where art collides philosoperontap

Fox: 00:06, 04:14, 04:52. Interesting hedgehog interaction 02:01 – 02:03. Not sure if there was some mating going on here or not. Either one of them was unwell or just not having any of it. Curled up. Three vids to watch.

Lovely night out at OleOle with Joe and Lucy. We sat outside. Joe dialled up an Uber for a lift home and got it for free. Something to do with being an Uber One member. Will have to investigate that one. I think I already did and concluded it wouldn’t be worthwhile but will have another look.

Off to Rhys Edwards’ wedding today. Just to the church. One of Joe’s mates we’ve known since birth. They are all starting to get married now. There will be a flush of weddings for the next few years before they move on to christenings.

Both THG and Joe have gone out running. THG to the parkrun and Joe to do 5k around uphill Lincoln. Quite a pleasant running route taking in the castle and cathedral. I’m sat on the deck, nipping into the shed periodically to check up on progress with my census transcriptions. You have to feed Claude in batches to avoid overloading it. Currently working my way through Llangeler where my 3 x great grandparents farmed a place called Pantyffynnon. Visited there with Joe last year. The ffynnon itself was filled in in recent times.

The other news is that today is effectively the start of the new football season with the first round of the Carabao Cup, the League Cup as was (still is really). The Imps are away at Derby County. We have just signed two strikers on loan, one of whom is from Spurs, so will be interesting to see how it goes.

V pleasant night out with THG and the Sands last night. Couple of craft beers in the Monkey Puzzle (or whatever it is called) and then an amble along the pavement to the Cathedral View Indian. Although I had been there after golf it was the first time for THG. The Sands had only just been there last week but you can never have too many curries innit.

Today is a day for sorting stuff out. Tomorrow we are off to see me blood and blister Ann and husband Toby in Wiltshoire. Life is a bit of a whirlwind really.

Looks like we had a drop of rain overnight. Not enough to have an effect but better than nowt.

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Left my “landline” plugged in this pm. just had a phishing call. didn’t bother answering and now it’s unplugged again for another few months.

Fox 21:35 last night.

Some banging tunes coming out of the wireless set this morning. Sunday Service from Port Sunlight United Reform Church. Hadn’t realised that the United Reform Church came from the coming together of the congregationalist and presbyterian churches. Never too late to learn. We’ve stayed in Port Sunlight a few times. Cracking pub nearby, Rose & Crown. Uncle Bill’s fave watering hole. THG has paused the service whilst we are outside. Already a lovely morning. Perfect weather really. Garden needs watering.

Pleasant bbq last night where we sat at my new garden table. Starting to earn its living, so to speak. I bunged some minted lamb kebabs from Pepperdyne’s on the grill and nipped in to the shed to do something. Almost left it too long but all worked out ok in the end. Kebabs were v good fair play. Not so sure about the sausages. Not as good as Fosters though I did buy the prepacked ones which seem to have lots of additives. Will try out the bacon this morning.

Dunno what lies in store today really. During the day anyway. We are off out for a curry with the Sands ce soir.

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Breakfasted, showered and now sipping tea on the deck. A gull of some brand or other circles overhead. I hear voices through the hedge from next door. Both sides. The others will be out of the house by ten thirty, THG to church and H&G to visit Lois and Joe around the corner. I’m going to see if I can make some progress on the compost bins. Need to get the circular saw out.

I’ve finished transcribing the 1871 census for Llanfihangel ar Arth and now doing Llangeler.

Fox 00:21. Met someone yestray at hte Dowsws who leaves food out for the fox!

Sat on the deck last night enjoying the evening with Adie and Zara. I had just mentioned that we had a hedgehog when lo and behold it trotted across the lawn in front of us and started rooting around the back of the raised beds. Couldn’t have timed it better. Then Z spotted the frog on the path, maybe 3 yards from the lake. This is quite thrilling. One of the reasons for having the lake was to attract frogs which like to eat slugs and snails. Ditto the hedgehog. It feels very much as if we have had fewer of them this year.

Last night was one of the few evenings we have stayed outside long enough to benefit from having the lights on around the barbecue area and also outside the shed. Makes the place v atmospheric. The downside, however, is that it means the nights are already beginning to draw in.

Now back on the deck before breakfast. Might as well take advantage of this weather while we can. My new sunglasses have been a result. Feels as if they are even better than my normal specs. I’ll still use the old ones for the pool. The lenses, which were so worn, kept falling out but I’ve superglued them in. The nuclear option but it doesn’t really matter.

