Salt and corrosion

What I would really like to do is start an entry with "yay, I got the job" (unlikely) or "boo, I didn't get the job" (more likely), but I haven't heard yet. The job search was coordinated by a human resources consultant, so I would expect that I'd actually hear if it was a no, not just leave me hanging. I do think the longer it goes the more likely it is to be no. At my once-and-current work, we ring successful applicants and email unsuccessful ones, and I am assuming something similar here, so I am getting a bit twitchy when I hear the phone ring or get an email notification.

Today we pulled down the bedroom curtains. The whole thing: curtains, lace, rods. We put putty in the holes and sanded the frames. Tomorrow: we paint the frame. And then we paint it again the next day. And then we'll be ready for the plantation shutters that are due next week. Blankets at the windows until then. Classy.

Oh, I saw an accident today! Not a bad one. I had parked in an angle park down the street and was getting some stuff out of the boot. A woman had stopped her car in the street, waiting for the car next to me to pull out of the park so she could go in. A man in a white van backed out on the other side of the road, right across the line of traffic and into the side of the woman's car, and then drove off. I wrote down the van's registration number on the back of a receipt (the only paper I could find), while the woman pulled in to the park she was waiting for. There was only minor damage to her car, and she was fine, but she was going to go round to the police station. So that was a bit of excitement.

Later I said hello to Brian Next Door while he was poking about in his front garden. He said, "Did you know the student house up the road was up for sale?" I did not. I knew which house he meant: it's an old house on the next block to ours, which has been let out to students for as long as anyone can remember. It's not as old as my house, which is the original house on the street, but it is the only other one on the street made of conite (stucco), so it's older than all the others, which are mid-century brick. So: one hundred years, or thereabouts.

Brian always wants to buy other houses on our street, but he never does. I asked if he bought this one, and he said, "Nah, Coolahan did." Coolahan lives in the same block as the student house. Brian said, "He wants to knock the house down and build a new one, so he went to the council to get permission, and do you know what they said?" No, I do not know. "They told him there's no house on that block. Never has been." We turned and looked at the house that isn't there, clearly there. As it has been for the last hundred years. "So," said Brian, "has anyone been paying rates on it?"

Say someone you know had a bag of oranges. What would you suggest she do with them? (Note: She has already made an orange cake, and very nice it was too.)

Hey ho, f-list. So much for a relaxing couple of weeks off. Long story short, my mother's partner, who has dementia and is frail at the best of times, has been admitted to hospital with some sort of virus. They can't get his fever down, and he's delirious, so that's not good. I spent last night driving my mother around the countryside - to the hospital, back out of town to their house, back into town to my house - and finally got to bed around three.

I live about five minutes from the hospital, so my mother is staying with me for the duration. (And maybe longer? If John can't go home, for whatever reason, I suspect my mother will want to move back into her house, which I am currently minding for her. So that will be interesting. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.) Anyway, that's a thing that's happening at the moment.

In other news, f-list, I'd like you to meet Round Mousie.



Round Mousie is one of the extensive Mousie family. Other family members include such luminaries as Blue Mousie, Yellow Mousie, Fish Mousie, Demon Mousie and Crinkle Mousie. Among the Mousie family, Round Mousie's claim to fame is that he scuttles along the ground when a string under his tail is pulled. Or that was his claim to fame, until the day I caught Alistair chewing the ring pull. I didn't want him to choke, so I pulled the string as far out as possible and snipped it off. Hello, newly safe Round Mousie!

The last few days, I have noticed little tufts of stuffing around the floor. My first suspect was Dog Mousie, which is neither a mouse nor a cat toy, but a stuffed cotton dachshund I made from a free kit in a craft magazine, which Alistair found (on a shelf, I might add) and claimed for himself. But no, Dog Mousie is fine. Today I found more stuffing, so I checked the Mousie box and found that it is Round Mousie who is leaking, poor lamb. I must have snipped the stitches when I cut his string. Then I thought that Round Mousie felt unusually flat, and realised that it was because whatever mechanism used to be inside him had also fallen out.

And then I thought: You know what would fit perfectly inside Round Mousie?

( Mystery solved! )

A sentence from an article I read today:

'Since 2000, at least seven ghost ships have been found wandering the seas, from a rusted, 80-metre-long tanker off Australia with no known owner to an empty yacht found near Sardinia with half-eaten meals on-board.'

So that's something to ponder.

The yacht, though. There's a story, if only someone knew what it was. The tanker too, I suppose, but at least there's a chance the people who know what happened to it might still be on dry land.

(The article I read isn't online, but it was about a ship that went missing in February this year, the Lyubov Orlova. The article I read said they have now had two position-indicating radio beacons, and they think the ship is still floating somewhere in the North Atlantic. So keep a look out next time you're in the area.)

As I walking home from the shop this morning, Kim Next Door drove past and waved. By the time I turned the corner, she had parked in her driveway and was standing by her gate, waiting for me.

