I’ve wanted to meet her since I was like… fourteen. I was THRILLED.
Also! Everyone in the hall got to see a sneak preview of the BBC Noughts and Crosses series, which I have been waiting for… again since I was about fourteen years old. It was an unfinished clip, it had a watermark across it and I don’t think the score was done, but ahhh! Exciting! (I’m not sure how much I can divulge, it was a scene at a party, but hopefully a trailer for the whole thing will drop soon anyway?)
Today was Turtwig Community Day! I grabbed five shinies in the end (including one right after another, which has never happened to me before.)
Plus this guy from a raid:
And this guy from an egg!
Not Pokemon-related but still cool: I then went to play Adventure Golf and won a free ticket by scoring a hole-in-one.
Hooray! (It’s the new one in Leicester, by the way. It’s great, you should go.)
Oh wait! I just clicked onto Twitter and there’s one more thing!
More than 20 years of traveling far and wide. More than 20 years of Pokémon training+battling. In more than 20 years and 1000+ eps, his courage pulled through, his destiny was fulfilled, and finally became the very best.
The Amazon’s burning, the Great Barrier reef is dying, animals are going extinct like crazy and my god, I am so sick of seeing that fucking George Carlin “The planet is fine, people are fucked” reposted everywhere. You know, the one that implies even a vague attempt to do anything is naive and pointless. You know… the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Fuck off, George Carlin. Come on down, Guardians of the Galaxy:
(Peter Quill’s thoroughly indignant voice doesn’t quite come across in image form, unfortunately.)
So because I’m one of the idiots who lives on this planet, I’m trying to do at least a couple things with what I have. Even if that’s just trying to keep bees coming. Luckily, they really like this mint plant.
(See the little blurry bee?)
Round the front of the garden there are a lot of blackberries. I’m kind of half thinking of putting a sign up saying that if people can reach the blackberries from the street they’re free to take them, but I dunno how many people would want unprocessed blackberries.
I’m probably going to turn most of them into blackberry jam and dipense said jam to whoever I know who wants some. I’ve also been trying to move some of the blackberry bushes to the back garden where they could grow better, by digging them up by the root and putting them in pots, but that hasn’t really worked so far.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen –
I love spring onions, and one day the Internet told me, “Hey, did you know if you put the ends of spring onions in a vase with water and sun they’ll just keep growing?” And they DID! I mean, this has only been going on for a few weeks, but it seems to be working well.
And here’s some tomato plants, snipped with permission from someone else’s tomato plant:
To get tomato plants ready to be repotted you need to put them in water and wait a bit until it sprouts white roots. This one hasn’t grown many, but I think that’s probably because it had tiny tomatoes on it already and was putting all its energy into growing those.
THIS one on the other hand did really well!
Look at that! Isn’t that great? I’m going to plant it in soil soon and then hopefully a tomato harvest will eventually come.
Anyway. You can probably tell I know nothing about gardening, but I’m hoping to learn as I go along. I have no endgame beyond “hey let’s not intentionally fuck all this up for profit” which is more than some other people managed, so.
The second of two protests I’ve attended in the past two months.
Whether this sign refers to the Game of Thrones Jon Snow or the left-wing TV presenter Jon Snow, I know nothing.
This protest was MUCH better attended than the last one. I was pleasantly surprised.
Boris is indeed a dick.
This picture came out blurry, but that sign in the middle is a picture of Emperor Palpatine and the words “I am the senate.” Because democracy is still dying in thunderous applause.
A couple of years ago I went to this magnificent antiques shop in Nottingham. And today I went back there, learned its name, and learned it is MUCH WEIRDER than I initially thought.
Let’s go back inside!
This photo is probably blurry because I was shaking in horror at whatever the heck this is.
A mysterious door with mysterious sounds coming from behind it. This place is DEFINITELY haunted.
Nothing to see here.
