Trigger Warning: FUCK TRIGGER WARNINGS!

I've been drinking so this will get fubar.

A friend (who I shan't name) reposted on facebook a rather charming quote by Richard Dawkins, to wit: "Atheists are a race.  Anyone who mounts an argument against atheists is a racist, atheophobic bigot."  With a comment to the effect that God should smite him.  I replied that Dawkins is a dickhead but that atheophobia is as much of a thing as theophobia.

My friend said that atheism is dominant in society and that theists are sidelined.  I countered that while this is true in the Left, in Queer spaces, and in the cold war USSR, it is not true of Britain as a whole.

  We are in fact a pseudotheocracy wherein the state religion (C of E), whilst not the only lawful religion, nevertheless has exclusive powers within the legislative process.  Literally, the head of the state religion, who is also the head of state, can lawfully veto any law without having to give grounds and is indeed above the law.  Other than the fact that citizens are not mandated to be C of E we're pretty damn close to a textbook theocracy.

  To add to that on a more personal note: as an adult I have been ordered on more than one occasion to attend church and to sing hymns on pain of spending time in the Glasshouse and ending up with a criminal record.  Yes in Britain, yes in the 21st century!  Do I need to go on?

  My experiences were compared first to crying heterophobia and then to toxic masculinity.  My friend then said that I was triggering them and that unless I agreed to disagree and to stick to that (basically to shut my mouth and never again say on facebook that atheophobia is legit a thing) then they would have no choice but to unfriend me for the good of their own mental health.

Go for it mate!

  See the thing about what we might call "the safer-space discourse", terms like trigger warnings and such, is that they started out about sensible things.  Rape, domestic violence, hate crimes.  The kind of shit that fucks people up real bad.  This is not a bad thing.  We need an accessible society where people who've been traumatised by these events can rehabilitate themselves, that's all to the good.  These days though you'll spend ten minutes getting chewed out for not putting a trigger warning on an article about spiders just in case it "triggers" the arachnophobes.  Half of those times it won't even be the arachnophobes saying it, just a daft prick wanting a fight!

  Trigger is a PTSD term by the way.  If you've not been subject to the kind of violence that can cause PTSD then throwing the word trigger around like that is appropriation, but I digress.

  These days also I see people using talk of triggering to play Oppression Olympics, or to shut people up whose views they don't like.  I see people using it when they've said something stupid and can't think of any other way of defending it.  I see people using it to score cheap political points.

I'm sick of it, fucking pack it in!

Safer Space Discourse is legit when there's a real need for it, like when discussing rape, domestic violence, hate crimes and the like.  You need trigger warnings when you might actually trigger someone's actual PTSD and do them some actual mental harm.  For all other purposes you can shove your trigger warnings up your arse, I'm done with 'em.  Grow up and have some fucking integrity, the lot of you!

I'm going to sleep.  Fucking internet liberals.

Bulbs

I've been putting bulbs in for the new year.  

Behind the pear tree I've put in crocus bulbs.  They'll come up in Spring and hopefully they'll set seed.  I'd love for some pretty flowers to become naturalised in the garden.  I'll be planting bluebell bulbs in the January to the same purpose.  In both cases, crocus and bluebell, they'll grow in the wee nooks between other plants without bothering anything.  

They go up as far as the end of the fence, the full width.  Against the wall there in back I intend to grow climbing roses up and along the wall.  I'm considering growing Elder against the fence, so it's likely that not all of my crocuses will grow to flower, but with 75 bulbs in the ground you can be sure that a few will.  

In the island I've sown French garlic cloves.  Garlic is a magic thing: break a bulb down into cloves, sow the cloves 4" apart, and each clove becomes a whole bulb!  With anything from eight to sixteen cloves in a bulb, varying by cultivar, you have a greater than exponential increase if you replant every clove.  I shan't though.  I'm going to select for my five or six biggest bulbs each year and the rest will go to the kitchen, either for braiding and drying or for pickling.  They need a nice sharp frost in the Winter in order to divide out into bulbs, otherwise you just get a slightly larger clove than the one you buried, so with that in mind I'll be hoping for a good chill in the Winter.  Apples are a bit like that too, they need a cold Winter to produce a good yield.  

The garlic's in under the bark, to the left of the rosemary and this side of the sage.  The bark's a little thick just now, but that'll rot down over the Winter and put some carbon in the soil, mitigating the worst of any frost.  I'm quite tempted to close off this end of the island with a fan-trained damson, as the extra fruit will be very welcome.  

