bunn

Last time I took the canoe out, we struggled to get the canoe on top of my car. It weighs about 35 kilos, which is not *that* much, specially when split between two people - but it feels like a lot when you are lifting it over your head, and it's heavier every year.

So! I went on Youtube and found some ideas, and today I built a sort of stepped ramp thing that lets me lift the boat a little bit at a time. The ramp is attached with removeable bolts to a frame on top of the car, and the rubber stops allow you to 'walk' the boat in small steps. Then you just lift the 'ramp' and you can push the boat onto the car. I got it up there all on my own!

( Photos )

Yesterday, the rescue came to collect the foster kittens to be neutered, and later they emailled to say that the ops had gone well, but a home had come up, and would it be OK by us if they went straight to their forever home?

I was a bit sad for their mum, Binx, who was clearly unhappy on her own and calling for them, but so it goes for cats. They don’t get to be families for long ( and often don’t want to be).

But! Then the rescue called to say the new home hadn’t worked out and could we have the kittens back? I was delighted. Binx was even more delighted (even if after 20 minutes of wild kitten shenanigans she looked rather less enthusiastic about them).

Right now they are all snuggled up together and she’s feeding them while they all purr. I’m glad they will have at least another weekend together.
I'll try to get some photos tomorrow.

I have taken the odd photo of the foster-kittens with my proper camera, but most of my photos are terrible phone snaps & short videos which aren't improved by my taking photos indoors in December. Still, the camera you have with you is a better camera than the one you don't.

Gus-gus is the slightly larger kitten with a longer tail, and Dumpling is the kitten with a white tuft under her chin. We think that Gus-gus is male and Dumpling female, but wouldn't want to bet on it.

Here they are growing from 2 weeks to the end of 6 weeks : photos.app.goo.gl/qWiK9rMuBWHCA25U9

I keep thinking of things to post here and then not actually getting around to making the post when I'm sitting at a computer.

Never mind. Happy New Year to you all.

A cheerful apologetic wave to those people who optimistically sent Christmas cards despite my dismal record on that front.

I shall now attempt some bullet points about things I considered posting about in December 2025 but failed to.

- Foster-kitties Tabby and Rosa went back to the rescue having put on a fair bit of weight. They had a potential home offer, but I'm not sure if that fell through, since we haven't heard any more about them.

- Instead we were asked to take in Binx, a black cat with a white tuft, and her two-week-old kittens, Gus-gus and Dumpling. They are now coming up to seven weeks old, have sprouted ridiculous long legs, and learned to climb and prance hilariously.

- The idea that Binx would teach the kittens about the litter tray did not appear to work. However, after a few random wees, putting two very shallow litter trays in locations that the kittens had previously chosen, and plonking them in the litter trays every time we went into the room did.

- I decided that the random shoes that arrived through the post over a year ago with no name on them, which nobody in the village admitted to having ordered, had aged sufficiently that I could sell them on ebay, so I did. (I suppose I could have donated them, but the local charity shops seem very unenthusiastic about donations, and I find I need to be feeling quite strong before I can march in and hand things to a sighing volunteer. )

- since the cold cleared and we have had quite a lot of calm, clear weather, I've been sea swimming a few times with the Hazelbeach group. I went today, in fact, and it was the coldest swim yet: it definitely helps if you've been exercising enough to get warm before you get into the sea, even in boots, gloves and my shortie wetsuit.

- Theo completed his scentwork course, which was fun, but he clearly thought it rather easy. There is an exam, but I'm not sure we shall bother with that.

- Went to visit my Mum; came back over the old Severn Bridge. My family lived in Swansea till I was 12, so every holiday involved that bridge: stopping there for the first time in about 40 years was a strange, nostalgic moment.

- Mum, Theo and I went to the Christmas Tree festival at St Eustachius's. It was a very good one. I think I voted for the tree celebrating the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, which had a really good mining chimney. For a Christmas tree, anyway.

- Pp has hurt a finger, bending it backwards in a manner that seems likely to require minor surgery to fix. In the mean time it is strapped up in a brace, which is annoying rather than painful.

- We bought Nordmann firs (one for upstairs, one for downstairs) from Pen Parc Festive Trees this year, which meant we got to trek through a chilly field and pick out the trees. They certainly seem to be holding their needles a lot better than in previous years. Nordmann is a fine wood to carve, too, though I didn't take a chunk off to carve over the festive season. I'll have to wait till 12th night to take my carving wood for this year's decoration.

