Piglet's on the Rattigan

Nicky planted some lettuce seeds a few weeks ago. She put them in little pots, then put the little pots in the top and bottom of one of those plastic cake holders that your get with supermarket cakes, and put them on the Rattigan to get some sun. A week or two ago they started to sprout, one of them particularly diligently. We caught the edge of a tropical storm (Ian I think) at the beginning of the week, and got more wind than rain, and the effect the wind was having on the optimistic lettuce seedling reminded me of E.H. Shepard’s illustrations of Piglet tramping his way through the 100 acre wood against a very strong head wind. So now we don’t have lettuce seedlings outside, but Piglet's on the Rattigan.

The tropical storm passing over us has been the main feature in this weeks weather, bring intermittent showers and lots of wind. Washing has still been dried outside however, and the requisite ironing completed. Along with the shopping I have also done a couple of Mac jobs. Meanwhile, the library, like the traffic, is getting busier as people start to return from their holidays. Some of them might have even gone back to work.

I have not been having a particularly good week with my eczema, but cheered myself up with a walk on the beach at Karekare on Friday as the weather had perked up. Yesterday was also quite sunny, but the wind was still quite strong and cooling, so Nicky and I weren’t encouraged to go out anywhere. We just had a quiet day at home, reading and pottering. By the afternoon it was comfortable to sit outside in the garden round the side of the house at it provided some shelter from wind.

Today was forecast to be wet, but this morning and early afternoon were just very dull. Jancis popped in for coffee and a chat after Nicky got home from church. We decided to go up to Albany to see American Hustle which has got lots of Oscar nominations - unfortunately we don’t see why. It wasn’t a bad film, but it wasn’t very good. Too much time on over explaining peoples relationships and not enough time on moving the plot forward. Neither of us could empathise with any of the characters. The rain had arrived though, and was bucketing it down as we ran back to the car.

This experience supports my recently developed theory about the Oscars. The basic problem is that they are just comparing a crop of recent films with each other. They are not being measured by any absolute standard. So the winner might just be the best of a bad bunch. That doesn’t say much for the industry in my view. However, as Hollywood seems to be full of sycophants I don’t see things changing this side of the millennium.

Ok. That’s my rant for this week. Just think, soon we’ll be eating pork flavoured lettuce!

Take Care, Rick.