(Bismarck) We will miss the heatwave by about two hundred miles (i.e. a meteorological hair's breadth). Shame - I was looking for a genuine excuse not to do much except gawp at thunderstorms.

Is milk the best thing for cats? A lot of people don't seem to think so. Put a dirty old frying pan out in the garden with some water in it - he'll go for it.

[Rosie] The essence of experimentation has the subject's welfare only tangentially in mind.

For cats, Rosie, it is not. I have been advised so over the years by various veterinarians. The cats over those years who deigned to live with us have been offered only water. They drink very little of it. Perhaps they collect enough of the stuff from the food that they eat - or maybe the few shallow trays we keep topped up in the garden for the use of our avian friends.

(Dujon) A cat's paw moves faster than light if it means business. Are the little dickies aware of this?

[Dujon] Perhaps they drink very little of it because they keep waiting for the milk!

[Rosie] Yes they are. In all my time here I have not come across a bundle of feathers in my gardens. Nor has my wife, the gardener of the Dujon Estate. I put down that to the calls some birds make when danger is imminent, particularly from the colloquially named 'Noisy Miner'.

[CdM] Given that most of them there cats lived to seventeen years on average, I have to doubt that supposition. :)

Hidden text

absolutely fucking pissing down

at Plas Huws 'round midnite. We seem to be under a line of heavy showers. "Hazardous driving conditions" for those who have never driven in rain before.

Happy birthday, "A Sticky End". It is exactly one year since you last had a move played.

[Raak] With good reason, it must be said.

Hello. Apologies once again for my continuing absence. Yes, there's a been a server upgrade. So you will see some ‘tésting’.

Hmmm... seems to be going a bit too smoothly...

It's surprising how much stuff you can delete...

[Electronic Voice] Expect the unexpected.

dah dah de dah de dah de dah, da da da da da tissue???

[blamelewis] Musical sneezing?

[blamelewis] Delius with a cold?

[blamelewis] MAP, 0 in Morse code?

(Kn) That's good, but how are your knees?

At first I had no memory of what the hell I was talking about. Troubling. It was a suggested move/rhyme for the moribund Sticky End game.

Just been back to Paris, and saw a shop selling quinoa vodka. How hipsterish is that?

Just been back to sunny Lincolnshire to visit family and friends and for a project meeting for a new annual festival for which I volunteer my comms expertise (Louth Pie Day, in case you're hungry). As part of that, I met up with the wife of a guy I worked for 7 years after I graduated. Their son and daughter (mere dots when I worked there) are about to set up a VERY Lincolnshire flavoured business.
Potato vodka.
I'm interested to konw what that entails - I hestitated to write 'artisan potato vodka' because I knew some clever bottom would ask me what an artisan potato is.

(pen) Ferment spuds in a freshly cleaned dustbin. Transfer, using a bucket, to a 50-litre flask and fractionate carefully by distillation. You can make it as strong as you like. No additives allowed. Potatoes are intrinsically artisan as are dustbins and buckets. Note - I have done a fair amount of "bucket chemistry" as it is termed.

55 years and 4 days on this planet without being stung by bees or wasps, until now. A pesky wasp was hiding in my top.

[pen] I thought that *all* vodka is made from potatoes. You use grains, you get whisk(e)y. You use grapes you get brandy. You use spuds you get vodka. You use old tea bags, banana peels or beetroot*, you get what you deserve.

* - As per a bloke on the same corridor in Waveny Terrace as me in my 2nd year at UEA. If it stopped moving, he fermented it and drank the results. Heart of gold. Nerves of steel. Bowels of water.