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I’ve got this user ID and password for this website that’s kind of important, but not something I’d be checking all the time.
So I chose something unforgettable.
I’ve pretty much been through all my unforgettable combinations of user IDs and passwords and no dice. (Yes, I do know it’s not as secure as it could be, but I do have a little collection of these passwords)
Dang it.
Do y’all remember that Andy Griffith episode wherein Andy is overwhelmed with social engagements? A dinner party and a bridge night. And he reckons that he can go to both if he skips dessert. But the problem is that he goes to dinner at the bridge folks’ house and then he shows up to play cards after the dinner party is over.
Yep.
We were invited to a family party this weekend several hours away by car. The Vol-in-Law isn’t especially close to his extended family, but he really wanted to show off his new boy – especially since he’s the first of his generation to reproduce.
The last time we went up there we did have two social engagements. A traditional wedding in this quaint East of England village and then a wedding reception back in London with yummy margaritas made with real limeade smuggled in from the States. We actually did go to both.
And did you know that champagne does not mix well with tequila? I’m saving you the two-day hangover by telling you now.
This time we didn’t have two social engagements.
But we got the day wrong. (And by we, I’d like to make it clear that I’m taking corporate responsibility for the actions of another member of our family management team.)
Because of the baby, we went up the night before so we’d be fresh and ready for the day long party. Only as soon as we arrived, after packing and dealing with the baby. And did you know how much stuff you have to pack for a baby? And then driving up and checking in. And then we discover that we got the day wrong. And the party is almost over.
So we change out of our baby food decorated clothes and run up there. Where Buddy appeared for a quick photo call (at one point there were four or five cameras flashing and popping in his face), which Buddy loves. He’s ready for his close up now.
And then we go back to our bed and breakfast. And that’s it.
Oh, except for the travel cot which Buddy mistook for some kind of Dick Cheney approved interrogation cage and just would not use. And the bed that was way too small. And the heat that went off at two in the tiny room with no insulation – meaning it was hot, hot, hot and then freezing cold. So no sleep.
But all was not lost. For on the way back we stopped at Woburn Safari Park, where we petted wallabies.
I have a funny little thing in my Flickr account. It’s a widget that generates a set of my least interesting photos. Why bother? Well, I thought it would be interesting to see what Flickr’s algorithm decided were my most dull photos*.
This picture was taken on a bike ride in the New Forest. I agree that the photo is dull and a little washed out.
This was some kind of miracle foot cream that I bought in Florence, Italy. It cost a fortune in a chi chi pharmacy. But it turned my cracked, dry and painful tourist feet into something almost normal within 36 hours. It’s probably made of Chinese dissident belly fat.
Last year’s cornbread for Thanksgiving cornbread dressing.
Houston Alred and Miss Alexis on New Year’s Eve at a tiny wee bar in San Francisco. Celebrations with my friends Q-Vol and Vol K. Apparently Miss Alexis was later fired for reasons unknown. How could that be uninteresting?
A local burger bar where terror arrests were made in the weeks following 7/7.
If you’da seen how high my husband jumped when we saw this snake, you wouldn’t think it was so uninteresting.
My fantasy faux lawn.
My friend Q Vol and I wandered around this essentially deserted play area on a wet December day in Oakland, California.
Condiments in my local caf
OK, maybe they’re not exactly prize winning shots, but they represent some interesting moments in my life.
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* The set is automatically generated, so you may get a different batch of dull shots.
Last year I missed the Lambeth Cemetery Open Day. I had a previous engagement. But I was excited to learn that there would be another one this year when we went on one of our frequent walks in the nearby boneyard. I was dying to go. And so we went. And this was the first public event outing for Baby Cletus.
Now, you might think that a cemetery open day would be a moribund affair – and you would largely be right. There was, as far as I could see, a poor turnout. There were not throngs of onlookers crowding the roads as the parade of hearses toured the cemetery.
A gaggle of coffin cars
The famous Harley Davidson motorcycle hearse
And we didn’t manage to get one of the offered rides in the hearses. This one looked quite fun:
But we did manage to go on the Tomb Trek during which the cemetery manager went around showing us special graves and sharing the history of the cemetery. We learned:
Light posting:
Well, posting has been light. Babies, it turns out, are a lot of work. But also, our internet service, as it turns out, is a bit crap. So when I do get a spare moment I’m not able to draft much.
