Author Archives: Kathy Bragg

Opera East Presents Haydn’s A World Upon The Moon

Our illustrious director of music has asked us all to spread the word about the production of A World Upon the Moon that is currently touring the UK and will be here at Bray on 14th June.
“Summer Opera at Bray presents ‘A World Upon the Moon’, by Joseph Haydn. A light, comic opera presented in [...]

The decline and fall of a Fiat Panda

After much to-ing and fro-ing we finally picked up the car on 30th January. Since then I have got used to her quirks and become very fond of her.
Also since then, she has nearly killed me.
On 3rd March, as we were attempting to take Random Cat to the vet to have his abscess seen to, [...]

The impossibility of buying a car

Sit comfortably and I’ll tell you how difficult it is to buy a car from Perrys of Aylesbury.
Two weeks ago, we contacted them to indicate that we would like to buy a new Fiat Panda from their good selves. A discussion was had about options, and a deposit paid.
Having not heard anything back from them [...]

Driving Instructor Berks/Bucks

I don’t normally do this kind of thing, which is wrong, because we should take time to blurt about fantastic people – they seldom get any other kind of special reward.
For most of my 30 years I have been a non-driver. I am not entirely ignorant of roads, being a persistent cyclist, but I have [...]

Knowledgescape

I’ve finally got round to setting up a slightly nerdier blog for my main interests – knowledge and communication. I’ve stolen some posts from my purplekitten.co.uk blog and shoved them into knowledgescape.co.uk, hope that’s okay
I’ve also just shifted this blog onto the hosting server, so it’s no longer running on our rubbish ADSL. [...]

Weird Words

anthomania
flower mania
bibble
to drink often or much; to drink or eat noisily
capax
legally competent
dorty
bad-tempered
eidetic
pertaining to the ability of visualising something previously seen
flexanimous
mentally flexible
galliardise
great merriment
hypnomogia
insomnia
ichnogram
footprint
jobation
tedious criticism
karimption
a crowd; a mass
leptology
a boringly detailed discourse on trivial subjects
macrology
unnecessary repetition; redundancy
nectarous
sweet-tasting
omadhaun
an idiot, fool
pailletee
a spangle
quaddle
to grumble; a grumbler
renable
fluent, eloquent
sacerdotophrenia
clerical stagefright
tautoousious
being absolutely the same
untrowable
incredible
vaccary
a dairy or cow pasture
wampus
a stupid, dull, loutish clod
xenium
a present given [...]

Flag Fen

In the last few months I’ve realised that I have an interest in archaeology. Tracing it back, I came to the conclusion that a single book was responsible for my trips to Avebury and Stonehenge, my need to see the Uffington White Horse, my fascination with standing stones, my interest in flint-knapping and earnest desire [...]

Keeping score

I’d like to think that I’m not particularly motivated by money in order to do my best at work. I’d like to think that working hard brings reward. I’d like to think that being conscientious, dedicated and enthusiastic would mean success.
But I’m realising that just isn’t the case. I’ve just had a long conversation with [...]

BBC Content

If my television license fee goes towards the development of content (whether or not I choose to *watch* the content), then why do I have to pay *again* to get this content on a DVD? Surely the price of the DVD should just reflect the cost price of DVD production and distribution, as I have [...]

New Camera

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Mac Mini and TV, originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

My Optio T20 went sadly blind (camera functional but all it could see was black) so after an attempt to use my Optio s4 again, I wanted something with a bigger [...]