eor | Network

I had a half day of annual leave to use up, so decided to go mudlarking, see some art, and go to a cafe. As low tide was at 9:15, I got up at 6 to make sure I'd have an hour beforehand. I got to Blackfriars and then queued for coffee and drank it on my way to the foreshore.

BBC had reported 0.00 for low tide, PLA had said 0.2. PLA then reported the actual tide as 0.4, but this time I managed to just about sneak around behind the leg of Waterloo Bridge, for the first time since the really low tide last year. I found a salt shaker! I wanted to look longer but was scared due to firstly the boats causing waves and secondly as the tide had turned. But, two other mudlarks appeared after low tide and they both went there, less hesitant than I.

The first mudlark said there wasn’t so much to find these days, but it doesn’t stop them looking, and the second showed me a nice bottle they’d found.

It was another day when lots of bottles were about, but I tried to be more restrained and only picked up 2 R White's and two little bottles. Plus a broken R White’s, as it seemed like the Thames was attempting to make art as a golf ball had become wedged in the bottle.

I dug a jam jar out of the mud, thinking it was something more exciting, but then put it back.

Finds included:

A necklace made of shells, which I left on the foreshore.

Two buttons and a bead

A Branch GPO sherd. I am not sure which office this is referring to, having previously found GPO West.

A Mecca sherd. I am not sure what Mecca cafe this is from.

Aerated Bread Company sherds

Express Dairies sherds

A different style piece of glass of an R White’s

A London Underground shot glass.

A salt shaker, with lid that says Cerebos salt on it. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Cerebos

A pink handcuff

A ceramic pot that says No 1 on the bottom

An interesting piece of pipe (sadly the other side is damaged) - possibly Masonic?

A piece of a small bottle - on the bottom it looks kind of like it could say “lner” but it might say something else.

A piece of a large bottle that says “ard”.

A piece of a torpedo bottle

A golfball stuck in a broken R Whites bottle.

A metal bowl that looks like one you can get from B&Q. https://www.diy.com/departments/urbnliving-4-stainless-steel-ice-cream-cups-170ml-dessert-bowls-sundae-dishes-pudding/5063536181075_BQ.prd

Two R White’s bottles

Two large bits of a plate that were near each other. I did try looking for the rest, but didn’t see it. I only really picked these up as I could see a tiny bit of a logo and was hoping to find the rest of it.

Plate with Leipsic pattern on by Joseph Clementson. (The back has this stamped on it.) This pattern was exhibited at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851.

Then after that I went to the Hayward Gallery and then to Nagare.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

squirmelia

A Friday evening on the foreshore and I found:

Express Dairies pottery sherds and glass

Two French pieces, to prepare me for an upcoming trip:
A piece of a small House of Worth perfume bottle. It says Worth on the side and Paris on the bottom.
A sherd that says “mouflet”, which apparently means kid.

Part of a Lewis & Burrows Chemist bottle. They formed in 1895 as an amalgamation of different pharmacies.

Part of a Boots Chemist bottle. The style matches Boots bottles from 1910s/1920s.

A coin! Except it is actually just the foil from a chocolate coin. So close.

Gray & Son

OXO mug sherd

Hotel Ware - possibly Grindley Hotel Ware. I remember I found a piece previously that said Grind on it, which was also probably Grindley.

Aerated Bread Company (ABC) sherds

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Delicious lunch with Kana

2) Chance encounter with my mum afterwards and I stayed for a drink

3) Yummy strawberries

vass

Anyone know why Private Mode might be failing to clear cookies when I close the browser?

(Saving this draft then closing the app to see whether I can reproduce it on Dreamwidth. Yup.)

That's the bug.

hannah

There's been a downpour on and off tonight, hitting a couple hours ago and then coming back loud enough I can't miss it. There was a little snow left in the parks and at the very edges, but this is going to see to everything. The feeling of knowing this is exactly it, more than it felt on Sunday, is somehow both peaceful and unsettling. There's an acceptance and a sense of gratitude of not having missed the moment. It's not something I'm eager to seek out, and it's one I can hold onto and sit with a while.

I put in three bids for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate, two for beta readers and one for a vid. Whether they'll end up getting outbid remains to be seen. I've got at least a day to figure out what my absolute maximum collective bid should be and which ones to prioritize. Not something to think about for the rest of the night, at least.

Current Mood: thankful
Current Music: All The Nasties - Elton John

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were suggested by

dray.

1. Do you know of any other words for snow? What's your favourite and why?

2. What's your ideal temperature range for winter?

3. Favourite winter activity? What about it makes it your favourite?

4. What are three things you can't do without when winter arrives?

5. Do you have favourite winter holiday activities?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

cimorene

and yet this ice cream truck has the fucking cheek to drive by playing its little tune.

