The Brilliance of Online Shopping

Some of you may be aware that this coming weekend we have a wedding to attend. Naturally, for such a grand social event, the best foot needs to be put forward, glad rags need to be assembled and nose hair needs to be trimmed. Whereas in our past, self and RHB might have been described as popinjays, these days we both assume a more ascetic demeanor, mostly due to the dearth of acceptable garb to be obtained on the High Street. It is also the case that we have different priorites these days - RHB for example, has been selected, by the smaller of the two cats, as a lookout post. This new employment is not really compatible with evening dress, so she hardly bothers. An alternative, and even less flattering view of this role is directly below:
I too, have mutated. My youthful garb of leather jacket, skintight jeans and Clash T-shirt is impractical for renovating, so I have adopted more practical workwear:


It would however be uncomfortable, and rude, to attend any event, far less a wedding, in our current state if dishabile, so for the past weeks we have been scouring the local fashion stores for suitable attire. The search was fruitless, mainly because it was difficult for us to picture ourselves in any of the garmentry available. Eventually, a brainwave was rustled up from the deepest depths of our collective intelligences. We decided to use internet to pick out possible wardrobe items. The experiment has been a huge success, and below I can reveal, exclusively, our proposed party wear

What doesnt kill you.......etc etc

Compare these two pieces of advice:

Advice Number One: "The Certificate in Teaching in Lifelong Learning is exactly suited to your career aspirations. You should definitely do this course.We have loads of great contacts to help you find a teaching placement."

Advice Number Two: "The Certificate in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning is not at all what you should do. You will struggle in the second part of the course if you dont have a teaching placement. We cannot give any help in finding you a placement."

Those equipped with some reading ability and a minimum amount of 'nouse' (Scouse for common sense - although some allege that statement in itself is oxymoronic) might discern a difference in the implications of above advice, so if I was teaching the above as an exercise in comprehension, in, say, a Basic Literacy or Skills For Life module, or as part of a Business Skills Course that I was teaching, I might be tempted to stretch my students further by asking them to analyse the following exchanges and derive from them a strategy for the engaged participants to pursue immediately after partaking in said reported conversations:

Conversation 1:
Johnny Wannabee : "I really want to get involved in training - pass on some skills, hopefully at Further Education Level - my big concern is that your course is the most appropriate course to take....? "

Professor Halfass : "Oh yeah, absolutely. Our course is perfectly suited to what you've described, in fact, its probably the best course you could have enquired about to suit your goals..."

Conversation Two:

Johnny Wannabee: "So I'm doing a degree in Education Studies with Psychology, and obvioulsy after that I will be perfectly qualified, maybe with a bit of training afterwards, to teach at your facility. When do I start?"

Monsieur Ed LeAdult : "Who told you that? What a useless degree. If you had wanted to teach - anything - you should have done a specialist degree. Then you could have done a Post Grad in that specialism. Then a Certificate in Teaching Adult Education."

And if I illuminated matters further by informing my Skills for Life learners that Monsieur Ed LeAdult was in fact also issuer of Advice Number One, and Advice Number Two (albeit with a temporal seperation), and that all pieces of advice were issued to the same person, then I think you will find it understandable if my gave my Skills for Life learners a Gold Star for returning their comprehension exercise advising that the best course of action for Monsieur Ed LeAdult was to leave the country immediately and seek anonymous refuge somewhere very far away on account of the bounty that had been placed on his head by those who had sought advice from him.

The main problem with the above mentioned scenario is, at least from my perspective, that I am in fact "Johnny Wannabee". This means that I am not teaching a Skills for Life course, so the proposed exercise will not be given. In fact, at this exact moment, the possibility of any teaching by yours truly is as distant as it has ever been, so much so that I am currently seeking a position in waste disposal on the basis that I am possibly more equipped to recognise bullshit (but only retropsectively) than I have been at any time in my existence.

The frustration, which you may, if sensitive, sense in the foregoing, arises from my further, recent research into my career options. As you may know, I am in my Second Year of a Degree in Education Studies, a degree that was "sold" as the perfect solution to an ambition to "teach people to knock nails into a bit of wood". However, as a complement to this (and in order to fast track my teaching ambitions) I seperately started a night class in Preparing To Teach in Lifelong Learning . This night class is the introductory element of a two part qualification, the second part of which the Certificate in Teaching in Lifelong Learning, continues after Christmas. As Preparing to Teach in Lifelong Learning is approaching it's completion, I visited my College to enquire about assistance in obtaining a teaching placement for the next semester - an essential element of this second part of the qualification - and the results of those several weeks of meetings, advice and discussions are the mess that is reported in the non-hypothetical conversations above.

