.... random rants and rambles. no agenda. yet.

Wish everyone who read this blog (all 3 of you) would come on Twitter instead. It's constantly moving and updating and, well, interesting, while I'm feeling so outdated here at SHD. Changes may be afoot soon... stay tuned (or not!)

In the meantime, here is a brief snippet of my life in links:

Fun, weird and generally eccentric.

I keep meaning to watch this soon, and this.

Finally, I can't believe I haven't linked to The Boy's blog on here before, but, well, I have now. My, hasn't he grown?

Posted by j at 7:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I know it's 10.30am and I've been awake for 3 hours but my pot of coffee hasn't really helped me to FEEL properly awake yet. Oh, and my knees hurt... probably a result of walking for around 9 miles last weekend; 5 on Saturday* and about 4 yesterday, including a very steep hill; anyone who has ever pushed a 3-wheeler buggy up a very steep hill will know that it makes your legs feel like someone's stuck bits of wood in them and set them alight.

[*Special mention must be given to my lovely wife, who chased me, laughing evilly and waving a piece of horse's toenail, after one of my supposed-friends had told me it was a dead snake. Yes, I screamed.]

And yes, we could have taken The Boy up and down hills in a sling - we did, part of the way, just in case you were wondering - but can I just point out that in the hot weather, it feels a bit like having a leaky hot water bottle strapped across your chest. A very cute leaky hot water bottle, but still.

Anyway, whatever goes up must come down, and when we were on our way down the very steep hill, shuffling and bumping down a loose track that was not for the faint hearted, we passed a very old lady who was slowly and carefully making her way amongst the stones and dust, using two of those special pro walkers' walking sticks. As we passed, she said, "I can't manage much these days, but I do try my best."

RE-SPECT.

Posted by j at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Never mind children... what is it with adults and snow?!

No sooner does it start snowing in various places in northern England, than I get people popping up on MSN, "It's snowing here!" ... "I can't wait to go outside!" ... "I'd do anything to be outside in it!" etc. To be honest, I hadn't noticed if it was snowing here or not because I was in the middle of doing something confusing with someone's CNAME records and looking out of the window was a bit risky. But I looked, and so it is; snow has reached our parts for at least the third time this year. C even texted me to check it was on the hills, and was thrilled to hear that yes, it is.

It's hard not to feel smug about the weather sometimes, even though of course I cannot take any credit for it; just because we happen to live somewhere where snow will actually stay on the ground when it lands, rather than turning into grey slush like it does in places like, oh, London. However, I am mainly feeling lethargic, as I contemplate doing yet more leafletting for Kerbside (another story for another day); maybe not tonight.

And here I am, blogging about snow.

Posted by j at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

First up, in answer to questions in the comments:

1) The baby's room is green; after mixing the below colour

with some white and another similar shade of green, we got... over 5 litres of a colour that is almost exactly the same as the one above. Uncanny (and please don't make me relive the whole confusing story!).

And no, this is not because we do not know if our offspring is a boy or a girl. It is because we'd like to have a nice, calm green haven in which a purple-faced screaming baby can be brought and lulled into a deep and peaceful sleep. That is the idea, anyway. In practice, it will probably be me who rushes into the nice, calm green haven with a purple face, because it is the only room in the house that is not populated with an animal, or a computer, or another source of purple-facedness. We'll see.

2) I am not allergic to our house, don't worry, Kathy. Unfortunately, I appear to be allergic to being married, but have no plans to stop being married, so I'll just have to stay ill.

It's not all doom and gloom in these parts, of course. This afternoon we skipped off work early - come on, who doesn't have post-Xmas blues? - and went to pick up a pile of Freecycled cloth nappies from a nice lady who lives up the hill. Even further up the hill, we decided to give the dog a quick spin so parked up and clambered up a hilly field. About halfway up, I realised there is nothing you can say to your almost 8 month pregnant companion that won't be annoying, because she is wearing the wrong boots and is not at all impressed by the fact that you have a sore finger after you burnt it on a piece of toast that day, BECAUSE THAT IS BEING FLIPPANT AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO CARRY A BABY AROUND (yet). So anyway, she made me run up the hill (because, ha, I can still run up hills!) and check what was on the other side of the wall, because it wasn't the road that we thought it was, which made her even more annoyed.

Luckily, it was one of those fantastic old walled footpaths that's covered in leaves, with neatly laid cobbled stones along the bottom. Quite fascinatingly, actually, there appeared to be a whole network of these paths hidden away at the top of the random hill that we were on. And all of them were encased by dry stone walls, covered in moss and leaning at weird angles.

They definitely don't make them like that any more... which is kind of the point of me mentioning this: Does anyone know why dry stone walls manage to lean at scary angles and not fall down?! Seriously?

