Ordinary life 9(b)

So I decided that while I looked for my true vocation, I might as well go back to college and explore the fallback of being a teacher.
Physics has always been a short supply subject and after having a short test on my internalisation of Newton’s work I was in. I was a few years older than most of my fellow students, I drove a large motorbike. While there was only one girl studying Physics there were plenty doing English and Drama.
After a year I had accumulated enough points to be qualified to teach Physics, Science and Drama.
Towards the end of the year, the admissions tutor, the one who had been chauffeured by me since he lost his license, called me in to his office.
“Look here Meredic,” he peered over his half moon spectacles, “are you serious about getting a job or not?”
I assured him I was, indeed the very next week I was on my way to Colwyn Bay to claim a post teaching Physics.
“Yes, yes…. hmm look do me a favour would you. I have an old friend at working in Llandudno. It seems they are looking for someone who can teach Computer Studies. You know how to use one of them don’t you? Oh yes, get your hair cut and lose the sandals as well would you.”
My dismal handwriting had forced me to use one of the new fangled word processors all year or face having my work rejected.
I affirmed and by teatime I was walking out of the headteacher's office with a job, and a promise of promotion to head of department on completion of a satisfactory probation.
On a far long lost September morning, nearly a quarter of a century ago, I started as head of computing (second subject Physics) with a budget of £25,000 pounds. Far less than the significant fraction of a million that I waved back in the labs, but still enough to kit out a room with BBC model Bs…..

“No I’m sorry Mr Hallett I think you might have misunderstood. The annual budget for your department is £250.00, I think you may have missed the point….the decimal point that is.”

I was stunned by the poverty of the situation. Only three computers in the school and a budget that wouldn’t even buy half of another. One word processor. And in addition it seems that my predecessor had spent the lot on text books featuring Pascal, Liebnitz, and Babbage. The history of computing up until the 1970s was written eloquently in those days and formed an important part of the curriculum!

Before making the best of it, I asked the then Head of Science what I would have to do in order to teach A’level physics. The world of computing in schools seeming another possible dead end.
“Well,” he said, “I would have to die first and then the Head of Physics would have to go as well.” I guessed that I wasn’t going to make much progress teaching physics!
This eerie conversation sticks in my mind even now, as within eight years both of them had passed on.

I have since bored countless students with the insight that my employment was in fact generated by the fact that I have very poor handwriting.

Ordinary Life 8(b)

Tiptoeing forward then.
What reasons are there to give up a safe, secure and well pensioned job in a boom industry? Here is a flavour of the kind of thing that took the shine off…

The work involved intense scientific scrutiny of small ( the size of a cotton reel) geological samples. Recovered at great cost from deep under the North Sea. Every few months a report was delivered to a large multi national, sometimes a government. It was delivering one of these reports that persuaded me that my real vocation lay elsewhere. I took SCAL 0087 (Silver Field, turbulent flow analysis :- Hallett, Lombos) to Statoil, Stavanger via Aberdeen.
My experience of Norway was this.
We landed in drizzle and low cloud, over a grey concrete city, onto a grey concrete runway. I was driven to a grey concrete hotel serving about a thousand types of herring. Alright as long as you are fond of herring. The view from my window, through drizzle, was another grey concrete hotel. I reread the report that I had been working on for the last half year. In the morning, following a fine breakfast of herring I was driven to some grey concrete laboratories. I presented my report and answered a few technical questions. After a fine lunch of herring I was whisked back to the airfield and before I knew it the grey concrete runway was swallowed by the mist. On the plane back to Aberdeen we had herring.
I am told that Norway is a spectacular country of mountains, fjords and the northern lights.

And so I went back to college to learn to be a teacher. Inbetween I fished silver mackerel from the now long gone jetty that loaded the stone ships.

Dark Arts 2

Last night, She Of The Town House, The Boy, Asbo and I lit out at sunset for a nearby island. Well strictly speaking an Isthmus I guess but for two or three days a year it is an island. Ynys Llanddwyn sits on the west end of one of the worlds special places. It keeps secrets old and new and has several summer beaches that are undiscovered by the madding crowd. I was on the hunt for some photos of the sunset around the ruins of an old church. The others were seriously in to picnicking.
A few years ago I was enchanted by the work of an astrophotographer called Mark Gaston. He works in the west of England and has some stunning pictures on view here.
I have always felt that North Wales has some potential for similar enterprise.
The photo above is of the familiar asterism the Plough, or Big Dipper if you prefer, the derelict church window is illuminated by moonlight. The orange wisps of cloud are actually sodium light pollution reflected from Holyhead.
It’s a start.

Is It Just Me?

A chance remark the other day caused me to ponder my life as an avid elastic band collector and reflect on progenitors of such behaviour.
In the past I have spent time, arguably more time than is good for a body, collecting pieces of wood that I thought were interesting.
One such you see above, garnered from a corner near the druids circle, just to the north of Hallett’s Mountain.
As I retrieved this little dancer from the bog I was transported back across time and space to a museum some time around 1979. I was reminded of Chocolat Dansant a print that I remain enchanted with, and hope to see in Albi once again some day.

Hymns and Aliums

Well there you go!

Meanwhile up at the old church this weekend, a widespread community came together to celebrate the harvest.
Although not a regular God botherer I do take an interest in the services that happen just a few fields from my house.
I hold the key to the church and sweep and polish it when occasion arises.
I was wryly amused by the three separate decorations that were going on around me.
You see someone had got in early with a few impressive cut flower displays. Prime spots it seems had been gazumped.
The latecomers came in scratching their heads and puzzling as to who could have done this as I swept the floor.
Later in the day, while I was grovelling around in a ditch (the reason for which will remain obscure) a third group turned up.
After a while I began to feel like I was living in the middle of an episode of The Archers.
Still, on the day all went well. We sang Bread Of Heaven twice with enough gusto to rattle the windows and sins confessed were forgiven.

Apology

My daughter has requested that I remove the last post.
It was not my intention to cause her any offence.

The Dark Arts

Some time around stupid o’clock this morning I took the photo above. I make no great claims for it being great, it hasn’t been processed except to make it much smaller than the original meggerbites or whatever they are, but it is one of the first constellation shots with my new camera.
It shows Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades and mars all rising over Bob The Other Builders house. I had no idea that this was where they were stashed during the summer but there you go.
Now I am off for a big nap.
Cheers all.

Ordinary Life 6

apologies for it being a bit long for a blog post......