One, of course, should always take responsibility for one's own contribution to any situations that one becomes embroiled in, and my case is no different. In the detail of the conversations I have had over the last few weeks, it has become apparent that if I had really wanted to be best placed to pass on life skills, advice, knowledge and experience to adult persons, I would have been better placed starting earlier. In fact, ideally, it has emerged, I would have been better off, in terms of advising, teaching or lecturing people on matters related to life experience, if I had not bothered with actually gaining any life experience at all. It transpires that the things I have done, like working in a specialised industry for twenty years, running a couple of companies, emigrating, living in different ciies, renovating a couple of houses, being a professional musician etc are a massive hinderance in teaching Life Skills, Business Skills or in becoming a career advisor.

The final nail in the coffin of a depressing couple of weeks came when Monsieur Ed LeAdult enquired whether I had considered consolidating my qualifications with a Study Skills course. "Study Skills is a big area", he told me, "Your degree might be useful to the Learning Advice people. Helping students understand their Learning Styles and become better learners is big area right now".

Weighing Oranges with Thermometers

The great debate was, of course, last week. Thursday, to be precise, a day in which the technology of the Greeks and Romans was put on trial. As readers may be aware, the task of Team Antikythera was to defend the murderous, underachieving, pyschopathic, opthalmic, xenophobic, ignorant Romans and Greeks with enthusiasm and verve.

Given that the decrepit Classical World could hardly feed itself, depended on slave labour for it's "wealth", decimated traditional lifeways across Europe, Africa and Asia and demonstrated a disparity between rich and poor that has not been witnessed in society since - at least not until Bush's American and Thatcher/Blair's UK - the task was not, on initial assessment, one to be relished. In the face of all this, did Team Antikythera blanch? Did we flinch from the task? Did we cringe in the face of the certainty of history.

The answer, as I have surely by now telegraphed, is that we did not. Instead, we set about our task, ruthlessly misinerpreting the evidence, distorting facts and misquoting whoever would be misquoted. Moses Finley, Joel Mokyr, Price, Gibbons and, the greatest author of them all perhaps, W. Ikipeidia were trawled, copied, cut and pasted into a cohesive argument that positioned the Classical Greeks and Romans as, (and I am utterly unashamed to say this, although perhaps I should be) pioneering environmentalists who only used appropriate machinery and, through restraint and principle, voluntarily limited their use of technology in order to protect the environment. We kind of glossed over the whole mass starvations, bread and circuses, slavery and extensive mercury usage bits, as well as the fact that when the Classicals did invent anything (like vending machines and steam power) they used them as cheap props - vending machines, for example, to dispense Holy water at temples, steam and wind power to "mysteriously" open temple doors. When they actually used technology it was to create massive automatons of the Emporer that presided over the slaughter of Africans, Christians and dissidents in the arena or to make better war machines. (and some people say we cant learn anything from history!)

As should be apparent, we were in trouble, so in order to help our argumentfurther we produced a Powerpoint which included slides like the following one:




And what of the result? Well, I can announce that in this first seminar, Team Antikythera won the votes of the jury. The problem is now how to proceed. Given that we persuaded the jury (unanimoulsy) in our first debate using tactics rather than establishing a solid base for our argument (not our fault as the Greeks and Romans were patently underachievers at least in terms of technology) it is clear that in future debates the opposition teams will also try to use our tactics. We will obvioulsy have to "raise our game". Effectively, for me, this does not rule out the possibility of cheap showboating. The togas might still be useful.

The Year of the Abductor

Other than perhaps emigrating and renovating, there is little that RHB and I have applied ourselves to collectively with as much energy as our current gymnasical enthusiasm. True, we each have our own obsessions - RHB has a personal mission to name and befriend every small animal in the locale, and I, because of my habits have regularly to attend AA* meetings. But together, we have become gym obsessed. The addiction has gone so far that we plan how to "make up" for the time we will "loose" because of the need to be hospitable to some welcome overnight visitors. While it is undeniable that at least some of the motivation for this started with an admiration for our various marathon running, squash playing Canadian visitors, the impetus to continue has been self-generated and is so embedded now that it is ubiquitous in our routine.

