Monday, August 30, 2004
Happy Blogday to me!
Um, wasn't it yesterday?
Er...well...it was, and I meant to post, only I got rung up and asked "You're tall, how do feel about kitchen ceilings?". And it's a bit hard to blog when you're an hour away from home and the computer, standing on a worksuface, trying not to touch the aged grease coating the top of the cupboards, and straining to get an even coat on the corner of the coving. By the time I got home, I was tired, and it was tomorrow already.
Yesterday was generally an odd day - especially getting a text message to tell me that A. The date of the Australian election has been announced, and B. It's 9th October. That's what you get for knowing staffers somewhere in the Australian political complex.
And it's not fair - playing Hearts with assorted family members (it was one of my cousins' kitchen that was being buried in white paint), and having an abysmal first round. The next round starts badly for me. So I decide to try and do that thing whereby, if one player collects all the scoring cards, then all the others collect maximum points. Somehow I manage this, to much hilarity from the rest of the players. Then I discover, that of the 5 people playing, only one other knows this rule. And she's the youngest out of the 4 others. Hence the rest of my kind relatives state "well, we don't play those rules". And hence I get an even worse score, and get annoyed.
It's quite interesting watching play, and realising that there are standing waves of those who score and those who don't (don't point out that there should have been an equal number of counter-clockwise rounds, as this too is not a rule that the 3 eldest were aware of). Some people consistently try to get short suited, and so give away everything in one suit - apparently regardless of the value. So the person downstream benefits from having three middling cards appear, rather than the 3 highest.
I've never really liked the game, as it's too dependent on the actions of someone upstream. Having said that, by the end of it, despite getting a ridiculous amount of points in the first two rounds, I didn't come last.
I still prefer Sevens though. But that might be because my evil cousin had all the early stops, and therefore I ended up not being able to go for the first 6 goes. And then won. Well, if someone will be stupid enough to not put down the 6 when they're holding the ace. And I can't help it if, by some quirk of dealing [dodgy shuffling of a new pack of cards], I happen to end up with the eight, ten, jack, queen and king of one suit, as will as still having the nine, four and five of another. Oh, I'm sorry, am I stopping you going? Such a pity.
Hmm, can you tell my family are ever-so-slightly competitive? I usually pretend I'm not, and then, once I think I've actually got a chance of winning it, the nonchalance vanishes, and apparently I start to worry people who've never seen this side of me before (Pictionary is a bloodsport).
So, anyway, card games - don't do them kids [unless you can win].
In other news,
Driving along the A3 out of London, at about half past eleven on the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend, is not fun, especially the nice bits round Clapham. It didn't help I was trying to get used to driving a different car (being the only Rioja-less one), which is pig to drive, especially in slow moving stop-start traffic. It didn't help that at the first set of traffic lights I put it into reverse (the gear change is so busy being resistance free, it's a nightmare to know what it's doing when out of gear). And then stalled it [just as well really].
For the record, I hate cars in which one can't hear the engine (how do you know how fast you're going? Looking at the dials is such a quaint notion), and in which the pedals flop idly, and produced minimal effect, and that's only after a while, if it feels like it (ok so the ones in my car can take the phrase "standing on the brake" a bit too literal mindedly). It's very odd driving a car which, from 70mph drifts down to about 40, if you let it get away with it (again, mine seems happiest at 80mph).
And I have to commend whoever is in change of the variable messageboards lining the A3 - which all read "27th-30th August. Notting Hill Carnival. Delays expected". It doesn't specify where the delays are expected, merely they are to be expected. Which given the signs were on the southbound side as well, makes one wonder if a traffic jam in Bournemouth can really be attributable to the Notting Hill Carnival. Roads blocked by flooding in Ottery St Mary? Oooh, that'll be the Notting Hill Carnival. Broken down car blocking the St Peter Port one way system? It's because of the Notting Hill Carnival. Nasty incident involving a horse and a bicycle on Sark? Notting Hill Carnival's fault.
And speaking of "delays expected", they've bloody changed the last remaining section of the road between Tweeton and Notacity to a forty limit. Which means that there isn't a single road left out of Tweeton where one can go above 40 mph. It's really annoying as it's only started happening since I've been driving. I could use the bypass, but it's miles out of the way, and the road to it is even more meandery (cluttered chocolate-box villages are a bloody nuisance if you want to get beyond the village).
It just annoys me to have to drive round behind someone pottering along at 35, who the sees "SLOW" written across the road, and does, when it's on bends that I know you can get round at somewhere over 55mph. That and all the mushrooming coach-sized roundabouts, and I'm really beginning to hate what use to be a nice road. I have however discovered that on the roundabout that has a dropped curb [to let artic-lorries get round], with a central curbed island, it's actually smoother to drive straight over the thing, than it is to hug the symbolic curb, which is full of badly made gutters and random lumps of ironwork. I'm not sure how legal it is, but I have started seeing more and more people doing it. It is after all tarmac-ed, and with tiremarks on it.