'Have you found any - ' she began, and I knew what the next words were going to be.

'Golf balls?' I said.

'Yes!'

'Three,' I said. 'On the driveway.'

'We had four yesterday. We found one of them right next to the car. We heard something land on the roof this morning, that'll be number five, so Brian is going to get the ladder out later to check. And he was talking about the golf balls to them over there,' - she waved in the direction of the house across the road, which hasn't had any exterior walls for several years while the owners are renovating it (slowly) - 'and they've had a few, and one actually landed in their garden while Brian was over there. So he's called the police.'

'Him across the road?'

'Yes.' This makes sense. He might be a slow renovator, but he's very keen on maintaining a law-abiding street. A few years back, the small boy on the other side of the Next Doors was annoying half the street by ringing random doorbells and running away. He was caught in the act by the renovator, and marched back to his side of the road to be spoken severely to in the presence of his parents.

I had thought that same boy might be the source of the golf balls, but apparently the trajectory of the one that landed in the garden suggested it came from further down the side street. I now suspect the student rental house, whose residents like to set off illegal fireworks when they hold parties.

So that's the latest on the J Street Golf Ball Mystery.

My mother mentioned the mandle/mandel/whatever mystery to one of her friends, who said that her son had a mandle tree. She duly took a cutting off it and gave it to my mother. So here it is:



Does that look familiar to anyone? I think it looks a bit like a passionfruit, maybe. I don't know. Mum's friend didn't know anything more about them; not even if her son ate them. So we can't really declare that mystery solved.

There was an article in today's paper about a 'billionaire Florida polo mogul'. That's quite a collection of words, isn't it? How do you go about being a polo mogul, do you think? Is it something I could do? This particular billionaire Florida polo mogul, aged 48, has adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend. It's a financial dodge, obviously. I'm surprised it's even possible to adopt an adult.

I have moved on to my next old book: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions: Volume 1 by Charles Mackay (1841). It's a retelling of some of the biggest financial scandals back in the day. I think we all know what my next few entries are going to be about. Tulip fever and the South Sea Bubble are in the contents list. I know what the South Sea Bubble was – I've written essays about it – but whenever I see it written I imagine a big bubble floating off an island. I bet everyone else does too. Look out, it's the South Sea Bubble! It's possibly the thing they shoot those Coca Cola commercials in.

Anyway, I've just finished the first popular delusion: the Mississippi Bubble that destroyed the French economy in 1720. People got so excited about the potential success of a company in Louisiana they created hyperinflation in France. Fun times were had by all. John Law (known as Lass to the French), the Scottish chap who was running the bubble, had thousands of people camping outside his house, wanting to sign up as shareholders. A local hump-back made a fortune hiring himself out as a human desk for jobbing stockbrokers on the street. It's good to know French hump-backs had job options other than bell-ringing. A woman who wanted to be a shareholder followed John Lass around in her carriage until an opportune moment, when she ordered her coachman to overturn the carriage. John Lass went to her rescue and she told him, ha-HAH, I just want shares. She got them. Another woman went to a party he was at and shouted that there was a fire; in the chaos, she attempted to get John Lass alone and get shares. She didn't get them.

Eventually the crowd got so big, John Lass had to move into the palace and the stockbrokers were moved to a local park. The prince who owned the park leased them tents, turning over the equivalent of 10,000 pounds sterling a month. That's 1719 money, by the way. Shares were so sought after that people were assassinated for them. The Compte d'Horn stabbed some poor chap for his shares, but was caught, tried and executed within six days. They didn't muck around with lengthy trials back then, did they? He was executed by being broken on the wheel. I don't know what that is (I don't want to know what that is), but his family appealed for the 'kinder' option of beheading, so it can't have been good.

The palace got so greedy for paper money, they outlawed holding coins. This panicked people, so they started investing in jewels and plate, and smuggling them out of the country. The company turned out not to be as profitable as expected. The bubble burst. France's national debt was 124,000,000 pounds sterling. John Lass, once the hottest ticket in town, couldn't go out without the Swiss guards for protection. His carriage was mobbed in the street. A contemporary report says that a politician was so excited by this he went into parliament and said:

Messieurs! Messiers! Bonne nouvelle!
Le carfosse de Lass est réduit en canelle!

He may have said something similar, though I doubt it was quite so poetic. But how much better would modern parliamentary debate be if politicians had to do it in rhyming couplets? They'd certainly be a lot quieter.

Mackay does that thing where when he quotes people, he puts the introductory bit in French, assuming his readers can understand the basics, then changes to English for the complicated part. I get why he does that, but it does sort of give the impression that French people just say 'Bonjour' to each other, then do the real business in English. Apart from that, I like Mackay. His introduction to the book said these bubbles were like a man rowing from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario: the river is wide, the going is good... and then comes the cataract. That is a great image.

As always, old books are educational. Today's new word: 'malversation', or corrupt administration. It's a crime, apparently.