Tread carefully

I've had a request for more postings about weird wildlife. With pleasure. This splendid giant capricorn beetle (Cerambyx cerdo) appeared on our terrace last week. Its body length was 4.5 cm, not including the antennae. That's a big bug: think of a stag beetle and double it. They live on large oak trees, which makes sense because we have quite a few of those in the garden.

When one of them popped up in Wales last year, it was headline news in The Times. Apparently they have been extinct in Britain for 300 years.

The COQ blazes onto MySpace

Quel thrill! With a little help from Lowri's brother Ian, who is visiting at the moment, I have set up a MySpace page for the one and only Chuckerbutty Ocarina Quartet. Check out the audio, video, reviews and suchlike at www.myspace.com/chuckerbutty and become one of our first Friends.

Next project will be a page for Sambuca. Which is far from being the one and only, as I discover to my dismay when I search for Sambuca on MySpace music, but I don't think there's much risk of confusion between the real Sambuca (mine, of course) and the Hip Hop version in New York or the funk one in Sydney.

Star of wonder

We were sitting out on the terrace this evening when we saw a bright star moving through the sky. Surely not Christmas, we thought. It turned out to be the international space station. It'll be appearing again at around the same time for the next few evenings. Check the precise time, because it only appears for a couple of minutes.

Unexpected hitch

An invoice has arrived from Dell, claiming that the new memory was delivered on 3 August, but no sign of the memory itself. I phone Dell, who say they will chase the delivery company. Meanwhile I have an increasingly agitated end user to placate, who wants to get on with using his Expensive Software. I am going to England today for a week, which won't help.

We've had a houseful of people this week and actually used our disco for the first time. The strobe light with ultra violet background work extremely well, though only for a few seconds before someone howls for them to be turned off.

What the owl brought

Not one but two copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived last week, sent by some kind English friends who visited recently. A wise move to avoid serious conflict. All three children (me too) have now read it, and Fearnley is half way through for the second time. I can reveal that it ends happily ever after.

Meanwhile, I agreed to buy some Expensive Software for Fearnley's birthday. Imagine the dismay when we placed the order and the estimated delivery date came up as 25 October. In fact the package arrived two days ago. Imagine the dismay when it refused to install itself because our computer doesn't have enough memory. On to the Dell website to order some more. Imagine the dismay.... no, stop it. It WILL work once the new memory arrives.

Unaccompanied Minor

8 a.m. and I'm just finishing off my second breakfast. The first was at 4 a.m., since when I've been to Toulouse airport to drop off Philomena for her first ever solo flight as an Unaccompanied Minor. She should be in the air now, enjoying her second breakfast en route to Gatwick where she will be met by her friend Natalie and mother. The whole Unaccompanied Minor business is bristling with formalities, paperwork and identifications. Lowri got very frustrated during the long hours on the phone to BA setting up the booking, and more than once suspected that they were making up the procedure as they went along. Still. It's worked, and at least BA do offer an Unaccompanied Minor service, unlike Ryanair.

Lots of travelling at the moment. Fearnley's friend Simon (another Unaccompanied Minor) came out to visit us last week, Lowri is in Dartington this week, I came back from England a few days ago, going again in 10 days' time.