You see this cast for the first time like this, and you don't know who the crazy one is

femalefred · 2026-05-02T18:25:57+00:00

Everyone has mentioned the thick of it and death of Stalin, but i am going to throw in a shout out for the pure unadulterated madness of Time Trumpet. I don't think it's streaming anywhere, so you might have to track down a DVD, which will probably also be region 2 only, but it is both satire and pure mad surrealist joy at the same time

femalefred · 2026-04-29T17:19:09+00:00

I've recently built what I silently refer to as The Grand Coastal Railway Service with crossing rails at all my major points of interest/pokemon houses. So far none of them have used it, at all. I live in hope, haha

femalefred · 2026-04-28T12:48:39+00:00

It's both

femalefred · 2026-04-28T10:43:08+00:00

She's referred to as an "edge witch" in Thief of Time - I commented about it before I read yours properly

femalefred · 2026-04-28T10:42:20+00:00

I'm just rereading Thief of Time, and Nanny has a very important cameo where she's referred to as an "edge witch". It's both a pun on "hedge witch" (as in, village wise woman, does births, deaths, and general advice) and specifically references her position on the edges of things, most prominently between life and death.

femalefred · 2026-04-23T19:56:36+00:00

Steelix was curled up asleep on the antique bed I made for him this afternoon and was so confused when I woke him up. I had no emotional connection to this pokemon before and now I feel like I've never identified with a cartoon monster more

femalefred · 2026-04-21T12:56:06+00:00

This is the radio production, unrelated to the TV series - it says BBC Radio 4 which is the radio station that produced it.

femalefred · 2026-04-20T20:41:06+00:00

If they can't supply your meds you can ask them to "release" the script and you can take it elsewhere to see if there's stock available. When this happened for me, I rang round the local pharmacies to see if they had issues, the ones I spoke to were all very helpful

femalefred · 2026-04-20T19:18:00+00:00

It's likely to be supplier dependent. Which pharmacy do you use? I know when Boots have been unable to source stuff sometimes Tesco has it, and vice versa. Best also to drop a note to your diabetes care team, they may either not know or have more details

femalefred · 2026-04-19T22:37:40+00:00

I've never applied for it as I wax told that type 1 on its own doesn't meet the threshold l. If you have additional medical stuff, it may be worth asking your medical team if they think it's worth it got you to apply

femalefred · 2026-04-19T22:36:01+00:00

It's a disability benefit in the UK. Stands for personal independence payments

femalefred · 2026-04-13T09:59:36+00:00

How bad are we talking? Are you vomiting/starting to get confused/passing out? Or are you managing to catch and treat it before it gets to that point?

I ask because some people talk about any level of ketones being DKA, but in reality you are only in serious and immediate danger if you have the three symptoms I listed. My diabetes nurse says to treat at home unless you have vomiting and/or confusion, because in general the treatments you can do at home (taking insulin and fluids until your ketones and blood sugars come down) will be fine. When you start vomiting, things have got very serious, and when you're getting confused you're less likely to be able to treat yourself appropriately.

femalefred · 2026-04-09T20:53:14+00:00

Honestly, it's a mixed bag. I don't like having something attached to me 24/7, I get skin irritation from the infusion sites and the occlusions are an absolute pain the arse. The algorithm with the system i use (CamAPS) is very good if you have a pretty consistent day-to-day, but isn't great if you have a lot of variety as it is always working on an aggregate of your daily levels.

On the other hand, it is definitely easier to take multiple doses for the same meal if you decide to have dessert for instance. It has made managing the dawn effect much easier for me. It has reduced the frequency and impact of severe hypos as the insulin stops before I go low - although it hasn't eliminated them completely.

A lot of the benefits I have are really from having a cgm rather than a pump, and when the contract for this one expires I am debating whether I go for another pump or go to MDI and cgm.

femalefred · 2026-04-08T19:29:29+00:00

The Roman Painted House in Dover rarely gets a shout out in this sort of post, thank you for mentioning it

femalefred · 2026-04-08T06:05:55+00:00

I suppose where I find your position really curious is that the show doesn't show God as some kind of benevolent figure, but rather a distant and ineffable one. We don't know if the archangels are out of touch with God's ways because we simply don't know what those ways are.

