Cinema

I had an afternoon to spare today, so I went to see "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" starring Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Johnny Depp et al. Rather weird and quirky but enjoyable. Worth going to see as I guess it will be a classic. I found it to be more accessible than some of Gilliam's other work - like "Brazil" for instance.

The Mill Tea and Dining Room, Lyme Regis

Yesterday evening we were taken out by my mother to The Mill Tea and Dining Room in Lyme Regis. See www.teaanddiningroom.co.uk
The place is very small - maybe 6 tables. The food was excellent English fare. My only criticism being that some products were used a lot. Many things on the menu used leeks for example. On the plus side, this showed imaginative use of seasonal, local produce.
I had a leek and caper starter, my mother and wife had the carbeens - rissoles made from pig trotters and pork. For the main I had stuffed chicken leg - stuffed with leeks! The others had skate with caper sauce and rolled pork belly. For the desert the ladies had lemon curd blancmange and I had warm stewed quince with vanilla ice cream. I had never had quince before - it was lovely.
Well worth visiting again I think.

Bordon to Liphook Rail Link Bus

Yesterday I was planning a trip to Southampton from Whitehill by public transport, so I thought I would investigate using the new Rail Link bus service provided by East Hampshire District Council. I remembered that it had been reported in the “Bordon Herald” that the timetable could be found on East Hampshire Council’s website at www.easthants.gov.uk. I went to the website and could find nothing from their “home page”. I tried using the “search this site” links from the home page. These search links had technical problems. I tried an alphabetical browse through council services… there was nothing about the bus listed under Whitehill, Bordon, Liphook, “rail link” or bus. After about 20 minutes of searching I found a community news feed. The last item on this feed was about the new bus service. This eventually led me to a hyperlink to the timetable.

So, in a spirit of cooperation: the news feed led to this page http://www.easthants.gov.uk/ehdc/community.nsf/webpages/8.93+Rail+Link+Service. The timetable itself is at http://www.easthants.gov.uk/ehdc/community.nsf/0/538C7BA936AD54918025762C0048DC9E/$File/Timetable.pdf. So that’s nice and easy to find now.

I have taken the liberty of using an online service to shorten the first of these hyperlinks for ease of use. You may prefer to type http://tinyurl.com/ykncg5r into your preferred web browser in order to visit the description of the service and link to the timetable.

I have reported the failed website search to the East Hampshire “Contact Us” service. So it may – in due course – get fixed. The bus service itself may well be failing to attract customers if it is not easy to find out where and when it runs.

 

Heron

We were out for a walk last week when we heard an almighty racket coming from a garden ahead of us. On looking through the hedge I could see a heron standing in a garden pond.

There was a cat watching it. The heron was yelling at the cat!

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I went into the garden and shooed away the cat. The heron did not move. I went closer. It then tried to take off, but failed. It had a plastic net wrapped round a foot. The net was stuck down to the pond. So the heron crash landed again.

The cat started to sneak back.

I knocked on the door of the house. No reply, so I rang the police and asked if they could contact the RSPB. In the meantime my wife went next door and roused the neighbours.

Soon there were six of us standing around watching the heron when the house owner emerged and asked what was going on. She did say it explained why the cat hadn’t come in for its tea.

At this point the neighbour’s wife turned up with a tea towel, suggesting she could throw it over the bird’s head while one of us took the netting off its foot. I took a look at the beak on the thing and suggested we should just wait for the RSPB. The owner said that if it was still stuck when it got dark she would ask her husband to cut it free so foxes didn’t attack it in the night.

We continued our walk. On the way back the heron was standing in the pond again.

We got home much later than planned and were just about to eat our evening meal when my phone went. It was a wildlife protection officer from the RSPCA – the RSPB had passed the call on! She was over an hour away and wanted to know what was going on. So I drove round to the cottage where the heron had been and found that they had cut the plastic so it could fly away.

However, it still had the netting stuck to its foot. But now at least it could peck it free without being bothered by cats or foxes. So I called the RSPCA officer back told her not to bother coming out.

Caterpillar damage

Effects of the cabbage white caterpillars on our cabbages.

Caterpillar

The results of our gardening efforts can be seen below. We have been growing cabbages. This was fine until the “cabbage white butterflies” took an interest in them. Despite picking off the eggs and removing the growing caterpillars when we saw them we now have skeletal cabbage plants and HUGE great caterpillars. Like this one…

 

We won’t bother with cabbages again next year.

Cats

Two of the cats have hypothyroidism, so we have regular weigh ins at the vet now. They went today. One has gone up slightly, the other has stayed the same as last month. So we go back again next month for another weigh in and another £60 on 30 tablets each this month!

In June they were both 4.1 kg. In July one was 3.9 kg, the other was 3.55. In August one was still 3.9 kg and the other was now 3.6 kg.