Zone Doubt, a.k.a. 'Surreal Я Us'...

Joules, trusted by... dozens... to make a drama out of your crisis...

Other sites:

:: JAT :: WaveWrights :: Publications ::

I live to write. It's not wise to get in my way.

... I'd write my autobiography, but no-one would believe it....


If you come across any words you don't recognise in this blog, take a look at the Taylorspeke Glossary in the left-hand infopane, you'll usually find a definition there.


The Poppy Tales

(Transformers fanfiction!)

Transformers mini-comics here.




Adventures in Orchids

Apparently I am now collecting them...

There's room for one - or maybe two, at a pinch - more on that bedroom windowsill (the only one in the house that's ideal for them). Let's see what I find. Well, that didn't last long...


EO - Everlasting orchid. Phalaenopsis. I've had this orchid since 2007 and it just keeps flowering...







AO - Alien face orchid. Phalaenopsis . Bought 2018 - lovely little flowers, all different patterns!





RO - Rescued orchid photo to come when it flowers. Phalaenopsis. Rescued from a bin up the road in 2019. Classic!






TO - Tiny orchid. Phalaenopsis. Bought at Tesco 21.8.20. It just begged to come home with me. How could I say no?





CO - Crimson orchid. Cambria. Another Tesco find. This one may be going to live in Ken's room once we've redecorated and put up the new shelving; it prefers a cooler, less sunny windowsill. If so, I'll need to find another cambrian to keep it company.






GO - Golden orchid. Phalaenopsis. Saw this one when I bought CO and left it behind - then immediately regretted it as soon as I got home. Never seen one like it before. Ken, bless him, went back over to Tesco in the rain and bought it for me...





DO - Dendrobium Orchid. Smells of wisteria, so beautiful...











RO2 - Rescued orchid no 2. Phalaenopsis. This is the one I rescued from the wall along the road middle of 2021.








PO. Pink orchid. Phalaenopsis. This is the one I bought at Cabury Garden Centre on special, late 2021. It's much happier here!










TWO. Teeny weeny orchid, Phalaenopsis. Rescued from Tesco end 2021 (I think).




















My IMDb ep summaries

(completed)
Arthur of the Britons
Sky
Star Maidens
The Starlost
Space Rangers
The Sentinel (part: seasons 2 and 3)
Swamp Thing (part: season 3)
Gravedale High
Transformers: Armada
Transformers: Energon
Transformers: Cybertron (part)
Misfits of Science (four eps)
Zoo Gang
Zodiac
Jupiter Moon
Transformers: Beast Wars (part: seasons 2 and 3)
Transformers: Beast Machines (part)
Vampire Princess Miyu
Starhyke
Nathan Barley
No Heroics
Undermind (3 eps)
Will Shakespeare (Tim Curry version)
Nightwalker
12 Kingdoms
Trigun (ep 8)
Rayearth
Hyperdrive (season 2 ep 3)
The Café

For later:

Missing Earthian ep
Missing Haibane Renme eps


Silver birch at Eastwood 

Farm

"Autumnal - nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth - reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere..."

(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Act 2: Tom Stoppard)

Autumn...

I love this time of year. I love the colours, the sharp slant of sunlight on the trees, mosaics of acid-yellow and harts- blood, velvet and darkness and a haze of mist-grey over the hills. I love its immanence, its mellowness, the tang of frost just around the corner of the year...

Watching the little birds in the goat-willow in my garden, I realised something more.

I love this land with a fierce, possessive love, deep-rooted in two thousand years of history. From the frosted beaches and cloud-brushing peaks of the north to the wind-haunted meanderings of the rivers of the east, from the sensuous rolling patchworked hills of the south to the demanding dark moors of the west, this land seeps into bone and blood and synapse, mother of motley nobility, culture, individual freedoms. It can be known. It can be understood. It can be felt deep inside.

I love its effortless eccentricities, its vigour and vibrancy, its flawed perfections, its silent strength and tenacious resilience, its hard-won tolerances and intense and variable beauty, the profound energy in its sacred mythical landscape.

Home and more-than-home, the forces that shape and protect and bind, in me, as I am in the land. Love returning love in the stillness for those who'll only take the time to listen...

(Joules, Autumn 2004)


All photographs taken by Joules unless otherwise specified. All photographs © Joules A Taylor or other specified individual.


In Memoriam

17.03.09 - Argent

25.07.08 - Raptor

18.12.07 - Quyn

02.12.06 - Ryme


Currently enjoying:
Muse
Transformers - IDW, Prime, Animated, Rescue Bots.

Currently reading:
Various Transformers books and graphic novels.



Currently working on:
Haadri

Currently chuffed with:
My garden

Currently miffed at:
Nestlé, Nonpres Tinyhands Fart, Toadface Farage

Currently maintaining:
BCHS
BCW


Blog Pics
I've gathered some of my pages of photos together: the page of links is here. I'll be adding more as time goes by!




Evil Squid
A Little Glossary of Taylorspeke
(in no particular order)

plit popints - n. Typo for 'plot points' typed on a keyboard with more than half the characters worn off...

[PING] (alt [ping]) - n. A brainwave. The text equivalent of a lightbulb going on blindingly over someone's head. Usually mine. And usually at the most inconvenient of times. [sigh]

TPTB - The Powers That Be.

wulmet - n. A person of little or no talent who somehow inveigles himself into a position where he is in power over other, far more talented people and uses his position to downplay them in order to try to make himself feel superior.

biteable - referring to an anatomical part vb, tasty.

Flatterfed - vb. 27.02.08: my typo for flattered, but since it's so cutely apt I thought it would fit nicely here. Lutra defined it as "the lovely warm feeling of satisfaction resulting from enthusiastic reviews..." (which I've been getting for my MB fics).

Composted - vb, 'compos mentis', mentally capable of working. Contrast with uncomposted or non- composted, not 'compos mentis', not capable of working, hungover...

Cumbles - n, cucumbers.

Kewp - how Ken says 'thank you'. We rather like Lutra's 'nanx', too...

Musekick - noun, music, without which I cannot work.

'feinne - noun, caffeine, essential for correct mental functioning, especially first thing in the morning. I prefer mine in the form of SodaStream Diet Coke. And on that subject...

Skoosh - verb, noun. To skoosh - to add CO2 to a sodastream bottle filled with water to make it fizzy, prior to adding Diet Coke syrup (or just drinking as sparkling water). A skoosh - a bottle of water that has been skooshed. Skooshy - something that has been skooshed, water, or that whipped cream that comes in tins you have to shake then upend and press the nozzle...

Shoogle - verb. To shake gently, for example, of roast potatoes in a roasting tin to ensure they're covered with oil. I have vague memories of this being a real Scottish colloquialism...

Stegasaurus - n, spider of the genus tegenaria. Why? No idea. I just find it easier, that's all...
Edit 08.09.07: Lutra thinks that Brian is a good name for a mini-stegasaurus. From now on, any 'Brian's in the posts may be assumed to be a tegenaria. Except where otherwise specified.

Viterals - noun, vitamins + minerals. Also a pun on victuals.

Splish - verb. A combination of slosh and splash.

Parrots - noun, paracetemol (from the old joke "Why are there no aspirin tablets in the jungle? Because the parrots eat 'em all...")

Maggles - noun, magpies. As opposed to non-magical people.

Flamewings - noun. Swifts. So called because the first time we became aware of them was an early summer evening when they were flying high, the light from the setting sun seemingly turning their wings to flames. Lovely little birds. We always know summer's arrived when we hear their high-pitched squeeing.

Murfs - noun, moths.

Peasant cut - noun, roughly cut up into big chunks, e.g. vegetables chopped in a hurry for a hearty stew or soup. By extension, anything prepared in a hurry - haircut, material, even a first draft of a story...

Giraffe - noun, a carafe (of wine, coffee or water, for example).

Shrumps - noun, mushrooms.

Splings - noun, Kai's spelling homework: by extension, any spelling.

Tyops - noun, typos. var toyps, typso, psyto, psoyt, etc. Usual result of a dose of the fingerials (see next entry).

Fingerials - (pr. fin GEEE ree yalls) noun, fingers that will not type what you want them to.

Haddock - noun, time, of which I never have enough. (Origin of this term here.)

Sleep - noun? vb? a.k.a. sheeeeeeeeep.... I used to know what this word meant...


The Updates Blog

The place to stay notified of WaveWrights' Fiction updates: Zone, Darkside, DarkRealm, Matrix, Vault, Safehouse 13...




my computer gremlin Butch. click the pic to see the larger image

Butch, my computer gremlin. Click the pic for larger version, and read his adventures here...

Butch by the talented 

Sylverthorne

A gift for me! Butch by the very talented Sylverthorne. Click pic for larger image.

Joules' 

Haddock

This is MY haddock. It was caught exclusively for me by Talon. No, you can't have any. I need all the haddock I can get!!



A'lestrel by Valkyrie.

A'lestrel - a gift for me from Valkyrie...



Albino Alsatian Benten (c) MEBird 

2004

Another gorgeous Valkyrie gift for me - Benten the Albino Alsatian! Click thumbnail for larger image.

