where art collides

Bit of an incident on the bypass this afternoon. Was on the way to drop the scarifier back at Lee’s but a cop car had closed it off. There was also a fire engine there with an extendable ladder. Plan B was through the Ermine to Burton Road and down through Burton village but that too was closed. Burton Road has a bridge over the bypass which is unfortunately sometimes the scene of tragedy and one assumes that this is the case this pm. Very sad. 

Plan C was to go through town but that was gridlocked with the knock on effect of the closure of the bypass. I gave up and went to Wickes to buy some compost. En route home from Wickes a couple of panda cars were hot footing it in the direction of the hospital. I made sure I was sticking to the speed limit!

Yesterday we officially declared our victoria plum tree dead. Killed off by last summer’s drought. It will be replaced by two trees in a slightly different position. These we will potentially purchayse this afternoon after a second attempt to return Lee’s scarifier. Always assuming anywhere will be open. Pennells Garden Centre would have been the obvious choice but they are a deeply religious lot there and are shut for the day.

The death certificate was issued after cutting a small branch to examine it for signs of life. There was no greenwood to be seen. We do have another, smaller, plumb which has flowered and therefore warned us that the health of the older tree was not as it should be. 

The smaller plum was purchased as an unlabelled stick for a pound from some shop with no idea as to what would eventually grow from it. It is a small miracle that said stick even took root and sprang into life. Plants can be very resilient.

Twill be a few years before the stick will yield usable quantities of fruit and the planting of new trees must be seen as a medium term investment.

Today is Easter Sunday, the Feast of the Passover or Spring Break, depending on your nationality and orientation. It would be a real shame if the use of the term Spring Break ever became the norm in the UK. Nowt wrong with Easter, especially as we get two bank holidays yay.

I am minded to make the day totally job free. Our family does have form in this space. My great great great great grandfather the Reverend Daniel Davies of Llandysul was excommunicated from the local Baptist chapel after it was discovered that he had let his farm hand work on a Sunday. They relented a few years later and let him back in to great relief all round. It must have created quite a stir at the time.

I visited his grave around ten years ago when I was researching my family tree. It was one of the oldest  in the cemetery and the gravestone was starting to deteriorate. At least I have it photographed.

Not got back any further than Daniel who was born in the middle of the eighteenth century.. Church records from before that time are somewhat incomplete and we Welsh unhelpfully did not have surnames in those days so it is difficult to spot a relative even if the record is there. I will revisit this some day.

I do mean to write a family history some day as it mirrors a lot of what was going on in the world in Wales over a couple of hundred years. The move from farming during the industrial revolution to owning woollen mills and then coal mining with participation in the religious revival movement thrown in for good measure. It was only because of the religious nature of my ancestors that I was able to trace them in the census. In Wales there are Davieses everywhere but only a few of them were labelled as ‘minister of religion’. One of my cousins, William Davies was the first Welsh Baptist missionary to die in Africa.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Leisure time beckons.

Totes beeootiful sunny day in the shire. Taking my cup of tea this morning in the conservatoire for the first time this season. Good Friday in prospect 🙂

Bit of campervan rental, bit of scarification, bit of culinary activity. I don’t know why it’s just dawned on me but a curry is a very keto diet compatible food item, as long as you stay away from the bread and rice. So I’m cooking a curry today in preparation for tomorrow night’s meal. It’s always better the next day.

Got to walk down to the garage to pick up campervan Jade. Jade is going out on hire this afternoon but it being a particularly Great Friday the garage is shut so doing it from our house which is fine. Jade is our fave van and the one we would take when heading off for a jaunt.

Lots of tomato seedlings in the tray on the floor next to me. They will need potting on shortly I dare say. We usually have more than we need once they have all been planted out. I’ll let you know availability nearer the time.

