The 'mowing of lawns' gives gardens an instant lift doesn't it? Picture 1 is from the kitchen door and Picture 2 is from Y's room, after Karen's good offices with the Mountfield.Although yesterday I was bemoaning the poor performance of some of the roses, those along the path leading to the front door have done well. All except Peace are perfumed and the red one, outside Y's window (please see below) is, I think. either June Park or some other old dear from around the same vintage. Much of the root-stock system and the 'budding point' are well above ground now and look quite attractive - if you like the ancient gnarled look, that is.
When Karen arrived we got out of her way and went shopping. Y went to Oasis to organise flowers for Margaret who is 80 and has been in Hospital with unstoppable nose-bleeds. Being Margaret she managed to see the funny side, difficult I know. She and Y always have a good laugh on the phone and today was no exception. Many many years ago Margaret used to be our cleaning lady but quickly became and has remained a much loved friend. David and Steven will have good memories of how she used to sort us all out.
This afternoon we tackled NT minutes and two letters arising therefrom. Then an agenda and a couple of e-mails.I don't mind my role as the Secretary's secretary but on the new PC I'm still feeling my way. Also I wouldn't describe myself as a Microsoft 'Word' expert. So I am not quite as quick as Y would like.
She is quite settled now on having a laptop of her own, and we must carefully select one that suits her requirements. A keyboard she can speed away on, is a major consideration, also a good touch-pad because she really dislikes using a Mouse. For these reasons I don't want her decision to be unduly influenced by 'which is the cheapest ?' - frugal girl that she is.
Anyway - we got there and had good food in suitable breaks. I did Sea Bream (from Lidl - delicious) with wedges, onion rings and petit-pois for lunch, and cheddar on toast with Branston for tea. Liberal quantities of tea and coffee, plus a whisky and water and an alcohol-free lager.
Comments
Jill ...... I only had a tiny fiddle with the PC and it improved it. But the thing doesn't seem to remember the settings and reverts to an unsatisfactory state. This no doubt my fault not the PC's.
You really had a 'busy' but I'm sure Poppy was a great help with your 'clearing out'. Always difficult here because Y is a 'chuck it out person' while I am a 'keep it - it might come in handy person'. People are so grown-up these days at 11 but Poppy did well to tackle an unaccompanied trip to Texas. You must be proud of her.
Re TV - we enjoyed the last part of Andrew Marr's 'BritainfromAbove' programmes. The website under that link looks super and earns 5 stars in my WebUser Magazine which arrived this morning. I've only managed a quick look but I guess there is several hours of informative fun therein. I've 'bookmarked' it for future reference.
Bungus ...... A pleasure to publish your Clematis Tangutica snap.
What a delightfully eccentric looking plant. The bearded effect is something again.
I think a really close-as-you-can-get image would be interesting. But be careful if it involves step-ladder work. Did you say in the Spring that it is the only clematis one can germinate from seed? You have really done well with them.
A radio alarm wouldn't work for me at all. I sleep with the radio on anyway and I've been known to sleep through telephone alarm, old fashioned clock alarm and when Y comes in to shake me, she often thinks I'm dead. On the other hand sometimes I wake instantly and happily around 3.30am and can't get back to sleep again.
Pleased with your dentistry-news. And you definitely sounded 'chipper' on the hone this afto.
Thanks for an interesting chapter in the QMC Fairy Tale.
Your 'comment' was a good read and I enoyed it all but won't go through it point by point because bedtime approaches fast.
Quotation slot ......
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example"
I've linked you to his Wikipedia page before, so this time I chose a different site - about his house.
.............................................
Sleep tight - catch you tomrrow - God willing.
.
Sleep tight - catch you tomrrow - God willing.
.
Yes, a reasonably cropped lawn enhances even the ‘wildest’ garden (ours, not so much yours). Sandra sometimes gets a lttle tetchy, though, when anyone says something like “It obviously looks after itself,” as she puts in a lot of time making it appear 'natural'!
ReplyDeleteI had some difficulty learning how to use a mouse but after about ten minutes it all settled down. Unlike Yvonne, I do not like touch-pads at all. Neither do I like the keyboartds on laptops. As with many things, it’s what you grow up with, I suppose.
I did a CLAIT course to learn 'Word' and 'Excel' before i had access to a PC. Although I have seldom used to latter since for its proper purpose, I have found the 'Word' tuition invaluable.
I too am a 'keep it - it might come in handy' person, and an ignorer of best-before dates although I try not to go beyond use-by-dates by more than a week or so, depending on the product. I sometimes wonder how we have all survived so long. In 1958, in the desert, I was eating canned bacon rations from WW2, and delicious it was too. Sandra has quite unnecessary periodic clearouts.
Yes, you recollect correctly. C tangutica is (to my knowledge) the only clematis one can germinate easily from seed. Ours was a cutting but the following year we raised literally hundreds of seedlings with no trouble. Do you want a ‘head’?
Like Sandra, you have solved it because I also fall asleep with the radio on and switch on again (on ‘sleep’) if I wake in the night. The normal alarm never seems to go off though.
Despite my admiration for Mark Twain, I shall not be helping to pay for the upkeep of his house.
Jessica’s pirate caravan sleepover was a great success and no trouble to us – although Sandra and Stephanie put a lot into the preparation. Below is the apt inscription composed by Sandra for J’s birthday card.
A MESSAGE FOR JESSICA
with much love from Gran
As a small child you were my little treasure
Bringing many hours of fun and pleasure,
Today you’re thirteen, and on the brink
of womanhood – which makes me think,
That any day now you’ll be swinging your hips
Instead of puckering those sweet rubber lips,
You’ll be having opinions and wanting them heard
And making damned sure that you have the last word,
But remember, when practising ‘Teenage Law’
You can’t shock me kid … I’ve been there before!
