Fish – smell the sea, feel the wind blowing your hair across your face, peel the spuds and get the chip pan on. A sensory wall hanging in the Art Gallery.
March 5, 2013
March 4, 2013
The giant electrical plug
This is one helluva plug. I didn’t have time to look around the corner to see what it was connected to. Probably a giant vacuum cleaner or huge electric fire. It should be possible to find out but perhaps I’ll leave it to you to go and see. Let me know won’t you? đ
March 3, 2013
March 2, 2013
3rd law part 18
This is one of those time has no meaning days. I have a jobs list but nothing that wonât wait. In one sense it doesnât make sense to use the internet on a day like this. If time has no meaning it means you have a lot of it going spare. If I use the internet the third law will kick in and that time will have gone. Decisions decisions.
I did just pop out to the back garden for a kickabout with a football with our youngest. The garden has no chance really. It is littered with cracked pots and broken plants, bashed by ball. The lawn itself is in dire need of attention, lots of muddy patches and where there is greenery it is often moss. There is really no point in doing anything about it whilst it is still used as a sports field. Perhaps I should get the groundsman from the school over the road to come in and give it some industrial strength attention.
Itâs a good phrase, âindustrial strengthâ. Handy for lots of situations though Iâm not sure I can quote an example here, other than the one I just did. Itâs a bit like âfair playâ. Useful, generally. Iâve made myself think here, wondering what other phrases come into the same category.
The pause for thought is represented by a couple of carriage returns, invisible but hopefully obvious. Iâm afraid I canât think of another such phrase though if I do Iâll burst out mid paragraph, a kind of metaphoric âEurekaâ. Eureka is also a handy word but not a phrase and really only meant to represent the fact that you have discovered something unexpectedly.
You wonât see this but I am writing this bit at a desk in the TV room. It used to be my study but that went out the door when we got a TV. It might surprise you to hear that our oldest was thirteen before we had a TV in the house. I eventually bowed to pressure from a daughter about to go up to high school who was worried she might not be able to keep up with the TV gossip in the playground, although I donât think they call it playground at âbig schoolâ. Playground is for kids.
Although I effectively lost my study it is quite handy to have a room that I can shut the door on and not have to put up with the rubbish they have on. It isnât all rubbish but the vast majority is. I usually end up in another room on my laptop indulging in a bit of third law, or writing stuff like I am now.
Most of my writing is done on a sofa in the living room or in the kitchen or the conservatory (with Colonel Mustard and the lead piping). That bit in brackets is an in phrase for those in the know. It isnât quite an eureka phrase and certainly not worthy of a shout out, in case you are analysing every word for the promised expression of surprise and discovery.
That expression may never arrive. I do feel as if I should be offering a prize for the first person to spot such an expression but I wonât because Iâll probably be inundated with emails and comments with âentriesâ none of which will be right and all of which will be expecting some kind of response. Not that I donât like comments. Iâm a pretty gregarious individual and like to engage with folk.
Thatâs my rule for twitter. I only follow people who are real people and who have something to say other than âbuy my left handed widgetâ, âoffers on left handed widgetsâ and âsale of left handed widgets ends at noonâ. I donât even know what a left handed widget is and seeing as I am right handed canât see what possible use I could have for one unless it is something like a fork which I hold in my left hand using my right to manipulate the knife. I might be completely wrong here. It may also be that left handed widgets can also be used in the right hand in which case they are mislabelled, misrepresented and quite possibly miss sold, though not to me as I wonât buy one because I wonât be following them on twitter. I donât think Iâve ever bought anything through following a link on twitter. I do get a lot of my news through twitter mind you. Breaking news, you saw it first on twitter, hot action as it happens from first hand witnesses, unless that is it is just a simple retweet. In fact it is mostly going to come from retweets as I donât know anyone who lives in a war zone and who is likely to be filling my stream with live action coverage.
I have been stranded in war zones on two occasions in my life. The first was on 9 11. I was at a conference in the USA. The whole thing fizzled out as the planes crashed on day one of the conference. Many of the attendees had not yet arrived and most who could, drove home leaving just the overseas visitors to spend a week around the pool and going out every night.
The second was during the July 7th bombings in London. I had been expecting to catch a train back north from Kings Cross that day but instead was âforcedâ to spend the whole afternoon in the pub, crashing out at my sister Sueâs place in Balham for the night. It was handy having a sister living in Balham (gateway to the South) but she lives in Cardiff now which is also quite handy for when you want to go and watch the rugby at the Millennium Stadium which I am wont to do every now and again.