This makes gym attendance entirely unlike earlier fads like the famous Max Payne era, when we crept round a virtual world playing computer games together - an ultimately unsatisfying experience due to RHB's prediliction for screaming "Bastard" at the on-screen baddies (she does tend to become involved), and displaying an entirely illogical disposition for frugality with resources that meant I wasnt allowed to waste any ammunition on fighting. Or another epoch in our relationship - salsa dancing lessons - which came to resemble title bouts for the WWF**. One week at salsa, Barry, the instructor, became frustrated by RHB's continuing tendency to "lead", (despite his frequent exhoratations that "the lady" must float and be led), so he whisked her off round the hall, intending to dance some sense into her. If I remember correctly RHB won by two falls and a submission.

It is with accomodating visitors in mind that we head for the gym at a time outside our normal hours. Creatures of habit as we have become, even this minor shift has caused some discumbobulation, in terms of schedule; cats have had to be herded at unusual times and the Crosstowner has been denied the weekly race with Bert's inheritor, Jim, so my mood is ambivalent from the outset. Arriving at the gym, we strip (not in the same room), change, and head for our respective warm ups. RHB starts on the ski-walker, a machine that I studiously avoid after an episode that nearly resulted in hospitalization for at least two other gymnastiques. I instead, direct my attention to the free-weights area, happy that even if I do fall off a weights bench, the worst damage I could impose on other gym users woud be strained stomach muscles and temporarily, mirth- induced blurred vision (TMIBER***).

One gets used to the rhythyms of a usual time spot at a gym, mostly because of the routines of other users, but it is almost a subconcious phenomena, so I do not notice at first that I am being shadowed. It is only when an unfeasibly shaped personage (with a physique roughly analogous to a woolly mammoth) stands right in front of me, curling about 1000kgs, that I begin to suspect I am being followed. My next exercise, "upright rowing" seals the case, as my stalker lifts a weight equivalent to the boat he is supposed to be rowing, directly after I have performed the same exercise with 40 kgs, and directly in front of me. At first, I am flattered, albeit that Spartan relationships are not my cup of tea, but eventually, as my pursuer is joined in his imitations of my routine by a couple of colleagues of equally strange disproportionation, I realise that the intent is not intimate male bonding, but intimidation. I am being stalked by Gym Pigs.

The Gym Pigs are all ginger and freckled. This, combined with a tendency to overwork the biceps and upper torso, plus an inherently thick neck has resulted in a physique that can without dispute, be called "big". But where the physique of a recently made acquaintance of mine - a Marine instructor - can undoubtedly also be called "big", there is, with my Marine instructor, a fairly obvious connection between form and function. In short, the Marine instructor - about as wide, and as tall, as four Toshacks (with tail extended) - is incredibly functional. |He looks as if he could break one's neck with his pinkie finger, a killing machine, immensely capable. The Piggy physique is much less understandable - running on their tiny little legs looks unfeasible, so sports such as rugby seem unlikely. Sports requiring hand eye co-ordination (such as tennis) so seem not to be destinations for these trainers, as all three of them have eyes that are sunken so far under their freckled pale foreheads that their vision is surely restricted to occasional glimpses of the world through reddish eyebrows.

Suddenly, an anthropological thought hits me, as it tends to do when you are the joint second best academic in England. Perhaps, I muse, Neanderthals did not, after all, become extinct? But no! I am immediately ashamed of such ethnocentricity - there is absolutely no evidence at all that homo neanderthalises, or homo heidelbergwhatitsnames were stupid. Instead I logically conclude that genetic experimentation is being conducted in Hull, and the ones that go wrong are simply turned out to roam free. By a quirk of fate, they have ended up in the gym.

For my second set of exercises, I move to the only machine deemed macho enough to be located in the free weights area - the thingymajig. This is a machine of sheer power. It looks like a kind of crane and I mainly use it for light work on the shoulders, as follows:

an arm, preferably one of your own( for maximum efficacy of exercise), is extended outwards, laterally from your side, and in the horizontal dimension. The digits at the end of said arm, grasp firmly onto a stirrup shaped handle, and with a sudden intake of breath, you force the handle - attached to a big piece of string and weights interpreted by pulleys - downwards, so the arm becomes vertical, or north to south, through an arc while still travelling in a plane co-incidental with that of your torso, when considered across the width. Transverse motion across the torso plane should be avoided, as should unequal torsion via the dorsal medial parameters.