That's enough waffle now. And without further ado, I can reveal the winner of the caption competition which was held an embarrassingly long time ago is SAM, for her caption, "But I wanted to be Rudolph!" which was both Christmassy and funny at the same time. Sam, your prize will arrive soooon.

Posted by j at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

... or something. How mysterious is that?!

And, despite accusations that I'm following those geese around Hebden (as if I don't have anything better to do), I must repeat that it's actually THEM who are following ME, as illustrated in my new header photo, which was taken from INSIDE the Thai restaurant on Friday night.

I was there first. They followed. I have witnesses!

More soon. Meanwhile, I have to stem the flow of pre-Christmas work that is streaming in and somersaulting on my desk. Fun!

Posted by j at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Not bad for a phone camera, huh?

Gritters of Calderdale, I salute you.

Posted by j at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

when you can see the moon at 5pm.

Perhaps the only advantage of having a dog that takes ages and ages to pee when it's freezing outside and you're ill and wishing he didn't need to sniff every single blade of grass before selecting one to pee on is that while you're standing waiting for him, you notice the beauty of your surroundings and nip to get your camera in an attempt to share them with everyone else.

And perhaps that was the world's longest sentence. Hooray!

Posted by j at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, great, we got an extra day last weekend and even HAD A BBQ and it didn't rain until 5 minutes AFTER everyone had eaten (at which point we all rushed around moving chairs and food and everything else that wasn't waterproof indoors... and of course it stopped then).

In all irony, however, we are now unable to put the BBQ stuff back into the very shed that we bought largely to put BBQ stuff in. In fact, it was hard enough to get it all out in the first place, due to the ginormous tomato plants that are too huge to stand up by themselves and are only happy when part-collapsed against the shed door, and if you try and move them, they drape themselves wildly over the nearest upright thing (usually you) and so you move them right back in front of the shed in a panic.

I can't wait for the tomatoes to ripen so that we can get into the shed again - other important things like the lawnmower are also being held to ransom by that massive. wonky plant. SO PLEASE, SUN, MAKE OUR TOMATOES RED!

In other, much less annoying news, our first crop of potatoes was ready and we dug up a bagful of fantastic purple spuds at the weekend. In honour of this, they are now on my blog header (press SHIFT-REFRESH if you can't see them), though slightly disappointingly, the purpleness disappears when you boil them.

So anyway, the Bank Holiday was great but everything else in the week that followed it was all crammed together with 20% less working time to do it in. I spent two days without a desk this week because we got two new desks from an office clearance - most unexpectedly - but one of them arrived in two halves (i.e. broken) so I had to put it all back together again using C's genius idea and many, many screws.

Now the office looks way more officey and my colleague (i.e. C) and I are sitting facing each other, divided by a wall of monitors - there are three on my desk, if you count the laptop. That was kind of weird at first because I could only see the top of C's head, which wasn't very useful, so we hitched them along a bit and made a wee "signing gap" to, er, sign through. Problem solved, except now I can see C typing away with a serious face nearly all the time, and I have no idea why she looks so serious, which makes me laugh for some reason.

Because of the above, I am now in Freecycle Mode again and was very pleased to give my old desk to a local councillor, who was very earnest and councillory and arrived with a man who reminded me of Chris Martin from Coldplay. I'm not sure why.

Oh, and Tip of the Week for locals is - book yourself a Green Refurb home assessment and they will come and tell you what's wrong (or right) with your house for £50. That might sound like a lot of money, but consider the fact that we thought we needed our loft insulated and the nice Green Refurb man said it was actually well insulated already, to a level better than the Government's new build building guidelines. Just as well someone told us that, eh?! I was also rather disappointed that we probably wouldn't get planning permission for a wind turbine, but we might, might, might get solar panels sometime in future. We'll see.

So anyway, that was my compressed week that was, and I've not even mentioned my day job, my course and several other random things that are filling my head right now. It's kind of OK to be busy when everything falls under the same theme (like Moving House or Work Stress), but when it isn't, that's when I type a rambling and rather incoherent blog post like this one.

If you read this far, I thank you, and I wish you a happy Bank Holiday-free weekend.

Posted by j at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sun, sun
We need you
So please come back
And stay for a while
Please, because
This much rain
Is not good for the soul
Although it means we have to water the garden less, which isn't too bad really.

OK yes I am British, thus obsessed with the weather. But everyone's been complaining about Summer 2008 (or the lack of it) lately, so why can't I?

It's weird. I keep thinking, SUMMER MIGHT STILL COME, and then I remember it's September soon, so there isn't much chance of that. However, E and P are going on holiday IN BRITAIN in September so I am hoping that it will at least be warmer then than now.

