Kitchen interuptus

This job is taking 10 times longer than I’d hoped so it’s been a boring slog of sanding, filling wet-rotted wood, and painting, painting, all the time painting. And then I just get set for an intersting job and realise I haven’t got a 4.5 mil drill bit. Back in the car to B&Q….again.

A tune that keeps popping into my head is: “I second that emulsion.”

Light relief next week though as Morten arrives on Monday. (Hope you are good at refitting kitchen drawers mate). I will post a regular update of socials if Mort can steal some time from Jet.

And I will start the ‘now and then’ series of pictures for your entertainment. Wanna see an old one of me in the mountains wearing a snoopy hat? Better start voting now for your favourites.

Have a good holiday all.

Courier pigeon

Great excitement at Troy Towers this morning. The long-awaited double CD entitled Bird Songs and Calls of Britain and Northern Europe with accompanying field guide by Geoff Sample arrived by courier. Rock on!

I wasn’t aware that blackbirds could mimic sounds like starlings do, but there’s one that sits on top of the house opposite who has distinctive catchphrase which makes me smile. It sounds like “Bring a stool, bring a stool.” (…or possibly “bloke’s a fool, bloke’s a fool”)

Anyway, I shall add the songbird running order to my iPod alongside Gerry O’Connor’s banjo lessons.

God that’s so difficult my brain is bleeding. My poor, tortured banjo teacher came out with a great one liner this afternoon after tolertating my persistent inability to follow a simple beat. “If you hit the wrong note it’s jazz but if you get the wrong tempo it’s Jayzus Christ!”

I also had a rather amusing Two Ronnies moment when I was trying to get new kitchen doors. I’d just been through all the permutations of size, packs, style, colour, hinges et al when it came to handles. “What kind d’you want?” asked the assistant in curt Barkeresque fashion. “Not really sure, what kind have you got?” I asked innocently. She ran through a list of about 15 styles like a train stop announcement, suggesting she had been through the routine a million times. “Well, let me see. Plain bow foot please,” answers I.

“Aint got ‘em,” comes the repost.

Blog tarts

I see…a couple of days without posting and the stats drift away. Ah yes, I’ve been keeping an eye on your viewing habits..

Well sorry but I just haven’t seen The Bounder, reverted to the Iron Age or climbed any mountains today. I’ve been marooned in a dusty kitchen spooning filler into cracks and crevices, listening to some pretentious garbage about Sigmund Freud on the radio and being constantly interrupted by lampoons from the Lib-Labbo Tory Demos.

OK, OK so I may have a better update tomorrow after my banjo lesson. And I will have pictures of pear blossom in about 4-5 days.

If I can get everyone’s permission I will also start the ‘then and now’ series. I’ve got a lovely picture of John and And playing for Moles Cricket Club. Perhaps you can help me with dating though – it’s mid-80s I think.

Don’t be shy – wade in, even if it’s just to say hello.

He’s back!

I put some fresh food out for the birds this afternoon. Waiting in the wings I spied the animal my elderly neighbour refers to as “The Bounder”.

This is what the little rascal did to my spring bulbs.

I’ve put two pictures on flickr just so you can rustle up a posse and bring him in – dead or alive. I thought he would make a rather fetching hat. They were taken hurriedly through glass which is why they are rubbish photographs.

Ian’s comments about Jack Pritchard the woodwork teacher took me back to school. He is no longer with us but died only relatively recently at a ripe old age. Not so Jack Roberts who also passed away recently. He was only in his early 60s.

When we were in France, we got talking about the old French teacher who was named after the Gallic for bird – oiseau. But of course in Herefordian it is written and pronounced wazzo. He had the most amazing clown trousers with a waist band that fastened right under his armpits.

Porkies

I overheard one of the best excuses ever this afternoon.

A woman was ringing work from the Barton bus to tell them that she couldn’t come in because… …wait for it…. she had been bitten by a pig!

Continuing with the theme of tall tales, my colleagues tell me that the Iron Age piece wot I wrote scored 88,735 hits on Wednesday. Yeah, right Dave. No, honest guv, I’ve got the official stats e-mail to prove it.

…but just to edge it up a bit more perhaps you could all click again a hew hundred times here

Matt at work wondered why there aren’t any pix of me in action on the slopes. Action is a bit of a harsh word to use there, but I was the only one with a camera. However, here is one.

Mort may have a few more from the Calanques.

He did treat us to a slide show from a few years back when we went to the Italian side of the Matterhorn. Perhaps I could get them copied when Mort comes to Oxford in a couple of weeks. I’m thinking of running a little series of snaps called ‘then and now’ to give you all a laugh.

I’m going into DIY mode for a few days now so I wil post again when I’ve got something more interesting to say. (whaddyamean do I ever?)

In the interim, if you have any excuses to top the pig bite then send them up as a comment and entertain this wee blog audience.

I’ve just noticed that on my IE Explorer you don’t get the welcome message or the right-hand nav..it’s right at the bottom. Anyone else got this?

Ta-daaa!

An old editor once told me: “Dave, never let the reader know you haven’t got a front page lead.”

With that in mind I thought I’d give you all a glimpse of my new Dyson vacuum cleaner which replaces the one I smashed to pieces with a lump hammer. It was generously donated by my long-suffering parents.

