the place to look nice for the return of the Painter. It's not imminent but it's looking more likely than it was a week ago. I can't say that it's taken this to make me appreciate him; it hasn't. I realise how lucky I am every day but I do know that nothing will ever be allowed to meddle with the dynamic, or try to destroy our family ever again. Just know, wherever you are, I have finished playing softball.

Anyway, I'll away and remove the boxing gloves and pull my marigolds on instead. Mmm, smell the rubber - britblog interest in sex readers standby.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:35 AM 0 comments

Friday, February 25, 2005

The Pursuit of Solitude - visit The Painter's online gallery - follow The Painter link in the sidebar.

posted by She Weevil @ 4:56 PM 0 comments

Hangover ...
This morning I woke up with what felt like a hangover. Given the stuff that's been going on you'd be forgiven for thinking that's exactly what it is. But for four weeks today i have been, what's the American phrase? Oh yes, clean and sober.

Clean, well sometimes, certainly in the drug-free sense. Not always sparkling fresh but then that's the way the Painter likes it; Britblog voyeurs eyes widen with expectation but, sorry, I'm not going to go into that at the moment.

Sober, again, it's difficult to tell at times. People often accuse me of being a bit of a sobersides. I have a rather manic personality and swing both ways - their eyes will be on stalks - from finding things intensely serious, to seeing only the fluffy and funny in a situation.

Seriously though, I haven't had a drink for four weeks, so to wake up with what, in all respects apart from a banging head and nausea, feels like a hangover was a bit of a surprise. I put it down to coming down from a sugar high.

The last few days have left me feeling less than hungry. I have been eating before you all rant, just not much. I haven't felt like it. Yesterday evening though, I went a bit daft. I put the daftness down to reaction to the stress I'm under obviously, now I realise, under the careful tutilage of Badaunt and Madbaggage that I'm actually premenstrual.

I have that vacant, pretty vacant absence of mental faculty and the toe stubbing, plate-smashing lack of physical acuity. Oh, and not to forget the inability to work out that I'm actually premenstrual. Normally, I rely on the kind offices of the Painter to let me know "Are you about to start your period - do you need some peanuts?" For some reason I crave peanuts; can some clever dick explain please.

Last night, not realising it was just PMS, I bought a Terry's chocolate orange, two bags of higly flavoured but differently flavoured crisps and a large bottle of dandelion and burdock. I fully intended to share the chocolate orange with the children but go 3/4 of the way through and apologised that there would be none left to share. Note to Social Services - I had in fact given them each a chocolate orange egg - they do not seem scarred but who can tell? This morning, I feel like the proverbial. My skin is tight and dry, vacant posession is available for any evil spirits out there and my mouth tastes like a badger's bum.

Thankfully I now realise I do not have to swear off the chemical cocktail I imbibed last night; it's not a tartrazine tantrum it's just my period. Hooray!

posted by She Weevil @ 11:18 AM 3 comments

Weird
So, yesterday, whilst trogging around the Intermanet thingy I found this. Actually I was looking at my Celebdaq portfolio. I'm not trying to be flippant here, it just struck my as weird that in the same week that I was so gutted, a high profile early stroke should be in the news.

Bit late to say it, but why isn't there more information out there about them?




Since Saturday I have learned:

Stroke research UK: Statistics (justcritical.co.uk)




Stroke is the biggest cause of severe disability in the UK.

Stroke deaths account for about 12% of deaths from all causes in England and Wales.

Approximately 12% of beds on general medical wards are taken up by stroke victims.

Over 100,000 people a year in the UK suffer a stroke. 70% of these people will be alive a year later.

10,000 people in the UK under the age of 55 suffer a stroke every year.

1,000 of these stroke sufferers are under the age of 30.

Approximately 70% of people who suffer a stroke in the UK survive longer than a year

If you want information on preventing strokes look here. It happened to us; it happened to Edwyn and Grace Collins. Don't let it happen to you.

Grace, my thoughts are with you and Edwyn and I wish him a speedy recovery and you the peace in your heart you need to help him get better.
For further information for people dealing with the aftermath of a stroke visit the Stroke Association and Different Strokes.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:12 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 24, 2005
Bigfoot ...
I could equally well have called this blog Bigfoot. I once used an email hoster because they were called bigfoot.

I'm 6'2" and I have problems buying shoes. I suppose I can get shoes to fit but only if I want to go for the orthopaedic look. There are shoe providers in the UK who sell shoes for women with larger feet (I'm only an 8 1/2-9) but they are all, well, so comfortable.