Also in September, thrillingly, we'll have been living here and running our 'new' (i.e. second) business for a year. Somehow the lack of seasonal definitions has meant the whole past year's kind of been balled up into a blur and most of the months have been similar, just a bit hotter or colder at times.

Weather-obsessed? Maybe. But try working in front of a giant window with a view over the Calder Valley every day and not noticing the weather. Impossible! Ha.

And no, I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Posted by j at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

That is the question everyone is asking. Did it come for a couple of days and nobody noticed, or didn't it come at all? Certainly, my Project Tuesday evidence shows hardly any blue skies at all - at least not on Tuesdays anyway.

I'm unsure whether I should sulk at the lack of Outdoor Opportunities or carry on crossing my fingers and hoping that they will come... just later than usual. The crossed fingers idea is probably the best one, because unless there are gale force winds and it's chucking it down, me and C are going camping locally at the end of August (just up the road, because that's enough novelty, and we can come back to feed the cats upon whim).

I DEMAND A SUMMER! Just a small one would do! Please.

In competition mania news, I am excited to announce that there are TWO winners:

1) Ce was the nerdiest and emailed me an impressively long list of things that she'd spotted:

1. Cat on wall 2. White post 3. Chair moved (can see sculpture in 2nd pic but not in first) 4. Dry shed! i.e. different colour shed 5. Purple flowers grown 6. Yellow hedge in field 7. Big bush has been moved 8. Small bush has been moved 9. Flowers in next doors garden (top right of 2nd pic) 10. Number of pots have been moved

2) HOWEVER - because there is always a however - Ce is not able to collect the prize this time round because she has already had one, and she did enter at her peril. So this time, E wins, mainly for the best cheating tactics. Hooray!

Oh, and I'd like to point out that the "bushes" in the garden are not bushes! We don't have any bushes! They are tomato and potato plants, which need to be harvested soon or they're going to explode.

Thank you and good day.

Posted by j at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today I took even more photos. Several billion, in fact, just in case the nice people at The Hebden List want some too. Anyway, I made a very small slideshow with some of them (it's about 25 seconds long) and if you want to see it and try and spot C, click here to download it - it's a video file and I totally can't be arsed to stick it on YouTube.

We had fun, but NO MORE CARS!

Posted by j at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you look carefully at the above photo, you will see a huge alsatian filling up the back seat. Or maybe not. But it is there!

And why have I got a photo of an old car with a dog in it on my blog? Good question.

When Ce asked me what I was doing at the weekend, she and A both fell about laughing when I said I might be going to the local vintage car exhibition thingy (blaming it on C, of course) and THEN they said I must blog about it. Must, must, must. Can't get any sense out of some people.

So anyway, I have zero interest in cars, but I am a great fan of weekends being as relaxing and weekend-like as possible. Besides, there's something quite intriguing and cool about old cars, and if something like that was going on in your local town, you might pop along of an afternoon, right? Come on, you would.

And that was what C and I aimed to do today, except our oven managed to conk out last night after playing havoc with our electricity for the last few weeks, so we had to go and get a new one, and by the time we got back it was far too late to go and stand around looking at old cars.

Cutting a long story short, that is why we decided to do a photo walk instead (or rather, I took my camera along when we walked Harrythedog) and captured a few home-bound cars doing what cars do best (pollute the environment!)...

... tomorrow, there will be old fire engines and things. Hooray!

Posted by j at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Now that would be brilliant!! I hope it stays like that, because we all know how British weather changes every 10 minutes and never does what you want it to do. Either way, the park is going to be very muddy for this weekend's entertainment. (See what I mean? We Brits are never satisfied!)

Tonight we are going to see some bats. Yes. Eeeeeek.

Posted by j at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Apparently, buying a shed - and arguing about where to put it - is a very thirtysomething thing to do. According to A, anyway. So, if A's word is to be taken as law, I am now a proper thirtysomething. Oh joy(!)

To cut a very long and boring story short, on Wednesday, we're having a shed delivered and installed. Oh yes, we are paying double to have it installed by professional shed people rather than getting one from B&Q and figuring it out ourselves. Stupid? Too late.

This is partly because we live far away from our Dads, and when I asked my Dad if he had any advice about installing a shed on a hill, he just looked at me as if I was mad and then laughed loudly and said "DON'T." It is also because whether you are on a hill or not, installing a shed seems to be really complicated and may or may not involve drilling into concrete, and seriously, I don't want to go there. Ever.

So Wednesday is the day I become an official thirtysomething. I just hope they don't think our hill is too hilly and impossible for a shed because sheds are far more complicated than they sound. Trust me.

