Dust!

DUST - what a wonderful word! A gentle susurration with biblical/Shakespearean echoes. Reminds me of His Dark Materials, and now - those funny fat-fighters in Little Britain. It's a great word because it can mean one thing and then it can mean its opposite.

If only raised and razed were spelt the same way .... "they raised a mighty edifice, and then razed it to the ground" - that wouldn't just sound great, it would look great too.

Internet shopping for food

I always feel so smug when I complete my shopping order on the computer. I can more or less order everything we need in the way of groceries in twenty minutes these days.

Of course I don't feel quite so smug when the delivery arrives and there's no milk or they say they've run out of butter because the particular own brand I ordered is out of stock and they bring me margarine although of course there's bound to be at least one packet of Anchor left surely and don't even get me started on swapping non-organic meat for the desired organic stuff.

They've also been fielding my (frequent) e-mail complaints with what I feel is an all too cavalier attitude. For example - a complaint that a litre of long-life orange juice was infested with flies/pupae only provoked a derisory refund of the exact value of the damaged goods. No regard for my sensitivity, the sleepless nights reliving that gruesome discovery. Had they forgotten the snail in the ginger beer saga well loved by GCSE law students?

Still, I shall keep the faith - as a non-driver shopping this way is brilliant, and they don't charge for delivery.

Pawing down.

Nature note:-

And not a very nice one but perhaps you'll be interested.

Walking by the river I noticed something fall out of a tree a few yards ahead of me along the path. I thought perhaps it was a fruit. Sadly on closer inspection, it proved to be a paw - honey coloured fur and possibly once belonging to a cat. Discussion threw up the idea that this was a piece of road kill dropped by a scavenging bird.

It was much more delightful to see the kingfisher darting along beside me, but that was another day.

A happy new year to you all.

Having just crawled out from under the eiderdown, I discover it is now 2005 and I need to blog.

One reason (excuse) I've thought of for not blogging more is that I can never remember my secret code words to log in. So sometimes maybe I would have blogged, say at work for instance, but didn't have my notebook with it all written in to hand.

Over the last few weeks I have become fascinated with e-bay. I like to watch the items and their prices and how well the sellers are doing - great for wasting time. I even bought something (a lithograph by Edward Bawden, since you ask).

Am considering joining Amazon's DVD library. Can then watch all those films I missed, first at the cinema (for the VERY recent ones, you understand), and then on the tele. For £7.99 a month I can see the films I want without having to clutter my house up with purchases. They've got Children of the Stones, Dead of Night (which has just been revived, whatever that means), Blowup, Sex and Lucia, etc etc - none of which I would wish to own and none of which are available in our corner shop. Just need to buy the DVD player and I'll be there.

Anyway, must dash - got some skirting board to paint.

Hamble.