Category Archives: Home

Dog guilt

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18C, bright.

Home, yesterday greeted me with a big splodgy mess on the kitchen floor. One or both the dogs pulled down a bag of bananas off the fruit bowl and ate the lot. Well, okay, they left the skins, but still… In a stern voice I ordered “come here”, Rosie came over while Bessie’s tail dipped between her legs and she walked outside. The body language said “guilt2 to me, which was frankly rather surprising. I can’t imagine the old dear getting up high enough to reach the bag. But still

Later, it turns out, Rosie’s face smelt of bananas, she had an upset stomach and needed to be let out twice in the night. So that confirms it- the dog who cheerfully came over the previous evening, wagging and interested was actually the villain of the day. Bessie’s performance was little more than that- an act. I’m still puzzling over her motive for that.

I have to remind myself as a pet owner, that they are at heart- scavengers and I keep two of them in my house. Seen that way, we should expect trouble every once in a while. It’s a bad mistake to expect human values even though they clearly do think. It’s the way they think that is puzzling me. But think they do.

Here is a fun link

Heavier than air

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27°C, humid & oppressive. Thunder later?

The air presses down making the drawing of breath an effort. You heart beats harder under the exertion and all because of an air full of menacing dark clouds. This may be one of those days were we long for a cracking thunderstorm but maybe don’t actually get one. Sleep could take a long time to achieve tonight, it takes the body to long to cool enough.

The dogs are really struggling with this one, especially old Bessie.

Cabled

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16°C, showers.

vinetrumpetAnother one that I can’t name. It’s a climber with coiled up tendrils that hold onto other plants. The flowers are striking, though only about 1/2 inch long, shaped like little pitcher plants.

Gears’ index: I removed the cables and cleaned out every little connector, end stop and so on. It feels smooth now and the gear changes work properly. Caution though, they’ve been perfect while changing gears in the shed in the past. But on a longer ride, difficulty develops. Frustrating and mystifying in equal measure.

Drowned Rat

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18°C, SW light, some sun. CR:55miles

Drowned rat is usually a metaphor used on days of heavy showers. Today, it’s actualy a rat that drowned.

drownedRat

Poor little chap, he must have swum around that pond until exhaustion pulled him under. That suggests a design fault with my pond, the shallow end must have, somehow, prevented the little chap getting out. These animals aren’t stupid, unless he was doped up with rat poison, that seems unlikely to me. What a way to go.

Follow that link though and some interesting stuff emerges. It turns out that rats use a creful strategy to protect themselves from poison. A strategy that makes them difficult to poison because thay take precautions such as eating only a little from the scavenged food, then return if they don’t become unwell. Presumably that must be a serious problem to a species that scavenges a large proportion of its food. Rat poison has to be tasteless & odourless so the animal will return and comsume more rather than treat the area as ‘no-go’.

Gears: the racing bike has a brand new cassette on, and it’s made not the slightest difference to the indexing problem I may as well put the old one back on since it wasn’t actually worn out anyway. Next- the rear hanger: if I put an allen key in the hanger-bolt, it’s clear that it’s out of alignment. So, I’ve ordered a tool to bend the thing true.

Ruby sparks

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17°C, some showers.

RubyFlowerThey’re tiny, perhaps only 5mm across but the colour is so intense that they loose none of their eye-catching brilliance even in fading evening light.

The name: Dianthus Deltoidus. 

Turntable world

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15°C, breezy with empty threats of showers
Turntables: Wow! here are some long lost names still alive & kicking:
turntableworld. Grado, Goldring, Ortofon, Sumiko, and so on.
Some astronomical prices but at least it’s somewhere I can get replacement stylii. The tip for mine costs £140, the memory of times when it sold for £45 are still vivid. Either my memory is good, or inflation is higher than I thought.

still no indexing

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20C, Sun.

Carpet cleaning machine: Rug-doctor is surprisingly effective. It’s noisy and can’t get into the pokiest corners of my attic but it does turn the soapy water into the appearance of old cold coffee. Strangely satisfying, in a domestic way.

Campag-8 gears still don’t index, even after replacing the cassette today. I’m just as puzzled and annoyed by this problem as the last time I posted about this. I really don’t want to upgrade the drivetrain to 10-speed or worse to get a slick gear-change. Those systems are fiddly, difficult to tune and unnecessary.  There is really no need for more than 8 gears (x2) on my bike. I’m not just saying that just because I’m a single-speed bike rider.

What is the solution to this?

June tomorrow

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15C, Sun, easing westerly. KC44 miles.

June already, but I haven’t finished with May yet. Look, here I am wishing my life away in an inverted way and I’ve been in bed since 8.30pm. Can I use an excuse? I’d like to use the one about cycling 44 miles then driving 100 more.

My old dog is certified stupid- I have just had to rescue her. She’s been barking for a while, that bark she has reserved for ‘let me out’. So, the caring responsible pet owner that I am, I went to investigate. There she was standing on the kitchen table, unable to get down. I hope I get into scrapes like that when I’m old.

Pond life

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16°C, Sun.

The pond is now populated with some plants, But the water is cloudy with algae now. I’m holding out for the plants having the effect of clearing the water. There are animals in there that depend on it, including leeches!

Look out the doorway