Plus, our BBQ goodness partly depends on it (if you think we're just getting a shed for a laugh, you'd be mistaken). Would you believe that today is the 7th of JULY and we haven't had a BBQ yet?! I can't either. BBQ Man would be appalled!

Posted by j at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am laughing to myself in disbelief in one of those I Must Blog That moments.

To cut a very long and unneccessary story short, the other week we were given a large black suitcase containing some stuff we'd bagged on Freecycle. The stuff inside was brilliant, but the suitcase was unwanted, so I tried Freecycling it away again. Strangely, no one wanted it. It's big and looks just fine, so I was a bit surprised.

As the week wore on and no one wanted the suitcase, it was just gathering dust on the landing, so I contemplated taking it to the tip yesterday. "Oh, no." C said. "Have another go on Freecycle."

So I tried a different angle this time, and explained in my new Freecycle ad that the suitcase was very sad because no one wanted it, and we would be very grateful if someone would give it a new home. Lo and behold, in my inbox this morning I found FOUR emails from people who feel sorry for the suitcase and wanted to take it away.

It is shortly going to its new home in Hebden Bridge. Ahhhhh.

Posted by j at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is what happened when I tried to book my first appointment with our local doctor:

Stony faced receptionist: (Crossly) Hello.

Me: Hello. I'd like to book an appointment, please.

Her: (Sighs) Oh, OK.

Me: Sometime tomorrow or Thursday would be good, please. And I would prefer a female doctor if possible because they're easier to lipread, but I don't mind really.

Her: Hjhjhjkykyn luik,jkluim derewfghn nnnhg.

Me: Sorry, I'm Deaf. Can you repeat that please?

Her: It's half term. I don't think there'll be anything, but I'll have a look. [TYPES] No, there's nothing.

Me: Nothing for tomorrow or Thursday?

Her: No.

Me: What about Friday?

Her: (Sighs) I'll have a look. [TYPES] No.

Me: Nothing?

Her: No.

Me: Well, when's your next appointment then?

Her: Well, you know, it's half term so they're all off. [TYPES] Monday.

Me: OK so right, Monday...

Her: I'll just have a look at the other surgery for you. But I don't think they'll have anything either.

Me: Oh, right, OK thanks!

Her: [TYPES] No. Nothing.

Me: Nothing at all? Not tomorrow or Thursday?

Her: No.

Me: Er, what about Friday?

Her: (Sighs) Let me see. [TYPES] No.

Me: So there's nothing at all?

Her: No.

Me: OK, then right. Can I just summarise... you don't have any appointments at all until Monday?

Her: No.

Me: So. OK. I'll book one for Monday then, please!

Her: (Sighs) OK. [TYPES] OK. Dr Hghjg Kgjdsfd at 3pm then.

Me: Great thanks! Is it a woman doctor?

Her: No.

Posted by j at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Am I glad it's the weekend? Very glad. I'm especially glad because me and C spent a lot of last weekend Doing Things, and this weekend the only thing we're doing is going to see this play, which should be quite exciting, partly because I've never seen subtitled theatre before.

I digress. One of the things we Did last weekend was spend a lot of time skidding about in the mud picking up loads of rubbish that stupid people had thrown all over the nice countryside. No, we didn't lose our minds, we joined in our local Clean Up thingy, along with quite a lot of other people who agree that people who throw rubbish all over the countryside are stupid. Me and C were lucky enough (!) to get a whole patch of our own at the bottom of a slope, which looked like this when we started:

Well, actually, that's only about 20% of it all. And that bike was HEAVY, but kind of useful, as I used it as a kind of pick to jam into the ground and hang onto when I was skidding back up the slope again. No idea if that made sense, but it's what I did. Oh, and the speaker (the black box thing in the photo) was EXTRA HEAVY, and kind of fell apart on the way up the slope, taking me back down with it about 3 times.

Which brings me to ask: WHY go to all the bother of dragging a really, really heavy professional DJ's speaker along a countryside path and then pushing it down a slope, where it stays for a few years before some stupid person (i.e. me) comes along and almost breaks her leg dragging it back up and sticking it in a skip? Seriously... why?!

People are weird.

But that's not the weirdest thing we found... there were several bikes, a fridge, a mouldy old dartboard, a cooker, a sewing machine, millions of cans and crisp packets and God knows what else, all strewn across the countryside. And. That. Makes. Me. Mad.

Here's some of the evidence:

And when we had finished our patch, it looked like this:

I can't tell you how satisfying that was. Like I said, people are weird.

Posted by j at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you haven't tried purple sprouting broccoli, TRY SOME NOW, before it goes out of season.

