Autumn

 

Oh tra la etc, 'tis the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness* . . . . AAAAAAUGH. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/aug/31/spider-season-home-arachnid-invasion 

A good year for spiders?  A good year???**  Whimper.  But that remark about eating clothes moths got my attention.  The article is from yesterday;  neither Peter nor I noticed it, but today there's a whole page devoted to charming photos sent in by readers, which I'm failing to make google bring up for me so I can ruin your evening too by providing the link.  My extra-large friend, the so-called house spider***,  from . . . was it only last year? . . . that Black Bear kept trying to convince me was a lovelorn male and I insisted was a girl because girls are BIGGER . . . features in today's photo gallery, as do a number of other creatures I do not want to share house space with†.  And that garden spider has no business in the photographer's bathroom, it's a garden spider. 

* * * 

Oisin is back.  He's been . . . I don't know, Antares or somewhere†† . . . and is still suffering space-lag.  My Friday afternoons have been a desert in his absence these last few weeks.  Gods!  It's like I have to work or something!  I was so glad to see him I put up with a forty-seven hour††† concerto for six organs, eight feet‡, and a gazania.‡‡  I am out of practise, listening attentively, and my brain starts to deliquesce after the first twelve hours or so.  He needs to break me back in slowly. ‡‡‡  He was glad to see me too:  I immediately asked him about the New Arcadia Singers and I believe he said something rude.§   Ah, friendship. . . . 

* * * 

* Speaking of Keats, poor old beggar.  http://www.artofeurope.com/keats/kea1.htm 

Elizabeth wrote:

What I find most amusing is that some poor WHSmith employee (or a whole department of them) probably read "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" on a product mock-up and (horrified by the poor grammar) "fixed" it. 

Yep. 

 Not just a momentary oversight either – the carefully written (I suppose that's debatable) product description on whsmith.co.uk proclaims "This bright pink A5 notebook is decorated with raised felt declaiming the famous line from Keats' poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' – 'Beauty is truth and truth is beauty.'" 

I am so impressed that you went and looked it up on WH Smith's site.^  It all begs the question however of how they succeeded as far as getting the title and author right and creating a little advertising blurb for the web site^^ and not checking the frelling LINE THEY'RE QUOTING—?  In response to several remarks about knowing instantly that there's something wrong even if you don't know what it is—one person cites 'proofreader's eye'—I don't think so.  Or anyway it's proofreader's ear.  Beauty is truth and truth is beauty is a plonking dull patronising whap you up longside the head aphorism.  Beauty is truth and truth beauty is poetry.  And I think your ear knows that.  Clearly there are no poets at WH Smith.

            And just by the way, why PINK?  Now we all know that I am a strong believer in pink, but I cannot see the connection either with Keats or with Grecian urns.  Let alone with monumental misquotation. 

^ Does it ever cross your mind that perhaps you should get out more? 

^ The web site famous to me+ for failing to sell their own store brand itty-bitty doodle sized sketch pads.  What is your web site for, for pity's sake, you bloated corporate monster? 

+ Yes, I should get out more too.  For reasons that do not involve bells.  I was almost pressganged into ringing a wedding tomorrow.  I want to spend tomorrow afternoon in the garden.  I think I have got out of the wedding.  But I may not answer the phone for the next twenty-six hours—just in case.  If Merrilee is reading this—she usually reads the blog—she is laughing sardonically.  You never do answer the phone! she (among others) says.  You can always make an appointment, I reply with dignity.

** There are quite astonishing numbers of bats around here this year too.  Or maybe I'm just sensitized.  

*** So called not because it likes to live in them but because it's as big as one 

† Bats, sure, I can do bats.^  Not spiders!  Noooooo!  Not spiders!  I am also aware of the putting them outdoors so they can tell all their friends and come back in force next time game aspect, but the truth is I'm not going to kill them, even when they're slightly larger than a hellhound^^, and YES I hang the bathmat at an angle so they can climb out.  I have been resigned to my madness^^^ but if they eat clothes moths. . . .

 ^ As I might say . . . ahem.  

^^ All those beady little eyes 

^^^ A belief in reincarnation is very useful when you're looking for an excuse for wimping out of killing things 

†† Very spectacular, he says, but you get tired of being on a ship all those weeks, and never making landfall. 

††† It's actually next Wednesday as I write this. 

‡ As I said to him afterward, as he was mopping his fevered brow, who needs to belong to a gym if you can play the pedalboard to an organ? 

‡‡ The funny thing is, with reference to a few comments on the forum . . . I probably could post both geranium and Christmas cactus cuttings successfully.  One of the ways you're supposed to overwinter geraniums is by cutting them down to nubs, digging them up, and putting them in a box of sand under your bed or equivalent—and b_twin said that local myth has it that you should leave geranium cuttings lying around dry and abandoned before planting.  And the Christmas cactus, like most of the common succulents and cacti, knows it lives in a hostile universe, and is permanently ready to hunker down and endure.   Any one of those odd daisy-chain leaves will root, if you break it off and put it in water—although in my (limited) experience if you want the thing to flower before you forget why you're giving it house space you want a branch of half a dozen links or so.   Dunno if a week in a mailing envelope has any effect.

            And unless the laws have changed (again) you're allowed to send plants over the border(s) so long as said plants already exist in both countries and they're clean.  This is a trifle obnoxious when you're scrubbing off bluebell bulbs, but cuttings would be a . . . um . . . snip.

            I had a brief hilarious moment contemplating auctioning Christmas cactus and geranium cuttings.  Don't worry, I got over it.^ 

^ I told you that my new earphones arrived yesterday?  No, wait, I think I tweeted it, including that they came with a Free Strawberry Flavoured Lollipop.  Huh?  The lollipop is still lying on the kitchen table, waiting for me to do something with it, like throw it away.  What's this? Peter said.  I told him.  Auction it, he said.

            Funny man.  Ha ha ha.  

‡‡‡ I having confessed to failing to follow what was going on he has helpfully sent me a link to someone else's performance.  Okay.  I'll get a lot of knitting done.  That's a lot. 

§ I realise with alarm that next week I'll have to begin thinking of creative ways not to sing three times a week with Other People Present again, now that Oisin is back and the Muddlehamptons are restarting.