Today is going to be another day of relaxation. I’m not in a rush to have breakfast. I still feel full from last night’s bbq. A few leftover sausages to eat up. No sign of Hannah and George yet. No rush innit. A few birds tweeting away, chirping. Unfortunately my phone is in the kitchen charging so I can’t tell you what make bird we are talking about. Several.

Looks as if we might have had some rain overnight. Not enough to get excited about. Quite a bit of cloud up there. More cloud than blue sky but it isn’t particularly solid, if you know what I mean. Amazing things innit, clouds 🙂

Fox 00:05

Snapshot of last night’s standing room only Ellis Mill meeting. Since it closed before Covid shutdown the county Council has neglected it and 3 other mills and it needs £500K to fix. However they are legally bound to do this (apaz this is unique to Ellis Mill). The Civil trust has promoted a business plan to take over the running of the mill after the council has repaired it. They, the trust, have a lawyer working on it. The challenge now is to get the council to spend the money in a timely manner. There is cross party support from some councillors and the feeling is that the council wants to see all four mills survive, somehow. The Civil trust plans to raise the profile of the campaign and get a petition running which it will need help promoting. The thought is that it will be politically hard for the council not to do it if there is seen to be big public support. It is complicated by the fact that the city and county councils are merging.

Arrived home as Hannah and George were arriving. Good timing. Had a nice chat and a couple of beers with George before hitting the hay. Noticed that Clearview Opticians had already received my new sunglasses, a week ahead of schedule. Well done Clearview.

Arrived before they had opened this morning so I thought I’d take a stroll to the cathedral to enquire about our membership passes. We joined up yonks ago but nowt has arrived in the post. Got there at ten past nineish. A few people cleaning and a woman sorting out the flowers but nobody at the desk to let me know what’s going on. Walked through to the entertainment of the organ being played. What a sound. Really fills the cathedral. Strange that they can’t get the acoustics right with some of the concerts they put on.

Now sat on the deck wearing my new shades. Nothing in the calendar. Have all the ingredients ready to make the bbq marinade except for onion powder which I’m hoping THG will source when she finishes in the gym. I do wonder whether just finely chopping an onion will do instead but many recipes demand the powder. I suspect this is an American originated shortcut. WIll see how we get on.

Pigeon taking a drink at the lake. Deep draughts or certainly multiple pecks. An oasis amid the sand coloured desert that has become the surrounding lawn.

Vulpine  visits at 23.08, 23.51 and 02.42.

Gosh it was a busy morning. Me ‘n’ THG had arranged to visit the cathedral caff and then to the shop to buy some Lincoln related presents for some friends we are going to see after which I was going to drop off the car at Coops’ for him to stick a couple of new back tyres on. As we got the cathedral there were a few parking spaces available down the side but I had planned to drive around the front to park on Eastgate as it was nearer the caff. That’s when the alarm bells started to gently sound. Graduation day for Lincoln University! The place was rammed with graduands dressed in their very colourful gowns. Queuing had already started.

My concern was that the caff might be full but actually there were very few people there and no other cars in the parking spots. The latter was because you only got an hour’s parking and clearly the grads would have been in for the whole day, most of it being the celebrations. 

Coops was not there when I dropped the car off so I left it together with the paperwork for selling the campervan and walked to the railway station where I picked up some tickets for THG. Then to the seamstress over the road to pick up my brown corduroy kecks and on to the Apple Store to meet THG herself. Her old iPhone SE is at the point of almost needing to be constantly plugged in. We bought her a new iPhone 17e. That’ll do her for a few years. She especially needs it for when we go on holiday.

Got the bus home from the station. Bloody driver was particularly not helpful. I tapped my phone on the pay thing three times but nothing happened. Then I looked at him quizzically at which point he said he needed to know where I was going. “Why does that matter when it’s a flat fare everywhere?”. He mumbled some response which I didn’t totally get. “Lee Road”. As the bus approached Lee Road the computer made an announcement to that effect. I rose and stood next to the driver but he didn’t stop! Blimmin eck. I made that observation so he did stop at the Christ’s Hospital School stop a couple of hundred yards further on.

Anyway I’m home now and sitting out on the deck. Will need to top up the lake. Water level must have dropped a centimetre yesterday. Not been any LakeCam action for a while but the LogCam picked up Reynard at 00:25 last night.