I did think perhaps it was a provincial problem. I live in a small city in the South West of England. I grew up in a smaller town in the same region. I presumed that bigger cities would cater better. They don't.

I once spent the day walking the length of Oxford Street with cash to burn being oggled at by anorexic shop girls who obviously thought I had no right to breathe let alone buy something from their PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT.

The question "do you have this in a nine?" will generate one of three responses: pity, the "my-husband's-sister's-cat's-nephew's-owner has got big feet too, or the I'm-staring-at-you-because-you-have-two-heads response. None of these are particularly likely to engender a sense of pleasure in the experience.

So now to the gratification of one of my sisters, I am forced to look here. Oh, how she would laugh as she jams hers into a size smaller than she takes.

What I would really like to be wearing is this. Thanks to Manolo over at his blog for the link. Who'd have thunk even he'd have to sell his own stuff on eBay?

posted by She Weevil @ 11:21 AM 2 comments

On high ...
... Just had a phone call from the Painter. This may not seem like much but read Gutted and you'll understand why it is. Plus he never phones me even when he's hale and hearty. He phoned me to tell me he loves me.

Just found the meme below . Seems weirdly accurate. Until we moved into this flat we really did grow our own food (see November's archive).

Meme - hark at her. I only found out yesterday what it was via Wikipedia and now I'm using it like an old hand.

Off to the hospital this afternoon so will have more time later to write.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:50 AM 0 comments

Obsolete occupations

You are 'growing one's own food'.

You are guided by two words: 'Live simply.' You
value quality over quantity in most things, and
you have little use for the materialism and
consumerism of modern culture. You know the
value of hard work and try to be
self-sufficient as much as possible, and what
you do you do well. Unfortunately, no man is
an island, and you cannot do everything
yourself. Your puritanical work ethic makes
makes people think that you are weird, and not
much fun. Your problem is that growing one's
own food has been obsolete for a long time.

Brought to you by Quizilla

posted by She Weevil @ 10:45 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Stolen ...
from the blog you can clickthru to above

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

My Sentence is "Is Magda really having a passionate encounter with Mr Windsor?" from Girls Out Late by Jacqueline Wilson. Not reading it, it's just in one of our many piles of books. This one happens to be by the computer.

posted by She Weevil @ 2:22 PM 4 comments

Long slow comfortable ...
... sorry all you britblog interest in sex voyeurs, I mean readers, this is another recipe for soup. This time oxtail soup, which, when I make it, takes two days. You can make it quicker but you will really need a whole day. A sunday soup.

Just to clarify - I am interested in sex and one day I may even post about it, but for now I'm thinking about soup. Souper.

You need

2 large onions finely chopped
a clove of garlic (small bulbule)
4 carrots finely chopped
3lbs of oxtail cut into 1 1/2" slices
two tins of chopped plum tomatoes
olive oil for frying
3 bay leaves
black pepper (freshly ground)

Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed pan until smoking hot. Add the oxtail four or five pieces at a time so that the temperature in the pan remains high. Seal on each side and remove to a plate. Carry on until all the meat is browned. Turn down the heat (remove it from the heat if you are cooking on an electric stove or the onion will burn) and add the onion, garlic and carrots and cover and allow to "sweat" until the onions become translucent.

Return the meat to the pan and add the tomatoes, pepper, bay leaves and 3 pints of water. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and let it simmer away very gently for a few hours until the meat is very tender and falling off the bone. Don't let the liquid evaporate away too much or the soup will catch and be spoilt.

Let the soup go cold (overnight is ideal) and remove the bones from the soup and any bits of cartillage, oh and the bayleaf. It's easiest to do this by hand. If you want a chunky stewy soup, gently mash the meat and carrots with a potato masher. This will break down the fibres of the meat into individual strands. Add about 1 pint of water and a small glass of port and bring back up to the boil and heat for 10-15 minutes making sure it his heated right through. Add salt to taste.

If you want a smoother soup liquidize once you have removed all the bone and cartillage. Return to the pan add about 1 pint of water and a glass of port bnring to the boil and allow to simmer for ten minutes Season to taste.

Serve with really good, preferably homemade, bread (click here and look for Paul Hollywood in the dropdown menu) and a nice robust red wine, in front of an open fire.

posted by She Weevil @ 11:39 AM 0 comments

Thank-you Deek Deekster ...
... for reminding me that Stig of the Dump is one of my very favourite books. And for his kind words.

