Ten Week Road Trip

A list of the places we visited/drove through/drove near/stayed overnight in on our way home from Saudi Arabia in 1996.

Ukulele

I've had my uke nearly two months and I can still only just play one song on it. I feel really shit and dejected and crap and rubbish and feel like I should quit while I'm ahead. I saw two different local uke bands, twice each, over the weekend, so I've got more a drive to practice and try to learn, but I'm listening to them, reading their song books and just feeling like I'll never be at that standard. I feel like I'm doing it all wrong because I can't even read music. I don't even know if I'm tuning properly! I have no idea how to work this thing and I just feel like it's all a wasted effort. I have no one else to really practice with so I could be doing it backwards for all I know. I want to carry on and play and practice but I also don't want to bother if it's just going to be awful. Such a catch 22. Sometimes I just sit and strum with an open fret board, or just strum the same chord over and over and over again. Which is ace, I can play three chords without looking at the chart, but I can't seem to incorporate them into a song, I can't change chords without stopping and looking and tilting my uke towards me so I can see what I'm doing.. Gah. Forever a beginner.

Allotment Update: Digging A New Bed

Started digging a new bed on the allotment on Monday, it's a biggy - 9ft x 6ft (ish). No idea what I'm ganna grow in it. It needs the rest of it turfing, then digging over, then covering, until I can get the wood to build the raised bed-ness of it. It'll probably then have manure dug into it, ready for next year. Might make it into a brassica patch because it's big enough for three or four rows of cabbages :)

Volunteering Week Seven

This week we continued working through the boxes. We found lots of skulls (mainly rodents); hippo teeth; cat claws and small boxes with miscellaneous small bones.

Cat claw?

We then decided to open the box labelled 'Monkeys x7', and Lynsey filmed it as part of our Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Twitter takeover day on the Thursday. The box did indeed contain seven primates, including a Marmoset and a Lemur! The following pics contain rather gross images of dead primates.. you have been warned!

We catalogued one of them and then had to pack away - we will continue with the box in Week 8!

I Climbed A Volcano

Mt. Vesuvius, 1996.

Volunteering; The Sixth Week

I have gotten all confused and befuddled. I thought this week was week 6. Turns out my head is a week late. Gah! Anywhooooo. Week six, what happened?

Oh yes! On the Sunday, the MCC had an open day! Myself, Lukas and Lynsey were around to show people around the Natural Science floor, and to speak to visitors about the work we are doing on the collection here. It was a very long day (I had been at work in the morning!) but very enjoyable. I got the chance to walk around the main store on my lunch break, and I managed to see quite a few items that I remember from the old museum. I also held a corn snake! Awesome.

Back in the MCC, Sarah and I continued to work our way through the boxes of 'stuff'. These contain all sorts of wonders, mainly miscellaneous bones! In one box, we found a massive slice of bone, which turned out to be a section though an Elephants skull. Impressive.

We also uncovered a box with Ox bones in.. They looked as though they had once been on a display board, and were in varying stages of being sawn, processed, turned and carved! We found several spoons, some teething rings and a blank for a paper knife. It was really peculiar, and felt a bit weird looking at it all.. Who would want an Ox bone teething ring?!

On the Thursday I was by myself, so I cracked on with the boxes. I managed to finish one box, which meant that we had finished one side of the shelf!! (But then we discovered someone else had dumped more boxes there, booo). During the course of the day, one box contained this:

A fish skull! Not sure what type of fish, I thought maybe a cod? That's my hand on the left for some sort of scale. It was really fragile.. All the bones were wired together, but there were so many! Loads of tiny bones in the middle, and bits inbetween other bits, extra plates tucked in places. Really amazing to look at and hold! It was really delicate - each bone was almost transparent, almost like thick paper. Amazing.

I Lived In Saudi Arabia