There's nothing as empty...

... as a house with no dogs.

The lads are gone to stay with Kay at Happy Hounds for two weeks and the cats will stay here with their cat sitter while we're away.

It's very hard to be in the house without them here.

37: The end of the Empire

Fragrant Harbour is another quality page-turner from John Lanchester. It tells the story of a family's blah against the backdrop of blah in Hong Kong blah. Alright, it's more interesting than that, but any plot summary is going to make it sound like any other family saga, because essentially that's what it is, even going so far as to start at the present day and work back. But the characters don't get caught up in the turbulent times of post-war Hong Kong any more than the story requires them to, and there is no magic realism of any kind anywhere in it, nor does anyone turn out to be a hermaphrodite. This is just straight-ahead storytelling where the story and the characters and the historical backdrop are interesting enough to do away with any quirks or gimmicks. Knowing nothing at all about Hong Kong doesn't make it any harder to follow, and in fact now I suspect I would find the place a little easier to navigate, if I was ever thinking about going there, which I am not.

Anyone who had a heart...

...would buy me one of these for my mobile.

This is everyone's cue to tell me how rubbish they are.

Half a dalek!

Okay, it's not really, it's our composter.

Having read the rules for using the composter, I'm not sure we qualify for one. Fill with earth and then a layer of woody material? Do not ever put potato peelings in? WTF? I thought this was going to be the answer to all my waste disposal prayers. Instead it's yet another thing I have to learn to do properly or it won't work.

Bah.
Posted Aug. 15 2005, at 3:00 PM
Comments (7)
We throw everything food wise into it bar meat, so that's all fuit/veg/bread/pasta cooked/raw etc. Dunno why it hasn't become a rat magnet, prob cos of all the cats....
Posted by eamonn on Aug. 16 2005, at 12:07 PM Delete
Right, but are you getting compost at the other end?
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Aug. 16 2005, at 12:20 PM Delete
Getting excellent rich compost, almost soil at that stage. Mind you - it's actually an old bin, so to get it out you have to first empty the top layers of fruity compost.
Posted by eamonn on Aug. 16 2005, at 1:54 PM Delete
In that case I won't worry about it. Except that yours is in a nice shady spot and mine isn't in a nice shady spot, but I don't have anywhere nice and shady to put it. Maybe I'll have to plant a tree next to it or something.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Aug. 16 2005, at 3:33 PM Delete
We just put everything in a pile at the end of the garden, not even a bin. Took about 2 years to start composting propertly, but now it turns all raw veg, lawn clippings and some paper into rich compost in a month or so. It is amazing how small everything composts down to.
Posted by caelen on Aug. 16 2005, at 4:03 PM Delete
Nature, eh? It's pure mad.

Excitingly, I'm also going to try composting our cat litter. It's the wood pellet stuff so it should be okay, or else it will be a horrible smelly mistake and we'll have to clean the whole thing out and start again.
Fun times!
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Aug. 16 2005, at 6:14 PM Delete
But not the pooey bits of course as those are a bad thing.
Posted by Keith on Aug. 16 2005, at 6:29 PM Delete
Write a comment:

Break out the champagne

We got our Sky+ and it is great. You really can do all the things they tell you about in the ads. And since I gave up watching Big Brother, I don't miss Channel 4 at all.

Chorus can kiss my arse.
Posted Aug. 11 2005, at 1:04 PM
Comments (5)
nice
Posted by on Aug. 11 2005, at 7:40 PM Delete
Don't forget, "Services" menu, type 4,0,1 then and this gets you access to the secret installer's menu.
Posted by StevieB on Aug. 12 2005, at 12:17 AM Delete
Then ....4,0,1 then ....If you forget select it'll blow up
Posted by StevieB on Aug. 12 2005, at 12:18 AM Delete
Hey, your comment box won't allow select. Select. SELECT.
Posted by StevieB on Aug. 12 2005, at 12:19 AM Delete
Well, that's nice and clear. Thanks!
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Aug. 12 2005, at 8:21 AM Delete

36: Harry Potter and the Empire Strikes Back

Less than a month after its release, our first copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince showed up in the shop. Hooray for people. Sadly if you're going to read it you've probably read it by now, and if you're not then you won't care.

Maybe it's because I get out less than I used to, or maybe it's something else, but I've had less of a pod-people vibe from this book. When The Order of the Phoenix came out, it was everywhere. Every bus you went on, every park you walked through at lunchtime for the whole summer, there were people everywhere reading it. I haven't seen the latest one knocking around as much, maybe people remember back to how heavy it made their bags last time and they decided to read this one at home.