In other words, its the same action as signalling for a bus holding a shopping bag.

After my first set, Piggy 1 approaches, and communicates it's intention to share the machine, as it wants to do the same exercise. I agree, as if I have a choice, and it changes the weight load from the 30kg I have been attempting to about 5600kg. Machine set, and with its pals shouting good natured obscenities, he begins violently yanking on the handle. As Piggy works through his set, his face turns red, purple and then puce, and he grunts, shouting something that sounds like "huyuuah" with each repetition. On the final repetition there is a massive 'CLANK' as the weights return to their staring position. Piggy turns to me, rolls his sleeve back and examines his muscles appreciatively, rubbing then with a surprising gentleness, then turns back to the machine to readjust the weights. I stop him in mid-action ... "No, its allright mate. Tha'll do". He looks a bit surprised, but I step up to the handle anyway, grasp it firmly, draw in a mighty breath and draw my arm downwards, Or rather try to, because the weight will not move. I adopt the grunting technique that was apparently such a part of his success, and still the wieght doesnt budge, so I start counting..... "Huyuuahh.. ONE...huyuuahh...TWO... " and so on.

From Piggy's point of view, it must look quite strange. I am standing, completely immobile, next to a machine with my arm extended horizontally, counting loudly and grunting, eyes bulging from their sockets. I count up to six then stop, turn around, roll up my sleeve, find my muscle, rub it and look him straight in the eye ..."Right on. Your go now". This charade continues through two further sets, then Piggy 1 wanders off, but I'm pissed so I decide to pursue the battle further. I'm pissed mainly because I have noticed that I am not the only person who has had the shadowing treatment, and frankly the Pigs behaviour is bullying. They are trying, through humiliating other users, to discourage anyone else from using "their" area.

I decide to turn the tables, so I now follow Piggy 1 round the room, insisting on sharing not only the equipment he is using, but at the same weight. Its a bit like an uninvited guest at a Menonite barn raising turning up with power tools. Except in reverse. By the end of my session, Piggy 1's beginning to look a bit freaked out as I invite myself to share every bit of equipment he goes to use, him moving weights as heavy as Stonehenge and me, at exactly the same weight, puffing and panting through a series of immobile grunting counts. I encourage him in his sets "C'mon buddy. You can do it! Lets take it!" and at one stage even utter a small "whoo - whoo" with fist pumping air action. I stop short of slapping his butt affectionately, but am not stingy with admiring glances.

Back in the locker room, Piggy 1 is in too much of a rush to get a shower, and leaves with just a mumbled something. Next week we are back to our normal schedule, so our paths wont cross, I hope, but as I get on the scales, and glance into a mirror, I realise I have put five kilos on in as many weeks. I am getting bigger. And the muscle shape is definitely beginning to happen. I think about my next workout and fantasize, for second, how great it would be with no weedy twenty year old students clogging up the equipment. And hang on, are my eyes getting a little....well, piggy?

Key:

AA* = Anthropologist Anonymous
WWF** = World Wrestling Federation
TMIBER*** = Temporary Mirth Induced Blurred Eye. Rupture.

GO ! Team Antikythera ! GO !

"Togas? " Joe looks surprised.

"Yes, togas. I definitely think we should wear togas.And we'll need some listening devices, IR detection equipment, spyware - find out as much info from the enemy as possible. Oh yeah, another thing! you dont know anyone who's an expert hacker do you? We could also try biological warfare - perhaps find someone with the flu and get them to follow the prosecutors round, sneeze in their faces, that sort of thing. "

Joe looks uncertain. "Well you've obviously thought about this a bit more than me....so...." he tails off, uncertain what to say next.

"OK, well maybe we should wrap this up for the moment. Do you want to take a look at this stuff I prepared ? "......... I push my research material ( a fifty page bundle of notes, print-offs and leaflets on tactics, evidence, strategies, arguments, counterarguments, plus books, including the classic "Ancient Economy" by Finley, and a working model of Hero's Aeolipile) towards him........... "and we'll meet next week"

Joe demurs "Perhaps it would be best if I just did those couple of paragraphs of suggested reading first. That's quite a lot of material you've produced. You know it's only a half hour seminar dont you?"