It's not time for ice cream!!! The ground is frozen!!! Stop mocking me!!!

dark_kana posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Working at home and listening to good music

2) Quick library visit during my lunch break

3) Lazy evening and a nice long hot shower

cimorene

They thought they had solved Dad's hallucinations but it was a false alarm.

The sequence of events so far is:

He starts hallucinating mildly, images of animals etc

The visual hallucinations escalate steadily and include audio - first talking to absent people, then thinking he is in a variety of different places, finally briefly not recognizing my mom, though he did a minute later

A new antibiotic is discontinued

They find a UTI, but all mental symptoms stop, so they think the cause was the discontinued antibiotics

He starts hallucinating again, more mildly, before the medical team has had a chance to agree to release him from the hospital

He briefly recovers almost completely, but then gets worse again

It seems his medical team is dealing with a mystery again. 😔

dark_kana posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) delicious yoghurt with granola

2) reading during lunchbreak

3) hubby's mum is staying for dinner

hannah

Feeling accountably tired today - I'm not sure of the precise cause, but there's enough of them it's probably something I can point to. The weather, the loss of community members, peeking into the job market, pick something. The effect is the same of having me struggling to focus on editing, so in the end it doesn't much matter where it's coming from.

I did manage to peek into the job market and send something out. I did manage a decent workout. I did manage to cook some congee to use up some rice and stretch out some braised chicken a couple more days. Productive in ways most people would think of, but with little writing getting done, it doesn't feel quite that way to me. The solution is to try for bed and try again tomorrow.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Brothers on a Hotel Bed - Death Cab for Cutie

vivien

I got thrown off my routine entirely with some health news in mid-February. I don’t feel like going into details yet, but there may (or may not?) be a significant surgery in my near future. I’m fine - it’s a scoliosis issue, so I’m not in danger or pain. Just. Blech. It’s A Lot.

I’ve retreated to comfort fanfic (Wangxian), which has been most helpful. I’m also planning on finally watching Heated Rivalry, now that I’m in the post-Olympic void. I did have one very joyous thing in Feb. I won a gorgeous midcentury wooden bookshelf similar to a decrepit one I gave away during my last move. I’d had that one since the early 90s, but I’d never gotten around to fixing it up. Now this similar one is in a great space, looking beautiful, and holding my children’s books and my Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation books and manhua. On the top shelf are my complete series DVD sets. I’d put in a picture but I’m lazy. Rest assured it’s a wonderful fannish addition with one shelf that’s for action figures from STTNG and the X-Files to some Leía and Rey figurines from the third unfortunate trilogy of SW.

It makes me happy. And since the world is dark and full of horrors, I need that.

squirmelia

Sunday 22nd February was a day of bottles! I picked up far too many as they just kept washing in.

Clear bottles:

Coca-cola bottle.

R White's - two different styles of R White’s bottles. One of them has a broken neck.

Presta bottle. Presta was made by Apollinaris and they made squashes and other drinks.

Presta advert:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintageads/comments/1qqg13o/ad_poster_for_presta_sparkling_orange_and/#lightbox

Apollinaris company: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp122659/the-apollinaris-company-limited

Brown bottles:

These three I am unsure of. Two of them could be modern beer bottles.

One says H4 CTC on the bottom. The other says R 10. The one with a label mark is much lighter than the other one, so I guess the one without the label is older.

The third makes me think of a cough mixture bottle and has B4 200 on it. When I hold the bottle up to the light I can see rainbow colours.

I might just recycle these ones.

A good chunk of a green torpedo/hamilton bottle, designed to be kept on its side. On the side I can read words that probably spelt:
Lemonade
le soda
Mineral waters
Wales

I can’t quite make out:
orth
le soda (table soda?)
R. H.
T’s

There’s also a glow stick and a bit of something that possibly said London Bridge.

Also, a pretty sparkly button!

I also found a glass jar. On the bottom it has an R in a circle and a 9. Perhaps it once contained jam. I’m thinking I might keep some pieces of colourful glass in it.

There was also a mysterious rusty thing. Google Lens said it was a grenade, which it definitely is not, but it could have been an oil lamp? It has a handle on the bottom.

And then there were a few other items:
A Libbey Duratuff glass, probably modern, as it’s quite jagged.

Part of a Thomas Keating bottle. The bottle would have read “Thomas Keating, Chemist, St Paul’s Churchyard”.

Thomas Keating was apparently based at 79 St. Paul’s Churchyard from around the 1780s, although records show this from around 1815.

Thomas Keating was a chemist and was known for their cough lozenges. One article I found said they sold cough lozenges in the winter and insecticides/flea powder in the summer!

The company later diversified and made scientific instruments, and components used in telephone exchanges and satellites! They still exist as TK Instruments: https://www.terahertz.co.uk/tk-instruments/history

A bit of glass I picked up as it said “ass” on it.

