18 August: Green?

We are responsible citizens - we recycle. Have done for years, taking loads of stuff to the tip - sorry, household waste recycling amenity - and putting it into the various bins and skips.

The local council brought in a scheme for recycling paper, tins, and glass. The large and ugly green box was a problem to keep in a modern house, designed with hardly any cupboard space except in the bedrooms.

Then the plastic and cardboard recycling scheme required an even larger, uglier and more awkward green bag. But we are responsible citizens; as there is not enough room to get a car into the garage (even when the garage is otherwise empty, and the car will just fit in, there's not enough room to open the door and get out of the car....), the recycling bag and box can go in there. It's a hassle, taking all the stuff out out of the front door and into the garage, but we are responsible citizens.

The recycling wagon has just come to collect the tins, glass, paper, plastic and cardboard. The operatives picked their way through the jungle of boxes, bags, wheelie bins (everyone now has 2, one for garden waste for recycling, and one actually for rubbish), and threw the stuff into the wagon.

But the wagon was full. We are not the only responsible citizens. So the operatives have the solution.

They empty the recycling bags and boxes into the wheelie bins for rubbish, and depart.

6 August: Incidents oral and aural

The visit to the dentist was dreaded - a large filling needed re-doing, and the choice was either a (definitely) distressing injection or a potentially distressing drilling without injection. In the end, the non-anaesthetised drilling was completely smooth and stress-free, and there had been far more suffering in the prospect than in the actuality. Another lesson in living in the present moment rather than the past or future.

More annoying has been the regular visitations from the ice-cream vans. One plays "The sun has got his hat on", and seems to do the more distant streets all round, so that when sitting in the garden you are subjected to the 'tune' over and over from different directions and at varying volume.

The other one plays the theme from Blue Peter, and plays it until somebody comes out and buys an ice-cream.

And I'm not too sure about the name - or am I just getting old?

3 August: Of bus passes and books

In the Good Old Days, back in 2007 or 2008, an OAP was able to stroll down to the local district council office, where the person at the reception desk used a digital camera to take a reasonably flattering photograph, and after a brief chat about the weather, handed over the completed and laminated bus pass, complete with photo, which had just emerged from a machine on the counter, and the OAP walked out to the nearest bus stop for their first free ride.

Then in April the district councils were abolished, and in the interests of efficiency and improved service (which of course means vastly increased expenses for the councillors - and increased council tax) we are left with just the County Council.

Now a bus pass seeker strolls down to the local council office, the person at the reception desk takes a digital photograph, and informs them that the bus pass will be issued from the County Council offices in "7 to 10 days", presumably by post, with the extra cost of an envelope and stamp.

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Recent reading has included an excellent book by Geoffrey Moorhouse - The Last Office: 1539 and the Dissolution of a Monastery. Lots of fascinating detail about the Benedictine monastery in Durham (the cathedral was part of it), the Prince Bishops, and local and national history.

The medieval theme continues with the current book, Britain in the Middle Ages, an Archaeological History, by Francis Pryor. A different approach to the period, which gives a bit of an insight into everyday life, which is always far more interesting than battles and kings.

And there's been a book about knitting - Invisible Theads in Knitting by Annemor Sundbo; this one was obtained from the author at Woolfest. It has a couple of irritating places where a sentence is unfinished at the bottom of a page or section, and the end of that sentence just never appears. But it's got lots of really interesting stuff about Norwegian knitting; much of the information comes from garments that were sent to her wool recycling mill. There are lots of illustrations and a few patterns along the way, though I haven't tried any of them - yet.

14 April: Marketing

Somewhere on the interweb (probably Ravelry) I read something about fleece/wool for birds' nests. Yarn is not good, as it gets tangled round legs, but wool fibres seem like they should be suitable, as bits drop off sheep anyway about this time of year. And the purveyors of bird-related products sell small containers of fleece, so it must be a good idea.

It may be a bit late, as blackbirds have been gathering nest material for a while now, and the robins have been a pair for some time, but a handful of fluffed up fibre was easily popped into an old peanut feeder and hung on a tree in the garden with a couple of tufts sticking out.


And we have a customer!

Still on the marketing theme, my jar of 250 vitamin tablets, which has lasted for 250 days, was nearly empty, so I went to buy another. Huh?


The new jar is just under half full.