Ok so, I think I’m pushing the scary-seed theme a bit beyond it’s ability to terrify, so this will be the last post on the subject until either a Triffid flower forms or it starts releasing toxic gas and I find lots of dead flies scattered around it.
For anyone who missed the hooha, here are my previous blogs on the subject:
Ahem. So the photo above shows the seedlings poking up from the mysterious Chinese seeds that I received. They look pretty much like normal seedlings. Those are just the seed leaves poking up, so I’ll have to wait a bit to see the true leaves and maybe work out what they are. No dead flies yet.
Photo from this great article about the plant prop from Day of the Triffids
I’ve been a bit shoddy posting recently, and I’m sure that many of you have been wondering: What about those mysterious Chinese seeds? Did they turn out to be Triffids?
Well there have been a few new revelations about the seeds, so I’m going to put an article up for any of you who’ve been wondering. There have actually been a few articles posted, mostly saying OH MY GOD, WHAT ARE THESE! WHERE HAVE THEY COME FROM? WHAT DO THEY WANT? DON’T PLANT THEM, WHATEVER YOU DO! A few countries have received them now: Canada, US, Australia, Ireland and UK – all English speaking countries, no idea if that’s significant.
One detail in the article is that the seeds come from Vanuatu as well as China, which aren’t two countries I think of as being connected. The article suggests we ‘avoid planting the seeds’ which is pleasantly mild, so I won’t set fire to the pot on my windowsill yet. It seems there are a few different species in the packets. Bamboo would have been nice and I like a Petunia, but I don’t think mine are either, so they may still be Triffids. It’s still unknown as to why the seeds have been sent – although the ‘brushing’ scam is mostly likely. Apparently the US are having an investigation and China are helping.
It seems that the evil of peas has made it into a book. Good.
I planted some of my mysterious Chinese seeds today (post about them here) – the ones that have newspapers like the Express all in a flap (I wonder if Express journalists are as hysterical as their headlines, or if they just see every situation as potential clickbait).
But it seems I’m too late, because I posted up that I’d sowed them on my work Whatsapp and it turns out my boss got some of the seeds too. And she sowed them ages ago! And they grew! And they’re peas! Peas!
Now I have an all encompassing hatred of peas, little green bastards. So I take back anything reasonable I said about China. This is an invasion! They are evil geniuses! They want to ruin all dinners with pea juice (because that is the evil of peas), so that we become hungry and grumpy and subduing us will be easy. I know I’m going to have trouble convincing others of this plot. Logically it may not make sense, but in my heart, I know the truth.
Today was one of those days when I wonder if I’m out to get me.
First I dreamed about a fight. I’m not sure why I was having it, but definitely it was something heroic and Matrix-like in its cool. There were (probably) spinning kicks and majestic dodges against my huge male foe who was almost certainly evil. And then I punched him, and woke just as my fist hit the wall next to my bed. It hurt, but apparently even majestic fights are quite puny when they leave the dream world, so no damage. A definite sense of Oh you fucking idiot, though.
Then I went to work, and I had to cut back some large Euphorbia. Euphorbia can be nasty because it has poisonous sap that oozes out all over you when you cut it, but I’m lucky and don’t react to it, it’s just sticky and annoying. What I was more bothered about was the insects living in the bed that didn’t like my invasion of their space. They started biting me, not unreasonably. But I noticed that they bit less the more sap I got on me. Aha! I thought. Nature’s insect repellent. Because of course that is why Euphorbia has toxic sap – to keep away biting insects. So I smeared some on my arms and legs and the insects left me alone. I felt so clever.
Then in the afternoon I got quite dusty and wiped my arm over my face, then carried on chopping – Mahonia this time. My eye started to sting, but I assumed it was the dust and blinked it away. But the pain wouldn’t go and was getting quite nasty. I staggered out of the bed and poured some water on my eye. A friendly builder working nearby asked I was ok. ‘I think so, I just got something in my eye,’ I said. ‘It’s not Euphorbia sap is it? Because that’s really dangerous if you get it in your eyes.’
And I realised that of course it fucking was, so I went back to base and spent the next ten minutes trying to wash the toxic sap out of my damn eye. And for anyone following this blog, yes it was the same eye that landed me in Urgent Care a few weeks ago.
That afternoon I was working in the same bed, trying to not be a self-sabotaging fool, and I looked up and saw this face looking down at me from a nearby statue. Pitying, exasperated, unimpressed, I have a feeling this statue has seen many idiots before.
Do you sometimes question if you exist in the way you’re supposed to? I sometimes wonder if I’ve died already and what’s wandering around as me doesn’t look completely human anymore.
