Author: Smokehouse

Wow, the entry “technic cleansing” certainly got a response. I have had hate mail from dedicated PS3 owners and congratulations from X Box owners saying told you so! Well Commander Riker and me have come up with a project for the summer. CR reckons it is entirely possible to resurrect the PS3. I have pulled what is left of it out of the pond and placed it into the grid where it is currently oozing green slime. When it has drained we are going to take it to bits, clean up the insides with contact cleaner and install a new hard drive. I am going to create a wooden case to house the bits and we are going to call it a PS3 Xtreme. I have my doubts about this but CR reckons it will work.

Technical difficulties still abound and my ISP has now gone off. Calls to those very nice and helpful technical staff at some call centre on the Indian sub continent have been as much use as an ash tray on a motorbike. My access to the net and posts will therefore be sporadic and limited at best until Catsili get their finger out. You may ask why not change providers? Well most providers want to lock you into a 12 month contract and I hope to be away from here in 9 months, yes it is that close. In the meantime their may new ornaments in the pond.

It has not been a good week technologically speaking. Some time ago my Cambridge Audio amp gave up the ghost and decided to cut out at irregular but frequent intervals. My Play Station has been nothing but trouble since I bought the damn thing and I have regretted wasting money on such a useless piece of junk from almost the day it arrived in my house. The up-scaling DVD player I purchased has been showing signs of overheating and consequent picture and sound loss. The large format Digital TV has also found to be wanting when it sometimes decides to show random colours and vertical stripy lines instead of the crisp clear picture it was purchased to provide.

A few days ago and my current pride and joy, Rhonda The Honda, was knocked over buy a group of people watching my friend The Beast trying to extinguish flames coming out the back of his van. That is another story for a future entry. I went to see TB to get my bike back from his house last evening and pushed the ignition button on RTH and waited as precisely nothing happened. It turns out that after righting the bike some tyre kickers and lever pullers had switched on the heated grip switch and my battery had run dry. The bike is new to me at least and trying to figure out how to find the battery and how to get it out of the housing was a major feat in itself. However it was accomplished after much teeth grinding and hair pulling. I took it home to charge up.

Feeling less than pleased that RTH was sat miles away and I was unable to take her out for a spin, I decided to relax by watching the last two episodes of Doctor Who that Roger Moor had kindly placed onto a DV disk for me. About 30 minutes into a gripping episode the up scaling DVD decided it had overheated and would now only show a few frames of picture and the occasional sound bite when it felt like it. Feeling non-plussed about this I turned on the play station and decided to watch the rest of the disk from that. It has to be said the picture was superb but there was no sound. I swapped cables, reset the Sony, consulted the manuals and rang friends for help but all to no avail. The Play Station had decided that it was only fit for deaf people and as I still have hearing left it was going to show me exactly who was boss. Several hours later and I had just about enough of this piece of shit laughing at me. As I said earlier I have regretted buying this item and I was determined if it was not going to work for me then it would not work for any one.

It has to be said that the Play Station does not bounce well nor is it waterproof. I expect the frogs in my pond are extremely happy with their new pond ornament. It was in its own little way my episode of “Gourmet Night” from “Fawlty Towers” in which Basil Fawlty decides to give his car a “Damn good thrashing” I have consequently banned all Sony products from my house and I have resolved never to purchase one of their products ever again. It’s a one-man crusade and it won’t make any difference to the Japanese giant but it makes me feel good and I know I wont have to suffer one of their over bloated and so complicated pieces of hardware ever again.

There are advantages of getting rid of stuff that does not work, it is extremely good for the soul and it is one less item I have to worry about when I go away. I wont have to store it or transport it anywhere. Unless the up-scaling DVD and the TV decide to buck their ideas up a similar fate awaits them. It is called Technic Cleansing.

After the excitement of getting the bike, it seemed the week would not get any better but it did. Bean Counter and me headed off to London for a two night concert in Hyde Park.  We left on the Friday to ensure being there nice and early for the Saturday show. It starts sure enough with an innocuous train ride from Lime Street Station to Euston on one of the all singing and dancing Virgin Pendolino Trains. They are whisper quiet, very clean and super fast with lots of electronic gizmos and flashing seat numbers. Even the doors are electronic push button, and that includes the toilet doors. I make mention of this because when we were not far from Euston, BC and me decided to haul our luggage from the racks and stand in the corridor near the exit doors. I decided it would be a good idea to use the toilet before I got off and duly pressed one of the buttons on the door. Not much happened so I pressed it again.

