Incentives and distractions

Posted on November 9, 2010 by BarryH

Monday morning I woke up at 06.00, 50 minutes before my alarm was set to go off.  I was unusually alert and focused ……… on the sound of a mouse in the roofspace above the bedroom.  It wasn’t moving about much but sounded very much like it was chewing through the coating on the cables to the light in the middle of the ceiling.  I stood on the bed and banged on the ceiling with the edge of my fist but to little avail.  An ‘Artex’ ceiling, all the rage when we moved into the house, makes pounding with a fist quite painful.  The mouse paused for a moment and then ignored me and carried on.   So I donned my rat catcher’s T-shirt, a present from Dai and the family, got out the step ladder, opened the hatch into the roofspace and went up to confront it.

On the case, Trapper Hankey

The first thing we did when we moved into the house in 1975 was to put a floor in the roofspace, the ‘roof’, ‘attic’ or ‘loft’ as we variously called it.  The reason for this was to have somewhere to store our boxes of stuff temporarily.  The previous house had been bigger and we had planned major redecorating in the new house so everything went up into the attic including large numbers of boxes of books.  Much of that stuff is still up there and is now part of the sedimentary process, added to by the vast amounts of stuff we have been pushing up there ever since on a regular basis.  The floor has long since disappeared.

The view of the roof when I stuck my head through the hatch

Taking a longer perspective

I clomped around sufficiently to deter the mouse which was doubtless moving around silently under the floor and through fibreglass insulation.  I guessed it had moved inside for the winter and the insulation provided a very welcome habitat.  It would have to be caught, no question about it.  But how?  I couldn’t even see the floor never mind place a trap.

We had been saying for years that we needed to get to grips with sorting the attic and have a major clear-out.  Having cleared houses after both our parents we knew how onerous it is and didn’t want the attic to be part of our bequest to our kids.  Enfys had made a start and got rid of a lot of stuff but I kept adding to it.  A particular problem was the accumulating cardboard boxes which stuff like computers, printers, microwave ovens, lawn mowers and so on came in.  They were put in the roof in case they needed to be returned during the 12 months warranty period.  They never were and the boxes were never thrown out.

Somehow we never really had the incentive to do anything about it.  It is a pretty unpleasant task and it is amazing how many other things distracted us from the task in hand.  Cleaning the loo with a toothbrush held between the teeth (not that we ever did!!!) would have been a good enough reason to abandon attic-clearance after even a few minutes.

Now, suddenly, at 06.00 on a wet, cold morning November morning the incentive was there.  Get rid of the stuff ASAP or risk have the mice eat the sheathing off every electric cable in the loft.

Rarely have I been so galvanised by such a daunting and unpleasant task.  When I went downstairs to have breakfast and opened the kitchen blinds it was obvious that the day was not going to be one for tackling the jungle which the garden now is.  It was dripping with water, there apparently having been such heavy rain in the night that it woke the neighbours up.  Why is it I hear a mouse chewing in the roof and yet sleep through storms?  Once when we were in Greece, I went down to breakfast in the hotel and people were talking about the thunderstorm in the night, the worst any of them had ever known. I never heard a thing.   Pausing only to eat breakfast and take a couple of photos of the dripping landscape, I headed straight for the roof.

Douglas Fir at the end of the garden dripping with water

Dripping washing-line spinning in the breeze

Knowing where to begin was a problem.  I cleared a small space next to the hatch as a manoeuvring area and then set-to to clear the detritus from above the bedroom where I had heard the mouse.  Under a chair I found a cat which had been keeping one eye on things but to no effect.

Keeping one eye on the problem but to no avail

The next few hours are blanked from my mind as too unpleasant to want to recall.  I collected the decent quality boxes, stuffed smaller ones inside larger ones and made two floor-to-ceiling piles of them behind the door in the hall ready for Ruth and Tim to take back to pack their possessions to put in storage.  I loaded rubbish straight into the car and by the end of the afternoon had enough to take to the tip.  The result was a metre square section of floor strewn with mouse droppings and chewings but otherwise clear of rubbish.  And here I placed the mouse trap in the hope that baiting it with a few sunflower seeds would do the trick. I may have to increase the tastiness of the morsel on offer.  Time will tell.

Setting the trap: note the wire coat-hanger reinforcing the walls of the trap - our super-mice eat their way out. And one last chance for the cat.

But the roof clearance must continue.

 

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Positive temporal discontinuity

Posted on November 6, 2010 by BarryH

As noted at the end of the latest post, after trying to get hold of a replacement keyboard for my Asus netbook for more than 2 months, thinking on several occasions that I was on the verge of success, finally sourcing one in Sweden, and then at the last minute to again have a rift in the space/time continuum open up and only to have it disappear somewhere crossing the North Sea, a package plopped onto my doormat two days ago.

It did indeed contain the keyboard.  And it was the right one.  As evidenced by the fact that I am posting this blog using it.

As further evidence that there is an ongoing temporal discontinuity, after all this time waiting it took less than 5 minutes to remove the fruit-juiced keyboard and install the new one.  This time the temporal discontinuity worked in my favour.  However, it must be said that the process was greatly helped by the fact that Mike came over to help with the distinct advantage that he has two fully functional thumbs.

