where art collides philosoperontap

Had a weird dream last night. Was off somewhere in Essex on business (gawd knows why) and was waiting in the train station in London (I assume). When the train arrived it had no carriage walls, just bucket seats. I got on and at some stage the walls miraculously appeared. Then I realised that I really had no idea where I was going so I got my phone out to look. Found it was THG’s phone which was no use whatsoever. I got off the train somewhere and decided I should find a wifi connection to check using my laptop. I went into a shop of some sort and when I opened the laptop found that the screen was broken at the hinge and I could see some of the electronics inside. At that point the woman in the shop recognised me and suggested we should go out for a cocktail. It was lunchtime. The End. 

Weird. What’s even weirder is that I can remember the dream!

It was light at ten to four this morning. Tomorrow is the longest day. Oh nooo. Where did it all go? Now it is ten past six and it has just started to rain. Just looking out of the conservatory at my new scaffold planks table and am pleased I got all the wood preservative down. The table still needs fixing to the base but it is v heavy and won’t be going anywhere in a hurry. 

Then, as I was looking out the window, the hedgehog scampered down the garden path and when it got past the bbq turned towards the fence. There is a hole there that it must use to get next door. It’s where the fox used to go through so plenty big enough.

Later, after two of THG’s finest banana pancakes with imitation maple syrup to break the fast, I am back in the conservatory with the door open to a now fresh, after the rain, morning. Will need to give some thought to what to do today. Tonight we are off to see Billy Ocean with support act Marti Pellow who some of our pals are quite excited about. I didn’t even know whether Marti was a him or a her. Never eard of im (turns out Marti is a him). Anyway because we are off at the crack of a bit after dawn in the morning I need to get packed before we go out tonight. We are off to Chelmsford to see Hannah & George but also to watch Essex v Notts which is the reason for the early departure. Won’t need to pack much as we are back on Tuesday. A few essentials.

I do need to buy some new sandals so might nip to GoOutdoors for that. Then a bit of family history stuff.

Tomorrow is father’s day apaz. It’s not historically significant in the way that Mother’s Day is but if the kids want to mark it in some way that is ok. We are off out for a curry somewhere in Chelmsford.

05:15. A bit bleary eyed but awake with the conservatory doors open enjoying the start to what is forecast to be a “scorcher”. Clear blue skies. Perfect bbq weather. I have a marinade in mind for the chicken. Doubt we have all the ingredients but we shall see. Might need to pop out to a suitable market.

Terrible golf yesterday and everyone was quite knackered towards the end as it was a warm day. We did sit outside for the meal at the Woodcocks. It was mostly shandies all round. Just the thing after a hot afternoon pounding the fairways. I actually lost a ball. A good one an all. Titleist 3. I don’t often lose a ball but the rough was knee deep and, like I said, the golf was terrible.

The garden is dead still. No wind. The only movement is the occasional flight of a bird. A robin hopped onto one of the scaffold planks that have been drying out, held up by various bits of furniture and a couple of saw horses. Today is the day they will be assembled. The resultant table will easily seat twelve and will be a good addition to the patio. Got a couple of benches to sand down too but they can wait until the table is finished.

The hedgehog just ambled down the garden path moving away from me. Must have been foraging nearer the house. We haven’t seen the fox for some time. It is no more. Went out for a wander meself. Heavy dew on the scaffold planks.

The batch transcriber I set in motion last night has a long way to go until it finishes. In seven hours or so it has only managed 28 out of 250 wills. I suspect moving from Pro version of Gemini to Flash has slowed it down but it also makes it cheaper. Will have to see when the batch finishes. It isn’t an urgent job. And only needs doing once. At this rate it will Sunday before it is finished. Looking at the logs it paused several times during the night. Once for three hours. Maybe shows the capacity management issues facing this new technology. Maybe some people are hammering the AI servers hard overnight. It’s no wonder they are forecasting massive AI driven data centre growth.

…

An hour and 45 mins later I’m up and checked the logs again. I’ve just found out that my mac shuts down wifi if it thinks it is inactive. I thought if I leave it plugged in and with code running that would be enough to keep it awake. I was wrong. I have now discovered the  “caffeinate” command to keep the mac from going to sleep. Ya learn something new every day. Now my tech pals will say “huh, you’ve only just found that out?” I say it is never too late to learn. I’m churning through one will every two minutes so should all be done by this evening.

Was racking my brains trying to decide what to have for breakfast when THG came up with the offer of half an avocado on some sourdough. Good idea. Will slip in a couple of rashers of pig.  Breakfast on the deck in front of the lake. V pleasant. The deck is in shade at this time of day which makes it doubly pleasant in this weather. The robin is back to keep me company. THG has gone to the gym.

Twill be warm work assembling the table top later. Gotta be done. Next week I want to move on to the compost bins.