I'd always eyed it with mild suspicion until recently, because, well, it looks kind of weird and isn't broccoli meant to be GREEN anyway?! But then we switched to the farmer's market rather than getting an organic veg box when we moved here, and the farmer always has tons of the stuff, so I have been brave and tried it and decided that I LOVE IT. Seriously, it's fantastic. And yes, you're meant to eat the leaves too, which means much less faffing about.

I can't quite believe I'm sitting here raving about how wonderful a vegetable is, but seemingly, I am. And I am very sad that it's going out of season soon.

So, do not let the humble purple sprouting broccoli remain ignored!

Posted by j at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It's snowing...

... and this weekend, C and I are way too knackered to do anything or go anywhere (that's what overtime does to you when you're our age!) so we decided to stay home and grow things.

OK, to be more exact, we've planted things rather than grown them, because that's the part you have to do first. So, yeah, our newly chitted seed potatoes are planted, but we had to keep bringing them in because of the snow, so we've kind of given up and they're in the utility room for now until it looks more like April again.

Along with the potatoes, we've planted tomatoes, sweetpeas and various other flowers, mushrooms, crystals and, er, an envelope. But it's no ordinary envelope - after all, how could A possibly consider giving me a birthday card in an ORDINARY envelope?! - it's a special Florelope made from sheep's poo and seeds (only in Wales!) and if we water it and everything, it'll turn into flowers! O-K-K-K-K.

Sooooooo... in the absence of any instructions, said envelope was optimistically ripped into several pieces:

... and then arranged as so:

... then covered in compost.

Now this is the part where we cross our fingers and hope for the best, at the same time as feeling slightly suspicious that this is all a con and well, who plants envelopes?! Er, us.

A's Dad, ever the cynic, thinks they'll come up as dandelions, but I'm secretly hoping for something like the ones on our kitchen table at the moment:

Who knows?

Posted by j at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Because a) we want to grow potatoes again this year and b) it sounded quite fascinating, C and I went along to the local Potato Day today. As my dad often says, you don't know until you try.

Ignoring warnings to pre-book seed potatoes because of the rush, we were rather alarmed to arrive just after noon to find the finish time had been slashed to 2pm from 4pm and someone had chalked "HURRY, GOING FAST!" on the sign outside. Clearly, they're mad for potatoes in these parts, so we rushed inside, to be greeted by a lovely but very serious lady who talked us through basic Potato Politics and warned, "these ones are new, so we don't know what they're like," as if she was worried that they might grow teeth and attack us in the night. I resisted the urge to say "they're potatoes."

And we bought some. Woo!

Posted by j at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's amazing, the amount of crap that people have thrown on the canal to try and break the ice:

Well, it didn't work. Not even this Christmas tree worked (I know, I know)...

To be fair, though, it probably doesn't weigh nearly as much as it used to, seeing as it's so old and shrivelled and crispy now. Poor thing!

In other news, C and I have realised with much fascination that as our house is south-facing and we live on a hill, we're also on "the right side of the valley". This means we get plenty of sun but if we look out of the window over to the other side of the hill (a mile or so away), everything's frozen and freezing and might as well be in another country. Seriously.

And yes, I know - I'm meant to have blogged about the fifth and last Geocache that we found a week ago. So here is photographic evidence:

Doesn't he look proud?! And so he should, because it was hidden in a really-hard-to-find place, in the middle of nowhere, with lots of rocks and bushes and not even a path. Well, we had to get rid of that blasted Mickey Mouse travel bug thingy that we've had for waaay too long... the Geocaching people will not be happy with us! Now we are travel bug-free and relieved (I wouldn't let C pick up either of the two that were in the cache!)

When we'd done that, we went for a walk on the moors and got a bit lost - as we usually do - which was slightly scary* but excellent for the old stress levels, because if all you can see is this...

... what is there to worry about?

* In my view, the scariest things about moors are boggy bits, which must be crossed either by running lightly or walking very slowly and carefully, depending on various things, just in case you sink in the mud or get chased by a spook. Running aimlessly in a blind panic screaming "CLAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEE!" is not advised, because it means you'll lose your sense of direction and henceforth your mind.

So yeah. there are some things to worry about on moors. Luckily, that day was bog-free.

Finally, because this is turning into a really long ramble with no aim, if anyone is thinking of going to see I Am Legend [warning: link makes a noise!], I thoroughly recommend it. Me and C went to see it at the local cinema the other day, and it was SCARY. So scary that we both screamed in places, which was a bit embarrassing, especially as there was an old lady there on her own - on her own?! - and stuff. C was freaked out because no-one told her there were flesh eating zombies in it (you've been warned!) and even more freaked out by the fact that I knew, and I still went along and watched it.

I can be brave sometimes.

Posted by j at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK, so Mr Cousin kicked my ass and told me to link to Mrs Cousin's excellent new doula website, so I just did. (And in case you don't know what a doula does, they're like midwives, but nicer. I think. That's not to say midwives aren't nice, of course. I should probably stop here.)

