The Great Lettuce Famine

Apparently we're all going to die because The Spooky Face means all that healthy foreign-grown lettuce and fine green beans can't be flown in. Or so said the radio this morning; I wasn't paying too close attention because I was sleepy, they may have phrased it slightly differently. However, when I got to Waitrose I was disappointed to find no panic-stricken queues - indeed it was quite quiet - and plenty of vegetables. Still nothing at all to see in the sky - well, other than the moon and so on, which remain perfectly clear.

DSC_4355-phoebe While I'm on the misc stuff, I warn you I'm going to blog about our trip to Amsterdam when I get round to it. And the HORR. And I'm going to tell you that I went sculling today for the first time in ages. Andy N had the grace not to shout out to me until I was on the water, otherwise I would have stuffed up taking Joy out. Up to the lock and back, glorious sunshine, I was slow and rubbish (arms-only most of the way) and I've rubbed the skin off one thumb, yummy.

Also, we have a cat! I've fought against a pet for years but eventually succumbed. She is called Phoebe, say hello, you can look forward to loads of rather poor quality pictures of her sitting on various bits of the house. Also, I warn you, we have a Roomba.

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What does Phoebe think of the Roomba?

[She is currently unaware of it's sleeping menace. But we expect to unleash yet more cat-on-roomba movies soon -W]

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 17 Apr 2010 #permalink

"Waitrose has said that the supply of "a handful" of products had been hit, including fresh pineapple chunks from Ghana and baby sweetcorn from Thailand." - from BBC website.

We had distinctly increasing orangey-yellow moon & Venus on Friday night as they set - didn't really turn orange until not far above the horizon, but Venus looked like Mars. Didn't get a chance to see last night.

You seem to have let the cat out to play in the ash. (Everyone knows evil masters of the universe have white cats—it's part of the job description.)

Apropos cats and vacuum cleaners, my vet pointed out an interesting effect. Cats have two ways of marking things

-- chin glands mark good things, that's why you see them rubbing their environment (you can mark a trail home for a cat newly moved to a new place by scratching under its chin, then wiping your fingers around the door or window and in a few lines along sheltered spots radiating out into the new yard, and see the cat following them)

-- anal glands are used to mark bad things to be avoided; little dried bits from the anal glands drop at random, normally diffuse and ignored, but get collected by vacuum cleaners, so if the floor isn't pre-swept or the bag isn't changed every time, to the cat's brain the vacuum cleaner, when running, can be exhaling a concentrated essence of evil.

[That is an amusingly scary thought, for a cat :-) -W]

And yet, William and Hank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDCAWbBwxpc

Of course, when a cat has made a decision to sit somewhere and clean himself, it will 'accept' loads of abuse, simply because it cannot admit being wrong.