The films of Jaques Yves Cousteau, his voyages with The Calypso, had led me up to this point, to firmly believe that I was going to be a marine biologist. Thus it came as a minor disappointment to me to find that once again careers advice was steering me towards engineering courses in university. Coming to the end of my sixth form time I resolved that whatever course I did wind up in, I would have to live by the sea. Thus I looked at places like Aberdeen, Bangor, Brighton, and Plymouth, finally reaching Swansea in the alphabet and realising that it was the cheapest train journey from Bristol.
Swansea offered a course in Civil Engineering and Oceanography and this seemed to fit in at least partly with my ambition for the sea. So I went and stood on Swansea bay in a borrowed suit. Took off my shoes and rubbed the sand between my toes. Signed up pending results and the next three years were spent in Swansea.
I took with me the skateboard that I left my old school on and spent freshers week racing it from the hall to the refectory. I don’t know to this day whether she was impressed, or if it was just pitying amazement but it was as this ‘Skater Boy’ that I met my first wife, The Graduates Mother. School friend of a rugby fan who shared the corridor I was on, it was just three floors down to her room. By the end of the week, we were an item for the next nine years.
It turned out that the course I had signed up for wasn’t popular enough to be staffed or funded. Unfortunately I hadn’t been told. I was still a very naïve eighteen year old. In partial excuse I think its fair to add that my background was bound to lack the experiences needed to prepare me for university. No one in my family had ever been away to university. I was on my own, quite a long way from home short on advice. Rather than go back to Bristol and start again, which on reflection might have made more sense, I was swept up and emptied into a plain civil engineering course.
To give you an idea of how little I knew, I was unaware until results day that you could get different classes of degree. I had to ask my tutor to explain what my qualification meant. I think it shook him a bit. Maybe I should have read the small print.
There were pleasures along the way of course. I was particularly keen, a recurring theme, on a series of lectures put on by the maths staff. These were imaginatively entitled ‘Mathematics For Engineering Students’ but at the end of them there was an invite to attend some extra sessions that coincided with our free time and I was enthusiastic about these. Geology opened my eyes as well, and later served me well both in career and as an interest. Fluid mechanics and finite element analysis, both requiring lots of number crunching with a PDP11 computer. Indeed for many of us who were disenchanted with code 114 (theory and practical advice on reinforced concrete) or the British Steel Section catalogue (from which I once selected all the material for a large warehouse except a door), the computer lab became the drug of choice. Due to my earlier experience I had a reputation as someone who could actually make computers work. Provided I could be prised away from the Colossal Cave or Startrek of course. In these late 1970s the most sophisticated toy on the market was a pingpong game that you could plug in to you television.
I also learned to dive with air bottles and became, to my amazement, the captain of a University Sports team. My ability, still retained, to hold my breath for three minutes meant that was an Octopush goal scoring machine.
I stumbled through some of the courses, breezed the numerical ones, and at the end of three years left clutching a degree that I didn’t understand, and for quite a while couldn’t use either. It was that bloody woman again you see. Margaret Thathcer. First she took away the milk and then she shut down civil engineering. I graduated just in time for the political belt tightening that stopped local authorities and government agencies from building or in many cases repairing. This left quite a glut of engineering students with similar qualifications to mine.

In answer to the obvious question I guess, the buxom blond facing the camera is my little sister Melissa.

Meanwhile Back On My Ranch

Someone blogged my house.
29th of August and above.
I swear when we got back the hussy had no trousers on.

A Right Dogs Breakfast

I have returned from 'the foreign' to two starving mutthounds. Free this year from the rigours of Camp Bow Wow, Asbo and Blind Pugh have been cared for by Axeman. One can only conclude that as he ran out of frozen pizza he must have held back a sack full or two of dog biscuits for himself. Both are looking gaunt and hollow around the eyes. Left un cared for this means that I will not only have Mitzi to answer too but the RSPCA as well. Oh well at least it should be fun.
After the early morning walk I am reminded of the joke about two bulls in a field.
As we prepare breakfast, Asbo jumps around the kitchen with the vigour and inexperience of youth. I prepare the biscuits, open the can of meat, stir in a little hot water, leave things to cool down for a minute or two, and then crush the can for recycling. By the time this is all done Asbo is careening from wall to wall and is practically eating the legs of the furniture.
As he hears the can descend into the green bin, Blind Pugh raises a sleepy eyebrow. He shuffles over to his eating spot and arrives just as the bowl descends for him. Minimum effort, same result.

Could I thank everyone for continuing to show such patient interest to my poor notes. Thankfully now I shall be able to catch up with you all again.

Deedle eedle ee dee dee

The men from Meridian are down on the beach early. I guess that if they left it a couple of hours they would have to film with the obligatory wavers in the background.
They have recorded Joe raising some lobster pots and now they are back at the cove. Jim Miller is giving them a hard time.
“So tell me Jim, have you seen many changes in the village?”
“Buggered if I know…..” He has answered their every question so far with this alone, but suddenly he changes tack.
“You know what,” he speaks a Dorset burr that has been turned on a lathe, one that I will spend the first week back on Hallett’s Mountain wearing out like my southern tan.
“You know there’s only half a dozen of us left in the village. All they others is new comers. An’ I’ll tell you this, they don’t know bugger all.”
Jim punctuates a most of his conversation with expletives.
“They don’t know bugger all at all.
You know they comes down here from I don’t bloody know, and the first thing they does is buy one of they wax jerkins. After that it’s a pair of green boots, a thumbstick with a ‘V’ Shaped notch in ‘im, and pretty soon a black dog of some sort or another. Then they’ve got the fucking cheek to call theyselves country folk.
Well let me tell you, they aint a single one of those bastards been fifth in a tin bath in front of the fire ever in their lives. Or walked to school with holes in their shoes.
Tossers”
Somehow I can’t see this being used in a feel good nostalgia program about men making their living from the sea.
Later on, Jim and I review the encounter back up at the duck pond.
“You see Murtoch,” this is what he choses to call me most.
“You see Murtoch, they all comes down here lookin’ for the village idiot but the truth is he’s the one you bring with you. Fancy a drink you ole bugger?”

Bad Mothering Sunday

My Other Little Sister carefully balanced another pint of Tanglefoot on top of the first one she had drunk. This was followed by several more. Until we figured that she had probably managed to secrete around a gallon somewhere around her person.
Then she had a packet of chicken flavoured crisps.
Later she was dizzy and quite a lot of the beer fell out.
You really have to be very careful with meat related snack food in the summer.

Still on my holidays. I will take care of comments and catch up with the usual suspects in a week or so.

Market Day

As my sister and I got in to the car it was with great delight that I was able to observe to Jim Miller that barely making it as far as the duck pond by seven o’clock made him somewhat of a lightweight. On Tuesday you see I had been late on parade and he had raised a stern avuncular eyebrow. The very idea that Mr Miller should once more call me a slacker propelled me from my bed at ten to six this morning and so, after an unsuccessful forage for puffballs on Bindon Hill, I was ready good and early for Dorchester market.
Indeed so early that many of my favourites were still setting stall and my sister and I were forced to look at selections of rusty tools and various ‘bad mother’ items.
I enjoy Dorchester market for its selection of food. It can generally be relied upon to put a few treats and novelties on the table.
For tea today I have had the following.
Asparagus, steamed and with melted butter. Not bad but I was sad to see that the asparagus had been flown all the way from Peru. I only spotted this on a sneaky label after I had got it home.
Some little gourds, green and about the size of a large orange. These I boiled, scooped out and refilled. Removing the seeds, I chopped the flesh with bacon, tomato, onion and garlic and enough cornflour and butter to make a thick mix which I used to refill them. I covered the tops with a thickness of grated cheese and then shoved them under the grill for a few minutes.
Next the great chieftain of the meatball race. The British faggot. Made on some farm nearby, according to the label. These with plain boiled potatoes, a little savoy cabbage and some tomato and onion gravy.
Natural yoghourt, with figs and passion fruit.
Local goats cheese.
Finally some coffee and walnut cake with a cup of coffee.
I made that six courses.
For some reason I now seem to need a snooze.
Just a little whisky to help it all settle I think.

I apologise for not visiting everyone I usually comment on at present but the holiday internet is restricted to a few minutes a day. It's partly therapy....

The Tears Of St Lawrence

Last night we sat and marvelled at a universe endowed with so much beauty that it seems churlish not to have some faith in a guiding hand..
Under a blameless sky we sat on the beach waiting for the stars to come out and exalt the sky. We were not disappointed.
First Jupiter, then Saturn, followed by Antares, Deneb, Vega and Altair. Shortly before ten in the evening the stars lay before us, sprinkled like diamond dust on black velvet.
From Sagittarius, rising from the gentle sea, the milky way climbed high over our heads, sweeping through the summer triangle back, through Cassiopeia. Like a clotted mist (?good lord what is he on!?) with patches of coal black darkness hiding the centre of our local galaxy. Jupiter’s shining trail reflected south across the deep marine.
Somehow we clung on, suspended between the warm chalk cliff and infinity rising.
And as we sat there, bewildered by our own small insignificance, the tears of St Lawrence fell around us.

I was gobsmacked.
Thank you Great Moo Moo. Thank you for blessing me with such a time and such a life.
As for the rest of you, if you find yourself under a dark clear sky tonight for goodness sake look up.

