Author: Smokehouse

Well the clocks went forward and the mercury started to rise, pancake day and lent came and went and so did Easter. So why the absence of posts, another sabbatical perhaps? The answer is no! After Pancake Tuesday, which in true fashion was different at Chateau Ghastanbury, it was held on a Wednesday instead and I decided to give up alcohol, my blog and shaving. Why so many items? Well I knew I would fail in at least one and after a visit to see my brother a mere 10 days after abstinence, the drink was the first item to fall at the wayside. I now sport a beard and as many people have said it suits me and to keep it as there have been who said it does not and to start shaving again.

The house has had yet another item crossed off the task list and the porch is now spotless and gleaming with only the utility room left before downstairs is completely finished. This leaves three rooms upstairs to be refurbished as and when the time, inclination and money are all collectively available. It is starting to feel as though I have completely rebuilt this house over the past few years, certainly enough time and money has gone into it.

My Barbie’s, smokers and grills were cleaned and refurbished over the Easter period. The smoker was recoated with heat proof paint and the legs and wheels have been coated in Hamerite in vibrant and funky black, gold and red. I also attended the first Barbie of the season at Ted Magnums. I have to say it felt strange being sober but I was doing my best to keep what was left of my abstinence. The host and his guests made up for my lack of alcoholic intake and a good time was had by all, hopefully it will be the first of many this year.

I also bought two new tents, one for the bike to replace the kite I lost inDevonand another to go in the back of the car. The large one was tested in the garden and all went well until my cat, Genghis, decided to use it as a scratching post. It now sports several swathes of McNet magic repair tape. Hopefully that will be enough to keep the worst of the weather out in what is still a brand new and unused tent.

Rhonda is now sporting new tyres and what a difference it makes. It is like riding a completely different bike. I went on the egg run and because Beancounter was unwell and not up for the ride I took Roger Moor along with me as a pillion. It was the first time he had even been on a motorcycle before and in spite of a nervous first few minutes he loved it. http://www.wirraleggrun.co.uk
Hopefully when BC is well and fit once more I have plans to ride Rhonda into the Dark forest at Galloway and take BC camping.

For those who have never heard of a dark sky park or dark forest, there are only four currently in the Northern hemisphere. One is in the UK at Galloway near Stanraer in Scotland. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/gallowayforestpark
The light pollution in these parks is so low that you can see the night sky and the stars as nature intended. Perhaps it is fitting that one should see stars as lent ends?

It has now been four years since I started this blog and although a lot has happened in that time it only seems like a few months ago since I started. My first post was on February 23^rd 2007. I have no idea where the time goes but it slips by so quickly. I had plans to be well away from here by now but those plans are on hold indefinitely, or at least until the world returns to some semblance of normality. Judging by the turmoil in the Middle East it may be some time!

The turmoil has affected most people on the planet if not all with the increase in oil prices as fears mount that the supply may be cut off. For my friends in foreign parts petrol (gasoline) is now close to six pounds a gallon and is set to reach £6.50 within a few months and possibly £7 by the end of the year. You can do your own conversions to your own currencies. This will not help to end the recession and the bankers are not to blame for this particular incident although much of the current burden is theirs to share alone, unless…… Yes speaking not so long ago to one who works in a bank he reckoned it was the fault of ordinary Joe Public. You see he reckons that if us lot had repaid the money we owed to the banks then there would be no problem. It is out fault for borrowing so much and not paying it back you see.

There, the answer is clear it is not the banks fault at all. We should have kept our jobs and made the repayments and all would have been well with the world. Bernie Madoff was merely misunderstood and ponzi schemes are fine. Don’t you just hate it when everyone else expects you to pick up the tab for them? A little bit like our own nationals who decide to go and work abroad because they hate the UK and then pay tax to foreign governments until the shit hits the fan and then they start screaming about how the British government should get them home. In other words you and me have to pay tax to mount the rescue of someone who has pissed off on us. Wouldn’t it be nice of the companies they worked for to pay and arrange to get them home instead of UK tax payers?