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Rift in the space/time continuum

Posted on November 3, 2010 by BarryH

I have been a fan of Dr Who since the first series when the entire hall of residence which I was in at University gathered in the Television Room every Saturday evening (yes, we had one television for the entire Hall population of 250 students) and hid behind the communal sofas.  Or cheered loudly at appropriate high points.  The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master …. The Doctor has kept the world safe from them all ever since.  But it is only comparatively recently that The Doctor has had to contend with problems with the space/time continuum.

I think it must be about time for another series because there seems to be trouble with space/time continuum again.  It has struck me several times recently how time and space are breaking down.  It is, frankly, not a little disconcerting.

Looking first at discontinuities in time.

Followers of my Greek Odyssey may remember that towards the end of August, the 25th to be precise, I succeeded in tipping fruit juice into the keyboard of my netbook, thereby rendering it unusable and necessitating the use of a plugged-in USB keyboard which I bought for the modest sum of €12.  Immediately I started trying to source a replacement keyboard.  Amazon offered several for sale but not the one for my model of Asus.  After a few days a guy in the local computer shop on the island tracked one down which he ordered from Athens, delivery in two weeks.  Stretched to 3 weeks, then 4, then 5 …….  When I flew home at the beginning of October it still hadn’t arrived.  Several times optimism was raised but then, unaccountably but frustratingly, everything seemed to move backwards several places.

In a sense this is not surprising in Greece where time is a concept to be debated rather than a real time driving force.  “I’ll be with you in a minute” from a waiter means “sometime tonight”.   “It may take a couple of days” from a provider of goods or services means “probably before you fly home next week”.  The delay in the arrival of the keyboard was blamed on the lorry drivers strike on the mainland.  But I think that is the excuse being put forward to hide deeper, darker shifts in the physical laws of the universe.  I hoped for the best but, though very disappointed, was not really surprised it was a no-show.

Once I got home it would be a different thing.  Just as the hole in the ozone layer is centred over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean so I reckon the rift in the space/time continuum is centred over Greece.

I hoped that once I moved away from this zone of temporal discontinuity I could get by with a little help from my friends (someone should use that as a song lyric).  Sure enough I eventually tracked down a company which could supply a replacement keyboard.  Based in Sweden their web site listed 5,194 keyboards for various models of Asus netbooks and laptops.

The existing keyboard had to be taken out in order to find the model number for confirmation.  Which presented problems of its own. I had tracked down instructions on how to replace the keyboard long before I tracked down the keyboard.  So it was easy!?.   Afraid not.  Two problems.  The first was that the very comprehensive step-by-step video forgot to mention that there are two adhesive pads in addition to four clips holding the keyboard in place and that therefore a modicum of brute force had to be employed.  The second problem was my fat thumb.  Since I cut the end off it with a bench saw it has been less than dexterous, more, well, gauche.  In the event it took four hands to do the job with Tim’s fully functional, dexterous fingers being the key to the process.

Armed with this key information the order for the replacement was placed 9 October, expected delivery 10-14 days. Brimming with optimism I felt confident that Tim would be able to help fit the new keyboard when I went back up to Stockport 2 weeks later.  Not to be.

It is now nearly 4 weeks since I ordered it and it has still not arrived.  Latest information is that it has left Sweden on board a lorry bound for Gatwick.  But on the internet tracking site the couriers flagged up a problem and I had to contact them to confirm the address.  Just as well I tracked it on the internet otherwise it would have disappeared into the rift in the time/space continuum forever.  At the end of the second phone call to the couriers I wheedled out of them the fact that the address was a problem because the post code had been put in the wrong field.

Arguably the package has already disappeared into the discontinuity but being an optimist I am hopeful that The Doctor is in there tackling the problem as I type and in the not-too-distant future a replacement keyboard for my Asus PC Eee 1005HA will be spat out on my doorstep while I’m actually still alive, and at home, to sign for it.  In the meantime I am staying in one place so that I will be here when the courier calls and so that I don’t follow the package into the oblivion it may be bound for.

My concern is that just as the hole in the ozone layer has been getting bigger (though recent evidence seems to indicate it may now be shrinking again), so the rift in the space/time continuum has been getting bigger and is now embracing Western Europe.  An alternative theory, and the one that I favour, is that having spent several months in Greece in the Summer I am still under its influence.

The evidence for this assumption occurred on Sunday.  But on this occasion time was shortened, or even moved backwards.  I went to church in the morning, potched around doing stuff in the house and garden in the afternoon and then decided I needed some fresh air and a walk.  The sky had cleared so I thought I would go up the mountain behind the house to the Folly.  Though the sun was out of sight behind the ridge, when I set out there was a glow in the sky above it which hinted that there could be a good sunset but it would be touch and go whether I got to the top of the ridge in time to see it.  That was when time seemed to concertina.  I remember nothing until suddenly I was on top of the ridge camera in hand and looking at a very spectacular sunset, a great rift in the clouds if not in the sky itself.

Is this the rift in the space/time continuum? Or just a glorious sunset?

Though I have been back home a month now, I still have a residual fitness from the physical demands of everyday-living half way up a near vertical hillside on Symi and from walking virtually every day in the mountains.  But that seems scarcely enough to account for the seeming complete absence of elapsed time between closing the front door and arriving on the ridge-top.  Once there, time proceeded at the normal kind of pace, the sunset lasting for just a few minutes but seeming to last for ages because it absorbed attention so completely.  But that is very simply explainable by the laws of time-perception as put forward in ‘The Magic Mountain’ by Thomas Mann, as I have wittered on about previously.