So anyway, I thought I might as well do a complete spring clean of my wayyyyy olddddd links, so if you look to the right of your screen, you will find them. And yes, I know they are rather untidy. I like them like that!

And, for the record, the water has gone down and you can hardly tell there was a flood yesterday, except it's a bit muddy and stuff, and in places it looks like someone threw a huge bucket of water down the road.

Funnily enough, we've been meaning to buy wellies for a while now, seeing as we spend so much time tramping around in the mud with the dog and stuff like that. After yesterday, our need for wellies has become urgent - if you can have a Welly Emergency, we're close to having one - but now all the local shops have sold out. Seriously. Even the "youths" wear them around here... which means we can't be THAT uncool.

In other completely unrelated news, we saw the very good The Golden Compass with subtitles on Sunday, at our local cinema, which is a darn sight better than the ones in Preston (it sells cups of tea! in proper cups! imagine! L and A were thrilled, and C was jealous because she didn't get one)... not to mention nearer. Oh, the irony.

As well as that, this morning, I was very pleased and rather taken aback to find that one of the women who works in the local greengrocer's can sign, and remembered enough to have a conversation, despite not having signed for 10 years.

This place constantly intrigues me.

Posted by j at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

To cut a long, long story short, yesterday we went to a cat rescue place in search of a 3-legged cat called Mandu, but ended up with a different cat, who has 4 legs and is much less grumpy and scary. In fact, he isn't grumpy or scary at all, and is very nice indeed. So without further ado, here he is!

His name? Harry. Oh yes, it is.

As Harry is 12, and has been called Harry for 12 years (as far as we know), we don't feel it's very polite to change his name now. So Harry stays Harry, and the other Harry (who has been Harry for 10 years) also stays Harry. It has been a very Harry-ed weekend, and rather confusing. My sis, who was staying with us, remarked how it's a bit like the two Ronnies. So, for obvious reasons, we have given them surnames, thus "upgrading" them to Harry Barker and Harry Corbett (if anyone wants to know which is which, I will be surprised). They sound like a pair of old men, which is kind of what they are... we're joking that Mr Corbett is here for his retirement, and so he is.

And do our two elderly gentlemen get on? Err, not really. Not yet, anyway. Mr Barker was delighted to see Mr Corbett, who did not share his view, hissing evilly at him in disgust. Mr Corbett, however, seems to really like me and C, which is a little surprising, but helps a lot.

Maybe we'll just call him H.

PS: For the record, we also went geocaching, but couldn't find caches 5 and 6 because the map and the land totally didn't match and we were cold and wet and muddy, so we took wee sis to see geocache 4 instead, and made her find it. She was thrilled.

Posted by j at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

... but you can't take the journo out of the girl.

Yes, I know I have been a terrible blogger of late, partly because I haven't had time and partly because I haven't been in the mood. While this does not actually matter at all, it matters to me because it's my blog, and because I make the mistake of promising to blog about things. And I don't like breaking promises.

So all the Things I Have Been Meaning To Blog About have piled up and become a completely random list for me to get out of my system in one mixed up, incoherent blog post. Which is what I am doing now.

So, this is the part where you start reading something else instead.

First up: The Mystery Object!
OKKKKKKK, fact fans. It was a medieval bee hive. How could you not have known that?! Still, it was fun reading the many confused comments that resulted (and worrying - Ce, I don't think a bee is an animal?!). And in case you don't believe me, Ce dug up these links (cheers!).

RIght. NOW you know.

Secondly, I have another mystery object.
No, really. We got it in the post, and haven't a clue what it is, so decided to stick it on here and see if anyone else does...! Here it is:

It's made of rubber, thus is not what C thought it might be, i.e. something to open cans with (!) Any ideas?! We need to know.

Thirdly, we found the unfindable Geocache the other day.
Yes, we went all the way up that big hill again to find this...

Of course, it contained a travel bug - that's the blurred Mickey Mouse figure you can see on the left - which has come all the way from USA and is now in our kitchen. Thinking of dragging C&J up another big hill to dispose of it (and thus escape the clutches of travel bugs) when they come this weekend, if they let us. And if it isn't snowing!

We were going to do that the other day after finding the above cache, but it was getting dark so we hurried down the hill instead. I did get some nice photos, though, like this:

and this.

Finally, I have too many other things to blog about so I am just going to list some of them here instead (not in any particular order).