I remember once staying with Sue in Balham after watching England play Wales at Twickers. Sue had been the âgood Auntieâ and taken Joe then aged three out in London for the day. Hamleys toy shop, that kind of stuff. Itâs hard work looking after a three year old, especially when you are not used to it so when I got back from the rugby Sue was desperate for some adult company, a few glasses of wine and a meal. Unfortunately I had been on the pop at a corporate jolly all day and all I could do when I got in was collapse. Poor Sue.
Sueâs a violinist you know. When we were kids we used to play the sailors hornpipe together, her on the fiddle and me on guitar. We would repeat the tune playing the verses faster and faster until we could physically go no faster. Mam and day would be quite proud when they saw people stop outside our house to listen. We still do it as a party piece. That and âThe Irish Washerwomanâ. Fair play đ
Slipped that one in, the fair play. You canât claim it as a new phrase though because it was in the original spiel on useful phrases. Spiel is also a very useful word but like Eureka, not a phrase. I might be being a little harsh on myself here insisting on the useful phrase being a phrase rather than just a word but there again rules is rules. If you make âem there is no point in breaking âem straight away though I know that ârules are meant to be brokenâ. That last phrase by the way is not one of the useful ones. It is interesting enough but not in my book useful, and this is indeed my book.
It would be no different if it was my ball and we were playing football. If itâs my ball we play by my rules. Period. Full stop. I donât really like the word period, itâs too American and I donât know why I used it.
3rd law part 17 here
3rd law part 19 here
March 1, 2013
The Voice
She was a few tables away but I could hear her voice as if she was sat opposite, talking directly at me. I could see that others were speaking but hers was the only voice I could hear. Her pitch must have been tuned exactly for my ear. She didn’t seem to be talking loudly.
Talk was of grass seed, husband, New Zealand and a swimming pool that was one metre short of Olympic size. Odd. It was as if I was hearing one side of a telephone conversation because I couldnât hear the other half of the conversation.
I wasnât interested enough to record the conversation any more accurately than that. It wasnât what she was saying that aroused my curiosity. It was the fact that I could hear her but no one else.
Breakfast, Holiday Inn Bloomsbury, Friday, March 1st
February 27, 2013
âlet spring commenceâ
The trim hedge,
once out of control, is now tamed,
its gangly tendrils mastered
and canopy forestalled.
Clippings lie forlawn, awaiting disposal.
Stiff-shoulders, job complete for another year,
the gardener sinks into his armchair and commands:
âlet spring commenceâ.
Lincoln A to Z D13 Birchwood
When I were a lad my first proper job, in 1984, was at Marconi on Doddington Road in Lincoln and Dave Hopkins and I used to nip home to his place at midday for a spot of lunch. Things were pretty easy going in those days and lunch wasnât typically an hour. We would pop to the Birchwood to buy some fresh crusty bread from the bakers together with a bit of ham and maybe some cheese and swing by his place to eat it.
Hopkins was a dab hand at making tea and I was happy to be the good guest and wait whilst he warmed the pot and made a proper cuppa. Dave was more conscientious than I was and was usually the one to call time and drive us back to the factory.
There used to be a pub on the Birchwood called The Wildlife and on Friday afternoons we would repair there for a few pints, often not returning until 3pm at which time we would go straight to the canteen for afternoon tea. It wasnât much of a pub but we were fresh out of college and our standards werenât that high.
They were pretty halcyon, those early days at Marconi. The company took on around 50 graduates over a two year period and it was a happy go lucky environment with almost every night being a party or a night out in the pub somewhere or another.
The Wildlife was the venue for one of the more memorable activities of the Marconi days which was âstar stiffâ. Star stiff was a competition whereby 200 celebrities, selected for their likelihood of keeling over and dying over the following twelve months were divided up into 20 âstiff portfoliosâ of ten names. Twenty engineers from Marconi took part, each carrying one stiff portfolio.
The names of the celebrities were contributed by all the contestants and a computer programme was written to randomly allocate the celebrities across all the portfolios. Each person had a seed which was a celeb highly likely to die over the year of the competition. The seeds were usually made up of Formula One racing drivers, which in those days was a far more dangerous sport than it is today, rocks stars known for their high living and drug abuse, and other famous people thought to be already at the edge of the abyss.
We would all gather on a day in July in the pub and eagerly wait to see who the computer had allocated us for our stiff portfolios. As I said the competition lasted twelve months. The deal was of one of the names on your stiff portfolio died you were given a pound by each of the other contestants. This may sound a little macabre but in reality if a particular celebrity looked like popping off you might have one person willing him or her to die but nineteen people doing the exact opposite and willing them a long and happy continuation of life.
