Persistent

Doing Manly things (ish)

Sadly I have not had the chance to do many manly things today, this is because I have spent most of the day trying to learn how to use a sewing machine.
Its an Alfa 22 sewing machine and if anyone in the world has an electronic manual for it please email it to me within the next 5 minutes....no matter how old this blog entry is, email it now.

It really cant be that hard can it, I mean women use them so they must be fairly simple.
In the end I had to get The Liz round to tell me how to thread it, but even she couldnt figure out why it kept tieing itself in knots.
I tried ehow before submitting to having to call in female help, it has a great how to called 'how to thread a sewing machine' the first line of which reads "all sewing machines are different please look at your manual"
So at the minute its sewing machine 1, human race nil.

The only other thing today was Rebecca, who bullied the Thompson children off their Xmas present so that she could have a go.
It was very sad to see there little tear filled faces as they cried to be allowed to play with their new toy, but my wife was having none of that.
After ten laps of the street she reluctantly let them have it back when they said they would go and get their dad.
Ok, I may have had a small go too.

A Boxing Day Story (With Pictures)

The fun never ends in Newbiggin by the Sea.
While other towns are still asleep in bed after a busy Christmas, the people of Newbiggin by the Sea flock to the sea front in order to watch the most foolish of their number throw themselves into the North Sea (Todays Temp 2 degrees Centigrade)in an event called the Boxing Day Dip

There is much dressing up, lots of good humour, enterprising sea front dwellers selling Hot Soup and Hot Chocolate and the lions club who do lots of good work running round with buckets of lollipops for the children.
The lifeboat is brought out 'just in case' and as the horn sounds at 11.30 the happy dippers rush headlong into the freezing sea. (Fearing a cancellation some enterprising Newbigginers head to the sea early to break the ice)

At 11.30 and 35 seconds they all run out again. Usually faster than they ran in.

Except for one person who very strangly went back in

After that there is much shivering and lots of applause.
The dippers melted into the crowd like they had never existed and everyone headed for home

THE END

Pondering

We have lived in Newbiggin by the sea for 10 months now.
Everyone knows that this year has certainly not gone according to plan, but we have to hope that next year will be better.
Its been a growing kind of year for Rebecca and me, she has started her business and I have had a bit of a shock regarding mine.
But we have done it all amongst good friends with lots of support. It may have been a pig of a year, but when I think about what has been learned by all of us, I suppose I couldnt really wish to change it

So, lets see what happens before  next Christmas. Until then Merry Christmas to everyone who reads my blog. Those that are close to us, those that are reading from across the country and across the world. Blogging certainly makes the world smaller, also merry Xmas to that Canadian Lurker Craig and his family. You should leave more comments mate, make it a new year resolution ok.
I think I'm having some blogging time off for a few days.

The size of a COW

While I was away I managed to get enough hours free to pop into the Odeon at the Trafford Centre to watch the first Narnia film.
I think there are enough reviews about the film for me to not need to write one, but I was amused by the standard of service and lack of common sense of the staff.
Heres my conversation at the popcorn counter:

Me: Could I have a large sweet popcorn and a medium coke please.
Other: Would you like a large coke, it's cheaper
Me: No thank you, a medium coke is all I need
Other: Are you sure sir, it's cheaper if you have a large as its part of a bundle
Me: (Irritated) OK, charge me for a large coke bundle, but just give me a medium, will that be ok
Other (Confused & flustered) Errrr ok
Waits, Popcorn arrives, Coke arrives and it's HUGE
Me: (pointing at the bucket of fizzy stuff on the table) Is THAT a medium coke?
Other: Yes Sir
I start to pick things up
Woman behind me: Could I have a popcorn and a small diet coke please
Other: Would you like a large diet coke it's cheaper?
Woman: Look I dont care about the money, just charge me, thefilms about to start.