- there are flowers on the rosemary bushes, and today I found some primroses despite the frosted ground.

September 12th, Pp went to a do with some ex-work colleagues, and picked up a cold, which he promptly gave to me. He had it for a week. I had it for September, and October, and December... I got royally peed off with it. Kept thinking it was clearing up. It did Not. Either I was streaming, or I was bunged up, or I was an ectoplasmic nightmare of green goo. When you can't breathe at all through your nose, your tongue shrivels overnight into a horrible leather strip, which is just no fun even if you can rehydrate it in the morning.

Eventually, I made an appointment to see a pharmacist (even though I was thinking: well, it's a cold, it's viral, what can they do?) But pharmacy appointments for minor ailments in Wales are free and easy (unlike doctor's appointments which are hen's teeth) so I thought it was worth a go, specially since there was a specific 'sinusitis' appointment type available under the Common Ailments program.

Pharmacist heard my woes, said I had chronic sinusitis and gave me a steroid spray with a built-in antihistamine (because, he said dubiously, scanning my history of allergies, It Might Be That Again.)

Anyway, the spray fixed it within a couple of days. Amazing. Brilliant. What a relief. Modern medicine, I love it.

Our team won the monthly quiz at a local village hall. Such pride! I think everyone on the team had at least one 'nobody else knows this' question, which is always rewarding. We won sugary treats which are very bad for us. They were delicious.

Today, it snowed. Most of Pembrokeshire seems to have been covered in a delightful white blanket, though down here by the water the snow quickly went to slush.

Much hard work went into launching the Shop on the Borderlands winter sale (we decided to ditch the idea of Black Friday, which is kind of meaningless in the UK anyway, and go a week or so earlier.) There was much rushing around putting books into piles and photographing them at top speed.

Then I forgot to clear the site cache before we sent out the newsletter yesterday saying the sale had begun, meaning that a lot of people saw an empty page of No Offers. Oh well. There has been a steady stream of sales today so it's all more or less worked out, though we're both rather worn by the effort of all the packing.

They are still rather sleepy and sneezy and subject to minor goes of the runs, but they do seem more relaxed, have definitely put on weight - and they enjoy playing now. Apparently cat flu can last six weeks, and it's been 4, so I am still hoping for a full recovery.

( Cut for photos )

1) the drain outside our house got blocked. I lifted the manhole cover, and found the shaft down to the drain was full of Horrible Awful Stinky Things that had risen to lap at the very edge of the cover (and had been leaking out if anyone had a bath in the house). I poked around with a spade, but was unable to dislodge anything.

But! we called a Drain Clearance man, who came within an hour, stuck a Device down the drain, twiddled it, and it was fixed! He did charge £180, but for that, we got someone who knew exactly how to do it, AND showed Pp where to buy a similar inexpensive Drain Twiddling Device, and how to twiddle it next time. Which makes it seem like that story about £5 to fix it, £175 to know *how*.

2) I took Theo to the beach, and he found a really, really manky runny dead seal and rolled in it. I brought him home and ran him under the outside hose. The Seal Smell remained. I used the usual dry dog shampoo. Still there.

I've just given him scrub scrub scrub, rinse, repeat with mint-scented dog shampoo under hot water in the shower. I can still smell it. Not sure if it's really still there or if I'm imagining it at this point.

On Friday, the Galeón Andalucía came to Fishguard. She's a replica of a 17th century Spanish Galleon, launched in 2010, which has spent the last 15 years sailing all over the world. Not a lot happens in Pembrokeshire in October so everyone became very excited, and we all rushed over to see her (apparently there were more visitors in tiny Fishguard than there were in Liverpool, and there were so many of them that on the last day, they had to stop some people getting on board because of the crowd. It felt rather appropriate, after reading that each of the 150+ people on board a 17th century galleon would have about 1.5 meters of space each. Varied, of course, according to status. The officer's cabins were snug, but not excessively so even by modern standards. The hammocks, on the other hand, made my back ache just to look at them.

( Read more... )

We are fostering two cats for a few weeks for a local cat rescue. They are very thin, but very friendly. They haven't met our cats or Theo, they are living in the bottom floor in the big Shop store-room-cum-guest-bedroom at the moment, since they are both very thin and a bit sneezy. We are supposed to be feeding them up. They are eating a lot, which has to be good.

