An outbreak of hysteria-1N1 Virus

12°C, rain threatened, but pulled its punches in the end.

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News: Viruses are able to turn people bonkers: Guardian. It seems that self-replicating semi-crystalline proteins can seriously damage rationalism. We now have a couple of people here in Britain with H1N1, they have mild symptoms and will recover in a few days. Contrast that with the thousands who die from ‘flu every year in this country under normal circumstances anyway.. Even in Mexico, it seem that we don’t know whether the pig flu killed those hundreds of people or did they have the flu and die of something else. The statistics just don’t exist to answer that one. I’m prepared to listen to Dr. Rosemary Leonard, she sounds like the sensible one.

This house remains calm.

Sparrow & Crow

15°C, heavy rain, dry now.

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CDs: The Sparrow & The Crow: I’d swear I ordered this on LP.
The Rip: Portishead

Through the glory of life
I will scatter on the floor
Disappointed and sore
And in my thoughts I have bled
For the riddles I’ve been fed
Another lie moves over

A Woman, A Man walked by

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

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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

10°C, rain, non-stop rain

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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.

In Bruges

11°C, cloud, but blue sky west.

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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.
  

Saxifrage & Eidleweiss

10°C, windy, but sunny too.

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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

11°C. NW winds, sunny intervals.

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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 .
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

15°C, getting danker

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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

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

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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.