Plant and fic progress

Unexpectedly we now have some *yellow* mesembryanthemums among those which had self-sowed as weeds in the tomato pots -- every other plant this year has been the dark pink! So, as with the Swan River daisies, the genetic variation is still apparently out there in theory. But as with the pink Swan River daisy I shan't get any seed off this particular plant. (I am still very sceptical about getting any ripe seed from the blue Swan River daisies either.)

( Chillies )

Both the spring onions and now the chives are completely infested with blackfly sucking them limp, despite my repeated efforts to clear the blades of the spring onions manually over the past few weeks -- they are quite unusable as herbs :( I suppose I could try the soapy water trick. Ironically chives are apparently recommended as a companion plant to *deter* blackfly!

I think I have finally managed to construct a final couple of paragraphs on my story, though it took me five days to write as many sentences, and I ended up using a different motif from the one I thought I was going to. On rereading and typing up I shall probably find these two chapters horribly repetitive; I have already noticed that Valentine uses the word 'friend' too often, although each individually was supposed to have the same impact as in the original novel (the relevant scene in which she does so having never actually occurred in this AU, since Gaston is not dead!)

( Chapter titles )

The Gasman cometh not

The special offer half-price boiler service offered by British Gas earlier this year ("you can go on enjoying the summer, knowing you're all prepped for when cold weather comes") that turned out not to be actually scheduled, due to high demand, until October 21st, has just been rescheduled, "due to a high number of breakdowns", for January 13th -- the middle of winter! Let's hope the boiler doesn't actually need urgent servicing... :-O

(Also, the big and very heavy antique clock on the wall in here has stopped, and sadly I'm not in a position to gently invert it in order to magically bring it back to life; it is all I can do to lift it down off the wall, and I had to hastily replace it since the top of the pendulum was bending alarmingly when held in anything other than a vertical position. Probably it just needs oiling, but the mechanism, although much larger and cruder than the little mantel clock, is a bit inaccessible.)