Discontinuities in space?  Much more difficult to pin down but when I was in Stockport a couple of weeks ago we went to the morning service in Platt church in South Manchester and then I took my camera for a walk.  I could be mistaken but within a few minutes I seemed to be transported to Cambridgeshire or somewhere else in affluent Flat England.  Not only that but I’m sure I recognised one of the ecclesiastical sculptures which featured in ‘Blink’, probably the best Dr Who episode of all time.

Is this rural Cambridgeshire? Or a park in South Manchester?

Platt Church. But you can never be sure when ...........

.......... there are characters from Dr Who around. DON'T BLINK!!!

Another example yesterday.  I was furiously digging away trying to clear a section of the vegetable garden before it rained when I spotted a lizard.  But what was it doing there?  They are an everyday sight on the Greek islands basking on rocks in the hot sun and then scurrying away so fast when disturbed as to be difficult to photograph.   This one was very clearly in the wrong place.  Because they are cold-blooded they need the warmth of the sun to survive.  This one could scarcely move. I had to pick it up and put it somewhere out of the way of the garden fork.

Scarcely able to move in the cold, this poor lizard is definitely in the wrong place.

Both of these examples could lend support to my theory that I have been so long in the space/time discontinuity that is Greece that its effect has followed me back to the UK.  Suggestions that Platt Fields just happen to look like Cambridgeshire and that I had inadvertently disturbed the lizard’s hibernation are just too prosaic, lacking in imagination.  Imagination is, after all, one thing which differentiates us from animals.

PS.  Just as I was about to post this blog a knock on the front door and it was the courier with a package which I take to be my replacement keyboard.  Weird timing or what?!?!  Perhaps the space/time discontinuity spat it out again. More probably The Doctor intervened, though I didn’t see the cameras.

 

Posted in Autumn, new technology, Reflections | Leave a comment

Remembering

Posted on October 28, 2010 by BarryH

Posted in Autumn, Reflections | Leave a comment

Reaping the fruits, Paying the price

Posted on October 28, 2010 by BarryH

Many decisions involve consequences which might not be fully appreciated at the time.

When I planned to go to Greece for the summer I knew that for the first time in very many years I would not be growing vegetables, that I would not be able to harvest the fruit, and that the garden would continue to grow.  I also knew that it would be unfair to ask anyone to look after the chickens for such a long period and that they would have to be re-homed.   I didn’t really appreciate the full impact of these things.

There would be no point in planting veg to be harvested in the summer as I wouldn’t be here to harvest it never mind to eat it.  I had covered most of the vegetable terraces with weed suppressant fabric to keep the worst of the weeds at bay.   I also planted winter veg to be ready when I got back.  However I underestimated the amount of ongoing care which goes into keeping an eye on winter veg to ensure a good crop.  The onions and garlic grew well but I wasn’t here to harvest them and most of them went rotten in the wet August.  The sprouts and red cabbage didn’t do very well at all and yields are very low while the weeds around them flourished.  Beetroot did amazingly well but were ready before I got back and one of my neighbours harvested them as I had asked – better that someone had the benefit of them.  A very unproductive year, no French beans to go in the freezer for the winter, no courgettes to make ratatouille to freeze for the winter, no tomatoes to make soups to restock the freezer.

We always harvest large amounts of soft fruit:  raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries , blackcurrants, red currents, rhubarb, and this year for the first time blueberries. We not only eat these all summer but freeze large quantities for the winter, usually at least 40 pounds.  We also have large crops of apples which we store to eat and cut up windfalls to make smoothies.  This year I have salvaged a few pounds of windfall apples and a few handfuls of Autumn raspberries.  The rest fell and rotted. There is still fruit in the freezer from last year but the stock has not been replenished at all.

The garden has indeed continued to grow.  Lawns and hedges have been well taken care of by Ed from church and are under control.  The weed suppressant fabric has done its job reasonably well but weeds are growing tall around the edges.  Elsewhere the garden is covered in weeds which have gone to seed creating a problem for future years.  With the generally grey, wet weather it is a daunting prospect to get it under control again.

Sounds a strange thing to say but I miss the hens.  Looking after them wasn’t onerous but imparted a simple structure to the day which began with feeding them and letting them out and ended with collecting the eggs and shutting them in.  The daily routine has gone and with it the impelling urge to get out of bed early in the morning to feed them.  Since I got back I open the kitchen blinds in the morning and my instinct is to go down the garden to the hen run.

Do these unexpected consequences of being away in the summer make me regret going?  Not at all.  It is a matter of finding how to deal with the issues they raise.  In any case they are, in the greater scheme of things, mere inconveniences.

Of much greater moment is the unexpected consequence of the decision over 40 years ago to get married.  At the tender young age of 24 the words “until death us do part” trip glibly off the tongue.  There is a nominal acknowledgement that one could get run over by a bus but, other things being equal, the anticipation was that we would continue together into the distant and difficult to envisage future.  If we had to put a finger on the implications of what this would mean in practical terms we would ferret around in our imaginations and come up with something along the lines of growing decrepit and unable to look after ourselves.  The thought of death is in the context of the first person singular – “I might die”.  We tend not to think of our life-partner dying.

For some years before she was diagnosed with cancer Enfys would now and again mention the possibility of dying before me and I would simply pooh-pooh the thought and point to the average life expectancy of men compared with women.  We would briefly discuss what would happen if one of us did die, usually in the context of moving house.  I was all for staying here, Enfys was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to cope with the garden.  For me at least, there was no reality about the discussion, it was entirely theoretical.