Still waiting on my qualification and transcript.  I've earned a distinction at HNC, which is all very wonderful, but it's doing me no good if I don't have the paperwork to show to universities or potential employers.  I'm feeling rather stuck right now and I don't like it, but with luck I'll have it all sorted ready to apply for the January intake.  

J

Training the Jasmine

The Jasmine (J. officinale) has gotten big, but it's been growing towards a point.  I want it to spread; so I've strung my remaining wire over the arbour, untangled the plant from itself, separated the larger vines and threaded them around the arbour framework with the support of the wire.

It looks overwired right now, but you look again in a year from now...

I've got some wire running to the frontpiece, which should promote curtaining (which is awesome!)

Cuteness happened.  Bloody annoying that he's dug up my garlic, but cute all the same.  

I borrowed a brazier.  Ten minutes later I was going "I HAVE GOT TO GET ME ONE OF THESE!"

And I've been getting equipped for college.  I'm weak on maths so I've been reading this a lot. 

Lastly then: I saw a caterpillar in the garden; big hairy bugger.  Caterpillars are unique to the butterfly or moth they become, but I've not found a match.  Any ideas?

Later.  Jx

Grumble grumble

Throat bug and feeling fluey.  Taken to bed all weekend with a rooibos and lemon and just trying to RPG my way through it.  Nobody bother me until Monday.

Repotting, reseeding and Georgeproofing

Mike got sick again.  Mature leaves turned red, new leaves turned black.  Bit of a disaster really, and fearing fungus I decided that a windowsill was no place for a tree.  I moved him to an outdoor pot and as I took him out of the existing pot I was met with an almighty reek.  The compost in his pot was rotting around the roots!  Aaaargh!  So I scraped as much away as I dared and binned it.  I took off some diseased roots, patted the rootball dry with a towel and applied mycorrhizal fungus.  He's been potted in fresh compost in a bigger pot with a bed of stones and a topdressing of further stones.  I've pruned all affected leaves and moved Mike out front, where he looks thoroughly forlorn.

I've mentioned previously that George is in the habit of climbing into the Strawbrary while he barks into the dark.  Well, I think I've got him foiled:

If he gets through a trellis with a bush behind it then he's some kind of Houdini dog!

Lastly then, the lawn has been reseeded.  This is it now, and fingers crossed it'll be thicker than thick in a month's time.  

Feels like for the past few days I've done little but grafting, eating and sleeping.  With emphasis on the eating and sleeping.  I've even set Skyrim aside!  Tonight then I'm going to get squared away and make some time for me.  I'll knock together a Baileys hot chocolate, colonise the couch and put a game on.  I haven't played Dragon Age in a while...

Alliums, Blackcurrants and Cuteness

Got another three sacks of that organic, peat-free compost that I like (and it's great that it's 3 big sacks for £12), and I've planted up the second bed.  This one's the allium bed.  I've planted, from the left:
Leeks (Musselburgh), Onions (Ailsa Craig), Garlic (buggered if I know).

 The allium bed is shallower than the potato bed for now as I had to top up the potato bed with half a sack of compost because somebody has been digging up my spuds.  And my lawn.  Somebody who's going the right way towards being a furry hat with earflaps.

The lawn's greened up a treat; but in a week or two I'm gonna feel the need, the need for a reseed.

Now George likes to climb into the Strawbrary via a rip he's made in the netting at the back, so that he can get as close as possible to the cat that lives a few doors Eastward and over the back before barking furiously.  This is a behaviour we've tried to discourage in various ways, of course, but still he rips the netting as fast as I can fix it.  So today I've planted a big blackcurrant plant in that corner, and I'll be putting a trellis over it just as soon as the stain has dried.  That'll go some way toward excluding George and keeping my strawberries from being trampled any further.

Lastly then, because I did indeed promise cuteness:

George, of course... ;p

Slowed again

So the tumble dryer broke.  In a household this big, a broken dryer is not good news.  I've now got a line across most of the garden to get the clothes dry in this glorious sunshine; meaning I can't be dragging pallets about and staining wood for fear of ballsing up the laundry.  This limits my worktime severely, but there's bugger all I can do about it.

Meanwhile, the front ramp needs work done.  To facilitate this, the buddleia's going.  Once the work is done on the ramp I'll probably put in a pergola.  Pics to follow.

Et voila, pics!  How naked does that ramp look?  Makes the place look like a GP surgery.  Plus I've finally gotten to all the rubbish that berks have shoved into my hedge when they couldn't find a bin.  It filled a sack and was mostly comprised of empty cans of cheap lager.

Meanwhile, is there anything that conveys the wonder of nature more succinctly than just watching a bud unfold?  