The End

Not the highest point

If you travel between Leeds and Manchester there is a point along the way where a sign proudly proclaims "The highest motorway in the UK"
I can understand why something unique has it's own sign, but I cant understand why thats all there is.
Surely if that is the highest point of a motorway in England there could at least be a lay by so that you can get out and take pictures.
I know from my local area that people get out of their cars to stand beside the sign that says "Scotland" doing big smiles for pictures, though I have never seen anyone cross the road to do the same for the one that reads "England"

What is the point of just placing a sign, or is it that they just want to let everyone know that it's all downhill from this point.
Possibly the highest motorway is just a sideways perspective on life in general.

A few hundred miles away on the M6 is another high point.
The services at Tebay dont put out a sign saying "the remotest services in the uk", or "Stay here for snowfall and be here all winter" but they still get people pulling in just to take pictures.
I went a few miles further up to the village of Shap where I was told that there was an old fashioned red Post Office phone box in a field.
It's more through a gate than in a field, I was hoping that it was working, but it had been vandalised. I found that quite amusing.
Shap is so high that during any invasion an army that was given the suggestion "lets go to Shap and do a bit of pillaging" would probably mumble to themselves until the words 'bugger that' became more or less legible.
I may in fact take the opinion that democracy was not invented by the Greeks but by tribes of Anglo warriors up to thier Meat & Veg in thick snow with some idiot of a leader looking up the mountain toward Shap and wondering if it might be worth a codgers.
Well, it makes more sense than a country with more slaves than citizens coming up with the concept of one man one vote, and probably involves the losing party ending up floating (or sinking)in a local bog. Hey thats communism invented in the same two minutes

Another bit of Out and About

 This weekend involved getting home on Friday Night about 6pm, having drinks at the Thompsons at 7.30, but only after devouring a dish of home made mince and dumplings made specially for me.

The Friday night G&T’s went down a treat and I once again re-affirmed that as long as the drink holds out at number 13, I will always be there.
Saturday involved finishing a set of armour for Goven, it was quite a difficult set as it was the first full body set that I had made using the buffallo hide.

It convinced me that it may be time to invest in a table punch as my hands are getting a bit sore now.
The armour got finished just in time to host a visit from my parents, who got away just in time for me to catch up on my ebay sales before visiting my old business partners house for dinner.

It has been a while since we have seen Paul and Jean, and sometimes you worry that things may be hard, but it was a lovely night and it was really great to see them again as I have not had a chance to talk to Paul for a while.There was just time to sleep before setting off for Dudley and some work at the Merry Hill shopping centre for some more Screen FX things. This time it was just small fixes, but as usual they are always more complex and I think one more visit will be needed.

I am staying at a hotel called The Trafford Hall hotel.

On first inspection it seemed to be a little worn, but as I am spending more time here I am beginning to notice that while the hotel may have been in use for quite a while, it may have frayed a bit, but the attention to detail that they have is nice.
My bed might be old and have coke spoiled down the side, but the sheets are pristine white and ironed until they are sharp.
The bedding smells fresh, not a cheap detergent fresh but a wind blown fresh, and the staff are all helpful, friendly and in some ways actually adapting their customer service around this squeeky old hotel.After initial reservations I have decided that I like this place, and that I would probably use it again.

 I am at the Trafford Centre tonight. There are not a lot of jobs on the list of ‘things for me to do’ so I will probably get away early. Mind, we are not allowed to start work until midnight, so who knows how late early will be.

Out and about again

At the beginning of the week I had the experience of staying in one of the unhappiest hotels in the UK.
It was called the Kingfisher and it is situated in Kingswinford just out of Dudley. It was fairly obvious from the moment that I arrived that the owners had no time for the guests but rather than communicate all of the things they were not allowed to do, they just left A4 prints stuck to everything.
For example, most small ‘in and out’ hotels will not be offended if you don’t eat with them, but the first thing you see at the Kingfisher is a Big note on the front door saying that take-aways of any description are not allowed past this point.
Oh dear, I thought, this will be fun.
The lady on the daytime front desk was very helpful, no really she was, even though she laboured trying to keep residents happy while at the same time being surrounded by things residents were not allowed to do.
There is a health club on site, it’s quite nice, it has a pool and a gym. Oooo I thought because I know that most hotels will let their residents use the facilities. But on the entrance to the door was the big A4 note. ‘Residents are not allowed to use the gym. The gym is for members only and there is a charge for it’s use. If you require use of the gym please see reception’ I looked at reception the lady tried to raise a smile and shook her head and I just shook my head and wandered down the corridor