…

Cream crackered. Been at it all day making the new garden table. The table top is now finished and in place on the base. Took me until 6pmish. A few breaks during the day especially as it was 29 degrees celsius. #toohotman. We are glad we didn’t buy tix for Madness. Some of our pals are there but it’s been a busy few days/weeks and a night in is called for. Shoved some chicken in greek marinade on the barbie at around 6.30 and sat down to eat in the company of THG at seven. V pleasant meal accompanied  by a bottle of 2020 Amarone. The simple things in life.

Good day at the Lincolnshire show yesterday. Rain kept off and by the end it was tshirt weather. Bumped into a lot of folk we knew. Bought six pairs of black working socks for a fiver. Gawd knows when I’ll use them but at five quid it doesn’t really matter. Also bought some sausages and a pair of sketchers trainers/shoes. Been meaning to source a pair of trainers for a while.

Healthily tired when we got home and settled in front of the cricket on the telly. Wasn’t particularly hungry so had a single sausage sandwich later, ie one sausage and one slice of bread, toasted. Would have had an early night were it not for the fact that THG had the football on so I hung around

Got a few things to do this morning. Already tweaked the python script to use the gemini flash version instead of pro for the will transcriptions I’ve been working on. The pro version was burning through too many credits. 

This AI stuff opens up lots of possibilities. I have to manually check some names, especially place names but the effort level is orders of magnitude lower than manual transcription. Plus I wouldn’t have been able to sort the script so quickly aaand the knowledge of how to manoeuvre the way around the workings of the image viewer on the NLW website was pretty specialist. I don’t think they want you to be able to scrape their website. Anyway, it’s sorted.

Now sat in the conservatoire with the doors open listening to cheerful birdsong. THG has gone swimming. On the way here I took a look at the sandals I had planned to wear yesterday but had to abandon as a strap had broken. Figured a bit of superglue might do the job but it won’t. A new pair beckons. They do get heavily used over the summer. I reckon they last me maybe 4 or 5 years. At least new sandals won’t pong to begin with.

Gonna be a warmun today. Golf this pm. Second coat of wood preservative on the scaffold planks this morning, when I eventually get going. Tomorrow I should be able to build the actual table top and then all I need to do is figure out how to attach it to the base. There will also be the question of how to lift it but that is for another day and the (able and enthusiastic) assistance of a pal or two.

Blossoms continue to emerge in the wildflower meadow. All good.

Quite heavy rain falling on the empire of THG. The forecast said light rain but we know better. Still the garden will like it. It’s going to stop in 52 minutes anyway says THG, looking at her app. Should be a good day for the Lincolnshire Show. Gotta nip to the Rose to buy a few picnic provisions before we go.

The scaffold planks got their first coat of wood preservative yesterday before the deluge began. I’ll stick the next coat on on Friday and then would be able to assemble the table on Saturday. Might need help turning it over. 4 x scaffold planks = v heavy, man.

Twenty past five in the morning. Just seen a bloke out running. That’s commitment. There’s a little bit of breeze out there. Cloudy. Supposed to hit around twenty five degrees today and then rain in the evening. Summer rain. The sort of rain you don’t mind being caught out in, I guess. Summer rain.

The rest of this post has been written by Gemini AI:

Time for a cuppa, I suppose. There’s something about the silence of the early hours that makes the first tea of the day taste just that little bit better. It’s a clean slate, isn’t it? Before the emails, the notifications, the endless buzz of the working day. Just the steam rising and the quiet satisfaction of being up before the rest of the world. It’s barely light, and yet, the day feels full of possibility—or perhaps just full of chores. I should probably check the weather again, but why bother? It’s going to do what it’s going to do, rain or shine. For now, it’s just me, the kettle, and the quiet.

A bit poncey if you ask me.

Got an email from BA re our delayed bags on the Sorrento trip:

“Dear Mr Davies

We need more information to progress your case. Please review our previous email correspondence and provide us with the information we’ve requested.

If we don’t receive this information, we’ll assume you no longer require support with your case and this will be closed

Lotsa Lurve

BA”

I added the Lotsa Lurve bit. Well this is a bit of progress as I wasn’t expecting to hear from them for weeks based on expectations set by a google search. No suggestion as to what I hadn’t sent them. Sigh

I resent the detail of the claim and got another email back over night.

“to proceed with reviewing and settling your claim, we do require the Property Irregularity Report (PIR) file reference number (also known as the AHL reference) associated with your delayed baggage.”

Sigh. I had already sent them the report. It was an attachment named “lost baggage”. I’ve resent it. I’ve also suggested that 200,000 Avios might be a suitable level of compensation. If you don’t ask…

Anyway it’s going to be a lovely week ahead and we are at home yay. I had pondered heading to Trent Bridge but I have the bit between my teeth and am going to build the garden table using the scaffold planks I’ve been keeping specially for the job. Nottinghamshire are playing Zummerzet and need 426 runs to win with 7 wickets remaining. It ain’t apnin. Might even get the compost bins made. This is the week to do it. 