Coming back a different way yesterday, and I nearly drove into the traffic island on the entrance to a roundabout. That's what you get for switching into autopilot based on one's relative position to the lampposts. It might have worked fine in driving lessons, but now they've made the entrance a single lane from double (thus wreaking havoc on the incoming traffic congestion), and so widened the middle island.
I also discovered on the way back that one of the main roads appears to have fallen into a ditch sometime last week. As distinctly unmentioned by the local newspaper. But hey, what do they care, they've already run their traditional "man grows sunflower" story (ideally accompanied by picture of said sunflower, showing man and child on his shoulders next to said sunflower. The article should also hint at a worrying obsessiveness about sunflower growth). This is then coupled with articles about why living in X is so great [in the X edition of the paper], which seems to have been written by someone who has never been to X. Local news for local people, and it generally feels like it's been sub-contracted out to somewhere in India.
And then of course was the piece about a local doctor who died. He died from a heart attack whilst in a triathlon. He was doing it to raise money for assorted medical charities [including a heart disease research one]. Maybe it's just me, and my utter lack of sentimentalism, but there's something slightly amusing about this.
Anyway, I'd better stop bashing here. Especially as I'm going to be here for a while.
[And I must not be quite awake. I've just been asked if there's much difference between lactic acid and lactose. I used Google image search to find out. And then it dawned on me. Lactic-acid - the one you make that causes a stitch? The little 3C one? And you want you know if that's like lactose, the disaccharide? Why did I not treat this question the disdain it deserves? Because I was being pretty dim. And I'm now trying to figure out why a pasta sauce might contain lactic acid].
And it's not fair - The Ben Anderson thing [Holidays in the danger zone: America was here, on BBC4 tonight and tomorrow at 9pm] apparently goes on until half past ten, which is a bit late (bear in mind my whole up before 5 thing). And I've yet to figure out how to record from digital (I might not have got round to plugging the right bits in).
Anyway, I'd better finish off here, as I want to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's, as, well, I've never seen it, and may as well (and I can't sit and read Kate Adie's [very good, very funny] autobiography all day).
Anyhoo,
PS. So much for the retrospective on the past year. It'll have to wait until there's a convenient event to hang it on.
PPS. Is distain really not a word? Everything suggests it is meant to be disdain.
Um, wasn't it yesterday?
Er...well...it was, and I meant to post, only I got rung up and asked "You're tall, how do feel about kitchen ceilings?". And it's a bit hard to blog when you're an hour away from home and the computer, standing on a worksuface, trying not to touch the aged grease coating the top of the cupboards, and straining to get an even coat on the corner of the coving. By the time I got home, I was tired, and it was tomorrow already.
Yesterday was generally an odd day - especially getting a text message to tell me that A. The date of the Australian election has been announced, and B. It's 9th October. That's what you get for knowing staffers somewhere in the Australian political complex.
And it's not fair - playing Hearts with assorted family members (it was one of my cousins' kitchen that was being buried in white paint), and having an abysmal first round. The next round starts badly for me. So I decide to try and do that thing whereby, if one player collects all the scoring cards, then all the others collect maximum points. Somehow I manage this, to much hilarity from the rest of the players. Then I discover, that of the 5 people playing, only one other knows this rule. And she's the youngest out of the 4 others. Hence the rest of my kind relatives state "well, we don't play those rules". And hence I get an even worse score, and get annoyed.
It's quite interesting watching play, and realising that there are standing waves of those who score and those who don't (don't point out that there should have been an equal number of counter-clockwise rounds, as this too is not a rule that the 3 eldest were aware of). Some people consistently try to get short suited, and so give away everything in one suit - apparently regardless of the value. So the person downstream benefits from having three middling cards appear, rather than the 3 highest.
I've never really liked the game, as it's too dependent on the actions of someone upstream. Having said that, by the end of it, despite getting a ridiculous amount of points in the first two rounds, I didn't come last.
I still prefer Sevens though. But that might be because my evil cousin had all the early stops, and therefore I ended up not being able to go for the first 6 goes. And then won. Well, if someone will be stupid enough to not put down the 6 when they're holding the ace. And I can't help it if, by some quirk of dealing [dodgy shuffling of a new pack of cards], I happen to end up with the eight, ten, jack, queen and king of one suit, as will as still having the nine, four and five of another. Oh, I'm sorry, am I stopping you going? Such a pity.
Hmm, can you tell my family are ever-so-slightly competitive? I usually pretend I'm not, and then, once I think I've actually got a chance of winning it, the nonchalance vanishes, and apparently I start to worry people who've never seen this side of me before (Pictionary is a bloodsport).
So, anyway, card games - don't do them kids [unless you can win].
