Pat the Chooks

This blog has moved

2008-05-22T10:57:00.002+01:00

This blog will now appear at http://patthechooks.wordpress.com/.

There is no guarantee that'll I'll be adding much to it, but you never know.

Big Five

2008-03-15T15:42:00.000Z

Big Five Test Results

Extroversion (26%) low which suggests you are very reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and private.
Accommodation (62%) moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense of your own individual development (martyr complex).
Orderliness (40%) moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, random, scattered, and fun seeking at the expense of structure, reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.
Emotional Stability (24%) low which suggests you are very worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.
Inquisitiveness (74%) high which suggests you are very intellectual, curious, imaginative but possibly not very practical.

Take Free Big Five Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

An unfortunate news summary

2007-12-26T18:16:00.000Z

Courtesy of the BBC News Website ...

Ballcuffs and a couple of birds

2007-11-07T18:55:00.000Z

Oh you have got a salacious mind, haven't you, clicking on that exciting link title to see what I've been up to. It's all about a trip to Islay yesterday where, for a change, just about everyone I wanted to see was in and I got all my business done.
Work took me up to the vicinity of the RSPB reserve at Loch Gruinart, where I saw a grey wagtail, the first of the two interesting birds of the day. It was hopping around on the ground and, when my car approached, hopped up onto a gatepost and gave a dismissive display of tail-wagging before doing an effective impersonation of a bird disappearing into the undergrowth. Don't recall having seen one before, and it's a pretty wee thing, so quite enjoyed that encounter.
Took time out in the middle of the day to go to the Kilchoman Distillery Visitor Centre and Cafe for lunch, because it's got some great food and the best coffee on the island. Approaching the distillery along the access track I had a great view of a female hen harrier shooting around, diving down to the ground and swooping around in loops. Lovely birds these, and several to be seen on Islay. (Some toggies from around the distillery here.)
Oh, yes, the ballcuffs. As I paid for lunch, I spotted a notice which caught my eye advertising some natty little accessories for the smart gent. Great idea, but the name did make me cross my legs a little ... Here's a piccy, nabbed from the Modern Gent's website.

Help and Support

2007-11-02T17:37:00.000Z

Okay, explain this one away:

A Reading List

2007-09-15T20:11:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I added any content to this little-visited corner of blogspace, so I thought I'd list the reading I've been doing since the last visit. In order of those I've read:

Bill Bryson The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid
Richard Dawkins The God Delusion

Inspired by the latter, I bought and read:
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins Climbing Mount Improbable
Currently reading:
Daniel C Dennett Darwin's Dangerous Idea

On the new book pile:
Edward O. Wilson Consilience
Richard Dawkins Unweaving the Rainbow
Jon McGregor So May Ways to Begin (Sorry, BondWoman; got distracted ...)
Elaine Morgan The Aquatic Ape
John Mortimer Murderers and Other Friends

Steaming on Loch Fyne

2007-08-07T21:50:00.000+01:00

After a long drive into Glasgow yesterday, a short trip to Tarbert was the plan to catch the Waverley on one of her summer Clyde cruises. In the season, she calls into Tarbert on Tuesdays and takes a short turn up Loch Fyne before returning to the Clyde. We made it to Tarbert in good time for her 1445 sailing, only to find that she'd never yet docked at the East Pier before 1505 - apparently due to a conflict over berthing at Rothesay with the CalMac ferry.
It was blowing half a gale when she eventually appeared in sight, making the pier only ten minutes after coming into view. Although we'd seen her sailing down the Clyde the previous day en route to the Burrell Collection, seeing her coming up Loch Fyne was like standing back one hundred years to the hey-day of the Clyde steamers. She was a visual anachronism, moving at a speed that would shame a modern ferry.

We all stood back as the Harbour Master and his son took the lines ashore and made her fast.

One more from the detail of the funnel:

Because she was late and the trip up Loch Fyne was truncated, we paid a lesser fare than advertised, so I spent the savings in the bar.
The Waverley is a fantastic survivor, even if only 60 years old, she represents an older age and one deep-rooted in the traditions and folk-memories of the Glaswegians. And it's no struggle to see why: this vessel is a constant visual delight and very comfortable. With her wide beam to accommodate the paddles she is very stable even in a gale. It's possible to walk right around the huge cranks of the engines as they drive the shaft - she can go as fast astern as she can forward - and small viewports permit a glimpse of the paddles through the frothing water.

A visit to the Burrell Collection

2007-08-06T21:30:00.000+01:00

Kat (#2 daughter) is up for the week to spend some time with her old man during the holidays. Since she's been studying art and design at college, this was a perfect excuse to go off into Glasgow to visit the Burrell Collection. This is a collection of around 9000 pieces of art ranging from the ancient Egyptian to modern paintings, gifted to the City of Glasgow by Sir William Burrell and his wife sixty years ago and housed in a purpose-built mueseum in Pollock Country Park.
I was amazed at the sheer variety of artefacts on display. Silverware, glassware, carpets, tapestries, pottery and porcelain, Chinese, Islamic, French, English and Dutch - more than can easily be seen at any one visit. There are many, many pieces of furniture and building elements on display as well, including, to Kat's surprise, a carved medieval ceiling from her home town in Somerset. I'd been staring up at it for ages, looking at the incredible detail on the carved bosses and thinking that it reminded me of the work of the monks of Muchelney, which I'd seen in places like the parish church in Somerton, when I read that the ceiling had come from Somerset at about the same time.
Other delights are almost too many to mention. It's occurred to me that I ahven't even mentioned the Rodin and Epstein bronzes. I much preferred the Epstein, although I was entranced by the sheer humanity and compassion of the model for one of the Burghers of Calais.
The French tapestries were a delight, with fascinating small details to be found on careful observation. These are all hung along a long gallery that links all the other galleries which project from it like the teeth of a comb.
But, and to my delight, there was a small gallery of paintings at mezzanine level which left me blown away. I'd already embarrassed myself to my daughter by failing to recognise a Rembrandt self-portrait at twenty paces, so to be surrounded by works of exquisite delight was wondrous. There are several Degas paintings, mainly from his Ballet Dancers series, a Cezanne, some medieval madonnas/ae, but the one that kept me fixed in place for a long time was a Whistler:

For me, it was worth driving 200 miles in the day just to see the paintings. Recommended to anyone visiting Glasgow.

Report from the fun day

2007-08-05T09:39:00.000+01:00

The village held its annual Fun Day yesterday, which was opened with the usual flourish by the Mid Argyll Pipe Band:

This year they were joined by a pipe band from Poland, who, with the occasional borrowed drum, gave a fantastic performance in front of the village hall:

There was the usual fish race, although the event was run over the jumps for the first time, with the burn course being chosen in preference to the fast straight of the river. John can be seen entertaining the anxious crowd in the first picture as news from the upper reaches of the burn was anticipated; in the second picture he is gathering in the also-swams:

My personal favourite from the afternoon was the peregrine brought by the local falconer. Just admire her:

Local crafts were on display and the church held a television-themed flower show:

In the evening we had a ceilidh and the hall was, to use the local vernacular, mobbed. We'd sourced some scrumpy from Somerset and we strutted our stuff with the ceildih dances we'd been trying to learn over the summer, with more or less success.
The plan is to try to do something different next year and we are contemplating a local real ale (and imported cider) festival over two days, with local food and music. So far, all gathered opinion is favourable and, you never know, it might even come off!

And the winner is ...

2007-05-20T13:58:00.001+01:00

My hobby website/activity, Geograph, runs a weekly competition for the "best" image submitted in the previous week. This week, much to my astonishment, my picture of two beasts pictured on my recent trip to Scarba, actually won the weekly contest. And here it is:

The Geograph of the Week competition is for fun, and the standard of entries is generally very high. A shortlist is compiled by a volunteer and the winner is chosen by the last week's winner, so I shall have to do duty next week, in between coming back from two days on Jura and Islay and going down to Somerset to see how that daughter of mine is getting on with the prosepects of teen maternity.
Oh, by the way, you have to register with Geograph to read the bulletin boards and see the GotY competitions, but everyone is welcome to get involved, no matter where you live in the world.

An early morning walk

2007-05-12T09:26:00.000+01:00

Woke up this morning at about six o'clock and saw that it was a beautiful day with the sun beginning to climb above the hills. I decided to take my camera for a walk down beside the river - I haven't been down there for ages - and see what I could see. Some of the results are below.

A trip to Scarba

2007-05-09T22:00:00.000+01:00

The Isle of Scarba is an uninhabited island off the west coast of Argyll. It lies to the north of the Isle of Jura and is separated from it by the notorious Gulf of Corryvreckan. North of Scarba lies the island of Lunga, which is separated from Scarba by the Bealach a' Choin Ghlais, or the "Grey Dogs" as it is locally known.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

The opportunity to visit the island came about when I came across a message on a ramblers' bulletin board (I hasten to add that I am not a rambler) advertising the trip and offering spaces to any comers with some walking experience. I contacted André, who was the mover and shaker behind the expedition, and managed to snaffle a place. We also managed to snaffle places for The Bikers, our illustrious neighbours, at the last minute. The last member of the party that assembled to board the Farsain, the charter boat from Craobh Haven, was a chap called Peter.

The forecast for the day was, frankly, crummy, and I'd prepared for a long day out in the wet with no shelter. There were showers as we crossed to Scarba, but it wasn't raining when we landed. One delight on the crossing was my first ever sighting of puffins, two of whom were fishing on the water off the Scarba coast.
The intention was that we would make our way to the summit of the island, Cruach Scarba, and the route selected was following the pony track that ran southward through the centre of the island.

The next landmark we came across was Loch Airigh a'Chruidh. Unfortunately, where the map indicated a footbridge to cross the burn that fed the loch, this had completely disappeared into a deep gully in the peat; this was just about jumpable.

This picture shows the pony track itself as it skirts around some of the crags on the southern side of the island:

The views south over the Gulf of Corryvreckan and to the Isle of Jura were spectacular as the path itself was about 800' in altitude at this point.

The climb to the summit involved an easy ascent for about one kilometre up grassy slopes. Towards the top, there was much gnashing of maps by the ramblers who set off in an oblique direction, while I used the basic Argyll technique of looking at the land and heading off towards the summit. This method secured me a quiet ten minutes at least at the summit before everyone else arrived.

The trig pillar at the top of Cruach Scarba is one of the "Vanessa" types, a concrete cylinder instead of the tapering square pillar more commonly found.
Lunch over, the party divided, with the rambling portion returning the way they came. The Bikers and I decided that it would be a shame not to try to attempt a different route back and we crossed north-east until we came to a burn that ran northwards, intending to follow it down until we came to the pony track that ran around the north side of the island.

The walking down this valley was fantastic; good going underfoot and primroses, violets and daisies in profusion. Deer watched us from the heights of the crags. The views forward over the islands to the north of Scarba were superb, for by this time the sun had come out and we were able to shed all the wet-weather gear.
We came down quite quickly to the pony track and, with plenty of time in hand, followed it around to the north-west corner of the island and drank in the views. We could see as far as Ardnave Point on Islay, the Isle of Colonsay, the Gavallechs, Ben More on Mull as the cloud finally began to lift from its summit and all the small islands to the north, including the closest, Lunga.

We made a leisurely trek back to the quay to await the Farsain, which arrived punctually to take us off the island. An excellent day out, and there are more photos on Flickr for those who've managed to read this far.

Daisy's up the duff

2007-05-08T22:26:00.000+01:00

I suppose, as an absent father, sooner or later one of your daughters is going to pick up the phone and make that call. This evening, I learned that I am likely to become a grandfather not long after my 47th birthday, rather sooner than I had anticipated.
I'm very proud of Daisy for having the guts to call me and give me the news. It's not as if her life is really in a good position for sprogging; she's only 18 and still finishing her college course, living at home and/or with her boyfriend who's living at home. But, boyfriend and his family are supportive and her mother hasn't given her too much grief, so at least she can start to come to terms with pregnancy (damn! there's that word) and start planning for the future without having to deal with over-emotive families. It's not going to be easy for her and it's hard to know just how much I can do 500 miles from the action.
To be frank, it's her life and she's been wanting to make all the decisions since she was twelve, and decisions and choices have consequences; we're all wiser after the events of our own choosing. That's not to say that I don't adore her or want the best for her or want to be with her and hold her hand and hug her and tell her that's she's the world to me and always has been, it just means that no parent can live their lives vicariously through their children and expect them to make the choices they would have made with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight; life just isn't like that.
After all, there are worse mistakes to make when you're eighteen than falling pregnant, and that in itself isn't a disaster. Honest.
More rational observation, comment and news will doubtless follow.

Saturday night is music night

2007-05-07T09:58:00.000+01:00

Word having got around the village that some locals had formed a band, the village hall committee seized upon the opportunity to hold a musical evening with barbecue on Saturday night. After two weeks of unbroken sunshine, it was inevitable that advertising a barbecue would catch the attention of the rain gods and that part of the proceedings was, inevitably, conducted under umbrellas.
There was a pretty good turnout at the hall, about forty folk in all, and with the lights down, it looked like a good crowd. Having been here for two and a half years, I've gotten over most of the social angst that normally strikes at community events.
Since the intention of the evening was to induce audience participation, a bag containing assorted and mysterious instruments of percussion was passed around the tables. I hit upon a wonderful set of wooden "spunes" - exactly like salad servers but with the spoon elements on the outer faces. Since I fancy myself as a wee bit of a spune player (see Spike Milligan for the source of the spelling), I literally hit upon these.
I'd also taken along my treble recorder (yes folks - it's a real musical instrument) and after a while was invited to sit in and tootle along with the uilean pipes, fiddles, mandolines and guitars of the band. Much to my interest, the piper couldn't sort a tune from the recorder.
Needless to say, a far amount of drink was taken, the willow was stripped and the gays gordoned. Herself retired early the worse for sleepiness and I was rather blurred at the edges on the morrow, but a band's a band for a' that.

Compare the ballot papers

2007-05-05T16:55:00.000+01:00

The Arbuthnott Commission included in their report an example of a ballot paper used in New Zealand for their mixed member wards (very similar to the Scottish regional and constituency model). The Commission comment, in their report:
In mixed member systems it is the list vote, not the constituency one, which is key to deciding the overall share of seats in the Parliament and the election of the government. This is reflected in the design of the New Zealand ballot paper, which puts both votes on one paper, with the party list vote given primacy. The voter is also helpfully informed that “This vote decides the share of the seats which each of the parties listed below will have in Parliament.”
It is interesting to compare the amount of detail on the New Zealand version compared with a mock-up of the one actually used on Thursday in Scotland:

Watching the Scottish Elections

2007-05-05T15:17:00.000+01:00

I had the privilege of being able to observe the elections in Scotland at first hand on Thursday ... and on Friday with the delayed count in the local constituency.
A lot has been said about confusion in the whole process and I feel it's important to unpick some of the comments and look at what did actually happen in the electoral process.
Firstly, there were three different voting systems in use on the day, two of which looked identical to each other and required the voter to mark their papers in the same way. These were the regional list ballot for the Additional MSP and the constituency ballot for the local MSP. Both of these ballot papers were on the same sheet of paper. The Arbuthnott Commission recommended that these two ballots, previously on separate sheets of paper, should be combined onto one sheet to emphasise the fact that the total votes for a party in a region is more important in determining the number of seats they win than the votes cast for the constituency MSP. To quote the report:
We also recommend redesigning the ballot papers to reflect more accurately the way mixed member systems work and to counter perceptions that the regional vote is less important. In mixed member systems it is the list vote, not the constituency one, which is key to deciding the overall share of seats in the Parliament and the election of the government. This is reflected in the design of the New Zealand ballot paper, which puts both votes on one paper, with the party list vote given primacy. The voter is also helpfully informed that “This vote decides the share of the seats which each of the parties listed below will have in Parliament.”
The regional result is declared on the basis of the d'Hondt method, which is a system of proportional representation. Constituency results, declared on the basis of first-past-the-post, are taken into account in calculating the regional result.
The Arbuthnott Commission had noted that the voter understanding of the electoral systems in Scotland was generally low, in other words, people were confusing the constituency and regigional ballots as some sort of first choice and second choice votes. I believe that this misunderstanding persists to this day and little has been done in the information provided to voters to educate them of the importance of the regional vote. The subtlety of the system of electing MSPs is that voting away from one's constituency party on the regional ballot is more likely to result in the second vote securing a regional list party member (see the reference on the d'Hondt method for more information as to why this is).
The third electoral system in use on the day was the Single Transferable Vote for electing councillors in new, multi-member wards for all Scottish Councils. This was a separate ballot paper which went into a separate ballot box from the Scottish Parliament ballot papers. This system was well-publicised beforehand by leaflets which went to every Scottish household and was well-explained by information at the polling places. Also, local council candidates' own advertising made it clear that numbers, not crosses, were to be used for voting on these papers.
Secondly, I had the opportunity to observe polling practices in eighteen polling places, including some forty-odd polling stations, on Thursday itself. All of the polling stations I saw were well laid out, had very good information about the double election and many had additional staff acting as information officers to help voters understand what they had to do. [Here is the notice that was posted in every polling booth.] This is borne out by the very low rate of spoilt ballot papers for the local council elections across Scotland. I don't have statistics, but the proportion of spoils for the new system was vastly less than that for the existing system for electing MSPs.
Thirdly, I had the opportunity of observing the count for my local constituency. This was extremely well-organised and all of the staff knew in great detail what they were doing. The returning officer opened proceedings with a detailed explanation of how ballot papers would be handled and electronically captured before the results were calculated by computer. The whole process of handling, scanning and adjudicating on ballot papers was entirely transparent and open to challenge by candidates and their agents. Staff were meticulous in their operation of the system and I came away convinced that e-counting is definitely the way forward, subject to sorting out the computer systems, their processing capacity and software, to enable them to carry out the processing task faster and more efficiently.
What went wrong?
Firstly, what went right. The poll and count that I observed were extremely well-organised and designed to make the voter's experience as good as possible. The purpose of the count is to determine the will of the voter, and the staff at the count go to considerable lengths to make sure this happens. Nearly all of the voters that I spoke to were well aware of the changes to the local government system, and that is borne out by the results and the low rate of spoils.
A lot of people seem to be under the misunderstanding that a cross marked on the local government paper rendered it invalid. This is not the case; if a paper was marked with only a single cross, then is was taken as a first-preference vote for that candidate. The fact that only a small proportion of papers had only a single preference marked suggests that the electorate had understood, and decided to use, at least two or more of the available preferences.
So, how did things go wrong? The delays in the system were down to one thing, the computers and software, which failed to handle the task in hand. Quite why, I don't know, but the Electoral Commission's investigation should get to the bottom of that. More serious is the very high rate of spoils in the voting for MSPs. In my own constituency, the difference between a Lib Dem hold and the SNP gain that was the result, was out-numbered by the spoilt ballot papers. Secondly, the rate of spoils for the regional elections was considerable. Again, no figures to hand, but the votes from this constituency were down by nearly 900 spoils from the number of votes cast.
During the count, the reason for this high rate became obvious: the majority of rejected parliamentary papers had two votes in the left-hand, the regional, column and no vote in the right-hand, the constituency, column. Candidates and agents were drawing the conclusion that voters were being misled by the instruction at the head of the sheet of paper, which read, "You have 2 votes ...".
Clearly, the Scottish electorate are quite capable of understanding a new voting system; STV for local government was a success and this is the proof of that assertion. This was the system that got the majority of the public information because it was the new one. The fact that the Arbuthnott Commission had identified that voters did not understand how their MSPs were elected was confounded by the change in the ballot papers for that election and the absence of good voter education by the Executive. To be clear; I didn't fully appreciate the reason for the regional vote being on the left-hand side of the parliamentary paper until I'd done some research after the election, and I'm interested in electoral processes and procedures.
In conclusion, the problem with the process is not the electorate, as some have asserted, nor the voting paper, but the failure properly to inform and educate the electorate how MSPs are elected and why the regional vote matters.

