Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Well it does if you are daft enough to stand downwind of this beast.
Whenever high wind and snow is forecast by the BBC I take this as a guarantee of good weather. The gloom and doom foreseen this morning meant that it was time to cook meat over a fire in the garden.
Observe, if you will, my latest contribution to the world of the cookout.
To the uneducated eye it may look like a bath, some bricks, an old metal plate, and a wheelbarrow. Of course Heston Bloominheck (and I suspect Buffalodick) would recognise the genius that is my new barbecue smoker.
Costing precisely nothing, this fine instrument polished off several poultry and half a pig this afternoon. Or rather my guests did. Please note that as children were present I was also forced to turn a couple of carpet burgers that had earlier been smuggled out of aisle thirteen.

Children do not try this at home.
Oh and ladies…fear not…I used the ‘B’ bath.
My hot tub still awaits your pleasure.

Hallett’s Mountain Ate My Lorry

I guess that the next generation of Sat Nav gadgets will come with a sense of humour built in. Hopefully when the postcode for my particular blot on the landscape is typed in it will respond with some version of ‘Come on now mate, you’re ‘avin a larf’ rather than a set of patient instructions that lead the unwary motorist to either their Scylla or their Charybdis depending on which side of the road they decide to sacrifice themselves to eventually.
I am sure I have told you all about it before.
Yesterday though, someone’s little bit of digital magic, and their own blind faith, really did excel.
Two large trucks played follow the leader until the gap between the rock and the hard place finally caught them. She Of The Townhouse and I came up behind trying to get to my house to be greeted with the spectacle of walls and trees being shoved aside to try and extract both lorries and their cargo. It seems that someone lower down had ordered 22 tonnes of gravel for a project.
We stayed to mock from the hedge for a little while and then decided to go away and return in a few hours.

Silent Spring

Phrases like “Eat unleaden death tree hugging scum” would never escape from the back of the Hallett cortex save in spring. The season when any mans fancy turns to his lawn. And this year I have decided to do my best to offset the efforts of all those do gooder carbon offsetting bods by buying a petrol lawnmower.
After years of pushing an electric hover around my acre I have finally succumbed. I even toyed briefly with the notion of one that you could ride on but soon realised that I could have ten cheaper mowers for the same price.
So there you go. After a few minutes mocking the safety instruction (long trousers! I don’t think so!!) I put a selection of Steppenwolf and Springsteen into my i(maginary)pod. Casually flicked out the aviators and went for a blast round the nooks and crannies.
Wonderful.
To think, I could have had an attachment for stripes as well but you know….its possible to overdo these things.
Later I discovered that fifty conkers that I collected last back end and put in pots have all germinated. I hope this isn’t going to offset the offset offset, if you see what I mean.

Dawn Chorus

As Asbo and I dogged the path through the woods today we heard a Woodpecker drum a staccato rhythm on dead branches. I was very pleased with moment.
Later Asbo found a dead sheep that he has been keeping his eye on, one that floated down the river a week or so ago. He pulled and pulled at the almost, but not quite tender leg. Perhaps it will come off tomorrow.
For the rest of the morning an old song has been rattling round my head. A song to be sung to the tune of “Dixie”.
Perhaps if I share it with you it will leave me alone for an hour.

THE WOODPECKER'S HOLE

Oh I put my finger in a woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Take it out, take it out, take it out,
REMOVE IT"

So I took my finger from the woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Put it back, put it back, put it back,
INSERT IT"

So I inserted my finger in the woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Turn it 'round, turn it 'round, turn it 'round
ROTATE IT"

So I rotated my finger in the woodpecker's
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Speed it up, speed it up, speed it up
ACCELERATE IT"

So I accelerated my finger in the woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Other way, other way, other way
REVERSE IT"

So I reversed my finger in the woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Stroke it in, stroke it in, stroke it in
OSCILLATE IT"

So I oscillated my finger in the woodpecker's
hole
And the woodpecker said, "Well bless my soul
Take it out, take it out, take it out
REMOVE IT

and then repeat form the beginning ad infinitum….

Fortunes Stroke

*picture a lot of money*
No one could have been more surprised than I when I was contacted out of the blue by Ntakay. I guess he must have remembered me from years ago when I was working catching core out in Nigeria in the early eighties. Anyway, however he dredged up my name, I must say that I think we both bless the day. While I have become a teacher it seems that he must have stayed in the oil business and, from his own account, risen to a position of responsibility as the principle advisor to the former leader of a west African republic. A country which I am reluctant to reveal the name of for reasons that will become apparent. After years of political stability in his adopted home Ntakay has established himself a by no means modest fortune. Again I don’t want to spill the beans, but lets just say that we are talking a pretty decent euro lottery win here.
Anyway, just before Christmas his government which had for some time been under the eye of an increasingly greedy military was destabilised, and all accounts above 50 million dollars in them have been held in stasis until they can be established as belonging to the government. The only exceptions being those which can be shown clearly to be linked to a foreign personal bank account. It seems the new regime is anxious to clobber its own citizens but would equally like to avoid offending people from the foreign who may be needed in the future to help them retain power.
To cut a long story short, it seems that all we have to do is establish an account with a few thousand in it in our joint names, get it recognised in his country, and then Ntakay can shift his millions over to Europe. He has generously offered me a fat ten percent to help him on the way!
So that’s it. By lunchtime I will have realised a few stocks and shares and opened an account in the name of Hallett & Mweewee. In a week or two its feet up on a desert island for the pair of us.
Why work harder!

In The Tube

While wandering near Calne the other day I visited the site of the first house that I could ever remember living in. A little corner of the Bowood Estate Where my parents lived in the early sixties. Down a farm track, across a field and hidden in trees in the rich farmland below the downs. I have probably told you about it before.
The thing is though there wasn’t a single brick left on top of another.
In fact less than that there was very little I could recognise at all apart from the horizons corrugations. The site of the old cottage has been bulldozed some time in the last forty years or so and now all that remains is some rubble that may or may not have once belonged on a bank next to a large beef and dairy unit.
I was kind of expecting this as my sister had let me know that there wasn’t much to see but you know how curiosity drives us back sometimes. After poking around round the back of the slurry lagoon I eventually found an old crushed enamel sink and some bits of tile that may have been dumped there but could possibly have come from the house, who knows.
Then as I turned my back on it all and fond farewelled what I probably shouldn’t have gone to look for I saw something that flicked the switch of childhood memory and raced me all the way back to the winters that we used to have. I think it was probably nineteen sixty three. After looking it up now I think it was probably the February so I would have been three and a half years old.
After a considerable blizzard that heaped snow on top of an already frozen ground my mother had taken my sister and I out into a fierce blue sky and winter sunshine, wrapped in gear designed for the Michelin man. Boots and layers of stuffed romper suits to protect us against the chill, we explored our new and unfamiliar landscape. With the winter we are currently in it seems hard to imagine but, back then, we had had several feet of snow which in places had blown in to drifts that were four or five metres tall.
One large drift had formed against a hedge bordering a field just beyond the boundary of the house. This had then blown over in what I believe is known as a cornice, a wind sculpted breaking wave of snow that fell upon the far side of the hedge after it had crossed a parallel leat (wide ditch). To the external appearance there was a huge mound running along the field where hedge and ditch used to be.
Against my mothers uncertain protestation we scaled the mound but soon found that it was truly hollow. Just a light jump on top and we broke through in to an illuminated crystal cavern, one of those rooms that you suddenly noticed in a dream. I can only have spent a few minutes in there really but the sense of childhood wonder still remains. Stretching long into the distance our own private ice cavern with its floor of rock frozen stream. My mother peering anxiously in to the holes from above. It was a ‘rosebud’ moment.
Years later my picture of the location was so clear that I recognised it in an instant.