The competition made for some tense moments. Salvador Dali was burned in a house fire but it took him months to actually die. Richard Burton actually went and died the day after the twelve months was up. Jim Patterson, who had him in his portfolio was gutted. Nineteen pounds was a reasonable wodge in those days when a pint probably cost 50 or 60 pence. Richard Burton, being known for his fondness of the sauce, was almost certainly a seed. I donât think any of the racing drivers died during the competition.
When the twelve months were up we would reconvene in The Wildlife, replace the deceased with new prospects and start again with a totally new random allocation of celebrities.
After three of four years the original gang at Marconi started to focus on their careers and went their separate ways. Life was never the same again though I do look back very fondly at what might be called the star stiff days.
The day grows old
The day grows old. Traffic has subsided on the road outside though I can still hear the occasional car drive by. The lights are full on illuminating the front room for all to see â the curtains have been tied up to let the new paint dry on the window sill. Anne has been busy.
The printer has been fixed, paper jam removed and new printer drivers installed on my laptop. The sound card doesnât work though since I dropped the laptop on its side and jammed the headphone jack deep in. Ah well.
Someone has ridden by on a bicycle swearing angrily at another person unseen. Oh dear.
The TV which has been showing documentaries all night is now switched off. Good.
Anne is pottering away in the kitchen. She has been out to a school fashion show. Anne is on the committee of The Friends of William Farr, otherwise known as the PTA or at least it was in my day. I have never been on such a committee, perhaps an indictment of my apathy. If they asked me for a donation I would give it.
The brightness of this room seems out of place tonight. Perhaps it is doubly bright because of the reflections off the windows. The curtains would normally be shut. Stands to reason really. For all I know someone is stood in the front garden staring in at me. Wondering.
I will be off to bed soon enough. The routine will kick in. Check the front and back doors even though I know that Anne will already have done so. Brush teeth in downstairs toilet. I find it more convenient to keep the gear there as it saves me having to nip back upstairs before heading out to work. There will probably be a quick glance round the kitchen. Ours is a large kitchen with two kitchen tables. Very useful.
Tonight I made a point of tidying the kitchen before Anne arrived home. It isnât fair on her to be confronted with a mess which can easily be the case with three lads in the house. It is done and she seems reasonably happy with it.
The clock ticks. A quick glance informs me it is telling the right time. Unusual! Must have a new battery. Good.
Looking around I am surrounded by books. You can never have too many books. One of the shelves also has a giant pencil which I bought as a souvenir from the pencil factory at Keswick in the Lake District. It has no practical uses and were it ever to need sharpening we would not have a suitable pencil sharpener for the purpose.
The vacuum cleaner is in the corner of the room under the desk. It is a Dyson. Strange. It is normally kept in the cupboard under the stairs. Unusual for it not to be tidied away. There must be a good explanation.
Iâm off to bed now. Goodnight.
February 24, 2013
stardate 24th February CE 2013 morning schedule
wake up 7.45 ish, tweet a little & consume cup of tea brought by Anne, doze
out of bed 9am, dress immediately, blue jeans, A10 networks Tshirt picked up free at LONAP AGM, stripy fat face fleece top, thermal socks
2 weetabix and banana with semi skimmed milk for breakfast
tidy golf clubs away in utility room & put rucksacks used at center Parcs in cupboard. can only find one of my black gloves.
brush teeth & put swimming kit in bag for life
read a little of Vol 1 Gibbons Decline and Fall of Roman Empire purchased yesterday from Readers Rest on Steep Hill – closing down sale ÂŁ40 for full set of 8 Folio Society  edition.
start prepping tonight’s beef stew – find we are out of garlic.
10.15 head out to Tesco for garlic, mushrooms and a turnip. also purchase thermal hat, gloves & scarf set for ÂŁ6. only really needed the gloves. return to car to find previously lost glove. ah well
get beef in Guinness going on stove – finish by 11.10, put in oven on low heat & wash pots.
11.30 head out to buy John Adidas astro turf trainers. drop John off to play footy & finish up for lane swimming at Yarborough for 12.30
February 23, 2013
Lincoln A to Z Q12 St Swithens Cemetery and Canwick Park Golf Course
The question on todayâs lips is whether anyone has ever been killed by a golf ball on Canwick Park Golf Course and subsequently cremated and buried in St Swithenâs Cemetery.
Being killed on the course but not buried in the cemetery over the road does not form part of this discourse. Neither is death by other means such as heart attack, being run over by a golf cart or, as happened on 5 occasions in the good ole u s of a between 2001 and 2006, being killed on the golf course as a result of a plane crash1!
