Author Archive

raining cats and dogs

Sunday, March 10th, 2024

It’s raining cats and dogs/men/choose your own idiom. This being the case means it is quite relaxing. I’m sure that those of you currently on a sun lounger around a pool will say that you too are relaxed. However, a) I don’t have a pool and if I did it wouldn’t be warm enough and b) I do have rain.

If I was sat on a sun lounger it would have to be in the shade as I don’t do sitting in the sun. The sun does have its uses, growing peas for example, but sitting out in it is not for me. No sir.

Meanwhile THG is getting the veg ready for today’s Sunday lunch which is being taken at lunch time as opposed to tea time in which case it would be called Sunday dinner. Again I realise this is somewhat contradictory but it really depends where you come from.  

For example members of the Yanomami tribe from the Amazonian rainforest would now be totally bewildered probs. They don’t have the concept of lunch, tea or dinner. In the rainforest you eat whenever you can, usually after killing a porcupine or a monkey, if they can catch one. Interestingly the Yanomamis have their own saying for when it rains. This translates roughly as “it is wet”. 

Today’s rain, heavy as it is, is not the horizontal driving rain often to be found on exposed moors and hillsides where it can often be quite windy. North Wales, for example, or Scotland. I daresay there I could mention other windy and exposed places but I won’t as it would get boring v quickly and mean I might spill over to another page. Don’t want to waste paper innit. 

In case you were wondering, there really is a Yanomami tribe. I googled it. There are also the pygmy and the Huli tribes and potentially others as yet undiscovered but I won’t be naming them, obvs. By all means let me know if i’ve missed any 🙂.

The average rainfall in Lincoln in March is 49.64mm or 1.95 inches if you were born before 1971. I should really invest in a weather station to record this sort of information. It would fit nicely with milkman arrival times. I did use to record the greenhouse temperature but the website i was using, trefsgreenhouse fell into disrepair. The Raspberry Pi and the sensors are still in place so one day I might get it going again. Also the live video stream.

The live stream of tomatoes growing was a particular hit. At any given time there might be as many as one viewer (ok that might have been me but I didn’t record visitor numbers). It was one of my works of slow art. I’ve posted the hugely speeded up timelapse vid of the whole growing season here so that you don’t have to search for it.

Tharrldofornow.

I don’t record visitor number for philosopherontap either. Neither do I do any SEO related tweaks.

Good news

Saturday, March 9th, 2024

Good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news.

Can you believe it?

Bad news

Saturday, March 9th, 2024

Bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news,bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news,bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news, bad news.

It’s all bad news

Zen and the art of the milk round

Saturday, March 9th, 2024

Zen and the art of the milk round

It came to me at about five thirty ey em this morning. I was lying awake in bed pondering whether to get up. The birds had started singing and clearly morning was well into its stride. However I was trying to decide whether nodding off again might be a prospect.

In the interim seconds or minutes before I did indeed drop off my thoughts turned to the art of delivering milk. I played with how this might be described, at least in a title:

Zen and the art of milk floats, Zen and the philosophy of milk floats, the philosophy of the milk round etc etc etc I decided that Zen and the art of the milk round would suffice as a working title. These things tend to stick

I don’t know anything about the milkman. His job entails very antisocial hours as far as regular social norms go. Presumably he is used to this. You do from time to time hear about people in such jobs who do it because it frees them up during the rest of the day to write their play or book or similar. Might this be the case here?

He turns up three times a week at ours, usually with two pints of milk but doubled up if the next delivery is due on a bank holiday. I was going to say he turns up like clockwork but his delivery times do vary significantly, any time between three and five ey em. Why is this? No pattern has emerged as yet. Is there back story here?

The job may be seen as very philosophical. A milkman can very much get in a zone when on his round. The same houses, the same order, apart, as I said from the bank holiday example, the same route. Other than the fact that people do vary their orders, family comes to visit etc, there is no need to think.

In one sense it is almost like being a long distance runner. You set off and get in the groove. Your mind is focussed on one thing, or indeed nothing, in order to get you around those twenty six miles without constantly wondering how much further is there to go or thinking what a waste of three hours fifteen minutes this is. Insert your own time.

Each house visited is different but at the same time similar in that it only takes a few second to drop off the milk before jumping back on the float and moving on to the next.

