Posts

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It’s A Wild-life

The hog is still here, and on top of that, tonight saw the first appearance of the bats!!

Just a half hour ago, Em and I stepped out the front door to watch the bats whizz by our heads. One at first, then a second joined in after a few minutes. 

The wildlife of Britain is just ssssooo cool, and right by our door!

Springwatch is soon. I’m going to try and include a countdown clock, hope it works!
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Favourite Music Artist – B

David Bowie Probably my favourite music artist, full stop.

Many reasons: Great rock/pop songs, weird lyrics, great personae, lots of “content”, just musically superior in every respect.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/JhZqsYkl1zI]

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Favourite Music Artist – A

Favourite Music Artist – A

ABBA – It might not be fashionable but who cares? They made perfect pop songs. Great musical structure. Great harmonies. That’s why.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/p4QqMKe3rwY]

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Photographic Proof!!!

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I told you to stay tuned on hog developments. Photographic proof was requested (well, not proof as such, but pics were requested), but the last 48 hours have proved elusive for sighting Mr (or Ms) Hog.

Nothing in the box for the last 48 hours, but we had been putting food and drink out anyway. It had been taken on the previous night (food), so we were holding out hope the hoggy would return.

This morning we look in the box, and lo!!!

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There Is Hog In The Box!

It seems too early, but already we have a hedgehog in our makeshift box by our front door. It’s not the biggest hog, nor is it a baby. Em wants to get some food for it, but we have more cats in our patch of wood that you can shake a stick at. But we have a set-up that hopefully means the food will only go to the little hoggy. 

Sadly Em did find a dead baby hog nearly 2 weeks ago now, on the lawn. Not sure what happened to it, whether it was an over curious cat, or perhaps even a kill by a bird of prey that was dropped in our garden (we do have birds of prey fly around our neck of the woods ‘cos we border the countryside), who knows? It’s was only the littlest baby. I hope it wasn’t the baby of the one in the box 🙁

Stay tuned on hog developments.

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How Did They Get Away With It??

I’ve been sitting on this picture for a few weeks, wanting to post it, but things have conspired against me lately. So here it is. 

This advert was in our local paper a few weeks ago. Is it just me (and Em), or is this just a LITTLE suggestive??

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Gone Is The Internet Age of The Pen-Pal.

I had someone contact me out of the blue recently (see comments on previous post) and thought it quite amazing. Especially since I don’t appear to get much traffic on my blog (not that I’m looking, it can be great to know you are almost totally anonymous with this thing, but feel there is SOMEONE listening). It made me reminisce for the lost art of the Internet pen-pal. 

In the heady, early days of the Internet (invented many moons ago, but saw me on in 1997), there was no Facebook or My(gay)space. The people you met on the Internet tended to be people you didn’t know. I was the only person in my family to be on the Internet for about 2-3 years. And I was still living in Oz at the time, so there was no need to “keep up-to-date” with my family online. The people I met in these early days were all strangers, including Em. Back then, you seem to go on the Internet to meet new people. Have a new way of making pen-pals that didn’t involve putting a little spiel in a magazine and hope that 2 months later you’d get some response. People put their email addresses on pen-pal sites and met that way.

Nowadays, it seems you need to know all the people on the Internet first. Like with social networking. OK, you can poke someone randomly, and they may add you to their friend list, but it never steps beyond that. The only real interaction you have with people on Facebook or Gayspace (in my experience) is with people you ALREADY know. Friends and relatives. That’s great if you live vast distances from them (great for me, I live in the UK, my family are in Australia), but it wasn’t the initial intent I had for my use of the Internet nearly 11 years ago now. Of course I want to keep in touch with my family. That’s not what I’m implying. I just wish I could continue to meet new people as well.

I wanted it to meet NEW people. To get to know people from all round the world. I met one fantastic person as a result (Em) and we are still together all these years on. I made some other pen-pals as well, but you just end up losing contact with these people. I always feel my life is not anything particularly special, so I find it hard to keep pen-pals. I never know what to write and think people will get bored with me, so after a while I just never bother to reply. Or I just lose track of people. I’ve had a pen-pal for about 10 years now. He lives in another part of the UK. He emailed me around Xmas time. I said in an email that I’d respond to his email to me in more detail once Xmas was dealt with. Well, it’s now May, and I never did send that “more informative” email.

But I digress. The short end of the story is, I got my hopes up with this person. I was dubious at first that the post was just a ploy to promote their own blog, but considering the amount of traffic I get for my blog, that seemed HIGHLY unlikely. This person seemed really nice and genuine, and so I replied in the hope that we’d establish a rapport, get to know each other, and become pen-pals (or e-pals). I was SSSOOO looking forward to establishing a friendship. But lo and behold, nothing happened. Perhaps my email went to her spam box? Perhaps she’s even more like me than I imagined, and just can’t be arsed to reply? Perhaps I am INDEED so boring that she gave up after 1 email? I mean, if I can’t even get my partner to tear herself away from a computer screen to spend some time with me, what hope do I have?

So, perhaps I’ll just continue to use my blog, like I did my diaries when I was a teenager. An invisible friend. Someone (something) to air my feelings to. I just wish I had that return banter sometimes…

🙁
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Making Space In A One-Bedroom Cluster Home.

We have lived in our current rental property for nearly 5 years now. Every day is a battle to keep this place clean, as it is SSOO small. We only ever eat meals at a dining table when we go out to eat (very rare these days), or when we visit Em’s parents together, or when I get out to Oz to see my family. We just don’t have the room for any sort of dining table, which I hate. I hate eating, sitting in front of the TV. 

There IS storage space in the house, but it’s modest, and it’s taken us a long time to downsize our stuff that used to fit quite nicely into a two-bedroom house, to a one-bedroom place. And Em is the BIGGEST hoarder ever!!! I came over just with clothes – so I haven’t really hoarded anything. All my other stuff is still at mums. 

Anyway, with a walk-in robe that couldn’t house anything beyond clothes, an under-stair storage space that has been full of stuff virtually since we moved in, a shed that is 3 quarters full (it can never be fully filled due to the gas and electricity meters being in there!) and a kitchen with the most diabolical cupboard space you’ve ever seen, something HAD to be done with our unsightly mess!!

A few weeks into the New Year we decided to utilise the whole wardrobe for storage of everything minus clothes, and bought 2 free-standing canvas covered wardrobes for our clothes. That freed up a LOT of space. 

The next thing we needed was some kind of storage space for the kitchen. I thought if we could get some kind of free-standing cupboard to put in the kitchen we could use it as a larder/pantry for our foodstuff and store all our kitchen cookware away in the daft cupboard space in the kitchen. We had no way of storing our cookware away properly, so there were always sauce pans and frying pans sitting on the stove top and we used to have to put all our cooking trays and the like into the oven to keep them hidden away. There was no room for a toaster, and other things like our liquidiser and multi-cooker had to be on full display as there was just NOWHERE to put them. 

Anyway, cutting it short, nearly 2 weeks back we got ourselves a cupboard for the kitchen. A self-assembly job, which was scaring the pants off us. But we actually managed to put it together!!

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It was meant to have a draw at the top. And we did assemble the draw. But because the unit isn’t fully flush together and is a bit “gappy” (IE: not cleanly connected), the draw doesn’t slide flush on the anchors inside, so we’ve ditched the use of the draw and are just using the space to store the condiments and stuff. It stores all of our non-chill/frozen foodstuff and it cleared all the existing kitchen cupboard space we were using for the food so we can now store away all our cookware! The best £29.00 we’ve ever spent (apart from the £22.00 we spent getting our dishwasher). 

The kitchen is finally clean and tidy. Yay!!!