The door slowly opened to reveal a woman in some obvious distress and frantically trying to cover her modesty. She started shouting for me to close the door but I could not. I grabbed hold of it and tried to pull it back but it was stuck in the open mode. I was desperately trying to apologise for this intrusion when other people started to look to see what the commotion was about. Feeling like some sort of pervert all I could was turn my back and attempt to cover the doorway so no one else could see in and wait for the electronic door to close again. Fortunately everyone could see the funny side after a few minutes but when she came out I felt too embarrassed to go in and use it myself. You would think the new toilets would have had some system that said engaged or in use but they do not. My advice to any one attempting to use this contraption is to knock on the door and ask if any one is inside.

After a hot sticky ride on the tube we arrived at our destination flustered and glad to be out of the airless London underground at rush hour. After changing the pair of us went outside to take a stroll around Park Lane and Mayfair. As we neared the Dorchester hotel we could see a lot of armed police and heavily built security types with dark glasses and on the steps was Nelson Mandela. I shouted and cheered and waved along with a couple of hundred others who had got wind he was there. The great man waved back to everyone and I was so busy cheering and clapping I didn’t take a photograph. But I have the knowledge that I got closer to the man than any one in the audience of the event held for his 90^th birthday party in Hyde Park that evening.

For those of you unfamiliar with concert etiquette, you are not allowed to take in food or alcohol. Your bags are searched on the way in and you are victim to the scandalously high prices charged by the vendors inside. It is difficult to get around this but BC and me are now consummate concert attendees and as usual we had our plans. We purchased two bottles of water emptied the water out and filled them with 1 part gin and 2 parts tonic water. These look fairly innocent and many a hard pressed security guard has given nothing more than precursory glance at the label on the bottle and waved us through. Our plans this day not come to fruition. I had bought the wrong bottles of water, they were still water bottles. So what I hear you ask? Well the difference is this; the screw tops on flat drinks are only one thread deep as no pressure builds up in the bottle to burst the top. I discovered this while sitting with my feet in the Dianna memorial fountain and opening one of my bottles. The top flew off with such a loud bang that every one in earshot turned and looked at me as if I was terrorist letting off a bomb. Again I apologised profusely to all that were following my every move and took several hefty swigs of my “water” to show no harm was intended or done and was pissed within ten minutes. There was nothing for it but to keep up the charade until the bottle was empty. Half a litre of gin disposed of in almost 15 minutes. The second bottle was dispatched just as fast and we staggered to the arena entrance barely able to stand.

After entering the arena it was time to hit the Pimms tent and 20 quid later one jug of watery Pimms appeared on our table. Fortunately I had with me my concealed hip flask and was able to top it up to a reasonable strength within minutes. The prices charged at the event were astronomical and a portion of stickleback and chips was ten quid (it should have been fish and chips but the “fish” was that small it could only have been a stickleback). A 500ml bottle of 4% Gaymers cider was four pound. I know these people have to make a living and the cost of these events are enormous but when you have no choice but to eat and drink from the vendors who all set their prices at the same level there is no competition at all. Clapton was brilliant but we left the event some 80 pounds lighter than when we went in. I also need to make mention of the fact that it is now called Hard Rock calling instead of London calling due to the event being sponsored by the Hard Rock chain. This has had the effect of stopping many of the smaller independent stalls from being allowed into the event. There were no clothes stalls or “Head” stalls and much of the very essence of a concert has now been lost to hard nosed commercialism and it is very much the worse for it.

I did not make the same mistake on Sunday and after a cream tea on the terrace of the hotel I purchased sparkling water with much stronger bottles. We did not open them until we were in the arena and they lasted almost until the encore by the Police. We still hit the Pimms tent and we did have a great time but whether we would do it again is very much in question. The sheer cost is astronomical. Tickets for the two days came to around 200 pounds plus the hotel and the transport there and back. All in all the weekend probably cost around 1000 pounds including spending money but we did get to see Nelson Mandela.

Yes it’s true I have a new woman in my life. Slick, attractive, young, agile, very slim and goes like a steam engine all day long. Let me explain, some time ago Ted Magnum offered to help me find a new motorcycle. He has done a great job because he found me a Honda Transalp in excellent condition for an absolute song. Well last Thursday evening I finally picked it up and TM, Me and Bean Counters cousin went along to Manchester in a huge white van. TM took said bike out for a test ride and we struggled to get the bike into this huge van. A decent ramp would have helped but all we could find was a couple of planks. The guy selling the bike looked at them and offered to give us a large aluminium scaffolding plate which did the job very well. Arriving home she was offloaded and now takes pride of place in my garden covered and secured with a squillion quid’s worth of chain and locks!

