Approaching doom

We’ve all seen the dreadful pictures on the news about the floods in Boscastle. Ned and I spent a lovely day in the village two years ago, and it’s very hard to imagine that beautiful place suffering such destruction. It was so well cared for, the sun was shining, the flowers were in full bloom and the walk along the harbour to the top of the cliffs at the end of the combe was lovely, and the views of the rocky Cornish coastline were stunning. This was the village where we started our ‘tea tour’ trying to find the perfect Cornish cream tea. (At Boscastle the scones and the cream were good, but the jam was disappointing.) There were several very ancient buildings, one of which, the ‘Harbour Lights’ gift shop, (shown in the pic) with its buttressed walls and wibbly roof, dated back to the 15th Century. It was totally destroyed by vehicles being hurled against it by the floodwater.


Harbour Lights 

Thankfully, it appears that nobody was killed, though they won’t know that for certain till the demolished buildings and wrecked cars (some out at sea) have been searched. Coincidentally it occurred 52 years to the day after the Lynmouth floods, which tragically happened during the night, and 34 people lost their lives. I’m sure that without the rescue helicopters at Boscastle there would have been many more casualties.

On another topic entirely, tomorrow is A-level results day, when we find out how much revision and digital extraction the Boy managed in the run-up to the exams. If his teachers are to be believed, he is capable of getting AAC, but I personally think ABD is the best we can hope for, and which I think is the points equivalent of the BBC the Uni has asked for. I would love for him to have done really well, but am consoling myself that, if the results are poor, then University would have been the wrong move for him, and we think about his future plans together. I don’t want him to go to Uni ‘because it’s expected’, or if it wouldn’t be of benefit to him. Watch this space ...

CNPS: 124 (ours)

Did you miss me? Yeah!

Mally and chums 

Hooray! The computator has been mendified and we’re back!

We've learned that next time we go away we'll have to take one of the dogs with us. Boy told us that Beattie had her tail between her legs most of the weekend, and the stress drove her to lick a patch of hair off one of her front legs. So she is going to have to become a Festival Girl. I shall practice getting her used to wearing a bandanna, because everybody wears silly clothes at festivals.


The Thinger 

I suppose this picture really ought to be posted in the Favourite Things forum, because it is evidence that Omally has successfully thung the Tilley T3. This picture was taken while we waited for Fairport to start their set, but Mallers still hadn’t imbibed quite enough to enjoy to the full being swept into an impromptu reel when a few bars of the “Dashing White Sergeant” were played. (If I recall, his words were along the lines of “You’re both wombatting mad”, but without the benefit of the filter.) He needs a few more lessons in hair-letting-downification. And I know just the people to do it!

Good time, feeling fine

The question of the day is; will I manage to get this blog completed? I'm having to scribble this at work because our home Peecee missed us so much it attempted suicide while we were carousing at Cropredy. The man is coming tomorrow to hopefully mendify it. I do hope so. With no computator we have had to watch TV and talk to each other.

Cropredy was fab. The musical highlights included the Family Mahone whose repertoire consisted mainly of drinking songs interspersed with the occasional toping song, and, for variety, the odd swigging song. It's a shame their spot was so early, but apparently it was their first Cropredy and they were very nervous. If their spot was too late they would have needed so much Dutch courage they would never have made it.

Richard Digance was good, despite having nearly electrocuted himself recently and so not able to play as many songs as normal without his arm dropping off. I was standing very close to Terry Pratchett at this time, and he seemed to be enjoying it too. Morris On were great - Ned and I had a lovely dance to some of the jigs, and watched in awe as the dancers on stage performed unusual acts with brooms.

A final afternoon getting sunburnt was followed by a great evening's entertainment from Fairport, and chatting to Omally and his chummingtons (nice guys - pictures to be posted when the PC is better!). I did feel very left out when they and Ned had 'quality boy-time' ogling the laydeez in their various states of undress and physical variations. Try as I might, there seemed to be a distinct lack of male eye-candy (present company excepted, of course).

Then home on Sunday to admire the Boy's new car that he collected on Saturday. It's a nice red VW Golf, J-reg, with only 78,000 miles on the clock. We've been taken out for a spin in it, and it seems to be a good deal; the engine runs smoothly and the only rust spots we can find aren't structural. The poor lad was a little crestfallen coming home to have a stone flung up on the motorway and his windscreen cracked. It seems harsh to have a prized possession damaged before you even get it home.

CNPS: 121

It's getting better all the time

Brief blog - popped back to have a bath (I'm a sissy) and empty the camping potty. Ned says driving with a gallon of wee in the back of the car concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Met up with Omally and his chummingtons - he texted us his co-ords so we cached him. I forgot to write in his logbook so I'll do that later. I claim a First-To-Find.