And what was the book like? Stuff happens that's supposed to be earth-shattering but I found myself not really caring. I listened to some children talking about it on the radio the other day and it seemed to me that if you are as young as Harry Potter was when the books started, you might find some of the stuff in this book a bit boring. If you're as old as Harry Potter is now, you might find the whole wizarding thing, well, a bit childish. It seems to me that Rowling's wizards are kids' wizards. They have names like Lupin and Dumbledore and even Harry Potter - almost Enid Blytonish names. They need a wand to do their spells. It all seems frightfully jolly hockey sticks and chalet school, which was great when everyone was young and they had adults to look after them. In order to move away from that and into the adult world of peril where Harry is now going, surely a complete change of language is needed? But won't that alienate some of the younger readers and their parents?

But of course I'm not a child and I didn't grow up with these characters and so I don't get particularly excited when cool things happen to them and I don't get teary-eyed when bad things happen because I don't love them like kids do. Perhaps it will be an exciting meme for the future. Where were you when...

Keith says:
I think people have their Harry Potter book space occupied by Dan Brown now. Certainly there isn't the expected decrease in DB book numbers and the expected increase in Potter. I did see a lot of people reading Phoenix before Prince came out, presumably to be ready for it.
Posted by Keith on Aug. 11 2005, at 1:07 PM

Tutti frutti ice cream!

Did you even know that there was a huge shipping trade in ice in the late 1800s? Me either. Would you have said such an idea was crazy? Me too. But there it was. And Gavin Weightman's The Frozen Water Trade is the book to tell you all about it. I liked this book enormously, even though the subject matter is a little dry. Like a lot of overnight sensations, the ice trade took a very long time to be take seriously, but once it was up and running, it took its inventor out of debt and was making him $40,000 a year in profits. Ice was sold as far away as India, and it is this trade that explains why American drinks are so much colder than ours, and why they call their fridges ice boxes.Shipping, commerce, the industrialisation of America, it's all here in a very compact 200 pages. Recommended.

Sick dog

Poor Cody's not well, but he's battling through, bless him.

Moses supposes

Look, we have a rose in our garden!

Sunday walk

Sunday walk is becoming a bit of a feature of the Laytown weekend. This week, Barbara and Caelen and Denali joined us for a bit of being blown around by a strong wind and pancaked afterwards.
Posted Jul. 26 2005, at 10:07 PM
Original comments
Denali's getting big isn't she!!
Posted by Queenie on Jul. 28 2005

34: No one can say no to the bastard

Possibly the worst tag line I've ever seen for a book. Certainly the worst cover I've seen on a book in ages (I realise that a scan would have brought out its awful seventiesness much more effectively than a crappy photo of the cover, but I can't be arsed going all the way upstairs to the scanner). If I was Beryl Bainbridge I'd have sued someone. Maybe she did.

The book itself is slight enough and is of the type that Bainbridge seems to have given up, which is just as well because the itroverted girl who gets taken for a ride by the bastard man of the world was done best in An Awfully Big Adventure, and thankfully it's kind of old and not very believable (maybe I'm just lucky and know strong women).

More interesting is the period detail. The family huddled around in a small dining room at Christmas, the mother constantly rubbing the backs of the chair legs to make sure the electric fire isn't scorching them, everyone trying not to trip over the cord on the electric carving knife, that kind of thing. I'm glad Beryl Bainbridge has moved on to the crisp history of According to Queenie or Master Georgie, but even a second division Bainbridge like Sweet William was worth the few hours it took to read it.

Original comments
Is that Sam Waterston and Jenny Agutter on the cover? That could be worth something.
Posted by StevieB on Jul. 28 2005, at 4:19 PM

33: it's family, innit?

Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup is billed on the back as a Romeo and Juliet story for a more cynical age. More cynical than an age where women were married off at the age of thirteen to improve their family's social standing? Really? Never mind that though. This isn't really a love story, is, I think, what that reviewer means. It's a story of two people using each other for the sake of convenience. In his case to get a residency visa for South Africa. In her case to get some cachet. Either way, they both get a lot more than they bargain for.

It's a book about politics and religion, sure. But it's also a story about families changing and adapting and being more than you thought they could be. Highly recommended. Doesn't outstay its welcome either.

32: Hey! Rome's full of rude Italians!

If you're looking for a book that will reinforce every stereotype you've ever read about any country in Europe, you've found it here. On the surface, Michael Booth's Just as Well I'm Leaving is an entertaining idea to part publishers and readers from their money. Hey, the high concept says, I'm going to follow Hans Christian Andersen's footsteps across Europe, tell you something about him on the way, and have a good laugh! So far, so standard proposal.

