Jim Webster's Blog, page 21

To posh to push, and a retort stand.

When I was at school, I took chemistry A level. I got the A level but I didn’t particularly shine. Still the practical lessons were interesting. On one occasion I was heating up this mixture in a flask. I’d done the usual agricultural level time and motion calculation and had worked out that by the …

Knowledge comes when you least expect it …

Originally posted on M T McGuire Authorholic:
This month, I have mostly been ill. That isn’t the entire sum of it, obviously. I mean there weekend at the end with the dig where I found the howling beastie and there was a rather jolly week after that plus a weekend when we had visitors and…

Spring?

The photo above is of Urswick church; it was taken by a friend of mine, and gives some feel for the beauties of the area. Nowhere does spring half as well as Furness. One or two people have commented about spring this year. Because we had a few warm days in February and it’s gone …

I’ve never watched Netflix

This isn’t a statement that I’ve taken a moral stance on the topic. It’s merely that being rural our broadband speed sometimes hits a truly amazing 4 meg but it’s never faster. That’s with us being on BTinfinity superfast broadband with fibre to our nearest cabinet. Given the nearest cabinet is at least two miles …

GET YOUR HEAD TO THE LEFT!

Originally posted on The Lakeland Auctioneer:
It is 1993. Aspatria RUFC have a mid- winter national league fixture at Sudbury way down south in Suffolk. As usual we leave Penrith at 3pm on Friday afternoon heading over the A66 and down the A1. The Redcrest luxury double decker coach is full, the atmosphere convivial. The…

Capital!

It has to be admitted that living just south of the Lake District, I’m in a really beautiful part of the world. Furness itself with the fells, lowlands, beaches and sea takes a lot of beating, and what’s more the rather ostentatious charms of the Lake District make sure the tourists swarm round the honey …

Condoms, Carols and a Crème Caramel

Originally posted on Joy Lennick:
Back-tracking, I actually found a few minutes in my frantic day to recall the first day we ‘opened for business’ at the hotel, and giggled … I must explain here that my ‘Gordon Blue’ can – to use a favourite expression – “turn on a sixpence.” If he didn’t turn…

Just another form to fill in

I suppose we’re all used to cookies and data being collected automatically as we go through life, but there’s still an awful lot of data that people want to collect about us. So they send us forms to fill in. I can remember that every year in farming we had the June Census. This was …

New Release Announcement for Animals, Acrobatics, Attitude, and Amore by @LynnHallbrooks #cozy #fantasy #shortstory # SCCA4

Originally posted on Boho & Bookish:
Have you ever wanted to know more when a short story ended? Sometimes a story is written to certain stipulations and when it’s finished it leaves more questions than answers. Lynn Hallbrooks has paired up some of her earlier short story works with companion pieces. She allowed her imagination…

Muck flies to the midden

This phrase has always irritated me. The meaning is simple. Somebody with a bad character will always end up hanging round with a lot of other bad characters. Yet given that I’ve spent a large part of my life shovelling muck, I know that while the phrase might sum up people pretty well, but it …