A Strange Film.

 We watched The Disaster Artist the other night.  I think it was on Netflix.

It's based on the Cult film "The Room".

I thought it was very good and just shows you don't need to be good to be successful.  It's like when you see a band that plays that bad they actually seem good.

Two aspiring actors want to go to Hollywood and audition for parts and one of them gets turned down most of the time.

They visit the crash where James Dean died and they decide to go to LA and eventually make a film themselves.  They direct it and star in it.

There's mystery who the strange sounding director and actor comes from and where he gets his money to fund the 🎥 film?

I won't spoil the plot for you.  But it's certainly worth watching.

Wouldn't it be great to make your own films?

Feeding Time At The Zoo Or Conservatory Even!

 

Domino on the right next to Muzz Muss in the middle and Tiger Kitty on the left of the picture.

Domino has been appearing on here since 2012.  So that makes him nearly 11 maybe 12?

Blogs store memories and places and jog the memory when you look back.

Underneath the cats 🐈 is the clothes airer.  The Conservatory soon drys clothes instead of using the Tumble dryer.   

It's dry today for a change.   

"Easy Peelers"

 

Would you put an "Easy Peeler" in someone's Christmas stocking?

We always called them Tangerines 🍊 when I was growing up.  Nowadays supermarkets call them "Easy Peelers".

Apparently according to Professor Google they are seedless Clementines or Satsumas that are easy to peel with your fingers. They are not Tangerines.

I still call them Tangerines. Do you call them that?

So why do we put them in our Christmas stockings?  Apparently they were considered exotic especially to people from "Oop North".    

So true.  We also kept coal in the barf and use our internal doors, architraves and skirting boards for firewood in Winter.

Someone old I once worked with said they had never see a banana until the 1950s.  

Nowadays you can get strawberries 🍓 in winter.  Everything's flown in or comes in the back of a lorry from a heated greenhouse in 🇳🇱 Holland.

I suppose a Tangerine in your Christmas stocking meant that you were getting something different than a Granny  Smiths 🍎 apple or a packet of Custard Creams.  What happened to Curly Wurlys, Snake belts, Caramac and Strike Cola?

Do you call Tangerines "Easy Peelers?"

Christmas Conservatory Cleaning.

 I walked into Northsider Towers kitchen the other day and wifey was busy cleaning the windows in the Conservatory.   It's not full of Conservatives I may add thankfully.  But the condensation and dust leaves stains everywhere.  

So I picked up a damp cloth and helped her by standing on the stepladders, chairs and freezer where wifey couldn't reach.  I even suggested moving the small chest  freezer when she said she couldn't  reach the other corner.  I was of course joking. 

We moved all manner of detritus like hand tools and made a thoroughly neat job even if I say so myself.  It looked like a lived in Conservatory once again.

Some famous  English northern comedienne once said that Conservatorys are places where your neighbours can see you eating your tea in.

I suggested that we could have our Christmas dinner in the revamped Conservatory?

She replied:

"We did that last year".

Oh dear!

It reminds me of a Irish day time show presenter once saying she was out shopping and she rang her husband to turn the oven on to cook the food she had prepared inside the oven.  He asked her what the gas mark temperature was ? She said: " It's an electric cooker!"

They had only bought the stove five years!

Reminds me of teachers  written comments on my old school reports: "David is easily led.  Must pay attention!"  

Did it say that on your school report?

Weeds.

 

I read Weeds by John Walker yesterday. A friend of my wife gave me some books that belonged to her late husband and I will review them when I read each one over these dark nights and wet none gardening days, except for the polytunnel of course.  

I found the book very informative and it's a good way of knowing what is growing in your soil.  He suggests you make a bare soil area in your garden and see what grows there.  Even overgrown allotments were once cultivated bare soil.

For example if you have sheep sorrel growing in your grass it means the ground is very acidic.

Buttercups are a sign of very wet soil often found in pastures.  There is a weed grass called Yorkshire Fog.  It's  a pale and fat bladed grass found in lawns.  I know that from when I worked on a golf course and I can identify many kinds of weeds.

The author like myself doesn't use weedkillers and recommends hand weeding, sheet mulching composting weeds especially nettles which will add fertility to your ground.  

He also like my self when I visited Dorset noticed fields of cereal growing in land sprayed with pesticides and herbicides are devoid of wildlife in the middle unlike the untouched hedgerows which are habitat s of birds, butterflies and insects and also how bird numbers have dropped so rapidly due the weedkillers and pesticides no longer providing food for living creatures like birds.

There is a section about Japanese Knotweed and whilst it is invasive and destructive to buildings it is also a great habitat for mammals and insects like nettles are for Butterflies.

It's what I would call a browse and dip in book like a lot of gardening books are.  I enjoyed reading the book and I would recommend it to anyone wants to know what grows in their soil and doesn't want to use chemicals to kill them.  It was published in 2003.

A good earth and nature friendly book.  

It's Knitting Season Again.

It's knitting season down on the Irish Riviera now.

Every night after tea.  The Stove is lit and I keep it stocked with the homemade  firewood I have chopped and gathered in the morning. 

Then we settle down to watch the old John Logie Baird machine (television) in the corner.  We argue over what films or programmes we are going to watch.  I also check blogs, comments and emails, news, football  scores on my electronic devices.  Then the knitting commences.

The baby cardigan and little  deck shoes are for someone wifey knows who is having a baby and can't knit.

It's going to be a long winter.  How did the people long ago manage without the Internet, television or even electricity? 

Do you ever go out at night during Autumn/ Winter?
 

Hard Graft.

I have not been able to go selling plants at carboot sales or  doany gardening outside due to monsoon season down here on the Irish Riviera.  Apart from weeding in my polytunnel of course.

Yesterday I got a phone call if I would give a few hours moving a old internal stone wall from a very old house.

So I donned my steel toe capped wellingtons and wore some work gloves and went and helped clear the rubble and earth.  Old West Cork houses are made with rammed earth in between the building stones.  It's very dusty work.

Here's some photos:

Trusty wheelbarrow and shovel and a a few tons of rubble and earth to move by hand and shovel.

This "fine yolk" a West Cork phrase sped the job up.  We took off the front door and steered her inside the house.  She holds about 4 full wheelbarrows of builders rubble.

We swept up and reattached the front door when we had finished.  I looked like I had been down the pit and my back is aching today.  It's good to know I can still graft even though I will be 60 in a couple of weeks.

I still harbour the dream of buying a doer upper in Portugal and renovating a property.  I don't want to live in the middle of nowhere though.  Preferably near a village, with public transport and a rub a dub, dub.  Imagine retiring into the sun and no more gales and wet winters and large heating bills?

We can dream can't we?