Category: Certainties

The Sporting Squire

Thanks for that. It’s been a great month off.  A lot of us around the site have been catching up on our reading.  That’s too bad as a lot of others of us decided long ago that books have been the ruin of us.  I’ll go further.  They’ve been a ruination and a contagion.

So who’s right?  Those who would read, or those who resist?  As Ford Madox Ford said via his rather stuffy narrator narrating the life of an incredibly stuffy individual in this example of the all but perfect novel— The Good Soldier—”Who the devil knows?”

Is that right?  Who?  The what?  Never read that one.  Or much of anything else.  Old whisky jugs.  Now that’s something to get your teeth around.

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They made thousands and thousands of these things.  Royal Doulton and so on.  I don’t know if they gave them away with the whisky or you jolly well had to procure one at the china shop before you went to the liquor shop.

The jugs varied in size and shape but the image was always the same. The Sporting Squire.  And The Sporting Squire always carried that expression on his face of being in possession of some information he’d be only so happy to pass on to you and that is that Dewars is good whisky.  If you lean in he’ll whisper it to you. Amen.

Here They Come Again
Here They Come Again

It’s getting to be that time of year again.  Thank you, Squire.  Kidding aside I’ve been reading this rather large book.  It’s big.  1500 pages of fine print.  “Reclaiming History”.  Vincent Bugliosi.  Vince Bugliosi didn’t even know he was an historian.  That’s my guess.  He certainly didn’t start out that way.  He was one of the elite prosecutors of his era.

I knew this book would be good because I read his true-crime epic “Helter Skelter”.  It was quite by accident I read it because I saw it on our bookshelves and wasn’t sure what it was doing there.  It wasn’t mine, but I’d been interested in this case too so I picked it up.  It was one of those serendipitous things.  There’s an elegance to Vince’s style and he’s very organized.  His mastery of the facts is compelling.

“To remove the  brain, Humes and Boswell use a scalpel to extend the lacerations of the scalp downward towards the ears.  Normally, a saw would be used to cut the skullcap and remove the brain.  Here, the damage is so devastating that the doctors can lift the brain out of the head without recourse to a saw. ”

And that’s not all.

Feb 9 2016 Boundary Pass

Twilight calm on Boundary Pass courtesy CS Nicol 

Fuzzy City Blues

You do your best but you just can’t get this camera to work.  Actually, it works fine but you just don’t know how to use it.  And then you just don’t know what to do and you cry.

January 13 2016 evening

And then the printer jambs and then you run out of paper and then you run out of time and this is the result.  Fuzzy city.  I was after the cloud, hit the switch, blasted away but I should have had the camera on the tripod.  The lonely cloud.  It liked it here and decided to hang around as long as possible.  The only cloud in town.

Sunrise on the Tantalus
Sunrise on the Tantalus

Tantalizing.  The “Tantalus” range in dawn glow from the upper deck.  An art print.  That’s “Alpha” over there.  Or maybe it’s over there.  “Serratus” we all know, is where?  And I forget the other one.  Fill out your card and drop it in the slot.  We’ll get this thing sorted out.  Let’s see.  It was “Alpha”, “Serratus” and and and…

I’m sharpening the steel tonight.  I’m lousy at it.  You know, with the sharpener thing?  What’s it called?  The steel round thing that’s been machined at the factory and it’s your knife sharpener?  No?  Wasn’t cheap, either.

I don’t know where this month went but I hope it keeps going.  Not a huge fan of winter these days.  Fact is I know what I’ve been doing.  I figured it out.  Hibernating.  Sure.  Like a bear.

You make the necessary cuts.  You cut and cut and cut again.  Until there’s nothing left.  They cooked the meat and called it dinner.

vp-us-lc-library-roof-ratIt’s how it works, but that does nothing to address the problem of the roof rat, or whatever it is, that keeps digging our spring bulbs out of their pots here on the upper deck and eating them.  Rattus rattus.  Exactly.  This rat’s gotta go.

It’s destroying spring and spring’s not even here yet.  I wish it was.  The roof rat comes by night.  We threw some netting over the pots but Master Rattus came back and dug into one that wasn’t covered.  That’s initiative for you.  I think there’s a trap on its way for this customer.