Today I was feeling faded out anyway, still ill with some bizarre virus that gives me a low level fever and makes my face feel swollen up from the inside. I haven’t been outside my room except to get water and occasional snacks, but I needed more food, so I went out to the supermarket. And on the way people were staring at me oddly. They often do stare at me oddly, it’s true, not nastily, just curiously, but today they weren’t even trying to hide it.
Then I was in the supermarket, using the self-service screen and it wouldn’t recognise my finger. I was pressing and pressing different buttons on the screen, trying to get something, but nope. So I called the supermarket guy over, I know him, he’s usually really friendly, but he barely acknowledged me. He pressed the button, it worked first time. So I think it’s me, what have I turned into? Am I just waiting to fade away?
Word of the day (I think this one may be a joke): Gawdelpus – helpless person
This is going to be short because I have some evil, life-force sapping virus. I think I’ve had it for a while, which probably explains why my blogs have been so crap recently (doesn’t explain their quality before that, but oh well).
But anyway, the foxes came back, and had a sleep near their shoe, so I glad I kept it. My phone wouldn’t get a good enough picture, so this is from Hamoudi’s. Look at the little chaps!
Any of you keeping track might know that I bought a new laptop a few days ago. And in many ways it is great – it doesn’t take half an hour to open Word, it doesn’t crash at the sight of WordPress and it’s not held together by elastic bands and bulldog clips.
However, there’s one small problem. When I was looking at the website, the size of the hard drive was listed as two different amounts: 1 terabyte (huge!) and 250 gigabytes (foolishly small). After reading the reviews and asking Hamoudi what he thought, we came to the conclusion that it had two hard drives and one was 250GB and the other was 1TB. We were both wrong.
So what turned up was a laptop that has only 250 GB of space, once I put photos and music on it, it was half full. So I wrote to the dealers, and said very sweetly, ‘YOU LIED TO ME’.
A nice woman wrote back asking for proof of the misleading website, which I sent, she said ‘Urrr, ok I’ll get back to you in a bit.’ I said ‘cool, btw I don’t want to return the laptop, I just want to be compensated for the external hard drive I’ll have to buy.’
Yesterday afternoon I checked my email, nothing. Then late last night the doorbell rang with a parcel for me. It was an external hard drive for 1 terabyte. No note, still no email, but exactly what I wanted. That they didn’t contact me to tell me it was coming made this an obvious shut up and go away gesture, which is fine by me, I love being paid off.
Complaining can work, my friends. Just don’t abuse it.
Word of the day: Gudgeon – a person easily cheated
“there’s no defense except all the errors made”
― Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit
Sub Tropical land. I need a short flower interlude from inspirational posters. So I decided to share with you some photos from our sub-tropical border, cos it’s beautiful.
I also thought I should let you know the bloke I see every day, who walks slowly up and down with his head hanging, I haven’t seen him since I wrote about him. I’ve decided for simplicity to call him Brennan, since that name means sorrow and he looks like the most desolate man I’ve seen. I’ll let you know when he comes back. I last saw him on his knees facing a house at seven in the morning so I’m a bit worried.
Word of the day: nullibicity – state of being nowhere
I’m not sure this is a good idea. Where would I put it all?
Was reducing a twenty-five foot bay tree to about twelve foot high today. I didn’t have a ladder, so mostly I was cutting huge chunks out by sawing through thick stems lower down, doing a bit of climbing so I could reach. I could see there were two nests near the top of the tree, it’s past nesting season and there was no tetchy birds around, so I was sure they were empty. After a few hours of cutting and clambering I finally sawed through the branch with one of the nests on and those whole thing came crashing down and landed on the ground. But the nest had vanished.
There was the branch with a bundle of dead leaves next to it. No nest.
But then I thought having a bundle of dead leaves in a tree was weird, not like they’d been pruned and left there, they must have been put there. I was working with Ezekiel (don’t think I’ve mentioned him, he’s very mellow and knows a lot about nature) and asked him what he thought.
See? It just looks like a pile of dead leaves
‘Well that,’ he said ‘looks like a squirrel’s nest, he’d have built it for the winter to hibernate in. Looks like he never properly used it though, there’s no poo.’
When we broke it open you could see the leaves were rolled up.
Ezekiel even found a nut in it. So there you are, a squirrel’s nest is made up of dead leaves rolled up.
Ez finding the nut
The other nest was just a bird’s nest and was only used by woodlice.
When I walked in this morning, Mateo was holding this little guy, still wriggling in his fingers. I thought it was a wasp, but he insisted, no, it’s fly pretending to be a wasp. He let the poor thing go eventually.
Accidentally snapped a flowering gladiolus today. I didn’t have anywhere to throw it away to and my hands were full of curb key and hose, so I stuck the flower in my pocket.
This gave me an eighties flashback to Morrissey (for anyone who won’t know about this, which may be most people, here’s a pic)
And I had to wail ‘You’re the one for me, fatty!’ at the sky.
inkbiotic 