{"id":7146,"date":"2014-11-16T07:05:38","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T07:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/?p=7146"},"modified":"2014-11-14T16:57:37","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:57:37","slug":"16-november-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stragnell.com\/befoulednews\/2014\/11\/16\/16-november-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"16 November 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been sort of a \u201cgood cop, bad cop\u201d kind of week. There\u2019s been some lovely sunny weather, a bit \u201ccrisp\u201d and autumnal to be sure but still very fine. Those lovely moments have been interspersed, however, with some miserable, wet moments which the dog hates and I hate too. We come home caked in mud and, I think, Molly feels quite cheated when the morning walk has to be curtailed due to the \u201cflood\u201d in the railway cutting. Even worse, she is not allowed into the lounge to recline in front of the French doors until she has dried out. I know the rain will fill the reservoirs which we need after the exceedingly fine summer we had. Still, if we are going to play good cop, bad cop couldn\u2019t we just arrange it so that it rains at night and is bright and sunny during the day? That shouldn\u2019t be that difficult to organise, should it?<\/p>\n

Penelope and I had a lovely day last Thursday. We had to find some birthday presents for (a) our very good friend Vicky and (b) one of our favourite people of all time, the mother of our granddaughter who turned 21 on Friday. We had anticipated trawling around the usual haunts in the Cotswolds but a quick search on the interweb led us to Culworth, a village just a few miles down the road. There we visited Forge 2,<\/a> a “bright and bustling art and craft gallery and shop nestling in the picturesque borders of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire” which was indeed bright and bustling\u00a0and which had a wide and very acceptable variety of gifts and trinkets, sufficient for all our shopping needs. When we had completed\u00a0our transactions it was approaching lunch time and the proprietor very kindly suggested we try\u00a0the Red Lion<\/a>, just down the road, which proved to be\u00a0excellent. Win, win!<\/p>\n

The Befouled Weakly News site was hit by a spout of spam last week which I am at a loss to understand. The site has a very efficient spam filter installed which normally works exceedingly well catching spam comments very efficiently, of which we receive about a hundred each week. (I know that some of this, probably the lion\u2019s share, comes from automated bots but honestly, don\u2019t people have anything better to do?). So you can imagine my disappointment last week when the following piece of spam sneaked through:<\/p>\n

Dear Sirs,<\/p>\n

I wanted to point out an error in this very fine publication. Last week the Weakly reported, \u201cThis was the occasion when Susie single-handedly stuffed up Sallie\u2019s septic system.\u201d For the record, it was the occasion when Greg single-handedly stuffed up Sallie\u2019s septic system.<\/p>\n

It was a pretty fun trip up until the time that Greg started blaming the need for a plumber on Susie.<\/p>\n

Also \u2013 you forgot to add the bit about when Susie ran out of blank tapes, car talk was then recorded on top of a previously recorded music tape so as Click and Clack were talking and laughing you could hear John Denver singing \u201cRocky Mountain High\u201d in the background.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your wonderful publication. Couldn\u2019t live without it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although this spammer tries the old trick of complimenting the publication, it\u2019s clear that this emanated from the mind of a delusional psychotic. I\u2019ll tighten up the settings to try to prevent such nonsense getting through in future.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how many of you have seen photos of the poppy installation<\/a> which has been gracing the Tower of London over the past few months. We\u2019ve not had an opportunity to get up to town to see it in person but the photographs have been quite stunning.<\/p>\n

\"Poppies<\/a><\/p>\n

As well as the photos, I was delighted to see a short video taken from a drone which gives you a feel for the scale and scope of the installation and, bearing in mind that each poppy represents a British soldier killed in the First World War, the senselessness and brutality of war.<\/p>\n