I get to take her out for my first serious ride in oh so many years, this coming Wednesday.  Countless discussions with well meaning people have abounded over what to wear with most in favour of riding leathers. Now these are great if you are quite young but otherwise you end up looking like some twat out the Village people. I have decided that I need a World war two Flying jacket with the sheepskin collar and a white silk scarf accompanied by an open face helmet and some goggles. Nothing like getting flies in your teeth, anyway I am far too old to be wearing trendy stuff with logos emblazoned on the back of my jacket.

BC managed to get onto the back of the bike with out the aid of a step ladder and is now contemplating buying some new shiny red leather gear and some thigh high riding boots with 6” heels. As one of my mates said Bike out on Wednesday, Hospital on Thursday and bike back on EBay Friday. I do hope they are wrong! So, the name of the bike? Well it is a Honda, so there was no option really, she is called Rhonda.

I have been staggered by the amount of well wishers that have either rang, emailed or called in person to wish me well and to let me know they were thinking of me and mum during the weekend. Special thanks must go the Bean Counter for putting up with me as I got rather trollied on Sunday. Onto the news then, Ted Magnum has managed to pull it off and has found me a rather splendid machine on Fleabay. It’s a Honda Transalp with less than 8k miles on it and has a load of goodies such as a lowered gel seat and a top box and heated grips. I pick it up this Thursday coming. I can hardly wait to jump on board and cruise the highways and byways of the UK. In my dreams more like, I will be sticking to quiet roads in good weather and staying within the speed limit.

I have spent much time looking at alternative power supplies such as wind and solar and I really believed I had come up with the solution to any power demands I might have in the future. My power bank would have consisted of 3 small wind turbines, 6 largish solar panels 8 big deep cycle batteries with a whole array of cables and inverters and sine wave thingies and a small petrol generator for emergencies. Feeling rather proud of my proposed inventory I contacted some people at www.selfsufficientish.com and told them of my plans and what I intended to run off it. Some of the awfully nice and very helpful people got back to me and it would appear a fridge and a freezer would have drained my complete power source within a couple of hours and for back up I needed a decent Lister diesel generator. Now second hand these boys cost around 2k sterling. Fridge and freezer need to be run from bottled gas as the cost to run these on natural resources would be inordinately prohibitive. I have now gone back to the drawing board. As I said in one my previous posts the challenge to go completely green is one big lie to the ordinary man on ordinary money. You need to spend more on power sources than you would spend in 20 years on power bills from the grid.

The same people did come up with alternative solutions such as run the lighting system on 12 volts. This may not seem bright but have you ever looked into a car headlight on full beam? Most of the power to run a washing machine comes from heating up the water but if run on a cold wash and fill said machine with water from a solar heater this will not run your batteries down. Electric kettles and toasters are a big no no and hot water can be produced by placing an ordinary kettle on a wood stove and toast can be made over an open fire. Not much good for Welsh rarebit but I am sure there is a method out there somewhere. Showers will come from solar heaters as will hot water for washing and cleaning. At the end of the day I should be running 6 lights, a radio cum stereo, a TV, washing machine and a computer. Provided they are not all on at the same time the batteries should not run down and if they do the Lister should have them charged within a short period.

My initial budget of 5k has changed somewhat and I am now looking at nearer 7 but the way power bills are racking up, if that is all I have to pay over the next 20 years it will be a bargain. Toilets are next on the hit list!

The height of summer? Well that is what the calendar would have us believe and yesterday was the summer solstice, normally this would have been celebrated with the event known as Ghastanbury. It has been a long tradition that on the summer solstice or the Saturday nearest to it I held a large garden party and barbecue in honour of my mother’s birthday. This was held at Château Ghastanbury and was held at roughly the same time as Glastonbury.

I decided that last year would be the last one as mother had passed away and in the run up to the solstice this year I wondered if I had done the right thing in cancelling. I need not have worried; the weather has been truly awful with temperatures plummeting and the skies darkening. Indeed I could not have had a clearer omen than the bad weather and last night I turned on the central heating it was so damn cold and the lights went on at around 9pm.

