Counting coup

I'm not sure how many people could address themselves to sorting through their books and discover in the process an unexpected jar of home-pickled walnuts, but number me among them, however few there are.

These are quite the nicest pickled walnuts I ever ate. A few of them may have to go into a beef stew, or possibly a steak-and-kidney pudding, but I might just munch 'em in the meantime. I do like a good pickled walnut, and oh, these are very good indeed.

In other news, today I talked to a nice boy about disconnecting all my media. That'll be broadband, TV and phone in one fell swoop. Weirdly, it's the phone that weirds me out. I may indeed hate the instrument, but this has been my landline number since my very first phone-of-my-own, and I've taken it with me every time I've moved (which is like saying I've not moved very far since I turned independent, just pinged about within the little radius of west Newcastle). It's been my number for nearly thirty years, in other words - and from next month, it won't be. It's a nice number, too, I've always liked it.

Blaspheming the aspidistra, or why we have the word 'coincidence'

So no sooner do I post about the telephone? Than something goes wrong with the telephone.

It seems to be a problem with the device rather than the line or the service, the main handset is just acting weird; so I have unplugged it and plugged in my old standby device as a standby. But there goes my multi-handset wireless system, and there is next to no chance that I will ever hear the standby, let alone get there in time, from anywhere else in the house. So basically, don't phone me. Not if you actually want to get hold of me. E-mail, people. E-mail is the thing.