I test drove it earlier and wow, you need a licence. The only danger is being sucked into another dimension – Dyson’s parallel universe.

On other matters, work has published my Iron Age piece here.

I was hoping they might run a pop-up gallery too but I guess my pix weren’t up to scratch.

Mort has been in touch over the Ridgeway walk and it looks like it will be the last week in June. You are welcome to join us for all or part of it. I will post an exact schedule nearer the time.

Anyone running the Town and Gown this year? I might come out of retirement to have a go as I have started doing a little bit of jogging. I hate it but it’s the only effective way to lose weight.

I forgot to mention the name of the artist Matt is producing at the moment. But if he could mail me a snapshot (or the artwork of the album cover) I could publish a bit more biog.

There’s some more announcements about socials coming soon and I will post them up….. if I ever get out of here.

Let me in

I’m having a serious indentity crisis because my own blog didn’t recognise me.

For some reason it wouldn’t let me log-in so apologies for the lack of updates which I will rectify over the next couple of days.

Due to popular demand (oh all right, one request) I have uploaded a couple more pictures from the garden which I will refresh with the season.

I also took a couple of average shots of a stone mason working on Hereford Cathedral. I’m trying to fix a visit to take some better pictures on the tower with the masons putting the finished blocks in situ.

If all goes well I thought I might throw a party at the end of my career break with a wee exhibition of photographs. Let you know in a few weeks.

Sian has been in touch (see comments below)…seems ages since we’ve been out on the razzle in Oxford.

I’ve started doing a little bit of running again so I might be persuaded to enter the Town and Gown (if it’s not too late). We always used to have a fun night out after that one.

Stats tart

Had a record day on the blog today so thank you for visiting. If you want to notify anyone else of a social just pile in with a comment and I’ll flag it up.

Tidal surge of activity

Good ol' Mort has posted his calculations for power from waves – click here.

It lost me somewhere after the first few lines but I'm sure the two Ians, Steve and Ruth would like to read and ponder. The bottom line is that it would take 100km of beach to equal Didcot power station.

Sounds like Mort will be in Oxford shortly so we can test the debate then. Ron has also been in touch – I've put up a link to his website and here's a sample of his wonderful Tolkien drawings.  This one used be on Steve's wall in his flat..not sure where it is now.  

 

And here's Ron's gallery

In the next few days I should be able to sort out a schedule of activities. If you can see this blog you are invited to any of them. We are planning to walk the whole of the Ridgeway, probably in May, and you are welcome to join for part or all of it. Will come back with dates.

Matt is finishing an album with a young singer-songwriter. He's pretty excited about the project so I'll post a piece when it's released.

And finally…looks like work will publish my Iron Age piece next week so I'll link if and when it goes up. Happy Easter one and all.

Thanks for all your comments – keep 'em coming. It's good for everyone else in the loop to hear from you.

Stone the crows

If you hate bunny-hugging nature notes – look away now – there’s an Iron Age update below.

It’s been a great week for birds.

I heard and saw many gems in the tranquility of Cinderbury including ravens and a nuthatch. Then on the way over to Hereford I saw a barn owl hunting the hedge line between Grafton and Redhill just after the sun had gone. And then to cap them all - a male redpoll.

I’ve been trying to solve the mystery of the heathland bird I saw in France. I said it definitely wasn’t a Dartford warbler. Well I’ve checked the books and I reckon it was…er…a Dartford warbler.

Visited a new recording studio in Cheltenham today – and as Matt rightly says in his comments it’s a corker. Great ambience in a beautiful Georgian building. Wonder if they’d like to record my favourite banjo tunes. From the top lads, Kerry polka….

Iron Age update

My admiration for our ancestors has increased considerably over the last few days – they must have been tough as old boots.

I survived the weekend in the roundhouse but I've never been so cold. It's a full-time job just staying warm.

With a lot of help from Dai the smithy I helped make a spear tip in the forge. I most enjoyed capping out the new roundhouse with reed thatch. Doing this practical stuff is fun but also answers the questions you can't glean from books. For example, did they have hot drinks? Of course they bloody did. It's the first thing we wanted to get down us as soon as we got the fire going.

I will post up some more pictures  here as soon as I'm able.

It's always good to hear from Ian in NZ. He was aksing some questions about my stay. My answers are personal views from experience rather than evidence but for what they are worth:

I don't think the amimals shared the roundhouses. That may be controversial but I wouldn't want to so I guess they did't either. But I'm sure there were exceptions if you had a sick animal you wanted to keep warm or a milking cow or goat that you needed close to hand, or to prevent them being stolen.

We didn't actuallty prepare meat ourselves but that wouldn't have bothered me too much. The crops haven't grown yet so we couldn't eat produce from the site either. But we were quite faithful to the time and ate beans, root crops, nettles and wild garlic. The meat was brought in but we cooked it in a pit by heating up the lining stones with embers and then burying the joint for three hours.

There were no cases of food poisoning but in the long-term I think that will be inevitable. I suspect  Iron Age people had the constitution of an ox and built up immunity to practically everything. Even when disease broke out I guess it would have been localised and contained. I think bigger problems would have been starvation, hypothermia, burns, breakages, infections through decayed teeth and septic wounds.

I'm offering up an account to work so I will let you know here if it gets published….and there are more pix to come.

Thanks for your comments – keep 'em coming. It's good for everyone in the loop to hear from you.