CNPS: 117 (as soon as we get 118 the campsite will have rich pickings - we've seen 119, 120 and 121 ...)

Steamy windows

No, not steamy in that sense, you smutty lot! What's happened is that, while we were putting up our tent at Cropredy (the usual camping field is flooded, so we're now next to the main railway line - this is going to be fun) there was a thunderstorm. So we busied ourselves pegging out the groundsheet and all that sort of stuff during the heaviest of the downburst (or cloudpour, I'm not sure which Ned called it). I was overjoyed (you may detect a note of irony here) to get back to the car to discover that Ned had left all the doors and windows open, so everything was sodden. The equipment, the seats, the contents of my handbag - everything. So I decided that, when Ned was having his post-nightshift sleep, I would go to Tesco, get the rest of the food supplies, pop home to see how the Boy was getting on, feed the dogs, then come back, when hopefully the heat of the car might have dried things out a bit. Which is where the 'steamy windows' reference comes in. I have successfully transformed the car into a mobile sauna.

Off I set. To wait in a queue to leave the campsite. The field is down a single-track lane and the police, in their wisdom and because of the hundreds of cars arriving, were refusing to let vehicles leave the site unless they were in a convoy. Three-quarters of an hour I waited there. I asked what would happen in an emergency, and was told "It'll have to wait, madam". I think that's appalling.

I'm off back there in a minute. I have got the shopping and returned for umbrellas and the camping potty, because I'm wombatted if I'm going to walk the half-mile to the portaloos (they're not near the railway line) in the middle of the night.

It's got to get better, surely?

Well, I woke up this morning ...

Which, although it’s a always a plus, it’s not really welcome at 4.30am, with cramp in one leg, a splitting headache and a throat that felt as though I’d been gargling with razor blades. It hasn’t really improved all day. Looks like I may not be camping as much as I could over the weekend, which will be disappointing.

The Boy, being a boy, is a master of inconsistency. For the past few days he’s been encouraging me not to pop back from Cropredy over the weekend (“I’ll be fine Mum, I’ll look after the dogs. They were all right last time you went away, weren’t they?”). Now he’s in a bit of a strop because we’re not going to be here over the weekend, when he wants to go car-hunting. Never mind, he’ll get over it!

CNPS: Still 115

Run, rabbit, run

It's been a very ordinary day today, so I thought I'd share a picture of Harry having fun.


Harry 

Down came the rain

D’you know, I don’t think it’s stopped raining all day? It started raining in the middle of last night, cos I heard it, and it’s been coming down steadily ever since. I’ll need to get the canoe out of the garage to get to work tomorrow at this rate.

The Internet is still down at work, and things are getting difficult. It means so many things are uncheckable, so we’re getting further and further behind. I foolishly forgot to take in any reading matter for lunchtime, so because there was no internet to play on either I worked straight through. And for some reason I’m still working.

And after all the trouble I went to, getting a new aerosol for my airbrush, I now find that the paint is too viscous to go through the tube. Bother. Brushwork is going to ruin the effect. I may have a new duster after all.

CNPS: 114

Among the fields of barley

When my granny was a girl (I think she was born in 1890) she spent her summer holidays on a farm in Kent. Her father had emigrated to South Africa to start a new life for his wife and daughters, but vanished without trace. Family history says he died in a hotel fire in Johannesburg, but who knows? Anyway, that's by the by. She used to tell us tales of her holidays haymaking, when she carried baskets of lunches out to the farmhands and would ride back to the farm on the wagons of hay that were drawn by horses.

I was reminded of this by the combine harvesters that have been driving down our lane at all hours for the past week; motorisation and headlights mean that there is no 'quiet time'. Make hay while the sun shines - and harvest when you can. Rural life still revolves around the weather, whatever New Labour would have us believe.

You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties

First thing this morning I was relieved to see my car back on the drive, indicating that the Boy had returned safely. He’s a good Boy, and hadn’t woken us when he got home.

My ‘volunteer’ day turned out rather better than I’d dreaded (and I’ve brought home two pairs of latex gloves), although because we still haven’t seen car number 110, the 111, 112 and 113 I saw in quick succession were wasted. Ned has been stuck indoors all day, juggling payslips, bank statements and a calculator, trying to work out how much backpay he’s owed (about £2,500, which would be very useful. If they pay up, especially all in one go rather than in dribs and drabs, we can replace our poor old car which is really on its last wheels. Not with a new car, obviously, but one less than 16 years old.)

He is now having fun being creative and artistic, working on a project which, if it’s successful, will be a nice (yes it will) present for someone. If it doesn’t, I’ll have a lovely new duster.

The Boy emerged from his room at 3pm and announced that he was going to buy a road atlas. His drive home had taken 7 hours instead of 5 because the A30 had been closed due to an accident, and he was diverted through Tavistock (I drove past your old school, Mum) so he’d had to navigate using only a small Tesco Store-finder map. Dartmoor is a big place in the dark, when you’re lost.

