Category: Life

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.

It happens to all parents. One day their little darlings are their pride and joy and the next with no warning at all they turn into teenagers. All angst and hormones and kicking against a system that works perfectly well for you. What’s this I hear you ask, Higherdew’s most diehard bachelor with no heirs talking about kids? Well to be honest I did have step kids once but that is a very long story and a chapter in my life I would rather forget. However I do have a baby.

Yes Genghis is starting to stay out all night and not come home in the mornings. He is becoming fussy about what he eats and is now turning his nose up at Whiskas foil packs and even fresh clotted cream. He turns up at all hours of the day and wants to sleep and then he is off out again. To be fair he is not asking for new trainers every week nor is he asking for a Play Station 3 and Grand Theft Auto 4, but his behaviour is causing me a lot of concern. I mean he could end up in the hands of some Cruella De Vile type of person whose sole ambition is turn him into a pair of mittens because of his distinct markings. He could be catnapped as opposed to kidnapped by mindless thugs who want to toss him into a pen full of rabid pit bulls for sport or he could be another casualty in the hit and run accidents that occur all too frequently.

There is another explanation… It is entirely possible that he has discovered the opposite sex. May be he is out sowing his wild oats at an alarming rate. (This would explain him being tired all the time) We have not even discussed this type of thing and it is only because of his embarrassing squeak as opposed to the sub base roar that I am waiting for him to develop, that I have not taken him to the vets for THE OP. I was waiting for his voice to break before I took him to have his balls chopped. I mean how embarrassing would it be for him to sit at the end of the garden talking to all the other cats in the neighbourhood and say in a rather squeaky almost effeminate voice, yes I am a virgin and my balls have been chopped and I am called Genghis after a mighty warrior.

I have tried my best to be a good parent and fed him on raw steak and fresh cream with the odd kipper thrown in for special occasions. I have ignored his destructive ways and forgiven him for ripping my net curtains to shreds. I have applauded his attempts to gain my trust, confidence and admiration by bringing live mice into the house and letting them go. I have attempted to broaden his horizens by giving him toys and treats to develop his hunting skills and improve his social skills. Sadly he has turned into Kevin from kevin and Perry and become a James Dean figure. A rebel without a clue that is ruled by his dick. Like many other parents I am asking where did I go wrong?

Sadly it is almost that time when I have to make an appointment for the vets to have him DONE. I had hoped this time would never arrive but it has and I know I am going to feel a sense of betrayal to my gender by taking him. After all if some one was taking me for the same reasons I would not be best pleased. As he is a rather handsome cat I guess there will be one or two feline hearts broken by my decision, but we can’t have lots of little ginger strays running around can we? If only those damn females would take precautions. I mean really, Kids who would have them?

So much has taken place over the last few weeks and much of it completely irrelevant but it has stopped me from making an entry for some time. The rain stopped long enough for me to get some work done in the garden and one could almost believe it is summer time. I have even had to resort to watering some of the plants. In the last two weeks there has been a typhoon in Burma with a disastrous death toll, an earthquake in southern China with equally horrific casualties and local elections with a massive move away from our government. Indeed in could be said that the writing is on the wall for our beloved elected leadership. I can not in my lifetime remember when a political party has had such a vote of no confidence. The labour government has been trounced into third place firmly behind the Liberal Democrats.

Much of this can simply be placed at the feet of the government for being so out of touch and completely insensitive to the plight of the common man. When prices are spiralling out of control you don’t put the taxes up on the same items to make them even more expensive, well any one with any sense would not. However our beloved leaders seem to think that is a fine old wheeze to increase fuel duty and rake off even more VAT when the price of oil is hitting record highs of 120 dollars a barrel. The only people benefiting from these price increases is the treasury who are rubbing their hands with glee at the extra cash pouring into government coffers. Would it not make sense to put a finite figure onto fuel and commodities that stayed the same regardless of the final price? That way at least the public could see that it was not the government profiting from global price increases.

This makes perfect sense to me but Gordon Brown who has the charm and charisma of a dose of syphilis does not. His abolition of the 10p tax rate has left many of our poorest people worse off. This made all the worse because only those in work are affected. If you are on benefits it makes no difference to you at all. If you are in a low paid job you may as well pack it in and join the growing queues collecting benefits. What is even more alarming is his bungled attempt at undoing the damage it has caused and the time scale to rectify it with his announcement of the increase in personal allowances that do not kick in til next September. How much extra revenue will that bring in to the tax mans coffers? I look forward to the day when he is voted out of office and is out of work, struggling and is strangled by the very policies he has put into place. It saddens me but I now long for the days when Maggie Thatcher was at the helm. There were no U turns with Maggie and at least you knew where you stood with her. The fact that you were fucked is by the by, but you knew your place!

I cannot think of any where else in the democratic world where a so called socialist government would take money off the poor to give to the rich. Only in the UK eh!

I suppose many of us have often wondered or thought about escaping from it all and leaving modern life with all of its stresses and strains behind. Becoming totally green and leaving an almost zero carbon footprint with little or no impact upon our surroundings.  For the vast majority a mortgage and rent are the biggest outgoings to a family budget closely followed by fuel bills, water rates, domestic rates, food, clothing and transport but not necessarily on that order. As I see it the only way to escape is to have enough money to buy some land and live off it, however this solution is not in itself the complete answer.