In other news,
Driving along the A3 out of London, at about half past eleven on the Sunday of a bank holiday weekend, is not fun, especially the nice bits round Clapham. It didn't help I was trying to get used to driving a different car (being the only Rioja-less one), which is pig to drive, especially in slow moving stop-start traffic. It didn't help that at the first set of traffic lights I put it into reverse (the gear change is so busy being resistance free, it's a nightmare to know what it's doing when out of gear). And then stalled it [just as well really].
For the record, I hate cars in which one can't hear the engine (how do you know how fast you're going? Looking at the dials is such a quaint notion), and in which the pedals flop idly, and produced minimal effect, and that's only after a while, if it feels like it (ok so the ones in my car can take the phrase "standing on the brake" a bit too literal mindedly). It's very odd driving a car which, from 70mph drifts down to about 40, if you let it get away with it (again, mine seems happiest at 80mph).
And I have to commend whoever is in change of the variable messageboards lining the A3 - which all read "27th-30th August. Notting Hill Carnival. Delays expected". It doesn't specify where the delays are expected, merely they are to be expected. Which given the signs were on the southbound side as well, makes one wonder if a traffic jam in Bournemouth can really be attributable to the Notting Hill Carnival. Roads blocked by flooding in Ottery St Mary? Oooh, that'll be the Notting Hill Carnival. Broken down car blocking the St Peter Port one way system? It's because of the Notting Hill Carnival. Nasty incident involving a horse and a bicycle on Sark? Notting Hill Carnival's fault.
And speaking of "delays expected", they've bloody changed the last remaining section of the road between Tweeton and Notacity to a forty limit. Which means that there isn't a single road left out of Tweeton where one can go above 40 mph. It's really annoying as it's only started happening since I've been driving. I could use the bypass, but it's miles out of the way, and the road to it is even more meandery (cluttered chocolate-box villages are a bloody nuisance if you want to get beyond the village).
It just annoys me to have to drive round behind someone pottering along at 35, who the sees "SLOW" written across the road, and does, when it's on bends that I know you can get round at somewhere over 55mph. That and all the mushrooming coach-sized roundabouts, and I'm really beginning to hate what use to be a nice road. I have however discovered that on the roundabout that has a dropped curb [to let artic-lorries get round], with a central curbed island, it's actually smoother to drive straight over the thing, than it is to hug the symbolic curb, which is full of badly made gutters and random lumps of ironwork. I'm not sure how legal it is, but I have started seeing more and more people doing it. It is after all tarmac-ed, and with tiremarks on it.
Coming back a different way yesterday, and I nearly drove into the traffic island on the entrance to a roundabout. That's what you get for switching into autopilot based on one's relative position to the lampposts. It might have worked fine in driving lessons, but now they've made the entrance a single lane from double (thus wreaking havoc on the incoming traffic congestion), and so widened the middle island.
I also discovered on the way back that one of the main roads appears to have fallen into a ditch sometime last week. As distinctly unmentioned by the local newspaper. But hey, what do they care, they've already run their traditional "man grows sunflower" story (ideally accompanied by picture of said sunflower, showing man and child on his shoulders next to said sunflower. The article should also hint at a worrying obsessiveness about sunflower growth). This is then coupled with articles about why living in X is so great [in the X edition of the paper], which seems to have been written by someone who has never been to X. Local news for local people, and it generally feels like it's been sub-contracted out to somewhere in India.
And then of course was the piece about a local doctor who died. He died from a heart attack whilst in a triathlon. He was doing it to raise money for assorted medical charities [including a heart disease research one]. Maybe it's just me, and my utter lack of sentimentalism, but there's something slightly amusing about this.
Anyway, I'd better stop bashing here. Especially as I'm going to be here for a while.
[And I must not be quite awake. I've just been asked if there's much difference between lactic acid and lactose. I used Google image search to find out. And then it dawned on me. Lactic-acid - the one you make that causes a stitch? The little 3C one? And you want you know if that's like lactose, the disaccharide? Why did I not treat this question the disdain it deserves? Because I was being pretty dim. And I'm now trying to figure out why a pasta sauce might contain lactic acid].
And it's not fair - The Ben Anderson thing [Holidays in the danger zone: America was here, on BBC4 tonight and tomorrow at 9pm] apparently goes on until half past ten, which is a bit late (bear in mind my whole up before 5 thing). And I've yet to figure out how to record from digital (I might not have got round to plugging the right bits in).
Anyway, I'd better finish off here, as I want to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's, as, well, I've never seen it, and may as well (and I can't sit and read Kate Adie's [very good, very funny] autobiography all day).
Anyhoo,
PS. So much for the retrospective on the past year. It'll have to wait until there's a convenient event to hang it on.
PPS. Is distain really not a word? Everything suggests it is meant to be disdain.