Today (June 22^nd 2008) would have been mothers 92^nd birthday and as she is not here I am currently having a drink and toasting her spirit where ever it may be, I hope she is happy and if there is the God that she always believed in then I hope he is taking good care of here. Here’s to you mum, hic…..  Friends are coming around later this evening and we are going to have a meal and a few drinks, well it would be rude not to and I am sure Elsie would of approved.

Onto the last few days then; Monday gone my oldest friend, I shall call him Captain Pugwash, came to see me and after a good few drinks and chewing the fat reminiscing over old times I poured him into a taxi. He is not sure about my leaving next year and we had a heated debate about it. All in good humour but we certainly got our points across to each other. Tuesday and I paid a visit to another long standing friend of mine, Florence Nightingale because she used to be a nurse until an accident with a parachute jump ended her career. I have no idea where the time goes to but I realised on Tuesday that there are many friends I do not see or communicate with as much as I want to. There is always something that distracts me. FN and I came to realise that we had not seen each other for almost 15 months although we had sent the odd email to one and other.

Time is flying by and in another 9 months I will not be here or at least I hope I won’t be. Actually trying to see everyone before I go is going to be a problem and I can only hope friends will keep reading the blog and emailing me to stay in touch. Well its almost dinner time and there is a bottle with my name on it. I am going to have a drink for my mum. Cheers Elsie.

Relaxing after what must have been one of the most entertaining football matches I have watched in a few years. Yes it was Switzerland against Turkey in a downpour. I thought they were all going to come out wearing flippers instead of studs at half time. Notably Switzerland lost and so became the first team to be eliminated from the Euro 2008.

Onto the rest of events then, it must be almost 3 weeks since I last posted and such a lot has gone on. The Greek arrived two weeks ago and came to mine for a meal where I introduced him to the delights of Pimms No 1 and Sangria. He left wobbling after a few hours and extended an invitation to go to Athens to stay with him for as long as I like. It is an invitation I may well take up some time next year.  I spent a total of 3 hours on the phone to Oz speaking to the Tiler and his wife. I recieved a good texts from the Printer in letting me know he was safe and sound and had just truned 47. (Where does the time go, he was 27 when I first met him) A few small barbecues have taken place in between the momentary lapses of rain and my brother arrived to stay with me 10 days ago. Friends arrived to see him and I have done my utmost to make sure each day he was here, that we did something different.

I say different but this actually means getting completely trollied in different places and with different people. So the first night we stayed in and had friends around, the second we travelled throughout his old haunts to show him the changes and had friends around for a meal. The third day we went on a pub crawl and were rescued and brought home by Beancounter. The fourth day we had more friends around for another meal and Friday we went shopping. Friday night we went to the Beasts house for an amazing barbecue and the almost obligatory end of evening bonfire. By Saturday my flesh if not spirits were beginning to flag and we did not do anything much except watch the start of Euro 2008. Sunday we went to the Kite festival (click for pics)and for a good long walk on the prom for some fresh air. More football on Sunday night and more beers through till last night. Sadly he had to go home this morning but I look forward to seeing him again in the not too distant future.

One thing I will not miss is his attempt to water my garden. After spending ages pruning, cutting, planting and mowing I was starting to feel proud of the way it looked. One day Bro decided to water the plants for me and used the wrong watering can. I have two one for weed killer and one for water. Bro decided to use the wrong can and most of my bedding plants have wilted and turned a deathly shade of brown. Ah well at least the pond is teeming with life this year. Regular readers will know it suffered a deadly chemical attack around about this time last year but this year it is full of tadpoles all ready to turn into nature’s deadliest pest control, slug and fly eating frogs.

The gutters are almost finished after a Herculean attempt by TB and I can now cross yet another job from the many that have to be completed before Château Ghastanbury can be sold. I have also finalised the decision within the last couple of days that the event know as Ghastanbury will not be going ahead this year. I have spent weeks and months agonising over it but have eventually decided that last year would be the last ever. Time is marching on and if all goes to plan I should be leaving the UK within nine months. Ted Magnum is assisting me to find a suitable bike for the adventure and I still have hopes of burning rubber with the wind in my face. A bit like Lucy Jordan really.

Work on the guttering has finally been completed and yet another job can be crossed of the list of many items to be completed before I call the estate agents in to value the place. Thanks go to Al The Beast and Bean Counters youngest for their sterling and unstinting efforts to finish the job off in spite of bad weather and extremely windy conditions for being at the top of a ladder with nothing to hang onto. The garden was looking great until the bad weather that plagued TB and BC’s youngest stopped me from doing any more to it and now lethargy has crept in. As soon as the first rays of sunshine hit the grass I will be out there with the lawnmower and continuing my battle with weeds and dandelions.