The weather forecast for Brisbane, Queensland

2007-03-31T20:22:00.000+01:00

I mentioned in my last post about the current balmy weather. Even Lady Voledoomcat has been purrsuaded to get out and lounge in the sun today, and we have been gassing most of the day over the fence with The Bikers, admiring their new pond and Pong's (the new kitten's) ability to lie on a warm slab beside same and dangle her long black tail into the water. She's not going to catch much with that tactic, populated as said pond is with assorted tadpoles, diving beetles, pond skaters and whirligigs.
We've been getting our act together at The Grannary, because we are about to desert this sainted celtic land and head south and east, inverting ourselves at latitude zero, as we set off for a family wedding in Queensland.
We'll be a little bit south of Brisbane, down on the Gold Coast. Life's a beach, after all. The wedding was originally going to be in August, but it was decided by the locals that the weather would be far too cold, in fact, they were concerned that April might be also too cool for such festivities. Having done a little research through the auspices of the BBC weather website, I'm of the opinion that these Aussies are crazy. As far as I'm concerned, the weather we're about to encounter will fry the wazzocks off me in about three seconds flat. Just take a look at this:

And for those of you who are impressed by old money:

A spring sunset

2007-03-31T20:19:00.000+01:00

The last week has been balmy weather for spring - post-equinoctal stuff, I'm sure, but warm, sunny days and shirt-sleeve weather are to be celebrated in this part of the world, whenever they occur.
Mrs PtC and I managed to get out and grab a sunset from Loch Beag a few days ago - all right, it might well have been a week ago, and the sight of the sun setting behind Jura was fabulous, even if the air became very cold very quickly.

Chookters in Auld Reekie

2007-03-21T22:05:00.000Z

One of the unexpected outcomes of the Glasgow blogmeet last year was that Mrs C and I were invited to stay with BondBloke and BondWoman for a couple of days, and last weekend we called their bluff and went up to Edinburgh. A fairly bold adventure, since meeting folk for a couple of hours in a Glasgow bar ain't the same as inviting those same folk to stay for a couple of days under your roof and share bread with them, particularly if you haven't actually met the old lady herself. Still, the Bonds are made of stern stuff, used to rubbing along with some of life's weirder throwbacks, so we fitted right in.
We left Argyll about half-four on Friday evening and drove via Balloch and Stirling to Edinburgh, where, only one false turn later, we tracked our hosts down to their palatial, and extremely stylish, flat in a converted warehouse in Leith. The course of the weekend was soon clear; after a swift meal and couple of bottles of wine, we were down in the Malt and Hops downing several pints of the very repeatable Pale Rider pale ale - albeit a wickedly 5.2% alcohol content. I seem to recall very little of the rest of the evening, but since Her Maj was more than happy to keep conversation going, my snoozing on the sofa didn't seem to cause the party to lag too much.
The following day dawned clear and cold and Edinburgh was infested with a wind from the colder armpits of Siberia to keep us country types humble. We executed a trip to the Dean Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art to see a goodly assortment of cubists, surrealists, wild childs and installationists, as well as some of the great Scottish colourists. I have to say, there were some bizarre installations, although we all agreed that the pickled leaves hanging in jars from the ceiling did something for us that the curdled milk bottles forming the 3D image of a woman on the saltire somehow failed to.
We meandered back into town and found ourselves in the Milnes bar in Rose Street, where a couple of pints of Old Speckled Hen blurred the rougher edges of the previous evening's excesses. Scotland were busy losing to France, a tale which we could see unfolding in the silence of the Scottish fans watching the TV and the restrained pleasure of the few French in the bar.
Next stop was the Cafe Royal for a couple of pints more and a few nachos and suchlike. I drew on my quasi-Welsh heritage (okay, I went to school across the border in Wales from my childhood home in Herefordshire) to cheer on the Welsh in their victory over England. I may even admit to the occasional Oggy-oggy-oggy escaping my lips in a moment of excitement.
Match over, it was time to find somewhere to eat, and a bus-ride down Leith Walk took us to Suruchi Too, an Indian restaurant which rejoices in a life-size carved camel in the midst of the tables.
The food was great and set us up for heading down the shore to The Shore, where some live jazz was anticipated later that evening. It duly appeared, as the following photo of two duetting pianists competing to find the beat will testify.
Not up to a late night, we retired homewards a little after eleven o'clock and were all crashed out not much later.
A good visit, nice to make/confirm some new friends and enjoy a little bit of metropolitan excesses after these rural fastnesses. The Bonds are good hosts and great company.

Feel the hose ...

2007-03-15T23:02:00.000Z

It's astonishing the things that go on in the local primary school, but this is the sort of thing that can give a kid a life-long interest in music. I can still remember my trumpet teacher playing a music stand ...

Second-generation blogging

2007-03-15T22:59:00.000Z

First-known instance, at least to this keyboard-numpty, but nice to see the youngsters getting the hang of this techno-thingy. Read on.

A little family history

2007-03-14T22:30:00.000Z

I promised to pass on some of the family tales that Mum related to me when I saw her over the New Year. Here are a couple:
Mum's great-grandfather was a GP in Parham Harbour, on Antigua. He died young and left his wife and children in abject poverty, which was extremely incongruous in the white population of the island at the time. Great-grandmother took to sewing crinoline hoops into dresses to make ends meet and somehow retained her social status and raised her children as a consequence.
Mum also told the tale of a strange journey she made to Jamaica in 1942 when she was only eleven years of age. She was travelling by plane from Antigua to Jamaica to stay with relations when she was put off the plane at Puerto Rico to make room for someone more important - this was wartime and transportation was an uncertain business at the best of times, but for an eleven-year-old girl travelling on her own this was more than a little unfortunate. She was put into an hotel by the airline where she was left alone for a month. She had a vast suite of rooms to herself on an upper floor. Frightened, she would check under her bed every night before going to sleep. She took her meals in the dining room and American GIs would buy her comics to amuse her. She eventually arrived in Jamaica just after her twelfth birthday.

Clachan Calamities wow Tarbert

2007-03-11T10:30:00.000Z

I've written before about the pantomime we went to see a few weeks ago in Clachan, away down the Kintyre peninsula. Last night the Clachan Calamities went on tour, eight miles up the road to Tarbert. The additional show was put on, not only to raise funds for the village hall in Tarbert, but also by way of popular acclaim for what is a good, fun pantomime.
Her Maj and I had been down in Glasgow all day, doing bits of shopping for luggage for the Australian visit in three weeks time, but made it back to Tarbert in time for a meal and a couple of pints in the Victoria Hotel to set us up for the show.
Tarbert's village hall is a large wooden-panelled room with a proper stage at the business end. The queue to get in was nearly out of the door when we arrived and additional chairs were being set out in the hall for the late-comers.
Lights! Cameras! Action!! and we were off. The chorus line was as good as ever and raised the audience's energy levels for the play itself. It was the same cast as previously, even down to the Duck, and there was fun and ribaldry galore, with much tactical play made of chocolate mousse pies at inauspicious moments in the action.
What made this show memorable was the complete and total involvement of the children from the audience in the action. More than once, simple honesty from the kids corpsed the players and had the audience in gales of laughter. Admittedly, the opening "scary" scene where the Spirit of the Ring has her head restored to her had a few of the wee ones in tears, but they soon settled down to enjoy the show.
The show was a great success, signalled mainly for me by the total participation of the children, who loved the magic that this company brought to the stage.
I should add that the raffle was also a great success, with two bottles of wine being returned to the cellar at The Grannary for later consumption.
So, well done the Calamities, and it's clear that Tarbert want to see more of them, as does PtC, who has already booked his seat for next year's show.

Electoral reform

2007-03-08T22:11:00.000Z

Your correspondent has this evening returned from being trained as a volunteer campaigner for the single transferable vote system being introduced at the local council elections for Scotland on 3rd May. The training was delivered to an eager audience of potential volunteers in Inveraray by the network development officer of the Scottish office of the Electoral Reform Society. All one of us.
PtC first encountered STV when a callow youth at university in Birmingham (West Midlands, not Alabama), where the system was used to elect representatives to the student union council and for other offices.
The STV system in Scotland will mean that Councils will have multi-member wards, where the electorate will be able to indicate their preferences and elect, between them, three or four councillors in each new ward. The method used is terribly cunning, but a little complicated to explain in detail. Suffice to say, the more preferences that the individual voter expresses on her ballot paper, the better her views and opinions are likely to be represented in the councillors that are finally elected.
There is loads more information at the ERS Scotland website here, so take a look if you want to know more. There's also lots of technical information on the vote-counting process at the Wikipedia article here.
The intention is that I shall be available to talk to any group who wants to know more about the STV system in the run-up to the elections on 3rd May and I will do my best to meet with any group or organisation in Argyll (or at least the reasonably-accessible bits) in the next 55 days.
The ERS want particularly to get information to groups such as the elderly, women, rural communities, EU-non-UK voters, young people and so on. They are running a number of campaigns with good prizes, including the Democrazy 2007 competition for bands and musicians.
I have to admit that I had very simplistic ideas about STV when I met George from the ERS earlier this evening. I've left meeting him much more aware of how important fair voting election methods such STV are for ensuring that our democratic processes are inclusive and representative of the wide range of views and concerns that local electorates can have.
This is all about fair votes, about ensuring that those who are elected have the consent of all the electors who cast their ballot. There's going to be a big change coming in local democracy as a consequence of STV and that's no bad thing. The system is going to take some time to get used to, but ERS volunteers like myself have a role to play in that.
You'll be seeing a bit more about STV and the local elections in the next 55 days, but use the comments system to find out more; local democracy is coming to Scotland.

Toad-squashing time

2007-03-08T21:59:00.000Z

It's that time of year when driving home in the dark takes nerves of steel and the reactions of a fighter pilot. Between the main road and the cluster of houses that shelters in the intellectual shade of The Grannary lie two lochs and a boggy bit, separated by said road from the quaggy and splashy bogs of the sloping bits known in these parts as "the hills". For this is toad-squashing time.
Little toads, driven by instincts as old as time, and certainly older than roads and motor vehicles, take it upon their little gonads to leave the familiar surroundings of their small patches of boggy hillside to go down to the water and make friends with other little toads, preferably of the opposite sex, for the purpose of recreation and romance, leading hopefully to strings of spawn.
Unfortunately, to consummate their passions, the toads must first cross the road. Here they resemble not so much as occasional leaves blown onto the road, but mark - autumn is far behind us and the gales and frosts of winter have made short work of all remaining leafy protrusions on the bare fingers of the trees - and these are no leaves, but eager toads with but a single thought in mind.
And now, thundering out of the dark upon this congregation of regeneration comes a blue beast of two tons, spitting diesel fumes into the darkening clouds and from which emits a powerful glare in which are caught our amphibia amorata. The driver can only weave a line of best fit between the alert, white bodies in his path and steel his nerves against the inevitable casualties that must result from his passing.
The bloody gauntlet is short, some half a mile or so, but the consolation for the toads of the small numbers lost to the cars is obliterated by the many that fall beneath the unswerving wheels of the timber lorries that herald the dawn with their passing, and the passing of so many small hopes and desires.

Another strange corner of the blogosphere

2007-03-05T22:46:00.000Z

Came across this courtesy of Richard Leyton - thanks for the tip, Richard. Several LOL moments at Wellington Grey. Reassuring to know that there are some original and clear thinkers out there teaching the next generation.

Some piping links

2007-03-04T10:26:00.000Z

You'll no doubt be aware of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, who have recently pushed the envelope of piping to a sufficient extent to make it onto prime-time TV. Here are a couple of links to some interesting pipers, the Chillis included:
Red Hot Chilli Pipers
Fred Morrison
Both have streaming music and are well worth a listen.

Micro$oft can't count

2007-03-04T10:23:00.000Z

Just updated my Windows Media Player this morning and was informed that, with all their computers, operating systems and software, Micro$oft can't do a simple division calculation.

More signs of spring

2007-03-04T06:51:00.000Z

I'm up early on this Sunday morning and, as I write, I can look out at the red sky of the dawn. It's fading a little now from a few minutes ago when I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea (Assam) before coming up to the interweb-machine, but now there is a delicate blue sky above the ruddy glow, with blue-grey clouds drifting in from the south, from left to right across my field of view. The village is in a glen surrounded by hills, which means that the actual sunrise and sunset can never be seen from here; they are rare delights which I usually only experience from the ferry to Islay.
The lighter mornings are the most obvious sign of the lengthening days and the renewal of the covenant between the earth and the seasons, but there have been many others to enjoy in the last few weeks.

Snowdrops are out in force, as this picture from a couple of weeks ago gives witness. Moles have been renovating their homes and fresh molehills have appeared in all suitable residential districts, which does not include the boulder clay and glacial deposits of The Grannary's small patch of Eden. The drive down the road is now a switchback of toad-dodging after dark as they head down to the boggy bits between the lochs to consummate their seasonal passions - all you can see in the headlights are small white things that look like leaves, but aren't. I was walking a week ago above Loch Fyne and found a frog on the summit of Beinn Ghlas, a small hill above Minard. Returning to the car, I found two goodly deposits of frogspawn in the ditch beside the track.
Although in Argyll in early March you can be sure that Winter hasn't finished with you yet, these signs of Spring and the lengthening days are a welcome reminder that the auld bitch's powers are at last on the wane.

A community funeral

2007-03-02T20:47:00.000Z

Last Friday was Janet's funeral; she died at the age of 49 of cancer. Although she lived only a few houses away, I'd never got to know her well, although I'd spoken to her on a few occasions at village dos, particularly admiring her photographs of the area, landscapes further away and Scottish flora and fauna.
Janet was a staunchly independent woman. A marine biologist by profession and a photographer by passion, she never gave up on life; even in her last week she'd ordered a new sofa for the house.
She'd planned her whole funeral, which was to be a humanist affair, but she fell out with the humanists after she insisted on having All things bright and beautiful sung at the funeral. A friend from the village stepped into the breach and the village hall was commandeered for the event.
It was her instruction, amongst many for the funeral, that bright colours and daffodils should be worn. Typical of Argyll funerals, the event was planned for lunchtime so that people could get away from work to attend. The hall was packed with people and the window cills were packed with jars of daffodils - their musk hung heavy in the hall throughout the funeral.
Janet had chosen a willow coffin, which was great to see, but the unintended consequence was that, with the light behind it, she was herself present in silhouette, something which some people found strangely comforting.
Instead of any formal religious service, the funeral was a succession of music of Janet's choosing interspersed with readings and words from her family and friends.
Tears were shed, we shared moments of quiet contemplation listening to music and, at the last, she left alone in the company of the undertakers for her final journey. As she did so, we sang together and kept her family in the midst of the living.

The new biometric me

2007-03-02T20:35:00.000Z

I have today received in the post my first full passport. This may surprise my reader, Mrs Trellis of North Wales, who may have gotten the impression that I am a rural sophisticate, well-travelled and versed in the ways of strange folk. All right, I did spend five years in Birmingham, but don't hold that against me - there is no trace of the accent left.
I have a beef with the UK passport authorities and the new biometric passports, which is that I don't trust the Americans with my personal data, and for that reason, have no intention of ever darkening their shores. I put my concerns to the UK Identity and Passport Service thus in an email dated 4th February (suffice to say that I haven't received a reply yet):
Dear Sir,
I read on your website that,
" We will pass the personal information in your passport to UK and foreign immigration authorities or law enforcement agencies responsible for border control. This will enable them to confirm that the personal information that appears in your passport is the same as that on the Identity and Passport Service database."
I am specifically concerned that my personal data should not be disclosed in particular to the authorities of the United States of America, whose regime I consider to be oppressive and where I have no intention of ever travelling for the self-same reason. I have no confidence in the American legal system and none whatsoever in the present extradition arrangements between the United Kingdom and the USA, for which reason it is better that they should not hold an identity about a UK national in the event that it is mis-identified with an offence within their jurisdiction.
As I am about to apply for a passport for the first time, I should appreciate your assurance that my personal data will not be passed outwith the control of the United Kingdom authorities without my consent, which appears to be the intention of the IPS.
Sincerely,
Oh, and by the way, this is the working bit of the new nasty passport:

You'll note the irony of the bug being on the page labelled, "for official observations", but the picture of the finch is nice, anyway.

Robin's back

2007-02-20T18:40:00.000Z

Nice to see the old boy back in the blogosphere - he's been missed. Here's an example of why:
Though the ceiling was still visible the floor had become so inaccessible that we finally felt the place merited the award of a squalorship.