* Me and C saw a deer from the kitchen window the other day, running across the field.
* The deer was being chased by a dog.
* We didn't see either of them again, but are sure they are fine.
* We also saw a woodpecker the other day, which makes a change from seeing cats killing things.
* In addition to the sweet grey neighbourhood cat, Pussy, who has adopted us, we might be getting a new cat.
* It's a bit fierce, and has three legs.
* However, we don't know yet.
* If we do, it'll be the third animal we have offered to home in the last week.
* The other two are homed elsewhere. Long story!
* After giving away nearly all of our belongings on Freecycle, we won a breadmaker the other day!
* And this morning I won a nice blue cupboard, which should fit exactly into the empty space in the spare room.
* I don't know what I'll do if it doesn't.
* The electrician is coming soon for the 5th or 6th time in the last month, because the downstairs lights don't work at the moment.
* The electrician is really cool, but I'm sick of seeing him!
* I typed all of this blog post and the other one from my bed because I am not feeling very well at the moment.
* I could use some sympathy.
* I'm sick of making lists so I'll stop now.

... Now that's all out of my system, I can sleep easy. And I probably don't need to blog again for about 7 years. Hooray.

Posted by j at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Tonight after work we had to go and pick up a fireguard I'd claimed on Freecycle for a friend who needs one, which involved driving to Bradford and rooting around behind someone's bins to find where she'd left it, then trying not to laugh at the idea that her neighbours probably thought we were burglars. As you do.

And while we were there, we decided to get rid of the Travel Bug that we found on Sunday because I felt like we were holding a relay baton and had to get rid of it quickly as possible. So we went Geocaching again, this time in a park, keeping an eye out for 'geomuggles' (innocent passers by), making sure they didn't spot C poking around in a bush like a madwoman.

And did we find the cache? We did.

And guess what was in it? Another Travel Bug...

This innocent looking plastic frog (it's upside down in the photo, sorry, and the camera battery died before I could turn it over) originated in America, travelled to Canada and spent a while travelling around Australia before moving to the park in Bradford that we found it in. It's travelled over 23,000 miles, and now it's in our kitchen!

Re-spect.

Posted by j at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Anyone who thinks that the hills of West Yorkshire are boring should carry on reading this and hopefully change their mind in the end... not that I am trying to be a tourist information-type person, by the way (!)

On Saturday, we walked up Scout Rock (i.e. the hill in the photo at the top of this blog) and gasped in awe at the major views over Mytholmroyd, later gasping in shock and embarrassment when we realised that our new golden blinds could be seen shining er, goldly, in the sun from where we were, which was about 2 miles away..! Let's just hope they don't distract a pilot or something.

On the way down, we bumped into a couple of other walkers who were chuckling to themselves about the fact that a van had driven down the hill and got stuck after following its sat nav rather too religiously. It was now being pulled out, after spending the night there, so we hurried along to see the drama. It was weird to see; a tractor was pulling a recovery vehicle (!), which in turn was pulling the van, which was bobbing from side to side like a toy, closely followed by an annoyed-stroke-embarassed man and a small, excitable boy. I managed to get some photos without being shouted at:

Would you drive your van down there?!

Needless to say, the van was all beaten up and looked like it had been squeezed through a very small space (which it had) ... As we walked down and down the road-that-was-a-road-ages-ago, C and I were gobsmacked that it had managed to get that far! We also found this:

(a scraped rock)

(bits of van)

Oh dear. Sometimes it is hard not to laugh at other people's misfortune, even if you feel a bit mean doing so.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, on Sunday, we finally gave in to much nagging from A and went geocaching, dragging an amicable Ce along with us. Basically, geocaching is treasure hunting for geeks, where you drag yourself on longggggg, lonnnnnng walks up biiiiiiiiig, bigggggggg hills to look for tupperware boxes full of, er, crap, hidden in gaps in walls and things. And it's fun! Yes, really.

The first one we looked for could not be found, despite checking on our sat nav - ha! - and searching obsessively for ages and ages and ages.

We tried as hard as we could, but there was nothing to be seen, although poor Ce managed to scrape her forehead on a bit of rusty old barbed wire. Sigh. Disappointed, we walked along the top of the hill to see if we could find the 2nd cache, which we did, within about 30 seconds of arriving. Hooray!

And this is what was inside:

(a tea light and stuff)

Not to be outdone, when we got home, C emailed the man who had hidden the first cache that we couldn't find, to tell him that it had probably been stolen by someone for a laugh, or thrown down the hill or something like that, because it definitely wasn't there. The man emailed back to say he'd found 17 caches (hello?! 17?!) yesterday, thus making us feel really, really inadequate. He also helpfully explained exactly where it was, adding "Watch out for the barbed wire that will be above you when you bend down to look!" AAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

So now we have to go back. Hooray!

Posted by j at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

And here's another one that I took yesterday...

... Yep, having problems putting my camera down these days. Not a bad thing!?