By next post I should hopefully have my lawn replanted, unless drama has ensued.  

Shed dramas

The shed - paid for before I thumped my right hand - is being delivered Ikea-style on Monday.  I'm in no fit state to build a shed, though thankfully I've got help.

I went up to B&Q in Chiswick today to pick up some woodstain: 2.5L of Cuprinol garden shades in Iris if I could get it, else Barleywood.  I've been planning where the shed is going for well over a year now and I always pictured it as stained dark blue with the trim (doorframe, corner edgings) painted gloss white.  I don't know why I pictured those colours, but I did, and now that's what my shed looks like.

Turns out they do the range in 2.5L, and they do both Iris and Barleywood, but they don't do either of those colours in 2.5L.  They stock everything but dark blue in 2.5L.  Bugger.  I could buy two 1L cans, but they're £14 apiece while a 2.5L can would be £19, meaning I'd be paying damn near 150% the price for only 80% the amount of woodstain.  Sod that for a laugh!

So the shed's coming, sure as Winter in Westeros, but I've got no stain, half a hand, and I've still not built the bearers yet.

Shit.

Roll on the weekend!

So the first of my sledgehammer wounds has healed over, leaving a patch of rough skin.  The second keeps catching things and reopening, but it'll heal eventually.  The bones no longer hurt, though the joints and muscles are still problematic.

Saturday I'm going to Kew again.  Sunday I'm resuming light work in the garden.  Monday I get to pick up the xbox again - Commander Shepard has been at a loss without me!

The care work is at an end thanks to a restructuring of how budgets are assigned - Tory bastards - so I'm looking for work.  Squires, Homebase or Wickes would be ideal for me, but anything's alright.

I've been passing the time by revisiting The Kingkiller Chronicles.  Honestly, there's scarcely such thing as too much of that dodgy little Ruh bastard.  I've also been taking bets on the events of The Doors of Stone, such as:

Lorren is involved with the Amyr,
Meluen is Kvothe's aunt,
Denna dies,
Ambrose kills Simmon in Kvothe's place, Kvothe kills Ambrose,
Kilvin was a boy soldier,
Arwyl sponsors Kvothe to El'the
The plot somehow turns on Elodin.
Not a clue what happens with Wilem, though again I doubt he survives.
Kvothe doesn't manage to kill the Seven.

We shall see.  In the meantime I'll be picking up the second half of A Dance with Dragons shortly.  I've no idea where this one's going so spoilers will be nutted.

On complaints

It's needed saying for a while now: you have an absolute right to complain about the behaviour of another person.  You do not have an absolute right to see that person punished if they've done nothing wrong.

Now in this oft-repeated story there are two stereotypes who crop up again and again.  We have the Grumpy Granny, and we have Daily Mail Bloke.  The victim can be practically anybody, though teenagers, ethnic minorities, the working class and the poor all seem to have a greater than average tendency to fall victim to this.  Note that the name Daily Mail Bloke refers to the mindset of your average Daily Mail reader rather than the Daily Mail itself.  Although...

Scene:  A sunny Saturday afternoon.  A bunch of teenage boys are sitting on a park bench, discussing Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Alright, they're discussing football and women.  A constable approaches...

Copper:  Alright lads, do you mind telling me what you're doing here?

Boys:  Just talking with my friends, passing the day.  

Copper:  I'm afraid we've had a complaint from the Grumpy Granny, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave.  

Boys:  But we haven't done anything, we're just sitting here.  

Copper:  Yes, but we've had a complaint, you see.  We have to do something because we've had a complaint.  

I overhear this same discussion once a week around here.  It's ridiculous that people think like this.  We are all citizens, we all have a right to enjoy our city in whatever lawful way we see fit, yet half a dozen citizens at a time can have that right impinged upon by the authorities because the Grumpy Granny says she doesn't like the look of them.  It's a joke!

Radnor Gardens, the wee park at the bottom of my street, is routinely used by anglers fishing in the Thames. A couple months ago, Daily Mail Bloke walked up to an angler to tell him that he didn't like the look of him.  The angler - quite correctly - told Daily Mail Bloke to piss off.  Daily Mail Bloke went home and complained to the council that "the fishermen in Radnor Gardens are all very rude and antisocial".  Again, the word of one man against the characters of many.  Sure enough, fishing was banned for a fortnight in Radnor Gardens.

Are we serious?  Are we as a society so hellbent on ensuring that no complaint goes unremedied that we are willing to suspend all rights to leisure time just in case the oversensitive, bigoted sensibilities of the Grumpy Granny and Daily Mail Bloke are slighted by our presence?