There are other factors of note. A milk round is a historic entity, at least in recent modern history. It brings with it the stability of familiarity. A comfort level in knowing there will be milk on the table at breakfast to feed the kids their porridge, or chocolate covered sugar bombs.

Part of me would like to know more about the man himself but this would probably destroy the enigma, the mystique around the function he performs. I don’t like to think of him as being part of a well oiled machine but there is an element of that. The customer facing element of a system that begins with cows grazing in lush green fields on a hillside in deepest Britain.

I wonder how long on average a milkman stays in the job? Is it something they can only do for a few years and then burn out or is it normally a job for life, a vocation. I’m not sure the work prepares you for anything other than delivering milk although employment opportunities could, I suppose, be available in the modern post covid logistics market.

Then you have to ask yourself what does a milkman do when he retires. How does he cope with the fact that he no longer needs to get up at two ey em to feed the horse before setting off on his round. Not that they use horses to pull milk carts these days. At least I never hear the clippety clop of hooves and the milkman arrives and departs. Also the dairy is fifteen miles away in Newark a horse would not be practical.

I daresay there is more to think about when it comes to the art of the milk round which will no doubt reveal itself in due course. 

Ciao amigos.

camera update

Friday, March 8th, 2024

Last night’s camera update was successful, so I’m told. Just in time for the milkman to arrive at 03:07. The complex world in which we live. The milkman was totally oblivious to this. If we stopped updating things, software, our modern world would eventually grind to a halt. 

It isn’t particularly a big deal if I don’t record the time the milkman arrives each day. Someone reading this in a couple of hundred years might be a little curious as to what a milkman actually is, or was. Maybe they came across it in a history book  and decided to dig deeper. Dunno 🙂 No matter. Most of my friends reading this are also equally curious why I might be doing it, probs. Hey…

My mac mini updates itself as do most things with software these days. I might occasionally have to say yes son, go for it but it is typically pain free. Relies on me having a symmetrical gigabit connection to the big wide world but that I have. I realise some of you have faster connectivity but I am ok with a gig, for now.

I like that I backed up my 5GB or so hosting space in a couple of minutes. Took even less time to move it to my NAS box.

Overhead I can hear the Red Arrows practising. I think it is them. Not seen anything. Just heard. Could be RAF Waddington. 

It still feels cold outside.

feels cold out, 
warm contemplation inside,
spring to mind, 
sunward face, 
heat sink
remember that? 
long time 

dead leaves distract 
as they scurry
crisply past my window

The washing line is being a nuisance this afternoon. The clothes keep blowing about making me think someone is coming down the garden path and thus I look up from what I am doing. V distracting.

food rankings

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

For some reason I started to think about how I would rank my favourite foods. Probs cos I was frying a bit of bacon for breakfast. Mushrooms, toms and egg. No carbs. Bacon would definitely be up there although in the guise of a bacon sandwich as opposed to a full English. Nowt wrong with the latter. Just doing a bit of ranking.

Then there is a good curry. Not sure I have a specific one in mind but it would almost certainly have an aloo gobi accompaniment and a selection of starters. Not too many or I wouldn’t be able to finish the main which might not be a problem as it will keep in the fridge and be even better the second time around, for lunch.

I’m in two minds as to whether steak is up there. It probably is but I have to be in the right frame of mind and it does have to be a ‘good’ steak. Rare to medium rare. To be accompanied with a very decent bottle of red. You can choose whether you want salad, chips etc.

From a Sunday roast perspective they are all up there though if I had to choose I’m torn between a nice moist chicken or pork with crackling. Both have to have the right trimmings, especially the stuffing which I am a dab hand at making.

A nice salad is also in. Strong cheese, maybe a pate foie gras and some decent hand carved ham accompanied by crusty white bread and some good butter. None of the mass produced stuff the supermarkets churn out (geddit?). My  homemade spicy pickled onions and plum chutney also goes with it.

Crispy duck mustn’t be missed out. Man can live on crispy duck alone.

I didn’t rank these in order but I suspect that the order in which I wrote them down and must therefore came to mind is probably it.

From a drink perspective it’s probs just water, milk and tea. The rest, nice as it is, doesn’t really matter. Even that cognac I brought back from the shop in Carcassonne which is the best I’ve ever had and amazingly still have some in the bottle is neither here nor there really.

