Blue Witch

Friday Question

I've misplaced my list of Friday Questions.

I have to write them down when I think of them, you see, or it gets to Friday and I have mindus blankus.

Given the current state of The Inner Coven, it is unsurprising that I've misplaced the list, actually. Just as soon as I have chucked this lot (*nods to pictures left and right, which are back and front of the same stack*) out of The Studio (yes, the cucumbers and tomatoes and some of the courgettes do already have flowers, and even small fruit, but it's been too cold until this week to empty the fuchsias and grown-on plug-plants for summer tubs out of the 2 greenhouses so that this lot can be planted out in their place (this weekend), so they've been a bit in the way) I might be able to do some sorting spells. Possibly.
... And no Mr BW, thank you, we do not need you telling them that it has actually now been like this for 2 years, since we had to empty The Coven Attic into The Inner Coven so the bui1ders could make The Additional Greenhouse for early spring use Studio :) At least my Witchy Mess is confined to one room.

Perhaps you have Friday Questions that you think should be asked in future?

(NB Following a huge spam attack a couple of weeks ago, the comments are still recuperating - if you get a 'Page not found' don't worry, your comment almost certainly has been noted and will be there if you close the page, wait a few seconds, then reopen it again. Thanks to those who've emailed to let me know and apologies for the temporary annoyance.)

Wednesday

Being suspicious that this current good weather (our outside thermometer measured over 30 degrees yesterday and the day before) could be the summer this year, as happened last year, I am going to switch off my computer and go and do something more interesting instead. If the giant tadpole doesn't eat me first.

Bank Holiday Surrealism

Yesterday it was very sunny.

We went on a 115 mile epic voyage in Mi1dred.

Some of Mi1dred's other classic friends went too.

They were all younger than her.

But everytime we stopped, people looked at her most.

We went down some leafy lanes with grass in the centre of them that we didn't know about.
Even though they were only about 2 miles from The Coven.

They don't seem to be on a latest edition 1:25,000 OS map.

Or on the edition before.

We went on a motorway too.

Mi1dred was scared.

But not as scared as Mr BW.

Even caravans passed Mi1dred.

I shouted, "Poo bag!" at a dog owner with a crappy dog who wasn't using one.

We kept seeing piles of clothes by the sides of roads.

Then we went to see a Nice Lady who gave us tadpoles and a black sheep's f1eece.

One of the big tadpoles ate one of the little tadpoles for tea.

The f1eece was nice and soft.

And had enjoyed its afternoon in the sun on a candlewick bedspread on the Nice Lady's lawn.

We had tea with the Nice Lady and her husband.

The End.

We'll keep the Blue flag flying here :)

I do like the Blueness of the national electoral map. Not that it represents my political stance (I hate them all equally, Vive the BW Party! Good grief, I've just found it was over 3 years ago that I last published any of my Manifesto - click and then scroll down to April 22nd and previous for all 14 parts!), but the Blue is pleasing to me.

We didn't have elections here, but I'm still reeling from the shock of H@rlow (where I once worked) going Blue. Must have been a 15 year old spell finally coming to fruition. That place really is the pits of the earth.

Mr BW has just come home and reported that R2 news is saying that some bookies are paying out on Boris. Given that bookies aren't known for generosity, I'd say that changes are afoot for London.

I'm undecided about whether it will be a good thing. Once an ardent Ken fan (I was a student in London in the 80s in the early days of his London career), I think he (and his cronies) has (have) become very arrogant and dogmatic in his old age. Yes, a lot has been achieved, but there have been a lot of bad decisions, noses in troughs and money wasted or mis-spent in recent years too.

Do you think Boris will get a makeover like Margaret Thatcher did when she came to power? I've just discovered that he's younger than me. And he's got dual nationality. Fascinating. But not so much that I sought to read it before now.

And I want to know how counting a few ballot papers is taking so much longer than expected (latest estimate for results, 10pm). Are they allowing the vote counters to use their mobile phones or something? The hours in every working day in this country that must be wasted on trivial and inconsequential text messaging.