OK so it's Friday and I'm clearing my inbox, and thought I would stick bits of it on my blog... well, the funny bits, anyway, because people email me some really funny stuff. For example, E sent me a hilarious bunch of letters from kids to God - here's a couple of my favourites:

Indeed. Good point!

Whew, just as well then.

Also got some photos in an email from S, entitled "World's Best Grafiti...?" I don't think so, but found his one mildly funny:

And finally, here's the semi-traditional Flash game (not very vegetarian friendly, but I liked it!) Aren't I kind?

Right, now off to deal with non-blogworthy things in my inbox, i.e. work. Have a good weekend if you've read this far!

Posted by j at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Getting up at 6am on Thursdays provides excellent photo opportunities, as you will see if you can see my new masthead above (if you can't, press SHIFT-REFRESH).

As with many photos, there is a story behind this one. It's slightly embarrassing, but I will explain anyway. As we haven't had a door on our bathroom for the whole time we've lived here (although we DO have a CURTAIN instead, OK!), it is possible to see out of the office window while sitting on the loo, if the office door is open, of course. And as luck would have it, that happens to be my favourite view of all; a view of the trees above the magnificent Scout Rock.

Today, everything changes. Today, we finally get a bathroom door.

While that is great news, all things considered, I am devastated to lose my view. So, in honour of Scout Rock and loo views, please stand back and admire my new masthead for a minute or two*.

I thank you, and good day!

* Please note; I didn't take the photo while sitting on the loo, just for the record!!

Posted by j at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The above photo shows the reason why I am finding it difficult to concentrate this morning - clouds. Yeaaaah, right. I'm finally losing it!

But seriously, no, I am transfixed by what's outside, which is another Reason We Moved. It makes sense... if you work from home and you're lucky enough to be able to live anywhere you like because you run an internet-based business, why not live somewhere with cool views (and hence never get any work done)? Indeed.

So anyway, this morning's massive 3D art display features rain and clouds, which seem to change every few minutes, and make me gasp in wonderment at the amazingness of nature. Excuse me if I sound like a complete townie, but I'm just not used to seeing things from so high up, alright?!

Another subject of my many obsessions has been recycling. I know me and C have tried to recycle as much as we can over the past few years, but it wasn't until we moved that I realised HOW important it was to me. We don't have our compost bins yet (they've been ordered) and weirdly, the thought of throwing away food makes me feel really sick, so we've created our own temporary system, including for recycling. The other day I realised we have no less than 8 different categories for recycling! Seriously. In case anyone is remotely interested, they are:

Compost
Glass
Plastic
Extra plastic (! see below !)
Paper
Card
Tin/cans/foil
Non-recycleable things for Freecycling

It's hard work at the moment because we've had so many things to Freecycle (you don't want to know!) and recycle, having to categorise things and put them in little piles, taking them to the recycling centre too because we aren't in synch with the local collections yet, etc etc. Am sure it will be easier when we get our new bins!

I moan about the extra work, but I am grateful to live here near the fantastic Ekko Centre, which recycles all the kinds of plastic that cannot normally be recycled (the snag is you have to de-label and wash and dry everything, which is annoying, but hey). The man who works there looked SO HAPPY the other day when me and Ce took him a big box of old mouse plastic bags for his plastic factory, fully easing my feelings of guilt about having bought them in the first place.

[That's another thing, you see. Living in plastic bag-free HB means you're meant to use a cloth bag or the 'bag ladies' will be after you, so moving here with 800+ bags that we weren't going to use because we closed down our business made me feel like The Enemy already. So, thank God for Dave at Ekko.]

Obviously, not wanting the bag ladies to get us, we've been using cloth bags as much as we can, when we remember anyway. Teemed nicely with my new Bid To Shop More Locally - i.e. go to 6 shops for basic groceries, rather than 1 - life is definitely more complicated at the moment. Am sure I'll get used to it all soon!

Do I sound obsessed? Probably. Whatever.

At least I haven't forgotten it's Friday! Hooray! Here's a flash game for your afternoon.

Posted by j at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

People keep asking me for photos of our new house. Well, I'm sorry but you can't see any - not until we've unpacked and moved things and tidied up and it's fit for visitors, anyway! (And even then, I'm not sure if I want to blog photos of where we live... it's not as if this is Hello magazine or whatever!?)

Anyway, outside is looking very fine indeed, so here are some views - I hope they are as pleasing to you as they are to me!

View from the office window #1:

View from the office window #2:

... yes, it is like living in front of a giant 3D work of art that changes depending on the weather. Cool!

And here's a picture of one of the many neighbouring cats lining up ready to kill something in the field behind our house:

Back to work! Byee!

Posted by j at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)