Radittsu, an oekaki for my birthday 04 

by 

Onna

Oekai by Bakayaro Onna - Radittsu at his sexiest...



The Zone Plant from
The Zone 

blog 

plant

OrganicHTML (which alas no longer seems to exist...)
[::..My Regular Reads..::]
:: Astronomical Pic of the Day [>]
:: What is Space... [>]
:: Dark Roasted Blend [>]
:: BLDG [>]
:: Watchismo Times [>]
[::..Fun Places..::]
::HubbleSite
Stunning...
::PALEOMAP Project
Absolutely fascinating.
:: Skymap
Check out the night sky where you are!
[::..Useful Sites..::]
:: GreenNet
First stop for environmental matters
:: The Forest of Avon
Our local community forest and places to visit
:: The Guardian
Online Guardian Newspaper.
:: Symbols
Exactly what it says
:: World Timeserver
For checking the current time around this world
:: Universal Currency Converter
Actually it's just a terran-global currency converter, not universal, but it's still useful...

So what is it with the haddock? Am I some kind of fish freak?

I'll leave that to others to decide.

The tale (or tail if you prefer) harks back to October 2000, when my GoodTwin and I, ably assisted by Sue, ran the first UK Professionals convention...
It's common knowledge that I never have enough time, and I was determined not to bewail the fact that weekend: hence I promised not to use the 'T' word...
Of course, that didn't really work (if nothing else I had to let the trainees know what times things were supposed to be happening!) so we decided a substitute word would be employed instead. There were several suggestions. Banana came very close to being chosen. However, I eventually decided that 'haddock' fitted the bill nicely. Ever since, haddock=time. Hence the title of my forthcoming autobiography,
My Half-Life in the Haddock Space Continuum....


Normally I wouldn't, but these were just irresistible...

How could I resist?

Just too adorable...

and to complete the rainbow...

These Too-Kawaii Kitties
were adopted from
Ghost's Anime Page (which appears to have disappeared, alas...)

[::..Anime/Manga..::]
Useful sites:

BBTS -
Fabulous anime figures

Anime Lyrics
A huge selection... evil popups

Anime still needed to complete series' I'm collecting... Many thanks to everyone who has helped me acquire the collection!
Ai no Kusabi

Owned:
   DVD
   Dj: June Special
   CD: Ambivalence

Cyber City Oedo 808

Owned:
   DVD
   All 3 eps on Video, dubbed
   Dj: Cyberage 1-3
   Illustrated Book 2 (Benten's) in Japanese

From Eroica with Love

Owned:
   Manga Vols 1, 9, 11

Mirage of Blaze

Owned:
   DVD Vol 1 (eps 1-4)

R.G. Veda

Owned:
   English Manga: Vol 1
   Japanese Manga: Vol 1-7 complete
   Tarot Pack
   R.G.Veda video

Twelve Kingdoms

Owned:
   Anime Vol 1-12: complete

Under the Glass Moon

Owned:
   Manga Vol 1, 2
Vol 3 needed

Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust

Owned:
   DVD

   Vampire Hunter D Book 1



New Vampire Miyu

Owned:
   (Studio Ironcat) Manga Vols 1 -5 (complete)


Yami no Matsuei

Owned:
   Viz Manga: English translation, Vols 1 - 11 (complete: I believe vol 12 is only available online)
   Japanese 3-DVD set
   Central Park Media: Descendants of Darkness Vol. 1, English/Japanese subbed.
   Sketchbook


[::..Joules SP fied..::]


... this is Terra? How the hell'd I end up here...?

(Thanks, Lutra, for the quote!)

[::..archive..::]
07/01/2002 - 07/31/2002
08/01/2002 - 08/31/2002
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11/01/2002 - 11/30/2002
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01/01/2005 - 01/31/2005
02/01/2005 - 02/28/2005
03/01/2005 - 03/31/2005
04/01/2005 - 04/30/2005
05/01/2005 - 05/31/2005
06/01/2005 - 06/30/2005
07/01/2005 - 07/31/2005
08/01/2005 - 08/31/2005
09/01/2005 - 09/30/2005
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04/01/2006 - 04/30/2006
05/01/2006 - 05/31/2006
06/01/2006 - 06/30/2006
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10/01/2006 - 10/31/2006
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02/01/2007 - 02/28/2007
03/01/2007 - 03/31/2007
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01/022016 - 28/02/2016
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01/01/2019 - 31/01/2019
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01/12/2019 - 31/12/2019
01/01/2020 - 31/01/2020
01/02/2020 - 29/02/2020
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01/04/2020 - 31/04/2020
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01/12/2020 - 31/12/2020
01/01/2021 - 31/01/2021
01/02/2021 - 28/02/2021
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01/10/2021 - 31/10/2021
01/11/2021 - 30/11/2021
01/12/2021 - 31/12/2021
01/01/2022 - 31/01/2022
01/02/2022 - 28/02/2022
01/03/2022 - 31/03/2022
01/04/2022 - 30/04/2022
01/05/2022 - 30/05/2022
01/06/2022 - 31/06/2022
01/07/2022 - 31/07/2022
01/08/2022 - 31/08/2022
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01/10/2022 - 31/10/2022
01/11/2021 - 31/11/2021
01/12/2022 - 31/12/2022
01/01/2023 - 31/01/2023
01/02/2023 - 28/02/2023
01/03/2023 - 31/03/2023
01/04/2023 - 30/04/2023
01/08/2023 - 31/08/2023
01/11/2023 - 31/11/2023

