Category: that’s a bit mad

Not moving to Gloucestershire

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I have no real desire to move full-stop, but certainly not to Gloucestershire.

Although, this place seems pretty affordable.

A 1 bedroom place in the countryside – it definitely needs some TLC – but at “just” £135,000, it seems nice enough: and it’s full of potential.

DSB Estate Agents are pleased to bring to the market this one bedroom detached cottage nestled away in the Cotswolds.
To the ground floor this property comprises of an entrance porch, an open-plan lounge diner, a fitted kitchen, a utility room and a bathroom along with a conservatory overlooking the garden, a cloakroom and a coal shed.
On the first floor you will find the master bedroom which boasts an en-suite. The second floor offers fantastic views from the loft.
As we head outside, prepare to be blown away by the beautiful (and rather sizeable!) garden which mainly lies to the side of the property. There is also a double garage.

Sounds good.

I particularly like the floating blue pot in the back garden. Trippy.

I guess that the only downside here is the size of the place. One bedroom doesn’t really offer a lot of flexibilty, but look at the amount of space you have around you to extend your living… I’m sorry… what small print?

Those somewhat unremarkable two lines in the middle there?

You mean this rather disappointing one?

Please note: The property is subject to a restrictive covenant which prevents any extensions being added to the dwelling. 

And this frankly alarming one?

In addition, there are known sink holes present within the grounds.

Yeah, whatever you do as the estate agent, don’t make that sort of important information easy to find, will you? That might put off some buyers. You know: the ones who want a little more living space or those who just want to stay alive and not plunge to their death while mowing the lawn.

No. Not moving to Gloucestershire, and especially not moving to this place.

“I don’t know if I’m the first one to think of this, but…”

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Spotted on social media…

The damage inflicted to a plane by a bird strike. I don’t know if I’m the first one to think of this, but what if we put a big magnet on the nose of the plane so it creates a magnetic field that repels the birds away?

I’m not 100% sure, but I’d put good money on the fact that you were the first one to think of this.

Birds, famously not magnetic, would probably not be repelled by “a big magnet on the nose of the plane”. For this to work properly, you’d have to go around a glue a big (same polarity) magnet to each and every bird, as well as each and every plane. And even then, getting that system to work with a closing speed of around 1000kph would probably not be ever so effective.

But hey, keep coming up with the ideas and maybe one day, one of them will make some small degree of sense.

Another day, another car park

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Gone are the days of the twice weekly sojourns to the old car park in Milnerton.

But Tuesday afternoons bring me to a different car park at the moment.

We nearly died getting here. In slow motion, sure, but still. The Stanhope Road bridge in Claremont – IYKYK – was like the Wild West this afternoon, with four lanes of taxis, Checkers bikes and old women in Mercedes fighting it out to get into the one remaining lane over the bridge. The traffic lights weren’t even being treated as a suggestion by anyone.

Every man, woman and vehicle for him, her and them self.

Absolute chaos.

And this car park is somehow worse today in that there’s a water polo match going on just over there [points], and water polo is the most whistle-happy sport in the world.

Every. Three. Seconds.

Additionally, Vodacom is misbehaving. Not in an illicit corporate way (possibly, anyway), but in just not providing any decent service. And that’s making my time here rather fruitless and very frustrating.

Who even knows if this blog post will work? But I need to get it done now because it’s curry for dinner and Sheffield United for the win this evening.

Well, definitely the curry bit, at least.

Let’s pray to any available deity and hit the PUBLISH button. 

High landing?

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Slow news day? You can rely on the gutter press in the UK to try and make a story out of nothing.

Thankfully, you can also rely on the good old British public to not let them get away with it:

He’s got a good point.

Although I’ve had a couple of really low landings that didn’t really work either (Corfu 2002 and London City 2023 springing immediately to mind).

About those lemurs

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Yesterday, we filled you in on how to identify your raccoons. Not that hard, given that there are only 3 species, and they are pretty much geographically distinct. Your only real issue is around Panama, which interestingly is pretty much the same as when you are traveling the length of the Americas.

Today, we’re upping our game a bit and bringing it back to Africa (and North Carolina), with a great guide on how to tell lemurs apart. The clever guys at the Duke Lemur Centre have noticed that aside from a few different personality traits and odd bald spots, their Ring-Tailed Lemurs have telltale signs regarding their ear shapes. And they’ve made a quadrant chart to assist them (and others) in how to identify their RTL stock. The four different ear shapes are Round and Elf (most specifically regarding the tufts on the lemurs’ ears), and Cat to Airplane (basically pointing upwards or sideways):

Of course, this doesn’t help distinguish Ring-Tailed Lemurs from other lemurs in the way that yesterday’s raccoon graphic does. But you can use the rings on their tails to do that. And the fact that at the DLC, they’ll be in the Ring-Tailed Lemur enclosure.

I love the personalities in the shot above. Aside from Seagrams (middle-left, just to the right of the word Round), who looks like he’s just been arrested, all of the other lemurs there look like they’ve just gone in for their passport photos, which is actually quite amusing; but I’m wondering if you could further identify at least one of them – it’s Liesl (middle-bottom) – by her amazing resting bitch face.
Wow. Someone got out of bed on the wrong side that morning.

However, when Liesl is happier and Seagrams hasn’t just had a mugshot, remember that ears are the way to go for RTL ID.

So that’s Raccoons: geographic location, and lemurs: shape of the ears.

Will this ad-hoc foreign mammal identification series continue tomorrow?
I don’t think so.

And honestly, that’s probably a good thing.