Pig Sty Avenue

And Happy New Year. We're moving house, and that'll amount to a change in ISP, likely. So probably see yous in 2007.

WHAM!!!! , originally uploaded by spily . This morning, at last, Molly's looking like her old self. I'm feeling better, too, though like the man in this photo, as if I'd been hit.

I've ordered some first early potatoes, "swift" , which we'll plant grow in containers in the unheated greenhouse. Also for the unheated greenhouse, some lettuce, "patrick" , (and some "rouge d hiver" , but that was a blunder).

It's been a grim few weeks. A mysterious chest infection, "low mood" and, latterly, a dreadful vomiting bug. Molly and Herself have both had this too. We're all on the mend now. I'm well enough to blog a bit, anyhow. The Avenue is more than two years old now. Not bad, eh?

shhexy: a tribute , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Not very well, still.

There are plans to demolish it .

...and turns his hand to shark smuggling !

Feeling a bit off colour.

, originally uploaded by Elinesca . He's had his fun, and now his basket, and his blanket awaits him...

This took me back. Feeling nostalgic about a nostalgic telly programme.

What with the name and the history and all that - not to mention the price - you'd expect it to be pretty impressive, eh? And then you look at the results in Flickr ...

Safe way to Gas yer Jalopy up******* ;)) , originally uploaded by BillyWarhol . I read somewhere that a struck match can ignite a bucket of petrol 50 yards away. He isn't aware of that, or doesn't believe it, or doesn't give a shit. Good for him. It's possibly a big philosophical point: are our high health and safety standards symbolic of anything? And am I foolish to look fondly on an age when firemen smelled of whisky and it was weird to be a non-smoker?

Like, hurry up , originally uploaded by miloinredfern . Flickr's made worthwhile when somebody jumps out of the blue, taking real photos. Like this.

Bonty Night , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Living in Catalonia, I was, at first, stunned by what seemed like a suicidal attitude to fire and fireworks. In a suburb of Barcelona I saw young lads with fireworks strapped to the old, thick coat they were wearing, dancing about. Here, the authorities are much more shitty-arsed about such fun. NB: this photo - of a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night on Calf Close Estate - shows that taking pics of fires has a knack to it which I haven't quite mastered yet.

Not Stopping , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . At Fellgate metro this morning.

Not taken many good photos lately. One reason is, even though I take the camera most places, it usually stays in the bag. So I'm going to take half a dozen photos every day: experiment with light, composition, colour, post processing. See what happens. I had some stupendous news today: will blog about that later.

...about that car boot . Thanks Al!

A link which might help in the future - when I've time to develop the germ of an idea conceived recently.

This is very handy.

pushupglases.jpg , originally uploaded by shveckle . Another classic from shveckle in Brooklyn.

This looks like fun. But surely it will bugger up the flight path?

Your bank manager or a smarmy bully ? I'm delighted, really, that Johnny Boy seems to be about to throw his bunnet into the ring: we should get a right laugh.

That saying pisses me off. It implies that somebody's gotten up before you, and MADE the coffee, whilst you're lying in bed, like Bertie Wooster. This , however, is a great piece of cinema. (You can get it in English, here .)

Jesus, Mohammed and the Buddha walk into a bar, and the barman says, "What is this? Some kind of a joke?" Thanks to Poseypal for the idea .

No, it's a really sharp suit, isn't it? I've always imagined a family resemblance...

There's been some internet blether about San Francisco Values lately, with the Congressional elections imminent. Meanwhile we've just had episode 10 of Series 6 of The Sopranos, with Fat Vito headed back to New Jersey, and all the homophobic gangsters knowing the truth about his sexual preferences. Well, I got to thinking, Tony Soprano could solve what's now become a morale/personnel/equal rights issue by making a call to his Friends in San Francisco, and maybe getting Vito a start over there. He could extort and be a loan shark by day, and go to discos dressed as a short fat member of the Village People by night. What would be wrong with that?

burn , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . We had a right laugh in The Forth on Friday. 5olly had the idea which led to this photo.

, originally uploaded by Chris&Oli . Look at them! Great stuff. Chris&oli's an idiosyncratic photographer. This is one of his/her/their [wtf?] best, imo.

...Please can I have a Nikkor 18-200mm VR II for Christmas? I'll be good. That'd be a brilliant multi-purpose lens. And with the 50mm f1.4 for low light, that'd be me, sorted. For now.

highiso001.jpg , originally uploaded by shveckle . Another gem from my Flickr-pal, Shveckle in Brooklyn. So here's a thought: is New York more photogenic than Tyneside?