The rooms were a bit smelly, but a smell of cheap cleaning products built up over the last decade rather than anything else, I was in a bad position because the heating was turned off through the day and on at night. This was a shame for me as I was in the hotel through the day and working at night. Also the bar did not open until 7pm, so there was no one there through the day to talk too, except for Mrs Lady on Reception, but her frightened rabbit eyes were off-putting. You could almost sense her waiting for the owner to walk around the corner as she wasted valuable time talking to me.

The night porter took his job much more seriously, he allowed no idle banter,  and was almost completely without a sense of humour. No I take that back, I think he was completely without a sense of humour and when he was forced to talk to me, for instance when I deliberately asked him a question he would respond while looking through me and at the wall behind my back, and when finished he would pretend I wasn’t around blocking the light.
On my second night I managed to sneak into the cabaret room. The place was doing Xmas parties and it was full of happy people almost filled to overflowing with alcohol and humor. Their presence warmed the place up and there was much joy….until the band of the evening came on.
The compare announced that house rules were, the band would play two sets. For the first set there was no dancing allowed as some people wanted to see the show, for the second set you were allowed to dance.
The band were great a group of guys doing some very good Tamla Motown and every one of them a dancy tune.
People were standing behind their chairs dancing, they were swaying at the tables, they were desperate to dance and dare I say it have fun at their Xmas party.
Two brave girls decided to get up and dance and I could not believe it, but the owner sent the bouncer over to tell them to get off the floor. It was so sad, I found it hard to believe and even though I felt sorry for the party people I felt more sorry for the band, you could almost feel them wishing that the audience would be let loose.

The next hotel couldn’t be more different, it’s called ‘The Inn on the Green’ in the little village of Ockley in Surrey.
Ockley is a lovely little village, the kind of place you imagine being populated by retired Spitfire pilots. It has retained it’s olde English charm, it has it’s shop, two pubs and a Cricket Club.

The Inn on the Green is very nice. The owners Paul and Gwyneth are very friendly and helpful and unlike the Kingfisher they actually put themselves out to help the residents be comfortable.

Paul is even letting me tap into his wireless broadband so that I can upload my blog.
The bar has a lovely old charm, with low wooden beams and a warm open fire.
The locals are chatty and welcoming which is rare in the London area and the rooms are nice and clean, comfortable, tidy, not smelly and I have control over my own heating.
As I am here through the day I’m going to have a walk around the village later and take some photo’s. I may upload them for you all to see.

So now, here are the sights of Ockley.

The town is protected by its own mercenary band called the wild geese.
One of them even came over and pecked at my foot, but after I took the time to explain the cultural role and the fate of the goose during this Xmas period he waddled off.

After that I was left to walk around in peace. I really liked the fact that most of these houses are still heated by big log fires. One man was good enough to let me phtograph his wood shed. It's quite an old wood shed he explained, but it keeps the rain off when you have your chopper out. I nodded agreement, I may not have his experiance of these things, but I would imagine that it's quite important, especially at winter time.

Terms and Conditions

It seems that my writing talents are too much for poor old Andy Curtis who goes dizzy if I don’t put up a picture every 5 lines.
So this is a Blog entry just for Andy, and it’s a competition too.
All you have to do is guess this photograph taken from a strange angle of a household object.