Regular Exercise

Occasional glances down towards the Hallett feet have revealed a disturbing trend. A trend of corporeal increase as it were. The view over the metatarsals can no longer be obtained without a lean over the not so lean. In fact I would go so far as to say the the prospect of the phalanges is disappearing fast. Thus I have resolved resolutely to take more exercise. To this end you may have noticed that earlier in the year my trusty bike was wheeled around a Cotswold circuit. The trouble that was unrevealed at the time was how I felt for a few days afterwards. Reader, I ached!
It seems that after two or three years of neglect the muscles that once propelled me up and down pass and valley were on holiday. Neglect followed by punishment left me with twinges where I was unused to having a twinge.
Of course I realised my mistake. I should have perhaps not been so immediately ambitious. So I have decided to be a little more regular.
So I decided to try the same thing again. Six weeks later I have again set off on a round of the Cotswolds. And do you know what? Exactly the same thing happened. Once again I ache all over from cycling. Apart from a small ache that didn’t come from cycling.
Anyway my point is that this regular exercise thing is all very well. But so far, after two regular sessions the Hallett girth is undiminished. Well I am not one to be easily put off but if the same thing happens in mid May and I am not several kilos more towards the optimum I am going to have to have a radical rethink.

(As you can see the great Moo Moo has once again made itself manifest in a bread related product)

Travelling Man

Hallett’s Mountain has been quieter than it ought to have been of late. You are quite right to point it out. Asbo the dog has had complaints from his University of Manchester fan club. Startare has requested more astrophotography. The girl in aisle 13 has been giving me a Paddington Bear look (I know there is nothing unusual there but I am grasping clumsily at straws). Other blogs have been wondering whether their sidebars have one to many links in them, and indeed I have not been the frequenter of others fine words that I have been in the past. In general, the Hallett organ has been dormant….
A couple of days ago though I was reminded of life’s simple pleasures, and their importance, during a delicious walk along the Thames near Lechlade. While a number of things rose during this hour or two of beauty and sunlit reflection; one that I feel safe in revealing in these notes, was that I really ought to have mentioned that I am going to change my job.
You may remember me polishing up my rather odd CV towards the end of last year. To my own surprise (the circumstances were complicated) and great delight, the effort I made was repaid by an interview and subsequently an offer. An offer which I have been very pleased with, and a little humbled by An offer which is also keeping me pretty busy as I have to tidy up one life and begin another.
After almost twenty five year working as a teacher, in the same school throughout, I am taking a new direction. From next September I shall be working in a hospital, still teaching, as I think by now I can admit that I enjoy it, but from then on working with students who are too ill to attend normal classes.
I can’t tell you how genuinely excited by it I am.

Leave A Message After The Burp

Just outside the butterfly house at the edge of the Old Walled Town there is a skip. Or as She Of The Town House prefers to think of it, ‘a low tech shop’.
We passed by a couple of days ago while they were getting some new furbish in to the place and trashing the old stuff.
It did occur to me afterwards just how bad it must have looked. Me in my best ratting jacket, She Of The Town House in her scruffs, Asbo jumping around the skip excited as only a dog knows how, and two cans of beer perched on the rim. We must have looked like a couple of desperate refugees who had turned to drink as we rifled the stuff that others were throwing away. Coincidentally just behind the council offices that send me the big fat cheque every month.
Still there were nuggets of good fortune in the chaff.
The ariel (aerial) had fallen off the phone in the townhouse a couple of years ago and it has crackled away for months getting progressively worse. The phone has also been the point of more than a little contention as either The Boy or Axeman has been using it to phone his mates (to be fair I think The Boy’s disregard for this particular aspect of modern communication makes him an unlikely culprit).
The apparently broken and discarded apparatus that we salvaged then was indeed fortuitous. Its inability to make any outgoing calls dependant on the numbers 2, 5, or 8, pretty well solve the problem. Also, knowing it was rescued from a smelly skip means it may harbour all kinds of communicable diseases. Certainly not the kind of thing that a teenager would squirrel away in their bedroom.
Plus it is a small digital unit with an inbuilt ariel (aerial) so the crackling problem has stopped as well.
An unexpected bonus has been the fact that the answerphone message (which She Of The Town House can’t be arsed to change even if we had a manual) leads the uninformed caller to think that they have dialled the wrong number. After a couple of replies from the butterfly house they give up.
All in all a bit of a result.

Finally :-) Thanks to the anonymous (but probably Mike) person who reminded me how you actually do spell aerial in the context of something useful for extracting a radio signal from the ether rather than a mischief making fairy. Doh!

Breaking News From Aisle 13

As I deliberately go in the reverse direction around my usual supermarket (it confuses the shopping psychologists) I notice that there is a good deal more stress than is usually apparent.
Men who I don’t seem to have seen before are out in droves. Several of them have already crossed my path. I even took pity on one and showed him where there were tubes of garlic paste (garlic paste…how lazy can people get…).
I noted that many of them were being followed by gaggles of children. Some clearly unused to walking when there was a trolley and all of them increasingly annoyed in proportion to their age. Young ones just a little bewildered, teenagers under a cloud so black that rain looked imminent.
Every now and then these exasperated male partners would stop and reach for the inexperienced shoppers lifeline. The Mobile phone.
“…oh yeah. Um where’s the garlic paste…?”
“Right well why on earth do they stick it there? It isn’t anything like Tomatoes…”
“Oww”
“No she hit my ankle with the trolley!”
“No actually they are being little sods….”
“Don’t forget to record the football.”
“I haven’t got a bloody clue…. tomorrow at this rate…”
…and so on.
All over the store similar scenes are being played out.

The reason dear reader? Well of course its mothers day. Someone somewhere has had her weekly routine whacked quite out of kilter by a poor sop who polishes the virtue of ‘helping’. Little regard I suspect that for the fact that minor omissions from the weekly shop will have to be overcome for the next seven days, and the kids will be sullen for days. One can only hope that the poor woman has been given some flowers.

Then, just as I sweep in to Aisle 13, I notice the latest 'Buy one at twice the price and we will pretend you get a free one’ offer. This week they are having a special on condoms.

I saw the poor saps struggling with the packing and impulse blackmail. If only you had thought about them earlier eh fellows?

Strictly Come Dancing....

I don't think that I have ever put this on my blog before, though I did write it some time ago. If it seems over familiar please forgive me.

Village committees had met, deliberated, voted, and agreed that it would indeed be splendid if the children of the school could join in the forthcoming festivity by taking part in a couple of country dances. One involved lines of us standing opposite, boy girl, boy girl and head to tailing in a simple arrangement set to music. Along with verse variations where shapes were made with arms, and pat a cake clapping as a couple by couple passed down the middle. The whole concluded after reprises of the main theme. The other comprised a rather more circular affair. Now couples wove in and out of counter rotating rings in a path that would have generated a fine spirograph pattern had they been allowed to pull baler twine in their wake. We were all to take part.

To begin with I was just a bit clumsy. If there ever was a person who proclaimed that ‘white men ain’t got no rhythm’ I suspect that they could have held my ineptitude at skipping to a beat up as a definitive example. The trouble was that Mrs Jasper, the self chosen choreographer of the spectacle was a perfectionist. The sort of woman who saw my feet of clay as an insult not to be entertained. I was caught then, between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand there was no way that I was going to allowed to drop out. If one rat was allowed to jump ship, however much the ship would benefit, it was clear that there were a number of others that would rather not be part of it. In a school of under thirty students there really wasn’t a lot of slack as far as the required number at the dance was concerned. On the other hand there was Mrs Jaspers reaction to my overqualification in the left foot department. Over a period of a fortnight she went from being a patient maternal perfectionist to a screaming banshee every time I put a foot out of place. Rather that curb my wayward rhythms this really only served to aggravate them and produce secondary anomalies. Soon I was unable to tell clockwise from anti clockwise, invariably made lunges for a male partner, and, when trying to follow other pat a cakers, nearly had Wayne Bests eye out on the end of my thumb. Students with whom I had shared tears and laughter began to discuss openly the best methods for my dispatch and the disposal of the body. I was totally crap at country dancing and not even my sister had a comforting word.