But it isn’t theoretical anymore.  It has happened and the consequences of it happening were unexpected and are difficult to deal with and very painful.

Do these consequences make me now regret having got married, with the emotional commitment that involved?   Not for one second! It would be a very sad life if we didn’t make commitments because we were afraid of unforseen  consequences.  But  more than that, the difficulties weigh light against 40 years of happiness and 2 great kids (and 4 granchildren).  If I knew then how difficult it is now would I have got married all those years ago?  Lead me to it!!!

I finished work on 19 August 2005.  When I got back from my leaving do at 20.00 Enfys was sitting on the balcony having a coffee, a magnificent sky behind her.  I knew then that it was a portent.  We had 4 good years after that.

Why am I getting so heavy in this blog?  It is a year ago today that Enfys died.

The sky on the day I finished work to be with Enfys

I’ll try to get back to normal grumpiness next time.

Posted in Reflections | 1 Comment

Taking a cold bath

Posted on October 23, 2010 by BarryH

I thought about calling this blog ‘Grumpy Old Barry’ but decided I didn’t want to be associated with a negative image.  And I didn’t like the acronym.  However, there are some things which deserve to be complained about.

Take the new boiler as a case in point.  For the second time since I got back from Greece, on Tuesday night I couldn’t persuade it to give me more than 3 inches of hot water in the bath.

When we moved into the house in 1975 the first thing we did was to renovate the kitchen which meant removing the old cast iron anthracite-fueled boiler in the corner with its 9 inch diameter flu pipe and 1½ inch diameter copper water pipes.  We replaced it with a work-horse of a gas boiler, the Ideal Standard, and at the same time replaced the cast-iron radiators and 1½ inch copper pipes with steel radiators and micro-bore pipework.

The boiler served us extremely well for 30 years, requiring no maintenance or repair apart from the replacing of the thermo-coupling every 7 or 8 years or so. It delivered lashings of hot water and bath-time was a real pleasure. I like my bath very hot so I come out  lobster red.

But the boiler was ‘inefficient’ by modern standards. What finally triggered us to do something about it was that the radiators eventually clogged up with deposits, a problem exacerbated by the fact that when they were installed the ‘latest fittings’ had been used with inlet and outlet at the same end.  A basic working knowledge of hydraulics tells you that’s not a clever idea, there just cannot be enough water flow.  Having become increasingly cynical I now need to be convinced  that the ‘latest model’ of anything is not just some marketing ploy rather than better technology or an improvement.

The radiators trundled on for the 30 years, gradually, imperceptibly, becoming ineffective.   Then, finally, the lack of flow as the gunge (a technical plumbing term I believe) sank to the bottom of the radiator and became ever deeper and more solid, meant the radiators virtually stopped heating up at all.

So in January 2007 we decided that it made sense to replace the radiators and install a new, more cost-effective boiler which would save us money and be trouble-free into our dotage.  I must admit we were seduced by the thought of saving money on fuel.  We were required by a change in legislation to have a condensing boiler, an environmental protection measure designed to reduce inefficient fuel consumption. The theory is that the boiler only heats the water we use and not a tankfull of water which gradually loses its heat.  It also provides hot water on demand.  Both more efficient and more economical.  In theory.

Didn’t work out like that.  It took two days to remove the old system and install the new and then …. the boiler wouldn’t work. It was a cold January and Enfys was in the middle of chemotherapy treatments.  We had a gas fire and an open log fire so we could heat the house reasonably well.  But for a week hot water in the kitchen was provided by boiling the kettle and we borrowed the 10 gallon tea-urn from church and I built a wooden frame to position it over the end of the bath so we could have hot baths.  Health and safety would most definitely not have approved but that was the last time we had reliable and consistent hot water in the house.

When eventually the manufacturer’s heating engineer came and replaced the motherboard in the boiler’s computer the central heating worked fine, very responsive, heats the house quickly and satisfactorily.  But the hot water has been a problem from then until now.   The hot supply to all taps and the shower is completely unreliable.  Sometimes it’s fine, other times it runs cold after a minute or so.  I’ve reverted back to boiling the kettle to do the washing up.  I sometimes give up trying to fill the wash basin in the bathroom and either settle for a cold wash or boil the kettle.  I have stood shivering while I try to get the water hot again when the shower turns cold on me.  Baths are a lottery, being both tedious and stressful as I try to juggle the flow to get enough hot.

I had heard from a number of people that by their nature combi boilers take much longer to produce a basin or bath full of hot water compared with the conventional hot water tank. That was expected if not welcomed.  The water is heated as it flows through the pipe and the slower the flow the hotter the water which comes out of the tap.  Therefore I was prepared for the bath to take longer than previously to fill.  But I was not prepared for the flow of hot water to keep going icy cold.  This means that I have to constantly monitor the temperature and keep turning the tap off in the bath, turn the tap on in the wash basin and when, if, it goes hot again, then turn on the bath tap.  I find it a very irritating.  When I climb out of 3 inches of lukewarm water having spent 20 minutes unsuccessfully trying to get enough hot water to have a bath, I have caught myself murmuring the odd swear word about what the Cornish would call ‘fangled’  combi boilers.  Not convinced by them at all!