Whaddaya think?

the great question of life

Wednesday, March 6th, 2024

I was aware of being awake at around five twenty five this morning. Shortly after this I opened one eye and noted the time had moved on ten minutes, then a further twenty. 

You lie there in bed pondering the great question of life, ie whether to get up or not. The issue is that your current sitch is v cosy and the act of rising brings uncertainty. Will it be cold downstairs. Certainly colder than the bed.

Sometimes I drift off again but on this occasion I didnt appear to do so. I don’t like lying there gratuitously wasting time just being awake. Eventually I said sod it and got up. 

So I’m downstairs with the birds. They had already decided it was time to wake up and are nattering away to each other. Already dawn, although I wasn’t sure whether the lightening of the sky through the back window was just light pollution here in the middle of town.

Down in the snug it also happens to be cosy. I’m tucked under a nice quilt made by THG some time ago that now adorns the back of one of the sofas. On the footstool in front of me lie a few balls of wool. Warm colours, blue, light green and grey. We have a nice place to live. Thanks to THG.

Being a Wednesday it is already half way through the working week, depending on which day you consider to be the start, obvs. In Israel they are already considering going in to the office because tomorrow is the last day of the week. Timeshift.

This week has so far gone quite quickly. It’s been pretty productive. Productivity isn’t always measured by work output although that depends on what you call work. Stuff that I get paid to do has been productive but also important stuff that we fill the rest of our lives with is also looking good. You have to look positively on life anyway but sometimes it is easier to do this. 

I’ve not thought much about what lies ahead with the day. Plenty of time for that. Sometimes it is nice to just drift for a bit. Time surf. Go where life takes you, even if it is just for an hour or two.

It is very much time I got my hair cut. I can grab hold of it at the back which means it is too long. Been thinking of trying the barber in the Carlton Centre. Will see if I have time this afternoon. Valuable stuff, time.

It is also time I made the tea. Gosh that went quickly dinnit. The milkman came at three seventeen this morning. That’s almost as early as it gets although he did a three oh two one Wednesday in January.

Ciao.

Interestingly I haven’t been anywhere since I sold the car. The one exception is when THG and I went to Wickes to buy some wood glue. She drove me and stayed in the car whilst I nipped in. Oh, also Coops and I went to pick up one of our camper vans from storage last night. He drove.

This is partly because I’ve been busy at home and partly because I haven’t really needed to go anywhere. THG does most of the shopping, largely because I always spend too much on stuff we don’t really need. Also I’m not insured on her current wheels. Picking up some new ones for her this pm which alters that.

I take it everyone is looking forward to this year’s Academy Awards. It’s this coming Sunday so not long to wait now. Truth be told I’m not sure I know anyone who is interested, except perhaps for my cousin Ken. it is quite unlikely I would even recognise those participating and being given an award.

Spring seems very much in the air. Still quite nippy mind you. My question is when do we officially recognise that spring has arrived? Is there a particular plant that blossoms? I don’t want dates. I want real life nature telling us that change is afoot. What’s the answer? I am looking forward to the day when the shed doors are flung open to the garden and I become at one with nature, as they say. This will be spring.

The itch, scratched

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

The itch. I scratched it. Then I scratched somewhere else, and after that the top of my head. No apparent reason. Why does somewhere randomly itch?

Cold water on your face. Invigorating. Wakes you up nicely. Refreshing.

As ‘thought for the day’ began the radio switched itself off. Serendipitous. All knowing.

Outside the rain falls steadily, drumming a gentle beat on the conservatory roof. The trees, still devoid of foliage, stand motionless and have nothing to say. They stand there patiently as if resigned to a day’s inactivity ahead.

The kitchen is calm. Avocado toast with a side of streaky bacon adorns the table. A few chopped walnuts, lime and a drizzle of good balsamic vinegar. I need to replenish the supplies of good balsamic. Belazu just about cuts it.

A fair bit achieved yesterday and I expect Tuesday to continue in the same productive vein. I struck whilst the iron was hot, dammit. Whilst the sun shone. THG is pleased with her candlesticks which is good. A happy wife means a happy Tref 🙂

Interesting, the concept of finding a productive vein. It’s like striking a seam of coal, or better still gold. Let’s clear that lot out shall we? Oh yes. Gold would defo be preferable to coal for obvious reasons. Diamonds even better although let’s not get carried away.