A sherd that says “Wells, 63 Wood Street, London” on it. It was made by Wells and Son, and could have been the base of a hat/wig shop display stand, like this one: https://www.easyliveauction.com/catalogue/lot/d11b0ba1e5d511d3ce164df1a086c0f4/0af8d24542e81eb9357e7ef448a6646f/antique-and-good-quality-modern-and-collectables/

It’s likely to be from the late 1800s.

They also made stands for mannequins and blanket racks.

A few pieces of Express Dairies Aster pattern.

A pink plastic heart bead.

A piece of a James Keiller marmalade jar. Keiller’s marmalade dates back to 1797, when Janet Keiller made some marmalade and then opened a factory in Dundee with her son, James Keiller, to produce it.

The green and white pattern is the Adams pattern by Collingwood, who were in operation from 1887 - 1948 in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, It may have looked like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/376753433746 I have seen this pattern before, but hadn’t managed to identify it previously.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

cimorene

Cats when Wax is working from home:

6.30 Sipuli wakes Wax up demanding breakfast and refuses to let her sleep
7.00 Wax feeds the cats breakfast and Sipuli doesn't finish hers before going back to sleep
9.30 Wax gets up and eats. Sipuli doesn't even come out of her blanket tent.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana follows me to brush my teeth and then goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing my face.
11.00 Sipuli emerges from her tent to lick leftover yogurt from Wax's breakfast bowl and wants some kisses and hugs. She hangs out with me for 5-10 minutes but goes back to the tent before I can even finish my breakfast.
11.30 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs to yell at me until Wax calls her from upstairs. She sits in Wax's lap for a little while or (more often) goes back to bed.
16.30 Sipuli wakes up and comes out of the tent to get cuddled for 10-30 minutes, then gets sleepy and goes back in the tent.
17.00 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs and starts yelling incessantly for attention. This wakes Sipuli who also comes out and wants attention.
18.00 Wax finishes work and comes downstairs.
19.00 Cats get dinner.

Cats when Wax has to go into the office:

6.30 Sipuli starts breakfast campaign.
7.00 Cat breakfast.
8.30 Wax gets up and eats breakfast, ignored by Sipuli.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing.
11.00 Sipuli cleans Wax's bowl and wants cuddles.
11.10 Tristana comes downstairs and starts yowling for me to pay attention to her. This eventually wakes Sipuli and they both complain constantly or intermittently every time I'm in the other half of the house until sometime in the afternoon when they finally both fall asleep, presumably from exhaustion.
17.30 Both cats wake up and start dinner campaign, usually while I'm trying to prepare our dinner.
18.45 Wax arrives.
19.00 Cat dinner and then our dinner.

cimorene

The doctor team found a uti and adjusted the antibiotics he was on from his last visit, and he has been his normal self since waking up Monday (yesterday evening for me when I was notified). He should get to go home soon!

Japp has been uncaged all the time for a couple of days and is enjoying spending more time in his favorite spot next to a radiator under the sewing table by the west window. He seems normal and pretty active, although he still naps most of the time (as he should since he's 102 years old). We're thinking we should try to provide a bit more enrichment and interact with him more often, although he doesn't really want human interaction very much 😂. His reaction to being approached is frequently to thump and go hide, even though most of the time we talk to him it's just to give him treats! So his personality is unchanged. 😂 We do think he might be somewhat senile now. He shows some signs of forgetting what he was doing in the middle or getting confused about which way to go in his familiar space (Rowan was doing this too in the last couple years). But he always finds his way again, so far.

With cat divorce and Wax now leaving the house this means that one cat is alone the whole time she's gone. The cats like to nap almost the whole day, but they both also wake up a couple of times a day. When Wax was upstairs working Tristana often chose to ignore her in favor of sleeping in bed alone, but now she's started yowling her little complaints every day. 🫩 Sipuli naps a bit more than her in the morning but is fully capable of waking up and complaining any time I'm out in the other part of the house.

dark_kana posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Going out for a walk in the sunshine with a colleague

2) My parents are coming over dinner

3) If I still have some time afterwards, I'm going to work on my photo's of 2025

dark_kana posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) gorgeous weather, enjoyed a walk outside during lunch break

2) probably going to end up in the playgarden when I pick up my daughter from school ^^ More time to enjoy the sunshine

3) lazy evening with hubby

cimorene

1. Wax Sent to Customer Service Jail

Yesterday I asked

waxjism, "Hey, don't you want to make a dreamwidth update about being sent back to jail?"

"Nope," she said.

Wax has been feeling sick (?) since we both had a nervous breakdown a year ago last September after losing two cats. She finally went to the doctor a month and a half ago and had a bunch of bloodtests but they found nothing and, I gather, said the next step is to check whether it's hormones or something and she needs to see a different doctor (a gynecologist, maybe?). But they didn't just give her a referral - apparently she has to call back to ask about how to get a referral, or what, because she doesn't actually know how to get that next appointment. Annnnnd she hasn't accumulated enough spoons again yet to do that (including when she had a week of vacation a few weeks ago).