Add all this to the fact that I was having a frighteningly early puberty. I reached the point where I prayed in earnest for some of the tragic deaths of children that we learned of in the Bible and Dickens could befall me, thus enabling friends and family to remember me as a wonderful boy. To spare them the need to speak my name in the hushed tones that would undoubtedly be reserved for the tales of the great barn dance debacle.

God answered my prayers, thoughtfully avoiding my untimely death, he instead sent a great flood to help me out.

Overnight the Bristol Avon catchment area was inundated with nearly seven inches of rain. The river rose, sweeping away old stone bridges. A dam burst and washed away the centre of Bitton. In our house the water rose to a depth of nearly four feet. In the early hours of Saturday July the thirteenth, the very day of the Upton Cheyney barndance, my sisters and I were evacuated by the fire service to a family on higher ground, and subsequently to my grandparents house in Kent. And as the circumstances of our family life moved on it turned out that we were to change school by the time the new term started. It wasn’t until the year two thousand and one that I felt able to dance as if no one was looking.

Junk Mail

“An English man’s home is his castle…
It’s also a valuable asset that could help keep your independence.”

Thus began a letter that I received trough the post today. A letter that went on to advertise the potential for equity release from my home.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose.
Oh…..
Unless of course you live in Wales and have a passing knowledge of how old Longshanks surrounded your countrymen with his castles in order to suppress any notion of independence.

I shall be giving Mr Daren Carter of Retirement Services Ltd a ring on Monday to educate him a little.

Unholy Moses!

Back it the late seventies it was still legal to burn the straw by products of the grain harvest directly in the field. Various justifications were expressed on behalf of the practice. Weed control was one. Ash as a quick wash in fertiliser was another. I think that I heard destruction of certain types of parasite insect larvae once as well.
The truth was of course far more simple. It gave you an opportunity at the end of a hard days work for more than a little mayhem.
Stubble burning was a truly spectacular conflagration and the real aim was to produce a pall of smoke that could be seen for three counties and allow you to turn up grinning and red eyed for last orders at the pub. If you were truly gifted you might just get a write up in 'The Stubble Burners Gazzette'.
My old boss Roger was a stubble burner of legend and on a good windy day, a day when things got truly out of hand, he could close down the M4, Divert air traffic from nearby military airfields, take out half a mile of hedge, endanger a few lives and probably several tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment. It was men like Roger that made farming ‘exciting’ in the seventies and I fear that unless health and safety legislation becomes a whole lot more lax we shall not see his like again.
I remember at the end of the day he would turn up just as his chaps were taking the last load of grain from the field. Cackling like a spectacularly maniacal Arthur Brown, he would drop a match while standing at a point that he judged to be upwind. Heaven help you if you were downwind.
Here on Hallett’s mountain it is time to pay tribute to our heroes of yesteryear. For the next month or so it is perfectly OK to set fire to the gorse. I have no idea why, though they do say that it keeps down weeds and pests and improves the grazing. For the next month we shall be blessed with a little rain of ash from the sky. Lone tractor drivers will be seen heading away as fast as they can. The skyline will be filled with small volcanoes, and men glad of the overtime will arrive in little red fire trucks to watch as things burn to their natural conclusion.

Uneasy Rider

After freezing my genitalia down to the size of a chipolata blessed with poorly shrivelled raisins for company I looked in despair at the contents of my bag.
Now there’s an opening line for you.
You see the thing was this, She Of The Townhouse had lured me on a promise down for a couple of days in the Cotswolds. While she went off for the day trumping up business for her organ, I am left to my own crude devices.
I am not sure whether fortune or foolish vanity drove my reason but I took my Dawes out of the shed and dusted it off with the intention of exploring a bit of Laurie Lees backyard. The gentle spring that had blessed the early part of the week had rather lulled me in to a false sense of security. Persuading me that all would be well and warm even without the extreme nether garments that I layer on when striding the mountain.
Dear me how wrong I was. As I attempted a hurtle along the A417 from Birdlip towards Cirencester, a very bike unfriendly dual carriageway, I soon regretted my optimism regarding the sun breaking through the chill grey mist. My fingers gradually turned blue and my thumbs stopped aching and went completely numb. The nose I was following likewise. Soon the uphill bits were accompanied by ragged breath and snot. By the time I actually arrived at Phoenix I was like a block of ice, and as I say at the top in danger of the unfortunate emasculation of the proverbial brass monkey.
I was glad then to repair to a coffee shop called Jacks and gird myself for the next stage of my expedition, first having purchased a map that would guide me to a route with a little less heavy traffic.
There I also reflected on how poorly I had stocked my small rucksack, not even a pair of gloves.
I was a sad comparison indeed to the radiant mother with a toddler who sat opposite me. Hanging from the back of a pram she proceeded to unpack an impressive range of puzzles, books, foodstuffs, spare clothes, cleaning materials and all manner of daily essentials until I began to suspect that she must have access to the Tardis space saving technology of ‘Bigger on the Inside”. This she multi tasked with animated and interesting conversation and the consumption of coffee.
It was like watching someone rub their stomach and pat their head at the same time.
I did think about whether she might not have a hot water bottle that I could stuff down the front of my trouser. But then I guess there are some things that are better left unspoken between strangers.
Ten miles later on I found a very nice pub and thawed out by the fire. As well of course as sinking a couple of pints of IPA and floating pie and chips on top of that.
The day seemed to brighten up…..

Miracle Cure

Just as I turn the corner between life and death, She Of The Town House is banging on about some sniffle she has picked up from goodness knows where and is exagerating to call a cold.
Women!

The Grim Reaper Calls....

Seldom free from pain but never one to grumble. Such, dear reader, is a mans lot. While some exceptions are out there (lesser men…) we bear our lot stoically and seldom remark upon life, it misfortunes, or indeed illness. Indeed, I myself am raising a weary finger from my own sickbed to type this small note to you and no living soul has yet heard a word of complaint.
Wracked though I am with this terrible cough. Burned by a fever hotter than pepper. Staring through the wild eyes of delirium.
Though I am uncomplaining, She Of The Town House has spotted my plight, and summoned the Old Walled Town's finest medical opinion to my sickbed.
I can tell that the end is near. The lights are dim now and the sound is receding to a gentle murmur in the background. I understand that the HN51 strains have all been accounted and discounted leading to a sorry conclusion. There is little time left. Unless an elixir can be located, and fast, I shall be gone by morning.
It seems that I have ‘Man Flu’.

Hoping For A Snowday

As January marks its passing I would like to nod my head to Jim Miller.
My friend of many years.
Goodnight you old bugger.

In other news. The wind is creeping in to the corners of Hallett’s Mountain and it’s a chill wind indeed unless you can scrabble room by the fire. As its my fire I have my feet up beside it. I have a glass of whisky and a strong coffee beside me on the left arm of the chair. To my right a bowl of Wine gums. There is also a rumour of chocolate but I am keeping that hidden unless She Of The Townhouse or The Boy twig.
We are hoping that the bad weather warnings for our area are realised and that by morning we shall find the rest of the world cut off by snow. At least to the degree that we wont have to go to work.
Fingers crossed.

