The lady is a pig

Have discovered that Io the pig is a girl pig. After this revalation the ladies in the house noted the cleanliness of her sawdust, her good behaviour and general air of niceness with which she has deported herself during her stay with us.

I can't help thinking that if she had been a he they would be looking at the same evidence and remaking on the mess, noise and the fact that there are not as many bottles of beer in the fridge as previously counted.

Never mind. I want them to get another pig. And call it "Silver". I'm sure the Lone Ranger would approve.

Down in Milton Keynes

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Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

If you are wondering why I am in a position to take photographs of the shopping centre in Milton Keynes at 8:12 on a Sunday morning, take a look here

Ba Humbug

I've been setting my alarm clock this evening prior to my "all expensive paid" trip to Milton Keynes tomorrow morning. We have to get up at 4:20 am. Not good. I hate getting up before the sun. Never mind, the usual amount of car door slamming and loud talking from the kids will make sure that the neighbours are not asleep at that time too.

Of course I have no usual alarm clock, mine is manufactured by "Oregon Scientific", gets the time signals from a nuclear bunker near Rugby and emits a faint "Silence of the Lambs" whistle as it glows to tell you the time in the dark.

And tonight it was showing "Ba" on the left hand display. I thought that it had got it's little silicon brain skewed, and had defaulted to a day of the week setting for a language where Ba means Saturday. I reset the machine several times and laboriously re-entered the alarm time and stepped through the language options. And each time, the accursed Ba came back. And the display was a bit faint. Stupid clock.

After a while it dawned on me that Ba is short for battery. Oh yes. A couple more AAAs (I always have a stock of batteries - we have been known to run out of toilet paper but never batteries) and we are back in business.

Return of the Son

Number one son came back today. Just when we thought it was safe. Unfortunately he arrived before I'd set up the recording studio in "his" room. Nothing says "welcome back" like a pile of stuff on top of your stuff. Anyhoo, it was nice to see him. He was tempted back on the promise of a trip to see one of the stars of his all time favourite movie, which he hasn't seen yet.

Pig Lodger

Got a new (albeit temporary) member of the family. It s a guniea pig we are looking after for a friend of number one daugher. It has the somewhat ambiguous name of "Io". Very handsome beast (for a pig), I'll post a picture when we can get it to keep still long enough to be photographed. We are not sure if it is a boy pig or a girl pig. Apparently you can spot a boy pig because they poo everywhere, whereas girl pigs just poo in one corner and keep the hutch tidy. And they iron. Number one wife and number one daughter are unanamous on these "facts".

At the moment Io has not pooed enough to allow a definitive judgement on gender. And I've not seen him/her ironing either.