The meeting ends, we part ways and I trundle the Crosstowner homewards, deep in thought. The "it" we have been discussing is an impending seminar, a part of our module "Innovations: A Cultural History" . The format of the seminar is a mini trial in which arbitarily picked students from the class have been divided into groups. Our group is Group B and in the first seminar we are the defence in the debate "The Greeks and Romans were technological underachievers". Other groups (Group A and Group C) act as prosecution and jury. Throughout the module, other topics are debated and our roles are switched, but for the first, crucial half hour session, we are advocates for the Greeks. It is a role I have not taken lightly.

However, as I wander home, I consider whether Joe has a point - am I taking this all a bit too seriously? I have to admit that during our meeting, Joe did, at times, look a little like a deer caught in headlights, but I put that down more to a dawning awareness (on his part) of the enormity of our task in constructing an absolutely watertight case, demolishing our opponents case(preferably humiliating them at the same time) and, in the process, changing global understandings of history (while wearing togas), than I did to an overenthusiasm on my part. Admittedly, my accent can be distracting, particularly during impassioned pleading, and I may have been slightly overstating the case when I suggested that no legal question since Roe vs Wade had been more important. It may also be the case, I suppose, that it is possible that my suggestions for physical intimidation of the jury and nobbling of the prosecution might have been taken for the dangerous ramblings of a deranged lunatic, but on balance, for a Second Year Group Seminar, I think I got it about right. The work we do his year does, after all contribute to ur final mark, and as Grasshopper has oft times pointed out - academia is a competitive sport. I'm sure she would approve, particularly the bits about disabling one's opponents.

I do however, decide to simplify my approach for the next meeting of Team Antikythera ( which hopefully more of the group will attend), so I remove ten of the less vital items from my suggested agenda, including a suggestion that someone is delegated to read, in its entirety, Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (in case I missed something), my proposal for someone to visit the Athens Museum (they do have a fairly good website) and the plan to remove from the library every single possible source of reference material for the opposition (on the grounds that I have already done it). I also reluctantly remove the toga provision - it could backfire, particularly if we get our togas mixed up with our chitons.

In Which A Cultural Observer Reports he Effects of the Culture He is Reporting On The Cultural Observer

It is a process that has taken a couple of years, but inevitably and inexorably, I can feel Englishness returning. In some respects, this is no bad thing -I am becoming increasingly good at improvising solutions, especially to craft related situations, whereas in Canada there would almost always be a technology to solve my problem - a piece of machinery I could buy. Hanging doors is a perfect example - in England, the approach is to skillfully chisel out, by hand, a perfectly square sliver of wood on frame and door exactly the same size as the hunge one wants to use. You then insert the hinge into the required space, screw it securely in place and hey presto, the door is hung! Takes about ten minutes per door, and the only equipment needed is a chisel and a hammer. Your finger nail and the hinge can suffice to mark your cuts. North American culture differs - the professional will have a "hinge jig" - a contraption that looks like the type of thing used when people need their heads stabilizing after car accidents - an electric router and a specially adapted router bit. Our North American carpenter wil, after parkin his behemouth outside your proerty, unload his truck of all his equipment (hinge jigs, stud locators, the "Drill Doctor", tinted safety glasses, mechanised measuring tape) then unearth the hinge jig and its companions. The same measuring procedure will be required as his English counterpart, but to cut the hinge he will have to take the door outside, secure it safely in his "safe-o-matic" door holder, assemble his jig, insert his router bit, apply his era defenders and safety goggles, and finally clear the area of all cats and young children. Then the router gets switched on. Cue massive noise and huge mess, which he then clears up with his industrial Shop Vac. The door frame gets a similar treatment, apart from the necessary laying down of dust sheets everywhere. Three hours later, your door, if all measurements have been correct, is hung.

I will refrain from describing the technological procedure involved in replacing a washer in Canada, for fear of giving some readers nightmares, but despite that it is often simpler to rebuild your house than decide to fit new doors, people in Canada are generally quite happy.

