discoveries, tea bags & spring photos

Discovery in the Belfry is quite restricted and usually has to do with insects & arachnids. For instance, I discovered a new daddy longlegs web behind one of my bookshelves yesterday. I only knew it was a daddly longlegs web because the owner was in residence. Occasionally a long-thought-lost book or nik-nak will turn up, demanding a moment or two's reminiscence before being put somewhere else to be forgotten. I imagine as packing becomes more pertinent these discoveries will be more frequent; arachnids, insects, books and nik-naks alike. Bin bags will be filled and charity shops will grow rich as I prioritise my belongings for the second time in a year.

There are other discoveries in the Belfry, usually made in pursuit of synonyms or other research. Today I discovered that divination through reading tea leaves actually has an official name: tasseography. This amused me. I'd looked it up because I noticed, at the end of my afternoon cuppa, that the debris was a bit larger than usual. There still wasn't very much of it. Probably not enough to divine the evening's television. And, in tea-reading terms (or tasseography terms, as those in the know would say), having come from a bag, it was some terrible state of penmanship. Maybe tea shorthand? Of course, it's all bollocks anyway, but it got me thinking that if you buy into that bollocks, where do the rules stop? If you get your tarot cards read and it's a marked deck, does that make the future they predicted invalid?

These questions puzzled me long enough to delay making a second cup of tea. This delay meant my mother was able to press my services for the good of the neighbourhood and take some pictures for the Old Chiswick Protection Society newsletter. This led to discoveries far more enlightening than that of tasseography.

This tree is wonderfully weird. It looks as though it could be used as a trebuchet or some other catapault-type-thing. How? Why? Love the mystery. The mystery of the weird tree.Mom thought that graveyard pics were somewhat sombre for a Spring newsletter. Or any newsletter, really. Unless it was Undertaker Quarterly. She's probably right. I think graveyards in the spring are quite hopeful - grass grows, flowers blossom, trees - bewinderingly - bend. The bible got it backwards, it's not in the midst of life we are in death, it's in the midst of death we are in life. Even the monuments to the dead end up draped in lichens and moss. I choose to find it hopeful, not sombre. But I understand why she didn't want any in the newsletter.

How fucking tacky is this statue? Really tacky, that's how tacky. Descended from the planet tacky. It could have been on Liberace's lawn. It's that tacky. But I like the pic.

Flower pics without ninjas. I'm sorry. Ninjas next time. Maybe.

Other discoveries today included a poem and a podcast. Cheers Jo.
(be warned, the podcast file's quite big, and I'm sure there are lots of people who won't find it as cool as I did. But they're wrong)