Back on Zog there are signs of life. Movement on the upstairs landing. The day is starting in the house of Tref. I must away…

Time to get up said Zebedee

Monday, March 4th, 2024

The radio stopped at around a quarter to eight. It was on a timer. Time to get up said Zebedee. Well he didn’t say that but would have done so had he been around, natch. Many of you will have no idea who Zebedee is but you’ll have to look it up. I’m not going to help. He was magic.

Early to the shed and I thought I’d drop in on the weekly Monday morning sales meeting. Even made a small contribution as I had visited a customer whilst out in South Africa. 

It is misty out. The sun is trying to poke its nose through the gloom. The met office has promised me personally that it will be a sunny morning. I trust the good people who work there. Times have changed since the unforecast great storm of 1987 or whenever it was. Around about that time.

The news this morning is that I need to do a php upgrade on philosopherontap. Snorrabiggie really, obvs. Just popped up in an email from the host. Philosopherontap is on a shared server. Doubt it gets many visitors. There are a few other sites on there – mostly the kids own stuff but I don’t think they play much with it. Just backing it up now. Can go on my NAS box as Google drive is starting to fill up. 

5.8GB compressed so not too bad I guess.It’s a two minute download job over my 1Gbps fttp. That’s probs a lot of pics in older philosopherontap posts. I tend not to bother uploading images these days. 

Moving from 2TB to 5TB takes the monthly cost from £7.99 to £19.99. Not huge in the great scheme of things. Just one of the costs of modern day life. One of these days I’ll take a look at all the domain related costs I see coming in and perhaps rationalise them. I see cash going out in dribs and drabs but never really look at what it is.

As previously stated today is a Monday. I wonder what will be achieved this week? Seems reasonable to want to achieve something. Not work related. That stuff sorts itself out. I do have a job to do for THG to which I should turn my attention. This relates to the affixing of bases to her candlestick projects. We bought the wood and I need to cut it to size, sand down and glue. I will get that done this morning. It’s a get the circular saw out job which needs to be done outside but the sun is now out, the birds are singing away. I might as well get on with it.

Today we pick up Anne’s new car. The milkman came at four nineteen this morning and left two pints. Usual guy.

A bit of fixture collision coming up next weekend. Wales v Ireland and Liverpool v Man City. I’ll be able to watch some of one of the games on catchup.

Also it was observed that the Red Arrows had six planes out when they were practising. Last Friday it was only five. I wonder when they will have the full team out?

the time is right

Sunday, March 3rd, 2024

No milkman today. Sunday. We do need some though so someone will have to pop out this morning to buy a pint or two. Might not be me. THG reminded me that I was only insured on her car by virtue of the fully comp insurance on my own. This morning the place where I normally park my car is empty. The car, as you know, has gone.

I feel no regret about selling the Defender. Somehow it feels liberating, almost like being a student again. As a student I went everywhere by public transport, or walked. No responsibilities. No thoughts to the future. It’s almost as if the direction of travel is back to that era.

It was great to have driven the Defender for the four years or so that I had it. People would ask me cynically why I needed 4×4 gas guzzler and I would reply “because it can drive through rivers, up mountains and across deserts and glaciers”. “When would I ever use it for that” they would reply. They didn’t understand. I could do it if I needed to.

There was only really once where I did need the off road capabilities of the car. Last autumn before catching the ferry home from France I filled in some time visiting the Normandy beaches. On one occasion I set the sat nav for one of the beaches, Gold maybe, or Omaha, and found myself driving down a farm track into a field full of sunflowers. I should have been suspicious but every farm track seemed to have a name which gave it some sense of being a real road so I figured Waze must know what it was doing.

It didn’t. I could see the beach a few hundred metres away on the screen but between me and it was nothing. My choice was reversing half a mile along a narrow, high sided Normandy farm track or going into the field and turning around. Fortunately there was around five metres around the edge of the field with no crops which was just enough for me to do a three point turn. For the Land Rover this presented no problem. 

It was good while it lasted and I have now moved on. The next step is to sell the campervans. We decided that after eight years of being in the vintage campervan rental business it had run its course. The vans are going to be sold and the business closed. 

Running a VW campervan business has been a very cool thing to do. There have been highs and lows, but mostly highs. It felt great when people would bring back a campervan and rave about the experience. Some would not want to hand the keys back and some customers return year after year. 