Re Cycling September 2001

2007-02-20T17:53:00.000Z

Here's a little historical piece, written before I discovered blogging. The objective was to cycle south down the one degree west of Greenwich line of longitude, having done the same to the Greenwich Meridian the year before; I'll post that some other time.
Saturday, 8th September 2001
· Start at Saltburn by Sea 1600
· Finish at Barn Hotel, Hutton-le-Hole 1757
· Distance 22.9 miles
· Ride time 1 hour, 42 minutes and 23 seconds
· Average speed 13.4 mph
· Maximum speed ~40 mph
After a sleepless night, H drove me to Taunton to catch the 0931 Newcastle train. Dropped in to Ralph Colman Cycles to buy a new cycle lock – three at home and no keys to fit any of them.
Virgin train punctual and the bike safely installed in the guard’s compartment and myself on a comfortable seat in coach D. Although the train was busy, I managed to have the pair of seats to myself for nearly the whole journey – much better than sharing, if selfish. In to Darlington on time and caught the local to Saltburn. Very rude member of Arriva staff snapped at me whilst I was trying to work out the best place to stow the bike. Good run across to Saltburn, one of those small Victorian seaside resorts. Ran down to the front to take a couple of photographs. The town sits on top of a cliff, not unlike Bournemouth, with a stream valley running down to the pier and some boats pulled out onto the shingle.
Started off from the top of the cliff and ran down a steep hairpin to the beach by the pier, before finding the immediate steep climb up a spur between two stream valleys, running south towards Shelton. Through Lingdale, easy route-finding, even with the 250,000 scale maps, and over the hill for the first sight of the moors. Beyond Lockwood Beck Reservoir the road ran straight uphill towards the horizon. A quick dog-leg across the Whitby road and the first moorland climb towards Castleton. Foot and mouth disease disinfection mats at the entrance to the moors, which are closed for walking. The mats were in very poor condition and the ramps either side in need of some repair. Not particularly effective as a consequence. Sheep roam across the heather slopes and the line of the road is marked by tall wooded posts on its western side, a sign of winter blizzards and a lonely road.
Strong northwest breeze provides the cycling equivalent of a broad reach and the climbs pass with reasonable ease. Perhaps I’m just stronger than last year. It’s worth saying that the weather forecast for the weekend and the early part of the week is for strong north to north-westerly winds and reasonably dry conditions. Dropping down towards Castleton the main body of Westerdale Moor and Glaisdale Moor can be seen across the valley of the River Esk.
Steep climb up through Castleton and out onto the moor again, leaving behind the three boys who ran alongside me through the village. The next three miles were the major climb of the leg, gaining nearly 1000 feet in altitude. Slow work, but steady, and I felt strong and confident. This felt like a good start to the next few days. These are grouse moors and a number of the birds whir and clatter around. Several more of their brethren lie by the side of the road, probably the result of ignorance of the world beyond the breeding pens, particularly the vagaries of motor traffic.
At the summit, nearly 1400 feet above the sea, is a cross by the road. I stop to take a photograph, meaning to take more on this ride than I did last year.
Just beyond the cross the view opened up. To the southeast runs Rosedale and to the south lies the great plain around York with the chimneys and cooling towers of four power stations punctuating the horizon.
The road now runs along Blakey Ridge and the gradient, although gradual, pulls the bike forward to an easy 30 mph. From here it’s a spectacular eight miles down the ridge to Hutton-le-Hole (le is a Victorian affectation, according to the information board in the village). The road is good and I easily reach 40 mph, but with the loaded panniers and the gusty crosswind the bike feels twitchy and as if the back end has a mind of its own, so ease down. Very soon I’m in Hutton-le-Hole and quickly find the Barn Hotel on the left, just beyond the Crown Inn.
The Barn Hotel is run by Gordon and is a labyrinth of converted outbuildings. My room is at the front and looks out onto the village green across which is the beck which divides the two parallel streets of the village. It’s very National Park, with a couple of ghastly exceptions. The buildings are of the local golden limestone. Houses have tiled roofs and public buildings slated ones. Apparently these are the Tabular Hills and the flat plateaux on their tops could be the derivation of the allusion.
After a quick shower, Gordon sets out a cream tea for me in the comfortable residents’ lounge; most welcome.
Evening meal in the Crown Inn. The beer is foul – gas-topped Cameron’s Creamy Bitter, so it’s quickly back to the Guinness. Peppered pork to eat; the balance of flavours not quite right, but the meat was well-cooked. The majority of the people in the pub seem to be middle-aged couples, reinforcing the impression of a village of second homes and retirees. Probably the only people who can afford to live here. Later on a table of women get together and their talk is of the problems of farming. Some younger people drift in as the evening gets on and a couple of musicians set up for later, but after I’ve left and gone back to the hotel.
Well, what of tomorrow? At H's delightful command I have to be in Messingham, south of Scunthorpe, in time for dinner at 5.30. Skirting York via Stamford Bridge and coming down by way of Goole, it looks like 65 to 70 miles. Just about flat all the way and the friendly, following wind (with luck) so should cover the distance in five to six hours in the saddle. No problems.
Should be an easier run to Lowdham and R's on the following day. Might go via Lincoln and I certainly want to have a look at Southwell Minster. By then, just about halfway to the Channel; let’s find out.
Sunday, 9th September 2001
· Start at Barn Hotel, Hutton-le-Hole 0920
· Finish at Messingham 1550
· Distance 79.4 miles
· Ride time 4 hours, 45 minutes and 29 seconds
· Average speed 16.6 mph
· Maximum speed 41.1 mph
A good eight hours’ sleep and a cooked breakfast at 8.30. Off at 9.20 with a strong tailwind, which was not to ease off all day. The wind made for fast riding, by my standards at least, reaching 22-223 mph on the level.
A few short, stiff climbs over the Howardian Hills, which kindly have their scarp faces to the south. A steady run down to Stamford Bridge, 28 miles from the start, and a pot of tea and hot, buttered teacake in the Cottage Tearooms. The route by Stamford Bridge skirts round to the east of York and follows the line of the River Derwent. At Sutton-upon-Derwent picked up the B1228 for the run down to Howden. At Brind there was a strange conical windmill, unlike the tower mills familiar to Somerset.
From Howden I ran on the A614 parallel to the M62 and its great viaduct over the River Ouse. I crossed at the Boothferry Bridge and took the road to Goole. At Goole the docks are vast, running inland on the Aire & Calder Navigation and the Dutch River.
Lunch in the Kings Head at Swinefleet, a pub set some way back from the road. Ghastly gassy Theakston’s, with the flavour quite ruined. A couple of baps of hot beef from the Sunday roast and a rest for an hour. The girl behind the bar was baffled by the request for a sandwich, but fortunately her mother was acquainted with the term. I think the local vernacular is “pack-up”.
From Swinefleet I ran east along the seawall of the River Ouse and then south along the Trent to Keadby. To the east of the Trent is a long, wooded ridge which dramatically improves the flat landscape. This is otherwise dominated by large industrial plant; chemical works, grain silos and more power stations, not to mention battalions of pylons marching across the land. The oil-fired power station at Keadby stinks of sulphur when I get downwind of it. Across the river at Keadby and follow the A18 into Scunthorpe. Right at the second roundabout and down the Scotter road and across to Messingham, where I easily find Pat’s house and eventually persuade her to let me in. H arrives about an hour later.
The plan for tomorrow is to take the back lanes to Gainsborough where I can cross the Trent and then run south-west towards Retford, Broughton and down to Southwell. Southwell is between 40 and 45 miles at a guess. I’ll give R a ring from Southwell, probably, and that will give me an afternoon to laze about and look at the Minster. This is a change of plan from going down via Lincoln, but there doesn’t seem to be an obviously bike-friendly route from Lincoln to Southwell.
Monday, 10th September 2001
· Start at Messingham 0940
· Finish at Lowdham 1740
· Distance 58.4 miles
· Ride time 3 hours, 52 minutes and 19 seconds
· Average speed 15.1 mph
· Maximum speed 37.0 mph
Before I left Messingham Pat asked me to do some word-processing for her, which I was glad to do. Pushed the key back through the letter flap and away.
A cold morning, with the strong north-westerly still present. Even with that abeam or behind me the wind chill was considerable and my uncovered arms and legs were getting very cold.
I ran straight down the main road to Scotter and then right, to run parallel with the Trent down into Gainsborough. From here the road ran through woods for several miles, which gave some relief from the wind. Noted some pink flowers in the ditches near Scotter, which I’ll have to tell H to look at. Not sure, but they could be marsh mallows.
Gainsborough is bleak and industrial, but the first chance to cross the Trent below Scunthorpe, so that I did. Two miles along the A631 with heavy traffic before I could bear south towards Retford. Rather than take the main road, I follow country lanes, past West Burton power station, through Sturton le Steeple (only a tower, but a pretty one), North Leverton and Grove to emerge on the main road south of Retford. The B6387 takes me across the A1 and down to the ex-mining villages of Broughton and Ollerton.
It’s gone twelve and, because I don’t have to rush, I decide to stop for lunch soon. In Wellow I ignore the garish first pub and turn right onto the land to Eakring. Here the village of Wellow opens out onto a large village green with a 40 foot-high maypole, opposite which is the Old Red Lion, looking so perfect that I immediately pull in.
I chat to the landlord about the iniquities of the modern brewing and pub trades while I have the first decent pint of the trip. Not only decent, but probably the best drop of beer I've tasted in some years. Timothy Taylor’s “Landlord”, and the first from the barrel.
At lunch I am joined by a gentleman who is travelling north for a funeral. He is a keen rower and has umpired for many years at the August Bank Holiday regattas on the Wye. He is a friend of John Hartland’s whom I only recall with some trepidation – the impatient, very sporty PE master confronted with the unwilling and un-sporty Patrick.
We talk of many things. Of churches and cathedrals, favourite and less so. Of cycling and his journey on bike to Santiago de la Compestella. One day, perhaps. I do not discover his name, but he retired some ten years ago as County Secretary and Solicitor of Wiltshire County Council. His company made for a perfect lunchtime.
When I emerge I find the weather has changed; it’s sunnier and warmer. The wind is still there, but I wonder if a front has moved over while I've been in the pub. Certainly the next few miles south to Southwell were a delight; the rolling hills of this part of Nottinghamshire in considerable contrast to the re-formed spoil heaps around Broughton.
I arrived at Southwell Minster at quarter past three and walk around it. There are unusual scalloping effects at the eaves of the first storey. A square, delightful Norman cathedral. I give R a ring and he answers, just leaving a visit five minutes away, so I’m soon greeted by a familiar grin, even if it’s surrounded by a less-familiar grey hair and beard combo. Change of plan; R's wife's PC has packed up and he has to drive the girls around, so he can’t ride the last few miles in. He gives me good directions to his house and I take a long, peaceful visit to the Minster. I am well-greeted by a lady steward who gives me a leaflet and an introduction to the church. The nave is powerful Norman work; muscular round pillars and semi-circular arches over, the latter rising in tiers above. There is a new (1996) Angel Window in the west end which rewards careful attention.
Like all cathedrals there is good modern art to be found and, unlike may, some wonderful ancient glass. The east window has five lights of medieval Venetian glass, showing scenes from the life of Christ. It glows and dances in the bright late summer light. A modern sculpture of the Way of the Cross has a sombre rhythm, cadence and weight about it that draws everyone’s attention. The Cross grows in size in its journey to Calvary, and the figure of Christ is more and more crushed under its weight, and the sins of the world, each time He falls. Christ is nailed onto the cross, but at the crisis, is within it. These were the impressions that spoke to me and my experience.
The chapter house’s delight are the carved leaves around doorways and the seats of the clerics. Astonishingly fine work and entirely naturalistic.
Leaving Southwell I ride out on the lanes to Fiskerton and then to Bleasby. R passes me in the car with his daughters, Lauren and Sophie and we agree on my time of arrival at his place.
Coming back onto the A612 at Bleasby I decide to run straight down the main road to Lowdham rather than loop back again towards the River Trent. In Lowdham I run up the old main road through the village and find R riding down to meet me; with an escort for the last half mile, I soon arrive at High Orchards. R and J have extended and renovated this to make a comfortable home. The delight is the garden, which rises up from the patio at the back of the house, through shapely lawns with herbaceous borders to open out onto vegetable beds, glasshouses and orchards. The whole combines to present the visitor with a sense of great peace and homeliness. These are a happy couple. R and I reminisce quite late after an excellent family meal. We share some Kingston Black brought up from Somerset and get to bed at about quarter past eleven.
Southwards today. The first day without a definite objective, but I hope to reach Towcester or even Buckingham, about eighty miles away.
Tuesday, 11th September 2001
· Start at Lowdham 0955
· Finish at Silverstone 1740
· Distance 85.5 miles
· Ride time 6 hours, 8 minutes and 52 seconds
· Average speed 13.9 mph
· Maximum speed 39.4 mph
After a very comfortable night with R and J, set off across the Trent and south again. Good progress at first, but it became a day of climbs and descents which made for hard work and a slower pace. I crossed into Leicestershire near Saxelby and stopped to enjoy the apples and plums provided for me from R's garden. By lunchtime I had covered 45 miles and deviated from my planned route to go through Foxton, because it appeared to be on a river.
Lunch at the Shoulder of Mutton in Foxton and a couple of pints of the local Caudle bitter from East Langton. After lunch I visited the canal junction, locks and inclined plane museum before resuming the run.
A few miles south is the site of the Battle of Naseby. At the monument I met two ambulance men from Merseyside who were returning after delivering a patient to Papworth. Oaseby was on a ridge, as was Guilsborough, and Ravensthorpe, and Great Brigton and Little Brigton. This is Althorpe estate country with the house itself to the east of my route. I cross the A45 and M1 near Northampton and run down towards Towcester. I decide that this, some eighty miles from breakfast, would do for the night, but cannot find any accommodation at all, so I carry on to Silverstone. I ask at the White Horse and they direct me to Barbara Cox at the Walnuts, who has a delightful stables conversion providing two rooms for letting. Down to the pub to catch up on the news, which I haven’t heard for a couple of days. I get considerably more than I bargained for, with the devastating and horrible news of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The news, which rolls on and on through the evening, is almost impossible to comprehend, even seeing the same clips of horror time and time again, the scale of what has happened is beyond my mental grasp. I remember expressing the hope that one outcome of this disaster might be a more humble foreign policy from the USA in the future.
As for Wednesday, the Chilterns are about 45 miles away, so I may not get much further than Hook in Hampshire. There shouldn’t be a good reason why I can’t get to Hayling Island by Thursday.
Wednesday, 12th September 2001
· Start at Silverstone 0850
· Finish at Reading Station 1330
· Distance 55.4 miles
· Ride time 3 hours, 52 minutes and 17 seconds
· Average speed 14.3 mph
· Maximum speed 33.0 mph
The weather forecast is bad. Strong winds and rain are forecast across the south of England later today with storms for tomorrow. £25 for bed and breakfast at Orchard Lodge (not the Walnuts as I’d thought last night) and after a good breakfast I set off. Past the vast Silverstone circuit complex and the headquarters of the Jordan F1 team and on towards Buckingham. The landscape here is dominated by the Stowe House estate and the last two miles into Buckingham are essentially the grand avenue leading from the town to the house. A young man in a horse-drawn caravan is camped by the side of the avenue, with a sign seeking work in drystone walling or hedging. He’s not going to have much luck around here; all the hedges are mechanically-clipped and there’s not been a drystone wall closer than Derbyshire.
I get slightly off course in Buckingham and onto the Aylesbury road. I work out a route back to the intended one via Steeple Clayton. Through mainly arable land with small woods and oak-studded hedgerows towards Thame. The land is less hilly than in Northants or Notts and I reach Thame at about eleven o’clock. I stop in a tearoom with a Portuguese theme and think about the rest of the ride. I know that I’d need to cover about 105 miles to get to Hayling Island in the day and that the stretch between Reading and the coast would be very hilly. This would be twenty miles more than I’d done in a day, so I might not complete the ride today. I also don’t want to cycle for hours in the pouring rain; this is supposed to be a pleasure trip after all. So it’s decided; I’ll catch the train back to Castle Cary from Reading and leave the last leg for a less rainy day.
South from Thame along the B4012, which is fitted with solar-powered cats’ eyes. Across the A40 and under the M40 and get hit by a heavy shower, which means the first outing for the new jacket. It passes over and dries up, so the jacket goes back in the pannier.
Watlington is a pretty little village and the start for me of the Chilterns. The wooded scarp rises up in front of me and soon the hardest climb so far up through the woods. This run for ten miles or so though the wooded plateau is delightful, but soon I’m into Reading and head for the station.
After waiting all afternoon, I catch the 1701 Penzance train down to Castle Cary. On with the lights and about fifty minutes later I’m home.
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what this decision (to go home from Reading) says about my fortitude, determination and motivation. The irony is that there were probably less than fifty miles between me and the sea, and it didn’t rain that afternoon after all.
Friday, 14th September 2001
· Start at Reading Station 0915
· Finish at Hayling Island 1338
· Distance 58.7 miles
· Ride time 3 hours, 43 minutes and 46 seconds
· Average speed 15.7 mph
· Maximum speed 37.8 mph
Alright, consider yesterday a rest day. My excuse and I’m sticking to it. The promised gales and storms did appear for Thursday, but the forecast for Friday and Saturday has been much better. After a day back in Street it just seemed the logical thing to do, to finish the ride today. So, on the 0747 from Castle Cary to pick up the traces again at Reading Station.
Arrived at Reading Station and set off at 0915, haring through the tunnels of the inner ring road. Clear blue skies with fleeting clouds driven by a blustery westerly wind. South across the M4 and pick up the B3349 (the old A33) south to Hook. Here I shatter a 35 year old illusion, that Odiham is spelled “Odeum”. Fast roads take me past the air base and into Alton. Out on the Selborne road and start climbing the easy dip slope of the North Downs. The road down the scarp face into Petersfield has stunning, spectacular views through gaps in the trees, all gone by too quickly to stop and photograph. Out of Petersfield and a short, stiffish climb takes me past War Down and a long, chalky valley south to Havant, chasing the railway all the way. The dual carriageway in Havant is clearly signed for Hayling Island and I’m soon crossing the Emsworth Channel onto the island itself.
I push hard and run down the island at 20-23 m.p.h., getting to the English Channel at 1338. I stop for a couple of photographs with the bright sea and the Isle of Wight beyond and on towards the ferry at Eastney. This I miss by no more than a minute, so have a couple of pints of Adnams in the Ferry Boat Inn. The beer is well-kept, but the food is poor. A tuna baked potato at £2.70 manifested itself as: one potato, one pat of butter, one dish of very grey and discoloured tuna mayonnaise (on which a smear of pink sauce is also visible) and one paper napkin. No garnish or any attempt to make it appetising. The tuna looks so awful that I leave it and only eat the potato. When the barman came to clear away he asked if there was a problem. I explained that there was and he gave me an unexpected full refund. (Note: sampling fillings in pubs could be a very interesting exercise.)
The ferry ride to Portsea Island takes less than five minutes and quarter of an hour sees me at Portsmouth and Southsea station trying to persuade the man in the ticket office that I am a passenger, not a problem, just because I happen to have a bicycle with me. The journey back to Castle Cary takes three trains and two delays, with the best service, as usual, on the intercity service.
Summary

Well, there it is, 360.3 miles in 24 hours, five minutes and six seconds, averaging fifteen miles an hour. Would have been nice to get under the twenty-four hours.
I am pleased to have completed the whole journey in the week, even if I took a day off and went home. For me, cycling is about travel and arrival, not doing it through all sorts of weathers just because – just because. The two full days were around eighty miles covered, which is much better than last year, as is the average speed. I was also a lot stronger and didn’t have so much trouble with the climbs. I did have better gears this year and was able to use the small crankwheel (28 cogs) for the worst of it.
I still don’t really understand my motivation for riding. I’m not spending time absorbing the countryside nor stopping to explore new places or buildings. For most of the journey it was fairly hard work and sometimes pretty miserable, as in riding south from Towcester wondering whether I’d actually find anywhere to stay in Silverstone. Perhaps the satisfaction is in the completion, the pleasure of arrival rather than the journey itself. This may be why I think in terms of linear routes for tours rather than peregrinations around a region, although Norfolk and Suffolk attract me for meandering.
Looking at the map … two degrees west starts at Berwick-upon-Tweed, the most northerly corner of England, and finishes on the Isle of Purbeck. Another hundred miles, with the option of carrying on to the most southerly point of England in Cornwall and even Land’s End. Now there’s a thought to sustain me through the winter.

