Air Hare Lair

Good morning, Star-shine.

The It’s been a bit breezy again. Nothing such as twas, but breezy. We have also had a night or three of rain, so t’towpath is most excellently soggy.

Among things I’ve been doing other things, things that growed-ups need to do, such as The Laundry. My wee [Chinese] twin-tub is a splendid machine, if a little labour-intensive. Mr Stove and The Clothes Horse are now about two-thirds of the way through drying my smalls, my bigs, and my intermediates.

The “Shock and Awe” inspiring stupidity of Human Industry continues. My laptop has not been mine for some days, it being too busy doing the manifold biddings of Bilious Gates, the AVG Corporation, and now Howlet Pukehard (it is an HP laptop). Some HP housekeeping thing suddenly demanded that I run a driver update blah blah blah, so I checked its authenticity [sadly, tis “for real”] and off it went…

It stopped Bilious and AVG in their tracks [making me wonder if Howlet Pukehard are in fact The Borg, or perhaps… even Species 8472] and downloaded a Realtek driver for my MiFi interwebnet connectory, dropped the connection, installed the new driver, didn’t reconnect to the interwebnettings, wouldn’t allow me to manually re-connect, and insisted on then trying to download the next on its long list of drivers… An ickle bickle gold star on your school records and a House Merit Slip from The Master if you can see the flaw in this process that the Throbbing Brains of Howlet Pukehard did not see.

A brutal (glottal) stop was the only thing, where you hold down the power button until Beloved Laptop does what real computers always used to do, which was to just power off instantly and obediently. Then a recovery, and a poke up the HP Professional Programmer with a dead mouse to prevent more of the same.

Sighs, indicating a certain sadness in re The Species. The older one gets the more one realises that most people in big corporations are not even as bright as hitherto given credit for on dull days. Fewer marbles than advertised. The older still and one realises that logically this applies absolutely to oneself, too – probably more so.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Also to point out the wee chainy
For the flushing away of the Human Species’e
and all of its daftest worksies.

Were I half as bright as I had hoped I would surely be no longer on this planet, but on some other, more sane and sensible ball of mud and molten iron spinning around a nuclear fire in space.

I certainly wouldn’t be clicking “continue” on HP Housekeeping Utilities like some innocent with liquid H2O behind the auditory organs.

Kicks at the pebble of individual human limitations with a tartan slipper-covered toe, and sighs again. There’s really no escaping with our lives, is there?

Existentialism; A Chapter in a Foundation Course in Establishment Philosophical Deceptions.

Try as I might, wary as I am, blood-curdlingly cynical though I be, the likes of the spotty adolescents on Mimi Numb wage working for corporations ‘In the I.T. Deppartyment, yeah? [rising inflection] can still catch me on a remotely-controlled whim.

Wimoweh. A-wim-oh-weh, a-wim-oh-weh. The kitten sleeps tonight.*

[*Ear-worm Club 12″ Remix feat. Aaargghh.]

Seriously, Linux here I come.

We have had some brightness of late (day-time only) so Messrs Solar Panels have tickled and cajoled Messrs Lead-Acid Batteries into “float” status on more occasions than not. This is in delicious contrast to that – I hope twas all – “two weeks and more of depths of Winter utter darkness”.

Red skies in the morning; some sort of warning, ne c’est pas?

These two i-mages, above and lead, and one other are of course now addeded and available in my F’Art America shop, link in the menu above. Roughly fifty or so to choose from in total. Mugs, prints (incl. canvas), cower shurtains, and even – Yes Myffanwy – as The Jigsaw Puzzles.

I was as were wam treated to a rare treat during one of my perambulations; a hare.

A Mad March Hare, in early February.

Since it was still damned near night-time and he was faster than James Hunt at “Last orders” the phomatograph is naturally not the best…

…but you get the idea. Larger than any of yer actual terriers, about a mid-size dog with ears and joke back-legs. In the beginnings of the low and patchy sunshine he was a magnifibode colour, and he spent perhaps two minutes racing about the field in the manner of a mid-weight politician seeking approval from someone, anyone, everyone.

I don’t know if it was my morning face [actually not dissimilar to my afternoon and evening face] or my cheery ‘Air hare lair!’ that scared him. Possibly I ought not to have christened him ‘Jugged’.

The sun-settery around here has also been gawp-worthy on occasion, blasting the length of the canal in this season, and with the Cardinal being turned to face into things.

The hedgerow to the right of frame worked nicely, and took a little of the edge of some of the gustoids, allowing me to wonder less about my covers. As far as inventory may say we lost only one of our rubber mats to the breeze – heavy perforated rubber that I put down when muddy to spare me and to spare the towpath from further erosion a la my hoofprints. Twas blown away and doubtless now performs some similar service in Oblivion.

I didn’t hear it go, possibly it departed during one of the periods when I was wrapped in BacoFoil and sitting under my desk, rocking backwards and forwards, banging my fists into my ears and crying something about ‘wind, go away – wind, stop – wind, go away – wind, stop…’.

We’ve got mizzle today. Mizzle is not to be confused with Pizzle. Mizzle is a form of Drizzle that is anything between hummingbird-spit on the back of your neck up to almost rain but not quite – and miserable with it. Soaks a chap through but without any of the fun and games of that Gene Kelly with the lampposts nonsense.

Now, if you’ll please to excuse me, I must tear a path past the horse that’s wearing my underwear and re-stoke the stove. My “audible thermometrix” – the stove-top fan – is indicating a need for fuelly-pokery and ash disposalling.

This isn’t a bad spot for the domestic wildlifery; I also spotted a fox hereabouts, a couple of moorings ago. There was a cormorant (anglers hate them, so I aumotatically love them) diving and surfacing alongside the Cardinal yesterday – no photographs; they’re too wary, and I was too busy just enjoying the watching.

I harbour high hopes for gnu and penguin.

Chin-chin, chaps.

Ian H.