Bungus, I did like Sandra's poem. Hope Jessica did too. Hope you are now chewing well....
ReplyDeleteAccording to Radio Times Pierrepoint hung 608 people....I have done a bit of searching but cannot find any reference to him dealing with his friend. I feel this may have been a bit of poetic licence, which is a shame, the film didn't need it. Definitely an odd bod....but took great pride in his work!
That clematis is very interesting - is it hardy? or only in sheltered places? Daughter has a fascinating evergreen clematis, with waxy cream flowers. It took its time to start growing and climbing, and seems a slow climber compared with say montana but now it is lovely, and her fence is covered year round in attractive dark green foliage.
'Old and gnarled' is a stage I am fast getting used to.....and fond of!
I had a free packet of seeds from somewhere, corrage garden mix, scattered them around and have some interesting results, 3 French Marigolds, 4 Cosmos, about 7 marigolds, some candy tuft and some straggly virginia stock, a cornflower, and something which we think is ? mallow, two bushy plants about 3 ft. high, lots of green heart-shaped leaves, one has large convolvulus-like white flowers, other one has a deep and lovely pink, what I would call fuchsia. they look far too big to have come out of a seed.....
I watched a new comedy-drama last night, called 'Mutual Friends' - not too sold on it, though it was good to see Mark Warren, another actor I will always watch. Paper likens it to 'Cold Feet' - I didn't like that much either!
I thought Pierrpoint was compelling in a grotesque sort of way (not sure grotesque is the right word). At times it was a bit like watching a car crash - you don't want to but you just can't help yourself. Timothy Spall was brilliant, as ever. He should be one of our most lauded actors. I thought odd bits seemed out of kilter, especially the bit about the execution of his 'friend' Tish (or was it Tosh?). All the sites on Google claim he hanged 450 people though the credits at the end said 608 executed from, I think 1933 to 1955. This is a much higher average per year than any website says; one I found said that the average number of executions per year from 1900-1949 was 13, so that's only about 650 in that period. Pierrpoint was only one executioner at work as well. I know he dispatched a lot of Nazis as well but the figure seems very high even so. Was the blond woman at the end supposed to be Ruth Ellis? I'm surprised Wiki doesn't have a page on him, well I couldn't find one and I am niftygoogler after all!!
ReplyDeleteWhere's all the sports news now the beautiful game is under way again? I see the Stags managed another last gasp victory on Monday after nearly throwing it away. And who needs Cristiano Ronaldo when they can have Darren Fletcher?
Looking forward to seeing you on Friday, RG. Maybe we can arrange a sausage fest when the wedding and honeymoon are out of the way? My best man is coming all the way from Royston for the stag night, how wonderful is that?
Rob
I had a haircut yesterday (Wed); the first for 3 months. So I had something of a Boris J appearance, now rectified.
ReplyDeleteGlad you and Jill liked the birthday poem. Sandra does have the knack of turning out celebratory verse, rhyming puzzles for Easter Egg hunts, etc.
When you mentioned mixed annuals I immediately thought of my own collection – Rupert, Dandy, Beano…
Jill:
Eating much better apart from a nasty sharp bit of metal digging into my cheek. Dental appointments now stretching into November!
Google tells me Pierrepoint hanged something over 400 people. BBC says over 600. A good job it is no longer important. The google story does confirm that he was as considerate and concerned for his ‘victims’ as anyone in his position possibly could be (a record 7 seconds from cell to drop).
I too feel that the execution of ‘Tosh’ (or ‘Tish’) should not have been included if incorrect. Such irony (or gallows humour?) appeared unnecessary. BUT, see below under response to ‘anonrob’ comment.
The C tangutica seems to be hardy –we’ve had it over 20 years. The flowers are small and unspectacular (one remains on Tue blog picture) but the seed heads are a treat and germinated so easily.
I like the sound of mixed seed. I could do with something like that to sow in the disputed No-Man’s Land between us and neighbour. I can’t handle it any more so have delegated the battle to Sandra – she still consults me, of course. He is now threatening to put up a high fence on what I consider to be our land. But boundaries are notoriously uncertain and this one perhaps moreso than most.
I think you may well be describing Mallow. There is a white one which is quite highly prized but the mauvey one is the usual variety. If you want to perpetuate them though, you will have to take cuttings after about five years as they seldom last beyond seven. We have lost ours.
I quite enjoyed 'Mutual Friends' (as I did ‘Cold Feet’) but Sandra is uncertain. Worth a look at the next episode, she thought.
anonymousrob:
I think Timothy Spall IS one of our most lauded actors.
I felt particularly uneasy that Pierrepoint’s ‘victims’ included Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley and yes, Ruth Ellis was another (but apparently, according to google, he felt she deserved it).
Wikipedia says:
“between 1932 and 1956, he is credited with having executed an estimated 433 men and 17 women, including 6 US soldiers at Shepton Mallet and some 200 Nazi war criminals after the Second World War.” (Perhaps someone has added the 200 onto the 433?) … he claimed, in his autobiography, “to have never given a precise number of his executions, not even when giving testimony to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment of 1949.”
Pierrepoint was later opposed to capital punishment "due to the experiences of his father and uncle who both worked as hangmen before him", and particularly after “he had also been forced to hang James Corbitt on 28 November 1950; Corbitt was a regular in his pub, "Help The Poor Struggler", and had sung "Danny Boy" as a duet with Albert on the night he murdered his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy because she would not give up a second boyfriend.”
Pierrepoint wrote "I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people...The trouble with the death penalty has always been that nobody wanted it for everybody, but everybody differed about who should get off."
He is also attributed with, “All the men and women I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.”
Yes, Stags are just managing to edge it so far. Let us hope they become more convincing.