The LSC's new priorities sound good. That article ignores the fact that provision for ESOL is going to be severely curtailed . Indeed, the books will now balance nicely. Johnny Boy "The Enforcer" Reid talks tough . But one can wonder whether he had any influence on the LSC's funding decision. During the summer, I spoke to dozens of would-be students from Poland. They were very keen to get free English classes. And if that meant doing a shit job in a strange country for a couple of years, so be it. Romanians and Bulagarians won't get the same chance next year. Well, the Editor of the Daily Mail would no doubt say, Why should the UK taxpayer provide free English lessons for immigrant workers? Well, they'll come here to do the shit jobs, we could give them something useful, the English language, couldn't we? Surely it'd be a Good Thing if ordinary Europeans could communicate with each other. And we wouldn't have to learn Bulgarian. The cha...

Baby Jack O'Lantern , originally uploaded by hampshiregirl . "Baby Jack O'Lantern and PigStyAve. I carved PSA's head into a pumpkin. I hope you like how it came out... Happy Halloween my beloved DMU friends!" Mind you, she's been taking an interest in me for a while: here I am , the subject of some troubled fantasy. Hampshiregirl's a marvellous example of America's leading the world in cosmetic pharmacology. She looks like a schoolgirl, but is actually a former girlfriend of Richard Nixon . Maybe there's a family resemblance? Or something.

I was going to write about this bastard Government's education policy, in a really rather clever macro/micro way. But the evening's worn on, so it'll have to wait. Meanwhile, here's some Stan and Ollie:

foolish spider , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . The sort of photo you take when you're not getting out much.

There are often rows about American politics in DMU on Flickr. One thing that these arguments show is a very clear liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican divide; unlike Britain, where all three major parties differ only in detail, and the whole business has become a postmodern fandango. American politics seems like much more fun, perhaps because it's all so far away, like Dallas . As usual, HST was on the money . Anyhow, I loved these behind the scenes photos from Time magazine .

10 inch Salvia Divinorum , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . The latest plant to hit eBay. They seem to be going down a storm.

Sickbay , originally uploaded by hoskarsson . Memories of Holy Loch, 1985. Rust buckets, these!

I was going to blog about some extremely distressing news , but instead here's an animation for My Pal Foot Foot . Worrying about your prospects doesn't improve them one iota.

I notice that the wee shite's gone beta. Always copying me, he is...

Clare and Molly BW , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . That's my oldest and my youngest baby.

Clare's here for a visit. We went out to collect hawthorn berries . I'll eat the flesh, it's good for the heart ; the seeds'll be stratified and sown in the spring. Part of a vague, long term plan to reconstruct traditional English hedgerows . My phone takes 10 second videos. I had a few random ones on the 'phone. Maybe a low res 10 second video could be a digital haiku ? Or something.

YouTube . It's what lots of people are talking about. "The Flickr of Video", though it's shaping up to be more than that. Different , anyhow. Another phenemenon that we can watch develop whilst we participate in it, entirely unaware of where it's going. I'll certainly blog more about this another time, but meanwhile here's an interesting article from the Guardian this morning.

PILOTS: PSA's 1000th photo , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . A thousand photos on Flickr! And that's not a vast amount, relatively speaking. Uninspired lately, mind.

This is hilarious. Poor quality video, I know... My nephew showed this to me on his phone in the pub, and I was laughing so much people nearby were muttering "drugs" "ecstacy" "his age"...

Johnny-Boy "I am the enforcer" Reid has emerged from his cellar again. Our prisons are overflowing, so the police stations are going to be utilised to keep people locked up. Furthermore, he's been advertising for ships to turn into prisons. A Home Office spokeswoman tells us that her boss: "has said he wants us to explore innovative solutions to the prison capacity issue." Innovative ? Our prisons are full because too many people get sent to them . Some people are public hazards and need to be kept out of the way, but most prisoners are social inadequates, and locking them up won't help them become adequate anytime soon. Intelligent community sentences might. But The Enforcer can't be seen to be a decent human being, can he? The trouble is, even within his own sad, quasi-macho terms, he's failed... He promised root and branch reform of the Home Office. But the absence of forward thinking on prisons has pushed him into reverting to ancient ...

...can be found here .

