Given that it's bloody hot today, it seemed like a really good idea to drive around with chickens in the car, up and down the M27. After all, why wouldn't you?
We were being very righteous, and collecting 3 rescued battery hens from a garage on the outskirts of Southampton, not for us but for a friend who has prepared a luxurious new home for them, but was unable to receive them as he was attending a wedding. A long wedding as it turned out, complete with Mass and then serious photography which was apparently getting on the tits of the guests who were wilting in the sunshine and had been refreshed only by a sip of communion wine.
The hens were with a large number of their chums in a wire enclosure in a garage, attached to a large house, where they were being distributed to their saviours by two jolly young ladies in jeans and polo shirts. There were plenty of new-age stockbrokers rocking up to rescue, and a couple of dead-beats. And the mother of one of the jolly young ladies, who turned out to be the owner of the garage and not actually very keen on it being used as the Schindlers Ark of the poultry industry, a point she made strongly when leaning out of a bedroom window to scream at a guy who reversed his pick-up to the garage, and spun the wheels hence spraying the gravel everywhere and leaving a dark rut on the drive. She really didn't like him.
So we put the hens in to some old wine cases, with some straw, and drove them to their new home, where they were installed with water, mash and plenty of shade, as apparently they are not experienced in matters meteorological and will therefore stand in the beating sun until they fall over. Poor mites.
I look forward to egg mayonnaise, shortly.
Then we went to the newsagent and bought an ice lolly called a Mr. Bobbles. Tabatha binned hers, I ate mine because I needed some cold, but it was really disgusting, a bad show. I've tried to find a picture to show you, but even the vastness of the interweb has conspired to conceal the aforementioned abhorrence. It was grim, and you'll just have to imagine the disappointment.
Still, steak for dinner, then out to the pub with various chums. Can't be too bad, really. (We didn't think chicken would be appropriate this evening...)
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Semi-Supervised
Given that I am this evening unsupervised - Tabatha is in London, ma-in-law is out exercising The Force, I am at liberty to indulge in some hard-core blogging. And to plug me ear'oles into some tunery.
Well, I say tunery. I have recently developed a sneaky penchant for a certain hook-nosed screeching Canadian, with a line in excessively indulgent epic rawk, and particularly crass metaphoric lyrics. It is a little embarrassing, but I feel comfortable confessing here.
My name is Krusty and I'm becoming a Rush fan.
I learnt something very interesting today; nah, only kidding. I did hear some complete bollocks, and was impressed by the ability of the purveyors thereof to keep a straight face and apparently, in all honesty, expect the audience to take them seriously. Actually.
I have just noticed with some alarm, that iPol has listed a Rick Wakeman tune. This is unforgivable (see previous references to matters Yes).
So what has the move to rural Hampshire done for The Baker? Well, I am rediscovering the pleasure of being talked down to by people who assume that I know nothing of village life. This has now happened twice. I grew up in a 'village' that is about half the size of my current location, and am perfectly well acquainted with all its foibles - gossip, scandal, slanderous rumour, sympathetic racism ("Ooh I am sorry, I just heard about your new neighbours" - my Daddy used to let slip in the pub that our new neighbours were Chinese and see how long it took to get back to mother. 13hrs was pretty much the average. The other game was to suggest that it was a policeman - the feller who lived opposite us was referred to as 'Officer' for 15 years by one parish councillor.)
I am also delighted by the fact that the last sound I hear at night is an owl. Or if I'm really lucky, the agonised, tortured screams of an alpaca as it is sheared. I honestly thought that it must be the vet amputating a limb (which on an alpaca is highly likely to be a leg), given that there was this awful emission from the animal, reassuring murmurs of the owner, and the buzzing of a mechanical device. Oh, and it was 10.30 on Sunday evening, not the most obvious time to set about your pet camelids with the clippers. But it was just the shearer.
In the mornings I am awoken by the dawn chorus, and a splendid sound it is too. I look from the window and see the bunny rabbits prancing around the fields, awaiting the later escape as the sniper shoots, and the crows and the woodpecker pulling up worms. And the strange man from the newsagent arrives with the 'paper. I don't think he really likes me - he looks at me like I'm a conquistador and all I bring is TB. And I don't want to buy anything in his shop - but then I don't like pot noodle and I have no regular need for tinned otter hearts.
The sun gently beams down, and I drive along the leafy lanes, avoiding the deer carcass, and attendant buzzards, as I make my way for an honest day's toil.
At the weekends I can mix with a variety of people and enjoy their company. I can get helplessly drunk and walk home, and not worry about being arrested (getting drunk in the company of the local constabulary may be of some value in this), or slipping up on the pile of shite outside the various local fast-food joints, or mugged by the 'innit' crown on the corner.
On the subject of Pot Noodle, I love their advertising. It's always excellent. It has to be. The aim of marketing and sales is to;
a) persuade people to buy a product in the first place ('Trial'),
b) persuade those people to buy it again ('repeat'),
c) persuade more people to buy it ('penetration'),
d) persuade those people to buy it again more often ('frequency'),
e) persuade those people to buy more of it when they buy it ('trip volume')
Now, having 'trialled' a Pot Noodle, are you honestly likely to 'repeat'; of course not, it's repeated on you, not the other way round. So the advertising has to be shit hot to continue to 'drive trial'.