The lows have been the occasional breakdown but that is all about how you handle it. We would give people a full refund and fortunately our hirers were fairly phlegmatic about those situations. After all these are fifty year old vans and things could go wrong.

Overall the experience was very positive but we now feel comfortable about getting our freedom back during the summer months. The time is right.

Selling my car and deciding to sell the vans has provided a remarkable sense of release, of moving on. I’m quite excited about what the future might bring. I have some ideas about things to do and I still have project Netxis project which although it has its ups and downs as businesses do it is mostly good fun. I think I have the balance right.

In the meantime it is nearly six thirty in the morning, dawn has arrived, the birds are singing and it is time to make THG a cup of tea.

Yay it’s the weekend

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024

Yay it’s the weekend. Yay. THG has made the tea and I caught some ‘Farming Today’ on the wireless. What’s not to like. I like listening to farming today. We were all farmers, if you go back far enough so it is in our blood.

I like the idea of having a cow. Someone else would have to look after it but the fresh milk, butter and cheese it would produce would be v nice. Not sure it works like that. Even @chris Conder who has loads of cows gets her cheese and butter from a shop. Fresh milk though.

What are people up to today? After breaking the fast I plan on making a steak pie for tomorrow’s lunch. Slow cook the day before makes for a tasty pie. I make a good pie. Shop bought pastry though. THG is off to the park run.

When I were a farmer, a few hundred years ago, I’d be out mending a fence this morning. Then I’d have to fix the wheel on the cart. Nuisance that it broke. These things happen. At some stage I’d check up on the pigs. Already did the milking. Well, THG probably did that. Or the girl. Never ends. Always a job to do innit.

Handy having pigs. A plentiful supply of bacon which I like. At the moment I get it from Fosters butchers on Monks Road. My grandmother kept a pig in the sty at the bottom of the garden and the deeds of our house in Greetwell Gate said we were allowed to keep a pig. There was a sty in the back yard. It’s not there anymore. I knocked it down. Used the space more effectively. It wasn’t a big back garden.

This afternoon I have a few lads coming around to the shed. We will drink beer and talk bollocks, pardon the French. It’s what blokes do in a shed on a Saturday afternoon. One of the raisons d’etre of a shed. 

I realise that sometimes sheds are also used to store gardening equipment and I do have a pair of secateurs there that I occasionally use to trim the ivy off the fence panels around the side. A token bit of kit but this particular shed is more than just a garden store. We have another shed for that.

My shed is whatever your imagination wants it to be. At times, not that often,  it is an exercise studio. It is a global communications hub, a meeting room, an office, a recording studio and a place where I can entertain important guests and clients in a convivial environment. It might even one day be a workshop although the potting shed is a more suitable place to keep the as yet unbought lathe. I suspect I will never own a lathe. It is too far down the list of things to do with my time.

In the meantime I have breakfast to fix and a pie to make. I’m thinking maybe even rosti potato this morning. See how it goze. Ciao amigos.

A time to sit and reflect. Breakfast has been taken, as they might say in the posh country houses of yore, or even of today. I’d say I’ve had breakfast and am now sitting down with a cuppa easing into the day. All is well.

Our reasonably spacious drive is devoid of cars, THG having gone off to do her Saturday morning thing. I have time to plan.

How do you plan time? It’s quite an interesting thought. People have already put much effort into it. It’s why we have clocks. Then folk realised that our earthly time bears no relation to time anywhere else. Imagine a load of interplanetary pilots getting together on the planet Zog. Spaceships are parked up, they’ve had a few drinks and are now all coordinating the next meeting, this time on the outermost ring of the planet Xerxa in the UrsulaAndress galaxy.

What time shall we meet? It is now ten past three. No it isn’t it’s five past twenty seven! See what I mean. Every planet has different times. Someone will have suggested a solution but I don’t know what it is. I’m blowed if I’m going to adopt the Plutonian time standard. Our own earthly one is good enough, apart from the odd inconsistency such as year lengths and leap years. Hey…

In my case my time horizon reaches no further than the Paris Olympics. I have a few jaunts to plan before then – the Isle of Man and my annual trip to Antwerp. I like Antwerp although finding the right train from Brussels Midi can be a bit of a faff. Get on the wrong one and it takes a lot longer.