This is apparently an, ur, artistic lamp. It is absolutely gonna kill you if you bring it into your home.
I’m assuming this is a real stuffed warthog or whatever it is. Apparently a peacock feather is a symbol of bad luck, so of course there would be one randomly in its mouth.
Just a box of broken skulls…
Possibly my favourite pic from this house of horrors:
TEETH! TEETH! ASSORTED TEETH! Whose teeth? Who gives their teeth to a random shop?! And for what possible reason would someone buy them?!?
DISCOVERY ISLAND! It has long been a source of fascination for me. That sweet little zoo I visited as a child in 1996 is now apparently an overgrown, decaying, delightful house of mild horrors. There are vultures! There are dead snakes in jars!
Anyway. Many brave souls have ventured their way into Discovery Island over the years. Some also have been sued by Disney I believe. I would definitely jump at the chance to explore the still-very much abandoned Island, but instead, hey, let’s see what it was like as a fully-functioning, snakesinjars-less part of the park.
(You can repost the pictures of the attractions/animals here, but please don’t repost any pictures with people in them!)
It’s a croc! Is it just me or does he not look all that happy to be behind fencing?
I can’t read these signs but I think they’re telling you to please not feed the animals or presumably the Mouse will get you.
These adorable Roseate Spoonbills all got relocated to Animal Kingdom when it opened, I think.
I don’t think my family spent too long at Discovery Island during ye olde Disney holiday. From what I remember it wasn’t really appealing to children because there were no rides or costumed characters around.
My brother it seems REALLY REALLY liked the sand though.
So I stumbled across a treasure trove of photos in my parents’ house, hooray. I was DELIGHTED.
Ya see, my love affair/general bizarre fascination with theme parks probably started when I was 8 or so and got taken to Disneyworld in Florida. I have very few actual memories of the experience, but thank god, my parents were early adopters of state-of-the-art camera technology!
…Sadly I am not, and all of these pictures are photos of photos because I have no access to a scanner. But for my fellow lovers of the Disney parks and spectacular theme parks in general, here’s a reasonably clear look of what Disneyworld looked like circa 1996 (yep, pre-Animal Kingdom). Part one! I’ll cover Epcot, the Studios, Typhoon Lagoon and poor, forgotten, abandoned Discovery Island later.
You can repost the pictures of the attractions here, but please don’t repost any pictures with people in them!
The ferry to the Magic Kingdom. Whether this ferry still exists, and where one would get on it, I have no idea. Hey, there’s the castle in the background!
The cable cars! I have vague memories of us riding in either a red or yellow one. Apparently the cable cars are gone now? Aw man. One of the memories I do have from Disneyworld is going over a lake (I think that’s the black blob to the left) in the cable car and my dad telling me that the submarines used to be under there. That would have been the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride, which shut down a mere two years before my family visited. I was so close.
The castle as seen from the cable cars.
Now this is from a parade I gather was a surreal celebration of all things Mickey. According to my husband, the picture on the left “looks like a Mickey Mouse head stuck on something’s crotch.”
Still, at least the ‘real’ Mickey was less unnerving, right?
Okay nevermind.
A couple of other, much better photos from the Mickey Parade (Why does the name ‘Mickey and Friends Parade’ keep coming back to me? Maybe that was its actual name?)
Here’s Splash Mountain, which I never rode:
According to my eight-year-old self, encouraged by my parents to label the Disney photos in the family photo album, this is a ‘indien village’. What it actually is and where it was, if it’s even actually in the Magic Kingdom, I have no idea. Anyone recognise this?
Here’s Cogsworth. Why he has a tiny Mickey inside him I have no idea.
Here’s It’s A Small World, which I gather has not in fact changed much in the past couple decades:
I’m guessing this is Discoveryland, with its funky retro rockets:
And that’s 1996 Magic Kingdom! I have a few more disconnected memories. I remember we nearly set the holiday villa on fire. Ah, good times.
