Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Just spare me the 21 gears and complicated cogs and shifts and stuff that I can’t fix myself when something goes wrong. I don’t want to have to be a bicycle mechanic to get on my bike to go to the shop to get a litre of milk.
It's really not that complicated, and the added ability to control speed v. effort is really important for anyone doing decent-length rides. I biked to uni and/or work every weekday for five years, and a couple of times when I was restricted to eight gears by gear issues, it was a bitch. Learning to fix them takes a little more effort, but no more than, say, learning to change a tyre or check your oil.
If it's that much of an issue, I'd check the second-hand market for bikes with fewer gears - they are out there - but really for any sort of riding on the road a 21-gear massively improves your efficiency and ease of riding. You certainly don't need to be a mechanic just to get on the bike - if changing gears is that much of a hassle, just pick a setting you like and leave it there!
I do entirely take your point about pedestrians, however. All this "cycle on the footpath!" stuff is all very well - *if* you want to go about five kilometres an hour or stick to very pedestrian-light zones with particularly wide footpaths. I've nearly been bowled over by cyclists, or nearly hit them turning into driveways. On the footpath, the cyclist is the fastest and most dangerous thing around. It may increase their safety, but it often decreases everyone else's, which isn't really a net gain.
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Cracker: Dig This!, in reply to Tony Parker,
I confess to using a chemical this year on my toms and spuds as they were starting out and they seem fine at the moment. Didn't want another season of no spuds and rubbish tomatoes.
Sometimes there just are no natural, organic remedies that work - or work well enough for human consumption of the products, anyhow. Minimising pesticide use is very important, but abandoning them entirely is another thing altogether - and one that involves a great deal of compromise. After all, they were invented for a reason.
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I have always found buses to be much more aware of and courteous to cyclists than cars - there are plenty of bus/bike lanes in Christchurch and I always felt safe in them, definitely safer than in the car lanes. Also, buses are far, far more predictable, because their stops are marked and their doors face the footpath. Makes a difference.
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Hard News: The Engagement, in reply to Martin Snell,
The Royal wedding will be a boon to the British economy, and further afield, wherever HM The Queen is head of state,
I'm genuinely curious: how precisely is this going to improve the Commonwealth's economies? When we all run out to buy souvenirs?
(There is, however, a curious confluence between this and the story as reported in the American media, which was very heavy on the "opportunity to make money off tourism!" aspect and light on everything else.)
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Cracker: Dig This!, in reply to Emma Hart,
Now, I like to grow things I end up having to throw bits of away if I buy in - lettuce, spinach, silver beet - being able to cut what you want and leave the rest to grow is fabulous.
This is absolutely one of the best bits - you just take what you need, and the rest keeps growing back. Pick regularly, and you can get months out of the same plants.
Washing is a bit more of a necessity with these than store-bought if you're particularly upset by boiled caterpillars in the saucepan, but I'm enough of a microbiologist to just pick them out and eat it anyway. After all, anything harmful is dead. I find, however, that this strategy works better if you don't bring it to the rest of the family's attention. They may become oddly picky.
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run a strict “if you need too much special attention, it’s not going to work out for us” regime. I’m perfectly happy to pinch back shoots and stomp on Japanese beetles and so forth, but if a plant is going to die because it didn’t get something special [*] applied, we were never meant to be.
Me too. A bit of compost now and then is fine, but that’s about the extent of it. I would swear that benign neglect produces the best tomatoes, but I think Mike was watering them every time they looked wilty, so probably not. (That’s the secret to a great garden: a spouse who takes your forgetfulness as a challenge.)
Unlike the rest of you late bloomers, I got into gardening at twenty, much to everyone else at the flat’s bewilderment. And mine, when they had a whole row of delicious and fresh lettuce which they turned up their noses at in favour of store-bought. I’ve had my best successes with tomatoes, mesclun, and rocket; soooooo much more tasty than supermarket-bought, and not that much effort. My first courgette died a sad and lonely death, but the second produced like crazy. Leeks are also a bit much effort, from my one try, as they just wouldn’t get very big, but if you have nice fertile soil they might be worth the effort. Capsicum and aubergine are a bit more finicky than tomatoes, but the satisfaction is greater when you get to eat them.
For the winter, spinach and silverbeet are musts. They grow like weeds and if you pick a leaf at a time and pinch the seedheads out, they’ll go all winter, even in Christchurch. Cabbage is a bit attractive to slugs, if you’re the low-maintenance type. Broccoli seems to hold its own. I’ve never managed peas that didn’t go mouldy, but they need more sun than I ever had.
We got to Massachusetts too late to plant anything this year, but there’s a lovely big 4x6m patch in the football-field sized “back yard” that the landlord says I’m welcome to plant up next spring, and he’s got a digger he can turn it over with. There’ll be room for potatoes and pumpkins and corn and all sorts of lovely big things I never had space for before. I can’t wait.
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Hard News: The Engagement, in reply to Leopold,
surprising that John was never resurrected after reformation – first to take on the papacy, albeit unsuccessfully. I’d still plump for Alfred or Arthur, myself
John Lackland. That's why it'll never be resurrected. (Plus the Robin Hood legend, which has deeply unfairly cast Richard Coeur-de-Lion as some sort of hero, despite the fact that the man viewed England largely as a tax base. Then again, so did John.)
Henry has also gone into remission since Henry VIII, though Mary was recovered. These things aren't always logical. Alfred could work, but there're some pretty big boots to fill.
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Sounded a bit far-fetched to me in this day and age, but it only took a moment’s hunting to find this 2005 article to show that Charles is at least considering re-naming himself. It would be pretty damn odd though.
Largely because he's established, and I wince to say this, a "brand" as Prince Charles - although I suppose Edward VII was the same age when he took the throne, and he managed the name-change successfully.
I don't really buy the "too Stuart" thing, though, because 1) the number of people who'd remember that and care is far too small and 2) that's like saying William III should have picked a different throne-name because William was "too Normandish" (or, for that matter, than William IV shouldn't have because it was too Dutch.)
I'd love to see a John or Richard ascend to the throne and keep the name, though. I can almost guarantee that's never going to happen.
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Hard News: The Engagement, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If history had taken a slightly different path (and his two elder brothers fallen prey to Victorian infant mortality), we’d have ended up with a real live King Arthur.
That was also famously and ineffectively tried back in the sixteenth century, as a symbol of Henry VII's reunion of the country after the Wars of the Roses (in a "to make you all forget I'm the mostly-Welsh descendant of a French princess, my son will be KING ARTHUR!" sort of way.) You've probably all forgotten Prince Arthur, who died young, but his widow - Katherine of Aragon - went on to have a much larger role in English history. Like giving her next husband a taste for getting rid of his wives.
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Hard News: The Engagement, in reply to Sacha,
We’re delighted for the young couple,’ said pub landlord Dave Stanley. ‘Obviously the next job now is to set about choosing a name for the child. I’d imagine ‘Kyle’ has got to be a front runner if it’s a boy, and ‘Cheryl’ if it turns out to be a young lady.
If one checks out the line of succession, the first thirty people after William include a Xan, a Cosima, a Columbus, a Cassius, a Senna, and a Lyla (as well as plenty of more traditionally-named offspring.) The naming patterns of British nobility are branching out faster than you might think. And lest you assume that they were all born to people not in the direct line of succession, the first one will one day become Duke Xan of Gloucester.