It must be a westerly wind because I’ve just heard the cathedral bells strike the half hour. This is good. Warmer. Were there any clothes on the line they would dry more quickly than would otherwise be the case, unless it was a southerly 🙂

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The garage is almost back to pre electrician visit condition which means it is still in dire need of a good sort out. This will happen over the weekend. Probs. It is nice to have an officially long weekend although the good folk in Belgium with who I work are still at the coal face and sending me emails

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Jade ready to go. Lawn scarified. Will do the aeration once the hirers have picked up the van. Cleared out the garage. Moved the large bookcase in the conservatory back into place. I know I hadn’t mentioned that before but now you know.

Halloumi kebabs for lunch.

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Today is the first seriously spring-like day we have had. I’ve been out in the jardin de Tref & Anne scarifying and aerating the lawn. We used to have Green Thumb do this but almost half the lawn needs reseeding post chafer bugs so I figured I’d do it all meself. GT don’t do chafer bug treatment.

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So made it into the pool, heventually. It was the start of the last session and quickly filled up. My lane must have had 9 or 10 punters in it. I prefer the last session before closing where it is not untypical to only have two or three of us in a lane and sometimes only me.

When it is that full it it doesn’t necessarily make for a good swim although today didn’t seem too bad. There are stories to be told.

First of all two girls got in, did two lengths, hung around the end of the lane for a while chatting and preventing anyone from making it to the side so we had to turn early. They left after less than ten minutes. Good oh.

The some bald geezer kept doing one length and then stopping for a break. After a suitable rest he would launch himself underwater for six or seven metres before coming up to a slow breast stroke.

A husband and wife combo then got in and swim in tandem. I can’t do this with Anne as she is much faster than me and goes in a different lane. Anyway they didn’t stay the pace either.

Three yooves hung around the edge of the pool before eventually getting into the middle lane. They splashed vigorously whilst doing the front crawl with their heads high out of the water. I think they only lasted ten minutes as well.

In all around fifteen people occupied the lane in the thirty minutes I was in and when I got out there were only four left. Felt good having done my half an hour. Would have done more were it quieter.

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I have a curry cooking slowly on the stove top. It is very loosely a lamb Rogan Josh but won’t taste anything like a RJ in practice. It is for tomorrow night.

Thursday is the new Friday, especially when tomorrow is Good Friday. Good name Good Friday. Whoever came up with it did a good job. An enduring brand.

Thursday is also the new Friday if your weekend starts on a Thursday. Always assuming that people celebrate Fridays as the end of their working week. Never done that myself, at least not for years.

Good Friday is not a good day to travel. Nor is the Thursday before Good Friday. Unless you consider long traffic jams and queues at airports to be a good thing which I don’t. 

A few years ago I had the idea of consolidating a year’s worth of BBC radio travel alerts to text so that all roads mentioned in the year were covered. It would show a gridlocked nation. Would have been a great piece for philosopherontap.

Didn’t happen because I couldn’t be bothered to listen to and transcribe every bulletin and didn’t come up with an automated process to do the job. I would also have had to listen to Radio 2 every afternoon which wouldn’t have worked. The project is not dead, just delayed, in keeping with the folk sat in traffic jams.

We are staying put for Easter although we might head to the coast or somewhere on Sunday. Take a nice picnic. The picnic will inevitably be eaten in the car, washed down with a flask of tea as many places will still be shut and the weather will be inclement, as the Brits like to put it.

Sitting eating a picnic in the car with food items spread out on the dashboard is a very traditional thing to do. Ideally with the rain lashing down on the windscreen or a freezing wind blasting in from the North Sea. This is after a brief five minute walk on the beach spent mostly bent over holding the hood of your coat down over your face and quickly coming to a mutual decision to return to the car.

Will have to give some consideration to our destination this Sunday. Haven’t been to the Grimsby Fishing Heritage Museum for years. That could work, although Grimsby is a bit grim, knowworramean.

Any ideas/suggestions for a day out (afternoon more likely) within striking distance of Lincoln on Sunday will be considered. In the meantime I’m off to make the tea.