Five twenty, a, m. Sat out on the deck in front of the lake, fountain gurgling away. A few cars racing by on the road out front. Lights must have just changed. It’s quite a convenient feature of where we live. Although it’s notionally a busy road it is only busy in bursts when the lights at the Wragby Road and Ruskin Avenue junction change. Ditto the ones at the Greetwell Road junction, outside the Peacock, in the other direction. What it means is that whenever we want to get the car out of the drive there is always a gap in the traffic to take advantage of.

All is still in the back garden. The tiniest whisper of a breeze moving the tips of some branches. A good time of day to be up.

Last night we went for dinner at Martin and Helen’s around the corner. The table was laid out on the lawn and everything on the table had been grown by Martin on his allotment. Wonderful grub.The exception was the fabulous pulled pork for which Martin is rightly famous. It is not practical to keep a pig on the allotment and now is not the right time of year to turn it into a pulled pork joint. I daresay he bought the meat from a butcher. I’ve mentioned it before but my grandmother used to keep a pig at the bottom of the garden and our house in Greetwell Gate had a sty in the back garden. Not much room in it for the pig but hey…

It feels as if I’ve had to top up the water levels in the lake every other day this summer. I guess in the truly natural world lakes do sometimes dry up and are refilled when the winter rains arrive. Not good for the fauna that live in the lake. In our case there is no river running into the lake and it is partly covered by the tree canopy so leaving the water level to be controlled by nature might not work.

Sitting on the deck by the lake in front of the shed for the last few days I have been subjected to a constant bombardment by empty nut casings from the holm oak as the squirrels above have been harvesting. I assume it’s squirrels although the nuts do no doubt drop off naturally themselves. In fact not all the ammo being dropped is empty. Some of them are whole, live, nuts.

Yesterday we deposited our campervan Betty at Coops’ garage for the last time.  Betty was an uber cool van to possess and in the 12 years or so we had her we had some great times going away with our pals. There comes a time, however,  when you need a few more creature comforts and the decision has been made to move her on. When we next go away on a weekend camping trip we will hire a motorhome. Won’t be until next year now.

This morning THG and I are off for a swim. We did this at 9am last week and it looks as if this might become a regular thing which is very nice. I go in the slow lane and she opts for the medium one. My technique must be really rubbish as people doing breaststroke overtake me even if I am doing the front crawl. Woteva. After the swim I drop THG off at the gym for her weights class. It might be pilates. Dunno. 

When I get back I might begin the process of refilling the greenhouse water buts. This will take some time as due to the hosepipe ban I’ll have to do it using watering cans. I guess I could fill the big yellow wheelie thing with water and roll that to the greenhouse. I’ll still need to scoop the water out of it but it will save quite a few trips back and forth to the tap.

Fox passed through at 02:06 and 04:24.

C ya.

Elected to take tea on the deck after breakfast, just before eight. It is already pleasantly warm out here and the gurgling of the newly unclogged fountain in the lake makes for a pleasant backdrop. Since moving it and the plants it has been undisturbed by wildlife (ie the pesky pigeons). The birds now have have their own end of the lake to play with. Three vulpine visits between eight minutes past ten and two am last night. These are all being recorded on the mobile “Stump Cam” formerly known as Raised Beds Cam but rehomed as  vegetation had overwhelmed the raised beds location. Stump Cam is screwed down to an oak log that can be easily moved around.

Gonna be a hotun today and we are off out to Helen and Martin’s for dindins so I imagine it will be quite pleasant sitting out in their back garden. I used to say that you could count the number of evenings warm enough to sit outside for dinner on the fingers of one hand but in recent years that has greatly changed.

Pigeon just appeared for a slurp from the lake. The bastard tried to stand on the rescue boat and got a bit of a shock when it sank underneath it. You can see how it was damaging the plants as it would have directly jumped onto them to access the water, dislodging the pots. I’ve been making sure the bird bath has been kept full in this weather to encourage them to use that  as well. Don’t think I’ve mentioned Brian for a while. Seems happy enough since he found a crevice in the rocks where the pigeons seem to leave him alone.

A thrush has tentatively appeared at the lake and is looking around to see whether it might be safe to take a drink. Actually I think it’s a female blackbird. Gratifyingly it decided it was safe and jumped in and took a bath. I don’t mind providing the service to blackbirds. It’s the pigeons I don’t like.

Nipping to Waitrose this morning in the campervan as THG’s car is in the garage having something done to it. She needs to be there (they meet in the Waitrose car park) for before 9:30 for the Pink Ladies Running Club. Hardcore. Better to get it done early before the heat of the day hits the streets.