The BBC once turned it into a drama and it lost quite alot in the translation but the true crime would be if they made a Hollywood version. NO! That would be a crime against nature, man and literature. Original is not always best but in this case it is. If you can find one with Illustrations by Edward Ardizzone, so much the better.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:16 AM 0 comments

Infinite possibilities ...
The Painter and I were talking the other day, BS (Before Stroke), about the way the world had changed since we were children. Yes, I know, sad old gits that we are.

I remember listening to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the radio the first time around and then watching it on the TV and thinking how excellent a guide would be but how impossible to have every book in the Galaxy on one little thing.

Of course, now we have it and it’s the internet. Not all the books are there yet especially the intergalactic ones, although you can probably find some hosted in the USA (what is it with you guys? Isn’t real life weird enough already?). A lot of the other stuff is self-absorbed drivel (like this for example). But not knowing the answer to something and being able to google it is amazing when you stop to think about it. The collective knowledge of the world floating around us and available to dip in and out of at our whim.

Okay, granted, google doesn’t give you the answer in the way the Encyclopaedia Britannica used to (although even they have their off days, now it appears). It only gives you an answer but such infinite possibilities

posted by She Weevil @ 10:07 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Progress...
... well the Painter has made lots of progress since my last post and I suppose I should be feeling better than I do. Toady though, I have just plummetted and feel like I've gone through the bottom of my boots.

It's not being on my own with the kids: I've been there, done that; it's just the enormity of it all. Today I had to fill in lots of forms because the Painter is self-employed: 48 pages of forms. You have to be really sick to put yourself through the effort of claiming and then you're probably too sick to fill the bloody thing in.

And on top of all this, I'm still having problems with his family. I don't want that nause now. I just wish they would all disapear and leave us "scum" to our own devices.

He's kind of in denial at the moment. He knows what happened to him and he's been lucid throughout but he thinks he's coming home before the two bath towels I brought him have been used.

Eternal optimism, I suppose - unusual for him, but I'll let him off. Just feeling swamped.

Nothing witty to say really - (she never has anything witty to say anyway - I know what you're thinking), just wanted to give you all an update.

posted by She Weevil @ 11:02 AM 3 comments

Sunday, February 20, 2005
Gutted ...
... like the mackerel in the picture below. This evening just as we were finishing off our highly nutritious and delicious meal of not pot noodle the Painter had a stroke. Ordinarily, I would reprimand such fruity behaviour in front of the various-sized little ones, but this was one of those real 999 emergency which service please moments.

As I write, having just got home from the hospital, my great love is completely paralysed down the whole of the left side of his body and our life has changed forever. He is 42 years old.

The reason I'm sitting here telling you all about it, gentle reader, is that it's ten past three in the morning and the only person I usually talk to at this hour is the Painter and the only person I want to talk to at this hour is the Painter.

Look at his paintings - click through to his gallery and wish him well. I do.

posted by She Weevil @ 3:09 AM 3 comments

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Catch me if you can - do you like me? You can see more here

posted by She Weevil @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

Backhanded compliments
A couple of mentions and link backs to two sites tha have mentioned my little outpouring in the last couple of days: The Cure for the Common Life has nominated me in the Cure For The Common Blogspot Awards in the Blogs I don't get category. If you don't get me either, please vote there. It would be nice to win anything really, as the last thing I won was an espresso for two machine when I lived on my own and before that a bar of galaxy chocolate (it seemed big but I was only five) for a firework picture I did. Whistler had nothing on me.

The other one has had an absence of Pot Noodles in his life, so step kindly gentle friend. Rantzalot (Sir) mentions me in his Personality Blogged2Death thread and thank goodness for it.

Hi guys. Weevily lovely to have you stop by.

posted by She Weevil @ 2:48 PM 2 comments

The origins of the She Weevil
SheWeevil, she-weevil, or sheweevil: all variations of She Weevil which in itself, in case you haven’t realised, is a direct reference the She-devil. If you are unfamiliar with the fantastical works of Ms. Fay Weldon then blogger off to the library and get familiarised. Alternatively go to work on an egg.

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil was adapted for television by the BBC in 1986 and I missed it for reasons that will become apparent further on in (read! You blog exploders, read!). During this discourse I am completely discounting the American cinema adaptation with Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr.