Once again I apologise to the people I usually comment on or reply to. I am on my holidays and have very limited access to the interweb.

Here Be Dragons

Do you ever think that the future has echoes in the past? It seems to me that there have been a few times in my life when this has happened.
Some time in the September of 1966 I first registered an awareness of the country that has been my home for the greater part of my life. Even then, at the tender age of seven, I sensed somehow that it would be important to me.
Earlier that year Upton Cheyney school had raised the grand sum of £12 10s 6d at the summer fair to acquire the latest in cutting edge technology. The schools first ever television. A 405 line VHF special. Music movement and mime on the radio was never going to be quite as good.
In the early September the whole school was gathered round the box and we watched the Queen and Prince Phillip cross the Severn bridge. Cutting the journey time from Bristol to Wales from hours to minutes. Of course at the time the motorway stopped dead at the far side of the bridge, but by the time another 15 years had passed that was sorted out. The Severn bridge was one of the wonders of our world.
A bold student teacher, who to my shame has lost his name in the swamp of my memory, built half a terms work around that bridge.
Soon, on a grey and windy morning, the dozen students in my class took a trip. Mr Cooper, the head teachers husband, had an old ambulance that served as a school minibus. We all piled in to the back, four each side on a bench and four down the middle on an old physical education plank. Niceties like seatbelts and health and safety were a thing of the distant future.
Crossing Bristol from east to west without incident we arrived at the car park and viewing platform at Aust service station. A service station! There was another exotic beast. I am not sure we actually went in but can you imagine, a huge restaurant dedicated to the needs of the hungry thirsty road user. This was so far removed from our simple village experience that it was like another planet. There were still houses in Upton Cheyney using a communal pump for water back then. I don’t know if we felt like African villagers dumped in New York but it was definitely in that area of experience.
From the viewing area, we walked down to the footbridge over the toll booths, marvelling at the half a crown (what an anarchic sum!) that cars were paying to cross the river. On to the path beside the main bridge deck itself and we formed a straggle tailed crocodile that waddled and huffed against the wind until we had passed the first huge tower, and were at last were standing 90m or so above the river Severn in the middle.
From here among the other wonders of geology, geography and engineering a line of distant shapes could be seen.
The rain swept mountains of Wales emerged from the obscurity of a childs imagination, and started to become real.

Idris?

Faithful dog Tray passed on last winter after a long and curiously deaf life. So my sister decided to leave her eldest with the responsibility for choosing a replacement. This particular nephew, is a handsome Adonis who towers over my mere six foot. Small surprise then that he should have alighted upon something equally large crossed with a Great Dane.
Jesus it’s a massive dog!
I mean think of a huge dog and then double it and you will probably be on the slip road of the right track.
She Of The Townhouse, The Boy and I are staying in Bristol for the first week of our holidays. In return for a free week, we get to look after the beast and its pocket-sized companion. The former graced by the name of ‘Iddy’ and the latter ‘Onion’. She also leaves a cat called ‘Sock’, some rats that give She Of The Townhouse the creeps, and a couple of guinea pigs, as well as various aquatic creatures, and plants that we have to try our best not to kill. All in all we shall be lucky if none of them have to be hidden away and excuses invented.

On Saturday night we returned from the pub just before midnight. Ears ringing to the legend of Rock The Billy and, speaking personally, none the worse for a gallon of cider.
“Oh my god! Dad you’d better come and have a look at this.”
* here I feel I should introduce my daughter, now to be known as “The Graduate”*
We all crowd around the sitting room door, the room where Iddy has spent the evening.
Well that is to say it used to be the sitting room. From what we could remember, having seen it earlier, it had some reasonably attractive, albeit worn, leather furniture. There was a table and some wooden chairs a fruit bowl and … oh you know. The usual kind of thing.
Since we left for our evenings entertainment though, something strange has happened. Someone has dumped a huge amount of furniture stuffing and a large skip full of builders rubble right on top of the nicely patterned rug. Clearly several fly tippers have mistaken my sisters sitting room for a layby.
They must have had a fright though. Sitting in the middle of the debris, grinning from ear to ear is an exhausted canine leviathan.

When she gets back from even further south, I am going to suggest that the dog is renamed Telford. It seems a shame to waste such a talent for civil engineering by using a diminutive of idiot.

Apologies to the people i usually comment on. While I am on holiday I am getting occassional access for half an hour in public libraries! Normal service will be resumed in three weeks!

Ordinary Life 5

Bottom row, second from left.
Careers advice then led me on to study Pure and Applied Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry at A’level. While I don’t regret the latter I still wish I had studied something apart from Chemistry. I had a flair for languages then and I think I would have done well in A’level French. At the time this was seen as ‘too far outside the box’ when students at A’level tended to be pigeonholed. I guess they still are. The divide between arts and sciences in particular is still a prejudice that lets down school timetables in my opinion.
Once again I was a relatively undistinguished student, relying on my natural ability with subjects and things mathematical to coast me through the exams, eschewing the extra that hard work might have given me. Not that I ever saw virtue in hard work for its own sake.
I came top of my school in Physics, did as well in Mathematics but was a poorer Chemist. It just seemed like a tedious series of observations that could only be learned parrot fashion to me at the time. With the exception of organic chemistry, which by its nature was more amenable to analysis from first principle and calculable result. I suspect this aspect was what gave me any dignity that a grade D deserved. I can see more merit in it now.
As well as A’levels the school was enlightened enough to offer a series of short minority courses. I learned a little of the history of modern art, how to program a computer, conducting orchestral scores, taking and developing black and white photographs, lateral thinking, and I came again to enjoy my own artistic efforts. I can see roots of many of my adult interests in these courses and the early experience of computers shaped a lot of my life.
I left my last exam on a skateboard in the June of 1977.
I didn’t leave the school entirely behind on that day though.
I had split up with a girlfriend of about two years before Christmas.
On the eve of my eighteenth birthday I was enchanted by someone new. Francine, a young French student a year or two older than I, was doing her years study abroad. She was partly employed by my school to practise language skills with O’level and A’level students. She showed me sweet romantic nights in her Bristol flat. Introduced me to music and love. She took me to film clubs and fed me French treats. We smoked Camels under the open window, along the back of Ravenswood Road, and listened to the sound of summer in the city.
After just a month her father came to drive her home to Paris. At the time this was an insurmountable distance. By the time she came back in to my life I had foolishly found someone new. We had made no promises beyond birthday wishes but I still feel I let her down.
Years later, when I became a teacher myself, it occurred to me that we might have made a scandal in the papers.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“You utter woodlouse!”
Blind Pugh doesn’t say much, but when he does its usually important.
“I’m sorry old boy”
“You heard, I called you a woodlouse.”
I decide that I had better listen to what he has to say and try and placate him.
“What seems to be the problem my dear fellow?”
“And you can stop all that ‘dear fellow’ Wind in the Willows crap.”
He is more annoyed than usual, something has clearly riled him.
“You know damn well what the problem is. The only warm sunny day in the whole of July so far and you have to go and mow the bloody grass.”
“Errm I am sorry,” I stumble by way of an apology, “its just that the summer visitors will be here soon and I haven’t …
“Spare me your pathetic excuse me. I am pawing a letter to my solictitor. And if you come one blade of grass closer to this apple tree I am going to ring ‘DogLine’.”
I expect he will get over it by tea time. His bark is usually worse than his bite.

