Tunes on Thursday: You didn't notice my new leather catsuit, did you?

 I'll warn you now, this is a bit of a big one.  I started this post last week, but forgot to enable the auto-publish for Tuesday just gone.  And of course, since then, I've listened to more music, both new and old, so the list has grown.

  

 From old to new (but not in strict chronological order):

 

Shakespear's Sister - You Made Me Come To This

Best served in the car turned up to 11 so that anyone who can hear you screeching along to it just thinks you're Siobhan!

Donna Summer - State of Independence

Jon and Vangelis - State of Independence

I included this because I've only recently discovered that this is the original version.  I prefer Donna Summer's though.

 

 

Toto - Africa

Heard at the swimming pool this morning while I was gayzing at My Lifeguard 😍.

 

 

Tina Turner - We Don't Need Another Hero

Dubstar - I Can See You Outside

Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Stay On Me

White Lies - Keep Up

My favourite glum, beardy, miseryguts is back!

 

 

Haute & Freddy - Anti-Superstar

Haute & Freddy - Shy Girl

Thank you, Jon, for sharing your discovery of Haute & Freddy!

 

 And to play out - because I watched the film again last Thursday night - 

Monsters Theme by Jon Hopkins:

 

Filling gaps and softening edges

 Here are some photos from the garden today.  I had intended to go through the garden photos I've taken throughout the year and select some for the upcoming Garden Photos Event-

 From the beginning of November, people!  We hope you've been snapping away at your green stuff?!

 Anyway, as I was saying, I'd started to select some photos for the GPE, but nieces descended upon us, so that went out the window leaving us with just enough time to slap together this post of a few hastily taken photos of our tired, end-of-season greenery.

 There's not much in the way of colour, but there are a few splashes here and there, like the pale purple (mauve?) scabious and yellow geum above.

Bitey on the Beach

  I'm on holiday this week.  I made some plans - something to do every day so as not to waste the time - and thought I'd have plenty of time for catching up with your blogs and updating my own.  The universe had other plans, however...

 

  Still, I managed to go to the Old Vicarage Gardens in East Ruston on Saturday, window shopping in Norwich on Monday morning, a long walk & paddle on the beach with Bitey on Tuesday, back down to the beach for a swim (which turned out to be a very deep paddle - more on that later) then gardening and allotmenteering yesterday, and here we are on Thursday already!  I've been swimming (in a heated pool) and done some tidying up in the garden and then came indoors because the forecast is for rain.  

 

  It is not raining.  Rather than put my shoes and socks back on to go back outside, I thought I'd use this opportunity to do some blogging.  So, here are some of the photos from Tuesday's foray down to the beach:

 

Approaching the End-of-the-Line

 

The End-of-the-Line

Four Photos: Nearly a month out of date

This year I actually made something out of the sour, pointless red currants from the allotment: fruit leather.

It's horrible.  It gets stuck to ones teeth and no one likes it.  I only made it because Vom Smallhausen and Count Podgkinson foolishly picked some currants after I'd taken them up the allotment (fruit leather was the least complicated recipe I could find that used the most red currants).  The red currant bush is getting dug up this winter!

 

View up Northrepps Road

 

Parasol mushroom

 

Escaping the heat - and Bitey - was this toad.

 

 

 

P. S. Apologies for my absence, I have been busy with summer and taking photos for the Grand Gardening Competition in October, or sooner??

 

  Oh, no, wait.  That wasn't me.  That was Ms Scarlet.

  While I have been busy with summer and taking photos for the Grand Gardening Competi-  I mean, Garden Photos Event, I have also been sorting out the garden & allotment, engaged in a few social activities (pah!), exhausted myselves trying to eke out some sort of service from a couple of companies so-called "customer service" departments/teams, and have been lumbered with nieces and nephew far more often that I would have liked!

 (Except for the toad, these photos are from 2nd August and I started this post on the 8th!) 

 

  Also, Ms Scarlet had locked me in her attic without food nor a bath mat - but that's a story for another time... 

Four Photos: Elephant!

Last month, we found this in the red greenhouse

 

It's an elephant hawkmoth

 

And last week The Mother discovered this on the lawn.  Well Bitey discovered it and The Mother went over to see what he was staring at. An elephant hawkmoth caterpillar (she thought it was a poo!)

 

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh!*  It's going to devour us all!!!!

 

 

*It may or may not be a pirate. 

I saw the underside of a painted lady...

... and her name was Vanessa

 Anyway, before we see more of Vanessa and her ilk, here's a summery tune to accompany your scrolling: 

 

Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Dolce Vita

This tatty silver-washed fritillary alternated between feeding...

 

... and fannying about amongst the webs under garage's eaves.

Hey Hi Hello

Alison Goldfrapp - Hey Hi Hello

 

 

 I think it's about time for a Garden Photos Event reminder, don't you, Very Mistress?

 

The House of

 

I N F O M A N I A C

 

Garden Photos Event 2025

 

 As with previous years, this year's GPE will be held throughout November, with the event kicking off on Hallowe'en with the now traditional Terrifying Triffidery exhibit.  This leaves you little more than three months to take photos of your green spaces (if you haven't already made a start) and curate them before emailing them to me by the end of October.

