I have decided to give myself a chinese burn every time I start a blog with an apology about the lack of recent entries. So (ouch) I’m (ouch) sorry (ouch) for (ouch) the (ouch) lack (ouch) of recent (ouch) entries.

(ouch)

Well, my only defense is that it’s been quite a busy week with very little time for sitting in front of a PC at all, and even then it was mostly taken up with yet another Windows reinstall after a nasty incident with a clunking disk drive. Disk drives shouldn’t go clunk.

So, the week off… Well, last Friday (the 13th) was quite special as it saw my favourite girl move 111 miles closer. Mary and Harry are back in the Bay, just 5 minutes up the road, which is always nice. The move went well, with cargo packed and unpacked by nightfall. It was a sterling effort by all involved, with the movee and her father doing a particularly fine job, despite the fridge-freezer taking something of a dislike to the electric heater less than 5 minutes from home…

Welcome back )

And since I have time off, and it’s the middle of the school holidays, we’ve been doing suitably touristy type stuff, with visits to Howletts (home of angry tigers) and Leeds Castle (home of reticent buzzards), and lots of cheering our many and varied sportspeople along from the sofa. (Did you see the hatful of golds we won today? Woohoo )

Howletts is a lovely place. Being as it is just down the road, and with me growing up around here, I’ve been there quite a few times. The highlights for me are always the big cats. They have a number of enclosures of beautiful tigers, and it’s wonderful to get so close to them. Even when they are trying to claw through the glass and give you a piece of their mind (as in the photo over there…). Their grace and dignity never fails to grab me, and I always walk away thinking about the pros and cons of getting one as a pet. I think I might need a bigger garden first

(click for bigger pics)

Leeds Castle is a spectacular building, but I kind of walked away feeling a little bit flat. The castle itself (or at least the tour around it) seems very prescribed, and there’s not much in the way of freedom to wander around and imagine how it was used before the velvet ropes and visitor boards were erected. The grounds, on the other hand, are very nicely done. The aviary has some lovely birds; the falconry display was interesting and humourous (“If he doesn’t get out of that tree soon I’m gonna shoot him.”, “Is mummy here? Wave goodbye to mummy!” and so on), and there were many things to keep small and not-so-small people amused for most of the day. The castle in the middle of the turf maze has quite a small door though, if you ask me

All in all, it’s been a very enjoyable week off. I am refreshed, happy, and ready to fling myself at work once more. (Yes, yes, my boss knows my website address…)

I have just one final thing to comment on: The recent news that wearers of what the marketing cretins call an “aspirational, cross-generational, cross gender brand” (most people call it “beige tartan” – savvy people call it “crap”) have been expelled from a couple of Leicester pubs. More power to the pubs, I say. Expulsion doesn’t go nearly far enough. Off with their heads! Crush their novae! Melt their bling! Reclaim the streets from the “niiih”-saying sub-class! Ahem. Erm, excuse me. Here’s the link. )

I’m off to find a burberry cap wearer so I can refuse to let them onto my property

Well, that’s not something that happens every day.

There I was, popping out to the car, when I feel a thud against my right foot and hear a sound very much like someone frantically sweeping the pavement. I looked down, and saw this little fella, all balled up and spikey after his impromptu breakdance along my garden path. Naturally, the first thing I did was rush inside to grab my camera, but after that I spent a good few minutes trying to decide what to do with what potentially may be my first ever hedgehog victim. After a couple of proddings, and reassured that my right foot is not the finely tuned mammal killing device I feared it to be, I decided that the best course of action would be to leave the poor little guy alone, and let him do whatever he usually does when he finds himself in such situations. Quivver and shake a bit and then waddle off on his merry little way, in this case.

And a good thing too.

What exactly do you do with a dead hedgehog on your conscience?

(Nightmares about armies of prickly death machines would probably feature, in my case…)