Garden Surprises

I have done a daft thing (what, just the one, dear ?) I planted some seeds in paper pots in the propagator and now I cant remember quite what they are ! A type of pea or bean certainly - but they could be any of half a dozen varieties, colours, tall or bush type. I have put them outside with a 'maypole' to grow up, so we shall have to wait and see what surprises us in a few weeks time.

Something, an animal, has been making mischief this week. The newly sown salad seeds, carefully marked with little wooden pegs have been scratched about and the marker pegs were found about 4 feet away from the bed. It must be pidgeons or a cat, cant think of anything else that would/could do this but not do anything else. There were a couple of shallots pulled up, one of them is over the fence and in the field... Please not the rabbits - dont let them find us !

Today, Stevie dug and I weeded, put out the pea/bean things, put straw under the strawbs, weeded again, made a frame to net the salad.

Tomorrow (Sun) will be put the nets/mesh over strawbs, salad and carrots, direct sow yellow beans at the maypole, redo the salad leaves, tidy the flower borders, water everything.

Weather permitting (wind speed) we will also spray nasty stuff on the jungle of weeds in preparation for putting down grass seed to get it under control for the summer. Might put our tent up there for some family friends to visit if its a bit easier and safer to walk on than it is now !

CVJFC Presentation Night

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We had our footy club annual presentation night yesterday evening. All our U8's Saturday morning Soccer Club go medals and took part in a penalty competition.

CVJFC Website News Item

Photos on Flickr

Psychopathic Personalities...

I listened to this morning's Desert Island Discs with the loathsome Piers Morgan. He comes across as a bright and determined person - clearly his career and successes reflect this. His access to rich and powerful people has enabled him to collect (and polish?)  a number of interesting and genuinely amusing anecdotes (e.g. his interview on the beach with a barefooted Rupert Murdoch prior to being made editor of the News of the World at 28 years old) - his choice of songs was quite interesting and varied - as a PR exercise he did very well.

However - listening to him attempt to justify his role and participation in the stupidest and nastiest parts of the media and his double standards on "privacy" (his is important - other people's isn't) -  put me in mind of this from the much missed Kurt Vonnegut back in 2003 - read it all...:

"I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!"

via Kurt Vonnegut vs. the &#@ -- In These Times.

Most of us are in no position to make real diagnoses of PP in an individual, especially somebody we only know of via the media. Yet so many of the most successful leaders in government and business appear (to me) to conform to the stereotype.

I think the PP lens is an effective tool for comprehension of incomprehensible times .

The question remains - why do we let these people assume power over us?

Doubley Toothless Charlie!

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The Tooth Fairy is being kept busy by Charlie... as his second top-front tooth came out this evening at the FA skills football session in a freak "running/drink-bottle" incident.

THAT PETROL EMOTION - Great Photos

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The TPE guys linked to some great photos from last year's Electric picnic gig - as they gear up for their series of gigs in July.

via Time to get excited. | THAT PETROL EMOTION.

Best pictures of the football season

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I enjoyed this selection of the best pictures of the football season by the Guardian's photographer Tom Jenkins.

I particularly love this one of Messi with his European Cup winners meddle. I was thinking how childlike he looks - just like a 12 year old kid - Jenkins' own comments reflect this too:

"At this moment as he wraps his winners medal round his head, the best footballer in the world looks like a proud, little boy showing off his prize from the school sports day."

Link to Tom Jenkins's best pictures of the football season