ivy towers of academe

I think it not at all impossible that the ivy will grow up outside my window, and proliferate, and immure me in the Chair's Office, given the amount of time that I spend in there. What is truly scary (and I do apologize for two buggy postings inside a week - this is not the result of some new obsession, but in today's case something that's been revealed courtesy of the camera lens) is all those little brown nasty thingies moving around on the air roots, or whatever the clingy ivy tentacles are called.

These are not nearly as horrific as what appeared on my computer screen yesterday, though. It's wonderful being able to Skype my parents every week, and see how they are doing, and get their cat to ignore our cats, and to see the house in which I grew up, and so on. But yesterday they were rather oddly perched on the settle in the dining room (that's an old north of England word for an old, hard seat - like a cross between a pew and a bar bench and a non-padded sofa). It turned out that this was because my father had found Bugs under all the rugs in the kitchen and dining room - 8 mm whitish wriggling things, massed. So the rugs were up, and airing, and the floor swept and cleaned and airing. I suspect Indian Meal Moth larvae -but the critter looked Huge - maybe bigger than that. I know, because he brought us a wriggling specimen in a baggy to observe. This was truly unpleasant, and left me with some reservations about Skype bringing unmitigated pleasure.