Things I might have written about:
But perhaps most importantly:
The new Security Minister Admiral Sir Alan West (quick – what’s the proper salutation for that?) suggests that the UK will face 15 years of the war on terror – which we’re not to call the war on terror. He also refuses – it seems – to use the word Muslim. He worries about the attraction of youth to radical ideas and violent actions. Just what kind of youth does he mean?
But he also suggests, chap – that we might need to be a little less than sporting in fight against the radicalisation of our youth. That we might need to the tattle.
“Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone. I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.”
Right so.
I guess I have two problems with this.
I know the Sir Admiral Minister has only been in his job a week or so, but he seems to be fundamentally missing the point.
Light posting:
Well, posting has been light. Babies, it turns out, are a lot of work. But also, our internet service, as it turns out, is a bit crap. So when I do get a spare moment I’m not able to draft much.
Things I might have written about:
But perhaps most importantly:
The new Security Minister Admiral Sir Alan West (quick – what’s the proper salutation for that?) suggests that the UK will face 15 years of the war on terror – which we’re not to call the war on terror. He also refuses – it seems – to use the word Muslim. He worries about the attraction of youth to radical ideas and violent actions. Just what kind of youth does he mean?
But he also suggests, chap – that we might need to be a little less than sporting in fight against the radicalisation of our youth. That we might need to the tattle.
“Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone. I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.”
Right so.
I guess I have two problems with this.
I know the Sir Admiral Minister has only been in his job a week or so, but he seems to be fundamentally missing the point.
Guest 1 tells Jerry and the assembled baying crowd a secret which will upset Guest 2 if Guest 2 has any shred of decency.
Guest 2 comes out on stage bewildered and bemused and bracing for the worst (as one Guest 2 said in a show I recently watched – You didn’t bring me on the Jerry show to tell me good news?)
Guest 1 -suddenly hesitant – reveals all with the encouragement of Jerry.
Guest 2 lets fly with a flury of ineffective punches and security steps in just that little bit too late.
I thought about this, because well, I’m watching a lot of daytime tv these days and because of the comments about Australian sex workers on this post – which reminded me of a moment in time when I told a friend “Man, you coulda a been on Jerry Springer with that tale.” Which, in retrospect, may not have been the most supportive thing I could have said.
Turns out this friend of ours – an Australian – had a girlfriend who turned out to be a sex worker. Well, he being the understanding sort who always saw the better side of people he said that while this needn’t be the end of their relationship – she did need to find a new line of employment. Which she did not. And then there was another whole sad sorry tale of a pimping boyfriend and an abortion and a legal consultation – and even though this had happened some time before he related the tale and in a land far away – it was obviously still very painful. And I said “Man, you coulda been on Jerry Springer with that tale.”
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I’ve racked my brain, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly Jerry Springer moment. I did have a boyfriend who cheated on me – but she was just a normal girl (hmmmm…as far as I know). Oh, but looking back on it – she did live in a trailer – so maybe it was just a brush with a Jerry Springer moment.
I did meet my husband through the Internet – but that was like sooo mid-90s that it barely attracts comment these days.
A reader asks:
Is it fun having a milkman?
Well, it’s not exactly like this. But it’s still pretty cool. I’d resisted getting milk delivered to our door, as it costs nearly twice as much as buying milk at the store. On the other hand, popping in for milk at the local Sainsbury’s always results in additional impulse purchases – so maybe overall it saves us money. And the milk, delivered in glass bottles, is not only environmentally friendly (as the glass bottles are reused) but tastes better, too.
In the anticipatory phase of Baby Cletus’s arrival, folks told me I should take advantage of my freedom and go to the cinema.
I said I appreciated the thought, and I was enjoying restaurant meals and such like, but that I had given up on the cinema years ago – and would only go about once a year.
Why?
And why’s that?
Melusina nails it on the head:
To add insult to injury, there is now apparently assigned seating in this particular multiplex, which my husband finds dignified and civilized, but I just find it annoying. There is nothing like paying for a seat which forces you to climb over twenty people already sitting down instead of being able to sit in another row. I’d like a side order of fascism with my overpriced Pepsi, please.
For some reason this just drives me bonkers. In the theatre, I don’t mind. But in the cinema, I like the advantage of arriving early and picking my seat – preferably near an exit row – so I can make a quick getaway should the movie be too rubbish to endure.
