'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

What's this, a real life post?

Today was a trip to the dentist - which in my family is an actual outing since we go to one all the way up in Sutton. We used to do this as a complete family visit as well though since Covid my sister and I have ended up making separate appointments to mummy and daddy - though hilariously we've independently managed to book the hygienist on two successive days this week (so just missing each other)!

It's a fairly straightforward trip up the A3 through the Hindhead Tunnel which has always felt like a strangely creepy tunnel. It's something about the lighting inside, the completely black tunnel roof, and the fact that on the first drive I did to Sutton we entered the tunnel from a sunny morning and exited the other side to discover fog creeping over the trees at the side of the road. It was no less creepy today - the drive north had mixed bands of glorious sunshine and light fog, and as we reached the southern portal the top of the hill was shrouded in fog with the tunnel entrance looking like some giant maw swallowing up the unwary traffic!

The return journey had our by-now traditional stop at Petersfield for a late lunch, though we didn't do the walk around Petersfield Pond this time but instead wandered into St Peter's Church. Entering the church I was struck by just how quiet it was - as soon as the door closed all the noise of the traffic outside just disappeared. For a church in the middle of a busy town it was amazing how peaceful it was inside.

Just your ordinary everyday low-flying Chinook...

Now you see it...



...now you don't!



Yesterday morning at the crack of dawn Fawley power station chimney and turbine hall were demolished, so before the crack of dawn I trundled along to Warsash to watch from the shoreline (because why not? - and because someone was hosting a geocaching event, also because why not?). The internets suggested that it could be popular so I avoided the suggested parking and instead parked up outside St Mary's at Warsash... which was the right decision, as by the time I'd walked to Hook Park Road everywhere was packed and apparently someone had crashed as well!

Walking there made for something of an odd pilgrimage in the pre-dawn gloom, with torchlit coat-clad walkers dodging the flooded roads (and in one case trying to manhandle a pushchair around a particularly deep puddle). At the beach itself I emerged into the teeth of the autumn gale battering the coast, and got thoroughly soaked through while waiting. I did consider bringing an umbrella... but decided not to in the end what with how windy it was. That was probably the right choice given what happened to other umbrellas:



The chimney went down right on cue, followed by a more visible explosion taking down the rest of the turbine hall, and a few moments late the surprisingly loud bangs reached us (apparently heard all the way over in Fareham). And that was that! A local landmark that I could see from the right spot in Fareham is now gone, and just the cleanup left followed by turning the site into a housing development.

And because this is the 21st century, of course I have video of it (though without the bangs, because of all the wind noise) 😁

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!


This has been something of a strange Easter. It's the first year I've not gone back to Horsham (which was already going to be different before all this went down, as they've ended the annual Italian festival), and the first year I've not been to some combination of Easter services.

But today I did manage my own little Easter celebration - somehow, I woke up before dawn, and in the absence of an actual dawn service somewhere I simply stood out on my balcony and watched the sun rise...

( Easter sunrise )

St John's Fareham did manage an actual Easter celebration as well - the vicar hosted a "simple sharing of bread and wine" on Zoom, based on a passage from 1 Corinthians. As with all teleconferences it started with the ritual "can you hear me? I can hear you!", but eventually we got audio mostly sorted. Trying to say the responses in sync with everyone else is quite tricky due to the latency involved!

So the not-a-window in my flat turns out to actually be a window, as the windy weather decided to make clear today. And in doing so it blew everything off the windowsill and a nice piece of stained glass I picked up back in St Mawes ended up shattered on the ground outside. Sigh.

It's a bizarre feature - two of the windows in the flat are theoretically openable, except there's no handle fitted and they're secured shut. Or at least I thought they were - I've noticed that one shifts in the wind but never enough to actually open before.

Anyway, I went spelunking through the bag o' tools and found a suction cup to use to pull the window shut, pried a blanking plate off to reveal the slot that the handle would turn if there was one, and improvised my own handle with a screwdriver. That window is now definitely shut, and I can glue the blanking plate back on later.

The downside of elemnar and I sharing some interests is when I happen to be semi-randomly wandering round town and spot something that is on both of our WANT lists (like a wish list, except our mutual reaction to discovering the thing has been WANT). Then comes the awkward question-to-self: do I get it as a thing for myself, or does it become a present for her? And if it's the latter, do I get it now and then have it taunting me from the bag o' presents, or do I wait until nearer her birthday?

And has elemnar also found it and thinking the same thing? Yes, we've been known to get each other the exact same present at Christmas - we've done that at least twice now, and the first time neither of us had any idea we'd done so (much to The Gnu's amusement, who did know what was going on).

Anyway, I have bought... a shiny thing! Now to decide what to do with it...

What did I do at the weekend? Oh, just went a bit ape up in the woods...



This all started a couple of years ago. I don't know when I'd first heard about Go Ape but for quite some time I had been thinking it would be a fun thing to do, so for my 30th birthday instead of the traditional birthday karting I arrange with the extended pasta night group I suggested Go Ape instead. What with one thing and another it didn't actually happen near my birthday, but instead in March last year (the Facebook event ended up saying "I'm fairly certain that Go Ape will happen before my next birthday"). 'Twas great fun and we unanimously agreed that we should go again sometime.

So on Saturday we did just that, and met up at Tilgate Park to once again tackle the treetop adventure. After much car park fail (seriously, the entirety of Crawley must have been at the park at the weekend) we ended up spread across two booking slots, but managed to arrange things so that one lot hung back at the first slot and the others were at the start of the second slot so we could all do the course together. Memo to self: next time, just park at K2 and walk up.

It's an odd mix of obstacles and crossings they've got in the course. Some of them are so easy that you can almost run across without using the ropes for support, while others are very hard (there's one with diagonally supported logs that I struggled with). The bosun's chair crossing (a slightly downhill slanted main/anchor wire with a rope hanging beneath to pull yourself along with - almost a mini zipline) was actually quite fun despite having nothing at all to stand on, while the scariest one for me was the tarzan swings, because of that moment at the start of the swing when you just drop before slamming into a rope net at a surprisingly fast pace. Climbing that rope net afterwards is hard work as well - it reminds me of the old Gladiators show and I've no idea how the contestants managed to make it look so easy.

All the segments end with a zipline which most of the time I started facing the right way and ended up landing sideways/backwards (with wood chip ending up absolutely everywhere), but on the final zipline I managed a running landing facing forwards! Go me!

So I'm playing a sort-of visual novel game on my 3DS (Virtue's Last Reward) while waiting for the timer on my cooker to tell me my supper's ready...

Character in game: "I'm gonna push that button. That okay?"
Character in game: "Yeah, sure."
Character in game: *pushes button*
My cooker: BEEP-BEEP! BEEP-BEEP!
Character in game: "Whoa!"

It's the thunderstorm and my MP3 player all over again!

Merry Christmas!

I got given a frankly silly number of constructions kits this year - even more than in 2016 (and I never did get round to building all of those) - so here's kit number 1. Can you guess what it is?

It'd look very silly if I failed to post something on the first day of NaBloPoMo, so I'm not going to do that.

Even if doing so involves a remote desktop connection to my PC (because I haven't unpacked the laptop, and why use a web interface when one can use an actual desktop app with twice the functionality in a tenth of the ram).

Anyway. NaBloPoMo! I have several ideas and somewhat cunning plans for this year. I may even reuse ideas from past years (I never did complete last year's post theme, or the one before, or the one before...). But for today, you get entirely original content: ( What Has BoggyB Been Up To Recently? )