Winner will receive the small Lindt chocolate that is in front of me right now.
(competition only open to females called albert winner must pay £10 fee before entry chocolate prize only available until I eat it after that you are on your own matey )

To have a laugh and to read the full terms and conditions of an american educational resource website for children please go here.
www.teemlink.co.uk/legal
Where you can read how they will charge you $250 for a phone call if they see that you have copied one of their images and are using it on your website.
You can also read gems such as

All other access, use, disclosure, reproduction, delayed use, reduction to human-perceivable form, printing, copying or saving of digital image files or other content, reformatting, file sharing, downloading, uploading, storing, posting, mirroring, archiving, recording, distributing, redistribution, repurposing, modification, rewriting, manipulation, creation of derivative works, translations, or products, licensing, sale, transfer, display, public performance, publicity, broadcast, televising, reporting, publication (in whole or part) or transmission whether by http, ftp, electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol, and whether by electronic means or otherwise, or use by other than individual scholars, or commercial use requires prior written permission of the rights owner(s) and payment of a fee, and severe penalties apply for theft and unauthorized publication, which is also a crime."
OR
"You agree that your use of this website is irrefutable acknowledgment by you that you have read, understood, and agreed to each and every term and provision of this User Agreement . . . ." (emphasis added).
You also have to agree that
"You stipulate, warrant and agree that you will not . . . challenge or dispute validity of our copyright."
And even the United Nations wont be able to save you
"The application of the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded."
The full Terms and conditions just to look at their website stretches to 21000 words and is here for you in a word document Download restricted_access.doc
and you have to agree to it AND make a paper copy of it before you use the site.
Sadly they spent so much on the T’s and C’s that there was no money left for good web development http://www.cprr.org/
If anyone finds any special gems in the Ts&Cs please post as a reply

More Earthworks Natural history ....

The Wonder of Water
H2o is the most simple of chemical compounds. It is a combination of two of the most common elements in the world and it does not behave like it should.
Water breaks a lot of rules that apply to every other combination, it’s one of the reasons that we don’t have a precise set of rules regarding elements and the bindings of chemicals, because right from the start water has shown us that there probably shouldn’t be any.

To start with Water is more dense as a liquid than it is as a solid. Almost every other substance shrinks in volume as it’s temperature drops, then as it contracts it grows more dense.
It makes sense, but not water. It behaves normally until it reaches 4 degrees centigrade and then something practically unbelievable happens. As it continues cooling it expands and gets lighter, then at zero degrees centigrade it has actually gained almost 10% volume and inexplicably has lost 4% of its mass. What’s even stranger is that without the benefits of star trek style matter transference, this mass reappears later if you raise the temperature again.
It’s a very strange behaviour, and one that accounts for there being any advanced life on earth at all.
You see, if water behaved like normal chemicals, ice would sink. Instead it floats and builds up a protective insulating surface above lakes, rivers and seas.
If it behaved normally it would sink to the bottom, and over time the next layer would sink and it would build up from there. Eventually every source of water on the planet would be a sheet of solid ice that defrosted at the surface in the summer. Most of the worlds water would be locked away forever.
If water’s behaviour at freezing point in bizarre, then it’s behaviour at boiling point in practically unbelievable.
Most substances boil at predicable temperatures. They all follow an orderly progression which actually grows in proportion to their molecular weight.
Based on this calculation that applies to all other substances, water should freeze at  -100 degrees centigrade and should boil just ten degrees higher at –90 degrees centigrade.
If water followed the usual chemical pattern blood would boil in our bodies and there would be no water at all on earth, just lots and lots of steam.
Happily, water is odd enough to prevent these things from happening. It may be colourless, odourless and tasteless but it is far from inert. It is one of only a handful of substances that can be used as both acid and base, so that in certain conditions it is uniquely capable of reacting chemically with itself. You can see this happening if you look at a pond on a winter morning as water takes on its three states of solid, liquid and gas.
Water is benign enough to support the tiniest of life forms, but corrosive enough to destroy the toughest metal. Water comes close to being the universal solvent. Given enough time it will dissolve almost anything. Water molecules have an extraordinary capacity for forcing their way between clusters of other particles. They are in fact so good at it that pure water is unknown. As rain falls it sucks particles out of the air, distilled water that is poured into a beaker contains a small but measurable number of glass particles. About half of all known chemical elements are dissolved in flowing fresh water.