Update 01/02/2008
Bloomin!
No sign of snow at all on the ground and just the briefest flurries as I set off for work this morning.
Grrrrrr

Sock It To Me

When She Of The Townhouse gave me socks for Christmas, I sensed that a certain stage had been reached in our relationship. Nevertheless I persevere.....
The footwear in question had a higher purpose. Over the weeks since the festive season, things have been complicated. You see the socks in question were labelled with the days of the week. At first I thought that this would be easy. If the day was Monday then you fished out the socks with Monday written on them, wore them for a day and then bunged them in the wash. And the next day you picked up Tuesday, the day being a sock related update of the previous one. So on and so on. I am sure that even a child could get the hang of it, and for someone as shamefully over certificated as yours truly, well surely such a concept is child’s play.
Is it bugger!
Within mere days the socks had performed a shuffle reminiscent of the pea under one of three thimbles. By the end of the first week I was finding it hard to remember what millennium we were in and I just couldn’t match the socks to the days no matter how much sweat or intellect I expended.
And (lap it up Miss Beckwith) then the great Moo Moo stepped in. I was getting ready for work last Monday and my personal deity revealed one of the wrinkles in the universe that comes every now and then to a Newton, an Einstien, or a Hawking. There I was, desperate to fit the socks to the day and all the time I was starting out wrong footed.
I picked up the nearest pair and in a flash realised that, in accordance with their legend, it would be so much better if it was Saturday again.
From now on it’s the socks that will determine the day and not the other way round.
Some of them are going to be recycled a lot more quickly of course.

Miss Beckwith? She was the Venus who taught me English when I was eleven. Never let me begin sentences with ‘and’.

Déjà Vu ?

Many years ago , on an eighteenth birthday that turned out to be memorable for reasons that I wont completely embarrass you with, one of the gifts I was given was a book token.
This represented the thoughts and good wishes of a group of friends that shared my life and lunchtimes in the sixth form college.
Lets see, Soo, Christine, Elaine, Julie, Alison, Peter, Kath, Jayne….Oh dear I am going to have to find it now and edit up at a later date.
The thing was the token had a picture on the front that was a puzzle to me at the time. Envisaged as some time in my future was a man nurturing a whisky and a pipe, feet up beside a glowing log fire, getting stuck in to an improving book. This latter presumably being the focus, in keeping with the nature of the gift.
Pleased with their generosity and the sentiments expressed within I made demure reference to the naffness of the picture. And to a woman ( sorry Pete it just scans better..) they assured me that this was an accurate representation of their own expectations of my future.
Well!
You can imagine what a blow this might be to an eighteen year old lad. The lanky Don Juan who agonised over the affections of young women just such as these was seen as a pipe and slippers man! It all seemed a dismal prospect.
The hormonal rollercoaster was put firmly back on track at a shared party in Hanham cricket club later that evening thank goodness. Even so some niggle of doubt surfaced again last night.
She Of The Townhouse is away on a witchcraft course you see and so for two nights I am alone. And I expect you can see it coming….
There I sat, nurturing a whisky, feet up beside a glowing log fire, getting stuck in to an improving book. The pipe was replaced by a stinking dog, a black Labrador grunting from time to time at my feet.
To all intents and purposes I had become the picture on the card. Disturbing.
So there we go, I am at a loose end again tonight. What should I do?
Text me, let me know, leave a note in the comment box perhaps?
I mean there’s the pub. The cinema. I could go out and watch the moon on a remote beach ( if the rain stops). I could dash out for some Kentucky fried weasel at the drive through. The night is pregnant with all kinds of exciting possibilities that I am eager to have drawn to my attention.
What do you think?

Oh incidentally, in case any of you out there in BlogSpace are reading it
A Guide to the Gower by Wynford Vaughn Thomas
The Oxford Book of French Verse
Wandering by Herman Hesse.
Thanks girls…..and Peter

Hot Stuff

Around this time of year I find myself thinking about Dave. My best friend for twenty odd years was taken away by foul cancer two years ago now. We had taught the same role in schools side by side ever since way back and we knew each other like a pair of old socks. We were the same age as well, still are I suppose but its not so easy to talk to him now.
It was around now that I spoke to him for the last time. Squeezed his hand. Cried a bit as I walked away. But you know he would be awkward if I made a scene so instead I will trot out one of his thoughts in the hope that those who knew him will turn a smile with me and he will continue to be remembered with affection by a generation before he fades. As of course we all must.
We used to waste time occasionally speculating on a program on the TV. ‘Ready Steady Cook’ has been on BBC for some time now. Its format is that two guests bring in a bag of food costing no more that five pounds ( about ten dollars (US)) and then, with the aid of two celebrity chefs, turn the contents into a spectacular feast inside twenty minutes.
We would idle away a few pints of beer amusing ourselves over the most unlikely ingredients that you could tip out of the bag and face the poor schmuck who really had to deliver.
Tara Palmer Wotsname came up with an interesting take when she tipped a pair of red high heeled shoes out in front of Anthony Worral Thompson. He made a herb omelette out of the storecupboard specials that the chefs are allowed access to in order to supplement if memory serves.
We decided that we had to stick to food items though. Eventually Dave came up with something that we felt would crush any attempt to deal with it.

Out of our bag would crash a turkey, deep frozen overnight in a bath of liquid nitrogen.

Right then fellas, twenty minutes starts now, ready steady cook!

Not A Word Mind

Dear reader, I hardly know what to say. There is a whiff of scandal here on Hallett's Mountain. We await developments agog and speculate away.

The Emporers Dirty Laundry

Apocalypse has struck at the Townhouse.
You know that moment on all naval disaster films when the background hum of the engine stops. The one where you are suddenly conscious of the sound by focus on its absence. Well a similar moment happened sometime between Christmas and New Year in The Old Walled Town. The washing machine, faithful old retainer of socks, ground to a halt. And a very nasty grinding sound it was.
A mere thirty seconds after disaster struck a large amount of laundry was discovered. After accusations had been exchanged, this was bagged, bundled off up to my lofty perch, and loaded in to the Halletts Mountain washing machine.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not that much of a slob, but a T-shirt will normally last me for a couple of days if you know what I mean. And a pair of jeans….well sometimes more than a day or two. I even have to be reminded sometimes. Well there you go. But hardly the end of a spectrum.
What struck me when sorting through the stuff to put on the washing line, was that we have one among us who changes his clothes with a frequency bordering on OCD. From one of the teenage bedrooms of the Townhouse has emerged enough clothing to relieve a community struck by Tsunami.
Even as we speak I hear the distnat rumble of a half track delivering the next load....

What A Great Age You Are Grandmama

Today was my grandmothers 96th birthday. She and I have been out for a meal.
We had a bit of a laugh with her wheelchair and getting in and out of my car.
We dined out at a very nice Chinese restaurant in Bath and then took a tour around the park. We talked over old times and speculated on whether she would reach her hundredth birthday.
Later, as she was falling asleep in the chair, I realised that I was almost exactly half her age.

Happy Christmas

and best wishes to everyone out there in blogland for the New Year

....meanwhile, high above Tranquility Base a lone figure races through the void....

Genetically Modified

I am sitting awake at just after four in the morning and would probably be a whole lot better off asleep.
I am thinking about the clothes that I wear like a second skin.
I really only have two modes of dress recently. An unlike Einstein in every other respect I think that it is from him that I get the idea of wardrobe. Mind you it could be from the guy that Geoff Goldblum played in ‘The Fly’.
I have my work mode uniform and my jeans and black t-shirt. Buy two of everything and you never have to think about what to wear. Goodness only knows what people think when they see me in the same clothes week after month but I care little …. no hang on that’s not true…. I care for my appearance once and then I don’t like to think about it again.
This month I have had some disasters though. Jeans that have been with me since the mid nineties have bitten the dust and my school shoes, shoes that I hoped would see me to retirement, have sprung. I have been raggedy arsed and poorly shod. In addition the strategy of lining my pockets with plastic bags in order to prevent items falling through the holes led to a night having to search a whole beach for my car keys.
I have been forced to bite the bullet and lash out on a whole new wardrobe.
Well at least that’s it for another decade. Provided that I can figure out where my umpty pairs of black socks wiggle off when the washing machine door closes.