On the bright side the weather is warming up and the days are getting longer. The blowy season will be here in a few days and then the clocks go forward again. That means the start of the Barbie season, if we have a summer that is. The last three years have been awful with the last two the wettest I have ever known. My chief partner in crime Ted Magnum comes home next week from a tour of Africa and I already have plans for this year’s highlights and events. The smoker is getting refurbished along with a good ole scrub and re-paint in readiness for plenty of action. I have not used it since Halloween and it has since been neglected and like the greenhouse looks a little bit sorry for itself. When the clocks go forward and it is light in the evenings I will be able to start working in the garden again and clear up the storm damage. I may even be able to give Rhonda a service. Without a garage this task is difficult in winter when spanners stick to your fingers because they are so cold and the rubber on tyres is so stiff you can’t lever them off the rims.

When I was in my teens most of my bikes were fixed in the kitchen, the sink was handy for cleaning engines although Elsie never thought so, but Rhonda is too big to get through the back door.  What I want is a garage or a decent size workshop, I have never had one of those in my life and I am starting to really feel the need for one. By the time the recession is over and in my experience these things last about 7 years, I may be able to move to somewhere that has one in which case I will probably be too old to handle Rhonda.  Yes time is flying so fast that before I know it my pension and bus pass will be here.

Yes I have to admit it I am baby boomer, born in the 1950’s. This is not something I had any control over it just happened. So, imagine my horror when I opened several newspapers to read that us baby boomers are responsible for the state of the world today. Yes the entire economic downturn has been caused by my generation with no thought for the past or future generations. We have been labelled as the want it all now and to hell with the consequences brigade. To top it all the youngsters are accusing us of not dying young or fast enough.

It would appear that the first boomers are ready for retirement and the fear is that there are not enough people working to pay for our pensions. This is hardly the problem of people who have worked since they left school. If it was not for the boomers then there would be no schools hospitals or any of the other amenities that people take for granted. It is the boomers that have been working since 1945 that have paid for everything we have today including the schooling and pensions of those born before them and since.

To label three generations as feckless, and self centred because they want a pension after working for as long as the government asked them to is a bit harsh. Maybe it is the fault of those who choose not to work or those who plunder the savings of the prudent in the name of profit that have ruined the economy. Banker’s bonuses are still being paid out in telephone number style. If they can afford to pay so much bonuses they can afford to pay decent interest rates on savings and pay back some of the loans that the taxpayer made to them to bail them out. In fact I have often wondered why people who are against the bonuses being paid out do not simply switch their bank accounts to a bank that does not pay as much.

Around 7 billion will be paid out by the top five banks in the form of shares or bonuses to employees; this is on top of their wages. The top five? According to these people, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/bank-j12.shtml
They are HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds and Standard Chartered. They are making around 200 million per day. Now how much of that is going to savers in the form of interest payments and how much is going into the government coffers in the forms of corporation tax? Sadly not very much but some quarters, including the young and the middle aged are blaming the baby boomers for this sorry state of affairs.http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/227764

I did not ask to be born when I did, I have worked continuously since the age of 21, I have no debts and I consider myself to be careful with my finances. Given this I take exception to the arseholes who blame me and many like me for the state of the world.

For those who do, well F*** you!!

Finally January went out with a whimper and February roared in, quite literally. After coming back from a camping session in Cornwall I stood helplessly in the kitchen watching 50 mph gusts of wind tear my greenhouse to shreds. It also tore down some of the trellis and many of the plants. Sadly the greenhouse is only fit for the skip and the trellis will go the same way, strangely enough the neighbours trees which have blighted me for so long are still standing. (I am sure some readers will chuckle at this)

The bad news on the economy front rumbles along and unions are planning strikes and demonstrations in protest. Even the students have got in on the act bemoaning the end of the EMA. EMA? I did not know it existed; it stands for educational maintenance allowance and is paid to 6^th formers who stay on in school. For gods sake we have been paying kids to go to school. I have no idea how this sorry state of affairs happened or even when but it has and now the new coalition government want to stop it.

At long last it seems as though the Government is standing up to the European Courts. Britain has been told it has to give prisoners the right to vote. Now I may have misunderstood here but if you are in prison it is generally because you neglected your moral duty or just walked over some one else rights. The Bigwigs in Europe seem to think that just because you don’t care about any one else rights you should still be entitled to your own and so you should have the vote.

This seems to me like asking Turkeys if Christmas should be abolished. Anyway our own government has a rebellion on its hands as many backbenchers have said no to the idea even if it is enforced upon us. This could mean us even pulling out of the European human rights act if the courts of Europe reject the UK’s own elected Government in what is essentially an internal affair.