Ah... wait... news just in - one of the counting machines has broken down... A sign of things to come? Or a way of delaying the result so Ken can clear his stuff out of City Hall? Probably not for as long as they did in Zimbabwe though.

Friday Question

Tempting though it is to ask you to respond to Harriet Harman's, ""What we've got to do is be more focused on listening to people and more in touch!" assertion on R4 this morning, and happy as I may be that Golden Brown has been proved to have screwed things up more than Bliar (who must be laughing like a drain today - where does that expression come from?), I think there's more than enough coverage of that issue already. So let's have some trivia instead.

What gadget or device that you use regularly could benefit from modification to make it more user friendly?

I'm voting for those pound coin gadgets on the front of supermarket trolleys. The ones that are meant to ensure you return trolleys in a neat and orderly way. They constantly jam and the dangling chain bits are always getting caught up in the bars of other trolleys. There must be a better way.

Business Culture

Just picking up and elevating a comment from the post below about last night's Apprentice, Dave (have you guessed the name of his baby-to-be yet?) said,

It always amazes me that these, apparently bright, savvy business people can come up with such stupid ideas and make such stupid decisions.

To which I replied,

Do you think they are? I think they're a bunch of nasty scheming wannabes, who haven't a hope in hell of making it any other way.

Would you want to work for, or even with, any of them?

I have to admit that I only half-watch the programme if I happen to be in the room when Mr BW has it on as I have absolutely no respect for how Alan Sugar speaks to people. Bullies and people in positions of 'power' who belittle and treat others the way he does are, I believe, responsible for more unhappiness and sick days in this country than anything else.

Having such a high profile programme on prime time BBC TV, with such characters, just encourages people to think that the only way to be successful is to bully and back-stab, so perpetuating a sick culture of management.

But what are the characteristics of a good boss?

And a bad boss?

May 1st

How did it get to May Day already? And isn't it cold for the time of year?

I turned the central heating off at the beginning of April (probably 3 weeks earlier than normal) when the price of a litre of heating oil went above 50p for the first time. I just refuse to pay that much, so we need to conserve what we have left in the tank. The Middle East holds the rest of the world to ransom methinks. And more to come as the Far East follows suit when it sells us back (at vast cost) all the skills we have outsourced to there and so lost from our own population.

Luckily we have an Aga that provides background warmth throughout the house, as well as providing cooking, drying and some of the hot water (which in turn heats a towel rail heat-leak that keeps the chill off the main bathroom), and two woodburners, one in the lounge (downstairs) and one in the Studio (upstairs), and we still have a huge pile of Jenga blocks recycled from the extension 2 years ago, so heating (when necessary) is free. So we haven't been cold, although it is cold.

Speechless

3 hours to determine the placement of an apostrophe?!

Choosing Baby Names

Tales about how expecting parents select potential names for their unborn child(ren) are not exactly uncommon. People seem to have a lot of trouble choosing that 'perfect' moniker. Unless, of course, they choose to name them after their favourite pop star / F1 driver / BB
contestant.

We're the same, at least when it comes to girl's names. In fact, I'm sure I blogged about it 3-4 years ago when we were last going through this but I can't be bothered to find the post now. With boy's names, we don't have any difficulty at all. We chose our son's name (he's known as 'Cirrus' in this part of blogland but that's obviously not what it says on his birth certificate) long before L got pregnant and we decided upon a second boy's name (first and middle) while she was pregnant. But we never could choose a girl's name that we were both totally happy with. By the time Cirrus was born, we did have a name ready in case it was a girl but I suspect I was more happy with it than L, since it's not longer on the table.

So, fast forward three years and L is pregnant again and we still have trouble. L will suggest a name and I'll screw my face up in displeasure. Or vice versa. L gets to six months and we still don't have a name to use if 'it' turns out to be 'she'.

Before I tell you how we finally solved this problem, let me first tell you about the sort of names we like. For a start, we prefer traditional names, so no Britneys or Jensens or Jades. We also like long, 3-4 syllable names that have a single syllable shortening.

Cirrus' name fits this perfectly. We also have to cope with compatibility problems with our surname. Suffice it to say that rules out names like Joshua and Amy (not that we'd have chosen either of those specifically), which cuts down the available pot of names even further.