Just stepped Out For A Minute

I guess by now people whose blogs I am normally all over like a bad rash must be beginning to wonder why I am so silent of late. Correspondents who drop in here from time to time must be wondering why I haven’t sent a note in the last fortnight likewise. For those of a nervous disposition, the ones I stand among, by way of a half arsed apology I offer this. I am afraid that my life in the real world is rather hectic at present and I am getting a bit flaky round the edges.
The spare time that I usually have to chew a thorn or pass the time of day is eroded to the nub just at the minute. I seem to be coming home and passing out for the few hours that I used to use for all the good things in life.
So if I don’t seem to be there quite as much as usual please forgive me.
To quote a man who used to make guest appearances blowing up hot water bottles on children’s TV “I’ll be back”.
Its just there isn’t a lot spare in the next three to four weeks

An Embarrassment Of Riches

Never looking the gift horse in the mouth may well be a general piece of good advice, but every now and then someone uses the entertainment of this sentiment to stiff you one.
I am beginning to wonder whether She Of The Townhouse shouldn’t have checked the teeth and gums of what had the appearance of a very generous offer just a little more carefully.
While not wishing to dwell on the size of Bob The Other Builders latest erection, I am afraid that this is where my tale must start. He has a few acres you see. A few acres down in the valley. Acres that are encumbered by trees standing in the way of development. Or rather were encumbered. It seems someone has been offsetting their carbon footprint on real estate that had been cleared for development and so it now has been cleared for development…ummm if you see what I mean….
With an enthusiasm worthy of a man who has finally rid the third runway forest of environmental protestors, he has laid siege to the trees that would otherwise impede progress. And, as is the way with these things, he has some logs.
Ever generous ( and I mean that quite sincerely, this is a tale of generous spirit if nothing else) Bob The Other Builder gave She Of The Townhouse the heads up for a load of logs. Knowing that she possessed a wood burning stove he asked what part of The Old Walled Town she would like a few unloaded in.
Now you see the thing is the local council can be funny about this kind of thing. OK they have passed a planning consent that allows him to obliterate an ecoforest. This doesn’t mean that they are going to grin and bear him dumping fuel willy nilly in the middle of a medieval walled town outside a house with a small back yard. So she asked if he could leave them outside my barn. In my car parking space. Where my car usually goes.
Bugger!

Vanity ?

For the past twenty three years I have taught computing, mathematics, and science at YsgolJB in varying proportions. I have taught each subject at key stages 3 to 5 and have been responsible for four separate A levels. Some of my ICT students have also gone on to take special papers beyond A level. In every subject I have taught it has been a good fortune to see my students succeeding at the highest levels.

I have overseen the expansion of my main subject from a curiosity in the corner of a science laboratory to a Key Skill seen as vital to success in all subject areas in a large comprehensive school. Over the years this has put me in charge of several expansions in the size of my department. Recent major challenges have been the smooth transfer from a late Victorian style building to a purpose built school, along with the introduction of ICT as an academic qualification to the majority of key stage 4 students. This has meant that my department has built from a one man band operating mainly at lunchtimes to a diverse and dedicated group of full time and second subject ICT teachers, each one of whom it has been privilege to guide and work alongside.

The above though is what you might expect. I have a background of experience, and some successes to feel pleased about. I can bring that to the table, but then so can many others I am sure.
As well as academic and pastoral responsibilities of a teacher I have always found that it in taking students on for the extra mile there are rewards beyond.

I have introduced and led a Duke Of Edinburgh award group at YsgolJB. As helping me to share my own passion for the outdoor and mountain experience, it has allowed me to see students develop self reliance and self confidence. The satisfaction gained in sharing this kind of experience with students more than repays the effort you have to put in.
This also allowed me to develop my own mountain leadership skills and qualify as a welsh mountain leader. The award has also allowed me to work closely with colleagues in other schools, sharing joint expeditions to the Scottish islands.
Trips abroad. I have served as teacher / deputy leader on fifteen trips outside the United Kingdom, taking students to Germany and France for weeks study holidays. Working, and sharing the fun. Guiding students (and indeed staff) through the perils of the ‘hypermarché’ and Euro Disney. Quite often reflecting on the fact that you could really do with a little more than five hours sleep before the next tour of duty starts. I am fluent in spoken French.
OOSH. Now what on earth does that mean? Out Of School Hours. Grant money enabled us to keep study facilities open at YsgolJB after the end of the school day and as well as maintaining a presence in an IT room overseeing project work in a variety of subjects I was able to focus on helping students improve coursework in maths for GCSE.
These last three, along with other experiences have of course shown me the value of going further. In teaching I feel that we are rewarded by what we give. The relationships and empathy that you build with students are what enriches the joint learning experience. Academic excellence is rooted in this I am sure. If I could give a third referee it would be my students over the years, many of whom correspond regularly from all over the world.

In my personal life I am a keen astrophotographer and a published amateur astronomer. I have a passion for photography and am a member of Conwy Camera Club. I enjoy the challenge of the mountains in all their variety. I am training to drive HGV vehicles. I grow my own vegetables and I am proud of my garden. I read extensively on a variety of subjects and write for pleasure. I walk the dog twice a day and have a hectic family life. I hold a BSAC diving certificate but prefer snorkelling and free diving. If you give me some raw ingredients I can cook up a storm.

Oh yes! If I have to, I can conjure up a science experiment from brown paper, string and patches.

( I am brushing up my CV )

The Feel Good Factor

Once every month I have a private indulgence……..ALL RIGHT! Enough of that sniggering at the back….you there….see me at the end of the lesson.

Hey you can tell I have been doing a little light teaching this week cant you.

Let me start afresh.
Around the middle of each month a copy of Astronomy Now magazine appears in the Hallett’s Mountain post.
After divesting it of its outer plastic cover I always turn eagerly to the amateur astrophotography pages at the end. While there are superb pictures by people of real talent I am ashamed to say that my immediate aim is to find a couple of pictures that I can scoff at and compare unfavourably with mine. Its just envy of course. I never take the time to send any of mine in so any mockery that I posture is just sour grapes.
A month ago I changed my habit though. I felt that my picture of the occultation of Leo was probably up their street. I also remembered that from the cloud variations I had seen that there probably were not many people who could compete. The window in obscurity that I was lucky enough to see was pretty lucky and the event had quit a limited geographical extent. Reader, I sent it in.
So with solitary feigned boredom I disrobed (enough of that sniggering I told you earlier) the virgin (stop it!!) December issue of my magazine on the kitchen table and with nervous fingers fumbled straight to the relevant section at the back. Imagine, dear reader, my delight when my eye fell upon an image of the moon and Venus and then again my disappointment when I realised that the credit underneath the photo wasn’t mine. Not only that but the fellow had missed the burst of starlight that I had seen. While still a good picture I was quite miffed! My gruntle had been decidedly taken away, and just for once the idea of a stiff letter to the editor, possibly even a liberal use of underliners ink, seemed to fit the bill.
Then my phlegmatic side kicked in. I like Astronomy Now quite a lot and decided not to let one editorial faux pas by someone who was obviously on a short term contract spoil my enjoyment of the rest of the magazine.
And so it was, that as I left page nineteen, with its speculations about the activity of martian volcanoes, and turned to page twenty the lower mandible truly hit the deck. There was my picture at the bottom of the page. Along with it, lacking really only the superfluous description of an arse being scratched, lay the content of my post.
Well! You could have knocked me over with a cheesy wotsit.
I am a published amateur astronomer. My picture. My words.
I modestly texted everyone I know.