What most of the companies selling green technology will not tell you is how much it will cost. For example we know how much land will be from the estate agents and from that we can calculate how much we will have to devote to crops, how much for livestock and how much to set aside to grow trees as fuel for cooking and heating in solid fuel burners. To go completely off grid with no sewage, no power or water requires a substantial investment and the array of information is truly mind numbing and often conflicting from one manufacturer to another. Try as I might I can find little information if any about reed bed filters. To live off grid you need to dispose of human waste, often called black water and two ways of doing this are composting toilets and reed bed filters. Composting toilets are a great idea, clean and environmentally friendly. The drawback with this solution is that if you have 12 pints of Guinness and a good curry one night, well I will leave the rest to your imagination.

To manage black water and grey water which consists of water from the bath or the washing machine etc, you really need a reed bed filter. There are two types, vertical and horizontal. Horizontal beds do not take up as much space as vertical beds so the land requirements are less however they require a slope. Virtually no information about building one of these is in the public sector. Many companies will sell you the information and offer to install such a process for you, usually at a prohibitive cost. After months of scouring the internet and asking librarians with no results I started emailing several green communities to ask how they managed. To date none have replied and the idea of the helpful eco friendly sandal wearing hippy with his tofu sandwiches and lentils is starting to look like a myth.

Unless you want to live by candle light then some form of electricity is a must and once again going totally off grid is a complete minefield. I may want to escape but I still want to know what is going on in the outside world. A TV, stereo, microwave and washing machine along with electric lights are a complete must in my book. Photovoltaic cells or solar panels are only 18% efficient and wind turbines are useless on a calm day and all the energy needs to be stored. To store all this electric you need deep cell batteries capable of providing 240 volts on tap. You will also want to ensure they don’t run flat in minutes under a heavy load, consequently at least two of these monsters are required and they are not cheap. They also need to be renewed every 10-15 years and this will be an ongoing cost as will the solar panels and turbines.

The cost of going truly green is exorbitant as considerations need to be made about the cost of every day living. Tending land and livestock is almost a full time job and so working for a living is almost out of the question. Hard currency is needed for vets fees and transportation fuel to name but two items let alone taxes and so a substantial amount of money is needed in some form of investment to draw income or interest from. Sadly it seems that to the vast majority of us who crave the simple life, becoming environmentally friendly in its truest sense is a big green myth.

Where to start? At the beginning I suppose so here goes. Bean Counter and me had decided some time ago that this year we were going to visit some of the islands around the UK for a series of long weekends instead of one two week annual holiday at a fly and fry resort somewhere warm on another continent. So last week I duly booked two nights accommodation on Holy Island off the Northumbrian coast. Holy Island is better known as Lindisfarne and it is a place I have wanted to visit for many years. So Friday just gone, Me and BC loaded up the car with walking boots, rucksacks, hiking poles and hip flasks and all the usual paraphernalia for a walking holiday including distress flares, Kendal mint cake, compass and my trusted Swiss army knife. With a borrowed satnav, AA instructions, a full tank of petrol and plenty of time to spare we hit the road.

It was inevitable that not all would go as smoothly as the military like precision with which I had planned the event. The first problems began on the motorway. Lanes and lanes of standing traffic all going nowhere and for no reason any one could see. After almost two hours of crawling along the motorway and having travelled the majestic distance of 30 odd miles or so, things cleared up and I pressed my foot to the metal to make up for time. For those of you who do not know, Lindisfarne is an island connected by a causeway that is covered at high tides. You can only cross the causeway when the tide is out. If the tide is in than you are stuck either on the mainland or the island itself with no way of getting off except by boat.

The old adage that time and tide wait for no man is certainly true and with 4 hours to go before the cut off point we were only 130 miles away and motoring smoothly. Things really got sticky at this point as the horizon went black and the windscreen cracked. My bonnet had flown open and was blocking my entire vision. I hit the hazard button, slowed down trying to remember the Lords prayer and hoping nothing behind me would plough into the back of the car. Mercifully nothing did but it was difficult trying to get from the middle lane and onto the hard shoulder with some mindless pricks giving me the finger and some frosty stares. Only when they had passed me and saw my predicament did they appreciate the trouble I was in.

Feeling shocked, cold and very annoyed me and BC sat on the grass verge and awaited the cavalry in the shape of the AA to get us back home. The car was completely un-driveable with a windscreen that was likely to implode at the first bump and a mangled bonnet that would not stay down. The police arrived and I duly explained what had happened and they rang their control room to ensure the emergency services were on their way. One and half hours later a rescue vehicle turned up and loaded my car onto the back and we headed back in the opposite direction home. Thankfully neither BC nor me were injured and things could have been so much worse but may car may be registered as a write off due to the age and mileage and as I could not cancel the booking for the room with in less than 24 hours for either night I was liable for the cost of the room. It would have been cheaper and safer to have stayed at home, gone into the shower and stood there ripping up 20 pound notes.

Genghis (new gallery click on link) was really pleased to see us and BC and I consoled ourselves with a large stiff drink and a takeaway that really should have been taken away, to somewhere else. Today is another day and although its still damp and miserable, I can console myself that the only injury I have suffered is to my wallet and pride. It’s really only a small price to pay.