I blogged this photo late last night after a few drinks, and, my keyboard skills being a trifle below par, promised an explanation. Never let it be said the Pig Sty Avenue gives empty promises when he's half cut. The reason I liked that photo so much was that it took me back to the WOMAD festivals at Morecambe in the 90s. What larks! Great music, great atmos., herbal cigarettes, happy days and nights... We camped by a cricket pitch. The main venue was in a disused railway station. That photo of Salif Keita 's backing singer brought it all back.

Salif Keita - backing singer , originally uploaded by Robby Garbett . WOMAD! I'll explain later...

Being a "distance student", you get to use something called UK Libraries Plus . To cut a long story short, this means I went today to join the library at Northumbria University , where I was an undergraduate in the early 80s. In those days, it was called Newcastle Polytechnic, of course. It was the spookiest thing, this 20 year time lapse. There are some trees, near the entrance to the Art Gallery, and facing the library's administration area. Lovely silver birches , forty foot high. But I remembered when one of them, the biggest, was about fifteen foot... Some wanker, God knows why, had cut a ring around its bark - that should've have killed it. Someone else wrapped thick sellotape around the wound, and wrapped into that bandage a note which said, so far as I recall: "If I find out who is trying to kill this tree I will break their fucking legs". Perhaps the sellotapist was also a botanist and knew what they were doing. The tree has flourished. As I ...

phonepic.jpg , originally uploaded by shveckle . Shveckle's a street photographer who lives in New York. She uses mostly point-and-shoots, but this is with a camera phone. Ace, eh? 2006, but with all the look of the 50s. It's an inspiring photo because it make one realise what ever more sophisticated, everyday technology can do to illuminate our everyday lives. Anoraks with Holgas: take note.

This song kept my sanity during the long lonely days and nights in Libya.

"I don't think it's right for politicians to start making moral judgements about people. That's the last thing I would want to do. What I think the question is, is what are my political views and as a politician those are the ones I'm accountable for to the public. As a politician I think anybody should be free from discrimination and I'll fight to the absolute end to make sure that is the case." Indeed. But now, we read about divisions within the government , which suggests that Ruth Kelly 's dedication to freedom from discrimination isn't being fought quite to the absolute end. It's ok to be gay, but not if you want to stay in a B&B, apparently. Or if, say, the local Gay Pride Rally organising committee ask to hold their meetings of an evening in a church hall. Ms Kelly's refused to confirm , or indeed to deny, that she's a member of Opus Dei . Why's that then? If it's an innocent organisation, like the WI, why not b...

molly hand sunlight , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . This morning, the sun was flowing in through the venetian blinds, and I clicked away whilst Molly played on the sitting room floor. It was a lovely morning. I've boxed-off time in the week for studying, to keep the weekends free for Us. It was great today to just have some time to ourselves. I love the way the light's caught her wee hand here. And the hand-ear gesture is a Molly characteristic.

Mind-fingers-keyboard-windows-print: hooray! The first bit of actual "work" this term.

crushing some tiny trucks with my enormous butt , originally uploaded by buildingcrusher . You've got to watch out for him - he's like any big star, he doesn't need the publicity now that he's in the stratosphere. This photo is post-ironically entitled: "crushing some tiny trucks with my enormous butt". It's a remarkable new departure.

I was asking myself, if I won the Lottery, or otherwise had a dramatic upturn in cashflow, would I get a Leica M8 ? Or would I go with the Nikon D2X ? Hmm? Well, of course, a lot of the technical matters are way over my bald head. But the Leica's more expensive by £500, and then the cost of the lenses! OMG! And it's smaller, but not that much smaller. And no autofocus? I should cocoa. It's the great thing about blogging, eh? The subjects that make your wife's eyes glaze over, or even cause her to leave the room, you can share with the world instead.

Molly and dead snake , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . She simply has no interest whatsoever in cuddly toys. Indeed, I'm proud to say that she consistently turns her back on The World of Numpty. We wish she'd sleep a bit more, though. After a year, a single whole night's unbroken sleep is something we can't recall.

We can be proud that the Venerable Bede , the first English historian, lived, studied, and wrote his books here. Coming from Jarrow, I've grown up with an image of him in my mind, as if he were as close as a beloved relation who died shortly before I was born. I don't think it is so now, but Bede was a common Christian name amongst Jarrow boys - I think the name's unusual everywhere else. My sincere hope, is that the next generation will connect us with the March and Bede, and not Catherine Bloody Cookson. Don't even get me started about her and the thorough nastiness and literary impoverishment of her so-called novels.

taking off , originally uploaded by timojazz . Timo's got an eye like no other.