I used to really enjoy a nice hot bath at the end of the day.  When I was in Greece it was one of the things I was looking forward to about coming home. Now my heart sinks at the prospect.  Genuinely!

Being brutally honest about it, will I want the faff of going through this in 20 years time or, indeed, will I still be up to the intellectual challenge.  Having a bath should not require successful completion of a training course in Quantum Heating Hydraulics.  Schools are now running classes on ‘how to use a bus’ (they even issue certificates!!!!). Perhaps evening classes should be run on ‘how to have a bath’.  Or, better still, Colleges of Further Education, or Universities as they now seem to be called, could offer domiciliary training visits to coincide with the monthly visit by the Corgi engineer carrying out maintenance and repair.

Arguably the new boiler uses less gas than the old one because it spends less time heating water so in that sense at least it is more efficient.  Before I went to Greece in May I changed energy suppliers and now I’m on a pay-as-you-go tarrif, paying only for the energy I use with no standing charge, so I guess I’m saving money on fuel bills.  However, I also had a water metre installed on the basis that as a one person household  I use little water and there is little point in paying the water bill for a family home.  But that doesn’t take account of the fact that at the moment I’m pouring tens of gallons of water down the drain every day trying to get the taps to run hot.  Hardly efficient.

So is it a fault with this particular boiler?  Maybe a ‘Friday afternoon’ job?  Or is it endemic to condensing or combi boilers?  I don’t know.  All I can say from my experience is that the enforced switch to condensing/combi boilers is not the fuel-efficient, money- saving, environment-protecting measure it was supposed to be.  It is close to being a nightmare.

Would I recommend combi boilers?  No way!  I would want to explore the efficiency of factory-insulated water tanks and a combination of electric heating and solar panels.  But that is getting  a bit technical for a blog.  And there seems to be no choice now in the UK.

The maintenance engineer is coming again next week for the umpteenth time, I’ve lost count as to just how many, to try to sort it out.  I’m glad that for the first time ever I took out an extended warranty and maintenance contract.

In the meantime, if you see me in the street and cross to the other side, I’ll know why.  I do try my best with personal hygiene but the technology is against me.

Posted in Grumpy Old Men, new technology | Leave a comment

Keeping plants can be dangerous

Posted on October 20, 2010 by BarryH

I was the subject of an unprovoked attack in the Blue House yesterday.

For those who don’t know, the Blue House is a green house which is Blue.  And Big.  It’s not a typical domestic green house but rather a kind of environment for Mediterraneran and other arid plants, most of them planted in the ground, getting big and very spiky.  It was built in 2003 and if you want to see what it was like then and how it has developed since, take a look at http://www.cig.canon-europe.com/a?i=CLlaXzETLC

In the winter it is loaded up with other tender plants, mostly cacti and succulents which live outside in pots in the summer.  So with frosts forecast and looking likely for this week it had become a matter of urgency to clear out the dead foliage which accumulated over the summer.

There are lots of different types of plant in the Blue House, the majority of them plants with a point, or several hundred points. Most of them now having sunk their roots deep enough to grow without any watering.  One cactus is 8 feet tall with spines up to 2 inches long.  Some of the smaller ones have doubled in size over the summer. All, as I say, very spiky.  It is becoming difficult to walk through the Blue House now without being attacked.  Even the small ones will nip at your ankles.

Doubled in size in 6 months

Still small but fattening up

8 foot tall, 2 inch spines

In particular two of the agaves have got so big that they are taking all the moisture from the soil and other plants like ivy leaved geraniums which had previously been rampant have died of drought while I was sunning myself in Greece.  That meant a lot of dead foliage to clear and agaves to cut back because they were encroaching significantly on the pathways.

Agave Arizonica, 5 feet high and 6 feet across having smashed its way out of pot

Blue agave, planted in rubble and doubled in size in 2 years

I have been putting it off but yesterday decided it had reached top of the priority list.  The clearing went well, though my arms bear witness to the contrary in the shape of numerous lacerations from the two giant agaves which I was trying to tame.  They have incredibly sharp and very hard points at the end of each leaf/pad or whatever they are called.  They could do pretty serious damage to any part of the body including the head because they are that big.  I put corks on some of the more threateningly positioned ones. What is a more frequently occurring problem, though not with such potentially serious consequences, is that the edges have barbs which are curving and so sharp that the latch onto the skin at the barest touch and are reluctant to let go.

ouch!

even more ouch!!

I cut off about 10 of the spiky pads, some over a metre long and congratulated myself on achieving less than usual blood-letting.  The clearing was going really well.  At least it went well until I was attacked, not by the agaves but quite unexpectedly by one of the prickly pear cacti which suddenly drove 50+ hair-like needles into my thigh, through my trousers.  I merely brushed against it but that was enough.

The one that did the damage

I then spent the best part of an hour trying to tease them out of my leg with tweezers, only to give up because I was pulling out far more hairs than cactus spines.  The spines were practically invisible in the hair even when I tried using a magnifying glass.  I’m glad no-one came to the door, or round to the back garden.  I was in my underpants sitting in the window to get better light, looking intently at my thigh through a magnifying glass, pulling out hairs with a tweezers, my face contorted with concentration and pain.

