It's Snowtime

The recent snow has engendered a bizarre new form of one-up-manship revolving around the time it took people to get home on Friday. "It took 2 hours to get from A to B" - "Well it took me 4 hours to get from X to Y" etc. The prize goes so far to a woman I overheard in a shop - not just for her time ("six hours to go five miles"), but for the cunning use of a trump card - "and I had two ninety-year-olds and a diabetic on board."

More snow. Because I can.

Whhheeeeeeeeeee!

Yes, it's actually snowing. Properly. In Cornwall. In November!! This is such an unprecedented event, that we got sent home from work at 2pm. What's normally a half hour drive took an hour and a half, then I had about another half hour to get home from my dropping point (for those in the know, top of Killigrew, wasn't going to make her go down Penmere!). This did however include stopping off for emergency supplies (wine and cat food). Took a couple of photos before the batteries in both cameras died (grrr), then went for a walk in it - great feeling sloshing along in your wellies past all the people still stuck in cars. Although I did get sprayed with slush by a van with Splash-Tec painted on the side. Yes, very funny, *slap*. C was coming in just as I got back, and popped out again to the post box. He came back with emergency supplies. Yes, more wine and cat food. Let the snow drifts commence!

Didn't Feel A Thing

Y'all remember the cheap shoe to-do a while back?

Was walking out the office at lunchtime and thought - "what's that odd black object in the corridor? Hmmn, looks like it's off someone's heel. Hang on. Ah, that would be mine then." And judging by the amount of crushed and mashed-ed-ness of the heel in question, it came off at least a day ago, and I have walked literally miles on the not-terribly-resilient heel body. Off now to try and reattach it with glue and possibly a large hammer, as the little holes have been somewhat mangled.

Remind me again why I bought cheap shoes? Oh yeah, cos the expensive ones fell apart just as frickin' quickly. Do I walk too much? Do I? Or is it the stamping on the bodies of countless minions?

Scary concepts of our time

Just seen a Hall For Cornwall poster - Colin Baker as 'Nurse Nelly' in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Oh. Dear. God.

Tree-mendous

A line in the (non-fiction) book I'm currently reading - "...carpets of herbivorous borders are blossoming on cue." Conjures up a marvellous image of a flowerbed full of hungry blooms munching their way through the rest of the garden like so many vegetarian triffids...

Bag-puss

Small Screen Round-up

Been watching Mutant X this week, which has just started showing on Freeview. So far, an appallingly plotted, highly preposterous pile of tosh. It's great. (I'd also forgotten how much I liked John Shea, and that I'd spent several series wanting Lois to go off with Lex...). So far there is much Alan-Statham-esque swirling of coat-tails as people sweep round corners, which no doubt the Mutants spend all their off-hours practicing, when they're not pose-fighting on elevated platforms, or having sensors stuck on their breasts by John Shea...hmmn, where was I?

Also caught the first episode of Tru Calling, where a mortuary attendant gets to live the same day twice, and try and save the life of her latest corpse before they're corpsified. Presumably doing herself out of a job in the process. Tending a bit too much to mawkish sentimentality in places, and proving that Eliza Dushku can only act one character, but held my attention to the end (happened across it accidentally) and was quite entertaining. Don't know if I'll bother to watch any more though.

And finally, hurrah, The Avengers is back, on BBC4. Bowler hats a-go-go.

East Of Edam

Went to see Wallace & Gromit in the Curse Of The Were-Rabbit last night, and jolly marvellous it was too. One of the most well behaved, entranced audiences I've been in for a long time, and not a bad turn out (over 20) for Redruth in a third week of showing. Things started unexpectedly with an additional short feature, "The Madagascar Penguins' Christmas Caper" which was a very entertaining bonus. Thoroughly recommend TCOTW-R, it went by in a flash, and was full of very funny detail (look out for the book titles on Wallace's shelf amongst other things). We came home with a burning desire for crackers and cheese...

A Locked Room Mous-try*

Was about to venture out into town yesterday morning, when I was forestalled by Smudge depositing a mouse in the hallway. Possibly for the entertainment value of watching me spend the next half hour wedged under various bits of furniture trying to catch the little blighter. Eventually, having upended a sofa, taken all the books off a bottom shelf, pulled out all the tat under the sideboard and completely failed to grab it, I closed the door firmly against the cats and went out as originally planned.

Upon my return, discovered Smudge sitting staring fixedly at the fridge. Either she's found another one and released it in the house, possibly in an attempt to start a captive breeding programme, or mouse A has somehow squeezed under the shut door (a door with a fixed brush draught excluder thingy and a fitted carpet running underneath) in a moment of mad mouse deathwishery.

Smudge then spends the next four or five hours on guard by the fridge. Better than telly, I suppose. We eventually take everything off the top of the fridge, remove the spillable bits inside, and tip it sideways, only to see mouse tail disappearing up inside the workings like something out of a rodent version of Alien. So we pull the thing out further, tip it again, and the mouse makes a break for it. I corner him amongst the recycling and make a grab. Upon which the little sod bites me in the palm. Drop mouse. Swear at mouse. Mouse disappears behind oven (comedy visions of him then getting paws stuck in the appalling grease layer back there sadly unrealised). We pull oven out, he disppears under washing machine. Pull washing machine out, only to see him disappear into a hole under the sink unit where a pipe comes out. We've lost him, for the meantime. I guess he'll have to stay, until the day we come down to find Smudge has been victorious. Till then, I think I'll call him Klaus**.



* Doesn't really work that, does it?

** Klaus the house-mouse? No?

We're here to, er, help?

Bought a couple of pomegranates in the greengrocer's yesterday, and the lady on the till helpfully held open the bag for me to drop them into. However, she wasn't actually holding it up high enough, so I then heard the bruising thud of them hitting the counter underneath (which she blithely ignored). Suppose I should just be grateful it wasn't eggs...

As requested...