Thinking of driving this year. Overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam and then a mere hour and ten minutes in the car. I’ll probs book that over the next week or so. The ferry costs roughly the same as the train, ish.

Now banging out some tunes in the shed. Pie filling is in the oven on gas mark 2 or thereabouts. Il still very much pleuts. I don’t mind. It’s what Tilley hats are for. You might not notice but I’ve tidied up the shed a bit. Took a load of recycling to the brown bin out front. More to go but Rome wasn’t built in a day. On this basis I have another couple of centuries to get it done, assuming I am not thrown to the lions or a similarly fierce gladiator out to prove himself.

One thing I am on  notice of regarding time is getting THG’s candlesticks sorted. We bought some wood for the bases and they need affixing. Might need some more gorilla glue as I finished the last lot. Twill be done. I’ll pop out tomorrow morning. Manāna. The wood for the bases also needs cutting and the edges rounded. All in hand. Leave it with me.

Made a start on the candlesticks. Drilled holes for the candles but the bases still need cutting. Then went and chopped some kindling at the bottom of the garden but it started to rain so took shelter in the shed, natch. In between I did get the chichen curry on the go (it’s a scouse chicken).

THG has found some snooker on the box. She can sniff it out from afar. Even if the telly is not tuned in to the right channel she can hear the click of the balls on a different station. Uncanny. Radar O’Reilly has nothing on her.

This is a seniors tourney from Dublin on channel five. Not sure I’ve ever seen channel 5 on the tv before. I tell a lie. All Creatures Great and Small. Not sure about watching the telly in the middle of the afternoon. I guess it isn’t weekday daytime TV. When I were a lad, me dad and I always watched Grandstand on Saturday afternoon.

He came at ten past four

Friday, March 1st, 2024

He came at ten past four this morning. I looked at the clock when I heard the porch door open. After depositing his goods he moved on. Usual bloke. I’m not normally awake when he comes. The process of looking at the clock involves opening one eye briefly then, presumably, going back to sleep. Thassit.

Today is St David’s Day. Dydd Gwyl Dewi. Dewi Sant. As a Davies I am named after him. Our family hails from West Wales, Carmarthenshire mostly. In some parts twenty five percent of census records showed Davies as a surname. This stems from the fact that many children were named after St David and in the days before surnames were used then sons might be called Dewi ap Dewi or David son of David. David’s became Davies. There ya go.

This does make life more difficult when tracing family trees. Church records did not have surnames. Also many church records have missing periods of coverage.This is where I have faltered in my own family tree research, not really touched for ten years but due for a renewal of energy. I need to spend some time on the ground in West Wales. Soon.

Il fait orrible out there. Absolutely pelting it down. Might just as well be in Wales. Picked my car up from the menders, again, and thence to Waitrose to acquire a bean salad for lunch. Had a cawfee in the caff there.

It’s quite interesting to watch people when you are sat on your own in a caff reading the Waitrose magazine. That last bit is v sad innit. I only really picked the mag up because it is useful for lighting fires. We haven’t had a paper delivered for thirty years – using it to light the fire was one of the side benefits, especially with the Sunday Times which was an inch thick.

There was a granny and grandson combo sitting at the high table in the window. I assume she was a granny – soz if I got that wrong. The kid kept asking questions. Then a couple of women were sat in a booth discussing work stuff. Lots of paper on the table. One of them was very definitely in charge. The curious me wanted to know what they were talking about but I wasn’t so interested to make any effort to find out.  In the next booth a bloke sat there on a conference call using his laptop. Huh.

All the booths were occupied so I sat at a middle table sipping my coffee and staring at the rain. Tis a valid enough use of time. Finishing the drink I zipped up my coat, bent my head into the weather and walked to the car.

Let it be known I am now carless. I do have the use of wheels as I can borrow THG’s but I’ve decided I don’t need one meself. We as a family only need one car between us and hopefully it will encourage me to walk/cycle places, primarily to Waitrose. We live in town so I can walk to the shops/pub. The only place typically I go on business is London and I use the train so I don’t need a car for that and could always hire one from time to time if I was going somewhere other than the smoke. Trains get you most places you want to go.

I am expecting that this is the end of an era. I’ve been thinking how I can make my own small contribution to the global warming crisis and decided that not owning a car is the way ahead. I can’t see that an electric car is the way. We will at some stage also install solar panels.