The thigh was looking increasingly inflamed and was becoming very sore.  It was clear that the tweezer method would not deal with the problem.  Then I had a brainwave!  It would mean sacrificing the hair at least temporarily but hopefully it would clear all the spines.  The solution? Depilatory hot wax.  I went to a neighbours’ where there are 4 females in the household to find out if any of them had any.  I figured I could coat the offended part and rip out cactus spines and hairs at one go, albeit rather painfully.  Good lateral thinking I thought.  But not to be.  They must all be shavers not waxers.  Or neither shavers nor waxers, I didn’t venture to enquire further.

However, they offered to go to the chemist and buy me the appropriate product in order to save me the humiliation.  An offer I readily accepted.  I wouldn’t like it to get round the neighbourhood that I use hot wax treatments.  It would get me a reputation I would rather not have.  The pharmacist, after a good laugh I’m sure, said hot wax would inflame the situation even more and recommended Magnesium Sulphate Paste as a ‘drawing ointment’.  So I’m trying a poultice made of that and Melonin dressings.  It hasn’t worked yet but here’s hoping.  Otherwise I might have to revisit the hot wax idea.

I’m thinking of taping off the Blue House like a police scene of crime.  It has certainly set back the Annual Clearance.

I had intended writing a Grumpy Blog today.  But I promise one next time.

Posted in extreme gardening | 1 Comment

Golden days and Autumn rambling

Posted on October 18, 2010 by BarryH

What a change in the weather!  From grey to gold in 24 hours.

I’m not really affected by the weather.  I have gone walking in torrential rain, including thunderstorms, because I enjoy it.  I love it when it is freezing hard and have climbed mountains when the waterfalls are frozen solid.  Heavy snow really makes me buzz.  So do strong winds: I’ve deliberately gone up mountains in winds of around 100 mph.  I revel in high temperatures and strong sunshine.  But I don’t like boring, grey weather. And unfortunately the seasons in the UK have started to become uniformly grey.  Since I got back from Greece that is how it has been.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s a form of SAD, about which there is a mass of information on the web.1 I like extreme weather of any sort.  Grey, claggy weather, flat calm, drizzle have never done anything for me but in recent years they make me gloomy, reluctant to go outside and do things, sap my enthusiasm.

So the last few days have been a tonic.  Golden sunshine on golden leaves.  People say with real feeling “I love Autumn” but what they mean is they love the bright colours of Autumn, which actually only last for a short time.  “Fall” in New England is much vaunted but in any one area is very short-lived, the peak lasting just a few days, with hotlines and websites to assist and encourage the visitor, and to prepare them for disappointment.2 The Forestry Commission in the UK carries an ‘Autumn Colour Watch’ on the web sites for its arboreta such as, most famously, Westonbirt’.3 Strong winds or heavy rain and the show is over in days, ruined.

So while it lasts it’s best to enjoy it.

I got up Saturday morning to a golden sunrise, like the one at the top of the blog.  I stood with the camera and watched the sun coming up over the hill.  .

The promise of things to come

Sun just peeping above the ridge

...... and clearing it

Then, as I have done for many years, after a quick coffee and slice of toast, I walked to the supermarket to do the grocery shopping.  But this time I took my camera and ambled there and back through the park.  It’s not Westonbirt but at the right time it can be very colourful in Autumn.  And not just oranges and reds, even the greens looked brighter in the clear light.  It’s very invigorating, really perks you up.

The Park Gates, now controversially painted green not black and gold

Home of the once famous Pontypool Rugby Club in its parkland setting

The bandstand

Leaves collecting under the trees

The bowling green

The sun was still shining on Sunday so I walked up the mountain towards the end of the afternoon.  Autumn colours still in evidence and at their best in the quality of light in the late afternoon as in the morning.

Holly berries add dazzling red

With the sun sinking lower towards the tops of adjoining mountains the high cirrus cloud was acting like a prism for a few minutes.  Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time …. and have a camera handy.

Low sun on cirrus cloud

Dramatic prism effect in the cirrus

I’m planning on adding a ‘Grumpy Old Man’ page to the blog but I think I’ll wait until the weather turns grey again.

1  See for example:

http://www.sada.org.uk/symptoms-of-SAD.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder

2  See for example http://gonewengland.about.com/od/fallfoliage/ht/htpeakfoliage.htm

Where the warning is given:  “Make your trip about more than just leaves so that you won’t be disappointed. There’s more to autumn fun in New England than peak foliage. Sip hot cider, pick apples, take a hay ride, hike, bike or attend a festival. Keep in mind, too, that even a hint of color can be beautiful”.

3   http://www.fowa.org.uk/your_westonbirt/autumn_colour_watch

Posted in Autumn, Grey Britain, Pontypool | Leave a comment

We are at the dawn of a new era, if only ……..

Posted on October 15, 2010 by BarryH

The title of an episode in Alan Plater’s Beiderbeck trilogy and a sentence repeated but never finished at a number of points throughout that and subsequent episodes.

And a new header for the new blog, a photo taken at dawn in October 2005, standing on the roof outside the back bedroom.

Just about sums things up at the moment.

It is certainly the dawn of a new era for me.  The months in Greece were something to look forward to through the winter months not only because the Greek islands are a great place to be but also because it represented a breaking away from the habituated pattern of life, and having broken the everyday habits and tram-line thinking, the opportunity to start afresh when I got back.

Now that’s over.  Now I’m back.