This observation, is of course relative, and only assertable at a remove. It was at such a remove that this reflection occured to me. Clarifying, I should say that it was as yet another car drove directly at me, it's purple faced controller screaming and gesticulating enthusiastically, that this reflection, ex post facto, occurred to me. I had dutifully stopped the Crosstowner at a "Zebra crossing" (translation for Canadians: "Zebra crossing " = crosswalk) to allow, in full accordance with the law, an elderly lady, Zimmer frame supported, to cross a minor-ish road in our locale. Observing a Range Rover ( the original SUV) approaching at a rate of knots on the other side of the road, and anticipating that the driver might not stop, I raised my hand and waved, then pointed at the windscreen. Having experienced driver rage frequently over the last 30 months I performed this action in as friendly a manner as possible. The driver obvioulsy saw me, because he wound his window down as he approached. I waved cheerily, thumbs up. The driver responded with a wave. To my surprise, though , it was not a cheery wave, more of a gesture of dismissal and he slowed at the crossing only long enough to imply that I fornicated regularly. My surprise continued when he did a 360 degree turn further down the road, accelerated back in my direction, and, to cut a long story short, tried to drive me off the road.

All of this would be the stuff of incident, if it were not a regular occurence here. And, my reflection revealed, I am re-immersing myself in the culture by becoming primed, expecting incidents of this type. No longer do I take to the roads thinking "careless idiot" if someone cuts me up, I now take to the roads expecting to be deliberately driven at. I'm getting Englisher in other ways as well, often trading no fewer than fifteen "thank you"s in the process of buying a simple newspaper, or starting every sentence with "I'm sorry, but...". As any anthropologist will tell you, this acculturation is of course natural, especially if it represents the original state of the observer, so I am not particularly worried about becoming English, there are plenty of benefits, but I do feel regret as the Canadian bits are gradually shed and this is particularly so in relation to the seasons. In Canada, we would have had Thanksgiving by now, and in both places we lived, there would have been a marked change in temperature - in Ontario, this was particularly so, from temperatures that could kill you by heat to temperatures that could freeze you. Tires on the car and the bike would have been thought about. Pumpkins would have been bought, and I would have resolved that this was the year I was going to learn to skate.

Halloween Two - A Movie Review

Halloween Two - A Movie Review.

Crap.


We only went to see it because myself, RHB, Will and Skarra wanted to go th HUll Fair, but the driving rain made the idea untenable. Also untenable these days is sitting in the pub for hours and hours - as may have been mentioned on this blog before, pubs just aint what they used to be, sitting round in an overpriced, trendy bar is unappealing and the nearby 'locals' are usually empty, apart from when a football match is shown. So we went the only show that we had time to go and see - Halloween. After an hour, I left, follwed by RHB. At a loose end we went and sat in the overpriced, trendy bar of the movie house. We were travelling with Will and Skarra, but they mystriously decided to see the thing through to the bitter end.

The movie attached is better, even though it has no plot, the cinematography is awful and the characters one-dimensional.





The black cat is Dizzy, a very friendly little local cat who just wants to play, and one of the last cats in the neighbourhood who visits Large Mansions on a regular basis. I would like to say, in a MAn The Hunter type way, that this is because my cat, Tosh, is so fierce and warlike that through his fearless aggressiveness he has bravely driven every other cat away. In fact, I think the other cats eschew our environs because Tosh's whining is so irritating.

If you are at all interested in cat behaviour, you'll also realize, that being domesticated so heavily, the cats have their signals all screwed up. Tosh, for example is in classic defences posture - lower than Dizzy and ready to be pounced on. This is despite that in this encounter, he was, as usual, the aggressor. Dizzzy on the other hand is displaying absolutely no signs at all that he's involved in a potentially dangerous situation.

It's only the next video, during which almost NOTHING at all happens that Dizzy acts like a cat that has been in an encounter, and the reason almost nothing happens is that he slinks away, moving VERY slowly.




The final video piece, though is interesting - at least to us. Tosh kept stalking Dizzy, and I followed him with my camera. I should add here that when I can, I break these fights up before they get physical. Someone once told me off for interfering in the 'natural' behaviour' of the cats, but looking at Tosh on his cat tree, playing with his squeaky mouse, I dont think think that 'natural' quite applies. If he has an excess of aggression he usually takes it out on his teddy bear, grasping it found the neck and raking its stomach with is back claws.

I followed Tosh down the wall to the rear of the garden where last weekend we had cut down, with our great neighbour Keeno, a massive jasmine that overhung his shed. As I started filming I noticed that revealed by this pruning is a face in the concrete, sculpted only knows when. It's pretty cool.