Critter

Driving home tonight, pulling off the M1 at junction 26 at about 0:20 this morning, a critter ran out in front of my car as I was stopped at traffic lights.

I don’t know what it was.  It didn’t look like a rat, although in size terms it would have been big for a rat.  Certainly much much too big to be a mouse. It was somehow more tubular and rounder than rats are.  It almost looked like a raccoon, but that would be a strange thing to see running around a Nottinghamshire road at night.  Its tail was darker than its body, and it looked like it was a sort of brown colour.
Whatever it was, it was fairly bright.  It knew to run off the road when the lights changed, without even needing me to hoot or rev to scare it off.  It scampered off into a drain hole in the kerb, and I continued on home.

Veg Box III

The third veg box arrived today.  The first week, we were good, and ate all the veg that came.  Last week, less good, and there was still courgette, mandarins, pears, potatoes and onions left over.  It’s almost as if we ate nothing last week at all, which isn’t true.

This weeks veg includes some absolutely massive jonagold apples, bigger than a hand, but strangely light, and some fennel, which I am looking foward to.

It’s probably just as well we had fresh food delivered.  Getting out of the house is tricky right now: it’s very hard indeed to walk down the steep hill because the snow is incredibly slippery.  Looks like the Ron, the delivery guy, got here at an opportune point between the melt this morning and the fresh snow fall this evening.

Attic discovery

We’ve had the attic boarded, reinsulated, a window put in, a light put up, sockets, etc. A nice new large hatch and a loft ladder were also part of the package. The idea is to put my office in the top of the house where I have room to spread out and keep my clutter out of the more public places.

But putting more rooms into the house has led to a voyage of discovery for Fudge. Smudge has been too timid so far.

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First he tried to climb the wrong ladder.

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That tantalising hatch! Just out of reach! What am I doing wrong?

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Aha! That’s how I do it.

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Unfortunately, getting down is a little trickier than getting up.

Anyway, now the attic is ready, I have to declutter the rest of the house. Hmm.

Gardening

Manda’s post from the end of January says she’s starting her chillies off already. I didn’t realise you could get going so quickly!

I didn’t do too well with chillies last year: I germinated some in about February, and then completely failed to repot them during the year.  I put them in the lean to, where they seemed to like the summer heat.  They got very leggy, and wilted on hot days, but I managed to keep them watered.

Not that that did much good by the end of the year when they were still in seed trays and they needed 8″ pots.

Come October, the Scotch bonnet plant made a valliant attempt at setting fruit, in some desperate, Darwinian bid for posterity (it didn’t know I had more or less a full packet of its  sibling seeds waiting to be sown in subsequent years.) It grew a wrinkled little green fruit about the size of a thumbnail.

I think the cold weather in the lean to has seen for the plants, and they certainly haven’t been watered in 2007.

Not good.  My track record on growing food is awful.  I quite like the idea, and I often put seeds in, but I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything through and eaten something I’ve grown.

I plan to be better this year (have I heard that before?)

A colleague has a big square garden with two old apple trees in. His approach to gardening is to clear the neck-high brambles every fifteen years.  He’s just done it, and I was vaguely thinking of cultivating the bare earth he’s left behind.

Obviously, yerakshual gardening before the elections in May is a bit of a no-no. But nothing stopping me getting some seeds going of an evening all ready for a grand plant out in May.

Any suggestions for seeds, and post May planting?

Dratted internet

Although I was again up at the crack of 7am this morning, I have squandered my early time advantage by allowing the internet to distract me from laying up Focus bright and early and then hopping in the car to work.

First, Liberal England asked me what famous cat I was.  Rather amazingly, the quiz suggests Tigger.  Unlikely, on the whole.

Then I got sidetracked by Neil H, who wanted to know if I’d ever considered ten dimensional space.

I hadn’t.  But apparently, if only I’d paid more attention, I might be able to fold through the 5th dimension and still get to work at a reasonable time.

Then again, I’m going to be in the office late tonight anyway.

Early morning leaflets

I was out before nine am this morning delivering leaflets I should have delivered earlier on the way in to the office, when I stumbled across this propped up against a fence, on Nottingham’s ring road, Western Boulevard.

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I wasn’t sure what it was at first – something industrial looking and a heap of electronics. A fish tank hood, maybe? When I got closer it became clear it was a traffic light. You know, a red, amber, green type traffic light head, or in this case, red, amber and No Right Turn. Its bulbs were still attached, and some of its workings spilled on the ground.

So, I called it in to the Council, telling them two things were worrying me: one, that there was tipped rubbish on the pavement, and that two, probably somewhere nearby, a traffic light was missing…

It was surprisingly light, when I tried picking it up. All made of heavyweight plastic, not the metal it looks like it ought to be.

Printing problems

Urgh. I’ve just had one of those nasty Riso failures that gets you covered in ink.

The master roll got stuck. Subsequent attempts to unstick it led to the thin sheets tearing down the middle as the machine struggled to reattach them to the printing drum. The beast was making growling, grinding noises as she tried to reset.

Something remained, deep within the machine, that was tearing the master paper. This is a new machine, and I don’t know whether it’s possible to flip up the print table like you could on the GR range, so I found myself pulling out all the movable parts like drums, and discharge chambers so that I could see through and work out where the obstruction was.

Then, James Herriot-like, I had to get down on my hands and knees and insert my entire arm into the delicate parts to grab the offending bit.

Following that, also like James Herriot, I had to scrub my forearms with washing up liquid to get the muck off my elbows.

Poor girl. She’s sounding a lot more contented now. All in a Lib Dem’s day’s work.