Scouting For Boys

Worry not, its not going to be a gay paedophile item. Really just a short observation on the legacies of Baden Powell and a reason that he is probably now rotating merrily in his grave.
Sesiwn Fawr on the weekend and with all those fine bands I hope you will forgive my lack of a post for a day or two. North Wales own mini Glastonbury is going from strength to strength, I was knackered!
I view of the fact that She Of The Townhouse was working the South and I was sitting in the North we agreed to meet at the venue, set up camp and repair to the main stage by eight in the evening. I wanted to see Steve Earle doing his stuff.
For this reason I was left in charge of preparing The Boy and collecting The Friend.
Now The Boy is an experienced camper. Just turned fourteen, he has been a scout for some years now. He is used to working his checklist in to a rucksack. As I also had to prepare food, collect equipment, and sort out pets I was secure in the knowledge that I could leave him to it.
He came home from school as I loaded the car. Loaded it until it grunted I might add. There was no way I was leaving that bloody kitchen sink lying there on the deck. After about three quarters of an hour I called him to see if he was ready. Almost finished he chimed from the bathroom. It transpired that preparation so far had comprised having a pooh!
As he emerged from the pit of foul despair I did my best Roger Moore Eyebrow twitch. Allowing this to express the strong emotion I was feeling in regard to the lateness of the hour and the diminishing prospect of seeing the singer songwriter that was my headline act for the Friday night.
Before long though, he emerged from the front door, ruc-sacked and ready to rock. Time wasted earlier was made up and we set off.
As we set up camp, a review of The Boy’s packing revealed that his scouting experience had enabled him to ensure that he had most of the weekend essentials. That is to say he had his book, and his Nintendo DS. I remember that She Of The Townhouse and I remarked at the time that this would be both practical and useful. It would enable him to sleep comfortably in a wet field and keep warm to boot. The lack of a sleeping bag, airbed, torch and a raincoat, would surely be overcome by items of such utility. If he got bored with the DS he could always use the illumination from the screen to read his book.

Some time well after midnight we returned to our tents with our ears still ringing from the specially reformed “Mafia Mr Hughes”. These being the local headliners, on after the aforementioned Mr Earle, and an excellent new band Trans Global Underground.
We were tired and ready for bed.
Sitting on the stool outside his tent, rain dripping off the end of his nose as the rest of us tucked up warm The Boy presented a description of misery seldom seen expressed outside a Dickensian novel.

After 5 minute we took pity on him. My years of experience camping with teenagers meant that I had one spare of everything. I swear there was a tear in his eye.

Truly The Magoo is strong in this one.

Ordinary Life 4

I have been in some doubt about how much I can write here.Just brief notes, the book will of course reveal all!

Some time late in 1973, at a school christmas disco, Christine and I tried to figure out how best to shuffle all the extra noses and teeth. We weren’t kissing with confidence but it was a start.
A few months later, Susan the professor ( though she was only 14 at the time you understand) gave me generous access to her vest and its mysteries.
Then, just after my fifteenth birthday, I was again dropped into another new world.
I took part in a school exchange with a student from a small village near Bordeaux. For a glorious month, I lived the life of a French boy. Shared his family, his cigarettes, his friends, his moped, a new world of food. I learned a language, driven by necessity beyond the ‘plume de ma tante’. I made a friend for life. I learned a passion for a country and a language that overtook my interest in astronomy.
While I was there, his elder sisters friend Chantal, took me aside one drunken evening, and I lost my innocence with no regrets.

Archbishop Makarios had a spot of bother in Cyprus, and Lord Lucan dissapeared. I took, and passed, a mathematics O’level a year early and then a year later passed ten more subjects, the one in which I had made a dramatic improvement, beyond expectation, being French.

Ordinary Life 3

In 1970 I went to secondary school. Again a step into a larger world. Because of the system I was now mixed with students from a wide area of North East Bristol. Five miles and two buses from my village home, I was exposed to wonders new and little understood.
To go back a little, my upbringing wasn’t sheltered; at least I don’t think it was, but the opportunity for certain experiences were limited by its rural remoteness. Not everybody had a car in the sixties. There were only four telephones in the village, ours being the phone box along the road. Going to school on the outskirts of a city of millions was big! Suddenly there were other kids that could do maths.
I think I rose to it, although I floundered in sport, the only one I did well in was the high jump, but then you might expect that of an eleven year old who was narrowing his gap with being six feet tall. Physically I was poorly coordinated. Academically I was firmly B stream. Except in science and maths where I found it simple to excel. I was fascinated by languages eventually taking Latin to improve my prospects! Along the way though I was lazy. I couldn’t get of my arse to have a passion for geography, the history I was taught seemed dry despite the efforts of castle builders. It took me many years to come back to these with interest. Perhaps my greatest surprise to myself was learning French and some of the knock on effects that this had.

I was still felt very shy around girls. Looking back now I can see that there were plenty that were interested. Most of them couldn’t wait long enough for the penny to drop though. The prospects for a teenage fumble at the glamrock discos of the early seventies were grabbed by bolder souls than I, and so for most of the first four years, girls remained an exotic mystery.
1975 saw an end to all that.



Pardon? Oh yes, Top far left.

A Stroke Of Fortune

This is going to have to be quick of course (fear not ladies, not that quick). I just had to pop in here first and tell everyone before I nip down to the patent office. Einstein schmeinstein! We have made a discovery that could revolutionise housework.

She Of The Townhouse has been away again. In the last fortnight she has been flitting backwards and forwards to the capital overseeing a change in leadership.
I beg your pardon? No no! Not those buffoons. I’m talking about Rhodri and Ieuan. Don’t think for one minute that the heart op was a coincidence….look I’m going a bit Corbett already. This has all got nothing to do with our discovery. The point is that She Of The Townhouse is on the road and Axeman, The Boy, Asbo, Blind Pugh and I have been left to fend for ourselves…… again.

Its all very well her being a Grand Pooh Bah Of A Whole Celtic Nation but I am afraid that she is using it as an excuse to let housework and catering standards slip. Once more the dust bunnies are threatening to mutate into a new suborder. And we are having trouble changing the channel. A few of the takeaway cartons spilled as the fell off the pile on the arm of the chair, and now there is sweet and sour on the remote.
Asbo did his best but its not the same as having a woman around the place, the limits of his tongue are becoming apparent (he is much quieter and he doesn’t smell as good either, but that is of less relevance so I thought I’d leave that bit out of my main theme). We are forced to watch repeats of Pobol y Cwm on an endless loop that was recorded when The Mummy was in hospital. I like the idea that Eastenders is not the longest running TV soap that comes from the BBC stable but the six episodes on this tape are becoming a little tired with repetition, especially as we have to stand almost out in the back yard to watch them due to the fact that the volume is stuck on full. Still they do include a couple of references to the welsh world cup squad and we enjoy a laugh.

As she is due back tomorrow I thought it might be nice if we all chipped in and made sure she had a fresh Dyson. The old one is full again and we have to throw it away with all the others. This isn’t proving as expensive as I had feared last time I mentioned it. We were able to recover She Of The Townhouse’s credit card number from one of Axeman’s ebay forays and use it on the Tesco website so now we get Dysons delivered mouse to house whenever the old one runs out for nothing. Selflessly determined to help I decided to put the old one out for the binmen despite the fact that she had left it two floors up, rather than by the front door; where it would have been much easier. I must have a word with her about thinking of others when she finishes a job.
While I was carting it down the stairs I lost my grip and do you know what? On the very last bounce that pod thing where all the grease and slime finally wind up just broke off. I have been meaning to write to Dyson to suggest this as a feature for some time as I feel this could lead to a far more environmentally friendly machine. Plus there would be a nice little business for someone in the pod replacement market.
Don’t get too excited and run off thinking you are going to make it rich though. As I say there has been an important discovery, and this may just render the Dyson obsolete.
While we were scouring the floor for the envelope with our dinner money in it, The Boy spotted something new. Some of the bright red sauce from the last Indian meal we had, breakfast on Monday if memory serves, had congealed on the floor trapping a rather large wad of dog hair. The effect was rather like a small scrap of scarlet and black carpet. The colour scheme reminding me of one of those jumpers worn by Paul Michael Glaser in the second season of Starsky and Hutch.