You can really see how thin Tabby is in the pic below - she's 8 months old. Her Mum is called Rosa, and she's slightly less skeletal, but still you can really feel her ribs.

( Read more... )

The Shop on the Borderlands sells many things to many countries. Up till this year, our position on import duties and tariffs has been, more or less: 'if you want to buy it, we'll post it: you are best placed to look up exactly what the country you live in charges for importing the things you've chosen to buy, and the postal service or courier will sort that out for you for a small fee'. I'm sure this put some people off buying from us, but it was fairly clear to customers (we gave them warnings about it) and very easily manageable for us.

Then Mr Trump decided he was going to Tariff All the Things at extremely short notice (like less than a month!)

In an attempt to make the filthy Foreigner (ie, us) pay rather than the US citizen, he insisted that not only would there be no exceptions for small parcels, but anyone who bought stuff from outside the USA and had it posted to them, would be billed at least $80 unless the seller prepaid the tariff.

So suddenly we had to try to work out what the US tariff was going to be for everything we sold so we could charge and post appropriately. This was complicated by the fact that tariffs are not based on where the Shop is based, or where the company that designed and commissioned the product is based, but where the physical object was made. So, for example, some D&D books are printed in the USA, but some are printed in China, and some in Belgium.

And there's no way to predict where a specific book was printed, without taking it off the shelf and rummaging through it in the hope that it will have 'printed in Lithuania' written on it somewhere (Lithuania is a bit of a hotbed of RPG printing...) Some books have no indication where they were printed at all, so you have to guess. Some of our stock is 50 years old. Doesn't matter. We still have to declare where it was made.

Anyway, we did that for all the 12000ish Things in the Shop. And we gave them all international product classification codes (which is how you declare you're selling dice and not books for tax purposes, for example)

And we did it twice, because the first solution we had didn't work. (It was a quicker job the second time since the data was in and just had to be moved, but still. )

So, I tested ordering various products and they seemed to be getting what we thought was the right amount of tariff/customs fee appearing on them. Then we got a pleading email from a hopeful American, unable to find the thing they specially wanted in the USA, so we let them order - a book printed in the UK. They got charged the amount we expected by Royal Mail, 10% tariff plus 50p admin, and a week later, their book had reached them! Hurray!

So it all works now, right? IF ONLY. We got another pleading American email, so we let that guy order too, and in a surge of confidence, turned off our message saying 'sorry no orders to the USA for now.'

But. We put US Order #2 through the Royal Mail system, for three books made in Italy, and... RM charged us 50p admin fee for doing the duty for us, and nothing more. But they were printed in Italy! Italy has a 15% tariff!

So we rang Royal Mail, and said: why no tariff? And they said: Oh it's fine. Tariffs don't apply to books.

So we rang off and reinspected US Order #1, which was definitely a book, and definitely printed in the UK, and for which we were definitely billed 10% of the value for the tariff a week and a half ago. And boggled.

(I might not have got all the terminology 100% right, but I'm increasingly dubious that anyone has got this 100% right)

Update:Parcel #1 had got tangled up in the massive update project and went out with the HS code saying it was a boxed board game by accident. So I think we're OK sending books without billing tariffs for them. Or, I hope so...

I read some old books about boats (and ships) and decided to ramble about them here.

( Read more... )

One thing all these books had in common was that they are print format, so I can read them 3 inches from my nose. I am definitely struggling a bit to read stuff at laptop screen distance at the moment, so I have been to the optician and ordered, with some fear and dread, some varifocal glasses. I hope I like them, they cost enough!

We've decided that we're going to sell the boat after this summer (it's not cheap to run, and the engine servicing & repairs in particular are painfully pricy). I'm going to miss being able to run down to the open sea and out to the islands in the spring, I know, so I'm making the best of it while we've got it.

( Many many photos. )

Tree News

The sycamore tree that was leaning perilously over the neighbour's house (with scary rotten side to the trunk) is no more! Pp decided to put it up as a 'job available' on Mybuilder, and we immediately got a contact from a shiny new young garden and tree management company, run by two shockingly young yet highly competent people who quoted very reasonably for the tree to be removed. They had the relevant certifications & insurances, so we went for it, and wow, did they work. They were here from about 10 am to after 8 and hung themselves by ropes from the tree with chainsaws to take bits off. Then they chipped it all, and took away the logs!