During the summer of 1986 at the age of 17-and-a-lot I had the ___ fortune (fill in the blank yourself) to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Don’t get me wrong, it was something I really wanted to do at the time but for various reasons they weren’t right for me and I certainly wasn’t right for them. I joined up on 9 June 1986 and spent the first five weeks of naval life banned from watching the television like all the other girls I joined up with. From HMS Raleigh I went up to HMS Dryad to do my Radar training. I bloggered about quite a bit and had to re-sit my final exam. Once I’d passed I was sent to work in the Cunningham Tactical Trainer. All of this time, through the summer and on into the autumn I watched virtually no TV.

After awhile I realised that I was being called She-devil by one of the hookies over in Cook Building. I didn’t know what or who he was referring me to but it didn’t sound good. When I found out I was even less impressed. I suppose with the benefit of hindsight I see where he was coming from but to me at 17 Julie T Wallace did not conform to the stereotype. At 6’2” with short red hair and flashing green eyes, neither did I but maybe I wanted to more than I knew.

Anyway. Now I’m thirty-six. When I started writing sheweevil I was thirty-five, I’ve had three children and am more Julie T Wallace than she is herself. I sometimes scare myself and often scare men. They don’t like the fact I look down on them – physically at least. I sometimes feel like a giantess and people’s children point and I get mistaken for men. Which is odd really as I certainly am more than ample in the boob department. They generally can’t believe a woman can be the size I am.

Okay now I sound like the incredible hulk. I’m not green, just a bit browned off. In my head, where I am self-deprecating in a dry and mostly humorous way, I’m a bit she-devilish but not quite, I am more me than that; more she-weevilish.

Are you getting it yet?

posted by She Weevil @ 2:27 PM 0 comments

Mmmm ... Full of Eastern Promise ...
Metcheck (check the link in the sidebar) is one of my obsessions. Snow is one of my others. Unfortunately you guys at Metcheck have fallen short in the snow department this winter. Except for the stuff you promised on Christmas day which duly came but I missed because I had my hand stuck up a Turkey, none of your snow forecasts for my region (click above, on SNOW) has come to pass.

My obsession with snow was, I think, created when I was a proto-person living in the North of Scotland. I was very little and have very vague, faded, black and white memories of my mum bringing in frozen stiff white shirts from the washing line and dancing with them. I remember the brightness of the white and the cold.

Then we moved to Cornwall and the snow happened once every two years if you were lucky. The first Christmas we were down there it snowed heavily on the Boxing day. Like a good Scot my dad went out with his shovel and cleared the path and salted it. The neighbours in this small Cornish village all looked out of their windows wandering what this madman was doing and by 11 o'clock the foot of snow which had accumulated over night had melted away.

We only had enough snow to build a snowman once, in 1978. The snow came in April. My children - the two older ones - have seen it once. The little one not at all. All my mum's arguments that it's horrible stuff that makes old people break their hips (?) never really worked to dissuade me. Somehow I can never get over the swirling white flakes against the black grey sky in my infant years and the brightness of a washing powder advert the next day. It's just too strong an image.

posted by She Weevil @ 9:23 AM 0 comments

Friday, February 18, 2005
Where the humans eat
Currently listening to Where the Humans Eat by Willy Mason on the BBCi Collective Session. The trouble with having a teenage daughter is she steals my CDs and my makeup - one of the plus points is I get to hear things like this.

First saw Willy a couple of weeks ago on MTV2 singing Oxygen and now he's on BBCi Collective. I like droning angst but only when it comes out of the mouth of someone else's child.

Half-term hasn't been as bad as it promised to be, notwithstanding the parsnip soup affair. And nowhere near as bad as it used to be at the old place. The Police presence around here is great, if somewhat ineffectual. The graffiti still gets graffed and there seems to be a glut of young male things (sorry, men is too much of a stretch) drinking Stella and wearing Burberry. Their main accomplishment seems to be that they have perfected the art of spitting.

When we used to live in the innercity you never saw a policeman from one week to the other. DH once hit a car battery that had been thrown by a young male thing at a girl from a tree and landed in the road. The police refused to attend. The boy across the road wouldn't take his rittalin and the boy next door to him used to get into to his flat by shinning up the drainpipe.

I don't think ritalin is the answer but if you feed your children on a diet of potnoodles and McDonald's there's bound to be some payback. The ritalin miscreant was often heard to shout down the street "Shania, your pot noodles ready".