On the up

The company got their money’s worth from me today. I got in to discover that the internet connection has been down for the past two days, and won’t be back again before Monday morning. So instead of being able to have the occasional break on various sites in between tasks, I’ve had to w**k on the database all day. Concentrating for 7 hours solid has left me with a headache. Heaven knows what state our website’s in – we can’t get access behind the scenes. On the surface all looks to be well …

Tomorrow is going to be another busy day. It is one of the days I was volunteered to go and help out at a breed club event. I still don’t know what is involved, but I hope to be able to catch up with some gossip. Malvern, when the weather’s fine, is a real sun-trap, so it will no doubt be sweltering. I’ll be glad to get home and unwind. I think I’m looking forward to it about as much as Carol was the hen-night she attended!

Hooray! The Boy’s just phoned, and they’re coming home tonight instead of getting stuck in the motorway traffic tomorrow. They set off at about 9, so should be home in the early hours. And his quilt’s dry and back on his bed, so ner, hutters!

CNPS: 109

Storm in a teacup

Isn’t it odd, the way you can suddenly be hit by the blues? Life will be chugging along quite merrily then suddenly WHAM! - all you want to do is curl up in a small, dark space and pretend you don’t exist. It’s even worse when you know just what’s caused it, and there’s mongoose-all you can do about it, that it’s something you’ve got to live with for ever, and it’s never going to improve. It's nothing anyone's done, so don't worry about that. It's just an unfortunate set of circumstances.

So rather than write a self-pitying blog I shall leave you with some music. Leonard Cohen should do it.

I feel it in my toes

It’s taken several days, but I’ve nearly got the Boy’s room mucked out in preparation for his return on Saturday. Today I decided to wash his quilt, which of course won’t fit in the washing machine, so I filled the bath with warm water and washing powder and dumped it in there. After half an hour’s soaking it was time to start beating it into submission, so I got my current book (“Equal Rites” again), took off my sandals and proceeded to stomp up and down the bath in the fashion of a very confused French winemaker. It was disturbing but satisfying to see the water turn an unusual shade of brownish-grey. When I reckoned it was as clean as it was going to get the plug was pulled and the sludgy water encouraged to escape down the hole. A bit more trampling squeezed out most of the water, and then it was time to prepare for the rush. The bathroom is about as far from the back door as it is possible to get, so getting a sodden, dripping duvet out to the line was going to be a sploshy business.

Of course, because the quilt is too big to go in the machine, it is too big to spin. It is currently draped over the washing line, dripping in a way that looks like it can carry on for several days. It’s got 60 hours. I wonder ...

CNPS: 108

Riders on the storm

My drive home from work today was exhilarating. I left Leamington in bright sunshine, but to the south the sky was darker. The closer I got, the blacker it became, till I could see the lightning bolts flashing down, yet I was still in sunshine. Very strange. About a mile from home it suddenly became dark and the rain started just as I reached home. Poor Ned had to set off for work in a downpour.

I was thrilled to discover today that if you type “Jeangenie” into Google, this blog is the very first on the list. Hey! I’m famous! (Of course, not as famous as Mr “mildly surprised” who lurks in Images.)

My final thought for today is to wonder why some phrases lend themselves to Spoonerising better than others. Today I have been singing that famous song “Sailor for trail or rent” ...

CNPS: 105

The sun has gone to bed and so must I

Yaaaawwwwnnnn! Lord, I’m weary. After all the excitement and activity of last week’s holiday, I’m exhausted. It was back in at the deep end at work (they have just signed a £10,000 contract, and I’ll be personally responsible for a quarter of that, to be completed before the end of this month). No pressure there then!

With Ned at work tonight and the Boy away, I think I shall treat myself to a long relaxing bath and an early night. Night night everyone.

King of the Road

It’s been a long day today. The alarm was set for 5am to make sure the Boy was up in time to collect his chum from Stratford at 6am and drive to Newquay. Although he’s a good driver, and during the week completed his Pass Plus course, I always worry about him when he’s driving. I’d worry anyway, but because his two pals were killed last November, through no fault of theirs, it makes the possibility less remote. His driving is fine – it’s the other loonies on the road who will cause the problems. Anyway, he phoned at 11 am to say he’d got to the campsite safely, so I can breathe freely again.

The rest of the day was spent completing household chores before we went off to play with Ned’s GPS. The first two finds were easy-peasy, especially in comparison to what I was expecting, but the final one became very zoological because it had been placed by a person who is even worse at sums than I am. The recommended parking area turned out to be 7.85 miles from the cache. A bit of a long walk for a hot summer’s evening, methinks. Shetland pony.

