kestrel

pluth-phunt
Originally uploaded by ramtops.

perlmonger and I saw this in a shop in Cotham Hill when we were doing some late December holiday shopping.

he’s (Phunt, that is) a sort of beanbag thing, with an extremely pluth exterior, and he is that rarest of creatures, a shoulder-sitting face-eating elephunt.

and because perlmonger was scanning some images this morning, I sat the Phunt on the scanner, and christened my Flickr account :)

Designed by georgedorn and provided by Positronic Design.
Grab your own copy here.

this morning, we found Liessa sitting on the shelf in the bedroom, tearing tiny pieces of cardboard from a shoe box with her little sharp white pointy teeth, and then spitting them out.

there’s no accounting for them, really …

we have some catnip, which is was stored in the set of wicker drawers on my desk.

this morning, when I entered the study, I discovered chaos … they’d managed to open the drawer, extract the catnip packet, extract the polythene bag from *inside* the packet, and strew catnip across the floor.

the house is full of crazed kittens …

the catnip is now safely (?) inside a jam jar.

cats – what are they *for* ?

last night, (along with most of Bristol’s chattering classes, it seems) we went to see the Kronos Quartet in the Colston Hall. I wasn’t at all sure that they would be my kind of thing, but by and large, I thought they were fab.

one or two pieces were a tad too clever for me, but there were some that I really loved.

they did two encores, the second of which was prefaced with the remark that “it’s a sad day when the only way an American musician can register his dissent is by playing a song from Woodstock”, and then they launched into their version of Jimi Hendrix’ version of The Star Spangled Banner” – as perlmonger said, probably the most angry rendition of that particular piece that we’ve ever heard.

a fine night.

in other news, we went to a wedding on Friday – more on that story later.

why does a dishwasher need a cleaning cycle every now and again?

I mean, every time it’s run, it has water at 70° hot, and a tablet which is basically caustic soda, and yet every now and again, the inside of the beast gets greasy, and I have to donate it a cleaning tablet and a hot wash.

all very odd.

we went to Wales this weekend to collect the Moose from fettlers geoffcampbell and Niamh (WINOLJ), and spent a very enjoyable evening and overnight at Niamh’s house with her partners Ken and Peggy, together with the aforementioned Geoff.

and on the way home, as I was in the MR2 on my own (perlmonger had been designated MooseDriver), I did something that I hardly ever do, and do not enjoy. What on earth was it?

I have just been to collect the dry cleaning, and was served by a chap with (badly) dyed red hair, whose badge proclaimed him to be “Jesus”.

which was nice.

there’s been some buzz in the news this week about Tesco expanding into non-food stores. To me, that’s a bit like hearing that Hitler wanted to expand into neighbouring countries.

Tesco are a vile and greedy corporate; yes, I know all corporates are thus, but Tesco are worst than most. They have a hugely unhealthy share of the UK retail market already, which *cannot* be good for consumers.

I don’t want to buy my groceries and do my banking and buy my insurance and rent my DVDs all from the same company – I want competition in the high street and in the marketplace, if only to give us something other than the boring retail chains we have now. For some time, I’ve made a point of avoiding Tesco wherever possible; how much longer will I be able to do that, I wonder …

here’s a *very* interesting read from CorporateWatch.

I don’t know if anything can be done to stop them, but if so, please tell me where I can sign up.

Lilith is currently asleep.

she’s asleep, inside perlmonger’s gym bag. Which is hanging from a hook on the ladder rack in the spare room.

no, we have no idea why. No, she’s never done it before.