The Dance Of The Hours

Returning to the mountain around two this morning, a black velvet studded with fusions diamond gems greeted my delight. The sky was clear and the air was still. Perfect for wandering through the cosmos and my imagination.
I am hoping to see some good meteors. The annual Leonids are good for a few nights either side of the 17th of November.
So there I am. Half inside a thermal sleeping bag. Lying back on a deck chair. A couple of thousand pounds worth of digital trickery beside me staring into the inky abyss and wandering the lanes between the stars.
Pointing my camera at Gemini first. My sisters birthsign so a good picture here might suit her for Christmas. A gorgeous red Mars hangs right in the middle, like an internally illuminated ruby tossed between the twins.
On to Cancer, and in my own faint constellation Praespe, a tiny little beehive of stars shines steady.
Then Leo. He strides the darkness over Garvie’s leap and the old church. I ought to return to this when there is some moonlight to illuminate the foreground. Perhaps in a couple of weeks. In the meantime Saturn decorates the lions belly like a little fleck of yellow butter.
I am reluctant to lose the warm cocoon that I am in but The odd wisp of cloud is about now. Already I have been an hour out and things are moving round. The meteors are eluding me as well. So I put away the toys and just take the chair and my Ajungilac a little way down the track to see what I can bag with the binoculars. Moving away from the house lets me look more to the north and west.
Even though I know the sky well it takes a little while to get my eye in. After a quick scoot through Orion it is on to Taurus where I tick the crab nebula in passing and wonder if leaving the camera at the house was a mistake. Still If I had tried for the crab I would feel I had to get the telescope out and then another hour would pass. Sometimes you have to just look and wonder.
Looking past the Pleiades, a gorgeous little cluster of sapphire stars I would like to find Aires and Triangulum this would give me a galaxy that borders on naked eye visibility but the pattern is hard to pick out for some reason. These are faint constellations and by now low in the sky so I have probably missed this tonight.
And then my eye is caught by something new, As I wander round the W in Cassiopeia a patch of light around a bright star doesn’t seem quite right. I think I know what it is but even so …Lets see. Cassiopeia, Perseus with its double cluster of stars grouped together but just beyond that. Using the binoculars I realise now what is wrong. I had spotted Comet 17P/Holmes a couple of weeks ago. It was flagged up on many astronomy sites and I even got a picture that I was pleased with, but this is much bigger. The corona now seems to be rivalling the size of the moon, nowhere near as bright of course but it is an amazing sight. Like someone had tossed a little bag of exploding flour around a star. Indeed I must check just which one the bright magnitude star next to it is. Beautiful. In fact it is so good that I should get my camera back out and try, the chance might not come again tomorrow night and in a few days the moon will wash some of it out.
Looking at the sky though, I can see that there is no time for this. Bugger. The cloud is now racing over from the west and there are only few minutes left before a veil is drawn across infinity. Just time in fact to look over my shoulder and admire Venus rising in the east.
And now it’s five in the morning. I have been out there for three hours. Time, I think, for a coffee and a few hours sleep. I imagine you all tucked up in those warm beds. Riding your night trains. Think then of me while I inhabit the parallel universe.

Free tours. Next one leaves just after dark.

And Found

Once the Royal Automobile Club had determined that I hadn’t actually had a breakdown and wasn’t in danger on the side of a motorway they declined to rush to my assistance beyond putting me in touch with a locksmith.
“£270 pounds call out , can be there by nine p.m. sir.”
Politely declining his generous offer I tried another approach. The local Ford garage.
Again a very nice man.
“Well on that model it’s an electronically chipped key so we will have to tow it in, break in to the car and get the serial number. Unfortunately we don’t keep any record linked to the numberplate on a database. Its going to be around £370 pounds sir.”
“No that’s alright sir, you use any expletive that you like. I am sure I would in your position”
The whole of the carefully squirreled Hallett Christmas fund was slipping away before my minds eye. After the events earlier in the day this was not so much adding insult to injury as turning the knife and kicking me when I already felt down. Perhaps the great Moo Moo really had deserted me and I was truly alone in an unforgiving universe.
Clutching at a desperate straw I reasoned that I would be quite prepared to work hard for three or four hundred pounds. So I trudged to the big shop. Taking care to avoid aisle 13 I bought a torch for £5 and a second one just in case that one ran out a bit quick.
Trudging (hmm I like that word) back to the pitch black beach I found a suitable stick. I dragged the stick and made a line from the dunes to the tide. Walked a couple of metres to the side and sweeping the torch back and forwards trudged (it was sandy what can I say) back between the tram tracks. A small pool of light in acres of darkness.
And I continued thus for several hours.
Reports of UFOs and ships lost at sea for the night must abound by now, and I expect there will be a write up in The Weekly Witter. I went through various levels of weeping frustration and hysteria. I dragged my stick and swept the torch back and forth. I offered a prayer to St Jude ( the great Moo Moo is seldom offended).
Eventually, unbelievable even now, I found them!
I found a small bunch of keys on a beach a mile long and half a mile wide in the dark!!
Tonight I am buying two lottery tickets, the numbers I shall be using are……..

Lost

After a day of desperation and despair the dog and I were both glad. As a welcome aside from our usual turn around the woods we enjoyed the freedom of the lonely strand. Several miles of windswept golden sand, stretched wide between the dunes and low tide. Giving him the freedom to career around like a lunatic and allowing me to speak away the cares of the day to the Marram.
A lucky find, a half filled bottle of coke, gave us just what we needed. This serendipitous toy delights us both. I throw it soaring high over the mid tide ponds. Asbo skims the surface of the water like a furry black exocet, returning it again and again. Until eventually the gloom of the evening turns our thoughts to the prospect of what we might have for tea. Grinning like a pair of fools, covered in sand and soaking wet, we climb back through the dunes and return to the car.
And in an instant my manic rollercoaster day takes the plunge to a new nadir. Somewhere out in the gathering darkness, caught between the tides, are the only keys to the car and the house……

Cliffhanger!

Asda Man And The Perils Of Aisle 13

She has always been a bit over familiar that one. You may remember
last time, when she tried to sneak me her mobile number. I am afraid to report that now she has gone too far. I have seldom seen a compliment go so to a girls head in such a foolhardy fashion. Why really, I barely went beyond a polite thank you.
I mean she was kind enough to point out that the fine ale that I was sneaking past the baleful glare of the security guard (I am blessed with nsuch youthful looks...) was on a ‘two for one offer’. Very kind indeed. But lord help us, she then went on to point out that I would now have enough to share with a friend.
The hussy.
I gave her a stern look that Paddinton's Peruvian aunt Lucy would have gazed upon with the female equivalent of avuncular affection. Practically inviting herself up to my mountain for some drunken orgy like that. Even assuming that such a thing ever happened. Ahem.
After ticking her off soundly, I gave her name tag in at the customer service desk I can tell you. And a piece of my mind to the lady who was obviously looking after the seat while the proper manager was away being important. On reflection I wish he had been there, things would then have been settled in a prompt and positive manner. You see the kind of thing that can happen when men turn their backs.
Anyway, here we are a few days later and they have sent me a letter. Not a word of apology mind you, nor any kind of reassurance that the minx has been summarily dismissed. Oh no.
In fact I am not sure that I like the letters tone at all, there are quite a few words in it that I am having to look up but the whole thing has note of what I believe is acronised to BDSM. Most odd for a superstore, even in this day and age. Phrases like ‘personal restraint’ and ‘self discipline’ spring off the page …..
Lord knows what I am going to do if she catches my eye next week.
Harumph!

Season Of Mists

Some days Hallett’s Mountain becomes an island. An Island high above a primeval swamp. A swamp populated with strange monsters. Monsters whose call echoes through the mists of the valley below. Strange crashes and groans as they brush aside the forest.
Then of course the sun comes up and everything gets a little clearer. The mist fades away and reveals the train running deep in the valley. Speedboats preparing for early water skiers glide minuscule but noisy far below. Lorries grumble along the A470 creaking out the turns in the road.
Camp bow wow and the jackhammer roadworks add their own notes to my soundscape.
I sit high on Garvie’s leap and watch the world wake up.