*Ok hands up! Who said ‘Geek’....…I’m not going to go on until we sort this out…*

After a short period of experimentation we found out that we were indeed on to a winning formula. Left over curry sauce and stray dog hair make a remarkably good self assembling carpet. By its very nature the bits that are walked on most are the ones that get a free repair most often. The carpet has a sweet eastern aroma that we all agree reminds us of those stinking incense stick that She Of The Townhouse insists on setting fire to in the lavatory (posh) after 'the lads' have been in there. Plus it helps let you know what the weather is like. If the carpet is stickier than usual then wear a coat as it may be raining outside.

To summarize.
A self assembling, self repairing, vibrantly coloured carpet; that needs no cleaning, and does away with the need for airwick and barometers.
Our fortune is made!

Mush dash.

Pants!

I suspect that anyone coming here to be appalled by the foul deeds of a man and his dog, or perhaps tales of dysfunctional housework must have been a tad miffed over the past couple of weeks. I am not sure what’s going on here on Hallett’s Mountain. And if I am not sure then what hope have you dear reader. I am always anxious to steer away from the fluffy kitten blog of course. I choose not to stray into other more worldly areas as well, as noted from time to time. I can only say that I have had my mind on womens underwear.
Mothers of small children, fear not. While I shall set googletraps in this post, I won’t cross the line. ……just don’t follow the links….
On the weekend I found myself faced with a dilemma that I was unable to refer to Miss Manners.
My guests, the honeymooners, had left, and I decided to spruce the old place up ready for the summer. I have to say that they left it shiny as a new pin. Spotless. And they cooked a very nice loaf of bread and left it in the kitchen where me and The Boy buttered it for breakfast. So. Before going out to mow the grass, a source of unfathomable male pleasure, I just stuck my nose in the other rooms.
The Tegan (I fear I am doomed to call her such, as I did it the first time by mistake and I am too embarrassed to admit another editorial mistake) was visited by her sister while on the mountain. The whole brood stayed up here for one night, so I thought it best just to see that they hadn’t left anything.
Staring at me from the right hand side of the spare bed, was an item of intimate feminine apparel. Laundered, I hasten to add, and folded in a manner that suggests that the owner was distracted, perhaps by a small child,just before putting them back in a travelling bag.
I was going to post them back through the door of the presumed owner when I paused for thought. There are several possible misinterpretations of such an action, and none of them really lead to a good outcome. Even leaving a note could overly complicate the situation, and besides what on earth could I write. Plus they might have been there for longer. Left by an earlier guest and overlooked by my pathetic attempts at tidiness. I don’t stray in to that room very often and the retrieval and folding could have been a polite gesture intended to prevent me embarrassing another soul sometime in the future. Or they could have been left there by The Boy… or one of his mates… circumstances that wouldn’t bear close scrutiny. The more I contemplated the lace trimmed little beggars, the worse it got.
Hallett’s Mountain is aware that there are internet sites on which second hand underwear sells well, but I have always felt a little uneasy about repeat visits. Besides which these were, clean.
I stuffed them in my pocket and continued my sweep, eager for something that I could perhaps sell on ebay.
A Couple of days later I was out walking the dog. While paused to exchange doggy pleasantry with the woman from the wine shop and her mate from the other side of the river, I noticed that Asbo was grunting and straining over the council flower bed. Delving deep into my pocket for a plastic bag I …… you’ve got there before me haven’t you…. Lest just say that I think we may be walking towards the Marina for a week or two until I know for certain whether the CCTV cameras were on.

I guess it could have been worse. Imagine if She Of The Townhouse had found them. Innocent explanation aside I shall be a lot more careful if faced with a similar situation in the future.

And ladies, please, try and remember where you left 'em.

Ordinary Life 2

This is quite scary folks. When you write down early memories they start to multiply, already I realise that what I wrote a day or two ago just scratches the surface of what I still carry from those times.Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast...

One immediate big effect on me of the break up of my parents marriage, was that I changed school. My mother resumed her education and trained to be a teacher. Off every day to St Mathias college in Fishponds. For her to go backwards and forwards to college in Bristol it was much easier if my sisters and I went to school en-route. From the two classroom village school of twenty four students I was thrust in to the much larger environs of Bitton County Primary. Here there were four classes and more than a hundred students. Many of the students were quite rough and tough. As well as the children of farms and hamlets I was now mixing with the hoodies of the late sixties.
At the age of nine, I had the only fist fight of my life, with Earl Brailsford. We were pulled apart by the woman from Bitton shop. No real harm befell either of us but, the next day, I learned that whoever got to school and told the tale first, was the one that wrote the history.

While singing in the school choir it became clear that someone was rather beyond the description of 'a little bit off key'. The voices of the angels had been joined by a troll from under the bridge. After hearing a few of us in turn, Mr Field decided that I wasn't going to the Colston Hall to sing the Daniel Jazz. He robbed me of confidence in song and it has really never returned, save in moments of alcoholic bravado. I also remember, though thank God the full circumstances escape me, Pamela Harris being astonished at my pubic hair. Followed quickly by all her mates. I was an early developer in that regard.

In 1969 Neil Armstrong walked upon the moon. I watched this through a gap at the top of the stairs door. Unintelligible flickering grey shapes. I have a lifelong passion for space and astronomy. I now own thousands of pounds worth of astronomical equipment. I scored a full house when Magnus Magnuson asked an astronomy set. I even correspond with Patrick Moore.
I watched every scrap of Apollo long after it became tedious for most, and even now bore the pants of my students with tales of tinned heroes. At the age of nine I knew more of the moon than the country beyond my terrestrial vision.

I was a voracious reader, still am, loved mathematics, still do, but my writing was appalling and my boredom threshold low. For this reason it came as a surprise to find that I was one of the few that the dying eleven plus selected to go to the grammar school. If I had been just a few months younger, comprehensive education would have sent me much closer to home.

Some time along my way Margaret Thatcher came along and robbed the school milk. She continued, 'metaphorically' to do this to me for the next twenty years.
The currency changed from lira, sesterce and denarius to the new pence. The nineteen seventies arrived,and with them, a brave new world.

Ordinary Life 1

I have been asked by a Cognitive Therapist to write some brief notes about significant events in my life. I apologise in advance if they get a bit personal. Some find the public baring of souls an uneasy process. I do. There will be photos but I need to find a few first.

My father was a corporal in the RAF, he signed up to avoid national service. This wasn’t such a bad idea, the services allowed him to pursue an education beyond A’ levels. In particular he learned Russian to help fight the cold war. I think the pay was better.
My mother had had various jobs, hairdresser, librarian and school assistant but did not work while her children were below school age. She followed my father from Kent to Scotland where I was conceived. And subsequently when he was posted to Calne, in Wiltshire, where I was born. They moved to follow RAF postings.

I was born July 3rd 1959. Despite being a child of the fifties I have no clear memories of the times.

My sister Melissa was born on June 6th 1960. I can't help but think that she must have come as a slight surprise to my parents.

We lived in a remote farm labourers cottage for a few years. I have fond memories, but I know the lack of services and neighbours must have been a challenge.

In 1964 a second sister, Claire was born. We moved from Wiltshire to South Gloucestershire. A village called Swineford, halfway between Bristol and Bath. The move was probably to be nearer to the college in Bath where my father was training to be a teacher. The house was a wilderness of cabbages, and beside a river that ran through our lives like time. As my sisters and I grew there, our horizons moved from house to garden to village and later to the lure of the cities. For each in our way, it was leaving home that showed us how lucky we were.