Signs of spring

2007-02-17T16:48:00.000Z

Spring flowers are at last starting to make their presence known in this part of the country, with snowdrops being the most prominent. This view was taken at the head of Loch Craignish beside the road to Ardfern - BondBloke's holiday territory.

I went down Loch Fyne a little way to bash a few squares and this was the pick of the crop:

Back up the road and found these early coltsfoot flowers beside the loch but dangerously close to a place were fishermen park their vans - let's hope they survive!

And, just to round off this quick photo tour, here's a nice view of the loch itself:

Cold and frosty morning

2007-02-06T06:22:00.000Z

The recent spell of cold, dry weather has coincided with a close-to-full moon. Being a bit restless last night, I got up around six o'clock and, when I looked out of the kitchen window, could see the moonlight glistening on the frost on the garden hedge. I know it sounds romantic, but it raises the prospect of de-icing the car before work today.
The present spell of cold, clear weather is the sort of winter light that I love here in Argyll, and the weather forecast from the BBC indicates no real change for the rest of the week:

Today's plan is to go up to Oban and do some work there for a change. The office up there had given my office some support over the last couple of years when we were short of people and, now that we're fully staffed and they're a couple of folk down, it's time to return the favour.

Real ale in Ipswich

2007-02-03T10:43:00.000Z

Down in Ipswich in Suffolk between Monday and Wednesday for a course. Flew down to Stansted from Glasgow and was met off the flight by a chum who was also attending the same event, so didn't have to struggle with public transport to Colchester and on to Ipswich. We were booked into a rather cheap B&B and were not encouraged when, as we checked in, to see the ceiling above reception slowly collapsing to the ground. The rooms were pretty grotty, but at least the linen was clean. No evening meals, so we resorted to studying Tessa's Good Beer Guide to find somewhere (a) where we could get some food and (b) get some good beer - it being my delight to find myself in the company of a lass who drank the stuff by the pint. We settled on the Dove Street Inn, which was about three-quarters of a mile's walk through the town centre.

It being a Monday evening, the place was pretty quiet and we had the non-smoking lounge all to ourselves. Food was okay, but they admit that they concentrate on the beers, which they do in great style. We found ten real ales on hand pumps on the bar and, even more delightful, not only were they all in fantastic condition but served in generous measure in oversize glasses. I have, all my life, resented paying beer prices for froth and here, not only do you get full measure because of the oversize, but you generally get a wee drop more for good measure. It's a small thing, but very important as far as the customer experience is concerned.
Suffice to say, I can't remember the specific beers we tried, but they were all four excellent and we resolved to come back the following evening.
The next evening, after the first day of the course, there was another chum, Dave, staying in town overnight at the Golden Lion, a Wetherspoon's hotel which you access via a chinese restaurant. Tessa and I collected Dave and then retired to the pub next door, the Mannings(?), for a drink while we decided where to go and eat. We ordered three pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, which is one of the best beers in the country, or at least it can be. Here, the beer was unaccountably darker than Landlord normally is and was in very poor condition, indicating bad cellar management and, possibly worse. Disappointed, we wandered off down a street with a good selection of restaurants and decided on the Thai offering, which turned out to be very good indeed for a set dinner for three. Mind you, I've never heard a Thai waitress swear before, so that was a novelty.
Anyway, back to the Dove Street Inn with Dave where we found the place heaving, bearing in mind this was only Tuesday evening. We managed to get a table in the heated marquee out the back where we settled back to continue our exploration of good ales and good company. The craic was mighty, as they say, and we had an uproarious evening between ourselves. After a few pints, we moved on to the malts and, as we were getting ready to buzz off, Karen, the landlady, came and joined us for a natter.
Karen is a lady with an astonishing knowledge of beer and manages to make keeping beer in good condition seem so easy. Their website even has live information from the cellar to let you know what beers are ready and how much is left! It was then, as we were ready to leave, that we discovered this pub not only had the main bar with ten ales on hand pump, but a tap-room with another eight drawn straight from the wood! couldn't really be disappointed; we'd thoroughly enjoyed our two small sample visits to one of the great pubs of Suffolk, if not the country.

Clachan Calamities

2007-01-28T11:31:00.000Z

The Clachan Calamities are a pantomime company celebrating their 18th anniversary this year with a production of David Swan's Aladdin at Clachan Village Hall. Clachan lies about halfway to Campbeltown from the Grannary, so we'd not been to see the previous years' productions while we had been in Argyll, but this year we had a friend who was acting the part of Wishy Washy, so a visit was a delightful obligation.
The cast was a proper village panto cast, with the singular exception of a female Dame, of whom more later. We chose to sit in the front row - always a dangerous thing to do on the Saturday night of a local panto - but I, for one, was very pleased with the view of the dancing girls from this position. When they were selling the raffle tickets I was told the price was "one pound for a strip" and, like the naughty man I am, I asked the girls how much the tickets were. All right, I was just getting in the mood.
The village hall at Clachan has no proper stage and the dressing rooms are behind the audience, so certain theatrical conventions were put aside. Also, this was far more of a revue than a panto, with the good music, dance ensemble introduction and some of the wildest, if not Wildean, ad libs I've heard for a long time.
Ah, back to the Dame. Traditionally, the dame is a saucy woman of a certain age, played by a man who plays vulgar but not camp. This dame was a real saucy woman of a certain age who, in the interests of her art, had left her teeth out for the night. Probably less that five feet tall, she came onto stage in one of the best dame costumes I;ve seen in a long time and had the audience in stitches without uttering a word in less than two seconds.
Aladdin was the best of the dancers, a young lady with not only great stage presence and great legs, but a very sassy lass who dealt with unruliness on the part of the rest of the cast with great aplomb and no little wit.
The show was a riot from start to finish, with the production highlight being the UV fluorescent "magic" scene in the cave, where Aladdin finds the lamp and awakes the genii - another stunning young actress in the most fantastic, glow-in-the-dark make-up. This scene is the excuse for the magic tricks - floating genii, slowly disappearing food and Aladdin's own transformation into the prince.
Suitable victims were selected from the audience for ritual humiliation on stage, including a local high school teacher who was chosen to be executed but was saved from that awful fate by the princess's merciful intervention.
The baddies and not-so-bad were played for full effect and clowning by Wishy Washy and the Peking Duck did their best to keep up with the wickedest and funniest Glasgow dame I've ever seen - I am totally converted to the Glaswegian style of dame, particularly in the hands of an exponent of this most fast-witted form of verbal dexterity.
The evening was three hours of some of the best entertainment I've ever had for only five quid, and we will certainly go back next year, and the year after and the year after that.

Karine Polwart and Seth Lakeman

2007-01-27T17:59:00.000Z

Just got back from Glasgow having seen Karine Polwart and Seth Lakeman in concert at the Old Fruitmarket. Will add to this post tomorrow when I get more time, but suffice to say, a most excellent evening.
Later ...
Friday was a great day, albeit a long one. I was on Islay for the day, which meant leaving home at the habitual 0530 to catch the 0700 to the island. Reasonable crossing, if a dozy one, most of which I spent snoozing at my seat. No fabulous sunrise this time, but a good couple of jobs done. Managed to grab a few toggies on the pier at Port Ellen waiting for the ferry back to Kennacraig, herewith:
Prawn creels on the pier at Port Ellen

The empty pontoons at Port Ellen in winter

Sheep off to market in Stirling

Safely back on land, met up with Her Maj and boarded her car for the drive to Glasgow. Got in to our hotel and out again in short order for a meal in the Baby Grand piano bar - mushroom pasta for me and fish and chips for her - and over the the Fruitmarket just as Karine Polwart started her concert.
The Fruitmarket is a smashing little venue in Glasgow's Merchant City area with a lovely retro feel. Not sure what the capacity is, but there must have been around 600 people there that night and it felt absolutely fine. Karine's singing is simply rapturous to listen to and the poetry of her words is a continual delight - in the same song she writes the two (separate) lines, "a wither of skin and bone" and "you can't grow a tree from a fallen leaf". Her writing and music are an emotional and melodic dose of medicine at the end of a long and busy week.
Seth Lakeman was the second half of this Celtic Connections concert. Seth is the fiddling phenomenon from Dartmoor who has rather set the folk music world alight in the last year or so and is, like Karine, just getting some radio airplay. His music is percussive, passionate, physical and, to be honest, not a little strange, if compelling for all that. His fiddle playing is muscular, almost butch, and forces itself on your attention. His songs are rooted in folk legend from his native Dartmoor and Devon, although he did make a raid across the Tamar in adapting a Cornish tale for one song. He had the whole place jumping, which isn't bad for a violin or ukulele player.
Altogether a fantastic evening of music, but both Her Maj and I agreed on one thing, it may have been Seth who rocked the joint, but it was Karine's music and words that stayed with you afterwords.

Passing time in London

2007-01-25T19:38:00.000Z

A retro-blog by Pat the Chooks
Sunday, 21st January 2007
Flew down today for a meeting tomorrow in London. Currently sitting in the George Inn, Borough High Street in Southwark, enjoying a pint of their own ale (brewed by Greene King) and the warmth of a hot radiator beside my leg.
Sunday night in London doesn't feel like a weekday night - more places are closed, this pub's not doing evening meals and the suburban trains aren't running because of maintenance work on the lines.
With a lunchtime flight from Glasgow, and checking-in for the flight on-line, I didn't have such an early start as I might have done usually, except that the roads in the village were covered with snow and ice from overnight showers. Very picterskew, but a sod to drive on. Decided to give myself an extra hour for the drive, but only took about five minutes longer than usual in the end. A lot of snow and slush on the road as far as Inveraray, but the roads after that were clear, even if the mountains were cloaked in snow coming through the Arrochar Alps.
I find checking-in on-line for the flight rather cool, actually. It's a pleasure to avoid the check-in counters and just meander into the airport, get some food and toddle on to the plane when it arrives. Unfortunately, I didn't print out the boarding pass for tomorrow's flight back from Gatwick - I thought I had, but I'd just printed today's twice.
Stopped off en route at Loch Fyne Oysters to get some goodies for my Aunt Liz who lives in south-east London and whom I hadn't seen for several years. I found her in very good form and we swapped stories of family for an hour or so. Her assorted grandchildren are all astonishingly bright and getting good degrees from good universities. Nice to know I was adopted into a family with such brains. She liked the smoked salmon and Scottish cheese, so they're definitely a good option for gifties in the future.
Public transport in London is a world away from Argyll. You see the weirdest-looking people, but here they seem to fit in so much better. A young man on the station at Lewisham was raging into his mobile phone to his girlfriend about some useless decks he'd been given when DJing a gig - he felt insulted and outraged because (a) this was his business, (b) he'd got a great set organised and (c) he was actually passionate about his art and he'd been let down. Now, never a fan of the mixing stylie thing, it was fascinating to eavesdrop on a man who clearly knew he was good and was building his business around his talent. Perhaps artistry is less about the medium and more about the application.
It's still weird sitting in a smoky pub after nearly a year of Scotland being smoke-free. Somehow I feel that England will have to be dragged kicking and screaming come July 1st next year. On this point, I heard Tim Martin from J D Wetherspoon discussing the smoking ban and the effect on the licensed trade in Scotland. The interesting point he made was that, prior to the ban coming in, pubs were becoming the last refuge for smoking in public and that they had probably concentrated smokers up to the ban, with the consequence that it took a little time for the clientèle to adjust and re-balance after the ban came into force. At least, that was his view of the situation in Scotland and he anticipated much the same for the rest of the UK later this year.
Later ...
Back to the hotel for supper. After all, they do serve food on a Sunday evening until nine o'clock. Well, not tonight. Back at quarter-to-eight to find the kitchen closed and the chef away because they'd "run sold all the food" - a surprising admission with only six people in the bar. So, off out again in search of something to eat. Fortunately, only a short walk from The Cut and the cluster of restaurants around the New Vic theatre. Several were open and I had a choice of Turkish, Indian (twice), Chinese, Sushi and (ef)Fish. Decided on the Spice of India where I had a fabulous prawn rezala and sag aloo. Also a wicked lime pickle and a coughing fit which drove me into the street to recover. Starter was a simple dal soup served with a slice of lemon in the bowl and a garnish of finely-chopped coriander and red chilli - simple, but very effective.
Back to the hotel to catch up with a chum down for the following-day's meeting. Bar now thinning out from the earlier crowd of six people to just the two of us and the hotel decided to put cost before customers and close the bar at ten o'clock instead of half-past. Och well, early to bed on a Sunday night never hurt anyone, but it would be nice if the hotel delivered the services they'd promised only earlier that same evening.

Railway fiction

2007-01-23T20:45:00.000Z

The illustration on the right displays a fine piece of railway fiction - the ticket to nowhere sold on the same day that travel to one's destination by railway was, in fact, impossible.
It beats me why, when I purchase a ticket to a station on a closed line, the railways don't mention the fact that you can't get there by train on the day in question, which would permit the discerning traveller to consider alternatives to the suburban iron road. Such as - DLR to Greenwich and the number 161 bus.
Instead of which, I find on arriving at London Bridge Station that the Mottingham line is closed for the day and there's a bus from Lewisham. Got (very quickly, in fact) to Lewisham and the next bus was about twenty minutes away. Chose to travel instead by taxi and spent an additional £20 on the journey, although with some good craic with the drivers concerned.
It still p*sses me off, though.

Sunrise on the Sound of Jura

2007-01-20T20:01:00.000Z

I may have mentioned that I was on Islay on Wednesday last week, or come to that, I may not have done. Either way, I was, and a bumpy crossing we had into the bargain. That said, things are always better when the sun comes up and here are a couple of toggies to prove the point.
The first one is the fantastic sunrise over Kintyre, taken from the open deck on the MV Hebridean Isles.

The second one was taken shortly after, looking towards Port Ellen.

What do points mean?

2007-01-20T14:16:00.000Z

A small, if pedantic, victory over Tesco today. After we'd done our weekly up at the Oban branch, Her Maj was handed a Clubcard voucher entitling her to 300 extra points for purchasing any "DVD". Quickly spotting the opportunity to increase my beloved's virtual wealth with her loyalty card, I swanned off to find a pack of blank DVD-Rs, three for the princely sum of 97 pence.
You can now imagine the confusion that reigned at the till when presented with the voucher for the purchase of the DVDs. Obviously, Tesco intended their customers, in taking advantage of this bonus offer, to go off and purchase a full-price pre-recorded DVD of something banal like Only Fools and Horses Series 437 and the till computer accordingly did not compute.
Off I toddled to the customer service desk where I encountered a woman whose purpose in life appeared to be saying "No" to people. Consequently, when I explained that I'd like the 300 points added to the Clubcard account, she told me that the offer was intended for films and the like. I politely informed her that the offer voucher did not specify the nature or state of the DVDs which required to be purchased and that, had it read "pre-recorded DVD", I would not be pressing the point. Since it only stated "DVD" and I had, in point of fact, just purchased three, I felt I should receive my contractual due. Well, she didn't like that and, pausing only to suck another lemon, rang for the duty manager. DM duly appeared and, after the ritual recital of each party's position, grudgingly credited Her Maj with the 300 additional points.
The moral of the tale is, if you can't say what you mean, at least mean what you say.
Moral number two is get out there and claim your 300 points for 97 pence if you have an appropriate voucher.
Expect Tesco to change the wording on the voucher PDQ if you all start doing this.