Halloween

Last night, She Of The Town House and I watched spellbound. In an ancient celtic roundhouse, Eric Maddern drew stories spun like gossamer from smoke around a camp fire. He wove them in to tales of kings and queens. He led us down deep dark forest roads. He charmed animals to speak in the tongues of men. He travelled the veil between the living and the dead in tale and song.
If you ever get the chance….

The Dark Arts 5

As British summer time gives way to GMT again I bet that a few of you out there in the interwebby spaces between my life and yours were pleased with the extra hour in bed. Probably unable to see any obvious downside to the prolonged snooze. Pity then the poor amateur astrophotographer. When all the others are grabbing shuteye and being smug, I have to get up an hour earlier than usual to get the same shot as the day before. I preferred the darker mornings.
So at four a.m. today I leapt like a salmon from the stream of unconsciousness. Dashing to the window it was with a special joy that I noticed that yesterday evenings rain had washed the sky to crystal perfection, leaving stars laser sharp. Mars and Venus both hung like exotic diamonds and the three quarter moon, hung high, was providing the perfect lighting for landscapes with stars. All this I observed aloud as a special treat for She Of The Townhouse, who shared the special joy of the hour with a hippopotamine grunt from the pit of those less fortunate than the early riser. Not that she is like a hippo you understand, its just the sounds.
I skipped lightfoot to the car. Loaded the ‘special equipment’ and left hot hooved for a mountain rendevous. It constantly amazes me how few others are around at that time of day, the roads were clear all the way to Tryfan but as I progressed deeper in to the mountains it became increasingly clear that thick cloud was going to blight the photographic prospect.
I am trying to build up a small portfolio of pictures for an exhibition you see. Constellations with a mountain backdrop, perhaps a noteworthy building or two. But these are tricky blighters to take. To get the shot you need a mountain in the right position in front of you, a constellation that you want to photograph and a reasonable amount of moonlight. The moonlight, if you are lucky, will illuminate the landscape. Being far weaker than sunshine it will allow you to take a long exposure (say 10 to 20 seconds) and have bright shiny stars as well as a clearly recognisable scene.
If you are lucky the conditions for this are right on three or four nights a month.
This morning though the cloud messed up the whole thing.
Giving up on the mountains I drove around for a while and eventually noticed a clearing sky over Llyn Gerionydd, a lake above the Conwy valley. Quite by chance I snapped this.
The cloud at the end of the lake has a little dispersed light from the valley town of Trefriw the only other light is moonlight.
I shall certainly be staking this spot out again.

Feed Me More Seymour

From top to tail the Old Walled Town is filled with men fiddling with shining white erections. Gentle reader, save for that elegant googletrap I shall stray no more into the unsavoury side. Unless of course the un of savoury is sweet, in which case you may still read on unperturbed by unwholesome appetites. Take care though if you are on a diet, then it might still be a good idea to avert your eyes. I appeal not to the baser lust today but rather to the would be glutton.
You see its
food fest time again.
Last year the Old Walled Town played host to a food festival that swelled its population from half a dozen spinsters, the other bloke from the pub, me, and the dog to a seething mass of tens of thousands of visitors. I had never seen the streets so full, or indeed the traffic at such a standstill.
I fondly imagine that buffalodickdy would be impressed, even with his far grander experiences of humungous chilli cook offs.
Every corner, every car park and every nook and cranny will be filled with things to eat and drink, most of them exceptionally good. Nearly all, save alas for the beer tent, will be generous with free samples and the skilled freeloader that I have become in these situations, is hoping to waddle home after undoing a notch or two on the belt.
There will be cold meats and hot roasts. Cheeses and pickles to tickle. Dishes of fishes and muscles for sure. Sausages from Edwards grilling. Thai, Indian, Malaysian, Burgers in baps, medieval authenticity in root vegetable form, and sweets from around the world. All this and demonstrations of culinary buffoonery that would make Nigella cringe (serves her right for the sheer awfulness of what she gets away with on the television).
A town that is running down for the winter will be alive in every quarter from the crack of dawn until the last drunk passes out in the street, and so on for the whole weekend.
I shall be sweeping back and forward through this bounty. A Homer Simpson like cross between a Dyson and a lawnmower.
Let battle commence.

The Dark Arts 4

I really must try and come up with a few more original names.
Right then, this weeks Astro Experiment is a photograph of the central region of the great nebula. If you want to see this yourself then the naked observer (it happens, what can I say…) will need to be standing facing south at around 5 in the morning with a decent pair of binoculars. Find Orion’s Belt and the fuzzy patch half way down his sword will reward you well if you look at it for a few minutes.
A dark southern sky will help. You might also prefer to wait until January when you can see the same thing as you come out of the pub, but at a far more reasonable hour.
The photograph I have taken of course relies on a few hundred quids worth of telescope and camera as well as a little experience setting the whole thing up.
So what is it? This is a region of far away (and long ago) where we can see the great Moo Moo making stars. A stellar nursery if you like. Gravity squashes huge clumps of Hydrogen together until they eventually ignite and stars are born. We see the clouds lit up from the inside by the magic of nuclear fire. Okay that’s a little simplistic as an explanation but if you are interested beyond this then Google knows far more than I (look up M42 Great Nebula).The picture has had the red element pushed up a bit to bring out more detail.
Now I know that there are plenty of perfectly good and far better focussed photos of this nebula all over the net but this is the one I took. And, I might add, froze myself to the bone doing it. Still, its tremendous fun even with your clothes on…..

Hells Angel 1 (A Note From Ordinary Life)

I am still rummaging in my drawers for a picture!

Stepping way out of sequence I am going back to the first half of the 1970’s again.
john.g and kev ( who you probably can’t read..) both have recently written great posts full of biker nostalgia that put me in mind of my own life as one of the Brothers.
My earliest bike was an old BSA Bantam that my father left behind. I think we got it working once but I was only about eight at the time and my mother was never really going to let me die so young. I think that Melissa and I probably filled the oil tank with plaster before it was pronounced dead.
It wasn’t until I was able to race from house to lake, through the vineyards of the Entre Deux Mers that the bug truly bit me.
In the summer following I did a deal with my grandfather, who foolishly promised me the sum of ten pounds for every O’level that I passed, little realising that this would leave him out of pocket enough to purchase a brand new moped.

Paul and I had joined a local boxing club. I can’t imagine what possessed me, as far as I remember there were no girls there. The idea of being hit by someone else and having to connect with them in return, or rather more preferably first, meant that it was a very short lived affair. I think I enjoyed the training and the running round the hills in the dark. I might have done it as a favour to a friend to make a viable number for the trainer. Anyway…
Paul came down from Kingswood on his Puch MS50 moped, I hopped on the back, and we both went back up to Longwell Green for practice in pugilism.
And then, when I was able to cash in my grandfathers obscene generosity, Paul was ready to pass on his moped. So I bought it, thereby saving myself enough money to also go hitch hiking round northern France.