I started at Upton Cheyney School in 1966, a little late as I was six at the time, and found that my mothers instruction in reading riting and rithmatic had put me several steps ahead. I really couldn't understand quite why Mrs Cooper wanted me to copy out my name by tracing her letters, but I did. I wrote my address underneath it as well just for good measure. Then she gave me a book to read and a picture to colour in and some sums.
After that I had to write a daily diary. My uncle Hugh rescued some of these and gave them back to me a couple of years ago.
I had mixed feelings about school. Every girl I ever met I fell in love with, and yet I was very shy and just couldn't bring myself to play kiss chase.
Kids gathered there every day from a couple of small villages and the scattered farms of the Cotswold escarpment. We learned and listened to stories and songs on the radio. We played games of war and football. Made ice slides in the winter. Dug escape tunnels on the tump and accompanied Mr Cook and Miss Lapinierre on nature walks deep into the Cotswolds green mystery. On birthdays Mrs Lacey, the school cook, would make chicken and chips for us all. At three thirty some went home by car but most of us walked.

In 1968 my father left home and was soon living with a girl he had earlier met in college. I remember crying when I was told that he wouldn't be coming home, but I can also remember the shouting that went on downstairs, and that didn't have much to recommend it. Twenty years later, when my own first marriage fell, my mother told me that there was fault on both sides.
I don't remember missing dad a great deal at that time. I didn’t really meet him again to any degree until I was an adult.

Tum ti tum tum tum tum
Tum ti tum tum tum tum
Tum ti tum tum tum tum ti
Tum ti tum tum tum tum

Rites Of Passage

I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll. In fact that’s probably when she first stuck in my mind. Having waded my way through a pile of the much hated maths homework it was time to name and shame. Eventually it was her turn.
“….and what about yours then?”
“Duh!.....Glastonbury!!”
Not bad for an eleven year old. I couldn’t fault that one. Original and interesting reasons are let off. If I have heard the excuse before, then it’s tough luck Sherezada. I have had my fill of left it on the bus, dog ate it, brother was sick in the bag and my mum had to burn the book. Give me one of those, and its out with the detention slip…..
*OI! Hang on a minute, I don’t want any of the older readers drifting off into a ‘those were the days fantasy…or worse..Settle down there.*
Haumph!
That was all quite a long time ago. In later years she used to phone me up from Glastonbury just to taunt me. I got my own back in 2005 though.
The thing is, this Saturday gone, She Of The Town House and I were guests at her wedding to a young man who I am reliably informed is a pretty good chef.
And a bloody good do it was too.
Hey Mike, Guess where they are spending their honeymoon?

And that was all I meant to write about. Fleshing it out with another tale or two of course, but something else has pleasantly sidetracked me.

You know, when I graduated we all went up to the board to see who had passed. I didn’t realise until that very moment that there were different classes of degree. I couldn’t understand why my mate Clive was fed up because he had passed. I still think he was a bit precious about it mind. There were quite a few that didn’t. I had to go to my tutor to get and explanation of what my qualification meant. He couldn’t believe that anyone could be so naive but the truth was no one had ever told me. I was the only person in my immediate family that had ever got a degree. I got what I subsequently came to know as a “Desmond”.
Today my own daughter cleared her hurdle and is now the proud clutcher of her own degree that isn’t an ‘ology. I am so proud of her I could spit.
I hope she finds it easier to get a job than I did!

It’s Rocket Science Jim …

… but not as we know it. Struggling against my upbringing, since the 1970’s I have had a keen interest in food. More so after I left home at the age of eighteen, when I found myself ill prepared. But that’s a long tale. Plus of course it does my mother a disservice. Its not that she was a bad cook. She wasn’t at all. But she was a girl brought up on a ration book with a firm belief that if a vegetable wasn’t boiled properly it might corrupt an innocent mind.
Where’s this off to? I was lucky. In 1974 I went on a school exchange for a month. The French family I stayed with opened my eyes to another world. Olive oil that had uses beyond the medicinal. Red meat that wasn’t overcooked, or even cooked at all. Salads that you could taste and no salad cream. An interesting proportion of the families food came from just outside the front door as well. Rabbits, chickens, fresh vegetables and herbs travelled from the end of the garden to the kitchen.
Oh it worked both ways. My exchange partner, still one of my closest friends over thirty years later, learned things to. He loved gravy, steak and kidney pie, apple crumble, trifle, bacon and eggs and the way that the British could sit down for a meal and get up from the table less than an hour later.
As years have passed I have enjoyed growing things outside my kitchen door as well. In particular herbs and salads.
A couple of years ago I got my hands on some delicious peppery rocket from a WI garden sale. The pungent green leaves dress up well on their own but are also delicious with soft red tomatoes and a bit of olive oil. The plant did really well and by cropping it regularly it stretched throughout the summer. Eventually I let it go and there were a few yellow flowers followed by seeds that I gathered and dried them out on top of my garden table. I was worried you see that a cold winter or some vigorous slugs and snails might see it off.
I needn’t have worried. I sowed two rows in the secret vegetable garden this spring and I think everyone of a thousand seeds did well. I can’t get rid of the stuff fast enough now.
A few seeds fell from the table when I was collecting as well. In the photo above you can see where they hit the floor. What with that and the stuff in the veg patch I could start a business.

Feel The Magoo

Yes, yes, I know I have commented on this before but recycling is the new black. At least that’s the way I saw it this morning when I observed that the dung hawks had emptied a whole terrace of bins right outside The Town House. Already I see I have started to wander from my primary theme but bear with me I will probably make some kind of rambling sense in the end. Its just that I can’t sleep very well when She Of The Town House is away. I had a late night last night and was up and about around four this morning. So for me its already been a fourteen hour day. And I don’t suppose I shall see my bed before ten as She Of The Town House is back from the smoke on the nine o’clock train. Anyway, shortly after four I was rebagging the rubbish from every house in the street and fumbling up curses on the council and the gulls alternately. Where was I?
Back to the Magoo. This is The Town House version of the Star Wars ‘Force’. Basically you can substitute any favourite quote regarding the Force with Magoo. Bearing in mind that the Magoo field is the one that permeates the ether to make us clumsy. You know that the Magoo is with you when you when you pour the milk into the teapot.
The Boy is at an age where the Magoo is particularly strong. As he is growing fast (according to the measurements over my fridge he grew over an inch in the last three months) his brain is still catching up with the new centres of balance of limb and torso. He could probably back slowly away from the great pyramid of Cheops and leave it as an unrecognisable pile of rubble. He doesn’t quite have the mastery of the Magoo of the legendary ‘Gloop’, a boy from Penmaenmawr whom Dave and I almost lost in a swamp once, but he is close.
As She Of The Town House is away till late supper we decided to have a quick scoff straight after school today. We are still trying to use up an embarrassingly large over production from the Seed Fair earlier in the year.
* Hmm unless you are pretty familiar with my back catalogue this is going to be a bit unfathomable isn’t it. Oi….pay attention at the back there*
The thing is, we decided to have soup, bread and butter, and a packet of chips (French fries not crisps ( you see how I take care of friends across the water)).
Finding only one item of cutlery within reach, The Boy treated Axeman and I to a fine display. Buttering his bread was a minor work of art, but for my money the piece de resistance, was the consumption of a whole bowl of soup with nothing but a fork and determination. He may be a bit old but I’m wondering if we shouldn’t get his magoo-chlorians measured.
Right. Lets see if Asbo will release that squirrel so that I can use it to clear up this kitchen. Two hours to go.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Bandit Country