So congratulations to Pot Noodle, definitely a Type 4 or 5.
Well, I say tunery. I have recently developed a sneaky penchant for a certain hook-nosed screeching Canadian, with a line in excessively indulgent epic rawk, and particularly crass metaphoric lyrics. It is a little embarrassing, but I feel comfortable confessing here.
My name is Krusty and I'm becoming a Rush fan.
I learnt something very interesting today; nah, only kidding. I did hear some complete bollocks, and was impressed by the ability of the purveyors thereof to keep a straight face and apparently, in all honesty, expect the audience to take them seriously. Actually.
I have just noticed with some alarm, that iPol has listed a Rick Wakeman tune. This is unforgivable (see previous references to matters Yes).
So what has the move to rural Hampshire done for The Baker? Well, I am rediscovering the pleasure of being talked down to by people who assume that I know nothing of village life. This has now happened twice. I grew up in a 'village' that is about half the size of my current location, and am perfectly well acquainted with all its foibles - gossip, scandal, slanderous rumour, sympathetic racism ("Ooh I am sorry, I just heard about your new neighbours" - my Daddy used to let slip in the pub that our new neighbours were Chinese and see how long it took to get back to mother. 13hrs was pretty much the average. The other game was to suggest that it was a policeman - the feller who lived opposite us was referred to as 'Officer' for 15 years by one parish councillor.)
I am also delighted by the fact that the last sound I hear at night is an owl. Or if I'm really lucky, the agonised, tortured screams of an alpaca as it is sheared. I honestly thought that it must be the vet amputating a limb (which on an alpaca is highly likely to be a leg), given that there was this awful emission from the animal, reassuring murmurs of the owner, and the buzzing of a mechanical device. Oh, and it was 10.30 on Sunday evening, not the most obvious time to set about your pet camelids with the clippers. But it was just the shearer.
In the mornings I am awoken by the dawn chorus, and a splendid sound it is too. I look from the window and see the bunny rabbits prancing around the fields, awaiting the later escape as the sniper shoots, and the crows and the woodpecker pulling up worms. And the strange man from the newsagent arrives with the 'paper. I don't think he really likes me - he looks at me like I'm a conquistador and all I bring is TB. And I don't want to buy anything in his shop - but then I don't like pot noodle and I have no regular need for tinned otter hearts.
The sun gently beams down, and I drive along the leafy lanes, avoiding the deer carcass, and attendant buzzards, as I make my way for an honest day's toil.
At the weekends I can mix with a variety of people and enjoy their company. I can get helplessly drunk and walk home, and not worry about being arrested (getting drunk in the company of the local constabulary may be of some value in this), or slipping up on the pile of shite outside the various local fast-food joints, or mugged by the 'innit' crown on the corner.
On the subject of Pot Noodle, I love their advertising. It's always excellent. It has to be. The aim of marketing and sales is to;
a) persuade people to buy a product in the first place ('Trial'),
b) persuade those people to buy it again ('repeat'),
c) persuade more people to buy it ('penetration'),
d) persuade those people to buy it again more often ('frequency'),
e) persuade those people to buy more of it when they buy it ('trip volume')
Now, having 'trialled' a Pot Noodle, are you honestly likely to 'repeat'; of course not, it's repeated on you, not the other way round. So the advertising has to be shit hot to continue to 'drive trial'.
So congratulations to Pot Noodle, definitely a Type 4 or 5.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Baker Is Back
Like a particular type of infection, Krusty is back. I haven't done this for a while, and a quick tour round some of my old blogospheric haunts suggests that subject materials, the obsessions of the bloggers, haven't changed a lot. And neither have mine.
Key things to note are that I have relocated geographically, to the rural delights of Hampshire - that's Old Hampshire for my friends in the New World - and am about to relocate professionally, to the immense delights of yours truly and associated parties, especially Tabatha, who is also now my betrothed. This last, actually, is probably the keyest of things to note for those who are interested.
So my obsessions still include politics, pop music, telly, the lack of pubic hair on internet porn (and probably other media of porn too, but why would you bother) and the success of Jamie Oliver.
From what I can see there is a bit more sophistication to this lark than there used to be - fancy linking and stuff; apologies, I'm fresh back at it, so if links from here are a bit out of date and redundant, well, that's just the way it is until I've had a good spate of housekeeping and spring-cleaning, and as I'm shit at that in a very real sense when it actually matters in terms of managing my finances, doing domestic chores and generally looking after myself, you can't honestly expect me to do it in a virtual world where it doesn't really matter. I mean, visit a lot of commercial sites and frankly, they don't work, because the links don't work, the data is 2 years out of date and they're just shit. So this, being free and all, shouldn't be expected to look like a picture from Country Living.
