The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

I spent the afternoon cleaning a length of my neighbour’s guttering. I can see it from my kitchen window, as it runs along the boundry wall between my house and his. It is definitely his even though it is on my side of the wall, in no man’s land, so to speak. So it is not covered by the annual roof maintainance contract I have. However, some remedial action was definitely neccessary, as it was so full of water it might just as well not have been there.

The root of the problem was the cast iron downpipe was blocked. The guttering was full of water, but nothing was running out of the bottom of teh pipe towards my drains. I had no way of knowing how badly blocked it was, so I got myself a nice long pointy stick, and inserted that into the downpipe. Years worth of badly decomposed autumn leaves had blocked the top of the downpipe. I must have pushed down about two or three feet before the stick broke through the bottom of the blockage. Once the stick was out, then the fun began, as water started flowing down the hole in the blockage, and the hydraullic action of the weight of the now moving water from the gutter did the rest. All the crud came shooting out of the bottom of the downpipe, fortunately I had quickly moved to one side. It did mean that I had to hose down a section of my back garden as well as turning he hose on the guttering to blast as much of the accumulated crud away from that. This proved that the In the process, I found a new use for the scoop I use to clean George’s litter tray, as it proved ideal for getting rid of what remained within the guttering.

Even though it was a grotty job, getting myself even colder and wetter than nessessary on such a dismal day, I went away with the satisfaction of a job well done.

1. Plot Summary
Well, after the bugs last week, its back to the lizards. Big aquatic buggers that eat anything that is smaller than they are. This week, the lizard of choice is the ancestor of the modern crocodiles.

2. Thoughts
Someone on the Outpost Gallifrey Forums argued that no animal would pass through the anomalies because they look too much like fire, an a fear of fire is hardwired into just about every living thing with any sort of a brain. This week they got around this problem by making the anomoly invisible under water, as one of divers who goes into a reservoir wih Cutter and Hart disappears into the past and gets stuck there when the anomoly closes back up again.

[digg=http://digg.com/television/Capsule_Review_Primeaval_Episode_3]The chief civil servant is really starting to annoy me. His annoying head in the sand attitude meant that he ignored the advice that the anomaly could move anywhere on a line between the swimming pool this week’s anomaly first appeared in, to the reservoir in the middle section of the episode. It is not surprising that mayhem ensued. Well, at least he has started to do the right thing by sending the troops through the anomaly to arrest the psycho bitch from hell that is Helen Cutter.

The time has no come for atleast some answers, such as what is causing these anomolies and how dangerous are they. Monster of the week and the hunt for Helen has run its course, the story should now move up a notch as it moves towards its conclusion.

3. Stars:
3 out of 5

I have to use up the end of my annual leave allowance, by the end of March. I have ten working days left of the thirty I get each finiancial year. So I have next two weeks off. Yippee!!!

It is looking more and more likely that the grand finale of Series Three (29) of Doctor Who is going to be set in Cardiff. In his web log, Caleb Woodridge, a Journalism student at Cardiff University posted the photograph on the right. It shows a large prop banner urging people to “Vote Saxon” from the finale of Series Three (29) of Doctor Who with the dome and clocktower of Cardiff City Hall clearly in background. Now, if the banner was not meant to show up on screen, it would not have been put there. In the past, the production team have gone to a lot of effort to make Cardiff look like London, but even they would not have the brass neck cheek to claim that a landmark as prominent as City Hall was actually in London.

Of course there is a very good reason for the story being set in the Welsh capital. Captain Jack Harkness, the Doctor’s companion has spent I don’t know how many years on the rift in time and space that runs through the city working at the local Torchwood Institute office. He was waiting for the Doctor to turn up and explain to him exactly what happened to him on the Game Station Satellite in the year 200,100 which has made him immortal.

I saw this image on the Internet and just had to have it as the wallpaper on my new PDA/phone. Is this the sort of handheld gizmo, with a large screen and decent keyboard that gives access to all sorts on infomation, especially telling you wher you are via satnav, that Douglas Adams was dreaming about when he wrote The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”?

Sardines on toast can be deadly dull. Especially if the sardines are mashed with so much vinegar that the fish cannot be tasted.   Grilling the sardines is more interesting, but stinks the kitchen (and the rest of the house)  to high heaven.  I prefer fish with horseradish sauce to tartar sauce any day of the week, whilst the Dijon mustard gives an added bite.

Ingredients

1 Tomato
1/2 onion (chopped)
1 tin of Sardines or Mackerel fillets in oil
1 tablespoon of Mayonnaise
3 teaspoons of Horseradish Sauce
1 teaspoon of Dijon Mustard
2 slices of white toast.
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Chopped Parsley (optional)

Method

1. Lightly butter the toast.
2. Thinly slice the tomato and lay the slices on the toast. 
3. Drain the sardines or mackerel.
4. Place the sardines on top of the tomato or equally distribute flaked mackerel over the tomato.
5. Sprinkle the fish with chooped onion
6. Season to taste.
7. In a bowl mix the Mayonnaise, Mustard and Horseradish Sauce.
8. Drizzlethe sauce evenly over the fish.
9. Garnish with chopped Parsley.

