The weather has turned mild and wet — Atlantic weather, which we’re pleased to see after bucketloads of Arctic. And just today, the first of the snowdrops has come out! There’s a spot on the bank which must be particularly warm and sheltered, because they’re always the harbingers, and there they are, nodding their […]
The title? Nothing to do with chromosomes, dearie. It’s from a rebus which has been going around for a while — perhaps centuries — yy ur, yy ub, icur yy for me, which is mildly interesting because it makes letters do three different things. Only the last two words are words, and the two ys […]
I was checking through the spam filter (a dismal congeries of pornography, gambling, dodgy credit and so forth, by & large), as I do most days, while simultaneously conducting a conversation with the Professor. I registered a couple of highly cogent-looking comments about teenage vampires which I seem to have lost. I’ve been through the […]
We have had a day out! Pause for effect. When Dr Biswell and Mr Wil were here we contrived a day out on 31 December, our first excursion since September, duly recorded in the annals of the blog. Today we indulged ourselves in another day off which took us outside Aberdeenshire — I was […]
I had the most peculiar misadventure last night. It was late, I was tired, and I’d been staring at a screen for a long time. When I finally got into bed, I started to take my contact lenses out. I always do this sitting up in bed, and generally in some haste since Miss Kit […]
I spent the day in the Vinegar Works, dealing with mountains of essays and stuff. I have to admit that the business of shuffling all the evidence of each individual’s meritorious term, in alphabetic order, filling in spreadsheets and all that, drives me distracted. Anyway, it has to be done, it took most of the […]
I’m just back from London, where I’ve been having an interesting few days. The principal reason was to spend a day filming for a documentary on Ed, though I hoped also to wedge in a visit to my agent, see a friend, visit one of the few shoe-shops I trust, go to a branch of […]
This winter seems to be going through all the tedious evolutions of which a winter is capable. We had snow (O did we have snow). We had Very Cold Mud. We had fog, and its peculiarly Scottish cousin, haar. We had temperatures, at intervals, down to twenty(C) below. We had, briefly, a flood, before Hero […]
The Christmas Cactus has come into flower. It gradually turned pink, and the flowers turn out to be somewhat like turbo fuchsias. It’s most attractive and as advertised, hasn’t died yet, nor does it seem to be thinking of a Better World — it really looks quite healthy. Other domestic news: on the plus side, […]
Miss T’s parents very kindly took me shopping this evening. When I got in the car, Miss T’s mother asked me if I’d like a Christmas pudding. ‘No’, I said. ‘I’d better throw it away, then’, she replied. Further conversation revealed that the pudding was one of those complicated sort of presents which you get […]
Dr Biswell and Mr Wil managed to make it up from Manchester on Wednesday, and we have been enjoying the company. Poor Mr Wil is I think under the impression that he has been time-travelling. The chaps went off to Turriff’s Independent Department Store the day before yesterday, because we wanted a couple more sheets […]