EATOMOLOGY

For many people, eating insects is a normal everyday occurrence, and in fact some insects are considered a delicacy. But here, the nearest one will get to insect 'delicacies' is this site, Edible.com - whose products I spied in Fenwick's delicatessen last week. That's D's christmas present sorted then. What got me thinking about eating insects was watching Charley Boorman on Beeb 2 in his latest 'By Any Means' series, whilst eating my dinner in a very working class 'tea-on-knee-in-front-of-TV' fashion. My come-uppance for such sloth was to catch sight of Charley putting a deep-fried cockroach in his mouth, just as I forked a piece of pasta into mine.....eeeeurccchhhh! I PROMISE to use the table in future!

D told me a story once, about when he was in Sri Lanka and someone was eating these big crickets. His friend dared him to eat one too. This is D we're talking about, and I shall need to write an entire post about him sometime to really do him - and this story justice - so of course he immediately put this cricket in his mouth and started chewing. When I saw the Edible display - of insects and other assorted products - D was the first person I thought of! I do miss him....

Josh goes back to College tomorrow after his 'Reading Week' and I am going to the horticulture project after my week off sick. I've got so much to do when I get back home after that tomorrow - post some yarn I've sold on eBay, hoover up downstairs, phone the local Council for a bulky rubbish collection, and do the household budget for this month in such a way that we have enough to put into the savings account at the end of November, and still eat and keep warm! It is definitely Autumn now, all of a sudden. It's cold, dark and at the moment pretty grey and damp. In short, typical Northern England weather. I can't seem to remember having a proper Summer this year. It was looking pretty promising in April, really warm, and May was hot, so I thought this was a sign of things to come and we would have a long hot Summer. But then it got humid for a couple of weeks in early June (I think) then that was the end of that. I only hope we have an easy Winter this time round. I don't mind bit of cold, so long as the sky is blue, but if we have cold and damp and sleet and all the really crap things about Winter - again - I doubt I can cope! Snow is all very well and good when you are 6 years old, and then it's lovely to look at when you're older, but apart from that it is nothing but an irritation. And what really annoys and frustrates me is the way every year Britain acts as though we have never before encountered the stuff. SNOW! Oh My God! Stop all the buses and trains and Metros! Close down the schools! And put the gas and electricity prices up!

The only consolation, in a month which is typically pretty miserable and dank, comes on the 17th when the Leonids Meteor Shower comes round again for its annual display of shooting stars. Apparently we are in for a real treat this year, with NASA predicting 'upwards of 500 meteors per hour'! (Which means around 8 or 9 per minute - one every few seconds) More about that on the night. Hopefully.

Well, I am now onto the second Express Lane/Hacho sock (that's the completed one at the top of this post - although you can't really see the colours because it was taken in artificial light and it seems to be difficult to photograph those purpleypinks without natural light) and last night I did another dozen or so rows of the Kernel scarf. I've noticed I accidentally missed out the garter stitch section between the two charts....oh well, it will look different from how it's supposed to. I might adapt the chart for the edging a bit and knit it straight after the chart at the other end when I get to it, because if I knit that end without a garter stitch section too there will be nowhere to graft a separately knitted edging section to.