A Woman, A Man walked by

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18°C, Sunny, "grass frost" this morning

Back to work, grumph
PJ Harvey: A woman A Man Walked by: initial impression is a return to previous form. I love the melancholy of the previous album, but here in the spring sunshine I can hear the old vigour back. An interesting development is that inside the LP’s cover is a card with a serial number that let me download the album on mp3. This is excellent- I have the sound quality of LP and yet still can load it onto my iPod for the car.I hope this marks a future trend
A proper review.

Thursday afternoon

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10°C, rain, non-stop rain

Two days on my legs still sore and need frequent stretches. Rosie is far more sore than I. She has five stitches in her leg, I don’t. I know what the cure is for this muscle-shortening stiffness, but it’s raining & I have an injured dog to pamper.

Mt. Snowdon 1085m asl

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11°C, heavy showers clearing.

Yesterday: climbed Snowdon up the Watkins path. After a few thousand feet, I found myself with a delightful family who hadn’t taken that route before. They were lovely, though I would have been just as happy with the solitude at high altitude. Climbing mountains is about searching, a longing for something elusive in the distance and in these places you get closer to touching something. Talking to that family, I shall call the "howards" left less space for the first quest. The summit was a more intense emotional experience for the wrong reasons: Rosie had acquired a deep long gash on her leg which left me with blood covering my hands. I felt devestated by guilt and concern for my loyal travelling companion. My mind raced through alternative solutions that would be best for my poodle. I decided to get away from the crowds, and give rosie a rest to allow the injury to clot and stop bleeding. It did work, but I would have given anythign not to have a problem like that to solve.
The urge to climb mountains is a  really tough one to explain, so I may have to re-visit this theme to articulate it more clearly.
Hotel: after a meal, there was no getting round the fact that I was too tired to drive home. Betwys-y-Coed has lots of hotels & B&Bs, it didn’t take long to check in a place that allows dogs. British hotels are grotty places, they hark back to a nostalgia for classicism, but the stuff isn’t that old but looks flaky in detail and smells of mildew. A great place for a novelist to seek material, or for me to read more of a Brautigan book. That book really drew me in yesterday- it takes me some time to get used to an author’s voice. Don’t look him up on Youtube though- he sounds like Big Bird from Sesame Street; his writing has strength.
I longed for a place that is more populated by climbers and people who do stuff outside; maybe they do exist, or maybe Wales still hasn’t caught on to that rich potential market. that is one country held back by under-investment and lack of imagination.

Quality advice here

In Bruges

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11°C, cloud, but blue sky west.

The clouds are taunting us- the patch of blue sky to the west has stayed there all morning, clouds are travelling northwards and could stay like this all day.
In Bruges: What a very sweary film. A brutal and funny gangster film set in a relatively little known Belgian city. What a beautiful place; a medieval city with much of the charm and atmosphere of Prague, but as the opening line in the film states: "Bruges is a shithole".  Clearly that character is less than happy: later you find out why. Warning: after watching this film, you may find yourself swearing more than usual.This effect dies down after a day or so.
  

Of rain & two punctures

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14°C, warm summer-like rain.

Cycle– shortened by heavy rain showers, not a problem themselves, but the two punctures in one day is teetering on annoying.

Headaches: another approach to dealing with them is reading glasses. I almost forgot that I had them, so out of the habit of wearing them am I. So I can beat them with reading glasses, less caffeine and better hydration.

Saxifrage & Eidleweiss

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10°C, windy, but sunny too.

Fritillary is proving difficult to get, the only ones I have seen are big, yellow and in my mind: vulgar.
I do have Several Saxifrage and Artemesias ready to plant out. Saxifrage apparently gets its name from their ability to break rocks, they are mountain plants – probably what people mean by "alpines".

The sun shines but I have another headache. Dammit.

to wheel spin, or not

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11°C. NW winds, sunny intervals.

Dogs walked, plants potted and seeds sown. Door painted, photos shot & plants bought. y’know.
That time spent yesterday swapping wheels on a car whose rusty axle stubs didn’t want to release the rims has worked out. The juddering wheel-spin has now gone on pulling away. I’m so gooood Tongue out.
Omegle: what a bizarre site- like messenger, but you have no idea who you will be speaking to; a kind of "speed-chat".

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Stranger: hi
Stranger: Im rick
Stranger: and you/
You: hi, where are you?
You: Mike is the name
Stranger: I want to sing a song for you
Stranger: We’re no strangers to love
you know the rules and so do I
a full commitment’s what I’m looking for
you wouldn’t get this from any other guy

I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
It’s right I make you understand

Never gonna give you up never gonna let you down
never gonna turn around and desert you
never gonna make you cry never gonna say goodbye
never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

You: that’s quite understandable

Now to fix the car stereo…

Domestic deity

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15°C, getting danker

Yes it’s true, this is starting out as a mending-things-holiday (again). Mounted & framed a print of a painting by Fantin-Latour; 1½ hours, then swapped the tyres round on the car- 1½ hours. My hands are not steady enough to paint now.
Those new tyres I had fitted (just before the snow week) aren’t ideally distributed. The ‘experts’ suggested putting high quality (=expensive) tyres on the back axle, and budget ones on the front. The car hasn’t been right since- these is often a little wheel spin when I pull away at roundabouts- and I am notorious for my measured driving style. I’m the kind of driver who annoys others because I won’t break the speed limits: even passengers get leary about it sometimes. Anyway, the car has front wheel drive, the engine is at the front and so is the steering, so I have put the best tyres on there instead. Let’s see.

Planning omelettes for tomorrow;  and I am no kind of cook. Here is one I prepared last week- a rhubarb and apple crumble:

Maytricks

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16°C, bright & sunny later. No cloud, nor wind.

Matrix (the): no need to say much, I have not hated a film as much as this since the trip to see Lord Of The Rings. Similar reasons, or at least both shared the characteristic that they are ridiculous films. The main problem was that it was not possible to suspend disbelief. Each time the plot got itself into a corner, then some sci0fi/magic trick was introduced to get them out of it. The effect is like cheating, I felt cheated anyway because we didn’t fully understand any dilemmas that characters were in. Actually, I say "characters" but there were no real personalities, there were roles played by people (or things) but they were not steered by their own personalities.
The result is a film that never drew me in. In Both films, I came out feeling quite annoyed by them. Why do so many in the 3D animation field enthuse about "bullet time"? I’m exasperated.

Clarity

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15°C, Sun

Clear: clear head, clear vision and a clear sky. Sunshine is a good idea.

Bessie inspected these bones carefully for ages. What went through her mind?
Road-rage: On the way home in the car yesterday a guy driving from a side road looked at me from his driving seat. Without much hesitation, he pulled out forcing me to an emergency stop and a blast on the horn. He looked squarely at me the whole time and raised the bird in defiance. How does a man get into s state like that?