 

 Infomaniac Bitches should already know the score, but for the muddled, forgetful, and easily startled/distracted - not to mention anyone new who'd like to take part - there's a potted history of the Infomaniac GPE on its own dedicated page at the top of this blog so you can see what you'll be letting yourself in for/getting involved in.  And despite some comments to the contrary, the GPE is NOT a contest, so your gardening efforts (or lack thereof) will not be judged and there will be no winner.  This means you, Savvy!

 There's no particular theme this year - we'll accept photos of pretty much anything garden-related, whether selected prize specimens that would make Monty Don weep or breathtaking vistas of your expansive grounds, to the potted dwellers on your balcony/windowsill, to a resilient plant that you haven't managed to kill yet. 

 And if you have a straggly and unruly bush that you suspect may be a weed but fascinated you enough to wonder what it is, the Official Plant Spotter of Hexenhäusli Device and its Extensive Witchdom, nay, All of Blogdom Itself, Jon, should be on hand to identify your unmentionables. 

 

 Right.  That's that bit done.  Here are a few bits & bobs from my garden this month to goad you into action:

 

View over the Circular Paysho from behind a hebe.

Four Photos: Wishful Thinking?

A hummingbird hawk moth drinking from one of the buddleias in the Hexenhäusli Device gardens this afternoon.

 

Oh my gods!!!  They're almost holding hands!  They're going to do It*!!!!!!

(Two of my three favourite** lowest of the Lower Deckers - Fin*** the super-hot, pretty boy human med tech and Charlie**** the adorable Andorian engineer - from the first episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4, "Twovix".  I took this photo back in April as I couldn't take a screen shot and couldn't find one online [I have found one since then, though] - I wanted it for research purposes, the end result of which will probably be posted here at some point.)

 

Bitey on the beach on Wednesday evening.

 

Someone in this house had this for tea on Wednesday - and it certainly wasn't me!

 

 

* According to First Officer Jack Ransom (in "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place"), the Cerritos is the "horniest ship in the fleet" (and doesn't have any married couples on board).

** The third is Buddy the Vulcan, as featured here with the other two.

*** He's not named in the show as he's just a non-speaking background character, but he looks remarkably like my backup lifeguard at the pool I swim in, so I've given him the same name.

**** Again, unnamed in the show, but someone has named him Charlie.  I'm going with it for now as I haven't thought of anything better.

Four Photos: Bat!

 

Look what I found crawling up the inside of the carport on Tuesday morning: a tiny bat!

Probably a pipistrelle of some description.  Unless it was a young 'future predator'...?

 

An hour or so later it had disappeared - probably having climbed high enough to launch itself into the air and fly away to somewhere more hospitable (and darker) than my carport.

Art vs Artist

 By popular demand-

 What? Since when was two people showing a polite, vague interest "popular demand"?

 Since now.  Go and interfere somewhere else.  This is my post!

 I think you'll find it is our post.  After all, whose name is on all those header images further down, hmm?

 Oh, hush.  Why don't you go and see to that ever widening Cusp interface before someone - or someones - falls in!

 Fine.  I'll leave you to your little doodles, then!

 

 Right.  Now that Witchface has gone, here is the Art vs Artist thingy I mentioned in the last post. It's something I saw on BlueSky so I thought I'd have a go, too.

 The majority that I saw are 3x3 square grids with a photo of the artist in the centre square surrounded by eight pieces of their work, so I followed the same pattern (it's all Star Trek stuff as I rarely produce any other kind):

 

Top left to right:

Four Photos: The Drier Side of Britain

 

Something for Ms Scarlet to consider...

(Proof of North Norfolk's dryness compared to Devon's - well, Cornwall, as Bude is the closest weather station to Ms Scarlet's neck of the woods) 

 

 

Stinking iris or roast-beef plant (Iris foetidissima)

 (A native to Britain, but "exotic" in New Zealand - the tables are turning, Dinah!)

 

 

A practise pose from 2021's Hallowe'en Star Trek Art Challenge

(I've included this as a reminder for me to concoct an Art vs Artist collage)

 

 

An unused photo from 2023's Salt Rooks

 You know, to show how dry it is here and all that...
 

Not the Hexenhäusli Device Gardens IV*

Agave montana flower head

 In the comments of my latest Four Photos post, I said to Jon that I might put up some photos from a recent visit to The Old Vicarage Gardens in East Ruston - and here they are!

 

* III can be found here. 

 

 We shall try to identify the various plants featured here, but The Host couldn't be bothered to stoop down and find the labels and photograph them while at the gardens, despite my nagging urging, so The Official Plant Spotter of Hexenhäusli Device and its Extensive Witchdom - AKA Jon - may have his work cut out.

 I was with a friend!  I had gossiping and laughing to do, not to mention trying to keep Witchface under wraps, so grubbing around in the undergrowth was low on my list of priorities! 

 

 Anyway, before we set off, Alison Goldfrapp has kindly offered to provide a musical accompaniment with her latest release, Sound & Light: 

I think these may be the flowers of Dianella caerulea?

(The plants I grew from seeds liberated from TOVG back in 2019 haven't flowered yet.  They're not doing very well where they are - and get trampled quite a lot by Bitey - so I will probably have to move them.)

 

 

Some sort of cow parsley/angelica thingy.