Category: Life

Wahey, it stopped raining enough for me to cut the front lawn. No big deal you might think but to me it meant a break in the weather and blue skies if only for a few short hours. However, it did lighten my mood for a short period. This has been enhanced by the amount of people who have read this blog and either emailed me, rang or even called to Château Ghastanbury to express either delight that I have made a decision or sorrow that I am finally going. It has restored my faith in humanity. My circle of friends has always been important to me but I had forgotten how many I had until the last posting. However it’s not so much farewell as au revoir. (Sic?) I shall be keeping in touch and when I do settle details will be posted so any one who wants to, can come and visit. I will always have a spare room, fridge full of beer and meat in the freezer for throwing on a hot grill.

Back to the bike situation and it’s all in the length of the legs. I have always had this theory that women have longer legs than men as in proportionately. Let me give you an example. I am 5 foot 11 inches tall with an inside leg measurement of 31 inches. This equates to approximately 43.66 % of my height. Most of the women I have known have longer legs than me even those who are shorter in height. My last long term girlfriend was five foot nine inches tall with a 33 inch inside leg measurement (aprox 47%).  Now this means she must have a shorter body than me. Given that we all have the same bits inside of us, lungs liver, heart, stomach and such like (yes I know woman have tubey bits inside of them but lets not discuss that), then there is either more space in men’s bodies or women have smaller bits inside of them. I mean do women have less space between their internal organs than men and if so what is sloshing around in men’s bodies to take up the space?

Take Bean Counter for instance, it is generally recognised by those who have met her that she is a wonderful, compassionate, witty and intelligent woman who happens to be vertically challenged. (Read dwarf or midget, I never knew the difference anyway) And, to boot she is not bad looking either.  She is five foot nothing but has an inside leg measurement of 27.2/5 inches which equates to 45.23% of her total height. So what I hear you ask. Well most of the bikes I have been looking at have a seat height of around 32 inches high. This means that not only can I not sit on one without both feet touching the floor but neither can she. This means I have to make a decision and one I had never thought of before. Do I dump her in favour of some who has longer legs, pay for surgery to have her legs extended or pay a fortune for my bike to be custom made with a VERY low seat?

Whoever would have thought that the length of a persons legs would play a major part in some one else’s destiny? As Rod Stewart sang Hot legs, more like long legs.

Rain, rain and yet more rain coupled with black skies. “What are you complaining about” one wag asked, “It’s April you expect rain”. I will concede that it is indeed April and yes I expect the odd shower or two here and there. What I really expect is there to be Bluebirds, Swifts and Swallows all flying carelessly through the Skies. I expect to hear the sound of the Cuckoo in the far distance and gaze in awe at pretty rainbows on the horizon as warm gentle light spring showers cascade through the suns rays. I expect to see postmen in short trousers whistling as they deliver the mail, full of the joys of spring. I do not expect torrential rain, endless grey skies and waterlogged earth too soggy to walk upon.

It is because of this that I am going travelling in search of pastures new. It made logical sense to me that it would be easier to inspect large areas properly if I had my own transport rather than relying on public transport and much cheaper than car hire for prolonged exploration. It crossed my mind to take my own car into Europe but the thought of using a right hand drive vehicle in a mainly left hand continent filed me with dread. I hate driving at the best of times. In a flash of inspiration it hit me, buy a new motorcycle. There will be no problems with left or right hand drive. And so it was that after days spent on the Internet reviewing and comparing motorcycles and a good few hours or so talking to other bikers, I narrowed the choice of machine down to two models. The Honda Transalp or the BMW RG650S.

Both are touring machines and should be more than capable of going for miles along good tarmac and adept at handling off road and green lanes. Now I have not ridden a motorbike for almost 15 years but I still have a valid licence and my enthusiasm for opening a throttle and watching the tarmac whiz by is as strong as ever. Feeling full of youthful optimism I walked into a bike dealers and explained what I wanted and why and he showed me a few different models. Motorbikes have certainly changed a lot in the last 15 years. They certainly do not look like any thing I ever owned or rode in my youth. Undeterred I confidently strode to one particular model just to get the feel of the machine and promptly swung my leg over the saddle. It was at this point that I realised that things were not going to go as smoothly as my research indicated.

Firstly my leg did not want to go over the top of the saddle and when it did I thought I had put my hip out of joint. It went downhill from there. Bikes these days are generally bigger than they used to be in my day and my feet would not even touch the ground when I eventually hauled myself into the saddle. This would be a problem when you stopped the bike at lights or other such places. I realised that even if I managed to lower the seat, a top box on the back of the bike would merely increase the height I had to clear. As Bean counter is actually a midget in high heels the only way she could possibly get onto the back of this bike would be with the aid of a step ladder.