I’ve been going through some old photographs – don’t know why really – as I have many other things I should be doing. I’ve noticed there are lots of pictures from the beginning of our marriage – then hardly any. This is partly because my camera broke and I couldn’t afford to replace it with a camera I liked.
In the past couple of years I’ve been taking loads of pictures, but they’re all digital. I’ve been trying to make sure I put stuff from trips into photo books (I did our trip to France and Christmas visit to Tennessee) and annual retrospectives – like A Year in the Garden 2006 rather than just leave them in digital files. And I should probably get my blog printed up and bound into a book – just for posterity.
Anyway, it’s interesting looking back on our lives. And I’ve separated the photos into
I’ve noticed that we were a lot younger and thinner when we first got together. Some of us had more hair. We look quite happy.
I found some old letters, too and managed to avoid the temptation of actually reading them. Many of them are from my grandfather who died almost four years ago and who were planning to name the soon-to-arrive baby after. My grandfather used to send me pictures regularly, too. And clippings from The Tennessean or the Lawrence County Advocate or wherever that he thought might interest me.
For example, I found this snippet of Wilson County News -
The Neal family farm near Tuckers Crossroads is one of just three farms in the state chosen for an important experiment in improving forage for cattle and cutting the farm’s dependence on hay for feed, Agriculutral Extension Services Agent Jon Baker said. Baker added that if the proer kinds of grasses are developed for pastures, it will mean less work for the farmers and reduced costs for consumers. As Baker said “Cows are designed to eat forage, not grain.” – WARREN DUZAK.
taped to this picture:
On the back of the picture, it’s written in my grandfather’s scrawl
This is a picture of the water damage in our shop recently. Insurance has pd all damage but $500 which we are asking the roofers to pay.
I do not know if this in Lawrenceburg – where my grandfather rented antique selling space on the square or if it was in Nashville or Franklin – where over time he had also rented space.
I do not know why the story about experimental forage on the Neal family farm was attached to it. That may be an accident of proximity and tape and time.
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I do know why he sent me the snippet on agriculture. We are kin to the Neals. My great grandfather’s mother’s maiden name was Neal, his given name was Neal and he and his brother Ben were raised in the home of William Haskell Neal, his maternal uncle, after their father died.
Haskell Neal, as he was known, developed Neal’s Paymaster Corn (read more if you’re interested about his induction to the Wilson County Agricultural Hall of Fame). This was the first reliably double-eared open pollinated corn. Haskell developed it through selective breeding. My grandfather told me that his daddy remembered harvesting corn with his Uncle Haskell and that Haskell kept a special sack for double eared corn – which he would use for seed corn the following year.
Here’s what a Works Progress Administration 1939 survey of the State of Tennessee said about it:
Corn always has been the leading crop in value and volume. For more than 50 years the State has had a yearly average of three million acres in corn. In 1935 the crop amounted to more than 60 million bushels. One third of the corn grown is the high-yield variety known as Neal’s Paymaster. It is interesting to note that until 1904, when W. H. Neal of Lebanon developed this variety, most Tennessee farmers had been growing the same type of corn planted centuries before by the mound builders. The major part of the Tennessee crop is consumed in the region of its production.
I recently told somone about this, just kind of casually mentioned it – I’m not sure why but it was vaguely relevant. This person seemed distinctly unimpressed. But it was a really big deal. This effectively doubled yields in a time when many people went hungry.
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Events have conspired lately to make me think of Haskell Neal and his Paymaster Corn. I was listening to a radio show about pacifist farming communes in England during World War II and one of the former residents was talking about how they strove to improve yields – and how if they could only produce twice as much corn (this actually probably means wheat) from the same acreage what a difference that would make to the world. I thought of Haskell Neal. He did that.
And last night, I was watching a show about genetic modification and some foodie journalist was absolutely appalled by the selective breeding efforts of livestock farmers to produce some really big beef cattle – Belgian Blues. He seemed to think selective breeding was some kind of new fangled invention, somewhere along the lines of Frankenstein food. How freaking ignorant. How could someone who is supposed to write about food know so little about how food is produced? A biologist on the show pointed out that so long as we have had agriculture we’ve had selective breeding. I thought about my great-grandfather and Haskell Neal’s sack of double-eared seed corn.