I have never been a fan of the European human rights act and to replace it with something that incorporates human responsibilities seems a lot fairer.

It is not too long before spring arrives and the clocks go forward again. I am sure my old friends the collared doves are hanging around somewhere just waiting to reclaim their old nest in my neighbour’s tree. The mercury is no longer falling and even the snowdrops are poking their heads through the frozen soil. It will seem strange not having a greenhouse this year and I will have to decide what if anything I am going to attempt to grow in the space the greenhouse used to occupy.

As the seasons change another birthday approaches and it seems to have come around even quicker than the last one which was faster than the one before. I am sure that even if Einstein’s theory of relativity was written about the speed of light it was inspired by birthdays as they come around faster each year relative to your age. When you are six years old your seventh birthday seems a long way off, when you are in your fifties it only seems like weeks since your last one and that to me is the theory of relativity.

January is almost over and I will be glad to see the back of it. As one journalist from the Daily Mail said, “any month that starts with a hangover and the need for a diet coupled with a huge credit card bill has not got a lot going for it”. In my case only the credit card bill was missing. I have still not lost the weight I put on over Xmas but I have become virtually teetotal and I am giving up the demon drink completely for Lent.

As the weather is warming up a touch and the days are becoming a little longer I thought it would be a good idea to start some maintenance work on Rhonda. After an hour my fingers were dropping off with the cold and I discovered the water pipes in the shed had burst. This meant not being able to use the jet washer and most of my time was taken up with spanners replacing copper pipes and repairing leaking joints instead of tending to my trusted steed. Rhonda will now have to wait until the coming weekend when I can wheel her into the warmth of Ogri’s garage to finish her off.

The snow and the ice may have temporarily receded but it is still damn cold. Not too cold though to stop me going away camping on the Bodmin moors in a little over a week’s time. Hence the need to have Rhonda in peak condition if she is to carry me for over 700 miles there and back again with all the equipment I think I shall require.

My broadband provider, the dreaded silicat , has been taken over by Yak Yak and frankly the service has gone from bad to worse. I have had varying degrees of access since last Friday and calls to the helpdesk have not been helpful. There is the possibility that if I actually understood what they were saying I may get somewhere. So why am I still with them? Well no other provider will take me on without a fixed term contract and as I live in the perpetual hope of selling the house it would mean being contractually obliged to pay for something I would not require.

There is of course some good news. My renewal quote from the AA for breakdown cover had gone up by over 100%, yes a staggering 100%. I looked at other providers and obtained rival quotes and rang the AA. The man on the end tried to explain that the previous year was a heavily discounted offer to welcome me back to the fold. I asked him about loyalty to customers who stay with the companies that provide services and he merely sighed. I then informed him I was off to join the RAC and I would be back next year as a new customer and would be expecting the discount again. There followed more heavy sighing coupled with the almost pleading “well let me see what we can do” and he came back to match the offer of the rival companies.

If only they could have done this in the first place we could have both saved some time. So many companies are offering discounts to new customers and it is the same with banks. One of my banks was paying virtually no interest on an old account I had so I rang them up to vent some spleen and they told me to open up a new account for which they would give a preferable rate of interest. Naturally I did but it begs the question why didn’t they just up the interest rate on my old account? Of course I expect to go through this horse trading some time next year when even newer bank accounts are available and more discounts for new customers, but not existing ones, are offered to tempt us to switch service providers of one sort or another. But here is a novel idea why don’t they reward loyal customers who stay with them. Maybe it is because it would take away the fun of horse trading? 

Hello 2011 and all of that. A professional blogger from the BBC once asked why so many amateur bloggers gave up and came to the conclusion that they run out of things to say. In my case it is that I run out of time to say them. It seems that as soon as I get in and have fed the cat, got changed, had something to eat then it is time to go to bed. I seem to be so busy earning a living I have no life! It is most definitely not the case that I have run out of things to say.

So with nothing more than a brief run down of what has been happening since my last entry, I am giving up trying to write about what happened yesterday because something always happens today. Bean counters youngest, Johan the Destroyer and his babe, took delivery of a healthy new baby girl called Holly in mid December. For the technical she weighed in at around 7 pounds ish and is now no longer pink and wrinkly.

