Why do pears...

 ...suddenly appear turn to over-ripened mush when one is least expecting it?

 I was just downstairs wandering from room to room with the phone clamped to my ear chatting to being chatted at by Indescribable. She was going on about how she took Babyzilla to the shops yesterday afternoon and bought some praline & cream icecream and cranberry & orange cookies. She ate the icecream last night (but didn't really like it) and scoffed the cookies this morning for breakfast. 
 As she gabbled on, I looked around for sustenance as I had yet to break my own fast (having spent most of the morning in the bath). The only thing I could see of slight deliciousness were three conference pears on the kitchen windowsill that were given to us by The Father from his pear tree. They'd been there for the past two weeks in the hope that the meagre Autumn sun would ripen them.
 I gently squeezed each pear, choosing the last one as it had a little "give". While my sister was prattling on, I bit into it and nearly broke my teeth! How can it still have the consistency of granite? How? It should have turned to mush by now!

 Eddie Izzard has the same problem it seems:



 There's a longer, more comprehensive video here (the pear bit starts from 4:30).
 

Graceless clod

Not me, sadly.

 Now, I was playing table tennis with The Father yesterday (don't ask), when he told me that I should loosen up a bit more. Be more fluid. Make my movements and shots more graceful as I "look like a piece of wood"!
 How very dare he! I am grace personified. Grace, elegance and poise are three words one could use to describe me. In fact, one could call me grace incarnate!

* ahem * Really?

 Shush, you! Just let him get on with his digging... 

 Hey! Anyway, I-  Oh.  Who left these here?

:

Unluckily, there was someone right where I hadn't intended to land.

"Ow!" she said as I clonked her on the elbow with Broom as I swerved at the last minute.

"Oof!" I said after hitting the trellis in the courtyard.

~

As I strode down a corridor to find Tim and Princess, they found me.

"Oof!" I said as the stretcher they were pushing bashed into my leg.

"Run!" Princess cried, bashing me again with the stretcher.

~

Oof!

* CRASH *

Drat. Sorry I've been a bit neglectful this past week or so - I've been trapped in the airing cupboard. Not in the Narnia-esque land back there (with its opening behind the hot water tank), as I had it closed off not long after I'd moved in after finding small hoof-prints and faun shit all over my best tablecloth and runner.

~

Oof!

* collapses into Sparky Malarkey and utters, with rubbish German accent *

Oh, Timothy, Timothy. Mine very own Timothy. You saved my life.

I shall never forgive you...

~

"Oof! Bugger. Who'd've thought there'd be a Cusp Interface on Cybertron?"

~

"Oof!" I fell back onto my desk, winded. "Ahh... Physical contact!" I drew myself together, transmogrifying into a fearsome dragon. "T-Bird!" I roared. "Timothy has escaped!"

~

"Oof! I think I just landed on someone" I said as I extricated myself from folds of pink taffeta.

"Not just someone" the figure said. "You've clobbered a fairy godmother! Either that or Barbara Cartland."

~

 

Oof! I'm back.

I dropped a penny the other day, turned and stooped to pick it up and accidently spun into a different universe. The one with the brown jelly babies!

:

    
 Well, I think we can clearly see who has been doing all the graceless clodding around here, eh Witchface?

 I don't know about that? It was all done in your body!

So. While those two bicker, lets watch the stunning Aljaž Skorjanec (and that Abbey Clancy, I suppose) glide handsomely beautifully around the stage.

Bookxotica

  So, here's another update of books-read-so-far-this-year. Well, I say books - there's a couple of graphic novels and two or three short stories, too. Still, I read them, so they count!
 And like last time, you don't have to take any notice of this - It's to aid my failing memory for the end of the year.
 

• The Things, by Peter Watts

• Revelation and Dust (Star Trek: The Fall), by David R. George III
• Trillions, by Nicholas Fisk

 

 

• Moon over Luna, by David R. George III
• Saga (volume one), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
• Ex Machina (Star Trek), by Christopher L. Bennett 

 

 

• Psychic Warrior, by David Morehouse
• Smoke and Mirrors, by Neil Gaiman
• The Buried Age (Star Trek: The Lost Era), by Christopher L. Bennett

  

 

 
• Pawns of War (Star Trek: Romulans), by John Byrne
• Echoes and Refractions: The Chimes at Midnight (Star Trek: Myriad Universes), by Geoff Trowbridge
• Echoes and Refractions: A Gutted World (Star Trek: Myriad Universes), by Keith R. A. DeCandido 

 I must say, Blogger's supposedly easy picture positioning tool thingy is getting right on my nerves. It's rubbish! It doesn't postition anything easily or quickly, and I end up having to fight the HTML demons to do it the old fashioned way.