Me ‘n’ THG are also off to the Lincolnshire Show on Wednesday. Not been for years. There’s always been something business related that got in the way. This is the year. We quite like going to the show even though it’s the same exhibits every year. Doesn’t matter. Lunch in the WI tent is always a good prospect, or tea and cake. One year it rained cats and dogs so I bought a leather Australian bush hat or similar which did a good job of keeping my specs dry. Not sure I still have it. Don’t recall seeing it for years. That year we got a lift back to the car park in a bus being driven by one of the parents from Eastgate school. V handy. Anyway won’t need the bush hat this week. I will wear a sun hat though. Good job I’ve had my hips sorted as the Lincs Show would be a non starter otherwise. 

THG mentioned a picnic for the day at the show. Nowt fancy. Just good quality. Crusty rolls fresh from the baker. Some nice ham wot I bought at Fosters. Maybe a bag of Pipers cheese and onion crisps. Pipers were giving them away free at the bar in the showground last time we went.

In other news, one of the kids sent a video from the Download festival. Wow what a huge crowd I thought to myself. Then the camera panned to the rear and I realised he was quite near the front. It’s a bit like when we went to see the Eagles in Hyde Park. Never seen so many people in my life. Would have needed binoculars had we been standing at the back.

Looking out from the conservatory I see that the runner beans have reached the top of the canes. Also noticed a few flowers so it won’t be long before the beans appear. The broad beans emerged a while back. Can’t be long before we are eating broad beans. The tomatoes are also flowering. And the habanero chillies. Hot hot hot.

Gotta go. That tea won’t make itself yanow.

Gentle start to the day. Slept well, I think, after a v busy day yesterday including cancellation dramas on the rail network and accidentally being shown to the bar reserved for Paul McCartney’s family and friends. Free beer and crisps though the promoter soon realised there had been a mistake and we were instead moved to the private bar at the back of the main auditorium.

Back upstairs to the reserved VIP seats, many of which remained empty until just before Paul appeared on stage at which point the family and friends emptied out of the bar and into the seats around us.

Rob Brydon appeared with Paul on stage to do the interviewing in a fireside chat that lasted over two hours. We got an insight into how each song on the Boys of Dungeon Lane album was written. All in all a great evening. We felt privileged to be there.

The queue outside stretched pretty much along the road to Camden Lock. Maybe a third of a mile. In the rain. We walked, with no embarrassment whatsoever, to the front of the line and joined the very small queue to pick up our guest list tickets. One person we spoke with over the barrier had been queueing since six am. There was a slight feeling of annoyance coming in one direction. Water off a ducks back tbh. They will have secured good seats near the front of the stage for their efforts.

…

Bit of a surreal life really. Last night it was the Paul McCartney gig. Breakfast this morning with THG and our Tom at Lumi in Camden. Chose it because of its google ratings. Yanow what? It really lived up to expectations. If I get a chance I’ll add to the reviews.

Anyway, today I’m meeting a woman from Australia in a trendy caff in Shoreditch to talk about Carmarthenshire in the eighteenth century. In fact about a baptist church called Hebron. Doesn’t come more niche than this. I am quite excited about it. No idea what she looks like. And don’t worry THG knows what I’m doing.

Then it’s the CCUK council meeting followed no doubt by a couple of refreshing beverages before rolling the dice on the train network for the journey home. Tomorrow it is cricket at Trent Bridge but tomorrow is another day…

So yesterday I discovered that Gemini can decipher 18th century scripts. I had tried this before some time ago and failed but perhaps that was chatgpt or just an earlier, less mature version of AI. The upshot of it is I can now read diary entries and wills that were otherwise just gibberish. You do have to sanity check the work and corrections do need to be made but AI breaks the back of it. The confluence of ultra modern technology with the archaic! Results have already been great.

Today is a new day, a new dawn and I have a gym induction plus a pilates class. The last month or more has been a bit of a whirlwind and such activities have been neglected. It is still raining mind you but this, in our case, has been good for the garden. THG has not yet been out on her regular tour of inspection due to the weather. She has, however, brought a pot of tea into the conservatory. Fair play.

Busy enough week ahead. Off to see Paul McCartney at the Camden Roundhouse on Wednesday. Breakfast with some of the kids on Thursday followed by lunch with someone who has similar research interests as me and has flown over from Oz especially to go the the library in Aberystwyth. Then it’s a board meeting before catching the last direct train home.

Gonna delay breakfast this morning. Not hugely hungry though we didn’t eat any later than normal last night. The ingreds are all there for a full Lincolnshire. With fried bread. Tis the sabbath after all. THG is out surveying her empire. I noticed a rose has appeared immediately in front of the potting shed cctv. In two minds whether to tie it back. It’ll get dead headed soon enough anyway so I might not bother.