So, how have we now ended up with the name sorted, ready for the big day in <=12 weeks? In the end it was simple; L just asked Cirrus (who's barely three) what we should call the baby if it is a girl. He thought about it for a second or so and uttered a single syllable. L and I looked at each other. It was perfect. There's an obvious lengthening that fulfils all of our other criteria and that, it turns out, we both really like. It was then relatively simple to choose a middle name from among the rejected names and within five minutes it was all settled and we were wondering how it could have been so difficult.

There we are then. If we have a daughter in July, then we will one day be able to tell her that her brother had a hand in naming her.

For anybody who's now totally confused, that was a Guest Post from Dave, once of Clear Blue Skies, who some of you will remember (blimey, last post nearly 3 years ago!). It's always nice to have the opportunity to catch up with once-bloggers. And even nicer when one of them sends you a Guest Post when you're too exhausted to write your own posts :)

I asked and Dave said that we can guess what the name is, and he will confirm if anyone gets it correct.

Thought for the day

The highest form of human intelligence is the ability to observe without evaluating.

- Krishnamurti

Now we are 14

Mr BW was going to work today. I did have things to do today.

But, we decided at 8 o'clock to forget everything and just go somewhere.

Just occasionally it's good to do things like that.

The secret to our longevity? Communication. And consideration. Far too many people give up on far too many relationships, and go on to have the same problems over and over, because they never work out what goes wrong for them. Erm, see just below.

Thought for the day

We live in a world where you're allowed to say anything, but nothing's listened to.

- Will Self

Now I'm a believer

Doctor Who is real I tell you.

The proof: last night I was shouting grammar corrections at the telly as I normally do (generally relating to less/fewer, was/were, did/done), and he 'heard' and immediately corrected the person I was yelling at! (was/were - did you spot it?)

That's impressive.

*looks anew at satnav*

And Mr BW heard the first cuckoo last night as he was putting the children to bed and setting the anti-Mr Bushy-Tail alarm (one of these, found at a third of this price in a cheap shop, mounted on a suitably aligned post and sited inside a big ice-cream container from the days when they made sensible reusuable containers and we ate ice-cream). We first heard it on the exact same Saturday in April last year. How do they do that?

The 100th Make Blue Witch Laugh Award

And finally we've made 100. I think we should actually be on 516 or so, because this did used to be a weekly feature, but you lot just aren't funny enough any more. Or maybe it's me. Who knows.

Here's a bithday card for us.

Oh, no, wait, that's wrong, it was actually for Nan Mr BW who is 95 today.

Although according to her it isn't her birthday, and she now seems to be living in an era about 35 years ago, but that's probably no bad thing, and just proves that she's got more sense than the rest of us.

For some reason they don't seem to make 95th birthday cards - I only found one, in a church in Suffolk, while we were out last Sunday with Mi1dred - and strangely it had one of Mi1dred's cousins on it, but I decided that 2 cards were better than one, and it gave Nan Mr BW the choice of being 9, 5, 59, or 56, if 95 didn't appeal.

Talking of numbers, as I predicted earlier in the week, the winner of the Centennial Award is commentator Nigel.

I'm not convinced he thought he was being funny when he was attempting to explain circles and triangles to most of the rest of us, and I'm fairly convinced that probably no-one else will have found it the least bit funny, but, well, you all know I'm not normal by now, don't you? :)

Well done Nigel. I'll double the sweet sticky stuff points from 2 to 4 as it's the 100th, so you only have 6 to go. The Stripey Buzzy Familiars are working on your prize as we speak because it's been a lovely sunny 23 degree day here; probably the warmest day of the year so far, although that's not hard. Compared to this week last year everything in the garden, and in the garden we went to this afternoon (where we also went a year ago for Nan Mr BW's 94th) is way behind - probably 2 - 3 weeks we reckon.

Friday questions

How far do you travel to work and by what method?

How long does your journey take and how long would it take if you had to use public transport, if you don't already (that includes walking to the nearest place where there might be any, or walking all the way if there isn't any).