Ned’s a bit fed up tonight because he’s just realised that, with the Boy and one car in Cornwall, and me and the other car in Leamington tomorrow (holiday over, back to w**k), he’s going to be limited to the village. Never mind. He can mow the lawn to pass the time. He’ll like that. :)

CNPS: 104

The animals went in two by two

Why is it that so many words for female animals are used in a derogatory way when applied to women, but the equivalent terms for male animals are often used in an admiring fashion? I mean, when someone wants to be really offensive to a woman she is called a bitch, a silly cow, a stupid mare or a spiteful vixen.

What impression do the terms 'stud' or 'buck' convey? Virility, power, sexiness. Not sweat, stench, hairiness.

But why are some female terms universally disrespectful while others, although screamingly patronising, aren't intended as being so? 'Pen' for example. Or 'duck' (eek!) or 'hen' (considered perfectly okay north of the border). Another thought: in the 1960s 'bird' or 'chick' was an eminently acceptable appellation for a man's female companion. Now it's likely to get a chap thumped!

We're busy doing nothing

First thing this morning (well, not actually first thing – that involved getting washed, dressed, jogging to the newsagent’s to buy the paper, having breakfast then checking the internet for interesting overnight happenings) I phoned the doctor’s surgery to find out when my morning appointment was. Oops. I replaced the receiver and immediately set off, hoping I wouldn’t be too late. For once my timing was perfect and I arrived a minute before my name was called. Shame. The waiting room was empty of drunks and ill people so I wouldn’t have caught anything.

It turns out my only physical problem is slightly raised cholesterol (Yay! The liver-function’s fine! Open another bottle!), and I was advised on a suitable diet to correct the potential problem. The trouble is, the advised diet is my normal diet, so I can’t see a lot of change there in the immediate future. This also means that my other physical symptoms are psychosomatic. Fair enough. I can deal with that.

The rest of the day was spent pottering, then we went to a localish (3 miles away) pub to see if there were any cachers hoping to log a first-to-find. Two pints later (no luck, but nice beer!) it was home-time, to eat more hastily-cooked-before-it-goes-off-accidentally-thawed-out food, and for Ned to take part in (and win! Hurrah!) SimonG's Dressing-up Competition.

The Boy’s at his mate’s party and will return to sleep then load the car (my car!) for his drive to Cornwall on Sunday. I bet he won’t phone to let us know he’s not been mashed on the road. I will worry until he’s home safely. That’s my job.

Here, there and everywhere

Our second cache has been in place for nearly a week, and nobody’s found it yet! Ned was astounded to get an email from one person who related his attempt-to-find, what figures they’d used from the waypoints (all correct), described where they’d looked for nearly two hours, and yet still failed to find. He then asked if he could log it as a ‘First to Find’ anyway! Now, I’m not quite certain how “Completely failed to find” can possibly equate with “First to find”. Maybe it’s a strange new use of English which I’ve never come across before. After all, we are still very much newbies at the caching game. Anyway, we said no, better luck next time! Cheeky so-and-so! (I see he’s logged it as a ‘Failed-to-Find’ now. Come on boys and girls! Who’s going to take the prize?)

CNPS: 102

Wherever I wander ...

Our break was successful. On the journey down we saw car number 99 as we left our village, and 150 miles and 3 hours later saw 100 as we entered my mother’s village. Since then we have driven to Dover, around Calais, back to Mother’s, around the area this morning caching and back home still without seeing 101 (of which we saw plenty before we needed it). At least we know one lives outside the Red Lion in the village – what’s the betting they’ve gone on holiday?

This morning we notched up four caches (darn, ‘team Minstrelcat’ had done them last October!). The first was quite amusing, because we were treated to a guided tour of the site by the resident gardener. Now, I’m interested in history, and old buildings, and gardens and plants, so half of me wanted to carry on chatting to this bloke, and the other half wanted to get on with hunting! But patience won through, and we found it. (I wonder if he was the one who placed it? We must check the placer’s profile.) The next two went pretty much according to plan, but the fourth was again made more of a challenge because we had to pretend we hadn’t seen where another cacher was emerging from! We walked on down the path and waited round the corner, but they caught up with us and we got to chatting. It was only the chap’s second cache, which made us feel like old hands at the game! After they’d gone, we turned ourselves around three times and tried to forget where we’d seen him coming from. I’m pretty sure we’d have looked in that spot anyway – it was a place I’d have hidden something.

Anyway, I think it’s good to be home. The walls are still standing, so that’s a plus. There seem to be rather more empty bottles in the house than there should be (especially when you consider that the Boy had been very good and put the box out for recycling yesterday). Another slight problem is that, when he helped himself to some ice cream yesterday, he didn’t properly shut the door of the freezer, and so I have a load of lovely soft food. Salmonella, anyone?

CNPS: 100!! Woo! Yay!