Protective clothing

2007-01-19T18:17:00.000Z

The increasing evidence of climate change has set me to thinking of the consequences, which include the potential for the return of mosquito-borne malaria to the soggy-boggy bits of the country. Now, here in Scotland, as regular readers will know, we have non-malarial mosquitoes and midgies in abundance. Fortunately, they're all hibernating at the moment and won't be coming out to bother us until it's just the right time to return to outdoor activities without wanting to wear several layers of protective clothing.
I thought it would be instructive to take a look at what the well-dressed, prophylactically-intentioned young squaddie was wearing in this respect 73 years ago. This illustration is drawn from the Army Manual of Hygiene and Sanitation 1934, which caught my eye many years ago in a second-hand book stall. Careful observation will suggest that, not only is this man determined to repel an assault from the sinister direction, but that dextrally he might just be indicating an allegiance to the builders of the fine, stone edifice behind him. It is instructive to note that rubber bands around the upper arms are a last-ditch defence against the more determined "sapper" mosquito (Anopheles crawliensis) which, left to its own devices would abandon its wings at the wrist and proceed in an orderly manner up the forearm, circumnavigating the tickly inner elbow section, seeking only to make a soft nest in the hair of the oxter.
The last line of defence, as always, is beating the little bu**ers to death with your belt, so observe the substantial construction of that supplied to our wee man which can be whipped off in a single movement, unencumbered as it is by belt-loops, and waved vigorously around the head in ultimate despair, hoping always to take some of them with you.

The web-poll you just have to answer

2007-01-13T22:35:00.000Z

Here it is. Enjoy.

For news about ferries ...

2007-01-13T21:38:00.000Z

There is a fan-site for ferry-lovers, the very interesting Ships of CalMac. not only has it got loads more information than you could ever desire to know about the ships that ply the western (and northern) seas, it also has a news page, where you can get more detail about ship news and movements than you can from the official CalMac website.
When we were up on Oban today for the messages, we heard that the Isle of Mull (ferry, not the island) had been beaten up by the weather. It now appears that she might have suffered significant damage and may be out of service for a while. Whatever, it can't have been much fun when she was sent listing very heavily by tidal surges and lost two of her inflatable liferafts. Much the talk of the town today.

A thing about the bathmat

2007-01-13T21:21:00.000Z

Lady Voledoomcat has revealed a vice; she has started tiddling on the bathmat, which is logically located in the bathroom. This may be a belated revenge for us having left her for over a week at Christmas and New Year, or it may be to do with the bad weather, or even the fact the Pong (the Bikers' new kitten) is starting to get outside and interface with local feline society.
One bad consequence of this behaviour has been going in to shave in the morning barefoot and finding the floor wet-and-warm where it shouldn't be.
There seems to be very little we can do to break her of this vice, apart from keeping the bathroom door closed, but that can't work forever infallibly. The Lady of the House is agin punishment regimes such as shutting Lady V out in the cold, dark, wet night - in any case, all she does is sit on our bedroom window-cill and squeak, interrupting the BS. The short-term consequence is that we now sport a litter tray instead of a bathmat in the necessarium, which means a little grit between the toes if one is careless on exiting the place of ablutions in the bleary-eyed morning.
So, if anyone has any useful suggestions - at least ones which are likely to be acceptable to the females of the household - your correspondent would be interested to hear them.
Answers on a blog-card to ...

Boy, am I glad I didn't go to Islay!

2007-01-12T20:27:00.000Z

I've been following the efforts of CalMac to maintain anything like a normal service to the islands over the last two days of gales and storms. Yesterday there were no ferries to Islay at all, and the 0700 from Kennacraig this morning was cancelled. CalMac did attempt to run the 1300 to Port Ellen, though, but had to turn back due to the weather. They then cancelled the 1800 crossing which means that 0700 tomorrow will be the first crossing to the island since Wednesday. That would have meant two nights on the island even had I managed to get across on Thursday morning. Instead, we've been dodging bits of tin flying off the office roof and driving round and through floods on the road here in Argyll. Finally, the wind seems to be moderating and we can get some sleep without worrying about the roof/windows/cat being blown to bits.
Mind you, the folk I really pity are those who tried to get to Coll or Tiree yesterday; the ferry sailed but couldn't dock at either island and had to return to Oban - eight hours plus on the ferry in stormy seas to end up where you began. That wasn't the worst of it - the ferry put in an extra sailing today to try to get people out to Coll and Tiree, only to be unable to dock at either island and to return again to Oban. There will be some people who, when they finally get home again, will have spent twenty hours on the ferry getting there - just remember that next time you get all romantic about living on an island in the Hebrides.
Updated 13/01/2007
To quote from the CalMac website today, The 0645 hrs sailing from Oban today has failed to dock at either Coll or Tiree and is heading back to Oban - arrival time in Oban will be approximately 1600 hrs. Next sailing to be advised in due course. Well, at least they tried ...

Wild and woolly weather

2007-01-11T19:05:00.000Z

Plan A was to go over to Islay today. Yes, I'd seen the weather forecasts and knew it's wasn't going to be a millpond, but I wanted to get some particular work done. Overnight it blew an absolute hoolie and getting some sleep in before having to be up at 0445 was not easy.
Knowing that, even if the ferry did sail and I got across, the chances of getting back today were a little limited, I packed an overnight bag and took "spare" work which could be done if I found myself isolated for a second day.
However, not to be. Although I'd checked CalMac's service information page on the web at some unearthly hour and found no information to suggest the ferry wouldn't sail, it wasn't until I was approaching Tarbert that I got a text message on my phone to say that the crossing had been cancelled due to the weather. Not that surprised, but being back in the office by 0620 was a little weird.
Yesterday was also very windy, but much brighter. Work took me to Campbeltown, but I stopped off at Killegruer just to bring you this fantastic view of windy waves crashing on the Kintyre shore.

Treat of the trip was seeing a golden eagle flying above the roadside crags on the way back up the A83 - the section of the road to Campbeltown I call the Corniche. No mistaking these birds, they look like flying doors and are about the same size. The eagle made a wildlife pair with the red squirrel that chose to dance around the wheels of my car on driving out of the village that morning.

NewsBiscuit

2007-01-08T20:03:00.000Z

Not sure how I came across this site, but consistently funny and very well-written into the bargain.

Notes on origins

2007-01-08T19:41:00.000Z

Time with my mother is a rare treat these days, and much of it is spent trying to find out some of her family history the better to inform my understanding of my (adoptive) family. My origins are rather weird - the more so since I am adopted - but unusual even without that fleeting fact.
My father was born in India in 1927 whilst my grandfather was working there doing great things for the emerging science of public health medicine. My mother was born in Antigua of Huguenot stock who had been engaged in the sugar industry there for over three hundred years. I suppose this makes me effectively a second-generation immigrant and, since I am white and blond, I've been dying for some scumbag from the BNP to knock on my door and explain the rational behind voluntary repatriation of such as myself ... unfortunately, I don't think they do much canvassing in the Scottish Highlands.
These days, most families have got members who are the family historians or the keepers-of-pedigrees, so original family history research may not be needed if one asks around enough. Mum has pedigrees for her Henzell ancestors (the Huguenots) and Sedgwicks (from Dent in North Yorkshire) and I managed to persuade her to let me borrow them to copy for my/my kids information. There is also a lot of detail on my father's family, one branch of which (the Owens) has been traced back to 1625. That means a total of 14 generations between the earliest known ancestors and my own children - pretty fantastic when it's all charted out.
As a consequence of this information, I spent most of the weekend assembling the data into a family tree application and now have over 400 people in various branches, and there are other lines that I know have pedigrees that can be added, particularly on my children's mother's side (the former Mrs PtC). Must see if I can borrow them some time.
Because my parents were not really great ones for maintaining relationships with diverse and several branches of their families, I grew up as a child thinking that we had very few relations, in contrast to all my fellows who could reel off long lists of aunts, uncles, cousins and even more remote kin. It's a bit of a surprise to see just how many extant folk there are perched on the various branches of the family tree, even if I know few of them from Adam/Eve and, no doubt, vice versa.
I've added a few "family" tags to my del.icio.us bookmarks, but, to maintain the fiction of anonymity which is the theme of this blog, nothing that links directly to my own family name - you'll just have to keep guessing if you don't know already.
To come back to the introduction to this post, Mum gave me a few tales which are worth re-telling and I shall do so in due course here, with appropriate edits of identities.

New Year in Ireland

2007-01-06T10:28:00.000Z

I mentioned earlier that our time in Ireland was characterised by wind and rain, well, here's the evidence from Malin Head on New Year's Eve: In fact, the wind was so strong that Poppet was blown over when she got out of the car and my glasses were blown off into the gloaming. Fortunately, Xander managed to find them for me so didn't have to resort to the back-up pair that lives in the glovebox of the car. Chipped and scratched (the glasses) but otherwise okay.
We went down to the local pub - Michael John's - that evening to find it very nicely decorated for the season and with a good coal fire going. The place was fairly busy, but we found a table and settled down for a few pints of plain (on my part) before going back up the road to Mum's to see in the New Year.
I can't actually remember spending the turn of the year with Mum for many years and the chances are that it was way back in the early seventies, before I appeared old enough to go into pubs, no doubt.

Back from the Crimble travels

2007-01-06T10:18:00.000Z

We're all back at The Grannary now, with Her Maj having returned yesterday evening some four days later than me. Lady Voledoomcat's pleasure at having her people back simply can't be contained and a lot of it dribbles onto your trousers as a consequence.
We delayed our journey down to Somerset until the Saturday and had a very good run. We drove in convoy and had a good breakfast at Tebay, as usual. Arrived in Somerset late lunchtime and I went on into Bridgwater to have lunch at the pub where the two daughters constitute the waiting staff, much to their surprise.
Christmas was a bit of a hurtle, all told, with Christmas day spent at her sister's en famille and Boxing Day with me rattling off to Wiltshire to see assorted PTC relations, including nephews and nieces. On Wednesday, I took the younger chickabiddies into Taunton to shop for their Christmas presents - a Trangia cooker with gas-burner for Xander and a pair of boots and a handbag for Poppet.
Thursday we travelled over to Ireland via Holyhead and the HSS to stay with my Mum in County Donegal for New Year. Also managed to see my sister and a her daughters for a short time, so nearly managed to see all nephews and nieces, with the exception of her wee son who was in Derry with his Dad on that day. That all went in a bustle of gales and rain and Her Maj and the chicks were put back on the plane to Bristol on the Tuesday whilst I headed for the Stranraer ferry and work the following day. And yes, they did have a dodgy landing at Bristol airport.

Crimble travels

2006-12-22T17:23:00.000Z

Finished work early today, although the company has a very strange idea about half days - you can claim a whole day,provided that you don't leave until two o'clock. What on earth is wrong with closing at half-twelve or one, instead of making people come back after lunch? Heavy parenting, if ever there was.
Her Maj and I are off on our travels tomorrow; Christmas in Somerset and New Year in Ireland. Apologies if it goes a bit quiet here at The Grannary for a few days, but not much difference from recent posting activity. I think I spend too much time procrastinating ... but haven't made up my mind when I'll be able come to a conclusion about that.

Islay on the shortest day

2006-12-22T17:05:00.000Z

End of the month and a few jobs left to do on Islay, so out on the Wednesday afternoon ferry for a short trip and an overnight stay. The mist and cloud were playing around the Paps of Jura as we sailed up the Sound of Islay and I got this nice atmospheric toggie as a record:

After getting done the things that needed to be done on the Wednesday, off to my hotel for the night and pleasantly surprised to be given a king-size room at the front of the house instead of my usual boxroom at the back; probably due to there only being three guests that night and the season of goodwill and all that guff. Still, nice to have room to sprawl. A cold night and I woke at some unearthly hour, peered out and found Orion peering back in; auguring well for the following day's weather.
Thursday was the shortest day and it didn't really get light until around nine o'clock. I was in Port Charlotte a little afterwards and the following couple of toggies come from there:

Another visit took me to Portnahaven, right out on the Rinns of Islay, where the morning sunlight gave the village a golden glow:

Having managed to get some time to spare at lunchtime, I popped in to the distillery shop at Bruichladdich,

where I was accosted by the distillery shop's highly-trained assistants who wouldn't let me leave without buying a bottle. Alright, I didn't fight that hard and the dram was a pleasure when I got home that evening.
I suppose some word of thanks must go to CalMac, who sent me two text messages during the day to remind me that Port Askaig was no longer being used by the ferries due to construction works and that the return crossing was from Port Ellen. The ferry back was a little choppy, but still managed to get some work done on the laptop even if a little later home than usual thanks to the alternative routing.
This was one of those trips to Islay where it really felt like a great place to be, just connecting with folk and the island itself. Helps that I had some good lighting and a camera to play with!

Tablet for St Andrew's Day

2006-12-14T23:05:00.000Z

Tablet is what would be known to the sassenachs as fudge, which is the best way to describe the latest offering from the execrable executive in response to the popular call for a national holiday to celebrate St Andrew's Day. Now I know this is old news, but it strikes me that the decision to make such a non-decision only goes to underline the lack of national confidence which hovers in the background of the Scottish Executive to date.
To quote from the executive's website:

The St Andrew's Day Holiday (Scotland) Bill was approved by Parliament on Wednesday November 29, 2006.
It aims to promote St Andrew's Day on November 30 as a national celebration of Scottish identity and culture across the whole of Scotland.
What the Bill does not do

* It does not automatically create an additional day off work or school
* It does not oblige employers to change their existing pattern of holidays
* It does not add to the total number of designated local holidays in any year
What the Bill does do
* The Bill adds a date - November 30, or the following Monday should November 30 fall on a weekend - to the schedule of bank holidays in Scotland
* It provides the legal framework in which the St Andrew's Day bank holiday could be substituted for an existing local holiday from another date in the year
* It gives employers the discretion to choose St Andrew's Day as an alternative option, replacing a holiday taken at another time
* Each organisation and company is free to take its own decision about what to do. Whether you decide to have a holiday, or not to, or to replace an existing one. A decision is not bound in any way by the new legislation.
Ministers are keen to encourage employers to consider the possibility of a St Andrew's Day holiday on November 30 and the Executive is engaging with its own employees to identify the best way of responding to the new legislation.
Got that? St Andrew's Day will henceforth be a special sort of bank holiday - no-one will be obliged to observe it. How's that for national pride and confidence?

Silversprite

2006-12-03T20:01:00.000Z

Here's a blog from the Outer Hebrides to keep the island theme going. Nice writing, good photos and a beautiful place.

Tiscali Customer Care

2006-12-03T11:30:00.000Z

You may have noticed a little banner appearing in the corner of this small place on the interweb, but I have finally had more than enough of raging in frustration at my (former) ISP, the who-gives-a-shit Tiscali.
Tiscali is typical of those large organisations with a massive customer base who design their systems for simple customers with simple needs and little expectations. They were my first broadband ISP and, admittedly, all was fine until I had to move house. Now I was only moving 200m and taking the same phone number with me, and getting a brand-new BT line into the bargain, but it took the best part of four weeks to get a broadband reconnection. Now I now that a lot of this has to do with the way that the industry is organised, but I had to revert to using pay-as-you-go dial-up while Tiscali sat on their thumbs and pay the broadband rental for this period of lack of service. They were impossible to communicate with except through the telephone; all emails come from black-hole accounts and the company does not publish any telephone numbers apart from its call centres.
Tiscali's call centres operate on a fragmented and dispersed model. No one single customer adviser can deal with more than one small subset of customer needs. To give you an example; when, the other evening, I found that my broadband service had been disconnected, it took me over two hours of telephone calling, six separate calls and speaking to eight different people in two continents before I finally gave up in frustrated rage.
Now, signing up with Madasafish was simplicity itself on their website and, when I rang their customer care number immediately afterwards, the person I spoke to was straight on the line (no voicemail menus) and helpful, and confirmed that everything was fine and that things would proceed okay. And they did (apart from the minor glitch of not giving me advance notice of when the service would switch to them). And I've now got 8MBps instead of 2MBps, so all is now sweetness and light.
Oh, and there is another moral to the tale. It doesn't matter who is your ISP, register your own domain, set up and use your own email addresses independently of your ISP because, some time or other, you'll change ISP and it's a real hassle telling everyone you deal with that your email has changed, and they never remember! I use 1and1 for web-hosting and all that goes with it and the changeover of ISP made no difference at all to my emails, once I'd got the connection to Madasafish working.
By the way, this blog will eventually move to www.patthechooks.co.uk and you can in fact use that URL at the moment, it simply forwards the request to the Blogger site for the time being.

Tales from Barra Part IV - Vatersay

2006-12-03T10:16:00.000Z

Friday, 24th November 2006
Last day on Barra and able to confirm that the ferry would be running to timetable and I'd need to be down the pier by half-past four to get aboard. A beautiful morning and my last chance to get down the Vatersay, so I grabbed some oatcakes for the pocket and the camera for my hand and walked off down the road.
Even in Castlebay there are remains of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century blackhouses and one has been incorporated into a modern house as an extension. I climbed the road through Nask and came up to the modern war memorial with stunning views back across to Castlebay and Heavel rising up behind the town. The road curved west across the southern coast of Barra and the causeway to Vatersay came into sight. I passed the site of one of the most extensive archaeological investigations at Allt Chrisal and which is going to be made more accessible and interpreted for the visitor in due course.

There is a slipway at Vatersay against the new causeway and there are a number of creel boats based here, contributing to the seafood economy of the island. There are also the walker's bane; dogs which decide they've got nothing better to do than to come walking along with you for half a mile or more. I crossed over to the next deep bay running in from the east and decided to climb Theiseabhal Mor (the highest point on Vatersay at 190m) and bag the trigpoint. Quite a slog up greasy slopes, but the view from the top was well worth it, with the last of the chain of the Hebrides stretching out to the south and the twin sandy beaches of Vatersay below, somewhat indistinct beneath the high tides.

Walked back to the hostel, lunched and then to the school for the internet access and some emailing and blogging. Then a cup of coffee in the cafe opposite, packing and sitting in the hostel until the ferry sailed into the bay and aboard. The return crossing was reasonable comfortable, but it's a long, long five-and-a-half hour sail in the darkness back to Oban. We arrived about ten minutes early and I was first off, back to the car in five minutes and home on the dot of the pips at eleven o'clock.
I shall return to Barra and the Outer Hebrides. There's lots more to do on Barra that demands a longer day and better weather - exploring the coves and beaches, walking the hills and finding the Heritage Centre open, for example.