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The sun has emerged from behind a cloud that had held much water which this morning was emptied on the good burghers of Lincoln. There is now optimism in the air that the lawn may this afternoon be the subject of scarification and aeration. If the lawn isn’t dry enough then it will get done over the weekend, definitely 😉 You already know that we are at home for the Passover feast, mostly.

The burghers themselves will also have emerged, from their refuges where they will have rushed to take shelter at the time of the deluge. Those caught out in the open will themselves now be drying off in the sun in the manner, no doubt, of spread-wing cormorants at the seashore. Soak up that sunshine!

Silence now reigns in the shed.

The light has gone. Having a new consumer unit put in so the power has just gone off to the house. I can tell because the screens in front of me have just died and I am now on a fully charged macbook pro hooked up to a fully charged phone.

Outside is a beautiful spring day that started with a frost. Ne’er cast a clout until May is out and it is only at the start of April. I am wearing a thick woolly jumper particularly as the heating is now off in the shed. In theory I was going to scarify the lawn and plant onion sets today but the combination of no electricity and the cold may delay that.

The concept of not having two 27” 4k screens in front of me is a little strange. Nowadays I don’t feel as if I am sat anywhere productive without the real estate to play with. Even the two screens have to be supplemented with windows that need to be swiped into view to be seen.

Sometimes when using the laptop in the house I have to move to the shed for productivity reasons. It is also quieter there and I am less prone to being disturbed. A good separation between home and work life.

In one sense the switching off of power to the shed is like the beginning of armageddon. How it all started. If the shed represented life, humanity, it would now be all about what happens next. I would have to adapt. Move away from my cosseted twenty first century  existence. Obvs I know the power is coming back sometime later today but if I didn’t know that it would affect my behaviour.

We do have some candles in the house. Some are there for decorative purposes and I believe there is a box somewhere with a mixed bunch of wax sticks. One year, aeons ago, there was a short power cut during our Christmas Party, the one where we sing carols. Out came the candles and we had the most atmospheric sing song that we had ever had, the glow from the log fire keeping us nice and warm.

That is in the past. In the present the washing is being hung out to dry. Must have just beaten the switch off.

I am looking forwards to an April largely spent at home. I have already resisted the urge to go to UKNOF in Manchester this week and to a VON Evolution conference in New York City later in the month. Mostly due to diary clashes but the attraction of giving the body a rest from travel did play a part. I do need to arrange a trip to Antwerp at some stage and have a pleasant lunch arranged in London in the last week of the month. 

I like leisurely London lunches. Wotslifeallabout? If anyone would like to book me for a leisurely London lunch during the summer feel free to get in touch.

Sitting with my headphones on avoiding having to hear cheery chappie TV chef Jamie Oliver. Bloody annoys the hell out of me. Carnival of The Animals. Will keep me going until University Challenge 🙂I realise this might be a shocking overreaction but I must be in that sort of mood. Not sure there are any TV chefs that particularly interest me. Call me a miserable so and so.

I do like cooking. I remember one evening years ago when I was the only person in the house. I was dropping Hannah off at a party and before leaving the house I opened a particularly nice bottle of Pauillac to breathe.

Driving back home I had the car windows in order to take in what was a beautiful summer’s evening. There was a smell to it. When I got home the wine had breathed and I cooked a simple rib eye steak on the griddle and rustled up a green salad. Didn’t need a TV chef to tell me how to cook it. Must have been one of those memorable meals for that evening to have specifically stayed in my memory. 

We have over the years collected innumerable recipe books. I started off with Delia’s ‘how to cook’ or similar during my bachelor days and soon added more including a cheapo Mexican cookbook from Sainsburys or simlar that we still refer to today.

More likely to google a recipe nowadays. Typically I’ll check out a number of sources for the same dish and opt for what seems the right one for me.

Gotta go. UC is on. Starter for ten.