As I Xi It

Homer Simpson would be proud.

A plethora of E numbers.

I’m having a Tesco’s cheese and bacon sarnie for lunch. The bread was a bit dry and there was a mildly stronger than expected flavour of butter, so I inspected it further and noticed that there was some sort of whiteish goo which looked like lard. I thought, “how on earth is there that much lard coming out of bacon?” Further investigation into the literature at the back of the pack revealed that it was suppose to be mayonaise.

More lard with your sarnie?

This wasp is dead. In its final moments, it had its mandibles clamped shut on some of the strands of my net curtains. I spotted it there sometime in summer, when the sun was shining and it was all toasty and warm. Probably a bit too warm for this vespid. I’d been meaning to shoot it sooner, but its not like it was going anywhere. It’s as if it were frozen in time, a 3D snapshot.

Rigor mortis

I was about to brush my teeth this morning when I looked out the window and saw some sort of ginger four-legged animal run across the garden and scaled the fence. I rushed back to my room, put my glasses on and saw that it was a fox! At first, I thought it might be that big ginger cat who sometimes likes to terrorise Cici. So, I dashed back to my room, put on the telephoto and shot it. Not the best pic, but you can clearly tell that it’s a fox. It’s not as manky as some of the foxes I’ve seen at night.

Fox!

What would be really nice to see is a hedgehog. Haven’t seen one in years. When I was a kid, they’d always be visiting and staying over in the garage.

Another snowy situation in London. No BBQ’s today.

Snowy BBQ

Another year gone, time for another annual retrospective review. Not really in the mood to write much so I’ll just leave you with some pics summarising the last twelve months, but I’ve got to say that the highlight of my year was probably my trip to South Africa. That was really something.

Went to my favourite central London LFS the other day and picked up a few red cherry shrimps. When I tipped them into a bucket to drip acclimatize them, I noticed something white and crawling about in the bit of Java moss that they threw in. Turns out its a micro crab (Limnopilos naiyanetri).

Super red cherry shrimp

Micro crab

Did a bit of a tidy up and refurb over the weekend. Trimmed down the water wisteria and added some Limnophila, Didiplis, Alternanthera and Rotala.

The shrimp tank is still devoid of shrimp since there weren’t any red cherry shrimps at my LFS.

60L nano aquarium

20L shrimp tank

In response to this.

Punk

This one didn’t fall out a tree.