Come day go day
wishing me heart it was Sunday
eating potnoodles all the week
McDonalds on a Sunday

As strange is it may seem, I am not a food fascist. I am partial to a McD or a BK and sometimes only a potnoodle will do. I don't ban my kids from eating them it's just that the food they have at home is better, tastier and more nutritious. It also costs less. Real food, unprocessed food, always cost less. Here endeth the sermon.

posted by She Weevil @ 3:54 PM 5 comments

Thursday, February 17, 2005
Perplex City has started ...
I had an email, the email, I have been waiting for from Sente since I found Perplex City in November. I go into some length further down the page but basically it is a reflection of what a sad sack I am.

I am going to be spending (wasting) my time looking for a cube that exists only for the purposes of a game.

Oh, well. Here we go. I wonder who won the sweepstake?

posted by She Weevil @ 10:01 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Oh what a beautiful morning ...
Current observation data: Valid for Plymouth 0800 UTC on Wednesday 16 February 2005
Temperature - -1 °C
Weather - Clear
Pressure (MSL) - 1031 mb
Pressure trend - Rising
Wind speed - 2 knots
Wind dir - N
Wind gust - N/A
Visibility - 10.0 km

It really is a wonderful morning outside. Inside however it is a different kettle of fish. Forget all that crap about eating my delicious soup with people you love. Sincerely meant when said, it has a rather hollow taste now.

Dinner was rather late - Tuesday is Karate for SS (Surealo Son) and the Painter (as I used to call him on the AOL Hometown incarnation of this blog). Consequently AD and SS were tired and rather grumpy. Generally doing everything with the minimum of effort, trying to escape to do something else every two seconds. Setting the table for dinner which consists of delicious homemade soup with an absence of bowls. Then descending into to glumdom the moment their folly is highlighted. Well okay, perhaps I was also a tad grumpy by this time and perhaps, also, I did not merely point out the error of their ways; I accept I was probably quite sharp in a kind of growly, biting (this would be one of the almost never occasions), she weevilkind of way.

Having all sat down to eat, I asked how the GCSE revision session AD had been to that day had gone. Her answer had been rather vague when I'd asked her earlier in the day. She'd gone to it supposedly to catch up with coursework which was due in last summer. Her teacher has been on and on about it; we have been on and on about it to the point that I've realised that she just may fail to do it. I could do it for her but of course I won't.

Your children reach a point in their lives where they have to make their own mistakes - this is one of them.

Dinner then went it to meltdown - I should have done french onion soup with gruyere croutons - all that melting would have been apt. Apparently, she just can't do it, she's thick and it's all our fault. If we didn't row/hadn't given up various vices/had a better car/wore different clothes everything would be okay.

The exam jitters have started.

posted by She Weevil @ 8:52 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Duck Soup...
... well actually it's curried parsnip soup.

Take:

3lbs of Parsnips
4 large of potatoes
1 large onion
3 pints of chicken or vegetable stock
1 tbsp of mild curry powder
1 oz of butter.

Chop the onion and soften the onion in the butter until translucent. Add curry powder and fry gently for two minutes to cook the spices out. Ad the chopped parsnip and potato and soften slightly with the butter and onions. Add the stock and cook for 45 minutes or until the parsnip and potato are very soft. Allow to cool slightly then liquidize. To finish check seasoning and add black pepper and salt to taste. Add a small carton of double cream and reheat to serve. Serve with the best bread you can afford (or make your own) in large hunks; eat with people you love.

posted by She Weevil @ 6:11 PM 3 comments


Sheweevil

Sorry really egotistical thing to do - but it's the only easy way to get the photo into my profile without signing up for even more things that I only want to use once. So you'll have to put up with the mug shot on here until it archives itself. Sorry.

posted by She Weevil @ 5:04 PM 0 comments

Sweet Little Mystery ...
Apparently the cat, it however may have been a third party who let the cat take the wrap, has just broken my Wet, Wet, Wet End of Part One CD. Max, the cat, just knocked it off the windowsill and it fell onto our beautiful Marley-tiled-original-and-somewhat-jaded 1960s floor. A small lunette flew out and away somewhere only to be found with the barest of feet in the dead of night. I suspect it's gone under the skirting board - I'm sure I will find it.

Someone is probably trying to tell me that it's passed it's shelf life. Somebody is probably also trying to tell me to take better care of my CDs. Sorry, I am a very bad CD owner. I took as gospel the advice when they first came out that they were indestructible. Although this has been personally disproved on several occasions, I take the view that they really should be. And if I decide to use one as a mat for my coffee cup, with a quick wipe it should be okay to play in my CD player for the rest of time.