Religious law

2006-12-03T10:05:00.000Z

We do not, in the United Kingdom, live in a "Christian country", but in a secular country with, in England, an established church and, in Scotland, a church with constitutional rights. It is a paradox, but a necessary truth, that social goods are not delivered by religious law. Religious law (and, by inference, its penalties) are effective where compliance comes from the spirit and the heart. Societies at large are irreligious and the imposition of religious principle becomes, at best, cruelty and, at worst, tyranny. We do not need to look as far as the middle east and outside Christianity to see the obvious truth. Take, for example, unreformed Catholic Ireland where civil divorce could not be established for many years because of the extra-constitutional sway of the bishopric. People in failed and irreconcilable marriages were unable to gain some relief in law and obtain divorce, to the cruelty and oppression of many, and not just women.
We see a similar situation with the Vatican's struggle to find a position on the use of contraceptives, searching out loopholes in the sayings of this celibate Pope and that.
The church is for the cure of souls - and adherent ones at that. Civil societies are comprised of imperfect, difficult, troubled and mostly irreligious folk and need civil remedies for social ills. The cause of public health has suffered greatly because of the celibate church's position on procreation. What the churches tend to forget is that Christ said, "I come not to call the righteous, but sinners, to salvation". He as said that unto Caesar should be rendered the things that were Caesar's, that the Kingdoms of Heaven and of earth are different and separate.
The only rule is that we love our neighbours and, if we find ways to remove disease, hardship and oppression from their lives, these would be the fruits of the perfect Spirit in an imperfect world.

Tales from Barra Part III - People

2006-12-03T09:49:00.000Z

Written on Thursday, 23rd November 2006
Without its people, history and heritage, an island is simply a sea-girt piece of geography.
I took an idle day today; reading, wandering around the shops, buying a giftie or two for the wee woman at hame - to wit a box of Hebridean Toffee and a souvenier mug.
One of the big differences between the islands I know and the Western Isles is the use of Gaelic. Here, most people will greet even a stranger in the old tongue and it is a delight to hear parents speaking gaelic to their children. Even older people are willling to re-learn the tongue of their childhoods or of their parents - there was a lively disussion this evening about the proper form for "hot water", although a consensus was soon reached and the tepid alternative discarded.

The weather has been typically unpredictable: forecast solid rain and mostly dry with showers as the alternative. I took the camera for a walk to try to find a good photograph of the castle and came across a young seal who was less-than-pleased at being disturbed, complaining loudly as it gallumphed down the shore to the safety of the sea.

This evening I went along to a meeting of the island's catholic congregation where a member of the Iona Community was teaching them some new songs and hymns and exploring the use of music in worship. A very pleasant evening and good to meet some of the locals. I also fullfilled a promise to friends at home by saying hello to the parish priest, who had moved over to Barra from Lochgilphead. A bit embarrassing, though, to arrive late and have to walk into a roomful of strangers, interrupting the proceedings. Still, an insight into local folk and folk music as well.
I do feel very relaxed on Barra and feel far more at ease here than I do on Islay, Jura or Colonsay. Perhaps that's because I'm at work when I'm on those islands and here I'm just me, not my job. Perhaps there is actually a tangible difference between the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
Tonight's ferry has been cancelled due to the forecast gales and there is a rumour that tomorrow's will leave three hours early. If it does, at least I'll be home at a decent hour instead of midnight. Perhaps I'll track down the internet access in the library tomorrow if the weather is horrible, but I'd like to run over to Vatersay if it's not too wet and cold in the morning.
This is being written in the bar of the Craigard Hotel, which is much quieter than the Castlebay Pub. When I went on Tuesday night there was just me, the barmaid and one of her friends, whome I bored about cricket when she suggested to her friend behind the bar that "it was like rounders and you get points for hitting the wicket". The cast tonight is the same, although the news of the first day's play from Australia is suggesting a bit of an uphill task for the holders of the Ashes.

And now the shipping forecast

2006-11-24T15:09:00.000Z

The last couple of entries have been posted from the free internet access in the public library in Castlebay, which is located within the local secondary school. Thanks to the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar for their generosity.
The ferry should be running today; last night's was cancelled due to the storm that broke over us in the wee smalls and no wonder. Today gave us a blue-sky morning and the opportunity to walk with the camera to Vatersay, of which more anon. Anyway, according to CalMac I should be setting sail back to Oban at 1705 this evening, to the accompaniment of the following shipping forecast:
SHANNON ROCKALL MALIN HEBRIDES CYCLONIC 5 TO 7, PERHAPS GALE 8 LATER. ROUGH OR VERY ROUGH. RAIN OR SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD
Not too different to the crossing that brought me here, then.

Tales from Barra Part II - A cycle-tour around the island

2006-11-24T14:42:00.000Z

Written on Wednesday, 21st November 2006

This morning dawned grey and overcast, but with the weather forecast of rain later. Given that the forecast for tomorrow was even worse, I decided that the ride around the island was a carpe diem decision, so the d. was duly carped. Showered, breakfasted and buttressed against the weather, I was on the road by ten.
I decided to go clockwise around the main road that circles the island, which took me in fifteen minutes to the west, Atlantic coast and sight of the first of many stunning sandy beaches.
Barra is comprised of Lewisian gneisses, which has been ground by glaciers creating a rocky substrate on which only a thin layer of soil can gain purchase. There is some fertile land in one or two glens and the coastal fringes to the west and north are characterised by machair - the rich, florally-abundant grassland of the sandy soils.
There are plenty of modern houses in several settlements around the island and a surprising amount of traffic to dodge on the single-track roads. Every settlement has a church, most of them Catholic, for Barra retains the old religion against its presbyterian neighbours to the north.
At Northbay I took the small road that runs north to the full extent of the island, passing scattered houses all along the way. This area, Aird Mhidhinish, is deeply-cut with sea-lochs which provide shelter for small fishing boats. Even so, boats are pulled in to clefts in the rock for winter shelter and frequently tied-down with four ropes against the winter gales.
As I came up to Traigh Mhor - the great strand - I spoke to a man who was about to head off across the sands. He was Polish and had worked during the summer as a builder. Now he was picking the cockles which are abundant on these tidal sandflats. The cockles are sent to Oban once a week for onward despatch but, because there was no ferry on Sunday this time, he buried his collected cockles again until they could be found a place on a ferry. I saw four different people out collecting cockles on this and another strand to the north.
As we spoke, the Glasgow plane came in to land. Barra airport is unique in that the flights are entirely dependent on the tides. For there is no runway, just the vast flats of Traigh Mhor. Once landed, the plane taxies up to the edge of the dunes and the island's small airport terminal. This has to be the best way to come to Barra, and one day I shall fly here. The seas around the islands are the most astonishing blues, greens and purples and, on the right day, the islands must appear from the air as green jewels set in surfy mounts.
By now it was spitting with rain and I'd put on the waterproofs. A few miles further and the end of the road was marked with a bus-turning head and the tracks leading on to one or two more cottages.
Turned about, I was now head into the wind and progress got slower - not helped by the fact that I hadn't actually cycled at all this year. The rain was well set in and I stopped at the ancient chapels at Cille-bharra to shelter for a short while. Here are three ancient churches, only one still roofed, and one of the island's graveyards. The roofed chapel contains a small shrine to the Virgin Mary and a replica of a carved stone cross, the original of which was taken, to the islanders' continuing disgust, to the Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh. Here too is buried Compton Mackenzie, who loved these islands and their people, and immortalised them in many books, most famously Whisky Galore.
[[[Self-edited section which may get added back in one day.]]]
I stopped again in Northbay to look at the church of Sr Barr. This is a large impressive church which has just celebrated its centenary. It must be capable of holding 400 people in the pews and has a choir gallery at the west end to add drama to the Mass.
From Northbay to Castlebay was a slog of seven miles in increasing winds and my unfitness, together with the wet and cold, combined to make it less than fun. To my surprise, the distance passed more quickly than I expected and I coasted down the last steep mile with considerable pleasure to the hostel, where I dried, changed and spent the afternoon drinking coffee and idling the hours.
I should report that the clouds cleared as the light faded and the hills of Vatersay stood outlined against an apricot glow as the sun set somewhere over the western ocean beyond.

Tales from Barra, Part I - Crossing the Sea of the Hebrides

2006-11-24T14:23:00.000Z

Written on Wednesday, 21st November 2006
The MV Clansman sailed from Oban yesterday for Barra and South Uist and, this time, I was aboard. The Clansman is a very different ship from my old friends the Hebridean Isles and the Isle of Arran, which take duty on the Kennacraig-Islay route. One of the first clues to the seas it plies are the fully-enclosed, motorised orange lifeboats which are slung high on the ship. These contrast with the open lifeboats on the other ships. The next difference is the accommodation. The Clansman is much larger and has many more lounger seats on either side amidships. Forward is the cafeteria (where I established myself) and aft the bar and open verandah deck. One deck up, above the cafeteria, is the comfortable observation deck. Given the forecast of gales, storms and high seas, I'd swallowed a couple of tablets for the security of my stomach, which seemed to be a well-founded precaution. The ferry was far from full so there was plenty of space, unfortunately regularly invaded by a small horde of screaming kids hurtling around the deck, but they settled down before long.
Dusk fell as we entered the Sound of Mull and the winds were keeping all but the hardiest smokers inside. I could tell when we'd reached the open ocean, not only by the light of Ardnamurchan Point appearing to starboard, but the increased motion of the ship. Still three hours to run at this point and there was a pretty vigorous pitch - rolling kept to a minimum by the stabilisers. I felt comfortable enough by this time to eat and had a good meal. I recognised one or two of the crew who'd been on the Islay ferries during the summer.
The Clansman has charts of the seas around the west coast of Scotland on which her route and turning points had been plotted. This helped to follow her progress against the few lights which were visible in the darkness of the winter night.
Having settled down to watch TV for a while, the cahnnel was switched by the passengers to watch the Celtic/Manchester United football game. Now, football bores me rigid, so I spent some time looking at the maps of Barra and making optimistic plans for geographing.
I met a chap from the Czech Republic on the ferry who was returning to Barra. He'd had a couple of jobs over there, including as a fsherman, before his present employment as a garage mechanic. He told me that, coming from a central European country, he wanted to find out something about the lives of island people, and fishing seemed the way to do it.
We arrived in Castlebay on time and I walked the bike off the ferry before the other vehicles. The hostel turned out to be only a couple of hundred metres away and I bagged a room to myself. It's very clean and comfortable with TV, games, guitars and even an autoharp. Didn't manage to raise the owners and, at the time of writing a day later, still haven't. One other person in the hostel, a lad from Edinburgh who comes over regularly, but he tends to keep his own company.
After settling in, went up the road to the Castlebay Pub for a pint. The place was in darkness and populated by an enthusiastic crowd wearing green-and-white hooped tops and all watching the football on a big screen. There were still fifteen minutes of the match to go and these minutes were sufficiently exciting to catch my interest, given that it was too dark to read. Celtic scoreed a cracker of a goal from a free kick to take a 1-0 lead ten minutes from time and the place went wild with delight. Seven minutes later, wild with rage as the red team were awarded a controversial penalty. Joy was unbounded when this was saved and the boys in green went on to win the match.
So, after a couple of pints, back to the hostel and so to bed.

Overnight visits from around the world

2006-11-20T08:49:00.000Z

I commented yesterday evening on the inadvisability of mentioning a three-letter word for gender in one's blog. Well, on checking the visit logs this morning, I find that I've really increased my hit rate since recording the results of that test yesterday. Since commenting on the numbers of sweaty-palmed visitors reaching PtC yesterday evening, another 24 visitors have been motivated by a un-gallant web searches to pay a visit. The rollcall of shame since the last summary is as follows:

Searches for "*r*b s*x" - 4:

USA, 2, including one from the University of Kansas

Germany

Egypt

Searches for "s*x" - 20:

USA, 11, including more academics from the University of Tennessee
and Willamette University

Canada

United Arab Emirates, the Emirates News Agency, no less

Australia - the University of Sydney

Egypt - 2

Syrian Arab Republic

Sri Lanka

Saudi Arabia

UK, just once

Don't mention "sex" in your blog

2006-11-19T21:20:00.000Z

Since I posted the item earlier this morning, this blog has shot to the top of the search results for the term "S*X". This is a little worrying, given the abundance of naughty websites out there in cyberspace and the energy that most of them actively expend in getting your attention (so I understand) when naughty words are entered into search engines. Anyway, I thought I'd just list the countries from which frustrated browsers have found their way to view pictures of cats, kittens and snow-clad mountains.
The roll of (dis)honour is as follows:

United Arab Emirates

The Islamic Republic of Iran (via a web portal called eBabylon - no, you couldn't make it up!)

India

United States of America

United Kingdom (three times, including one from Scotland)

Malaysia

Turkey

I detect a certain politico-geographical theme emerging here ...

Sailing to Barra cancelled

2006-11-19T11:46:00.000Z

Just posted on the CalMac website:
"Due to adverse weather conditions todays sailing to Castlebay and Lochboisdale has been Cancelled.Next scheduled sailing will be Tuesday 21st November @ 1530 as per timetable."
Bah! Now I'll have to find something constructive to do at home; and I'd just finished all my packing.

Google searches that find Pat the Chooks

2006-11-19T11:43:00.000Z

Doncha just love the data you get from your sitemeter? I have great fun looking at what searched people use that find this place. Couple of recent favourites are "what sort of illumination is a tealight", which gave PtC second place and, best of all, "what is pat tasting", which gave PtC as the number one result.
P.S. The answer to the second question, incidentally, turned out to be whisky.

Brain Sex Test

2006-11-19T09:46:00.000Z

No children, not a test of how much time you spend thinking about sex, but an attempt to characterise whether one's brain displays more male or female characteristics. I was put onto this by Martyn, who wrote about it here, having done the test on the BBC website. My results are shown in the graphic below, but before anyone gets too excited or reads too much into it, just remember that my empathy score is 2/20, so I really don't care what you think!

And now the shipping forecast

2006-11-19T08:58:00.000Z

You'll recall that I'm planning to sail to the Isle of Barra this afternooon? Well, here's the shipping forecast for the Hebrides issued earlier this morning:
HEBRIDES SOUTHEAST VEERING SOUTHWEST 6 TO GALE 8, INCREASING SEVERE GALE 9 TO VIOLENT STORM 11, PERHAPS HURRICANE FORCE 12 LATER. ROUGH OR VERY ROUGH BECOMING HIGH OR VERY HIGH. RAIN. MODERATE
Note the use of the words "Violent Storm", "Hurricane Force", "High or Very High". If the ferry runs, it's going to be fun ...
Don't think the weather on Barra will be that conducive to walking - and certainly not cycling - not if those sorts of winds keep up over the next few days.

Snow on Mull

2006-11-18T15:02:00.000Z

Up to Oban today to get a few provisions for my trip to Barra tomorrow, and managed to get a couple of pictures for the record. The first one is of the reflections on Oude Dam and the second one shows the mountains of Mull plastered in snow. The second shot was taken from the promenade in Oban where the seagulls were trying desperately to snaffle my chips before I had the chance to eat them myself. Not the least of the provisions for Mull is, of course, a packet of anti-vom pills given the rather ferocious forecast for the crossing.

First snow of the winter

2006-11-18T08:30:00.000Z

Yes, I know it's only the middle of November, but yesterday we had the unusual experience of rain and snow falling at the same time. On the drive home in the gloaming, the hills could be seen to have a significant dusting above about 100m. A lot of hail fell during the evening and, when we went across to the Bikers' place to check on the kitten, we walked across on a thin covering of snow and ice. The forecast for today is for light snow showers, so I'll have the camera at the ready on my trip to Oban later today - I've got a few messages to get before I take off to the Isle of Barra on tomorrow afternoon's ferry. Mind you, the forecast is boisterous with the possibility of storm-force winds for the five hour crossing of The Minch. Better look out those sea-sick tablets ...

Fuzzy kitten

2006-11-18T08:15:00.000Z

The Bikers next door have acquired a kitten to replace their beloved Spike, who went under the wheels of a timber lorry a few weeks ago, causing great heartbreak in their household. The kitten was found wandering around a boatyard a few miles up the road and no-one in the area knew anything about it, but it made its way next door due to the effectiveness of the local grapevine. However, having acquired the kitten the day before yesterday, the Bikers had to away to Edinburgh overnight and we were cast in the role of kitten-sitters. We made the early decision not to bring small scrap into the Grannary because (a) it would piss off Lady Voledoomcat and (b) would disrupt small scrap's settling-in to her (we think it's a she) new home. There is a (c), in that we definitely don't want the kitten to think of next door as her home as well.
Anyway, I have been given strict instructions to visit the kitten every three to four hours, give it 1cm of food in the bottom of a ramekin and generally act the genial uncle to it. So far, mission accomplished and kitten is gobbling in food at the bow end and pumping out the other stuff at the stern, so no problems in transit.
The picture of the kitten was taken with my camera still set at the highest ISO setting after the lantern parade, hence I must apologise for the fuzziness, but in a way that suits the wee beastie.

Duvet cat

2006-11-15T18:41:00.000Z

Ever since she was a kitten, some ten summers ago, Lady Voledoomcat has just had this thing about being snuggled up under the duvet. It's all my fault, really. When she was brand spanking new to the pre-Chookery Somerset household and a replacement to my beloved t'Othercat whom I'd left behind with the kids and first Mrs PtC, I brought her up to the bed after her first night. She tucked herself up under a corner of the duvet and didn't shift all day. Since then, the bed has been her place of safety, of comfort and peace. Recently, she has been wanting to get in to the spare bedroom so, Her Maj being a kindly soul, admitted her. This is the result. Cat hairs all over the pillows and a dozy puss-cat into the bargain. But, you have to admit, sweet!
I suppose I have to explain t'Othercat. Well, I was young and single and had always had an affection for black tom-cats. I went home to visit my mum in Herefordshire one weekend and discovered that her neighbour's cat had produced three kittens; two black boys and one tabby girl - collectively known as Sooty, Sweep and Sue. Well, I went back down to my bachelor pad in Bridgwater with the two toms, who became my great pals and domestic tearaways. I had the problem of naming them, feeling that Sooty and Sweep were a little too tweee for meee. The bigger chap got called Harold and the other one, well I couldn't actually think of a name for him other than ... t'Othercat. Caused no end of confusion in the vet's as you can imagine; veterinary receptionists aren't generally in the job because of their academic qualifications and explaining that the element of his name which represented the definite article was not capitalised and was followed by an apostrophe seemed just that little bit much for their brave-new-GCSE levels of literacy.
So, I hear you ask, what became of Harold? Well, I got married and he left home. True, absolutely true; a very prescient cat and I followed his example nine years later.