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Long post is long  

and contains flash photog... pix!

Can I remember everything that's happened since the last post? Let's see...

Kai ended up only going in for a couple more lectures, and took Friday off. I carried on tidying up. House is even less cluttered than before, and the greenhouse is now ready for this year's toms and cucs. Getting there!

On Saturday we tried going for a walk along the river, but Kai felt too poorly and out of breath to go far, so we came back and he chilled in The Forest for a few hours. Sunday was much as usual (manic) and Monday... I forget. Couldn't have done very much, I guess.

On Tuesday Kim drove over and we went out to Almondsbury Garden Centre for lunch and shopping. They now have a section for wildlife friendly trees, which I shall investigate more thoroughly next visit. I came home with about a ream of info on greenhouses - a polycarbonate one isn't going to be any good (they fly away in the wind) so I'm going to be going for a toughened glass one. A bit more expensive, but will last a lot longer. Haven't had time yet to look through it. Maybe next week.

On the way back we dropped into the Riverside Garden Centre, which is an absolute delight! Great selection of plants, terrific staff, and even better, they have their own hive - we watched over the wall as the early bees went in and out - and sell their own honey. I've reserved two pots: they won't be ready until September, so no good for hayfever this year, but should be good for next. Bought three wonderfully fragrant hyacinths on special - haven't decided where to plant them yet...

In the evening Kai and I watched the first ep of Childhood's End. I adored the book when I read it as a child, and this is shaping up to be an excellent adaptation.

Wednesday was Kai's BMT clinic. His blood counts are still stable, but we asked for them to take extra bloods for virology, just to check it is a bug making him feel rough rather than anything more nasty, and after the appt a nurse took throat and nose swabs too. Probably won't be anything to worry about, but having come this far we don't want to take any chances.

Afterwards, since the weather was so glorious, we took a ferry ride along the floating harbour to the Nova Scotia...

I'd planned to show Kai the Riverside Garden Centre (and pick up a couple of things I saw the previous day) but the old bridge - which was a vital short cut - is closed, and the long way round was a bit too far for the time we had. So we walked back along the New Cut


and Spike Island...

to the M Shed...

There is an easier, very pleasant walk to the garden centre from the M Shed, which we'll try to do next time it's dry...

This year's Masterchef started in the evening. I've never yet managed to try any of the recipes but I'm getting very good at guessing the winners!

Thursday involved a lot of shopping - in preparation for the Eostre weeekend - and the second ep of Childhood's End. Still excellent.

Yesterday Kai and I went to Weston-super-Mare, to take advantage of the fabulous weather before Storm Katie hits us...

Brean Down from Weston beach. Going to try to get there again in the summer, it's a gorgeous place but an awful lot of walking!

And Jazz's little brother was parked at Cadbury Garden Centre, Congresbury, on the way back!

Went into town this morning to Primark and Wilko (for bird food. My birbs are ravenous at the moment, must be nesting season...) In an hour or so we're taking advantage of Sky's current freebie: a month of free movies on their pay-for channels (presumably to tempt us into paying for them afterwards). We have or have seen most of what's on offer, but they have Inside Out (which all Kai's friends are urging him to see), Robot Overlords (looks dreadful but might be fun. Will have on while I cook dinner) and The Nut Job, which Kai wants to compare to another film he's seen, so this evening is pretty much planned out.

Sue, I only have one ep left of Will Shakespeare left to cover then I can send the DVDs back. Sorry it's taking so long. I am enjoying it, but will probably take it off my wish list now I've seen it again, despite it being Tim Curry!

It's Kai's second venesection appt tomorrow. Going to be fun trying to get buses there and back...

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Blogger Sue said...