Somewhere downstairs She Of The Town House is bundling up the raffle tickets for Sioe Gwn, Llechwedd’s very own annual sheepdog trial.
Casually, she enquires whether I have got any elastic bands to wrap around the bundles.
I am outraged! Who does she think she is kidding. Oh I’m not going to crack and give anything away but I know what her game is.
Every time the postman leaves his little sheaf of junk mail in the box at the end of my track he also leaves me a red elastic band (OK sometimes they are brown, but red is best). Every time I look in the box my heart flutters at the prospect. With the joy of a man who needs to get a life, I lovingly join the band of the day to the end of my growing collection. The one I have stashed in the drinks holder of the New comedy Car.
….And incidentally The New Comedy Car is beginning to show signs of quirkiness. The handbrake cable gave up the ghost and so now I have to remember a large rock in case I have to park on a slope. I know this is probably frowned upon by Brundstroms Heroes but I can even now picture the man in the garage rubbing his hands in anticipation at a large chunk of my holiday money.
But back to the bands…..
Its not obsessive. Don’t think that. Its just that their bandiness excites me, and the way the little loops curl and twist in their holder, and the feel of their rubbery niceness, lying there looking up at me every day waiting for a new fellow to join the end of the line. The red rubber coiled with such promise, growing longer week by week, nurtured by the love of postman and recipient of junk mail. Ahem.
Oh she’s a sly one! I can see the look in her eye. The way that she raises a casual well plucked brow from the counting and stacking. She has designs on my precious rubber band collection. Viewing them as some kind of frivolous utility item that can be consumed at will. Worry not my precious ones, worry not. I’m coming to save you.
Bandy……
Bandy………

My Dark Lady

I read a poem some years ago, more than I care to remember in fact, by Herman Hesse. It was published in a little collection of writing called ‘Wandering’. The poem haunted me for a long time. Still does to an extent. It told of how he builds a life in his minds eye based on the briefest glimpse of a girl on a passing train. It resonated with me.
Many a year on the 20th of June I have wandered up to the old stones near my house. Maen Hirion. If I have spelled it wrong I am sorry. This is a circle of stones that has stood on the mountain one over from me for the best part of four millenia. I went there again and again hoping to see the sunrise on mid summers day. I witnessed plenty of grey mists and drizzle until four years ago I at last got lucky. After two decades of trying ( oh all right not every year but most) I finally saw the sun rise. Gold and glorious, it sailed in to the sky through broken cloud and lifted my spirits with it.
There were a few other people dotted around the circle with me. One was a dark haired girl who took my imagination and ran away with it. I went home and wrote as near as I could get to a poem. I defied the reputation of engineers and mathematicians, for I am such. I knocked off a poem which as well as celebrating the sunrise, told of how my heart was torn by the girl. Like you do. Over the next few months I tweaked and prodded the poem. I wound up very pleased with it. I don’t claim it was good but I liked it myself and that was enough. It had some of the haunted quality that I remembered from the Hesse and I was dead pleased that I could do that, albeit to myself.
So I’d like to run it up this flag pole for you all to pick over.
Trouble is I’ve lost the damn thing!
Every computer disc I own has been thoroughly searched.

......to be continued....

Right then where did I put me Glasto ticket?

Asbo Eats All The Pies

While I seldom have any clear idea of what I am going to write about here, I can usually rely on Asbo to provide some inspiration during our early morning promenade.

*Oh, before I continue, whatever part of the world you are in make sure your breakfast is consumed and well settled. Err… and children turn away….
Right then who is left? Hands up. Hmm the usual suspects*

Asbo runs along snorting and snuffling close to the ground. He is mine sweeping for something that he can make a dogs breakfast out of. No one could call him a fussy eater. Anything that might remotely once have born the spark of life is dragged out for a crunchy snack. I have recently mentioned the deliquescing shellfish of which he is fond. The odour of rotting 'moules chaude au soleil', washed down by green puddle that smells of rotting cabbage is one of his early walk staples. ( Did I say that I wouldn’t mangle the French language again? I lied.)
Another treat that abounds in his al fresco deli at this time of year is the dead baby bird. You know the ones. Crashed to the trottoir…

…hmm French is in for a pounding today it must be the ‘eat anything’culinary theme and boy could I tell you a thing or two about that, I once went on a snail hunt during a thunderstorm in the fields and hedgerows of entre deux mers…Oh lord it happening again… Sally help me its all going Corbett….. Where was I …

Ah yes, the dead baby birds that you find on the pavement at this time of year. The ones with no feathers and big purple eyelids. Looking like some mini pink spam fritter with two black grapes on the end. Probably dumped out of the nest higher up and unseen, during a struggle against natural selection. Well they are quite tasty according to my canine mentor in these matters. The small bones are still soft and the general texture is akin to that mechanically recovered reprocessed ham that sells really cheap in Tesco. And they burst on the tongue. Lovely.
I remember once She Of The Town House was particularly nauseated when he bounded up with the scaly tail, and the back end, of a worse for wear rat dangling out of his front teeth. He grinned at her and crunched away; she took a deep breath of fresh air, and looked for the nearest exits.
For my money the worst is ( if you have eaten recently don’t say I didn’t warn you) the used condoms that you find along marine walk. He doesn’t mind ribbed, fruit, chocolate or plain. As long as they are fu.... Its no good, even I can't go on with this one.
Truly he is a disgusting dog.

This morning then, he surprised me. Yesterday evening someone bought a picnic and wandered out on to the cob to watch the sunset. Somehow they mislaid one of their bags and dropped it behind the chair they used. Inside the bag were two of Edwards the Butchers finest steak pies. I deduce all this from the receipt, which was the only thing that I was quick enough to retrieve. They were inside their sell by date, well wrapped and looked delicious. I am going to have to keep my own eye out more closely. His wild food campaign may have more to recommend it than I thought.

I think I shall let The Boy take him for a walk tonight though. He needs the exercise and there’s a load of cling film and a couple of tin trays due out of the dog soon.

Something Else For The Weekend Madam?

Fairy folk have been gathering pistils from mountain flowers. Collecting them by moonlights silver beams. Mixing them with dewdrops that have fallen from the new green leaves in the forest, and the tears of baby bats. Its expensive stuff of course. You aren’t going to find this sort of thing on the shelves in Asda. Rather it is delivered by elvish folk in little carts drawn by dormice to the finest shops in all the land. And what do you suppose they do with it precious? Well of course it is a secret. Mere mortals can never really know. Save only of course for the chosen. The cabal of female gender that specialise in the ancient arts.
Not (for once) members of the coven that She Of The Townhouse belongs to. No no, these sisters of Vesta (hmm maybe that should just be acquaintances of Vesta in view of other things I have heard about them) are the ones blessed in the secret arts of relieving women of minute snips of hair and colouring in the grey ones.
Generally they exchange their services for gold.
She Of The Town House is off to the hairdresser.
That reminds me. I really must trim my nostrils.

Must Catch The Post

Just a short note about something that I have seen in passing.

About a fortnight ago Frank left a note for Ann. He was obviously missing her. It seems they had a brief encounter last summer. One which preyed upon him to a degree that he just could not let go. The trouble was, he knew little more of her than a walk. A walk that shares the route taken by Asbo, Pugh and I first thing every morning.
I never thought she would reply but, to my surprise, she proved me wrong. Left a message. A message to which I am not privy.
Like an idiot Frank has managed lose her message. He has ballsed it up as it were.
Now he has had to leave another note in the same spot as the first.
I hope he takes better care this time.
Good luck Frank.

…. I shall try and keep you posted.
(Incidentally if your name is Ann and you fancy a shot at this, drop me a line and I will let you have the number)

Creepy Crawlies

Regular readers of these notes will know that, from the very beginning, I have taken great delight in drawing to your attention the things that arrive on the mountain. Be it mammal, insect, fish or fowl. Everything flying thing, from the humble tit to Sparky the Guinea Fowl. Mammals such as chipmunk or indeed the weasel in the freezer. Even the things that haunt the night. You have been spared none of them.