Heart attacks are the most common cause of death on golf courses which is understandable as golf does tend to be a pastime enjoyed by those of more advanced years. Death by plane should not be totally discounted in Lincoln due to the history of aviation in the county but whilst there are many records of aircraft related fatalities in Lincolnshire I am not aware of any specifically associated with a golf course and certainly not Canwick Park. I may be wrong about this as there is scant information available on the subject.
Before getting back on track here it is also worth clearing up some confusion that may exist in some folksâ minds regarding the subject of âsudden deathâ and golf. Sudden death is a means of deciding a winner if a game is drawn after the final hole has been played. The golfers involved play on until a hole is won outright, the loser or losers being deemed to have suffered sudden death.
Whilst being hit on the head by a golf ball is also likely to lead to sudden death this is not the same sudden death.
There is very little data in the public domain on death on golf courses in the UK, at least not on the first page of a Google search result and it isnât really worth looking beyond that. The previously referred to statistic from the USA does come from a source with additional data that could inform our debate.
|
Event |
Fatalities |
| Overturned vehicle (nonhighway) |
19 |
| Other nonhighway incident (excluding overturned vehicle) |
14 |
| Fall to a lower level |
8 |
| Highway incident |
7 |
| Homicide |
6 |
| Trench collapse |
6 |
| Struck by falling object |
6 |
| Suicide |
5 |
| Drowning, submersion |
5 |
| Airplane accident |
5 |
Apologies for the spelling and use of un-British vernacular such as âHomicideâ and ânonhighwayâ. Whilst I realise that these terms are probably used and certainly understood in the UK I personally would use âmurderâ and ânon roadâ as alternatives.
It should be noted that the above statistics which cover the period between 2001 and 2006 pertain to work related deaths and not to golfers themselves. However they do help us to understand the general trends where causes of death on a golf course are concerned. There is no specific reference to being hit by a golf ball but âbeing struck by a falling objectâ would cover this scenario and for the purpose of this argument I am going to assume that that is what is meant when describing this particular form of death.
Wikipedia tells us that in 2008, just after the period under examination, there were 17,672 golf courses in the USA and 2,752 in the UK, representing 50% and 8% of the total number of courses worldwide respectively.
If we take these data and extrapolate we come up with a figure of 0.934 deaths by golf ball in the UK over the six years, or around one death every seven years. In any given year therefore in the UK there is a five thousandth of one percent chance that someone at Canwick Park will be killed by a golf ball. Whilst the science behind the calculations used here is not exact I can apply some real world data to the discussion by saying that in forty years of playing golf (I know, I canât be that old) I have never known anyone to be killed on the golf course, any golf course.
Research by the University of York reveals that âAccording to the Office of National Statistics, there were 493,242 deaths registered in England and Wales in 2010, compared with 491,348 in 2009 and 537,877 in 2000. In England, in the vast majority of cases, deaths are followed by cremation: in 2010, the current cremation rate was just over 73 per cent. However, in a significant and growing number of cases, cremations are themselves followed by the formal burial of cremated remains at cemeteries, crematoria and churchyards.â
Departing for a moment from scientific facts and methodology the chances are that if someone was killed by a golf ball at Canwick Park they would end up in the crematorium over the road with some degree of likelihood that they would subsequently be buried in the cemetery. We canât be more exact than this because the ONS doesnât tell us what percentage of cremations are subsequently buried. The problem is exacerbated further by the fact that there are other cemeterial options in Lincoln. I assume here that cemeterial is a word. If it isnât either I have invented a new one or, well you knew what I was trying to say really.
In conclusion, and to put everyoneâs mind at rest, especially the members of Canwick Park Golf Club it is unlikely that anyone has ever been killed by a golf ball on their golf course and subsequently cremated and buried in St Swithenâs Cemetery.
Itâs quite nice to be able to quash rumours of this sort before they begin to take hold thus causing a stampede for the car park of golfers no longer wanting to risk playing at Canwick Park. Such a mad dash for the exit in itself is more likely to cause death than the golf balls now locked safely up in bags in the boot of the car.
Fore!
1 Source United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/sh20080416ar01p1.htm
February 22, 2013
World peace achieved – all is well
Fire flickers in the comfort of the hearth and all is quiet. The curtains are drawn on the world. Whisky evaporates by the glass. Another room coughs. The world is at peace.
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
v
Warring peoples settle centuries old scores and inter-marry. Marriages last a happy lifetime. Children remain obedient without dulling their sense of radicalism and change and perform well at school. Â All religions agree to coexist happily. Nags Head wins the 3.30 at Epsom and beer is freely dispensed at all public houses. Lincoln City are promoted to the Premier League.Â
Ok that last one was a dream too far.