The bike is not out of the question but perhaps the model is. One thing is certain, my youth has gone the same way as my old motorbikes, however I may be down but I am most certainly not out.

It is still raining. All hope of the jungle that is now my front lawn being cut and neatly manicured has gone out of the window for some time. As usual the skies are grey and the BBC weather website informs me that it is unlikely to change for the next 5 days. It isn’t the cold that bothers me it is the lack of sunshine and we are now over a quarter of the way through the year. With this in mind I have taken one of the most important decisions I am ever likely to make. I am putting my house on the market next year and leaving these shores as soon as it is sold and I have the money in my hand.

I have no idea where I am going to be going but going I shall be and to warmer and sunnier climes where ever in the world that may be. This is not a rash or quick decision, it has been in the back of my mind for some years and I always said that I would not do anything until at least 12 months after my mother’s departure. Having said that next January will be some 15 months later on and January 1^st seems like a good date to inform the estate agents to put boards outside the front window.

It is not easy to describe how I feel after having arrived at this decision, there is a feeling of weight off my shoulders but also a lot of apprehension, uncertainty and excitement about the unknown. What I am going to do with all my stuff. Where will I go and what will I do when I get there? Loads of well meaning people have told me not to sell my house and rent it out and live off the income. However I want to sever all ties with this place and move on completely. It is not that I have been unhappy here it is just that I have been here too long and it is time for pastures and adventures new. What happens next?
Watch this space.

The weather is bleak and the days are cold but at least the clocks have gone forward. Good old British Summer Time is here. Well, at least that is what the calendar says! The reality is that the weather is awful and has prevented work being carried out on the outside of the house. The guttering that arrived just before Easter is still in its wrapping and looking forlorn. In fact the week I took off to coincide with the Easter holidays was a waste of time, except for one thing. My new shed arrived and it was installed with the help of The Beast, Bean Counters Eldest and a lot of liquid inspiration. Working in the cold and wet, old flagstones were lifted and re-laid. This is not an easy job when the rain is washing away any cement you are using to ensure the flags stay in place.

The old shed was moved with a lot of effort to the bottom of the garden and has now become a wood store. This job was not without a lot of drama and Heath Robinson cunning and invention and of course the usual liquid inspiration. Special thanks go to Roger Moor, TB (again) and the use of Little Miss Sunshine’s ladders which were used as a rail track to slide the old shed down the garden and into place. The garden has been tidied up as best as is possible with the weather conditions and the new shed now contains mine and BC’s pushbikes and the aim is to become fit and slim once more by using them.

After all this work it was agreed we needed a treat and so we retired into the house to sit down with a beer or two and watch a film on the new PS3 console. Said film was duly inserted into the PS3 and nothing happened. Well I say nothing happened in fact lots of things happened that should not have. A pink screen was followed by no sound but a picture then sound but no picture and finally nothing. Remembering the old adage that you need a young child to operate most gaming consoles, Roger Moor was despatched to fetch his 10 year old son. Even this talented child could not fix this and so after a lot of head scratching and much consternation followed by venting of spleen I contacted Commander Riker who duly put me in touch with Captain Sony (one half of the Revellers). 30 minutes of talking to CS could not cure the ailments of my pride and joy and it still sat there bleeping and flashing its little lights as if to mock me. I must admit that by this time I had taken a few drams of Milwaukee’s finest to calm my nerves but still managed to tell CS in no uncertain terms that the PS3 was a pile of junk and it was going in the bin and I was going to buy an X Box. This must have jarred something within CS who works for Sony and he promised to come down the following day and take a look at it for me.

True enough the following day (evening actually and 5 hours late, but that’s another story) CR and CS arrived and fixed the damn thing within a few minutes. Apparently when switching this heap of junk on, you only have to touch the on button and not hold it down until something happens or does not in my case. Holding down the on button merely tells the machine to reset itself. After much abuse towards Sony for not supplying a simpler on and off switch I calmed down and it was beers all around. My advice to any one contemplating buying one of these machines is, don’t. They are complicated unreliable and have a mind all of their own. This was pointed out by several X Box owning friends who merely laughed at my predicament with the resounding words of “Told You So”.

Genghis is growing fast both in stature and wisdom. He has become fussy about what he eats and he has learned how to bring mice into the house. I now have to train him to kill them before he brings them home to Daddy. He seems to have made several friends amongst the other cats who frequent my garden and has started to invite them into the kitchen to share his dinner with them. I guess like me he is going to be a really friendly and sociable kind of guy. I cannot think where he gets this from.