Cats not withstanding, all CDs should be Sheweevil misuse proofed and then we wouldn't have the depressing and fruitless search for the sharp little niblet and the eventual lacerated foot, would we?

posted by She Weevil @ 12:04 PM 0 comments

The electric man cometh ...
An a big hooray to the men and women of Western Power. He actually arrived this morning and wasn't due until this afternoon. Was passing, saw our window open and thought he'd give us a try. A local service for local people.

He came because after eight years on a key meter we've managed to pass go, collect £200 and have an ordinary meter installed.

For those of you who don't know, the key meter (gas equivalent Quantum card meter) is both useful, in that it allows you never to have the feeling of not being able to pay the £368 bill that arrived on your doorstep, based on estimated readings since the year dot, and an iniquitous tool of a capitalist regime.

It affords those who can least afford it the privilege of paying for their power upfront and at a premium. Thank the Lord for the Late Great Margaret Thatcher and her deregulation of everything. It all works so much better now. British Gas actually built up a credit balance of almost £300 pounds at my last abode and then made it almost impossible for me to claim it back.

Breaking News - what? She's not dead? Shame.

posted by She Weevil @ 11:09 AM 0 comments

Getting jiggy with it
In order to feel like I'm not just blogging in the wilderness, I've been jigging about with the site, the format, the links and various odds and sods to get it to feel a bit more me. So that when you all read and re-read my startlingly sagacious words you have an insight into the "me-ness" of me.

Yesterday I added a link to blogexplosion - that flashy thing(not in the sense of "look, I've got a Porsche") but the thingy that keeps flashing. If you have a need for sheer numbers added to your webcounter then I can definitely recommend it. If it's quantity you want then blogexplosion is just the ticket. Never mind the quality, feel the width. 66 visitors were added yesterday who would not otherwise have stopped by.

Well, i think I've stopped playing for awhile - blame it on Joe over at the Woolamaloo Gazette. He revamped his site and it inspired me to be a bit more me. AD thought it was rather girly, which is odd as I don't consider myself to be girly. I am Woman - hear me roar. I just thought it looked, well, nice.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:33 AM 0 comments

Monday, February 14, 2005
Pooh ... I missed it
For the last few days I have been waiting for my favourite weather site (is there no limit to this woman's nerddom?) to make a Valentine's Day free release of their new gizmo Precipitype. Usually I check the site with monotonous regularity but today I forgot. And now I've missed it. Fume.

posted by She Weevil @ 5:32 PM 0 comments

... back to the forum
A different one this time. I spent Friday evening feeling quite wretched after apparently offending and impuning a person on said forum.

At this point you may be thinking, well I just don't care. In which case it is probably advisable that you click one of the various links and go somewhere else. Of course you could always use your back button but that is so boring. Take a leap of faith and click into the unknown. Or you may be here because you clicked the britblog/interest/sex link. If this is you then search for the word "voyeur" and you'll get to the right bit of the blog (wink). If you are vaguely interested, then hang on for a couple of minutes and I will endeavour to explain.

The link above is to a forum about Perplex City which is a new Alternate Reality Game (I think that's what ARG stands for). For a really in depth explanation of Perplex City look here. Anyhoo, as part of this "game" various people "found" postcards. They then found Perplex City and then the forum and posted on it. Then after a couple of entries they disappeared.

Believing that this was a game, I thought it was legitimate to question the identity of people who happen to find bits of info. But apparently it's not. Everyone knows that it's against the rules for people "in game" to post as "out of game" characters. Stupid me.

No matter that all these findings seemed entirely coincidental and improbable to me. I am supposed to suspend disbelief. Well okay, if that's what they want, I will.

I did think that Alternate Reality Gaming was probably something that at least gave conventions short shrift and rules are only conventions. I don't have an answer to this ramble. Just posing a few questions to myself. And using me noggin. You won't find that in the Michigan University Concordancer.

posted by She Weevil @ 12:28 PM 0 comments

As promised ...
... the little number quiz.