No doubt about it, the old habits are certainly broken in many ways. A lot of practical things rethought. Five months of a completely different lifestyle and I can now hardly remember what I used to do.  Simple things like breakfast.  Since I finished work in 2005 I had developed a set pattern once I got up.  Loo.  Wash.  Clean teeth.  Coffee (instant: I used to find it just about drinkable as long as I didn’t think of it as coffee and it was quick to make with no cleaning up coffee grounds after).  Reading and prayer.  Thick slice of toast and jam.  Cup of proper coffee.  Wash up.  Tidy the kitchen.  Check the e-mails.  Only then I was ready to face the rest of the day.

Now there is no clear pattern at all.  The instant coffee doesn’t often feature on the agenda.  Real coffee always does, I’ve still got to have my early morning fix.  Sometimes I have breakfast first thing.  Greek yoghurt, crushed almonds, honey and fruit appear on the breakfast menu some days, brought back from the habits of the summer.  Toast other days.  Occasionally both.

Other changes include far less use of the credit card.  Few places take plastic on the smaller Greek islands, even fewer since the increased prospect of tightening up on taxation, so I used cash the whole time.  Using cash gives better sense of the speed at which the cash is leaking out of the bank account.  Using the debit card gives almost as much of an awareness via on-line banking.

Months of shopping in family-owned supermarkets which are the equivalent of corner shops in the UK and buying fruit and veg which is kept at ambient temperature rather than chilled have changed my shopping habits.

So, the dawn of a new era, if only …………. I could put my finger on it.  At the moment it’s a bit like the current weather on the tops of the mountains – living in a fog, no clear view of where I’m going.

There are lots of tasks, things to do.  The minutia of everyday living.  Finding the best way to fit in with the family which is also at the dawn of a new era with the twins.  Writing up and publishing the walks recorded in the summer.  Publishing Enfys’s poems.  Going for walks in the mountains to keep body and mind toned up.  These all have to be accommodated and time organised so they all get done.  But no overall goal, no framework, no underlying purpose.

Over the summer the practicalities of everyday living have been much simpler.  The house was considerably smaller and I didn’t have responsibility for maintenance and improvement.  There was a tiny yard to keep swept not a quarter of an acre of garden to tame. I went walking in the mountains every day, uncluttered by man-made stuff.  Cleared the mind and meant more opportunity for the subconscious to mull away in the background and analyse things.

Looking back, life has been a series of clear and ‘given’ broad targets which provided the framework for everything else:

  • Go to school and pass exams in order to …. (14 years)
  • Go to university and pass exams in order to …. (6 years)
  • Get a job to pay the mortgage, put bread on the table and earn a pension so, as it turned out, I could …… (35 years)
  • Retire early to be with Enfys when she became ill. (5years)

Now, the dawn of a new era, if only ………… I knew what my purpose is now?

I guess it’s an issue for a lot of people when they retire, particularly blokes. Many of them have no real interests outside of work and when that finishes they have nothing to do but sit around reading the paper and drinking coffee.  That was why when I finished work in August 2005 I cancelled the Guardian.

No, it’s not that I’m stuck for things to fill my time.  Far from it.  I find I can’t do a fraction of the things which I need to do, never-mind the things I want to do.  The things which need to be done, household chores etcetera take a lot longer because now I have to do them all not share them.  I’ve become even more obsessively tidy but I don’t get hung up on it.  I can walk away and go and do the things I enjoy.  The sad thing is that one of the things I enjoy now is getting everything clean and tidy and I will have to make sure that doesn’t take over.

One significant change is that I will nolonger being going to a Greek class. We started learning Greek in 2001 after our first visit to the islands, shamed by not having a clue about the language, not even knowing whether the signs we saw said “Welcome, please close the gate” or “Beware of the mad dog”.  One year I went to two different classes.  I’m still nowhere near fluent despite going to a class in Cardiff University for the last 5 years.  But the numbers in the class have dwindled and it is nolonger viable.  Alternative arrangements may be made but for me it seemed a natural end to that particular process. Certainly the end of an era, if only …….. I had become more fluent in the language.

One big thing is on the near horizon.  Ruth and Tim have given up their jobs and on 1st December are going to Canada for a season’s skiing and to complete their instructor training.  So I’m going out stay with them for a month from mid-December.  Certainly a new thing to be away from home for Christmas.  Enfys and I talked about it some years ago, thinking about renting a chalet in the Alps but it didn’t happen.  But I see this as a one off, not the beginning of a new era.  I can see the headline now “Pensioner Denies Jet-Set Lifestyle”.

I wrote in my first blog on 18 April : “I’m very conscious of the fact that though “a man’s mind plans his way …. God directs his steps” (Book of Proverbs chapter 16 verse 9)”.  What that tells me is that though I may not be aware of what my purpose is now, God has a plan behind it all.  So while I find it a bit disturbing not knowing where I’m going or what I’m doing in the broader scheme of things, I’ll not fret about it.  At the moment I’ll just aim to chart a course through the various tasks to make sure they are all achieved.  Maybe the purpose will become clear.

Hope you like the new photo.

Posted in Autumn | Leave a comment

Life is not all a walk in the sunshine

Posted on October 9, 2010 by BarryH

After 5 months of rambling around the Greek Islands I’m now back in Grey Britain.