*Aside… and at this point let me reveal that part of the point of this note is to see what Google will pull out of the dark spaces…all will become clearer lower down…already I have laid a subtle trap for the seamier side of the springwatch audience…*

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. She Of The Town House and I were sitting in the sun beaten haze of summer at our vastly improved pond on Saturday afternoon. All of a sudden a large insect of a type that I hadn’t observed before appeared and buzzed round, alighting on various strands of reed and grass and tormenting my attempts to get a decent photo. On looking it up later I found that it was Libellula Depressa, the Broad-bodied Chaser. There is a rather nicer picture of it here. The one that I took is clumsily enlarged from my phone. This is not a rare beast by any means but it is unusual round here. In the last ten years I have never seen one on my mountain, which is why it took me by surprise. If you happen to live with an insect enthusiast with a special interest in dragon flies ( not so unlikely as it sounds this is all targeted stuff…:-) ) I am curious to know whether they usually come this far up. I am 300m out of the valley below. On Sunday I spotted another one, quite a way from the pond, round the back of the house. I wonder if we have provided just the right habitat, or if indeed the incredibly warm weather that this year seems blessed with is allowing them to explore new heights. So a beautiful insect and very welcome.

Something else has crept out of the woodwork as well. Earlier on in these notes I attempted humorous reference to the fact that the recycling box was over flowing and cocked a mocking snook (Result! Microsoft knows not of the word “snook”. Where else could you get such satisfaction…) at an organ of a foreign power. I am choosing my words carefully here. A couple of you made a point of telling me, tongue in cheek I thought, that perhaps such snook cocking wasn’t a good idea.
I am thus a little disturbed to find that indeed someone’s crawler has indeed made a bee line for that post, and the one before it which referred to restricted weaponry.
This is worrying. I am not, unless severely provoked, any kind of revolutionary. No fisting the air, marching and chanting slogans for me. Well not since “Jobs Not Bombs”. Since the end of the Thatcher years I have been a far more sedentary political cynic. Once she had been seen off, I felt that all that fuss about school milk was finally over.
Oh lord I am going a bit Corbett again. Please stop me when this happens.
Look the thing is this. Just a couple of days after I wrote that, my notes have been thoroughly indexed, including possibly links to you dear reader, by a company that provides electronic and scientific services to HMG. And it took me a little while to track them down. They didn’t actually leave that web address but that’s certainly where it came from!

I am going to have to be careful what I say in future.

At least two "Google Traps" have been laid in this post.
I apologise in advance to anyone who has wound up here looking for the contents Kate Humble's vest. Look elsewhere.
* I wonder if there is such a thing a "Google Trap" or wether I am the coiner of this phrase? *
Thats it... I'm off...

Early Bath

The sun has been splitting the flags here on Hallett’s Mountain. I trust that if you live in the UK it has been much the same where you are.
I got up early with the good intention of mowing the grass, struggled with the heat for an hour or so, and wound up having an early bath.
She Of The Town House generously scrubbed my back but there I am afraid, gentle reader, I must draw a veil over the proceedings.
Everything else in the garden has been panting like dogs.
I enclose half a dozen photos to show how nice it has been here.
I will get my proper writing head on again soon.

Bin Laden

We decided to form an action committee. Eager to be the first in the street to reach our target. The Boy, She Of The Town House and I sat round the kitchen table and voted. Axeman abstained as he was busy targeting missiles on western Europe.
Obviously I am chairperson. That is what I do best. An important overseeing role that won’t actually involve getting out of the comfy chair very often. She Of The Town House decides that she will be secretary. She is well qualified for this role as she has been a scrivener of note for the local sheepdog trials for some years. She won’t actually have to take many minutes as she has, like all of her gender, the memory of an elephant. This leaves the boy to do the actual labour. Immediately he demands a billion pound bribe.
A period of abuse and negotiation ensues. Eventually he settles for a shilling, but only in bob a job week.
And so we begin to recycle.
Our eagerness seems to have violated the councils rules of engagement though. Nearly three weeks after we have started cramming cans into the pitifully small box they send out a note explaining when they will actually start the fortnightly collection rota. We have a nervous moment while we consider our lager consumption and the diminishing space for squashed cans of all variety.
Axeman, returned to the table following a thaw in relations between east and west, hits upon an idea. If we just give the dogs leftovers and stale bread, we can save all the space that they will potentially use for the next week. This should help a little, and I have also noticed that the lid and sides of the container are quite bendy. It should respond flexibly to a fair degree of overstuffing. If we combine strategies, and attend the pub more frequently, we may just get away with it. Despite the hot weather.
Its going to be tough but we may just make it.

Googlers please note that this whole post is an attempt to justify mistaken title traffic.
Gentlefolk from Langley…it’s a joke…and the reference to a sniper rifle in my last post was in similar vein….
I’m going to have to hide out on the mountain aren’t I.

Of Mice And Women

All night long I have stood vigil at the town house. Pausing only to remove an occasional bead of sweat from the Hallett brow. The cross hair in the sight of my Heckler and Koch PSG1 trained and unwavering. Two floors up in The Town house, I have a clear view of the intended killing field. My camo, the nets and Mel next doors owl providing impenetrable disguise from even the sharpest eye.
I have corrected for wind drift and range, but not even a leaf has twitched. Nothing has stirred. Not even a mouse.
Let me skip back twelve hours, dear reader, and explain. This is a tale of the inevitable consequence to the little man of the unthinking machinations of government from afar. In April we had the smoking ban. In a place like the Old Walled Town this introduces problems for the tobacco addict. There just aren’t that many spaces that aren’t enclosed or public. The devotee must seek out a corner and guard it jealously in order to ensure a fix.
Heap upon this indignity, the new recycling schemes that we all seem to have to endure. This places another premium upon the territory available to smokers. In the tainted corners that they seek are now, cheek by jowl as it were, overflows of ordure, offal and tins of dog food that really ought to have been rinsed a bit more carefully.
As well as the glowing coal of the end of the nicotine stick, the night time brings evil red eyes. Creatures attracted by the easy pickings. And they grow bold my precious.
Last night The Boy and I were engrossed by the flickering image of sixties Britain. Suddenly a piercing scream cut through the falling dusk like a dagger.
She Of The Town House has seen a hideous mutant, a giant squirrel rat like creature small mouse in the back yard.
It’s almost enough to make you want to give up!

La Philosophie Dans La Jardin

Worry not, I shall not torture you more with my mangling of the french language. Nor will we pay any more than a passing nod to the Marquis. Hallett’s Mountain, as I am sure the gentle reader knows, leaves that kind of thing to others.
Its just that Asbo and I have been having some ‘man time’ together in the garden. I noticed that the cats had not finished their breakfast. The weather has been hot and close to thunder. They go off their Tesco cat chunks in times like this. They twitch in the secret shady spots and look for an endangered species to mock.
Asbo is always glad to clear up and so I sit with him for a little. Taking time off from the rhythmic scything of bracken that has left my mind free to wander elsewhere. While he eats his way through his second, and third breakfast I take a cool one from the fridge to the garden chair. We pass the time of day, watching the swallows dip across Cae Dan Ty.
The silence between us is easy. We mellow away.
After a while the swallows dip lower.
“You know mate, I reckon there could be a thunder storm any time now. Do you think I should unplug the phone?”
Asbo raises a quizzical eyebrow. Failing to detect any nuance of the word ‘walk’ he returns to his task. Perhaps he also considers the echo of the lone tree falling deep in the remote forest.
Far across the valley the skies darken ominously.
“I’d better get the line out of the modem as well.”
Asbo smiles at the follies of men and munches on. The thought of one hand clapping crosses his doggy countenance. How on earth would that be of any use if you wanted a biscuit.
The first flickers of lightening cross the miles, the radio inside the houses crackles. After long pause a few bass rumbles track around Craig Celynin and reflect upon us. The air temperature suddenly chills.
But the practical time for reflection is past.
Sitting with a beer at the garden table has its merits but we will soon be cold and wet if we don’t stir our stumps. I drain the glass and turn to my friend.
“Time to pack up and sit by the fire mate?”
Asbo shrugs off his canine philosophising.
Spits out the last chunk of the previously oval cats bowl and grunts.