This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 09/10/13
This And That
Nothing in this section for nearly a month, largely because I've been dragging myself back into the routine of work after my September break.So...
What follows is not remotely earth-shattering (dealing as it does with more minutiae of an underspent life)...
...But part of it has to do with earth-moving (but not, I fear, in the Hemingway sense).
I knew that the one major problem I would have with the bare patch of earth which I had created where the shed used to be was its irresistability to some of the neighbourhood felines. Sure enough, within 48 hours the first rancid dollop appeared and - equally sure enough - this in the corner where the soil had been banked up a bit to match the contours of the existing lawn.
Regular readers will know of my previous troubles with the local moggy population and my utterly unavailing attempts to thwart it. New readers start here and here. Well, I may finally have cracked it.
Back in the period of time between my mother dying and my getting my first PC, I used to pass the time by doing some baking. Nothing grand - a fruit cake here, a chocolate marble cake there, and an embarrassing attempt at making shortcake biscuits - but it was quite fun to do, and I got to lick the bowl as well (hint: there are other contexts in which that activity is not advisable - in a chemistry lab, for example).
Once I became 'connected', however, all such activity receded into the past. Which left me with ingredients in one of the cupboards in the kitchen which hadn't been used for a long time. When examined recently, the 'use-by' dates on some of them might as well have been in Roman numerals. So it was time for a clear-out: of flour (plain and self-raising); sugar (white, brown and caster); and cocoa powder (Fairtrade, natch).
Also on the same top shelf, I found a pot of black peppercorns which were nearly a decade past their best. An idea came to me, and I took the pot outside and emptied it over the corner which the wretched pussies had been using as a latrine.
That was nearly a fortnight ago. Since then, not a sign of unauthorised dumping. Fingers crossed.
I've got a plan for that patch now, anyway. I had intended to leave it for the grass to spread naturally across it from the existing lawn (the dandelions have already started to set up house in it), but I was struck by an idea the other evening. I have a fuchsia bush which my mother planted - in default of a wiser idea - in the middle of the back lawn. This makes mowing that area a right royal pain in the arse, as it involves not only having to manoeuvre the mower around it, but also untangling the mains cable from it...
(This is the time for a firm restatement of Stapley's Law of Cussed Cabling, namely, "If there's anything - however small - that a power cable can get caught on or around, the bloody flex will go and do precisely that")
...And the fuchsia goes critical every year in any case. Anyway, standing by the back door the other evening, I realised that the patch of bare earth would be an ideal spot to relocate it. I won't be able to do it until Spring because the damn thing's in full chat at the moment, and you shouldn't even cut it back until then anyway, but it will solve two problems at once.
Apart from that, the grass and the hedge have been given their last cuts of the year. Trouble is, thanks to that blizzard we had in late March, everything else is running later than an Arriva bus at the moment, so the cutting back of the weigala, the elder bush, two forsythia, two cotoneaster, the buddleia and the philadelphus is going to have to wait another two or three weeks for the leaves to go off them. A busy Autumn beckons.
In other news, I'm about to apply for a new job. It's a sideways move, as I gave up any desire for promotion a long time ago, but it's to another part of the Depratment, one where they seem to treat their staff as autonomous rather than automatons. I haven't a hope in hell of getting it, I know that; not only are the six positions being offered being sought by upwards of seventy or eighty people (all of whom, like me, just want to get the hell out of the 'business stream' they're in now), but it's based on those bloody awful 'competence-based' application forms. I've had bad experiences with them in the past and, although they seem to be a bit more straightforward this time, I've no great hopes of being able to replicate the MBA-speak bullshitting required for success in such a venture. Short of our Euromillions syndicate coming up trumps, however, it may be the best that I can hope for.
Well, now you know. As if you'd asked, of course. Or cared.
Carry on...