Sardines are immature mackerel, however, the older fish has a stronger flavour.

Throughout the World, people who would not dream of using recreational drugs themselves are giving their cats Catnip.  I have no doubt that if Catnip had the same effect on Homo Sapiens it has on Felis Domesticus, it would be a Class A banned substance. There would be a thriving black market for the stuff run by the criminal elements and the usual faux glamour that is associated with doing something dangerous and/or illegal.

I have come to this conclusion after watching George’s reaction to the toy I bought him for Christmas. It was a red and white striped stuffed mouse on a piece of stretchy string that I dangle in front of him, the stuffing being laced with Catnip. The first I dangled it in front of him George started hunting it as if it was a real mouse, until he bit it. He started scratching and biting it, rubbing his face against it. After a few minutes he was lying on his back, eyes dilated purring the feline equivalent of “wow, good shit man”, stoned to high heaven. A few minutes later, he must have had the munchies, as he wandered upto to his food dishes and eat the contents of his recent refilled bowl of cat biscuits, normally he only takes a couple of mouthfuls at a time, before going off to his basket to sleep it off. Over the months the Catnip in the toy has lost its potency, but it still leaves George unsteady on his feet. I used to think that George was one of those cats that was immune to Catnip, now I am not so sure and very dubious about buying him another toy that might contain the stuff.

Well, 2007 is certainly turning into a year of change. I moved this web log to WordPress, I am moving my bank account to Barclays, and I have just switched my mobile from Vodafone to T-Mobile. As with the other two, a general build-up of low-grade annoyances has final made me flip. Most notably the fact that there is almost no signal where I most want to use the mobile, at work, in my mother’s house, my house and my sisters’ houses. So yesterday, I took myself off to Cardiff and got myself a new Technotoy. I had been told that I would be offered a new handset when I set up the contract, but I was expecting something cheap and nasty, so I had had my p910i unlocked so that I could pop the T-Mobile sim into it as soon as possible. So, imagine my surprise when I was offered an MDA Vario, T-Mobile’s own brand smartphone/PDA. Yes, I know there is the Vario II, but the original model is still a very nice peice of kit, so a Vario it was.

As can be seen, the bottom half of the phone slides down to give a fairly decent sized keyboard, and the screen is a nicely sized 16:9 landscape orientation, which makes using it so much more pleasing. On the downside the operating system is a variety of Microsoft Windows, the variation for Pocket PCs, but as it stands, it is the only peice of Windows kit I have, and I will never own a Windows desktop machine, if anything happened to stop me using RISC OS, Ubantu Linux would be my OS of choice.

One thing I have done, is install Minimo, the cutdown version of the Mozilla Firefox browser, as I hate Internet Explorer, and I would much rather use the freeware alternative on my PDA.

I am normally quite calm and well adjusted about the differences between the two major subsets of the English Language, British English and American English. After all, color, honor etc as found in American English is the original way the words were spelt before the British started frenchifying their spelling, an Aluminum is what Humphrey Davey called the metal he discovered.

However, I really lose my cool when the Americans insist that the abreviation of Mathematics is MATH. How can a word that is naturally plural have a singular abreviation? Mathematics is an umbrella word for all the mathematical and arthematical arts. There is no mathematic, so there cannot be a math, it has to be MATHS.

Got that. MATHS not math.

My baby niece Martha Patricial Rees-Davies was born today at 10.35am (GMT) by Cesarean Section. She weighed in at 7lb 14oz, probably half a pound lighter than she would have been if she had gone to term, but the medics thought it would be better if brought her into this World two weeks early.

She was named after my Great Grandmother and my Mother. Martha James was my great grandmother and she lived to h ripe old age of 97 years old. Carolyn chose this name because she thought that it would be distinctive and individual, that here would not be many Marthas around in the see of Kylies, Jasmines, Siobhans and other modern names. So she was less than happy when I told her that the new companion in Doctor Who was to be a Martha. Carolyn now believes that given th success of the series, there will be at least another two Marhas in her class in primary school ad at least a dozen or so in her class in 11 years time when she starts secondary school. I don’t agree, but only time will tell.

Patricia is my mother’s name, apparently it is an old Scottish tradition to give the first born daughter her grandmother’s name, so I am sure that somewhere out there my Scots ancestors will be pleased.

Martha is my mother’s first granddaughter an my first niece. It is nice to have a change from the norm. Pink things instead of the acres of blue that have been present at previous arrivals. I went down to ther Royal Glamorgan Hospital with my brother-in-law and William. Before I went upto the Ward I popped into the WVRS shop to get a card to give to the baby, and had a brainwave. At primary school, they are teaching William to write by getting hime to join dots to make the letters. So I bought a second card and marked out on it a series of dots spelling out Martha and William, the I got him to join the dots, so that he had a card to give his little sister as well. I think that went well with Carolyn, but it will a number of years before I get Martha’s oppinion on it.

1. 2.

3. 4.