A mystery solved, and a successful experiment

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing mysterious thuds and bangs whenever I’ve been in the bathroom. The alleyway fence is just outside the bathroom window, so I just assumed it was kids walking down the alleyway kicking at the fence or something, but the weird thing was I never heard any voices to accompany the bangs, and it’s school holidays, so there hasn’t been the usual stream of children walking along the alleyway to get to school.

The mystery was finally solved when I went out the back door the other night to put something in the recycling bin. The back door is next to the bathroom, and there’s an awning over it made of that clear (well, it was clear once – it’s a bit weathered now) plastic corrugated roofing material. And next to it there’s an ugly tree, which we normally keep pretty severely trimmed back because it shades the bathroom (which is already pretty dark, being on the south side of the house). We haven’t been as drastic about trimming it back this year, and it’s responded to this reprieve by producing small hard plum-like fruit (which the birds haven’t touched, so I’m not going to risk tasting them to see if they *are* plums!). And the thumps I’ve been hearing are the fruit dropping off the tree onto the awning!

I probably owe an apology to the neighbourhood children for thinking evil thoughts about them, assuming they were up to their usual vandalism in the alleyway…

I managed to get all the bags cut out on Sunday, and pressed the handles so they’re ready to be sewn. I didn’t actually get round to sewing the handles though – by the time I got to that stage MrPloppy was watching TV, and the sewing machine interferes with the reception, so I decided to leave it. I’d still like to get the handles sewn and turned before our sewing bee on Sunday, though, because that’s the slowest part of the bag-making operation – maybe tonight I’ll make a start.

And now all loyal DDers should look away, because I’m going to blaspheme and talk about LiveJournal (don’t worry, I’ll go and wash my mouth keyboard out with soap afterwards :-)). There’s a pretty active bookcrossing community over there, and I’ve had an account there for a while so I can read and comment on various friends’ blogs. But I’ve never made any posts of my own, having a perfectly good diary here (and I much prefer DD’s layout to LiveJournal – all that scrolling up and down the page if you want to read things chronologically just irritates me).

The only problem with keeping my diary here was that although I’d told many of my bookcrossing friends about it, they of course don’t get notifications or anything when I post a diary entry, so although I was getting to read all about their lives through LiveJournal, they were missing out on mine (not that I delude myself that my diary is a fascinating, must-read experience, but I thought some of them might be vaguely interested, especially as the main theme tends to be my bookcrossing adventures). Then on Sunday the obvious solution struck me: all I need to do is post a link to my diary in LiveJournal whenever I make an entry here! (Yes, I know I’m just reinventing the idea of a feed, and I could probably do something complicated and make it happen automatically, but this way works for me, so who cares). And it worked – I made an entry on LiveJournal with a link to Sunday’s DD entry, and not only did I get a load of comments on the LJ entry, suddenly my hit count shot up enormously!

So, welcome visiting LiveJournallers! Make yourself at home, and feel free to look around. Down there at the bottom of the page you should find all the buttons you need. You can leave comments with “Add”, and read others’ comments with “Show”. “Index” will take you to a calendar of entries (and also to my “What I’ve been reading this year” list). “Back” and “Forward” I think you can figure out for yourself 🙂

Currently reading: A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy
Currently listening to: Thirteen Steps Down by Ruth Rendell