I am still attempting to find a motorcycle for my sojourn and with the way oil prices are heading it could become my major means of getting from A to B. The price of oil shows no sign of coming down nor does the hated tax that goes along with it. Gordon Brown says he is listening to what people say and he feels their pain but he is not actually doing anything about it apart from pushing up the price of road tax for older vehicles. This seems to have caused a split between the green lobby who want even higher taxes and to stop people from going anywhere unless they can walk or cycle and the rest of the UK who are suffering the highest household bills for decades. It is no use saying in real terms prices are actually lower than what they used to be years ago, it’s what is in your pocket that counts and most of mine is going on petrol, household bills and food.

With this in mind Roger Moor, me and TB started looking at efficient ways of burning charcoal and wood. We looked at Rocket stoves, Winiarski Stoves, Justa ovens and rocket bread ovens. In order to cut down on the annual and seasonal consumption of charcoal briquettes for outdoor cooking we are going to make a bread oven from oil drums and bits of steel pipe and we are also looking at gasification of wood to cook on while outdoors. This is going to be the project for this summer although Ted Magnum has said he wants to crucify a pig (a dead one don’t panic) over hot coals and he wants me to produce a kebab of a whole lamb and several chickens on the same spit. Details and photos will eventually appear in the Barbie section weather and the good ole British Summer pending. (Note to the Tiler and the Printer, it’s the end of May, its pissing down and its only 15 centigrade so don’t be crying into your Four X and moaning about having to put the car heater on cos it’s Autumn down under and only 25C)

Another event due to take place at sometime this year was the garden party I am planning, again weather pending. This was to have been a recreation of a 1920’s tea party with cucumber sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and strawberry conserve, Earl Gray tea in china cups and lashings of Ginger beer with Pimms No1 to follow. Dedicated carnivores will be directed to the grill. In keeping with the theme of the event I set about looking for a pair of white linen Oxford bags and a Panama hat. Sadly it seems no one is making Oxford bags any more and Panama hats range from the extortionate to cheap copies which are far from the genuine article. I may even have to get some "baggies" made. I wonder if Flemings on Walton road Liverpool is still in business? They used to make tailor made and customised jeans. You had a choice of gold or white stitching and you could specify leg width, they would knock them up in 48 hours. Made from sail cloth they were the toughest jeans you could buy. I wish I had not thrown mine out but I guess they would not have fitted my ever expanding girth anymore. A raid on the charity chops is in the offing.

Sunday 18^th May, the sun was shining and I invited a few friends around for dinner in the garden. The usual suspects were in attendance, Bean Counter, her two sons, Roger Moor and his son and my good friends the Taxman, his wife and their youngest. Also making a surprise visit was Ted Magnum back from South America. As we dined and the beer flowed Ted told us a little about his travels. How petrol in Venezuela was only 3p (yes 3p that is not a typographical error) a litre and how in Ushia Bourbon was so cheap they used it to start Barbecues instead of fire lighting fluid.

After dinner I started the almost compulsory firebox and we sat round and chatted and caught up on gossip and events by the light of the flickering flames. During the evening we tried counting how many tadpoles are in my pond, (it seemed like a good idea at the time and yes they are back again and in numbers) but gave up due to the fact they will not stay still for long enough. As the guest’s left and BC retired, I sat in the garden and thought heavily about the friends who were not there. The Tiler is deeply missed and I have not spoken to him in ages. I have not had time to email the Printer and I thought about many other friends whose company I once took for granted and it was an almost given that I would see them at least once a week.

Ted’s tales reminded me of just how much I want to leave here and also left me feeling a little apprehensive. It’s a big world out there and I am no more than a miniscule speck on its surface. I know I am going to miss all my friends and my nearest and dearest. I know I will be leaving behind everything that I have become used to over the years including a home and a job and I have no idea what awaits me on the day the money from the sale of the house enters my bank account. All of this is a long way off yet but I can’t help thinking about it.

I have never made a will. The very thought of doing so was to accept my mortality and yet on Sunday night I thought about what would happen if something untoward should happen to me while I am away. Who would have to clear up the logistical mess caused by my inability to accept the inevitable? Some one would have to see to what was left of my estate and sort out my stuff. Who do I make executor, would they even want to do it should I name them? Who would I leave what stuff I had collected over the years to, who would want it? Taking off on a jolly seems like a great idea, a whole lot of fun but its actually a rather serious matter.