Preparedness for when

mardatha

Also worthwhile getting a good herbal PP - herbs make excellent medicine.

boultdj

PP, basil is a right heat lover, and is not keen on wind either, so I would surgest kitchen window or a greenhouse/coldframe and my Dad alway's use to soak his basil seed's over night before planting.

herbily

GreyQueen wrote: »

Memo to anyone attempting to buy a new build home on a greenfield site; be very wary. Particularly if the old maps of the area show placenames like Water Lane.........

Note for northerners: Anywhere with the word "Ings" in it should also be avoided, e.g. Ings Lane. Ing = Water meadow. There are fields where the local farmer only kept his cows in summer, because cows don't like swimming in winter (or any other time, come to think of it:)) and now they've got houses on them that have terrible trouble with the sewage backing up.

GreyQueen

Nope, wasn't me wot shot the pigeon. Bow-hunting has been illegal in this country since 1645, so no one has got any business out shooting anything. Plus the danger that the arrow could have travelled past its target and hit anyone or anything - grrr.

Lots of silly language in the story; it isn't a spear or a dart, journalist, it's a wooden arrow. Quite unusual as most of them are made of tubular aluminium or tubular carbon fibre. And it has a target-shooting end, not a hunting point.

If the Police had any sense, they'd take it to nearby sports shops specialising in archery equipment. Arrows tend to be made to order (they're sized to your body, same as bows) and archers usually have a particular combination of colours of shaft and flights, so they could lead right back to the owner.

Mind you, if it's starvation or attempting to shoot pigeons, I'm going to shoot pigeons. You go after birds and squirrels with a rubber ended arrow; the idea is the force of the impact kills them instantly, not that you skewer them. Blinking idiot.

Interesting that a pigeon shot by an arrow is a scandal but its OK to poison them, or fly hawks against them even over cities....... We are a strange nation of animal lovers, and no mistake.

***********************

Been to the lottie and am now back again. Things are looking pretty good up there, considering that the planting season is still 2-3 months away. I have transplanted some pot marigolds (calendula) and they're still in flower, wonderful to have a bit of colour at this time of year. And I want them to keep flowering for when insects come out of hibernation.

I once saw a red-tailed bumblebee on my allotment on 24th January one year, on an unseasonably hot and sunny day.

nuatha

jk0 wrote: »

Thanks Nuatha,

Until Thursday, I indeed thought that my landlord's insurance covered alternative accommodation. It would if I had buildings insurance or 'loss of rent' cover. The buildings are covered on a block policy, so I just have contents and landlord's liability cover from Directline.

I do wonder what the managing agents were planning to do with 60 families, if the whole block burnt down.

They are probably assuming the local authority homeless team will sort the problem out, they probably aren't assuming that the LA will actually bill them (and add admin fees).

Though that adds a third insurer into the mix, though liability should still lie with the firm that caused the problem and thence their insurers (IANAL etc)

thriftwizard

Memo to our local planners & a certain large building firm: The name "Brook Road" contains a bit of a hint as to the previous history of said area, especially when it's next to a fairly major river...

It's quite funny watching the progression of pipes they've been putting in to try to drain the swamp that's built up since they demolished the factory. They started off with 2" ones; now we're up to great big black ones about 12" in diameter & the swamp has been there long enough (since midsummer) that various waterbirds have taken up residence. I don't give much for them fitting 270-odd dwellings on the dry bit of the site...

GreyQueen

thriftwizard wrote: »

Memo to our local planners & a certain large building firm: The name "Brook Road" contains a bit of a hint as to the previous history of said area, especially when it's next to a fairly major river...

It's quite funny watching the progression of pipes they've been putting in to try to drain the swamp that's built up since they demolished the factory. They started off with 2" ones; now we're up to great big black ones about 12" in diameter & the swamp has been there long enough (since midsummer) that various waterbirds have taken up residence. I don't give much for them fitting 270-odd dwellings on the dry bit of the site...

When I was in my teens, I was lodging in a B&B during the week as was too far to travel back to the family home every night after college.

One of the other residents was the architect of a commercial site alongside the riverbank of a tidal river, not far from the sea. He was called out at 8pm-ish one night and came back rather shaken; the site had filled up like a tank when the river flooded, the water couldn't get away, and JCBs were floating.

Poor bloke was ashen. He was in his late twenties and it was probably his first major job. The reason the site had flooded was that he had ordered the demolition of a high wall on the riverbank alongside the site.

I asked him if it had occurred to him to ask why the wall was there before he decided it should be knocked down and he said he hadn't thought and didn't ask anyone.

The wall had been built to protect that part of the riverbank and the houses behind it, from a form of flooding which occured there every 20-30 years. He wasn't a bad man, but it takes a special kind of higher education to leave commonsense behind.

Perplexed_Pineapple

herbily wrote: »

Note for northerners: Anywhere with the word "Ings" in it should also be avoided, e.g. Ings Lane. Ing = Water meadow. There are fields where the local farmer only kept his cows in summer, because cows don't like swimming in winter (or any other time, come to think of it:)) and now they've got houses on them that have terrible trouble with the sewage backing up.

That's interesting, herbily, further south "ing" means a tribe or people, eg Reading, meaning the people of Reada (from the Anglo-Saxon word ingas).

GreyQueen

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

That's interesting, herbily, further south "ing" means a tribe or people, eg Reading, meaning the people of Reada (from the Anglo-Saxon word ingas).

I'm glad to learn that.

Sooo, I suppose we could consider ourselves to be the MSE-ing? Or the M'sing, if you fancy an exotic slant on it.

Post SHTF Traveller's Tale (collected early 22nd Century)

And we came at last to the land of the M'sing, where the matriarchs of the tribe greeted us whilst wearing their ritual costume of cross-bodied floral aprons with their ceremonial weapons, the rolling pins, held close by, in case we honest travellers should prove troublesome.

After the traditonal exchange of recipes and insults, we settled down to barter treadle Singer sewing machine parts and Pyrex pudding basins with the tribe. Our previous contacts had indicated that these goods would be highly-favoured and we were not disappointed.

Your narrator found the M'sing a fascinating tribe, but couldn't quite understand their veneration of a mannikin in striped shirt, known as the M'tinloose, whom they have held in great esteem since the most ancient of days.

Research has yet to establish whether the M'tinloose was a real historic figure or is a Jungian archetype, as the tribe are very close-mouthed about their origins in the pre-collapse world. They were believed to have formed up in the Dark Ages, from a loose confederation of like-minded souls, who came together with only a password and a covert sigil to identify themselves to each other.

The sigil is represented below but no one has managed to identify what it was meant to represent.

jk0

I found an interesting gadget on Amazon.com today:

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-SS50B-Inverter-Flashlight/dp/B001FSK128/ref=dp_ob_title_garden

It's a backup battery/ radio/ inverter/ light. What a shame they don't make a 240 volt version.