I'm about a quarter of the way through a bottle of Jack Daniels, this evening, and really starting to wonder what all the fuss is about. I mean, it isn't the mellow, malty delight of a good bottle of Irish, or the richness of some of the more choice Scotches, is it? It's basically just ok. It isn't harsh, none of that sharpness of some of the stuff you can get, and not the downright oiliness of some of the apparently 'peaty' Scotch malts - I'm guessing that drinking Duckhams Hypergrade offers a similar experience.
Pop music question of the day - Blue Oyster Cult, honestly, America's answer to Black Sabbath? Yeah? C'mon, "Gardens of Nocturne", is that a lyric to take seriously? Mind you, rock tunes about Godzilla have to be a winner.
Is Hazel Blears real? Or is there a string in her back, which when pulled makes her say any one of approx 6 stock answers to any question asked. Also comes with emergency 'Scum Floats' facility.
Oooh dear, it's late, and I'm being checked out for behaving in an unsupervised manner....
What is a corn dog?
The new Star Trek picture - cracking, first time in years I've been to see a film and wished it was an hour longer, not an hour shorter.
Is Angelina Jolie attractive? Or, is she, excusing the pun, jolie laide? When I discussed this with a friend who is sapphic, she said that it is not Angelina who is a pin-up, but Lara Croft. This, I think, offers some insight into my question.
Why is tinned cider so bloody gassy? By the way, do Americans have cider? Does anyone else remember Cydrax, or was that just a benefit/quirk of being able to spend childhood pocket money at the tuck-shop of a minor public school? And if it still exists, where can I get it? I went to a school where the masters had a bar in their common room, and the best English teacher would walk into class in the morning with two carrier bags - one carrying the books he'd bothered to mark last night, and the other carrying last nights empties and today's to-be-emptied. And he'd take a pinch of snuff during class. (Ooh er missus)
Right, enough for now - if you're interested, piss on the post and I'll try and keep this going, and without some of the bitterness of the past, which was mostly why I stopped doing this, because, frankly, I was starting to repeat myself, like a bad doner.
Key things to note are that I have relocated geographically, to the rural delights of Hampshire - that's Old Hampshire for my friends in the New World - and am about to relocate professionally, to the immense delights of yours truly and associated parties, especially Tabatha, who is also now my betrothed. This last, actually, is probably the keyest of things to note for those who are interested.
So my obsessions still include politics, pop music, telly, the lack of pubic hair on internet porn (and probably other media of porn too, but why would you bother) and the success of Jamie Oliver.
From what I can see there is a bit more sophistication to this lark than there used to be - fancy linking and stuff; apologies, I'm fresh back at it, so if links from here are a bit out of date and redundant, well, that's just the way it is until I've had a good spate of housekeeping and spring-cleaning, and as I'm shit at that in a very real sense when it actually matters in terms of managing my finances, doing domestic chores and generally looking after myself, you can't honestly expect me to do it in a virtual world where it doesn't really matter. I mean, visit a lot of commercial sites and frankly, they don't work, because the links don't work, the data is 2 years out of date and they're just shit. So this, being free and all, shouldn't be expected to look like a picture from Country Living.
I'm about a quarter of the way through a bottle of Jack Daniels, this evening, and really starting to wonder what all the fuss is about. I mean, it isn't the mellow, malty delight of a good bottle of Irish, or the richness of some of the more choice Scotches, is it? It's basically just ok. It isn't harsh, none of that sharpness of some of the stuff you can get, and not the downright oiliness of some of the apparently 'peaty' Scotch malts - I'm guessing that drinking Duckhams Hypergrade offers a similar experience.
Pop music question of the day - Blue Oyster Cult, honestly, America's answer to Black Sabbath? Yeah? C'mon, "Gardens of Nocturne", is that a lyric to take seriously? Mind you, rock tunes about Godzilla have to be a winner.
Is Hazel Blears real? Or is there a string in her back, which when pulled makes her say any one of approx 6 stock answers to any question asked. Also comes with emergency 'Scum Floats' facility.
Oooh dear, it's late, and I'm being checked out for behaving in an unsupervised manner....
What is a corn dog?
The new Star Trek picture - cracking, first time in years I've been to see a film and wished it was an hour longer, not an hour shorter.
Is Angelina Jolie attractive? Or, is she, excusing the pun, jolie laide? When I discussed this with a friend who is sapphic, she said that it is not Angelina who is a pin-up, but Lara Croft. This, I think, offers some insight into my question.
Why is tinned cider so bloody gassy? By the way, do Americans have cider? Does anyone else remember Cydrax, or was that just a benefit/quirk of being able to spend childhood pocket money at the tuck-shop of a minor public school? And if it still exists, where can I get it? I went to a school where the masters had a bar in their common room, and the best English teacher would walk into class in the morning with two carrier bags - one carrying the books he'd bothered to mark last night, and the other carrying last nights empties and today's to-be-emptied. And he'd take a pinch of snuff during class. (Ooh er missus)
Right, enough for now - if you're interested, piss on the post and I'll try and keep this going, and without some of the bitterness of the past, which was mostly why I stopped doing this, because, frankly, I was starting to repeat myself, like a bad doner.
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