I owned my first car in around 1984 or 85. It was a mini. UGC418M. Since then I’ve been through a variety of company cars and then a Jeep, a Jag and the Land Rover Defender. That’s okay.

The Defender was starting to get pricey to run, not least because the dealer charges £150 an hour labour. I am experimenting with how much we can really live on. I have expensive tastes.

Feels strangely liberating, not having a car. I was never really a car person.

same bloke

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024

Wednesday, stardate twenty eighth of February twenty twenty four, year sixty two month three. Actually it is year sixty three, month three. I will be sixty three in December.

That’s a lot of years innit? A lot of numbers. How did that happen? I don’t really do the age thing although when joints creak during both the standing up and sitting down process it isn’t something you can totally ignore. No beaming up yet though Scotty. Hey…

Just switched the heating on in the shed. I have a process. I put the pot of tea down, switch on the heating and then fire the mac into life. I’m sure y’all have something similar unless you have to go into an actual office in which case the heating and lights are probs already on and you switch on your laptop before heading to the kitchen to make a cuppa. One of the kids has a barista in his workplace. Posh ou quoi? Addictive. Music industry.

Londoners also tend to get into their office later, what with their longish commute an all. But today it was gone nine thirty ey em for me – I did a chunk of stuff on the sofa in the snug whilst finishing off cuppa number three. 

I have two ways of approaching work. Three if you include delegating everything. One is to do it straight away and the other is to ease into it as the day evolves. Maybe even leave it until the last minute. I know it will get done. 

Last night we had a Scouts committee meeting. As I am the chairman I usually delegate everything but on this occasion found myself agreeing to an action. I did most of it on my phone whilst the conversation went on around me and finished it off when I got home.

At that stage I spotted an email from “Head Office”, as Jones the Steam would say. Reacting to it would have distracted me from the football on the telly so this morning I spent twenty minutes on the sofa putting an answer together. That’s quite a long time for me, twenty minutes. Now, in the shed and having poured the tea, I am waiting for the ball to get rolling. The muse to kick in. Something will trigger it and off I’ll go. Not yet though.

Everything is about time, and our use of it. Use it wisely, grasshopper 🙂This morning the milk was delivered at four eighteen ey em. Same bloke.

Hiya all

Tuesday, February 27th, 2024

Hiya all. How are things this fine February morn. Well it isn’t that fine but February it is. Indeed. Still. Goodness me. Luvaduck. Blimey. Gosh. Innit. However there is no point in wishing time away, fast forwarding to spring proper. In fact there really is no point in having two least favourite months. January and February. That’s one sixth of the year, of your life, of time. 

How do we get to like the first two months of the year. Our forbears slept through them, probs. Conservation of energy and food supplies. We have a freezer and a Waitrose to supply us with such essentials as fresh kumquat, extra virgin olive oil and perfectly ripe avocados so we don’t need the conservation of energy bit so much.

Ok ok I know that the kumquat was picked on a north facing slope or grove somewhere in the southern hemisphere and flown overnight to a warehouse in the disunited kingdom but it comes with the Waitrose freshness guarantee, as does the avocado. They don’t really sell good olive oil in Waitrose plus it has a shelf life but let us not nitpick.

So enjoy February whilst you can, miserable as it may be. 

In other news I can’t find my passport. Fortunately I have two but the British one, the one with all the interesting vistas and stamps, has been put somewhere safe in the house and I can’t for the life of me remember where. OK this is not the end of the world. It expires next year and I have a perfectly good Irish passport that I can use but the stamps are worth having and it is also the passport associated with US Global Entry. Now I may never go to the USA again, who knows, but I still want to find the passport.

It will of course turn up somewhere and I will either say “ah of course I remember now, that’s where I put it” or “blimmin eck how did it get there”. Years ago I mislaid my wallet. I returned home after a very enjoyable school sausage sizzle in the Bull and Chain beer garden and put it down somewhere safe. Somewhere that burglars would not find. 

Took me a few weeks to find it and only after all the cards were cancelled and a new driving licence applied for. I only found it because I put my new wallet down in the same safe place on top of the old one. Doh!

before I make the tea

Tuesday, February 27th, 2024

Five minutes, 
before I make the tea.
Short minutes snatched,
no time wasted
My blurry eyes struggle
to make out words
spoken noiselessly without
applied thought.