Monthly Archives: May 2020

amusements, thoughts

Greeking Hell?

It occurred to me the other day that the current cabal occupying the White House bear more than a passing resemblance to the Ancient Greek Underworld (and Roman too). The pantheon seems to stack up roughly as:

Pluto President Trump
Cerberus Mike Pompeo
Caron Vice-President Pence
Eurynomos Jared Kushner
Thanatos Eric Trump
Hypnos Barron Trump
The Eumenides Melania, Ivanka & Tiffany Trump

Or is it, as some have suggested, more like something from Heironymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights?

personal, ramblings

Horrible Times 7

Today is Day 60 of quarantine for me. Yes, I’ve not been off the premises in the last 60 days; Noreen has been out just a handful of times, mostly just to the postbox.

It’s all a bit tedious, although everything seems to have settled down into a new non-rhythm – things aren’t as fraught was they were 6 weeks ago, although the thought of either of us getting this lurgy still induces a fit of the horrors.

Anyway, just by way of a small celebration, I though I would document half a dozen good, and the same number of not so good, things which have happened here in the last 60 days.

Good Not So Good
  • We’re managing to eat extremely well – probably better than normal – to keep the spirits up!
  • Super fruit & veg deliveries from First Choice Produce, as occasional treats
  • Spring sunshine & warmth
  • Roses already in full bloom, and some of the tulips have been magnificent this year (see below)
  • Been doing some gardening – though not as much as is needed
  • Friends helping each other, and looking out for each other
  • It’s just too hard to motivate oneself to do very much
  • Cannot get massage to ease my back
  • Idiot neighbours who have workmen in to do totally inessential work during lockdown
  • Other idiot neighbours who, while one member of the household is ill with Covid-19, have friends round for coffee
  • Death of a friend (not from Covid-19) and no funeral to go to
  • We had to buy a new fridge
Lady Hillingdon Rose
Lady Hillingdon Rose (click image for larger view)
Pink Tulip
Pink Tulip (click image for larger view)

Be good and stay safe, and hopefully the gods will allow us all to survive.

amusements, memes

Ten Things: May

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with May …

Ten Quotes

  1. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
    As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
    To taste whole joys
    [John Donne, 1699] (right)
  2. Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
    [Benjamin Franklin]
  3. My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
    [Indira Gandhi]
  4. If you don’t concern yourself with your wife’s cat, you will lose something irretrievable between you.
    [Haruki Murakami; The Wind-up Bird Chronicle]
  5. Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know?
    [Groucho Marx]
  6. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
    [Caius Petronius]
  7. In converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork.
    [William Shakespeare]
  8. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
    [George Bernard Shaw]
  9. The key aspect that makes the Buddhist attitude toward sex utterly different is that the concept of sin does not exist in Buddhism.
    [Brad Warner; Sex, Sin and Zen] (also right)
  10. No-one else is he and thus cannot deny that he knows when fish are happy.
    [Zhuang Zi]
amusements, natural history, photography

Squirrel

In the latest episode of photos from my Flickr, we have the local squirrel and it’s hunters – finally captured on film this morning thanks to my new Canon 90D and a mega-long zoom lens.

[Click the images to get a larger view on Flickr]

Squirrel 1

We have this grey squirrel around the garden who has almost no hair on its tail. It looks very odd, especially when he sits around doing that squirrel thing of waving its tail. It’s been around all winter and otherwise looks to be in good health, so there’s no obvious reason for the hair loss.

Squirrel 2

As this next photo shows he’s male, and has been observed knocking up the ladies!

Squirrel 3

While he’s happily devouring our bird seed, Tilly cat approaches from starboard …

Squirrel Hunt 2

… and Boy cat undertakes a blocking manoeuvre to port, while desperately hoping the squirrel falls off!

Squirrel Hunt 1

Needless to say, the squirrel won with a good six foot leap from the top of the feeder pole to the apple tree. But it needs to be careful as Tilly is known to have caught a squirrel in the past.

And notice the wildlife-friendly, aka. unkempt, bottom half of our garden. It is sort-of half intended to be woodland floor!