1. 747 JJ
2. 60 SIAM
3. 1963 AOJFK
4. 3 BM
5. 12 IIAF
6. 50 WTLYL
7. 20000 CWKTRW
8. 14 LIAS
9. 24 HFT
10. 57 HV
11. 1066 BOH
12. 101 D
13. 3 STH
14. 42 MOLTUAE
15. 7 DS
16. 7 WOTW
17. 100 CIAD
18. 14 DIAF
19. 666 TNOTB
20. 1666 GFOL
21. 999 EWSP
22. 52 PCIAD
23. 15 MOADMC
24. 1314 BOB
25. 29028 HOMEIF

posted by She Weevil @ 11:42 AM 1 comments

Origins of dust
Like love you never know quite where it comes from. Or how there happens to be so much about; there's always enough to go around. You don't ever run out. But it can also be a bit of a problem: covering over everything; needing to be cleared away every so often or the outlines of things just become indistinct, fuzzy, blurred.

But I do love you as much as all the dust in this house. My health visitor once said to me that there was nothing wrong with being stuck on the shelf as long as you got regular dusting. I don't think this is quite what she meant but ...

posted by She Weevil @ 11:18 AM 0 comments


This is the dusty dust card - written on the newly painted wall in pink chalk a valentines card with Dust and a heart!

posted by She Weevil @ 11:15 AM 0 comments

Dusty dust
some people make large gestures with dozens of roses or expensive rings. Some people book holidays or plan expensive dinners à deux. And some, the ones you would least, expect make surprising and romantic statements of their own.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:54 AM 0 comments

Politics of the Forum
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to spectate on some really unsavoury behaviour. One of the forums that I visit fairly regularly went into melt down. Lots of people were hurt; some people will probably never venture in again.

This is the post-modern village. We have gone, in two generations, from knowing the inside leg measurements of our neighbours and their five direct antecedents, to not knowing the name or indeed quite what our new neighbours look like. Instead, we know the minutiae of our cyber friends' lives. But the world of text-only communication is fraught with the danger for the misreading of tone or the plain misreading.

I don't really understand what went on. There was some allusion to it happening before. I just know that when people start throwing mud, inevitably there will be rocks in there and people will be hurt. I think a famous book sums it up fairly succinctly. Let those who are without sin cast the first stone. Nuff said.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:32 AM 0 comments

Friday, February 11, 2005
Week of Hell ...
Half-term that is. It hasn't really started yet but the slug people downstairs are off. No, I don't mean they are taking a well-earned break. Their shenanigans have started. Shouting up and down the stairs. On second thoughts, have looked out the window and they are getting into the car, laden down with matching luggage - an assortment of sizes of Matalan carriers. Maybe it is a holiday - hurrah. Maybe just a picnic...

Now don't get me wrong. I am sure they are perfectly pleasant people. I have described in detail the behaviour and uniform of the daddy. Mummy, I have to assume is just another mum under similar kinds of pressures as me. This does not account for her uncanny impressions, though. Chiefly, if you remember the illegal copy of the Exorcist you and your friends huddled around after a couple of bottles of a well known brand of Peach Schnapps - you will no doubt remember the green Ms Linda Blair and her immortal words "Your mother s**** c**** in Hell." Mrs Slug uses somewhat different vocabulary but the vernacular is very similar. Her children seem to be called, I assume in order of size, F***** and little F*****. Quaint. Only another 10 days of it.

On the subject of ranting mothers, I may well be one later. This week AD (Arty Daughter) has been offered a place at Art school to do her post 16 education and this morning received her pre-GCSE report. She is, as we speak, blissfully unaware of this fact. In fact she is sleeping. Her ability in art is prodigious and apparently all consuming. As I say I may well have to have a bit more of a rant later.

My lovely sister is giving up smoking, has been to the DR and everything: got all the right stuff. But has decided with her DRs agreement that stopping during half-term, as the mother of 4 primary school boys and a Lotte (18 months) (K, you are mental, as we used to say at school - no offence intended to sufferers of mental illnes of which I am one), would just be insanity. She's taking something ...ban but I thought that thatwas for water retention.

Happy half term and may your fuses all be long.


John Morris - Online gallery of art for sale at minigallery.co.uk

posted by She Weevil @ 5:44 PM 0 comments

Thursday, February 10, 2005
Congratulations, DH
Today DH sold two paintings and I am very proud of him. It has been a struggle for us to keep going but he really must.