Molly's First Birthday , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Hooray! I was having too much fun to take many photos - this was the best of them. The time's flown in , eh? She's had a lovely time today. We all have.

Flag , originally uploaded by Dshalock the Libertarian . In a shameless move to liven this blog's traffic up, I'm hustling on DMU. Dshalock was the first to step up. (And I solved the Flickr problem by removing the Avenue from the blog list there, and reinstalling it...)

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

You'll see that the Avenue's gone beta, which is mostly cool, except that some bug means I can't blog photos direct from Flickr now.

She'll be one year old tomorrow. In a reassertion of ethnic identity, Herself's for making a cloutie dumpling . Molly and I went for a walk this afternoon, and gathered acorns. I'll sow them next week. They might grow for a thousand years.

My first SLR camera, twenty-something years ago, was a Nikon EM . When my interest in photography was re-awakened, I started with an Olympus compact, and did a lot of research and thinking before buying a dSLR - the best deal brought me back to Nikon with the d50. I'm cynical enough about big-business to avoid foolishness like "brand loyalty". But I will stick with Nikon for the foreseeable future because of the fact that I can use almost any Nikkor (or Sigma) lens on any Nikon camera body. So I was quite intrigued when my friend Elinesca raised the question the fishiness (or otherwise) of Nikon's marketing of their new d80 in a DMU thread . I then googled to jill/txt , who gave some food for thought, (and who is, coincidentally, a chum of Elinesca). It's very clever. The very fact that I'm blogging this is evidence of the success of the campaign. Whoever dreamed that one up has earned their Columbian Marching Powder this month. Not that I'd dream o...

Peter in the Long Bar , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Peter, the man in this photo, was telling us a story about a bar, a horse, and a punk rocker when I snapped this in July with a new cameraphone. Now, the story's made the BBC , and UPI . None of those newshounds got the Angelic Upstart angle, though.

Unknown Dahlia 2 , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Looks nice with the raindrops, doesn't it? Not enough time for the allotment. The old man has taken down the tomato plants, and we need to get the greenhouses tidied for the winter. We're going to grow some winter lettuces in one of them, and there' a type of potato called swift which can be planted in the greenhouse in February and it'll be ready to eat by easter. The most irksome thing about being short of time is that blackberries, apples and plums are falling to the ground, rather than going to make jam, cider or wine. Sometimes, I daydream about winning the National Lottery and being a full time allotmenteer.

Great North Run 2006 (26) , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . I went with Molly this morning to watch the Great North Run go through Jarrow. It's a half marathon from Newcastle to South Shields. It was really interesting photographically, trying to snap runners as they went by, in focus. I got to use the "sport" mode on the camera for the first time. These two lads came out really well. My son-in-law, Martin, was in the run with his Dad, and I was hoping to get a photo, but missed them.

In my 20s, moving in left wing circles, people were always fascinated if they learned I came from Jarrow. The March was one of those milestones of working class history in Britain: the Peterloo Massacre, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Jarrow March, the Great Miners' Strike... Now, I suspect that anybody under 40, even people from Jarrow, will have only the vaguest notions of what happened, and why. One of these harmonica players is my great uncle, I'm told. It says something that this 30kb jpeg was the best quality picture of the March I could get on Google Image.

Welcome Them , originally uploaded by smoothdude .

My mate Smoothdude has a photographic exhibition in Brooklyn next week. Go if you can. Details on his website .

An inspiration. I'll have to get down to the Side Gallery - perhaps on the pretext of a trip for my students - and have a shufti. Yes indeed.

All change! The academic blog remains as it was: a place for links to sites needed for studying, and a place to publish drafts of essays and other work. It's had a wee face lift to reflect the fact that I'm studying two courses this year. It'll probably see a lot of traffic and further changes in the next few months. I've deleted the Jarrow and Hebburn blog. The local news and a lot of the photos can better go on here. But I have started a blog called Jarrafellas . This is to encourage me to further a plan to get photos of the people my home town. It's going to be almost exclusively photos. Nothing much new to see yet, though I will be posting some old ones from Flickr until I manage to get out with the camera again. Speaking of which, this (albeit rather jokey) thread in HSP got me thinking again about this whole street photography malarkey. The whole "candid" thing seems to me a bit creepy, and is the sort of behaviour which could lead to someo...

I'll be over on the clever blog . Which will be delightful over the next few months for anyone interested in Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and the Teaching of English as an Additional Language in Further Education... Wake up at the back there!

The World of Numpty makes inroads on reality every day. The latest is, loaves of bread with the crusts already cut off . I'm not fucking kidding .