Xmas came and went with all of the usual hustle and bustle and so did New Years Eve. I did manage to barbecue at midnight on New Years Eve and cooked several cuts of meat aided by Roger Moor while the rest of the guests sat in the warmth deciding that we were mad. Indeed the New Year was let in by the waft of grilled meat and spices, surely an auspicious start to 2011?

The Traveller has been to Gibraltar, back to Greece and then headed off to America where he is currently in Manhattan checking out suitable land. The search is not going well and Greece and Gibraltar have been written off as too primitive or too expensive and the good ole US of A is not looking much better.

Ted Magnum is more than ¾ of the way through a trip down Africa and was last heard of in Malawi and about to enter South Africa over 2.500 miles from the end of his journey to table top mountain. Yes everyone is travelling except me!

This brings me to the state of the country; petrol has gone through the roof and is now £1.28 a litre or almost 6 quid a gallon and it is set to rise. Conservative economists reckon it will be £1.50 a litre or £6.78 a gallon, for my American chums that is $10.50. Banker’s bonuses are still sky high and Dave Cameron has said it is time to stop bashing the bankers. Sorry Dave but it wont be time to stop bashing the bankers until they have pulled us out the shit they have dragged us all in to and then paid some compensation.

So what have we got to look forward to in 2011? Globally it is very uncertain but the feel good factor will certainly be enhanced when the Royal wedding takes place in April. Indeed if you look at the last few royal weddings they all seem to have taken place under a Conservative government, you might say they have bought the franchising rights. As for me well I intend to lose some of the weight I gained during the festive excesses and do some travelling or holidaying at the very least. Right up there on the list is to finish the house when the clocks go forward and the mercury starts to rise. There is not a lot to do and hopefully it will all be finished by the end of June. Oh and I definitely intend to take Rhonda out more often good health willing. Happy new year.

It has been some time hasn’t it? Approximately four months! It isn’t that I didn’t have anything to write, I had too much and before I could get thoughts down more stuff worth writing about happened and so I decided to take a sabbatical. So now for the hard bit, condensing 4 months worth of stuff into 3 minutes worth of reading.

Work continued on the house despite the wettest summer on record, 3 years in a row, where will it all end? The outside of the house is almost finished but it will only be completed after the good weather is here and the clocks have gone forward again. There are 3 rooms inside to be completed and then it is as finished as I can get it to be before I start spending negatively. IE spending £500 to add only £300 to the value. It should be on the market at some point next year.

What else happened? Well I fell over in the bathroom and landed side on upon the edge of the bath. This resulted in at least four broken ribs (the X rays were inconclusive due to the amount of fluid and swelling) and a perforated lung. I spent a week in hospital with lots of painkillers and plenty of oxygen. I was off work for six weeks only returning three weeks ago. I have been told I was lucky as the broken ribs could have pierced the lungs completely instead of badly grazing them. Fortunately Beancounter, The Traveller and Roger Moor have all looked after me.

The weather has taken a turn for the worse and winter has arrived several weeks early. Some parts of Scotland have experienced temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius. The outside pipes in my shed have frozen despite plenty of lagging to ensure they would not do so like last year. The peninsula that I live on has mercifully been snow free but already the popular national press has been scaremongering with stories of food and fuel shortages due to Lorries and wagons being unable complete journeys. I have no idea why the UK cannot cope with a few inches of snow a couple of times a year when Scandinavian countries cope with six months a year of the stuff. It certainly makes it hard for the young ones to believe the Brits once ruled an empire upon which the sun never set when they see us get battered into submission by a few snow flakes!

Christmas is almost upon us and the annual orgy of consumerism and self indulgence fuelled by clever advertising agencies has begun in earnest. Shops are advertising sales within the first few days of December in order to attempt those with the least to part with the most. If Christmas really stood for what it was supposed to, the frugal but joyous worship of the birth of Christ, I would be all for it. Sadly it seems that Charles Dickens has destroyed that with his Christmas story. (Brits did not eat Turkey until his tale but ate Goose instead) Never underestimate the power of good advertising to destroy the true meaning of anything spiritual. It makes you wonder how long will it be before the admen and money guys come up with some way of exploiting and profiting from the Dalai Lama?

Until next time when I try and catch up and post lots of photos in the gallery, enjoy the snow.