Feeling under the weather has snowballed into near-total burnout and exhaustion and she has been having trouble focusing at work, and as a result her boss called her and revoked her Work From Home privileges, as of two weeks back. She's going back to the saltmines (the customer service mines) every day, and as a result she's even more tired the rest of the time.

On the plus side, it's good for her mental health to leave the house and have a schedule that makes her walk around and breathe fresh air everyday. Not sure if it's as good for her as the extra exhaustion is bad though.

2. My Dad Hospitalized for Copious Hallucination

My dad (69), a quadriplegic wheelchair user who has been recovering from a series of antibiotic resistant infections and other complications and in and out of the hospital constantly for like a year, has a sudden, brand-new, unusual problem. Friday he apparently woke up feeling odd and started hallucinating, at first things like a pool of water on the table or a black webbing on his own hand, then a lizard under the chair and a cat jumping onto the ceiling; they took him to the ER, and the hallucinations got more vivid and numerous very quickly. He was seeing people and animals in the ER and asking my mom if there were really kittens on the floor. By Saturday he was talking to my favorite aunt and uncle (who weren't there) most of the day and by the end of Saturday he was no longer aware that he was in the hospital. My dad has no mental disorders except anxiety, and the doctors were ruling out various kinds of dementia at first, but they thought it was likely to be something acute. He was having urine tests and x-rays and EEGs yesterday, and being interviewed by various doctors. He spent the early part of Sunday keeping my mom awake talking to hallucinated people and asking her to interact with things that weren't there (some tax paperwork on the table he said he had to file, a book he said he saw, stools and tables he wanted her to move); later he was in the house I grew up in (they moved out something like ten years ago), my grandparents' house (sold almost ten years ago), a restaurant, and imaginary places; and he had a brief spell not recognizing my mom, but he remembered who she was a minute later. The psychiatrists were saying they thought it was probably not neurological, and might be metabolic. He seems to be in less danger than he was at several points last year, but this is very stressful for my mom and sister. They both seem scared. I wish I could go there. My parents live with my sister in Louisiana.

3. Loss of One Bunny.

Rowan died Saturday night, fairly suddenly, we think basically of old age. 10 years is thought to be the maximum life span of our type of bunny, and they're 10 years and 4 months right now, but of the two, Japp has been sick several times and Rowan's never had a single health scare and has also been much more active, playful, and happy in recent years. He only seemed sick on Saturday, but he had eaten his most recent meal (which is usually the first sign of danger for ailing bunnies). I've been trying all morning to get in touch with the vet to take him to get cremated: I got up early to call them before Wax left for work with the car, but couldn't get through (and still can't). I will make a separate memorial post about him, but I have to collect pictures first. It's very sad, but we're relieved that it was quick and he didn't seem to suffer and that he had a long happy life and basically died at 101. Also relieved that he was the one to die first: he was much more clingy to Japp, who has always been more independent and not particularly sociable. I am less worried about Japp getting lonely.

hannah

It might've been the last snow of the season this morning. A light dusting, enough to make me think a coat would've been nice and not too much to make me need more than a sweatshirt. It was nice to feel the last bits of cold, especially since the sun was out a couple of hours later, so nothing much stuck around. Few people were at the market, which made it easier - I haven't been to the Sunday one in a while, and as anemic as this time of year is for produce, it's nice to see some depth of color when it comes to the root vegetables.

In other shopping news, from working in assorted doctor's offices, I found a good quality bandage brand, and online shopping being what it is, I had to resort to eBay for a couple boxes. Most medical supply places call for a minimum order of significantly more than a couple boxes of bandaids, which I understand, and convenience pushes me towards eBay because that's all I need right now. It was that or Amazon, and I'm slightly more trusting of eBay as a general institution.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Boxes - Travis

petra

I am a completely psychologically normal individual and the part where I had, until I posted one of them yesterday, two active WIPs started in the last couple of weeks in which my blorbo loses his virginity to, in fact, the same person, under extremely fraught circumstances, is simply because I love joy.

Definitely nothing to do with VirginWan Weekend posts having filtered onto my Tumblr dash for weeks and inspired me to greater heights of appalling Obi-Wan/Anakin.

The one I finished is: i want to raise a city behind his teeth (for when the AO3 comes back to us). It’s identity porn, Petra stylée, set the day Anakin is knighted.

The one I am still working on is your classic Obi-Wan in a Time Loop trope, except he’s repeating RotS and he only gets one day to do it in.

( It starts like this, and I am looking for an alpha-reader/cheerleader/audience. )

Current Mood: oops i did it again
Current Music: Do you think it would kill you to enjoy this a little bit?