The secret of waters strange behaviour lies in the structure of its molecule. The combination of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen is a powerful one. Difficult to break but also inherently unstable. The hydrogen links in such a way that a glass of water is in effect one gigantic molecule with all of its parts interconnected. That’s why if you push your finger into the glass it flows around you reforming itself.
Ice is even more reglar, forming the most perfectly bonded hydrogen structure known. Each molecule in it connects to four others and together they build up regular patterns like six pointed stars of snowflakes. These ice crystal lattices are so precise that they persist even in the liquid state. Melted ice may look clear but it actually contains crystals of ice that dissolve millions of times a second. It is almost like the water remembers its icy state and keeps a memory of it ready to turn itself back at any time.

Substances that break rules like this are usually very rare and very hard to find, but water is everywhere there are 8 million cubic kilometres of it rising up to the earths surface, there are 1200 million cubic kilometres of it in the seas, and there is ten times that amount floating around in the atmosphere.
We are 65% water and have to replace it at a rate of 2 litres per day. The reason for this is that water absorbs heat. It does it reluctantly, and anyone who has lifted a hot pan while the water inside in still cool can testify to this.
An iron pan absorbs and loses heat ten times faster than water will.
With most things there are more rules that apply for things like iron, copper, granite or anything else the amount of heat needed to increase the heat by one degree will be consistent and form a pattern. Not with water. Between 35 and 40 degrees centigrade water is relaxed and easily warmed. How strange that this narrow field in the temperature gauge of water is in fact within the body heat range of nearly every animal on the planet. It’s not only convenient it is vital.

In 1920 Prince Adolph von Schaumberg-lippe of Austria had a problem, he had 21,000 hectares of untouched forest and was anxious to realise this asset. The forest however was 50 km from the nearest road or river and the cost of transport made cutting it uneconomical.
He tried to build a wooden chute to float the logs out but there was to little water to feed it. And there the problem stayed until it was discovered by a young forester called Viktor Schauberger. Schauberger had noticed that streams seemed more dense where they were coolest at the source of a mountain spring.
He summised that you may be able to use less water to transport the logs if it were cooler. What he proposed was that warmer water was let out of the shute at certain points and fresh colder water was introduced along the route. The engineers and experts ridiculed him but he persisted and at his own expense converted a non working chute and proved his point in a demonstration for the prince.

His secret wasn’t just cold water which we know to be slightly more dense than warm. It is also that when spun correctly water can create a vortex that lifts items. Using angles in his chutes he would start the cold water spinning and the logs would fly down hills, and across open flat grassland with no more power behind them than the running of a shallow stream in a wooden box. The last of his chutes was demolished in 1951 and all that remains is some archaic footage from the Austrian tourist board shot in the 1930’s it shows logs travelling in chutes at speeds calculated being up to 50km per hour at angles that contravene accepted theory.
Schaberger went on to publish theorys that are still considered to be highly controversial. He believed that naturally moving water was earths blood and that as it flowed it grew and changed. He also believed that if treated artificially it died, and while I am not sure of his thoughts I am aware of the bland deadness of waters in some large citys.
He believed that water from underground had not matured and should not be drank. It’s a wild theory, but it is known that towns and citys that are provided with underground water have higher rates of certain illness and certain types of cancer than reservoir fed towns.

Maybe it is time to look at water a little more, not in it’s dead laboratory state, but in the world where it lives and matures. Perhaps it is time for science to open it’s mind to things that don’t exist in purity and to try to find the mysteries that are in front of us. Why are we looking to the depths of space when we have not seen the bottom of the ocean. If we look there we may find more than we thought, not just in forms of life but in the very thing that surrounds us all our days.