I flew back into Manchester on Sunday evening, got back home on Tuesday (5 October) and spent the next 2 days in a surreal, grey world.  I started to, unpack and kept interrupting the process, going meandering off on some tangential and similarly inconsequential task.  I did some washing, desperately trying to get my brain into gear to remember how the washing machine worked.  Once again I stood around in the loo wondering where the bin was for the paper.  I couldn’t remember where the crockery was: I found white porcelain side plates in a cupboard and caught myself thinking “those are nice” even though we had them about 5 years ago.  Like so much else, looking at them for the first time in 5 months was like a new experience.

Some things I had been looking forward to, particularly seeing the family again and meeting the twins for the first time.  Now that was a genuinely new experience.  I couldn’t get over how tiny they are.

Then on Friday I went for a walk with Mike.  I had been walking virtually every day for the 5 months I was in Greece but this was something altogether different.  I struggled to remember what it was like walking in anything but hot, arid conditions.  I decided I would have to wear boots but hadn’t appreciated how alien and uncomfortable they would feel in place of sandals.  The temperature was reasonably high but very humid so I wore shorts and a T shirt. All the right choices as it turned out.  Walking through wet grass and knee high bracken would not have been fun in sandals.  More than shorts and T shirt would have been unbearably sticky.

As we were coming from different directions Mike and I had arranged to meet at the telecom masts on the top of the mountain at 10.30.  I estimated it would take me 1 hour 20 to get there and so aimed to leave at 09.10.  I actually left at 09.35 due in large part to wandering around from distraction to distraction in a befuddled daze trying to remember what to take walking in the UK interspersed with doing odd bits of tidying of the detritus I had deposited when I got home.  Being pretty fit after all the walking I had been doing I went roaring off at high speed to try to make up for the late start.

Before I left the street I could see that the mountain was completely covered in thick mist and cloud.  Even from the shoulder half way up there was still no sign of the top, just grey cloud.

 

Believe it or not but there is a mountain up there

 

This section of mountain ha been badly damaged by motor bikes riding illegally on the common and the scarring seems to become worse every time I walk up this way.  Disappearing upwards into the thick mist it seemed all the more desolate and sad looking. Reminiscent of the municipal vandalism of bulldozed tracks on some of the islands but without the sunshine.

 

Damage to the mountain by illegal motorcycling

 

I reached the first telecom mast at the front edge of the mountain and couldn’t see even half its height.  From here the path becomes a broad track, levels off and becomes more deeply rutted by the bikes and 4×4’s biting into the thin peaty soil leaving numerous and extensive linear puddles.

 

Rutted track on the top of the mountain

 

It was not at all like walking in Greece.  The warm sunshine, hair-dryer breeze, cypress forests, deeply fissured limestone crags, herb-covered mountainsides, and the sweeping views of the coast and unbelievably blue sea were all missing.  But in order to make progress you still put one foot in front of the other.  It was nowhere near as pleasant as the walking over the last 5 months but then life is not all a walk in the sun.  What would there be to look forward to if life were all summer and sunshine.

No matter how gloomy the prospect, if you stop putting one foot in front of the other you never get anywhere.  So I continued to stride out, avoiding the deepest of the puddles and the mud, focusing on the short term prospect, meeting up with Mike and a pub lunch in Newbridge.

I reached the rendezvous at 10.53.  I knew the time to be correct because I had set my watch by the GPS which is as accurate as you can get and this particular watch keeps very good time.  I knew the place to be correct because there was a telecom mast and a gas pumping station in a compound.  Admittedly there was only the bottom part of a telecom mast but the top was presumably still attached and lost in the cloud rather than having been removed.  It reminded me of the philosophical debate our English teacher forced us to take part in on the subject ”if there is an explosion in the desert with no-one to hear and nothing to record it, does it make a noise”. It seemed a fatuous debate then and still does now.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly Mike wasn’t there.  We had arranged to be in Newbridge by 12.30 and as he had estimated it to be 2 hours walking from the mast he might well, quite understandably, have set off.  This was confirmed by a guy coming out of the compound who said he had seen someone answering the description leaving about 10 minutes earlier.

I followed on down the track, still unable to see more than a few yards ahead.  I walked as briskly as my be-booted feet would tolerate.  Now I was out of the long grass, brambles and bracken, sandals would have been far more comfortable but then you’ve got to prepare for the whole journey not just bits of it.  I decided to try to use my mobile phone to make contact so I stopped to dig it out of the depths of the rucksack, turned it on only to get an answerphone message which led me to conclude that I had an old number nolonger in use.  On one of the few occasions I try to use new technology it failed me.

After about 15 minutes of gradually losing height the mist cleared slightly and I could see a lone figure half a mile or so ahead.  With a following wind I cupped my hands and shouted with loud drawn out syllables alpine style “Maaaaaaaiiiiiiiike”.  I thought the figure paused but then the mist closed in again.  But it was Mike, and he had heard my bellowing and stopped to wait.  A triumph for traditional ways of communication.  He had shouted back but the wind took his words the other way.  There was probably some guy in Crumlin wondering who was shouting him.

It turned out that Mike had left the rendezvous at 10.54 on his Blackberry which, when we checked, was showing the same time within a minute as my watch so he must have left a matter of seconds before I arrived.  I guess we had been only 10’s of yards apart at that point but because of the mist we couldn’t see each other.

It’s now 18.00on Sunday and I have been back in the UK exactly a week. Despite repeated forecasts of fine, sunny weather and temperatures 20o plus the grey weather continued for several days and then this afternoon it cleared to give a fine autumn day of warm sunshine.  Maybe rambling around here might not be too bad after all.  Now and again.

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