Tales of Home [9]

Yes Malick, it bloody well is !!!!! your own self confidence & awareness is worth more than Diamonds

Good on you Malick. Not many people figure out priorities and many of those that do dont have the courage to make the change.

I hope everything works out for you. The job market doesnt look good now but I am sure that there will be a lot of opportunities coming up once this current situation has passed and the economy looks to get back on its feet.

And yes, the weather is lovely. I am waiting for Polaris to appear so I can set up my telescope. There is a comet out there I want to see... hopefully it will get brighter over the next few weeks so you can all see it (well, all apart from those southron upside down folk)

Walking away from a steady income is not an easy thing, especially if you haven't got loads stashed away. Good for you! Not exactly the best environment for job hunting just now, but taking a month or two for yourself is a good thing.

halfwise wrote:Walking away from a steady income is not an easy thing, especially if you haven't got loads stashed away.  Good for you!  Not exactly the best environment for job hunting just now, but taking a month or two for yourself is a good thing.

Yeah it was a hard decision to make, but it was only a short term entry level minimum wage job, not a job i could see myself doing long term even if my mental health issues hadn't relapsed so badly.

The manager didn't seem too put out by me leaving, I didn't feel like I was a great fit there anyway.

At least I gave it a go.

Officially in lockdown then.

Well, I've got bed bugs.

For the last few weeks I've been having this terrible rash which died down during the day but got crazy itchy at night.  Then I started noticing little blood stain on the sheets and pillow cases.  It was only this morning when I saw a couple flat bugs on the wall and smashed them to see blood that I finally put things together.

Fortunately exterminators are considered an essential service.  I read I should shop around several to find one I felt comfortable with, but when the first one told me, with a note of hesitation, that they way they checked is to bring in a trained dog to sniff out the hot spots, and the dog's name was Ridley, I knew instantly my search was at an end.

RIDLEY!  I hadn't even met the pup but knew she would be my savior (yes, even better - the name was for a girl dog.  I was entranced).

So within a few hours they appeared at my door.  Ridley turned out to be a rather unassuming sandy haired beagle. Was well behaved to the point of ignoring me completely.   Sniffed around a bit and indicated that not only my bed but (as I already knew) the books in the shelf over my bed were rife with the critters, and my recliner (which I make a beeline for right out of bed) was slightly infested.  Everything else was fine.  Even a blanket I had pulled off the bed two weeks ago was good: she went right for it when I layed it down, pawed and nosed it a bit then kinda gave a doggy shrug.

Unfortunately the people who can treat my bed and furniture can't do the books: they use either cryo or high temperature treatments, and book bindings can't take that.  I was given numbers of companies that would bag things up and fumigate them, but they weren't responding on the weekend.

Anyway, I'll be sleeping on the couch and hoping the little buggers don't find it before the exterminators get here.

Ick! :X
Have you given them the lecture about social distancing?

Oh poor you halfy ! how yucky knowing that as you were curled up, warm & cosy, so were a 100 mates you didn't know you had. Hope your books will be ok tho ? Is there any really treasured ones amongst that lot ?

They won't treat the books. I have to find someone else to do that with gas, and I want to do it the same day or else there's no point.

halfwise wrote:They won't treat the books. I have to find someone else to do that with gas, and I want to do it the same day or else there's no point.

If I were you and couldn't find a specialist in these times to do a relatively small project (by the way, just how many books?) I'd consider sealing all the books in garbage bags with a bit of a garden- or pet-grade pyrethroid insecticide for now. That should do the trick, at least until the world sorts itself out a little better.
[Disclaimer: I'm a farmer not an exterminator]

I'm a farmer not an exterminator- David

{{ You say that, yet when Im staggerig home from the Duck 'n' Muck of a night and stop to help out with the crops you seem quite keen on exterminating me! }}

And I keep missing like an amateur ...

{{ Nothing is as unpredicatble as a drunk walk }}

Bed bugs are notoriously resistant to garden variety pesticides. I have the books double wrapped in garbage bags now, but I know they can still get out. I'm thinking of adding a third wrap until I can get a permanent solution. But I have to move fast before my little guests decide there's better foraging elsewhere (I'm currently on the couch) and move out to find better hunting grounds in my living room.

Ahhhh... I see from a quick search that a handful of cities including yours have been breeding pyrethroid-resistant strains of bed bugs. Nice work!

On the bright side, you now have your own little pandemic model to experiment with!

Walking the hairy hound today I got a pic of a beaoooootiful flutterby just seconds before it did just that....

{{ Take a walk with me to a small local Loch, via a golf course and some crabbit complaning about caravans! }}

  Petty on a crabbit ramble yay! nice loch, its very blue.

{{ Thanks Figgs, and yeah it can be very blue and sometimes such a deep blue its almost black! }}

Enjoyed that Makes you see that we are not so very different at all.Enjoyed the commentary Top Gear would have a field day in that caravan park One of the funniest episodes I watched was them fighting to be 1st at a camp somewhere & smashing the caravan up getting there That lovely woods, open water & golf course could be anywhere really ? Where I am used to be orchards, green fields forever then the Downs behind all that. Then the council stepped in & before you knew it everything was gone literally over night. whats left of the beautiful orchards etc is one last apple tree & a swathe of blackberry bushes that are taking over the bottom half of our estate. Across the main road is the old barn & milking sheds that belonged to the farm that worked the land I now live on, now in ruins.

I hate that sort of thing, it makes me sad. Seeing beautiful wild secret places blighted by councils, tips, or building and concrete really makes me despair for the countryside.
There was a faerie grove near my house and every Spring it was a riot of flowers insects and birdsong. There were corners of overgrown shaggy trees and long waving grass and poppies up to your knees that I used to lie back in and look at the clouds sailing, and carpets of tiny flowers which looked like a Botticelli painting. It was lovely. But then somebody bought the land and started to plough, cut and trim everything to an inch of its life. They built a large ugly shed and have large ugly machinery everywhere. The atmosphere changed and became sterile and empty, the faeries have left forever.

Except for along the 'road' the woods are fairly open. Must have healthy deer population keeping it down.

The muck's so deep along the loch you can be sucked down to death! that's a pretty awful way to go. You'd think someone would fence off those parts.

Yes Figgs, there's no going back once you've destroyed something so magical. I felt a lump in my throat when you described your bit of heaven.