In other news I ordered a dimmer switch for my Tropical Trefbash neon sign. It isn’t neon really it’s LED but neon sounds right and being LED makes it easy for me to fit a 12v DC dimmer switch in line. Hadn’t really thought about it before our Tom mentioned that it was a bit harsh, which it is. I didn’t order one when I bought the sign as it was quite expensive but in reality they are three quid each from Amazon. I bought a pack of three so if anyone wants one I will have two going spare. Arrives today.

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Now at the caff in “The Rose”. Was going to have a cawfee but when THG said I was probably going to have a sneaky bacon sarnie I changed my plan and have ordered said breakfast item in a roll and substituted the coffee for a pot of tea. For me coffee does not go with a bacon roll. The guy behind the counter gave me a posh (this being Waitrose) sachet of brown sauce. We came, as previously mentioned, in campervan Betty, and it being early it was easy to find a drive through parking spot where I didn’t have to faff around reversing.

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Forgot to tell ya. Ordered South Wales And The March 1284-1415 Book, W Rees Historical Study 1924. My co-worker Claude suggested it would be an useful read and I was lucky enough to find a copy for £15 plus postage.

A cooler and overcast day with a 30% chance of rain at 11am which is now. What we are really after is one of those long drizzly showers that gently soak everything and last long enough to penetrate the subsoil. As it is, the east side of the country is not getting any significant rainfall. The 30% chance of rain turned out to be two drops as far as I could see/feel although one has just appeared on my laptop keyboard just now. Keyboard needs a good clean actually.

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Today I finally got round to putting the framed pictures up on the shed wall, behind the desk. In all there are

1. Signed poster of Pink Martini from when we went to see them at the Royal Albert Hall
2. Bill McLaren’s match notes from the 1999 Rugby World Cup Final between Australia and France (check)
3. My framed 4” Silicon on Sapphire wafer with the MAS31750 chip
4. An antique map of Carmarthenshire
5. Sheet of Ukrainian postage stamps – the one where the soldier puts a finger up to the Russian battleship that got sunk

Just a few pieces of interest really, collected on an ad hoc basis.

Nipped to Tesco for a few bits including a kilo of brown onions at 95 pence. I suspect that is expensive but I’ve never looked at the price of onions before. The choice was loose onions or prepacked. They were the same price so I went for the easy option. More plastic I know but it is what it is.

Later this pm I’m going to watch Episode 7 of Clarkson’s Farm. THG and I did watch it last night but I nodded off at some stage so will catch up on it. I was nodding off on the sofa in the shed at five thirty.

But first, the shed needs a tidy including a good dusting with a damp cloth…

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Big news on the fox front as I captured two on camera this morning in the garden at the same time.Total of 4 visits between 22:18 last night and 06:18 this morning.

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Being bombarded by nut casings dropped from the holm oak. There is a squirrel up there methinks. It’s been going on for a few days now the deck is covered with them and I daresay the shed roof is too.

Quite nice being in our van when it’s raining. I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of tea when it started. The met office said 30% chance of rain at 8am. Well I can tell you it’s a 100% at 7:30. Nobody is complaining. We need the rain. It won’t move the needle much though. The groundsman here at the playing fields had told one of our crowd they had been expecting rain and drilled lots of aeration holes to maximise the chance of the rain soaking into the ground instead of running away off the surface.

Cup of char, a bit more kip and now I’m up and dressed and ready for the day, ish. 08:30. Gonna wait until we get home to have a shower.

There was a bit of drama at the “Elton John” gig last night. Someone in the audience was ill and they had to call an ambulance. The gig ended early so we retired to the coleman event shelter to finish off the  night. We were quite a noisy lot. Went to bed at roughly 12:15 leaving most of the others to it.

All in all another good weekend. Still the communal breakfast to do and then pack up and tear down.

I don’t know if it is my imagination but it feels as if there is a tinge of green back in the mainly straw coloured grass of the playing field.

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Home by about twenty to one. Quite windy so the van was buffeted a lot which meant slowing down a bit and having to counter steer, if that’s the right way of describing it. Now emptied and the wash started.

I’ve been around and watered all the necessary plants, ie tomatoes, spuds etc and even picked a couple of potato plants. The tubers are very small this year but we have some for tonight’s tea. Also topped up the lake and did some essential maintenance on the fountain which had slowed to a trickle. I am pleased, nay excited to say that we are now back to a full “shower” (?). Fox had been a couple of times whilst we were away. Looks like the same scruffy geezer recently spotted . The one that used to come had a much shinier coat.

The trail cams showed that it had rained overnight although you can’t tell from the garden. Also captured the fox.

Rained for a few seconds. All is peaceful.