Life Observed

This is what happens in between your 16 bar solos*  You put your box of cats down and sup some ale. Add caption * A solo would normally be 8 bars but as we know, musicians have to be hauled off the stage with a hook on a pole when it comes to solos.

Many of you already know that bagpipes are powered by a total of four cats. Three of them set off the droning noise while the fourth one is encouraged to make the melody. Its tail is squeezed by an arrangment of holes and levers. Thanks to the marvels of modern miniaturisation, this squeeze box here has no less than thirty two baritone cats. Individual buttons poke the cats in various places. Clearly any instrument this ambitious takes some considerable pumping to keep going.

Folk Club: In Sir Patrick Spens I clean forgot The forty second verse, so I sang the twenty seventh  twice as loud and in reverse, and no-one noticed** *Usually involves "Heave Away" **Fred Wedlock, I believe

Out here in Wiltshire they must have been made of stern stuff in days gone by. On the top of each of these barren and windswept hills you find an Iron Age settlement. We walked up to the top of one in between rain squalls and it was fairly chilly, even in August.  What possessed these early moonrakers to build up there so far from civilisation? Consider: This was a long time before Marlborough even had a Waitrose. PS: How do sheep manage to do that "Baa" thing even though they never seem to stop eating?

So, this is the new economics.  Inverse sales where the price doubles suddenly.

Old seeds.  Somewhere round here there should be a 1955 copy of Whitaker's Almanack.

Here's a nice spiky flower thing I found in our garden.  Why are there so many sorts of flowers? What's the point? PS. This one isn't edible.