Dad's a digital age illiterate. Nontheless, he's got a good idea of the potential - a bit like Rupert Murdoch. Anyhow, he's got me digitally cataloguing his dahlias. I'm strictly a veg and herbs kind of gardener, but I must confess to being wowed by the fibonacci -ness of this bloom. I don't know if it IS called "Hamari Rose", btw. There was another label in the pot: "s dream". The importance of careful labelling with gardening cannot be underestimated.

ugly face , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . We say to her: "Do your ugly face," and she does this! Well, sometimes; and usually when there's no camera in sight. I know this one's badly framed, but I love it nontheless. And it's the only "capture " I've been able to make of this expression from her repertoire. What a comical bairn she is.

Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), aka, teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), or, less often, teaching English as a second language (ESL), has a marvellously complicated professional structure. Even people who do the job have only the dimmest idea of the big picture. Those of us doing the job in Further Education colleges in England need a qualification called, - God knows why - "Module 2". That's what we call it. Its real name is much longer. Anyhow, I'm studying for this now. But that's in addition to a Masters' degree in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, which is something quite separate: it's the same essential subject matter, but rather la di da: theoretical, let's say... So far so good. I'm actually teaching, AND studying the practice of teaching, AND the underlying linguistic theory. I'm as happy as a pig in straw. But at work, my colleagues put on, each year, a pantomime , "for the students"...

funny face , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Molly keeps doing these funny faces. We say: "Do us your funny face!" And she does. But it's not easy getting her on camera. She also does an "ugly face". She seems to be acutely aware of the comical effect.

...can be a lot like going to University. Your first year, you make friends with almost anyone. The second year, you devote some energy to avoiding a proportion of the buggers.

pig sty ave , originally uploaded by zombizi . Clever, I call it. That's how I feel quite often.

It was a right laugh.

Dad, The San Adolpho, Apapa, Nigeria, 1954 , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Click on this if you want to know the story.

Another South Tyneside blogger! With my mate Oli , that's three of us now. We could start holding conventions - in a phone box in Tyne Dock, perhaps. Or not, given that Oli and I aren't exactly lissom.

There's a good article about this at 2point8 . It's always felt like an alien term to my North West European ears: reminiscent of similar American idioms like "streetwise" and "to be on the street". We know what the phrases mean, just as we know what baseball is. But it's not part of our culture. Even within a UK context, "street" implies an urban environment, the streets of London or Glasgow or Newcastle. There's no discernible street-life in Jarrow. Life outside of the domestic setting is lived in pubs and clubs, or bingo halls, or in shops. So we need to get away from this whole "street". In fact get away from any kind of pre-conceived ideas. But when you've gotten away from something, you need to find a place to go to. That's to be blogged on another day.

Andrea has been a really good blog-chum for a long time now - always dropping by. I've been away from blogging for a few weeks and come back to find that she had her baby a month ago, BUT now her husband Luc is in a coma after some kind of accident. Do drop by her blog or say a prayer or light a candle or something, eh?

Sharon, Aunty Margaret and Garry , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . That's my sister Sharon, my Aunty Margaret and me. What I love about this photo is the Christmas lights you can see outside. My mam worked as a book-keeper in a local electrical firm, who got the contract to do the town's Christmas lights. So we'd get advance notice from her that the lights were about to go up, and we'd know that Christmas wasn't far away. I've scanned in a load of old photos this afternoon. (Click on the photo to have a shufty, if you're curious). That's because I'm about to embark on a study of sociolinguistics as it relates to teaching English, which will keep me out of mischief until February or therebouts. That's for the Masters degree. I'm also doing something called Module 2 at work, which is vocational training. So I'm going to be a busy boy.

the lcl motif continues , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Blogging should go slow this time of year... More of an activity for the long winter nights. Whatever. Pig Sty Avenue's having a fallow spell just now.

Dad , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Handsome old bugger, eh? More nonsense soon.

Molly in her play pen , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . This is an experiment with light. Click on the photo if you're bothered with the technicalities.

I've got a lot to blog about the subject of "street" photography. No time tonight. I've added a link to 2point8 to remind me, though.

castlegate berwick upon tweed , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . We had a right kerfuffle today. Herself was off with Molly to Edinburgh. I was to help them on the train at Newcastle... As I was finding a place for the folded up bit of the pram, I looked out of the window and there was the station bloke waving the train off... The corridor was packed, the doors locked and there I was captured, and being bad tempered with the guard as far as Berwick. Hmm. Luckily I had my camera, and had a couple of hours there. 'Twas a pleasant enough accident, really. This photo has a lovely feel to it.

crying baby , originally uploaded by PigStyAve . Two teeth now. We've had a few sleepless nights with the teething - and the heat lately doesn't help. But she's a great baby, and gives us all frequent nights of several hours sleep. What more could we ask? And, bless her, here she is doing a bit of research.

