Tag Archives: life

Standard of crosswords still quite good, though

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Question in today’s Times, summarised:

“I just walked in on my 15-year-old son having sex with a girl he barely knows in our living room and I’m not sure how to talk to him about it.”

Answer, summarised:

“Look up your local STD clinics and leave a glass jar of loose condoms in the bathroom, topping it up occasionally so you can never really tell if the level goes down.”

Did you know the Times was once considered so important to the British way of life that Goebbels ordered a daily translation?

… and I’m also an auditor

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I no longer communicate. I market.

Coming up to 48 hours ago our team manager called us in for a meeting and told us we no longer work for the Head of Communications and Support. We now work for the Head of Business Development. Our manager is now Head of Marketing.

I – am – a – marketer. This will take time to get my braincells around.

So far I have to say my life has continued pretty much as normal. I still wish I didn’t have such a good memory for 13-year-old Dilberts.
Dilbert.com

Dilbert.com

Wytham wandering

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The purpose of trees is to provide blessed shade as you stroll along on a hot summer’s afternoon. Any other purpose is useful but secondary. Put enough trees together and you get woods. Put the woods on a hill overlooking Oxford and you get Wytham Woods.

It’s an access-controlled SSSI, and even though I don’t think there are any reasonable bars to anyone getting a permit, it makes it just a bit more peaceful and remote than, say, Shotover (despite the best efforts of our friends from Brize Norton to bring a little low-level noise into our lives). Every now and again you turn a corner and suddenly find yourself with a panoramic view of the dreaming spires, and wish you’d brought the proper camera rather than just the phone.

The phone camera also failed to do full justice to the hitherto unknown pastime of caterpillar bungee-jumping.

That glowing blob is not a crack in space-time: it is in fact a small green caterpillar about 3cm in length, dangling in the middle of the road by a strand of silk so fine it seems to be levitating. Closer up:

And there were a lot of them. Whether they were trying to get down or up or just dangling to pass the time of day, I have no idea. However they do it at about face level so it’s a good way of grabbing the attention of passers by.
Current reading is Avilion by Robert Holdstock, last of the Mythago Wood series, which gives all sorts of added resonances to walking through a piece of undisturbed ancient woodland, and makes you realise that living somewhere like this:

… could be a very bad idea indeed.