Opened an eye to look at the clock by the bed. 4am. Twirly man, twirly. Opened it again and it was six ey em. Gosh. All in the bat of an eyelid. That last stretch of sleep is a really good one. I am now downstairs in the conservatoire listening to the rain on the roof. Today looks as if it will be a wet one. Not much gardening then. For THG.

We originally had half a plan to go to Heckington to see the windmill and a steam engine exhibit but abandoned it in favour of getting stuff done in the garden. I guess Heckington could be back on though the steam engines will be outside so I dunno. If we go I’ll post some pics so you know.

The hedgehog just walked past the door. Cool. We like the hedgehog as it eats pesky slugs and snails. It is very rare to see it in daylight though. Maybs it is on the way home after the night shift. Probably got a family to feed so putting in some overtime. 

Not seen the fox for a while though bear in mind we’ve been away. I need to reposition the Raised Beds cam as a dahlia has emerged in front of it, as dahlias do. I’m even thinking that experiment has run its course. Having been away for over two weeks it was too much work to trawl through that amount of camera footage to look. I certainly haven’t seen it during the day since I’ve been back.

The rain comes in waves with a steady drumming but the occasional whoosh. It isn’t even a drumming really. It isn’t as if you can hear gaps between the bears. Too many raindrops wanting to make themselves heard. Pretty relaxing just sat here. It’s quite breezy out. A light grey sky of varying tones.

…

THG has gone off to the Hartsholme Park Run. Hard core. The rain isn’t as bad as the time she ran the Lincoln 10k. On that occasion it would run in through her collar and out through the bottom of her shorts.

…

Had a good day. Made quite a bit of progress in respect to the religious aspects of Llanllwni including corrections to the list of vicars they have up on the wall of the parish church in Llanllwni

THG is out on her morning inspection round of the jardin. Top gardeners are constantly monitoring their empire for jobs that need doing. Tomato spurs that need pinching out, stakes that need shoving back in properly, the occasional weed that needs snuffing out before it gets established. You know the form. Comes with years of experience. Wisdom and knowledge.

Meanwhile I’ve knocked up a couple of Fosters extra spicy farmhouse sausages with a few shrooms and a bit of toast and am now sitting in my conservatory, doors open, cos I can. The wheelbarrow on the patio, next to the raised beds, has four bags of compost positioned in readiness to fill the one remaining empty bed. The patio itself is in desperate need of a good weeding although some of the plants that have established themselves in the cracks between the flagstones have, in my mind, lovely russet coloured leaves. I know nooothing.

Absolutely nowt in the calendar today. I do have to cook up a lamb tikka massala and will get the lamb marinading shortly. Bit of yo gurt and tikka paste and into the fridge.

June Cooper’s funeral yesterday. Coops’ mum. With Ajax n Sue and Jezzer. We decided not to head to the wake as it was very much a family affair although we were invited. Instead Jezzer gave me a lift home but the four of us did stop off at the Golden Eagle for one en route. This was at about three thirty. At Seven pm we went back to Ajax’s for a chinese takeaway, the cars long since abandoned. THG came to join us and then gave Jezzer a lift home. Not planned but that’s the way it goze.

Today THG is off to Liverpool to visit her sis but will be back by around seven. Thursday is golf day but this afternoon’s weather forecast is such that I think we have already decided to go to the Strugglers instead and talk about golf. We have all just done a deal with Pottergate Golf Club that gives us 2 rounds a month so we will need to figure out the rota for that. There are seven of us involved.

In the meantime I have a leisurely day ahead. Shifting a bit of compost from the boot of the car to round the back. Nothing too strenuous. Also got train tickets to book. We are off to see Macca at the Camden Roundhouse next Wednesday. V exciting. It’s the launch of his new album. The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Unbelievably lucky to get tix. Also booked in to the Holiday Inn at Camden Lock which we like staying at because of its location but haven’t done so for years because of my addiction to Hilton points. That and because it isn’t particularly near to anywhere other than Camden Lock.

Yesterday I found the name of my 24 great grandfather. Well I found the name of 44 freemen living in the parish in 1291. I am quite likely to be related to one of more of them. Only problem is I have no idea which of them it is. Not losing any sleep over this but it was quite nice to find the names. I’ll be publishing them in due course.

I also found the baptism records of my 3g grandparents Benjamin and Mary Davies. They were in a batch of six people baptised the same day on 25 Sept 1808 at Ffynnonhenry baptist church – one of the oldest in the country.

Loads more stuff to look at from my visit to the National Library of Wales including the diary entries of Hywel Harris when he stayed at our farm. It’ll all have to wait. Got a fair bit of admin to do after 2 ½ weeks away.