I’ve just seen a lovely bumblebee in the garden. I like these fuzzy-bottomed creatures, but I’ve never seen one quite like this one – a slightly tapered bum (abdomen, I think) with three distinct amber-coloured stripes around the tip. The problem I have is that I’d like to know what type of bumblebee it is and whether I’ve spotted something rare or unusual. It’s this sort of thing that shows the limitations of the internet. If I had a book of insects, I could open the page of bees and compare all the different sorts until I spotted an illustration that best represented the creature I saw. However, the net relies on me making a search using the name of the creature I am seeking (looking for "bumblebees" is too vague). Wikipedia only offers a detailed description of the most common species.

Any suggestions? I’ve had a similar problem when I’ve spotted an unusual butterfly or moth. Birds are another group of creatures where I go straight to the bookshelf first.

I’ve recently purchased a new wireless router here – a LinkSys WAG354G – and I’ve been thinking about fitting a high gain antenna (probably the LinkSys HGA7S) as the signal drops about two or three times an hour when I am in my office. The router sits on a shelf in the kitchen and my office is in the summer house, so the signal passes through about ten feet of clear conservatory; then through the window; across around twenty-five feet of garden; through a thin wooden wall and some rockwool insulation; and then a further three feet to my laptop. I currently get between 49% and 61% signal here and transmission speeds between 2.0Mbit/s and 11.0Mbit/s.

I have no experience of using a high gain antenna and all I can find online are endless repetitions of the LinkSys blurb, which naturally espouses the virtues of the device. Have any of you had any experience of using antennas? Would I be better advised to upgrade my 3Com 3CRWE154A72 WiFi card?

UPDATE: I’ve ordered a cheap DabsValue 5dBi antenna to see if it makes a difference. I did get tempted by some very expensive kit that would have permitted me to wander off across four or five fields, park myself and my laptop under a tree and still listen to the live stream of Arrow Jazz FM; but that would have been, well, unnecessary.

Is it me, or do The Young Knives sound similar to mid/late ’90s Croatian rockers Stella Maris? Or am I just being too obscure?

Thanks to some evil keel slugs, I’ve discovered that cardoons have scented flowers.

We have a huge and handsome cardoon that somewhat dominates one corner of the garden. Early in the year it gives us impressive silvery leaves. Now it has huge stems, around 7 feet tall, bearing enormous fist-sized spiky thistle flowers. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed that a small group of Milax budapestensis and Milax sowerbyi had set up home in the bottom of my Cynara cardunculus, and the former chewed through the stem of the latter and felled our beauty as a hairy checked-shirt-wearing Canadian might fell a spruce. Woe indeed.

Determined not to have all our gardening fun destroyed, I immediately set about a scorched-earth treatment of the garden with small blue metaldehyde-laced bran pellets, with the result that there are now corpses everywhere. I also cut the fallen stem and put the thistley heads into a vase on the dining table.

This morning, as I came into the conservatory (where our dining table resides), there was a distinct scent of honey coming from the cardoon flowers. This explains why bees are so attracted to them and is a discovery I’ve made thanks to the intervention of the evil keel slugs.

Some of you may have noticed some oddness here. I’m working on it. Expect great change.

We’ve just had our first harvest from our runner beans in the garden. However, one bean does not a meal make.

Still, it was very fresh and tasty. And there are more coming.

This list of things that "every child should do" comes via the linkbunnies. I like the idea of number 32.

How many of these things did you do before your tenth birthday?

Bacon mayo, for the perfect BLT. via Cal.

Things on Radio 4 that you may have missed:

• Crossing Continents: Thembi’s AIDS diary. Incredibly moving, particularly the part when Thembi tells her father that she has AIDS.
• Forging the Union. Alan Little’s excellent history of the European Union which shows how, by dragging her heels and hanging back, Britain has always found herself disadvantaged in the EU.
• Linda Smith – A Modern Radio Star. I miss hearing Linda Smith as much as I miss John Peel.

Radio 4 is, I think, producing some of the best programming I have ever heard right now. Whatever would we do without Radio 4?

UPDATE: I forgot to include:

• Unseen China. I don’t normally enjoy Peter White’s radio style (I remember when he was on South Today, 15-odd years ago), but this series is excellent.

Pointless. Useless. Bound to sell shedloads.

In other wireless news, my high gain antenna has boosted the signal in my office from around 48% to about 65% and resulted in only one dropped connection since installation. So I think we can consider it a qualified success.

This government has made 3027 new offences since coming into office in 1997 (more than 330 per year), compared with just 500 or so introduced under John Major (roughly 100 per year) and the rate of introduction is increasing.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just wade through some red tape to the kitchen and fill out an application form to make myself a cup of tea.

This week has included:

• learning that a friend and client is very unwell
• literally dozens of phone conversations with two different sets of lawyers and two different sets of surveyors
• realising that I’ve cocked up my plan to go to a trade show in Poland (note to self: VIII means August, not September – d’oh!)
• dropping a client because he is really not on my wavelength and I can’t be bothered to struggle for what would be a potentially small reward
• getting a very long document from the Borough Council
• not getting a whole bunch of things sorted out that I planned to do this week
• cleaning up purple projectile vomit after Tom had blackberries for tea (he’s fine now, but I’ve got to redecorate a wall)
• having to clean the cat litter tray every day after one or other of them decided that the garden was too cold and wet to use now that the weather has turned.

And that is just what I’ve had to do – Hels has had just as much. 

But there are positive things too:

• Sussex beat Durham in the cricket
• it rained (very good news in this part of the world)
• we caught up with some people in the pub
• it’s Friday
• we’re going on holiday soon
• Tom “pulled” a waitress in the place we went to today for lunch (very funny – you had to be there)

So it’s not all bad. It just feels that way.

Don’t panic. Travel, workload and other stuff will preclude writing new content for this site for a little while, plus delay the long-awaited redesign.

But things are good.

I’m back. I’m really busy, but I’m back.

When time permits, a post on:

• Leiden
• Arrow Jazz FM
• Kraak en Smaak
• Miffy
• Utrecht
• a David Lynch moment
• Maastricht
• Pruevenemint
• the Atomium
• Antwerpen-Zuid, and
• why EuroTunnel is doomed