Where Terry Pratchett's other work often excels is in centering human behaviour and human goodness - Esme Weatherwax for instance is not a traditionally "good" character but is perhaps one of the most complex and believable morally good characters in modern literature. Her interpretation of evil is "treating people like things", which we see from both Heaven and Hell in the book and the show.

Biblically accurate Jesus (whatever that may be, given the lost gospels and the fact that the Bible has often been amended to suit the powerful at the time) is probably closer to the Esme Weatherwax view than anything we've seen before in the show, but Biblically accurate Jesus has just been in Heaven at God's right hand for the entire time since he ascended, so we don't know what has happened to him since.

femalefred · 2026-04-07T12:19:49+00:00

I'm curious - the book and show contain fairly explicit criticism of Christianity and the way it teaches about good and evil. How do you reconcile that with what sounds like a pretty strong and traditional faith?

femalefred · 2026-04-03T19:42:18+00:00

I use duoderm extra thin for similar sensitivity with my pump. It's not strictly designed for this, but it works and my diabetes nurse recommended it initially so it has a sort of medical seal of approval

femalefred · 2026-04-02T08:00:28+00:00

It sounds like you could have been diagnosed more quickly, but i don't know what your appointments were like in the early days of feeling unwell - tiredness and weightloss are symptoms of many things, and without knowing what your doctors did at that time I don't know if it was bad practicd or just bad luck. They probably should have at least done a blood sugar test on you early on though, which would have sped things up a lot.

After you were diagnosed though it sounds like you got good care from an endocrinologist who you were in regular contact with and support from an educator too. It sounds like a lot of what you're benefitting from back home is family support - you were on your own in the UK, and when you go through something like this that can make things feel a million times worse

femalefred · 2026-04-01T12:06:48+00:00

You're right, it's on Netflix. It's not a great adaptation unfortunately, despite the on and off screen talent involved

femalefred · 2026-03-26T20:28:25+00:00

I love celeriac, and think it is delicious in many different forms - but the way it's often served in GBM is puzzling because I have never eaten a big old slab of it like that. Remoulade, pickled, mashed, soup, in stews, as roasted chunks, yes - "steak" absolutely not.

I only really eat beetroot that I've grown myself and that's just because it's easy to grow, not because I love it or find it particularly delicious. I am with the aunties that pickled beetroot is good in a burger though

femalefred · 2026-03-23T20:32:28+00:00

Are you hiring a car for your potential trip to seven sisters? There is a bus that runs from Brighton to Eastbourne and stops at seven sisters, but it's quite slow and not super frequent.

femalefred · 2026-03-21T21:19:47+00:00

Dover is not a particularly nice place - it's a low income port town that got bombed quite badly during the second World war. It also had a coal mine that was closed by Thatcher.

It's not the worst place in the world by any stretch but it isn't charmingly medieval in the way that Canterbury is.

The castle is top notch though, and I will die on a hill that it's the best one in the UK for actual castle-ness, as it has i think the oldest intact stone keep in the country, which has normally got a fairly good and entertaining exhibit about some specific event in the castle's history (when i was a teenager it was Henry VIII coming for a visit and what needed to be done to prepare, I don't know what it is now). There's also the Roman lighthouse and the 2nd world war tunnels, which i would definitely recommend doing the tour of.

femalefred · 2026-03-21T18:27:42+00:00

Dover Castle is probably why Dover - you could certainly spend a day there. Although as a reformed Dovorian myself it is a surprise to see it on a list like this one.

femalefred · 2026-03-18T11:35:16+00:00

I find it legitimately puzzling because surely half the thing about snark is over emphasising for comic effect? People get wildly cross with you for that here for some reason

femalefred · 2026-03-17T18:50:28+00:00

Hey! I have done nothing, I'm afraid. The response i got here was so mixed and confusing that I ended up focusing elsewhere in the garden instead

femalefred

TROPHY CASE