... is to give you and your pals a bookmark to something informative, useful or funny. This thread is all three. It'll help me to remember how to take photos.

Hopefully, I'll be doing some extra hours at the College's summer school next month. It's quite well paid, which will come in handy . F1.4! I left photography alone during most of June and early July, and expected to dust off the camera and reapproach it with fresh eyes. Instead, I just seem to be taking snapshots. I got a good one of Alexander yesterday but he won't let me post it. Bloody kids, getting minds of their own, I don't know...

crushing a new building , originally uploaded by buildingcrusher . If you've never encountered the photography of building crusher, you're missing out on something moderately significant.

Radical Philosophy , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Ave . That's Molly thinking-over an article she's just read in her Mam's Radical Philosophy magazine. Her virus lasted only a couple of days. Probably to do with teething - she's got a top tooth to match the bottom one now, and is having a great time with the novelty of teeth grinding. The current bout of academic work is nearly done - probably another full day next week to tie up some loose ends and proof read the several essays. And then no more studying until September, when I start on Sociolinguistics for the Masters, AND a teaching course at work. Couple of weeks holiday now. We won't go away this summer, but have local days out.

...of coming home to roost. Coincidentally, in rare idle moments, I've been leafing through The Great Shark Hunt , which, amongst other things, casts a malevolent eye on the last days in power of my Uncle Richard . Totally different details, of course - nobody's suggesting (yet, anyhow,) that New Labour's been burgling and bugging anyone, (why would they bother?) But there is that same feel about it all: the weird feeling of untouchability that all governments get when they've been in power more than a few years. Thatcher went down the same road. Another factor that goes with power is that arrogance will lead to people getting rubbed up the wrong way. Most significantly for current purposes, the police and the press. High handed bullies, pricks like Alistair Campbell and Johnny Boy Reid, have been humiliating and sending-away-with-lumps-in-their-throats all kinds of people over the last ten years. Just think about it. Somebody inflicts psychic pain like that an...

Molly's got a viral infection: temperature, feeling sad some of the time. We took her to the doctor this morning, and it's nothing to worry about. Another week and I should finish the Grammar and Phonology module of the MA. It's taking a lot of mental energy just now. But the allotment is a restorative. Mostly watering and weeding this weather.

You would not believe how this pond has progressed since the last post about it . It clouded up for a couple of weeks - thick as pea soup. And then, as if by magic the water cleared wonderfully. There's quite a lot of weed on the surface, and we thin that every now and again. There are still two quite distinct sizes of tadpole. I've done a bit of Googling on this, and it's possible that the smaller ones are the common frog, and the big ones the marsh frog : which would be splendid. There at least two newts, I can't tell which sort. From my Googling, it seems unlikely that any of the visible tadpoles are newt-tadpoles . There are several different kinds of tiny crustaceans, and those black shiny beetles that come to the surface to get a bubble of air. All kinds of insects buzzing around the surface: a dragonfly; flies with yellow spots. It's a marvel, that pond. And all from nothing in just a single season. I'll try and research all the life there and g...

Tried posting pics from the new mobile earlier. Clearly, they haven't arrived here... Arse...

Dedans... , originally uploaded by sarahwoo . Click on the photo for the story. It's not Molly, but it's made me think: we must take this bairn to Paris!

...has made another almighty fuck up as a result of his contortions to fellate the editors of the tabloids. The shit. That's what happens, you see, when we're governed by weak kneed imbeciles. Johnny boy has to swallow, Wapping's finest have a post orgasmic cigarette, and the nation's child molesters are scattered God only knows where. Brilliant. And this twat is supposed to be a political heavyweight! The hacks' rent boy, more like.

...It's been raining all night. The barrels are replenished and the plants looking happy. Hooray!

It hasn't REALLY rained for about five weeks now. We're approaching a crisis at the allotment because we have no piped water. We do have an ingenious rain water collection system. But that needs rain. Dad told me this morning that he's been dreaming about rain. The greenhouses and the leeks must have water, so they've been a priority: everything else is to put roots down far enough and fend for itself. Apparently , we're to get showers this weekend. Oh yes, please.