Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Yesterday's XKCD

Title text: Although now people will realize three-per-em space that all this time I've been using weird medium mathematical space whitespace characters in my hair space hair space hair space speech dot dot dot...

 

@NigelJ I think @Tidemark means that it should be Shoemakers' Museum.

 

Aaah!
However it is not the Museum of Shoemakers (lots of wax models of shoemakers;or a lot of old cobblers) it is actually a Museum of Shoemaking.

 

Gardening, eh? There I was, wandering round the weeds the other day, thinking I really should get off my backside and at least tidy up the path to make it visible, when I saw a baby Clematis struggling to survive in all the chaos.

I dug it up and put it into a nice big pot with lots of lovely compost.

This morning, I looked at its leaves and thought how exotic they looked. Not at all like all my other Clematis plants. Ooh, maybe I’ve got lucky!

I looked it up.

Old Man’s Beard.

I’ve never seen one round here. A bird must have delivered it. Ah well, I’ll take it for a walk come the winter time….

 

In my garden I find this to be a malicous weed and I pull out a lot of seedlings every year. The seed blows in from the scrub behind me.

 

Looking it up, it does seem to have originated and be concentrated in the southern half of England. It must be moving north, maybe with the change in the climate.

 

When I was a kid there was an area of woodland that had been left to its own devices.
There was vines hanging from the treetops, we used to swing on them tarzan style .
It was many years before I recognised it as old man's beard,the stems get very thick and long in the right conditions.

I think it like's chalky conditions best.

 

Plenty down here in Somerset and we're not chalky. I never realised there were parts of the country that didn't have it!

 

We did the same many years ago, i did go back the the wood but all vines are gone now may be too much swinging, i know we buy lots of Bannans but.......

 

Most have gone around here now but I noticed a good thick one a while back.
I cant swing on them now.

 

We have an event near by this weekend, so we don't go out because of the way some people drive (single track road) and they don't think that no one else will be coming around the blind bends + some of them are on their bleeding phone!!!!!!!!
Last year i recorded 18 drivers using phones in 1 hour!!!!

 

@Jiffy, we have lots of narrow lanes round here, and have to be extra careful during summer holidays. A lot of visitors drive as if they were on normal width roads, and come round corners as if they were on a one way street. The locals all know where the danger points are, and drive accordingly, and also take note of where the passing points are. A lot of unnecessary reversing has to take place.
We came round a sharp narrow bend over a bridge on the way home yesterday, and met two cyclists at high speed in the middle of the road. Fortunately for them, OH was driving very sensibly as usual, but they didn’t miss us by much. Ridiculous, we might have had a bit of damage to the bodywork, but they could have been dead.

 

This is people THAT should know better because if boot was on the other foot you would be report for driving to close & fast, just see a sign saying "slow childen & animals yet the poeple that but it up don't do as they say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! may be it only applys to outside of their home but sod everywhere else anyway why is there slow childen + animals in the road
Just waiting for a big bang but for some stange mowment it doesn't happen

 

Lots of narrow lanes round here and bends with the wrong camber. Most of the locals are sensible but cyclists tend to come in pairs or groups and be slow to react when cars are coming, especially the almost silent leccy jobs.

The worst tho are the holiday drivers who behave as tho there's no-one else using the roads and hog the middle then don't want to get their shiny wheels on the verge when someone comes the other way. Bad parkers too and ignore stop signs then act surprised and offended when someone else appears at a junction and has right of way.

 

Was reading an article yesterday about a change to all GP surgeries in England from 1 Oct. Apparently when you ring to make an appt you will be asked why and, having proffered the gory details, will be told you will be contacted within one day. Then all the appt requests will be looked at and, according to need, will be given either an appt for that day or the next one, in person or by phone, or told to use a pharmacy or whatever.

So, this aims to sort out the 8 am scramble for slots, which is good, but it does rely on staff being able to tell from a written sentence or two what is urgent and what can wait. Still, we will see how it pans out.