No, but nor will we do anything about it.

 

 

 

 

Beds and other news.

So the builders have finished and I'm getting in the first of the raised beds.  I'm putting in four of the main beds, so I'll be growing potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, neeps and cabbages.  No photos until it's done because right now it all looks fuck-ugly.

This is being hampered somewhat by the fact that I bashed myself in the hand with a sledgehammer yesterday.  The right hand.  The hand that was holding the sledgehammer.  I'm actually impressed.  It's swollen, turning purple, two fingers are lacerated, but no bones are broken.

Having bugger all else to do this weekend, I'm thinking I'll jump the train down to Egham for a night at the opera, the new one about the Ap-ocalypse.

Until next time.

Edit: apparently my hand's a mess. The joints function but I've got periosteal cracks, weakened tendons, an injured pollical system, the ulnar nerve got banged up pretty good. 4 weeks light duties: no heavy lifting, no heat, no xbox; lest I give myself a crippled hand.

Woodcare

  Thanks to the efforts of the weather, crap builders and one inconsiderate smoker (who has been soundly bollocked, fear not), my bench is in a bit of a sorry state.  I've brought it in, planed it and sanded it.  I also improved it by using the plane to round off the corners, making it more comfortable.  Granddad Rab would be proud-ish.  I'll give it another sanding tomorrow morning then varnish it.  Jobs like these make me wish I still owned a belt sander (we lost it in a move), so when I've a few bob spare I'll have to have a shufti on ebay.

  I picked up a trio of birdhouses today; they'll also go up tomorrow.  I can make my own easily enough, but I had a coupon that made these more economical to buy.  They're of a size to attract tits to the garden - stop sniggering!  Got dirty minds the lot o' youse!  Anywho, there's something of a debate on painting and/or staining birdhouses.  Some say do it, it makes them look pretty and can ensure that they're in keeping with the look of the garden.  Others say don't do it, that you don't know what chemicals are in your paint or stain and that it might poison the birds.  

  I have my own line of reasoning on the matter, and that is that if you put a glass over the entry hole and draw round it, then only paint outside the line, you should minimise the likelihood of stuff getting on the bird.  You should also refrain from painting the roof, as water on the roof might drip in through a gap in the wood, and don't paint over the baseplate.  The baseplate has gaps around it to allow air in and to allow any water that gets in to drain away, protecting nestlings from drowning or suffocation.  Painting this can occlude the gap and cause these problems.  Finally, never paint or stain the inside of the birdhouse.  This should remain largely dry in use, it may even pick up oil from the bird's feathers, so there is really no need to introduce chemicals into such an enclosed environment.  

Lastly then, I've found out how foxes are getting into the garden.  It's hard to see scale in a vertical photo, but this lot is six feet high!

Pics of the finished bench and the birdhouses in situ will appear either tomorrow or Tuesday.  FSM knows what I'm gonna do about Steptoe's Yard...

Rhizobium woes

Thus far, my beans aren't nodulating.  I still don't know if the deficiency is in cobalt or Rhizobium.  I've been looking online for a cheap way to test for the presence of Co whilst browsing Rhizobium stockists.

  Most places (quite sensibly) won't ship live bacteria to any address that isn't a school or college.  Trouble is that this includes Rhizobium.  Some strains of Rhizobium can infect humans, but not the same ones that infect beans.  Thus far, the only place I've found that'll sell me Rhizobium will also sell me Penicillium, Candida, and Staphylococcus. OH HELL NO!  I shan't publish the address because I don't want to encourage or facilitate stupidity.

  Staphylococcus is the genus which includes the dreaded MRSA.  Whilst certainly dreaded, MRSA lives on the skin of 1-in-3 of us and is only likely to harm you if you have an open wound or a compromised immune system.  Still, after the huge media flap over MRSA (ethical journalism FAIL!), you'd think they'd be careful with Staphylococcus.

  Penicillium gives us penicillin.  Penicillin is restricted for a good reason, in that overuse of it is what started this whole superbug fiasco in the first place.  People should not be making batches of dubious penicillin in their garden sheds.

  Candida is a fungus that gives you ringworm or thrush.  Bloodstream infections from Candida have a mortality rate of between forty and fifty percent.  A vengeful, twisted eejit who got hold of a batch of Candida could load up the Karcher, take it down to Westfield and give ten thousand people a dose of thrush.  It also makes wine go off and I can't be having that!

Suffice it to say that I shan't be shopping at a place so reckless as to offer any germs to anyone.