I asked their advice about the elm tree next to the sycamore, and was delighted to hear that they thought it was in fine fettle and needed no work done. You don't see that many elms about, so I really wanted to keep it (assuming it wasn't also a terrible peril to the neighbour's roof). It looks very fine now you can properly see the shape of it - though you can see it was sort of leaning away from the sycamore a bit. With luck, it will just fill out a bit on that side. There is the ever-present risk of Dutch Elm disease, but I am hoping that the wild sea-winds may be enough to keep the beetles at bay. Certainly there's no sign of DED yet.

I asked the tree guys to leave the big rotten stump of the sycamore in place, hoping it will continue to rot and perhaps become hollow and enliven the local environment. It may shoot from the left over bits, but if it does, it's now small enough that I can easily manage the shoots with loppers.

( just bullet point diary notes really )

Goodness, it's been almost two months! I have been reading here and I've even started the odd post, then a cat landed on my keyboard or something and...

Anyway, here I am. What shall I put in a post?

The Shop continues reasonably busy, though less so than last year: it's the first year since it started that turnover is distinctly down on the previous year. Unsurprising given everything that's happening in the world, but a bit concerning on the micro-personal level.

Here are some things I've done:
( Read more... )

It was Pp's birthday today, so since the forecast was clear and windless, we went out in the boat.

We had lunch in the shelter of Skokholm island, with puffins and guillemots whirring busily past us. There were no seals today, but there were bluebells and whatever that small white flower is that you can just see forming masses among the grass in the photo below.

Then, since the weather was good, we went on past the next island, Skomer, whose massive cliffs were surprisingly busy with visiting tourists, as well as seabirds. That meant we went into St Bride's Bay, the wide bay between Skomer island and the massive point of westward-thrusting rock that holds St Davids, the smallest city in Britain. The oil tankers often hang about in St Brides Bay, and there was one lurking there today, waiting for a space at the oil terminal, I assume.

However, the wind from the north was getting up, so we decided that was enough exploring for now, and headed back south through Jack Sound. Jack Sound has a bit of a reputation as a difficult passage, but the tide was flowing straight south, so we thought we'd risk it, and in the end it was a smoother route than the seas around Skomer had been.

Here's one of the tourist boats going out from St Martin's Haven to Skomer behind us, as we came out of Jack Sound and started heading home.

We've volunteered to support our friends the Celtic Longboat rowers again - last year we went to Saundersfoot with them. They have a team of nine, with four rowing and one coxing at any time, the rest of them ride in the RIB with us until it's time to swap over.

This year we have ambitions to go north, out to Grassholm, the island of the gannets, which depending on who you ask, is 6, 8, or 11 miles off the coast, and then across St Brides Bay to Solva. If it happens (and it will be very weather dependent!) it will be mid-August when we try it. At present, we are just doing a bit of training in the estuary, including swapping boats, towing the Celtic, and so on.

I'd always thought of this as a poetic phrase, but yesterday it happened to me! We were out in kayaks on the Pembroke River, a very calm sunny evening, the sky blue and the water full of reflections of the ploughed red hills, sun on the yellow gorse and white blackthorn-flowers. The sun was going down into the hills west of us, and directly opposite, a huge pale moon was rising. The reflections were unreal.

I did try to photograph it, but my phone camera is clearly not wired for poetry.

I feel I've done a bunch of things and already forgotten many of them, so here's a disordered list of things before they fall out of my head entirely

Went to the opening of a new tiny games cafe in town. A nice space and lovely people, I hope they make a success of it, there are SO many empty shops. The name 'Stormborn Games' along with the red lightning on black is a bold branding choice, but perhaps Warhammer teens will consider it pleasingly edgy.

Went for a swim in the glorious sunshine off our little beach- the first this year with no gloves. Thought that was a mistake to start with, but my hands adjusted OK though I'm pretty sure the water can't have been more than 8 degrees, it makes a huge difference to have no wind and the sun shining. Bit weird for April in Wales, but I'm resolved to enjoy it.

Still struggling with very annoying eczema. It started with a bunch of horsefly bites last year, and just will. not. quit. Currently covering myself practically hourly in oat based lotions after another run of steroids and trying very hard not to scratch. I did take several months off swimming, thinking that was making it worse, or at least an infection risk - but if anything the cold salty water seems to make my skin happier, so I might as well enjoy the swims.