Andersen turns out to be a fascinating character. Crazy, gangly, unattractive, maybe gay, maybe not, certainly in love with the idea of doomed love, a brilliant writer, a man raging with insecurities, a virgin at his death, and so on.

Michael Booth is a bloke who thinks he's funny and isn't really. He even makes a lazy "...and that was just the teachers!" style joke somewhere in here that I can't be bothered to find. True, he does his research well and he cares about Andersen, but he ruins the most straightforward anecdotes with lame jokes, so a book that should be fascinating in its depiction of how much Europe (and the profession of writing, really) has changed becomes merely adequate and much too long.

And there are a lot of printing errors and a couple of factual mistakes in it, which really grinds my nads.
Posted Jul. 18 2005, at 5:10 PM

31: Cosy Moments

Aren't these Amazon scans really poor quality? If I wasn't using them without permission I'd be really pissed off.

Anyway, Psmith Journalist. Last year on ILB, some women admitted to having a bit of a crush on Psmith. I don't see it myself. Or it might just have been this book. I don't think Wodehouse is at his best when he tries to "do" Americans. I'm not sure he ever got the mannerisms quite right and I just am not sure he has the same feel for them as he does for his own social circle back home. So maybe the Psmith books that take place in England are better.

Heaving stomachers

How great is it that the words "heaving stomachers" brings up an ad for the Crohn's and Colitis foundation of America? Brilliant.

30: Interesting times

With a rustle of petticoats and a heaving of stomachers, here comes another Phillipa Gregory book. The Queen's Fool follows on from The Other Boleyn Girl, telling the story of Hannah, a young Jewish girl who has fled the Spanish Inquisition with her father and settled in England. She is begged for a holy fool because she has The Sight of some kind and ends up in the court of sickly young Edward VI and, after him, Queen Mary. The story of the intrigue and terror that gripped all of England at that time is well told and, as I said when reading her previous book, she manages to drum up sympathy for the unlikeliest of people, so you sort of feel sorry for Mary by the end. But only sort of.

It's good to be reminded of how things were before Elizabeth's golden age, how restricted people were in what they could say and write about, how easily today's off-the-cuff remarks could become tomorrow's hanging offences, and how powerless minor courtiers and courtesans really were. It's more of the same stuff. Quality.

Record temperatures

According to the Met Office report at five to six this evening, temperatures tomorrow could reach record highs. The man at the train station in Laytown said that might be a problem. He checked the temperature of the rails today and it was thirty degrees. Apparently if the temperature goes above thirty degrees...

At this point he made some twisty turny movement with his hands and made a kind of 'cccchhhhhh' noise, which I think was supposed to indicate that it would be hard to keep the trains on the rails.

Bloody great. Of course I'll be able to get into work, but not home again.
Posted Jul. 11 2005, at 10:01 PM

Broil King

Man Make Fire!

It's beer o'clock!

Man, it's hot here in Laytown today. People were even swimming in the sea. Good times.
Posted Jul. 10 2005, at 5:34 PM
Original comments
Today was melty all right. We went out to Dun Laoghaire with the folks. Top market in the park action.
Posted by Ray on Jul. 10 2005, at 9:31 PM

To conclude with a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody in full chorus

I can't believe I've posted nothing for nearly a month. And that I'd get the urge to post today, of all days, with all the shit that's going on in London. I suppose it's the urge to do something combined with the lack of ability to do anything useful. It's probably also that fear for family's safety followed by relief at safety of family.

Anyway, last Sunday marked the birthday of our matriarch and we had a huge party. It was top fun. These are the only photos I took, though.
Original comments
Hmmm, what's that I see on the wall in the background of photo 2?
Posted by Ray on Jul. 07 2005, at 2:49 PM
How come Keith never wears that shirt to work?
Posted by Dave on Jul. 07 2005, at 3:13 PM
Ray: Ickle baby Byrnes!

Dave: Because that shirt still hangs in the "goodwear" section of the wardrobe. Next Christmas, when he gets a new shirt, it will be relegated.
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Jul. 07 2005, at 3:23 PM
On further inspection of the group photo, it's funny how Keith is inspecting his feet as people do during the second verse of hymns or during the national anthem. Even after four years in this family, HE DOES NOT KNOW THE WORDS!
Posted by perfectlycromulent on Jul. 07 2005, at 3:25 PM
Oh I know the words all right. I just don't think it would be politic to tell the in laws that I don't really like Queen.
Posted by watchdog on Jul. 10 2005, at 7:36 PM
They're not in-laws yet, and if there are any more revelations like that...
Posted by Ray on Jul. 10 2005, at 9:29 PM