  So, I'm back to square one.  A mate's dad grows V. faba and he gets N fixation just fine, so I'm trying to get a clod of his soil to spread on mine.  He's fine with it, the only problem is he's down in Southampton.  Next time I visit Ro I'll stop by, but that won't be for a while yet.

I best get working on that Co test...

I shouldn't have to say it!

Grr!  The world is annoying me tonight!

My gamertag is SixAgileFingers and I believe that sexism in gaming is BULLSHIT!

That is all.

Flies, bats, other stuff

The composter is attracting flies, even as we are fast approaching the Winter.  This must mean the composter is generating a certain amount of warmth, which is nice.  Getting rid of the flies is something of a must, however.  I don't mind flies, they do their jobs in the ecosystem and the world keeps turning; but they encourage spiders, which I personally quite like but which my sisters get freaked out over.  It's bad to put house spiders out in Winter as they won't last the night, so I resist doing that, but I don't want to swell their numbers by letting a fly explosion run unchecked.  The solution is to assert a biological control over the flies. More spiders are out of the question.  Frogs are crap.  Wasps scare the living shit out of me.  Birds can be great, but there's quite a spread with birds and you don't know when putting in a bird box whether you'll attract the sort of bird that likes flies or the sort of bird that likes your crops.

I've decided on bats.  London has many species of bat, and Strawberry Hill comes alive at dusk with the tiny, leathery sound of pipistrelles in flight.  I'm picking up a pair of bat boxes tomorrow which I'll fit high up in the big Maple just as soon as I can get ten minutes use of an extension ladder.  Eventually I'll set up BatCam as part of the BirdCam project, but for now the priority is pest control.  It's also nice to be able to offer shelter to an endangered species.

I'll need to stain the bat boxes so as to protect the wood from the elements.  Should I stain them a blending colour like green or brown?  Red like the fences?  Something like purple or blue to be bold yet stylish?  Something that really sticks out like a neon pink?  Or should I stain them black and then paint a little batman symbol on the front?  Decisions decisions...

Mike's doing well.  The beans are doing well.  The strawbs are doing well.  The lawn has a hole in it.  Those Thymus are doing well, though I still never figured out that 'lilac' business.  The brambles seem to be doing alright, to the point that two of them have shown overt growth while a third is budding.

I'm getting a budget from the household in January to make improvements to the garden, which should be sufficient to finance a shed, the beds, and a greenhouse tent.  This is awesome!  I mentioned before that the ramp out front is bridging the DPC and needs to be replaced, well so too does the patio out back.  This'll put the shed, beds and greenhouse on hold until it's done, but it should be done fairly quickly.  I think I'll stain the shed blue an paint the trim (corners, door frame, window frame) white.  I think that'd be bold, but look nice.

In other news: there was some kind of magpie turf war going on in the Buddleia earlier today.  It was quite intense, more so when a shitload of parakeets and a raven got involved.  Bill stayed indoors for that one, and of his own volition too, which I guess means he's smart enough to value his eyeballs.

I need more tea.  Down the bar last night...  Okay, it's a bit of a long story.  Jesse disappears for donkeys' at a time because of work.  When we see him again; he, Liam and myself have a thing of sitting about the bar in our boxers and drinking.  I don't normally have more than two pints on a night out, three at most, so now my head feels like it's been carpeted.

On the other hand, it isn't every day that one's arse gets a round of applause.

Bye xx

Annoyances

  Someone changed the boiler recently.  The new one has a narrower flue and exhaust than the old one, which means the hole in the wall needed mortaring to a narrower gauge so as to be snug to the new pipe.  Fair enough, but they didn't put a tarpaulin down before they started mortaring, so the stuff went everywhere!

• It left indelible streaks on the patio.
• It discoloured a chunk of my bench, which'll mean an afternoon spent sanding and revarnishing.  
• It gummed up the head of my leaf rake.  
• It got on the lawn, shot the pH up through the roof and killed a square metre.  

  Grass likes a pH of between 5 and 7.5.  At 7.5 it gets sick, at 8.5 it dies.  I'm treating the area with citrate over the Winter so that I can try and reseed in the Spring.  Balls!  

In other news: aphids!

Things aren't all bad though.  I need some manure and Nathan (the mate with the horse) has offered to drive some round in the boot of his car.  This comes as a relief, because trying to cart a barrowload of poo on and off the train might raise a few eyebrows at the very least.  He drives up from Redhill to visit his partner in Boston Manor, so Strawberry Hill is about 50p's worth of petrol as a deviation from the normal route.  Easy peasy.

Life ain't all bad.