I love you, John, with all my heart.


posted by She Weevil @ 11:48 PM 0 comments

Visit Sarah86/lovelyzakky here
and then just bookmark it/add to your favourites. Well worth a read.


posted by She Weevil @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

Must read books for toddlers
If you love your child you MUST (or you will be a very bad parent) read Where's My Teddy and It's the Bear and Hug all by Jez Alborough. Oh, and anything and everything by Shirley Hughes.


posted by She Weevil @ 11:12 AM 0 comments

Buy! Buy! Buy!
Camilla Parker Bowles on Celebdaq. Yes just another one of my many attempts to escape reality is my fairly successful life as a trader on the Celebdaq. Obviously, I put on the business suit version of stretch leggings to play (all right, I'm lying, still just POCW). I really have not much truck with the dried up old haddock and even less with her soul mate. He even has a landmark named after him in my national capital.

That would be the one with the big castle atop a lump of volcanic rock.

For those of you in any doubt it's a 19th Century unfinished neo classical temple/monument.

Says there it's commonly known as Edinburgh's Disgrace. My dad (hi, on yer cloud) always called it the National Disgrace.


posted by She Weevil @ 9:55 AM 3 comments

Today I am sporting ...
...black stretch leggings. Very fetching, you might say, or perhaps you're thinking, what a scrubber. Oh well, they were in the washing pile that constitutes my unbuilt, self-built wardrobe, they were easy to pull on and I have no intention of venturing into the outside world today. Or maybe ever again.

If I had the energy and the money I might pull on a beatiful pair of tailored brown tweed slacks - second thoughts in the house of five cats, pissy old cat woman might actually end up looking like a furball coughed up by one of said cats.

At least the black lycra leggings pull on and peel off easily, the hair comes off them easily and they cost me £2.50.

Yesterday was such a filip. To have such lovely comments about my rantings was as unexpected as it was welcome. But in the afterburn of yet another row, it is difficult to find the energy to even carry on.

In case you think I am sitting here topless, this may not be such an awful prospect for some (you know who you are, you britblog/interest in sex voyeurs), the fact that the only surgery of the plastic kind I would contemplate is a breast reduction, the thought of myself flopping around while tapping away is quite distasteful.

So for the record I would like to clarify that I am wearing a Scotland rugby jersey - a wedding anniversary present from PH who is really DH - that I gave birth to the boy genius Lachlan in.

A picture of sartorial elegance.


posted by She Weevil @ 9:24 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Hi to all you foodies
Thanks to everyone who has dropped by from UK TV Food. Don't be shy, leave a comment - say hi.


posted by She Weevil @ 1:41 PM 0 comments

Spring has sprung ...

... the sap is ris, I wonder where the birdies is?

A dadism - my dadism. Wherever you are, dad, scowling on your cloud, I love you.
But it's almost here and looking out at the trees has made me realise the loss of my garden very intensely. This blog, which started off as an AOL Hometown Journal, was supposed to document life in my garden along with some anecdotal lifestyle stuff. Oh, and some beautiful pictures would accompany it (see the link at the bottom). If you have followed it, then you will know that my garden is lost to me now - we don't even have a window box.
By the eighties brick boxes that are at the back of the flats there are three mimosa trees. I only had one in my garden but I had planted it just after we moved in and loved it. In seven years it had grown to virtually its full height and was just starting to fill out. In the middle of winter, once it started to flower, it burst forth with amazing clusters of yellow flowers. The soft silvered green of the foliage gave us a beautiful dappled light in our bedroom.
On the beech trees to the front of the flats are long yellow-green catkins like the ones on my contorted hazel.
Thompson and Morgan have sent me their latest seed catalogue and I can hardly bear to open it.



John Morris - Online gallery of art for sale at minigallery.co.uk



posted by She Weevil @ 10:21 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Have a cuddle in a cup
... or a hug in a mug.

Lentil Soup.

Take six large carrots and slice. Two large onions finely chopped. About 300g of red lentils, a glove of garlic, two large bay-leaves, six black peppercorns and 3 pints of stock (ham stock works best but adjust to suit your own tastes). Cook for about an hour, until the lentils have broken down completely. Remove bay leaves and liquidize. Serve piping hot with fresh crusty bread and black pepper to taste.


posted by She Weevil @ 5:31 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 06, 2005
New - 2005
Dreams like a scarlet
paint-splash in the blackness of night:
diagonal slash;
Ragged and dripping.

The flash of electric blue
branding my brain
like the after-glow
from a stared at light bulb.

And days: oyster dull.
Days of soft grey.
Fading, fading, fading
away.

posted by She Weevil @ 10:38 PM 0 comments