Standing stones

2006-11-04T21:03:00.000Z

I mentioned that I'd been playing with my new camera; here are some pictures of the standing stones at Ballymeanoch which were taken in the morning frost earlier this week.

More of these at Flickr

Lantern parade

2006-11-04T20:56:00.000Z

Tonight was the Lantern Parade in Lochgilphead, so Her Maj and I went on down to see the fun, frolics and fireworks. There is a big community effort in the town to make lanterns for the parade and workshops are run in the weeks before the big night. Lanterns are constructed from frames made of thin wood with paper shells and the illumination comes from tea light candles inside them. The Council even obliges by turning out the street lights as the parade comes down Argyll Street.
Best of the bunch was:

After the parade, the annual fireworks display was set off across the water from the Front Green. Organised by the local Rotary Club, this has to be one of the best free shows in town, but they get you with their buckets before you can escape to the car again.

Toggies are taken with my new camera, a Nikon D80, so still learning its little foibles. Very nice to be shooting with an SLR again after all these years.

Gag-a-rama

2006-10-12T21:25:00.000+01:00

This has just appeared in the list of Scottish blogs. Very funny - at least, I'd never heard them before.
By the way, the curry house in Port Ellen is the Maharani ...

Eggcorns

2006-10-12T21:12:00.000+01:00

Eggcorns are fun. They are those unexpected transpositions of words that sound about right and almost mean the right thing. The name for them comes from the idea that someone who mis-heard the word acorn and not knowing how it was spelled, might mistakenly use the word eggcorn instead; after all it makes a certain amount of sense at the seed level.
I thought I heard what might be one this morning on the radio. Pismonounciations are easy to make and easier to hear through the crackling ether. On the occasion someone was talking about the consequences of hazards and spoke of "wrist-assessments". Well, I couldn't resist that; surely a wrist-assessment is an off-the-cuff estimate of danger?
Your comments, Mrs Trellis, are, as always, welcome.

The Glasgow blogmeet

2006-10-12T20:28:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday, the 7th, was the day of the Blogmeet for Scottish bloggers, or at least bloggers who are either (a) Scottish, (b) Scottish resident, (c) otherwise desirous of association with the best small country in the world and actively indulging in electronic vanity-publishing.
I had to be down in the Toon fairly early on in the morning to get my car serviced, which meant leaving home even earlier than that for the two-hour drive, not quite what the doctor ordered after the indulgence of the previous evening. Never mind, needs must and I managed to get down to Rutherglen and the VW dealer for 0930. Left the car to their tender mercies and meandered into town on the bus, deciding to get off a few stops early and explore the dark mysteries of the Barras market. Not many people around at that early hour, but a very good second-hand book stall, with an excellent Scottish history section, lurks in the shadier recesses and will be well worth a longer visit at some stage.
Spent the morning mooching around the city centre and bought a nice new umbrella, my last one having died somewhere south of Eyam in Staffordshire a few weeks previously. This new model has a fibreglass frame and is designed to be resistant to the normal insults that befall any brolly in the turbulent conditions of the mountains (or, come to that, Glasgow city centre on a windy day!). Wandered in to Central Station for a coffee and pasty and a sit down; I like places where I can watch the world go by when I'm on my own and the station on the day that Scotland entertained France to a game of association football was one full of colour and energy. The vast majority of the Scottish fans were in blue footba' shirts, kilts and what appeared to be obligatory footwear - Timberland boots. Some sported Glengarries and a few of those made up for the absence of eagle feathers with pheasants'. There were a few bemused Frenchmen around who kept their spirits up by singing a song of love and hearing the rafters rebound their echos. Saw that there was a train back to Rutherglen so grabbed a self-service ticket and returned to pick up my car.
Now, car service and peregrinations aside, the reason for visiting Glasgow that particular day was to attend the blogmeet which had been organised by the very wonderful Gordon, who maintains the Scots Blogs website. I found him sitting in the lounge of the Radisson hotel looking forlorn and unloved, because no-one else had turned up. It turned out they were all in the other bar of the hotel amongst the footie fans and eventually wandered over to join us. The cast attendant upon the drama were:

all of whom it was a pleasure to meet.
Kitty made an appearance as well, although in the form of a substantial fund of cash in the centre of the table to ensure that those drinking beer were able to keep the bar staff busy. Those of us (only me) who had to drive home for two hours had to stick to fizzy water, although the random choice of lemon or lime slices by the bar as accompaniment to the bubbles maintained a little interest in the beverage.
A couple of people had brought cameras with them and a certain amount of my-flash-is-bigger-than-yours ensued, but mostly it was a masterclass in the use of digital SLRs on the part of the most knowledgable photographer present (one of the Richards, I think, although recall is a little hazy on that point).
Neil had to leave us for a little while because he had a ticket for a place called Hampden Park, something to do with the Auld Alliance reunion organised that afternoon for devotees of the round bag of wind. Anyway, he came back later on considering his time had been well-spent and very cheerful. The result was made all the sweeter for the sassenach cousins failing to do anything at all interesting against a minor Balkan state in the same competition.
Conversation ranged far and wide amongst a very varied bunch of folk. It turned out that one person there came from the small Somerset village of Priddy up on the Mendips and we shared an enthusiasm for the Queen Victoria pub.
A lot of the folk there were pretty well-endowed in the cerebral department and, as a retired part-time chook-keeper I had to work fairly hard to keep up with the conversation. It was astonishing how the time flew and after about seven hours, when it was getting on for eight of the evening and the other choice was booking a room for the night, I retired from the fray and headed off into the darkening night to get a carry-out, rescue the car from the multi-storey and burn rubber back up the A82 across the Highland Line and get home again. Rewarded myself for my sobrierty in the city with a stiff one with Her Maj (a dram, dear, don't get excited) and a well-earned lie-in the following morning.
Good thing blogmeets; must do them more often.

Whisky tasting

2006-10-12T20:04:00.000+01:00

I referred in a previous post to the whisky tasting evening which was being organised in our local village hall last Friday. The much-anticipated event came along in diurnal passage, but Her Maj was distracted by shenanigans with her aged mother in Somerset and needed to spend most of the evening on the phone, so I had to make my way up to the hall on my poor old ownsome. Arrived, paid my £15 and found a seat with a table of some old friends and some folk who rapidly became new ones.
The evening was being held to raise funds for the local community project, which aims to purchase land from the Forestry Commission to replace the old village hall with a new one. The star of the show was Jim McEwan from the Bruichladdich distillery. one of the jewels of Islay's alcoholic firmament. Jim came armed with several special bottles of malt whisky, all of which he'd selected himself and finished in various different casks before bottling. Although memory is inevitably a little vague on the matter after such a good evening, we tasted Glen Scotia, Bruichladdich (of course), Caol Ila, a 36-year-old Lagavulin (which was honey to the palette) and a couple of other gems from the mainland which escape my recall at the moment (and probably did even the following morning). Oops, an awful lot of parentheses there, but in a way, that reflects what happens to my conversation when in the presence of the cratur.
Jim is an excellent raconteur and a great advocate for single malt whisky. We were initiated into the art of tasting whisky, learning how to determine the age of the whisky from the tongue and the alcohol content by a judicious jiggle of the glass. We discovered the tears of the peat and learned of the angel's share. We laughed at his tales of "vurriners" (as they'd say in Somerset) and the care with which they'd pour samples of whisky into their hands to taste it; it makes more sense if you were there, as inevitably do most tales involving ethanol.
The evening was accompanied by some live music from a trio who tend to follow Jim around and who contributed to a solid, mellow groove for the evening. Even if I was missing the old lady's company, the pleasure of the whiskies we sampled, the good company and the music made for a fantastic evening.
I must confess to dancing most of the way home in the moonlight ...

Spanking the penguin

2006-10-08T14:56:00.000+01:00

Now I have to admit, when I first heard this phrase, I assumed we were in bishop-bashing territory and didn't pursue the subject, being a happily-married subject of Her Maj. However, reading Neil's blog after the Glasgow blog-meet, I followed this link to great hilarity. I then followed this link to seat-dampening effect.
If you never have spanked a penguin, you've missed out. Really.

Written on the Islay ferry

2006-10-06T00:22:00.000+01:00

The ferry from Port Ellen is running 45 minutes late tonight, due to a very high tide causing problems with the loading of lorries at Port Askaig earlier on in the day. As always with late ferries, there are few folk aboard. Those that are are mostly in the recliner chairs or upstairs in the observation deck where they can stretch out and sleep.
The seasonal-sister ship to this - I am aboard the Hebridean Isles - is the Isle of Arran, which has a little-known lounge on the embarkation deck where the habitual sleepers are to be found. But the summer season is over and the Isle of Arran is away to her wintering grounds leaving the good old Heb Isles in sole sway of the Sound of Jura and West Loch Tarbert.
With the late sailing from Port Ellen, the first call to the cafeteria was also the last as the crew were eager to go off-service and clear away the catering. I chose the roast pork, which came in a rich gravy with a hint of apple about it, the sort of diced vegetables that we called "Russian Salad" at school and a good portion of chips. 9.30 is late in the evening for a meal, but I'd been a long time since hot food at lunchtime.
Quiet, late evenings like this are when the crew relax a bit as well and some of the boiler-suit brigade emerge from below the waterline to join in the general craic. Today was also crew-change day, so some of the faces from the morning crossing had disappeared to be replaced by others; half the crew get changed each week after their two-week stint aboard.
I like the late crossings for the peace of the night. There has always been something special about night work for me. I think it's a sense of having care for a sleeping, vulnerable world when the air is still, the moon holds her court among the clouds and the noise of the day is hushed.
Soon after leaving Port Ellen, and having safely stowed my supper, I went out on deck to a magic scene. The squally rainclouds had cleared , the wind had dropped and what was left was a mild, almost balmy breeze. The moon was left peering through a high, thin patchwork quilt (Oh, where is my Guardian "Clouds" wallchart when I really need it!) and the distant masses of Kintyre and Antrim could be discerned against the hazy sky.
I watch the lights in our wake. There, to the left, is the Mull of Kintyre lighthouse with a slow, steady beat of white. Further astern is the Rathlin Island, marked by its easterly white and westerly red lights. A car passes somewhere across Rathlin's bulk, adding its movement to this littoral constellation.
Moving in front of the Rathlin lights and, by parallax much closer, is another light. This one has a more urgent rhythm of six short and one long flash before its dark wink. This, a crewman informs me, is the Otter Rock. I will have to find it on a map or a chart to place it now, fixing the constellation of sea-lights in my mental firmament.
And again people disappear from the canteen. There's only me at one end, in my habitual seat, and one half of a retired couple at the other. The other half, wearing a ghastly flat cap, has gone off on some peregrination leaving her to some precious peace amongst the pages of the Daily Mail.
This quietness and calm is in stark contrast to this morning's seven o'clock sailing from Kennacraig. In the midst of the normal cargo of public servants, German and Japanese whisky-tourists and commercial drivers, suddenly appeared a horde of teenagers bent on getting first place in the breakfast queue. There was a football tournament on the island today and teams from the three closest high schools on the mainland came over for the fray. They were well-behaved kids, which was just as well given that their teachers ignored them for the whole of the crossing. It's reassuring to see normal, cheeky, well-behaved youngsters do no more than chatter and play cards - not a single one of them even seemed to want to go outside for a smoke, which was great to see. I hope they had a cracking day.
My day's been good too, thanks for asking. I got done all that I went over to do and a wee bit more besides. I learned a lot more about oysters and met some nice folk, generally conducting some good business for a change.
Given that I'll be home about quarter-past midnight tonight, I'm rather glad that I arranged to have tomorrow (Friday) off work. I can lie in and get up when I like; so long as there's food for Her Maj when she gets home, there'll be peace and harmony. We're looking forward to a whisky tasting in the village hall tomorrow night with Islay's Bruichladdich being the star of the show. Can't get too blurred at the edges, given that I need to get down the road to Glasgow early on Saturday; getting the car serviced and joining (for my first time) some other Scottish bloggers at the blogmeet. I suppose I'd better be a good boy, avoid drinking and go home to my darling that evening. Much better than facing "questions in the house"!
So, what started out as a note to records a sea-scene at night, has become an eight-page ramble through retrospection, introspection and anticipation. Perhaps it's just been the pleasure of writing with a pen again ...

London pubs

2006-10-01T21:25:00.000+01:00

Just to report that, on my trip to the Great Smoke, I did manage to re-acquaint myself with one or two favourite pubs and find a new one into the bargain. There'd been a bit of a mix-up over accommodation, but my hosts soon sorted that out and, after unpacking and showering, I went out for a meander. I walked around the West End for a while, attempting to find Liberty's to see if I could obtain a little knick-knack for Her Maj, but the place proved too elusive for one approaching from the south up Regents Street; I'm told that an approach from the north is more likely to prove successful and one day I'll find the blasted place.
Mooching back through Soho, I thought it was high time I found the John Snow and paid homage to the man who first applied the tools of epidemiology to an outbreak of cholera and stopped it dead. He did so by the simple expedient of removing the handle from the public water pump which was infected with the cholera bacillus, much to public scandal, I have to report. You can read more about the man and his contribution to epidemiology here.
The pub named in his honour turned out to be owned by the Samuel Smith brewery, although none of their beers were available from the cask. A quick pint of Taddy lager and a call hame to hersel' were the tasks attendant upon that visit. That and a silent toast to the man himself.
After that, time to head over to the Seven Stars in Carey Street at the back of the Royal Courts of Justice for a good pint of real ale. This is a very small, narrow place with a high density of legal types sinking the good stuff by the pint. I grabbed a pint of something good (which escapes me now) and a bag of macadamia nuts and went to sit down in a corner with an evening paper. At the next table were three young people, all in their twenties, earnest, intelligent and engaged in a discussion about champagne and good wines. The expert, a young man with passion in his eyes and a relentless curl in his hair, was explaining to a friend who was enquiring of him, the rights and wrongs of the champagne trade. The advocate for the wines was clearly extremely knowledgeable, having worked as a wine waiter in some very good establishment, and it was fascinating to ear-wig such expert conversation. The only thing I know about champagne is, that when opening the bottle, one turns the bottle against the cork and not vice versa. Apparently, from what chummy was saying, the rest of my seldom-practised technique was spot-on, so I preened myself quietly and nibbled my nuts.
Then it was time to hook up with some chums for a meal and we descended upon the Auberge near Waterloo station for the remainder of the evening. The food took its time coming, but was excellent when it did, and the Belgian beers and good company made it an excellent way to round off the evening. Even more conveniently, I was only twenty metres from my hotel!

Art for art's sake

2006-10-01T21:10:00.000+01:00

Down in London for a meeting on Friday, and with some time to kill afterwards, I'd arranged to meet up with an old chum who's now at the British Museum, pursuing his passion for Roman objects. We were at school together in another life and hadn't seen each other for about twenty years, when we met again for the first time earlier in the year. One of the things about meeting old friends is how little they have apparently changed over the years, but this time we were talking about childhood and youth and I was suggesting that they were experiences of another person whom I once knew, rather than being an integral part of the person I now am, who seems formed of more recent experience than childhood enterprises and disasters. Anyway, before we had to part, I asked him to take me down to the galleries and show me one object through his eyes as a curator, rather than simply mine as a historical tyro. He took me to the Portland Vase.
The vase, for those who've never seen it or know of it, is an astonishing piece of Roman glassware made just about two thousand years ago and which survived almost intact (with an ancient modification) until the middle of the 19C when it was damaged by a visitor to the museum, to who's care it had been entrusted.
The vase was made by blowing the form in two layers of glass, blue inside white, and then the white glass was eroded by a craftsman either to remove it entirely, exposing the blue ground, or reducing the white glass to different thicknesses to create the relief form of the cameo. Now this is the astonishing part of it as an object, that such commitment, effort and care goes into a process which also results in such a work of beauty, for the vase is beautiful as well as technically fantastic. The scenes depicted (of the wedding of the parents of Achilles) are crafted with tenderness and translucent forms of people, plants and architectural forms emerge organically and with precision from the blue glass behind.
Yes, I'd seen this object before, but never from the perspective of a man who, frankly, loved it and delighted in it. This was a privileged insight into the distant past and has left in me a little bit of awe that I'd forgotten how to hold for ancient and precious things of beauty, after all, no-one can make another one.

Blue dance

2006-09-30T20:30:00.000+01:00

Soft, effete, lefty, liberal, London types

2006-09-30T20:06:00.000+01:00

Whilst down in the smoke for a couple of days, I noticed a story in the Grauniad that related the cost of Ken Livingstone's campaign against the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Now, I have every sympathy with the ambition to reduce the numbers of flying rats in the nation's capital and applaud the use of biological control, i.e. hawks, but was astonished at the tone of the reporting in the Grauniad, which at one point said:
"Protesters claim that on one occasion a hawk swooped and killed a pigeon in front of children."
This is the nub of the story for me: not that hawking pigeons off the streets is a bad thing nor that the hawks should feed on the pigeons is a terrible thing, but that some people are so thick that they think it's outrageous that children should have the inestimable privilege of actually seeing a raptor take and feed on a prey bird. I would be fascinated to see that - I've come close, but never quite seen a hawk take a bird on the wing - and it would be a wonderful education for city kids to understand some of the processes at work in the wild, but "protesters" think that this is somehow appalling and to be deprecated and therefore a reason why biological control should not be used in the city.
I mentioned this to Her Maj, who was firmly of the opinion that it would be a privilege to see a hawk in action, including taking and eating a pigeon, and that to protest about children seeing this was complete nonsense given the amount of violence to which they were exposed on television. I can only concur.
Now, the cost of the operation, that's another matter, but I'm not a London rate-payer ...

SWMBO - definition

2006-09-26T06:44:00.000+01:00

I find that someone got to Pat the Chooks by googling for "SWHMBO, Definition". SWMBO, of course, stands for that illustrious female, Mrs Hilda Rumpole, known privily by her adoring husband as "She Who Must Be Obeyed".

Stop mucking about!

2006-09-25T22:48:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to report a weekend away in the west around Loch Shiel and Ardnamurchan. Here's a picture of Her Maj playing up to the camera with Muck, Rum and Eigg in the background. More pictures and words when the muse strikes harder.