Theo Hound finished his scentwork course on Saturday morning.
He is pretty good at finding the things we've been working on finding (we started with Kong dog toys, and worked from whole toys, to finding chunks of Kong in a magnetic tin, to tiny slivers of Kong in a vial.) I am less skilled at directing and rewarding him than he is at finding things.

There were only two dogs left at the end of the course (mystified by dropping out of a course you've paid for up front, which conflicts with ALL my instincts, but hey.) The other dog that stuck it to the end was Bertie the cockerpoo. They spent a reasonably amount of the last two sessions play-chasing, wrestling and growling loudly, and both very much enjoying it.

Went down to visit my mother in Devon, where we visited Rosemoor RHS garden to see the spring flowers (mostly seas of daffodils but also a mysterious, beautiful pale blue fluffy squill for which we could find no ID, and therefore suspect someone at Rosemoor has decided is Undesirable), and went to Wembury beach, where the sun shone and we had a delightful picnic. The steps down to the beach were steeper and more irregular than I remembered, but Mum made it down them - fortunately there is a level walk back up from the beach into the village, so we did that rather than try to clamber back up the steps then I left her by the road admiring the view while I walked back to collect the car. Saw my first Peacock butterfly of the year on the way.

I have more or less decided that adopting more dogs when I'm travelling so regularly to Devon wouldn't be the wisest move. Theo is great in the car, can be left for a few hours, and can go pretty much anywhere - pubs, cafes, motorway services, around Pudding my Mum's cat - but it's not reasonable to expect that from another rescue dog, at least not immediately. I am still in a number of dog rescue Facebook groups, so I keep seeing so many hopeful appeals for home for delightful dogs: the pandemic adoption wave is over, and homes are once again hard to find. But you can't adopt ALL the dogs...

None the less, I keep looking mournfully at the local greyhound rescues. I would love to have another ex-racer around and I think Theo would enjoy the company too. Maybe in the autumn...

I'm reading my way through the Laundry Files books by Charles Stross - British technospy fiction spiced with horrifying tentacular Things From The Beyond. They are pacy, fun and don't take themselves seriously. I'm surprised that I'm enjoying reading so many words in present tense: normally I have a definite preference for past tense for novels. But here it works. Had never previously come across the phrase 'hairy eyeball' and don't like it. :-D

The weather is warming up! I've planted three Agapanthus Northern Star and three nerine bulbs in a strange triangle of soil that I suspect exists because the previous owner of this house didn't have quite enough concrete to cover it.

It's a very sunny exposed spot that also gets a lot of wind, since it's only about 20 feet from the water, so rather than plant it all up with something that might not be able to handle the location, I'm doing a test plant. I can always add more bulbs if they seem to like it there.

The young rowan trees that I'm training along the fence look like they might actually manage more than a couple of flowers this year, though they may still be too young to actually have berries.

None of the three citrus trees in pots seem terribly happy. The lemon had one flower: the kumquat and orange, none at all. I think maybe I should have fed them more last year. They have now moved off their special citrus winter food onto summer food and I'm going to start watering them more generously too.

Ended up with an accidental surplus of carrots, could not find a recipe I liked the look of where I actually had all the ingredients, so kind of squished together a recipe with what I had in the cupboard. Quite liked it, so:
400g carrots.
200g castor sugar
3 eggs
150g ground almonds
100g very dark chocolate
200g butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
teaspoon vanilla essence (never know why this is added really, I assume it's some kind of Baking Spell, since I'm really not sure I can distinguish vanilla under all that cocoa and chocolate)

Pre-heat oven to 160 C (fan)

Roughly chop the carrots and boil (in water obvs) till soft.

Drain water, put the carrots into a liquidiser, make them into a puree.

Put the chocolate & butter in a bowl floating in a saucepan of hot water and melt.

Add the melted stuff to the liquidised carrots, give it a whiz till blended.

Add the eggs & ground almonds, whiz. If too stiff, add a tablespoonful water.

Add cocoa powder & sugar, whiz till blended.

Stick in 20 x 20cm brownie tin lined with either baking paper or that silicone stuff, put that in oven for 30-40 mins.

Eat when cool, they are a bit squishier when still warm.

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bunn

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Recent Entries

I built a thing!

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