Some time last evening Little Miss sunshine and myself embarked upon the great debate of GM Foods. Not knowing a great deal about this subject other than the panic headlines I was only able to argue that GM foods should be labelled to give people a choice as to whether they buy or consume them. LMS decided that as every thing had genetically modified since the invention of cross breeding to improve live stock this was not necessary but mere scaremongering by the press. So I have spent some time on the Greenpeace website, a UK government web site, the World Health Organisation website and a couple of other officially sanctioned bodies to try and make some sense of it all.

Admittedly GM foods have had a bad press although I did not understand why. If cross breeding was such a good idea why were so many people afraid of GM? Well from the limited research that I have done it would appear that cross breeding within a species such as that performed to create Shire horses extends much further than cross breeding within a single species. I did not know that tomatoes had been cross bred with fish to give them a redder colour. I also understand that some tomato seeds have been created after genetic modification with other animals to give them a longer shelf life.

This to me defies the cross breeding and selective breeding such as performed by race horse owners. They do not try and cross a horse with a say an ear of corn. The New Scientist Magazine, a respected periodical with a great heritage has reported GM crops bred to withstand massive doses of insecticide to wipe out crop eating bugs has resulted in super bugs able to withstand all but the most severe of insecticides (those that are dangerous to humans). This has meant that the super bugs are now capable of destroying far much more than before the introduction of GM crops.

This has also raised the issue of cloning rather than natural selection. If all crops are cloned to be exact replicas of each other after some one has decided that is as good as they are ever going to be then all foods will be identical no matter where in the world you are. Local tomatoes will taste the same in Brazil as in Spain as will corn and coffee. It raises the spectre of potatoes such as jersey royals or King Edwards being replaced with genetically modified crops that will be grown the world over and we don’t know what animal DNA they have been crossed with.

I now understand the headlines such as Frankenfoods that have screamed at us from the daily tabloids. Pollination of one type of rose with another seems ok to me as this would happen in the wild anyway due to the way seeds are blown about and bees pollinate anything in their path. Crossing them with snake venom and fish DNA to make them last longer and give a deeper due of colour does not seem natural at all.

It is little wonder then that the Monsanto website does not contain as much information about GM as the Lancet or Greenpeace. I may not understand all there is to know about GM foods but I have discovered that Monsanto and Synergen are not donating any money to food agencies around the world but instead offering tons of GM seed crops giving agencies no option but to feed millions with no choice on GM foods. Happily the US government thinks this is OK. At least for now at least I know I want nothing to do with GM food or crop seeds. LMS may have tried to convert me but she has me joining the ranks of Greenpeace and wholeheartedly condemning the introduction and use of cross species GM foods. Enjoy your supper.

Easter came and sorta went. Not much to report except that as usual Château Ghastanbury was busy and lots of people passed through over the period. The weather was a complete washout and some building work I had scheduled had to be cancelled. It’s pretty dangerous being on a ladder with a 40-50 mile wind gust factor. I guess the guttering and re-painting of the fascias and soffits will have to wait until some time in summer. I started work in the garden this morning and by 10-30am I had to stop for a while until the snow had stopped. A new shed that had been scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning has had to be put back by two days to allow the old flagstones to be re-laid and settle. The garden currently resembles a car boot sale with stuff everywhere as there is no place to put it. I have no idea how a person can collect so much junk in such a short time but we do and I have.

The financial crisis that has hit the UK in the way of a credit squeeze and so many building societies and banks cutting mortgage loans to only 75% of value has hit people around the world. The Printer emailed me to inform me of the state of things down under and the Tiler rang me during Easter weekend with similar tales of woe. The Traveller who is in the Baltic informs me that things are no better in Eastern Europe. In fact the only person who seems to be having a good time of it lately is Ted Magnum who is currently zooming around Brazil on his South American tour.

One piece of good news is that my favourite radio station, Planet Rock, has had a temporary reprieve from its scheduled closure on March 28^th. It has been given a months grace in the hope that a buyer can be found before it shuts down for good. Well actually there are two pieces of good news. The other one is my diet which has seen me lose 6lbs over the last two weeks. I hope to keep this up and by summer be back to my svelte like self. With the prospect of worldwide food shortages this is a definite possibility.

Well it has stopped snowing and the sun is trying to peer through the clouds. I had better get back into the garden and make the most of every ray of sunshine available before the weather turns again. The barbecue season seems a long way off!