Placed on the centre stand, you pedalled like mad for a few seconds and then the angry wasp of an engine burst in to life. Burning a petrol and oil mixture that you had to blend yourself at around 35p a gallon. Helmet on, though the law was still a little lax on this point I think, and then push forward use the hand gear change on the left, throttle on the right and off in to the clear blue exhaust smoke. Pedal backwards if you really needed to brake and fingers crossed that nothing fell off.
Ah the joys of two stroke motoring. That bike and I covered a few thousand miles but I was never able to get the fuel oil mixture quite right. I stripped the head and everything downwind several times to clean sticky filthy black carbon deposits from the pipes leading out. I learned that cheap electrics vibrated themselves to death so the police would pull me time and again if I went out at night. I never could get the back light to last more than about half an hour and always had a handful of bulbs in my pocket. I found out about chains and tyres and the dangers of stripping your splines (a very nasty business madam). The mechanical skills that I, by the necessity born of poverty, acquired fixing that bike have served me well ever since.
We whizzed around Bristol and Bath. We climbed and descended the Cotswold escarpment getting metal pinging hot on the way up, catching flies in our headlamps on the way down. We travelled over the Severn Bridge to university together, though the seventy mile journey was a little unrealistic for such a small bike. We went in the guards van to London and traced the capital in times when you could still swing over and park at the side of the road.
I also had the first of two biking accidents. A true ‘sorry mate I didn’t see you’ in which I sailed over the bonnet of a complete tosser chap who pulled out without really looking.
After about three years we parted company as I forsook mopeds for a proper motorcycle with real foot change gears. The last I remember it was stashed somewhere in a barn by Dick who thought at the time that his wife Jean might like it. It may well still be gathering dust there. I know she never rode it.

Couch Potato

Two things before I turn to my topic of the day. First the post contains images of nudity. In fact lets get that out of the way straight away, I am so warm here on Halletts mountain that I am at present typing to you both in the garden and in the buff. Second, yes the picture that I hope is above this note is of the rear end of a dog. Without going in for the kind of hands on experience that leads a fellow into hot water it’s the best picture of a dogs arse that can muster. I could have provided a snap of ‘mist coloured mountains’ as you will see this would be just as appropriate, but that Knofler fellow used it once and ….look if you had paid attention years ago you would know why it chokes me to be reminded of that song.
You see it all started with a brief moment of inattention on my part. As I went to open the gate leading up the last quarter mile to the house (and by the way, check out the squarey little picture thing, I got a couple of good pics of the house last week…ummm Sal..I’m going Corbett again…) I left the car window open. Well it’s a warm day here and I was trying to keep cool.
Asbo, perhaps not the best behaved dog in the world, spotted an opportunity to express his inner wolf. Followed by the debris of a carrier bag and vegetables that I am hoping to use for a feast later on he exited the car at high speed through the window. Neglecting to pay any attention to the difference in shape between he and it ( I fear here for the dogs bollocks (claim googletrap)), with a mighty high pitched yelp, he set off towards the upper slopes of Hallett’s Mountain, leaving me dumfounded. His quarry, to whom he devotes many waking hours of thought, are the sheep that continue to decorate the wilderness until the first frosts bring them back down to valley farms. So as the dogs arse disappears into low cloud I am forced, admittedly by my own stupidity, to pursue.
We rush over the fence. We clear hummocks of fell grass over the big field. We hurdle a stone wall that must be nearly a metre and a half high, and we set of in earnest over the open ground. After about twenty minutes I have been up to my thighs in a sticky bog, my clothes are filthy, I am covered from head to foot in peat and slime, and I am cursing the ancestors of the dog back several generations.
High on Craig Celynin the sheep are far from worried. They have a fair idea of our relative strengths and weaknesses. They are judging the curses and barks from the mist below them, and are running a book on the likely outcome.
And then a minor miracle. The dog and I burst out of the low cloud somewhere above Maen Pen Ddu into golden sunshine. Asbo looks back at my filth ridden form and throws in his paw. He sits down, rolls over in a submissive gesture and grins. We laugh at each other.
On the way back to collect the car and the shopping, I am secretly very pleased. I have just run nearly two miles through a vertical distance of at least 500 feet. I have also run the dog to ground in the process. Okay it was adrenaline fuelled, but its better than I thought it would feel.
By the time we get back to the house all those little endorphins are making me feel quite mellow, and without a qualm I have discarded my clothes in a heap. As I cool down at the end of the day the mist is breaking up and I sit preparing for our next adventure in warm sunshine and a birthday suit.
Later tonight Asbo and I will be joining the crowd in Paris for the rugby. We will be joining it from a comfy chair, well provided with beer and salty snacks of course. Attending via the magic of television. But its nice to know that we aren’t a pair of couch potatoes.
Bring on the dancing girls…..

The Dark Arts 3

I do have moments of doubt. five o’clock in the morning is a pretty unforgiving hour when there is no need to get out of a warm bed at all. Still, the celestial wheels are turning and the next chance I get to see this one I will be a decade hence facing sixty. Not to say that sixty is a great age you understand, I shall look forward to it as I have every decade, and so until the great Moo Moo embraces me.
So. Its five o’clock and I am stumbling around my kitchen, scratching my arse, connecting equipment, and making a cup of tea. Asbo grunts and gives me the lazy eye. Blind pugh grunts.
Outside it is cloudy. Bugger!
But as I look to the west I can see stars through the thin cloud and figure I might get lucky.
Tonight my target is a grazing occultation.
Regulus, The Little King, Principal star of the constellation Leo, is going to play its own game of kiss chase with the moon.
If this cloud clears I should see it disappear as the moon crosses its line of sight, and then reappear a few minutes later. Unlike the childhood games of kiss chase where I was too shy to pursue golden haired Gail, I have now learnt that if you stick at it, in astronomy at least, you can get lucky eventually.
Fingers crossed then, I set up my camera on a tripod. Switch on a computer next to it and start exposing. Ooer… No the point here is that I want to photograph three, arguably four different objects. The light face of the moon, very bright. The shadowed face of the moon from which I hope to see faint detail of the grey seas. The star Regulus which is the faintest object I expect to see, and also Venus which I hope to be just inside the rectangle.
Even without the cloud, realizing them all in a picture is optimistic.
As the moon creeps through the ecliptic the cloud gives tantalising windows on the dance. The blinding moon, massive in perspective to the star, eventually swallows its light, occluding.
And now it’s a nail biting wait for the photo that I really want. I want to catch the star as it comes over the darkened limb of the moon. To catch the exact moment that it reappears. I want to see the tiny dot of light as it blinks over the lunar mountains.
The interval drags. I ought to be able to figure it to the exact second but there are so many factors. In fact even with an accurate clock, a precise location and altitude there would be an interval of uncertainty. One that can be used to measure the gap between crags on the moons horizon. Oh heck, I am not that good. But I really do want to catch the moment. And then suddenly the cloud thins right out. The moon is hanging in a crystal sky and Venus is as bright as I have ever seen it. Its in the frame.
Using binoculars on a second tripod I watch the faint new moon, cupped in the brightness of the old. Afraid to blink even.
All of a sudden its there! Click. A laser sharp pinpoint of alien fire sweeps across unimaginable billions of miles, trips a light fantastic over the arid mountains and photons that left on their journey in 1930 spark a synapse and a small piece of digital magic. My imagination outraces Einstein’s speed limit and in an instant retraces the path.
Wow.
I didn’t expect it to feel this good!

A Proposal

So following on from that, I propose to honour my old friend by promoting "Mucky Minnie Night"
Sort of like 'speak like a pirate day'. All you have to do is don the ears and bow, go out to the pub / club / etc and pronounce the words;
"Gee Mickey you're so big"
using the appropriate accent.
Get a photo or a video of course and stick it on a website, blogspot, youtube...
Hmm I wonder what day of the year would be best.
I have a hankering for the 31st of January myself.
I put the motion to the house....

Too Good To Miss

I feel that now that he is dead (and I shall leave Cath the young lady concerned anonymous) I can reveal that my mate Dave once persuaded his girlfriend to don a pair of Minnie Mouse ears with the spotty headband.
His ultimate aim was to have her stand in the bedroom and in a high squeaky voice proclaim..
"Gee Mickey , you're so big!"
What this did for either of them, or ultimately thier relationship, I don't know; but he was fooloish enough to spill the beans to just a few of us one night in the pub....

Apologies to Stephanie