That's absolutely fine, I'm in no hurry so whenever is good for you.
Pictures are great, glad you've been able to get out and about a bit.

3:29 pm  



Tuesday, March 15, 2016

It's been a very good day. Fiona gave me a lift to the charity shop with six crates plus a few oddments and has offered to help me take the ancient stacking garden chairs to the tip sometime soon. We have our hall back!

My copies of the complete All Hail Megatron (all 496 pages of it) and the first two volumes of The Transformers arrived. This latter is the third ongoing IDW story (the others being MTMTE and RiD, which I'm already collecting. Yes, it gets frantically confusing (not helped by so many of the continuities having the same name: it's a pain when you have to check the dates to make sure you've got the right thing!) I have the third volume already - it's the one where Megatron is redesigned as a stealth bomber with a rail gun: I got the figure for Yule). I still need to get Vols 4 - 7 (8 and 9 are out later this year) but I'm not in a great hurry as it's going to take me a while to read All Hail Megatron first.

Then I went into town. To the bank. Where I handed over two cheques amounting to just under £29,000. Yes, our endowment policy matured! The mortgage is now paid (well, almost: there's another £4.5K needed for the second account, the one which would allow us an extra five years to clear it all if we needed, which is coming out of the drawdown tax free 25% from my BT pension. Should be able to get that sorted out this weekend). And I worked it out: to clear it on time, knowing the endowment was going to leave us with a pretty big shortfall, we've actually paid in nearly £23,000 over the last ten years as one-off payments as and when we could. This explains why we never had any money! We'll have a little more to play with now, although most will still go into the house. But YAY!! We did it! I've spent the entire day grinning...

I bought a bottle of champagne, a couple of weeks ago, to celebrate when it's finally cleared - Heidsieck Monopole Blue Top. I felt we deserved it. I'll post a photo when we open it!

Tired now and heading to bed soonish. Kai is poorly - there's swine flu doing the rounds at the moment and we think he may be fending it off. He's taken the last couple of days off, but is going to try to get in tomorrow, he has a tutorial he doesn't want to miss. Fingers crossed...

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Monday, March 14, 2016

Spring has sprung!

Frog-bonking is just about over - you can barely see the water for the frogspawn in Roeg's pool, and Kai's pool has a substantial amount too. And we have butterflies and bees and flahs everywhere!

All of my seeds have sprouted, and I've started hardening the seedlings in the greenhouse. Now really hoping the cold weather is over, as very soon I'll have to pot them on and they'll have to stay out there permanently!

And on the subject of the greenhouse... went out to replace the old cracked pane at the far end, to find that the triangular pane above it has now also cracked in two, and there's another crack in one of the new panes I recently replaced. I think the insane winds we've had may have twisted the structure. I'm considering replacing it with a polycarbonate one - they're quite reasonably priced on amazon, and virtually unbreakable. And once the wall is built (that'll be at the end of this year's growing season: we'll need to disassemble the greenhouse anyway to make room for the digger) I'll be able to place the new greenhouse right up against it, which will make it even more stable and protected.

In the meantime, off out now to tidy up and get the old one ready for this years tomatoes and cucumbers.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Sue said...

The spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the boidie is.
They say the boidie’s on the wing.
But that’s absoid. The wing is on the bird.

<BG>

9:33 am  



Thursday, March 10, 2016

I'd been worried that Kai wouldn't enjoy his 21st birthday (he's still fending off bugs and was feeling a bit rough) but he went in to uni, gave his maths presentation (which sparked an interesting debate about human consciousness!) and came home in a remarkably good mood. He liked his presents (and has worn the stag pendant today, really likes it!) and enjoyed the fajitas with tiramisu for dessert (his choice for dinner). So all in all it was a good day!

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Sunday, March 06, 2016

Mothering Sunday 

It's been busy as usual. Sorted out the shed this week - the hall is now almost unnavigable with crates of stuff to go to charity. Going to have to get someone to ferry us there (or collect it all) as there's far too much and it's too heavy to carry.

I've had a nice day. Spent a lot of it on client stuff (behind now as spent so much time on the shed) but it was peaceful and pleasant. Kai gave me a lovely card and Lindor chocolates [g] (no, there's none left...)

And I can't remember what else has happened. Looking forward to a bit of a break in a few days, as the client stuff is almost finished and I can make a start on my own writing again.

We now have pairs of jays, magpies and long-tailed tits (who love the buggy suet cubes I've put on the feeder) resident in the garden. Well, regular visitors, anyway! And everything's coming into bud. And the hazels have catkins, which seem to be giving me hayfever already, which does not bode well for the summer...

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