Today's Meagre Miscellany.

The glums have set in again. It’s been a messy sort of weekend over here in Blighty – lots of rain and strong, cool winds, with splashes of occasional sunshine to lift the mood temporarily before the glowering ’gins again. And I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I gave up probably the only chance I’ll ever have to meet that very special person I mentioned in earlier posts. I’ve also upset an Australian woman (another Australian woman…) with a glowing tribute I left on one of her YouTube videos. Seems I didn’t compliment the right element sufficiently and now she says she’s failed.

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I came in from the garden earlier to find a Devil’s Coach Horse beetle on my kitchen floor, raising its abdomen at me in typically threatening manner. It’s what they do, apparently, having been born with the delusion that they’re not beetles at all, but scorpions.

 

Not being the sort to be intimidated by a beetle, I gently encouraged it to leave the premises and take shelter in a damp, dark place. I gather beetles like damp, dark places in which to pass the daylight hours. And then I read up on them via Wiki and learned that in Mediaeval Britain there was a superstition that to crush a Devil’s Coach Horse gave absolution from seven sins. I was rather pleased that I’d preserved the life of the creature and kept the sins, especially since a mere seven would make little impression on my spiritual passport anyway.

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So then I idled away an hour sifting through my pictures file on the computer, and came across three which seemed to tell the story of my life from boyhood to now rather succinctly. These are they: