Life, the Universe and Everything

Ivy is a foliage plant, right? It does flower and like many gardeners, I have never thought about it much. Then I saw some of mine being mobbed by bees and even a butterfly. I think I've seen pigeons eating the berries too so maybe it ticks the "wildlife friendly" box.  Its flowering habit is interesting in its own right. Normally, it lurks around near the ground, climbs a few things and doesn't flower. However, it it reaches the top of something such as a wall, it has "nowhere to go" and so it flowers.

“Well, Bernard” said Sir Humphrey, “how are you getting on with your new Minister?” “Oh, Iain's OK but some of his policy ideas are a bit strange” “A minister with policy ideas? Extraordinary!” “Yes, he's had another idea to give benefit claimants an incentive to get into work” Sir Humphrey shuddered “After the row he had when he claimed the benefit cap had incentivised 8000 claimants to go out and get a job?” “Yes, and despite the roasting he got from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority for it” “As I remember, I suggested you persuade him to talk about liars, damn liars and statisticians but you let him go all religious and say he believes he's right” “I know, Sir Humphrey, I know!” “So what is this latest idea?” “Well, it's a bit of partnership working with the MOD” “No Bernard! No, no, no! The army does not want the reintroduction of National Service, especially if it involves the unwashed and the unemployed!” “I know that's a h...

Plantar fasciitis is a pain in the heel that is typically worst first thing in the morning. This is my story of continuing recovery. I am not medically qualified and if you suspect you have Plantar fasciitis, get a doctor or physiotherapist to check and follow their advice. For standard information, try this Wikipedia article and for evidence-based advice, try the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence article So, I "caught" Plantar fasciitis at the Chippenham Folk Festival at the end of May. I did a lot of vigorous ceilidh dancing mainly on a "wood" floor that probably had concrete a few mm down. By the time I got home, walking was extremely painful. I had already booked for two festivals in August so I needed to fix things fast. I have largely succeeded. Here's what I tried, my thinking and observations: I stopped walking 4km a day to work and drove. In fact I became a total couch potato.This was intended to reduce further damage and pain ...

There's been a lot of fuss recently about the "Benefit Cap" that's being introduced to the UK. Basically it limits the total amount of welfare benefits anyone can receive to around the average working wage. You might be shocked that anyone on benefits can get anything like the average wage? In fact, only around 1% of benefit claimants do and will have their income reduced by the cap. Typically, these are people with quite a few children living in expensive rented accommodation. Iain Duncan Smith believes this isn't so much a problem as an "incentive to work" and he has claimed that thousands of people notified that they will be affected have gone out and got a job. However, the UK Statistics Authority are not happy with this claim In rather dry language, they say: We have concluded that the statement attributed to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that 'Already we've seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap m...

I first got an email address back in 1993 and in those days you thought nothing of giving it to all and sundry - spam was still meat in cans. That soon changed and after a few years I was getting several hundred unwanted emails a day. A change of email address helped but pretty soon the flood resumed. That's when I was tipped off about  Gmail - and how I could keep my email address and get rid of almost all the spam. In some ways, Gmail is just an ordinary email service like Yahoo or Hotmail. The key difference is they have got a really good spam blocking system. So, here's how I used it: I opened a free Gmail account I set up an autoforward from my normal email to send all my mail to the new Gmail account I could have stopped there and just read my email in Gmail and adjusted it to send replies "From" my old email address However, I prefer to read my email via a separate program so I used the autoforward in Gmail to send the messages on to an ordinary ...

So I got to the head of the queue at Wetherspoon's and tried to place my food and drink order, "Table number?" asked the barman. "Oh, I haven't got one yet" I explained. "I can't take an order if I don't know where the food is going to go" I looked round the busy pub, briefly contemplated finding a table upstairs somewhere, determining its number, coming down, queuing again, placing my order and hoping the table would still be vacant when I went back. "I'm sorry", I said, "I'm in the wrong place" and left.

The rules are reversed in gardening. We are positively encouraged to root out migrants such as Spanish  Bluebells because they breed with our native Bluebells. Chemical warfare is still very much allowed although the list of allowable toxins is cut every year. Instead, we are offered nice biological weapons such as nematodes that carry bacteria into the bodies of slugs and kill them. But, dear gardener, come out of the garden and try any of that in the rest of the world and you're in trouble!