Dealing with negative anecdotes

2006-09-23T12:17:00.000+01:00

I was chatting to a lawyer recently about advances in environmental standards when he came up with the inevitable negative anecdote that people often advance in resistance to change, particularly the application of higher standards which will involve them putting their reluctant hands into their pockets to invest in something that is imposed upon them. Or, for example, having to modify their behaviour with the inevitable loss of some privilege or pleasure. Examples would be; speeding behaviour on the roads, smoking, environmental improvements of various kinds. Often these changes will have their benefits at a societal scale by reducing mortality or morbidity but are unlikely to have any specific benefit for individuals. This, of course, being the outworking of chance in populations subject to environmental stressors.
The typical negative assertion that is brought into the argument is something along the lines of "I've been doing X for forty years and I've never been ill" or "I know lots of people who've been doing X all their lives and they're now eighty". The second case, of course, describes the survivors, not the ones who have fallen by the wayside through the years, been buried and forgotten.
It is the first argument, the negative assertion, that I wish to address. The principle here is that a negative assertion is not evidence, it is merely prejudice. Evidence in terms of environmental stressors acting on populations comes from epidemiological research, not the collection and reporting of anecdotes. Anecdotes have value in that they express the societal myths about particular issues and therefore evidence the need for considering cultural expectations and honestly-held opinions in managing and promoting change. They do not, however, provide an objective truth about the relationship between a stressor or environmental agent and the morbidity or mortality that could arise in a population as a consequence.
So, why the use of the term prejudice? Prejudice simply means to form a judgement in advance of the facts of the case. My negative experience of one cap-wearing driver of a white Ford Escort is anecdotal of that incident, not predictive of the behaviour of other cap-wearing drivers of white Ford Escorts nor the consequences of meeting them on the road. Were I to consider that all cap-wearing drivers of white Ford Escorts were likely to behave in an unpredictable or dangerous manner on the road, I would be expressing a prejudice.
But there is a second form of prejudice expressed here, which is the one I wish to consider in the context of the negative assertion. That is the prejudice that assumes the unwilling individual is going to have to change their behaviour, or spend money they don't wish to, without a perceived personal benefit that would outweigh the cost of participation in the change process. And herein lies the rub; benefits arising from reducing environmental stressors or exposure to pollutants generally arise to the population as a whole in terms of better health and life expectancy, they very seldom deliver a tangible and welcome benefit for any random individual.
Perhaps the aphorism should be re-written thus: a negative assertion is not evidence, it is merely the expression of a resistance to change. Less snappy, for sure, but less liable to misinterpretation.

Black grouse

2006-09-22T21:37:00.000+01:00

Last weekend Her Maj and I went off to learn all about black grouse (or blackcock as they are also known). We met up with a number of other folk in a local hotel and were given a series of presentations in the morning on the beasties in question. After a good lunch we set off into the local forests to seek out "leks". Now, for the ignorati, amongst whom I would happily have counted myself a week ago, a lek is the site where male black grouse congregate and display in the hopes of attracting a lady-friend for a reproductive enterprise. To lek is also the verb relating to the display. Given that these are very large grouse, the size of a goodly cockrel, the site is one to be seen.
We scouted around and found lots of pine marten spats (deposits of partially-digested rowan berries) and some black grouse droppings, suggesting suitable locations for our early-morning field trip the following day. Given that the location of leks is confidential within the project, I can't even give you the broadest indication of where we were, sorry.
The field trip element of the weekend involved meeting at 0515 on the Sunday morning and driving off into the forest to the lek location we'd spotted the previous day. We split up into two parties and set off to find discreet locations for viewing the lek site for an hour either side of dawn. The leader had the right idea, for having found a nice sheltered clump of spruce trees, snuggled down on a bed of needles and snoozed happily for an hour. I have to say, it's pretty boring sitting still in the dark for an hour, and it became a little more so when dawn came and there was no sight of the ruddy birds. We gave up about 0730 and went for a drive in the minibus to see a couple of other lek sites that the trainer knew about. Well, the inevitable happened; driving back towards the road, we actually saw a black grouse feeding on the side of the road and it hung around for a couple of minutes to enable us all to have a keek through binoculars. I don't know if it was the first blackcock Her Maj has seen, and I'm not sure I'll ask the question in that form.
The plan is (being serious again for a moment) that we'll be allocated a lek site in the spring and will go out to monitor activity on a couple of occasions to enable an assessment of the population of birds in this part of the world. Won't be as much fun in the spring when the dryer mornings will inevitably be cold and frosty to boot. Ach well, the two of us can snuggle up and keep each other's morale up.

And now for some labels

2006-09-22T21:35:00.000+01:00

Labels now being enabled, I've gone back a couple of months (all right, four) to add labels to existing post. It's entirely possible that I'll never go back through the other nearly-400 and label them, but at least all future posts will be so, er, labelled.

A new look for the blog

2006-09-22T21:11:00.000+01:00

I said it was time to dust the old place off and give it a new, fresh look. The original plan was to move to another blogging host/engine, but I'll see how I get on with the Blogger Beta. It has a lot of improvements in terms of the simplicity of managing layout and content and I'll have a wee play for a few weeks to see how I get on.
Sorry for having been so quiet for so long, lots to tell you ...

Willow coffins

2006-08-26T20:36:00.000+01:00

I've been down in Somerset for a few days, having brought the younger chickabiddies back so that Poppet could get her GCSE results - not as good as she was hoping for, poor lass.
The Somerset Levels and Moors, as some readers may be aware, is the home of the English willow industry, although not to the extent that it would have been a hundred years ago. Nvertheless, you can still see fields of withies being grown and ranks of stripped withies being dried in some places. I have a toggie to illustrate, but am unable to upload pictures at the moment due to being away from my own computer.
There's been a lot of interest in recent years in green burials and Somerset has been one of the areas where that interest has been strongest. Willow coffins have been occasionally used because they are the ultimate biodegradable burial container - no need for any other materials to be used for handles or hinges with withy. And, they look so good as well. Driving through Bridgwater today I saw a van advertising these coffins and felt it would be good to share the information with a wide-ish readership. Here's the link. Personally, I think they look charming and far less terrible and ghastly than the modern chipboard-and-veneer options that are pressed upon vulnerable people at vast prices. May this company prosper in their venture!

A task outstanding

2006-08-15T21:30:00.000+01:00

I need to refurbish and reconceptualise this blog. After all, the only animals that live here are Lady Voledoomcat and any brief rodent lives in her paws. Chook and goose news is in very short supply, apart from hearing the Charlie is in rooster heaven with the arrival of half a dozen new pullets; Pipsqueak is growing up to be a bantam version of his dad and the Sergeant has a new challenge with a pair of resident dogs who like chasing geese!
I have been thinking for some time about moving the blog to another provider and would welcome comments from anyone who uses something other than Blogger to do the job. It would be nice to have better control over the stylesheet and the ability to use tags.
The one reason for making this public (alright, three of you) statement is that it might spur me into action and actually do something about it. Mind you, I won't have the time until after my hols, what with chickabiddies visiting and walking in Derbyshire to occupy my time.

Phew! She's found her keys!

2006-08-15T21:23:00.000+01:00

After the trip to Gigha yesterday, Her Maj has been turning the house upside down in search of her car keys - I even had to use the spares to get it to Oban in search of new tyres this afternoon. The problem was, the last time she could remember having them was on the beach on Gigha when she was putting her rings back on her fingers (which resemble a silver knuckleduster in full regalia), and was a little concerned in case they were still there, at the mercy of the tides and herring gulls. Daisy reassured her that she'd checked the area when they left and was confident nothing had been left behind, but this good news still did not produce the missing keys. Even I joined in the fun and looked in the Great Cabinet (in which many things are placed, but few emerge) but no joy.
I had been beginning to consider strategies for recovering her keys from an offshore island without its own police office and was starting to think another expedition would be called for, when ... Her Maj just now reported the successful recovery of her keys "from a different part of my handbag". I think further comment from anyone of the male persuasion would be not only superfluous but reckless in the extreme.

A trip to Gigha

2006-08-15T11:05:00.000+01:00

The Isle of Gigha lies a couple of miles off the west coast of Kintyre and is a twenty-minute ferry crossing from Tayinloan. Yesterday was warm and sunny and lots of people seemed to have had the same idea about going over to the island for the day. The island is owned by a community trust and loads more information about the place can be found here.
The main purpose of the trip was to go to find a nice sandy beach where we could have a picnic and a swim. Her Maj is a great fan of sea bathing and Daisy (who is spending a few days with us) was easily-persuaded to come as well.
We decided to take the car over with us, which turned out to the the economical choice, because bike hire would have cost the three of us more than the return car fare on the ferry in any case. All right, if I was going over on my own, I'd take my bike and pootle around at a proper island pace, but with three people, picnic and bathing gear and all the clobber, we decided to be idle.
First stop were the gardens at Achamore House, which were probably of great interest to people who knew lots about plants, but were sadly lacking in good interpretation for the casual visitors like ourselves. Also rather expensive to walk around, at £3.50 per adult, but not as expensive as the teas, which were £2.50 per person, even if you did get a slice of cake and a refill included. The gardens are probably at their best earlier in the year when all the rhododendrons and azaleas are in bloom, but the walled gardens were pleasant to walk around. Her Maj enjoyed collecting feathers from the resident peacocks.
Off then, to the Twin Beaches at the northern end of the island. The twin beaches are formed either side of a tombolo, which is a spit of sand joining the small island of Eilean Garbh to the larger Isle of Gigha.
We chose to go to the southern bay, Bagh Rubha Ruiadh, where we found a nice sheltered spot on white sand with some warm rocks to sit on. There were a few other folk on the northern beach, but no-one else at all on the one we'd chosen. So, having come all this way, we got into our cossies and into the sea. The water here is very clear, quite unlike the brown soup of the Bristol Channel of recent familiarity, and it was wonderful to wade around looking at the seaweeds and worm casts on the sandy bottom. The beach shelves only very gently and we were able to swim out quite some distance without going out of our depth. With the shelter afforded by the off-shore island, this made it a superb swimming beach.
The only problem with swimming in the Atlantic Ocean at these latitudes is that is it ruddy cold and determination and vigorous activity is necessary to get over the first few minutes in the water. After that, one acclimatises (or gets hypothermia - I've never decided which) and the experience becomes almost pleasant. It was, actually, great fun and reminded me how much I enjoyed swimming in the sea.
Daisy was far more reluctant to come into the water, but finally managed to get swimming. Great success of the day was teaching her to float on her back, something which she's not managed before.
I couldn't come to Gigha without bagging a couple of green squares. There was a small wrinkle on the west coast of Eilean Garbh that hadn't been geographed, so, after a picnic lunch and reclad in trousers and shoes, I set off to find it. First thought was to walk across the island the 300 metres or so to the destination, but the thick growth of brambles and bracken soon required a new plan. Since the island was only small, the logical thing was to walk around the coast, which I did. The southern end of the island is a large gull colony and I was accompanied all the way by wailing gulls as I picked my way through their nests and the carcases of the unsuccessful young birds. The object of the expedition was determined with the use of a compass (provided the coast north went eastwards and that south ditto, I knew I was in the right place). This is the result of all that effort.

Revised Scottish National Threat Levels

2006-08-12T10:19:00.000+01:00

Falling Sky: Home Secretary Wullie
Nice to see a little bit of Scottish objectivity creeping into the current national sense of crisis. Somehow I think the whole country (UK rather than just Scotland) would benefit from adopting these four simple and transparent threat levels. They are easier to distinguish than, for example, serious and critical.

Don't play with your food

2006-08-12T00:00:00.000+01:00

Readers of a nervous disposition should look away now, because I am about to reveal the unadulterated truth about Lady Voledoomcat's appalling behaviour when it comes to the treatment of small rodents.
I was down in the kitchen this evening when she came in through the CatFlap(R) with a small furry thing in her mouth. I immediately shouted "Out!" and she took her anticipated meal out to the patio. I decided to watch what she did with her catch, which appeared to be a small vole.
At this stage the vole was in fairly good nick, if a little shaken, and could probably have made a good getaway had it been anywhere near some long grass. Lady V had other ideas and let it try its best whilst literally dancing around the poor beast. She would actually spin around completely and catch the vole again and again. The next trick was to let it get to the wall and try to climb up; she would permit only so much of this before pawing it to the ground again, mouthing it and patting it about. By this time the vole was visibly tiring and unable to make any further escape attempts.
The cat had plenty of play left in her, however, and proceeded to sprawl out in the evening sunshine and roll around, displaying the classic "playful kitty" method of springing the vole up into the air and down again. By now the little thing was twitching and its chest would convulse as its end came nearer. Lady V rolled around on top of it, enjoying the warmth of the ground, and displayed a complete nonchalance towards the fate of her prey.
Only when the poor wee thing was no longer moving did she decide that playtime was over and teatime had arrived. She proceeded to devote herself to her carnal appetites and the vole disappeared completely in little under two minutes. She then came in to seek appreciation and the usual domestic attentions from the household.
No doubt some readers will question my role as passive observer in this drama and protest my failure to intervene on behalf of the vole. If I had tried to get out to her, I've no doubt that she would have picked up her prey and carted it off to some location where she could entertain and feed herself with disapproval. The other point is that she does this several times every day and a single intervention is pretty meaningless in the overall scheme of things. If I'd stayed upstairs the drama would have been played out in the kitchen unobserved by me, so feeling guilty for observing and accepting Lady V's behaviour is irrational and unreasonable, however much some sense of guilt creeps in from being a witness to the microcarnage.

Book Meme

2006-08-11T20:53:00.000+01:00

Tagged by BondBloke for this one; not that I'm a great fan of blog-tag, mainly because it reveals that I'm Billy-No-Mates on the web! Anyway, here goes:

1: One book that changed your life.
The Confessions of St Augustine

2: One book you have read more than once.
Nearly everything on the bookshelf - I'm mean when it comes to buying new books. Just finished Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, which gets richer with every reading.

3: One book you would want on a desert island.
The Kon-Tiki Adventure by Thor Heyerdal - one has to be practical here.

4: One book that made you laugh?
500 Mile Walkies by Mark Waddington.

5: One book you wish had been written?
The George W Bush Guide to Hill-billy Diplomacy.

6: One book you wish had never had been written?
Boogie up the River by Mark Waddington.

7: One book that made you cry?
I don't cry at the written word, but music can get me when I least expect it. That said, A Tale of Two Cities came pretty close to it.

8: One book you are currently reading?
Para Handy Stories.

9: One book you have been meaning to read?
Almost anything by Charles Dickens.

10: Now tag five people

Robin
Jude
Tom
Freda
Pavlov's Cat

Wild raspberries

2006-08-02T21:38:00.000+01:00

Late home this evening after a very early start and spending most of the day down the far end of Kintyre (meetings, blooming meetings!) and no sign of Lady Voledoomcat. Now, she is a great one for firkling around in the long grass all day long, but she's usually infesting the kitchen when himself appears at the end of the working d., but not this evening. No sign of her even after I'd cooked some fish, which normally has her flying through the CatFlap(R) at close to the speed of a very hungry cat. Now, call me soppy if you will, but I thought I'd just toddle out and comb the verges for her corpse ...
... which took me as far as the Old Gamekeeper's, where I stopped for a natter and a cup of tea. Wandered on along past The Chookery and found ripe wild raspberries in the verge, so helped myself. Back over what might one day be the village green and meandered up along the burn towards the edge of the moor. The light on the hills at this time of year is fabulous; the hills themselves have greened up considerably in the last week with the welcome rain. I thought to myself that I couldn't wish to be anywhere else (apart from a small village in Herefordshire or Somerset with a decent pub and warm real ale). Back on down the track and yet more wild raspberries just leaning into my path for my delight. Small pleasures which are so seasonal and fleeting are the more pleasurable for a' that.
Oh, and herself was sat upstairs by the computer when I finally came in again ...

The delights of enforced idleness

2006-08-01T21:40:00.000+01:00

I know the last offering was lamenting my own idleness, but I've found considerable pleasure in the last few weeks from making weekly trips to Islay for work. Well, someone's got to do it and it might as well be me ...
Islay is further from the mainland than appears at first sight, particularly when you consider that (a) the ferry leaves from Kennacraig, a long way up West Loch Tarbert and (b) tends to go in to Port Ellen, which is a long way west from Kennacraig. The journey time to Port Ellen is two-and-a-half hours and from Port Askaig is two hours, so the evening journeys in particular in these summer months can be an absolute delight. Last Thursday the weather was so warm and the sea so calm that it was actually shirtsleeves up on the open decks and it was possible to linger and watch the sea drifting past as the ferry made its way back to the mainland. The visibility wasn't as good as it can sometimes be, with a sea fret blurring the distant shores and horizons, but the light was good and the sea was rippled with small waves. Oddly enough, there were networks of calmer water, like leads in the sea-ice, that had no ripples or waves on them at all. Quite often, these leads of calmer water had strings of seaweed floating along them.
On other days, you can lean over the side and watch blooms of jellyfish pulse alongside the ship. Seals are commonly seen, as are the occasional gannet. One chum reported seeing a submarine the other week on her way across; I've not yet had that pleasure myself.
When you're on Islay for work, it tends to be a hurtle from one place to another and it's a big old island! Not unusual to do 60 miles or so there in a day and there's always the pressure of getting back to the ferry on a day-trip. Consequently, having to sit on the ferry and enjoy a meal and, in the best weather, a pleasant cruise through some of the best islands in the world, is hardly a trial. I find the crossings are time to read, to think, to write for work - now that I have a laptop it's always with me on the ferry and I try to bag a seat near a mains socket as well. Occasionally there are folk you know - and I also know some of the crews reasonably well now - so the company can be good.
Some other people I know hate the journeys by ferry because of the uncertainty of the weather and the time the crossings take out of a day - you effectively spend a whole working day doing the travelling bit before you add in the time for visits on the islands - but I don't mind that. Uncomfortable crossings are rare at this time of the year and you can, with a little luck, avoid them by planning ahead about four or five days and keeping an eye on the synoptic charts. Others complain that the CalMac ferries are little more than floating buses and lack amenities and comfort, but they are lifeline services first and foremost and I'm not sure what they really want, given that they'd rather not be on them in the first place. For me, I accept and enjoy them most of the time. In any case, there's always a packet of travel pills in the glovebox if my weather forecasts are wildly out ...