Busy, busy, busy. Yes that is how things have been for the last few weeks and I am not sure where to start! In fact I have been so busy that I have not had time to make an entry so my apologies to regular readers who thought I had disappeared. The weather has been strange; it has been neither cold nor warm, not overcast or sunny. In fact it has been nondescript. With this in mind I have booked time off work as holiday time to start work on the outside of the house. Imagine my surprise then when the forecast prior to the coming Easter showed heavy rain and thunder and then snow over the period. I reckon I will be stuck indoors watching the rain beat down for the duration of my holidays only for the sun to come out the day I go back to work.

As most people who take in the world news will know, a recession is about to hit us. Billions of dollars have been lost and both pound and dollar have fallen against other currencies. Many people are in negative equity as house prices fall, interest rates go up and they face owing more money at a higher rate than the assets they own. If jobs start going the same way then a return to the late eighties will be more than a pessimistic outlook, it will be reality. What does this all mean for me? Well as the value of my house has fallen and the cost of foreign currency has gone up a place in the sun and early retirement looks as far away as it is possible to be. Land and properties that only two weeks ago would have cost me 30k sterling will now cost over 34 as the pound buys less and less.

The papers have this week focused on benefit Britain and shown that in over 50 towns in England and Wales over 50% of those of working age are claiming benefits and out of work through one reason or another. As usual the figures have been massaged by the government to show less people out of work but do nothing to hide those not working but still claiming benefit. The bill to the country as a whole? Well more than the total bill for running the NHS. It does make you wonder whether or not it is actually worth going out to work when those on benefits will be protected during any economic downturn and those in work will not be.

Regular readers will know that few previous posts of late have not finished without an update on Genghis. He has had his final injections and has been let out on the loose. This morning he wondered out of the house after finishing his breakfast and chased a bird up the Cherry tree at the bottom of my garden. This was at 8-50am and he was still up there howling to get down at 9-15 which is when I have to leave for work at the very latest. I had no choice but to leave him to his own devices and hope he would be back on Terra Firma by tea time. Arriving home this evening I could see him at the back door howling for his tea. He had obviously figured it out for himself how to get down. Pictures will be posted in the gallery over the next week or so.

Until next time………

Its an odd thing, you wake up in the morning full of ideas and ideals and by the evening when you get chance to write them all down you have forgotten them. With most writers this is called “Writers Block”. However as I am not a writer my own condition which is often very similar is called “Bloggers Rite”. It’s like a rite of passage for bloggers that we all go through at some point or other. In some case bloggers never recover and simply let the blog slide into obscurity with not so much as a further post or explanation.

My birthday which is on Valentines Day came and went. BC took me to a five star hotel in the Lake District and I spent some time driving land rovers up almost impossibly steep inclines and forded some rivers. After this I spent some time doing the same thing on a quad bike which was immense fun. All in all it was a fantastic birthday with marvellous food in very swish surroundings and great company.

February has finally passed away for another 12 months. With this year being a leap year a few young ladies that I know took full advantage of the fact that its ok to ask a man to marry you and popped the question to the men in their lives on February 29th. Some men said yes and the best of luck to those happy couples. This concept came out of the 5^th century when St Bridget complained to St Patrick that women should not have to wait so long for men to propose. The first recorded and documented practise is from Scotland in 1288. More facts for those who are interest can be found here. http://marriage.about.com/cs/holidays/a/leapyear.htm
Whether this custom will continue or go the same way of dowries and breach of promise remains to be seen but it has lasted for at least 1500 years and shows no sign of abating.

Onto earth moving facts and there was a minor earthquake in Lincolnshire on 27^th Feb. There was no real damage as such other than to the pockets of the insurance companies. There were no droughts, famine or pestilence caused by it and by no means anything like the humanitarian catastrophes that we see around the globe on an all too frequent basis. However it did wake me up and to be honest I thought I had burglars in the house. I tiptoed downstairs, heart in mouth to see who the intruders might be. On discovering no one except a cowering cat I came back to bed convinced that Genghis had yet again knocked over some large object. Indeed it was only when the news came on in the morning I discovered what the disturbance had been.

Now if only this had taken place on February 29^th then so many young men would have been able to say “She proposed and the earth really did move for me”

It,s been over a week since I last had a full English breakfast and I have not touched any biscuits, although there is some debate on whether shortbread is a biscuit or not. My own take on it is this if it really is a biscuit instead of bread then trading standards should be informed and action taken to ensure that that the public are not mislead. Speaking of misleading I went into a butchers the other day to buy some ribs and asked him about Ox tails. I mentioned that you don’t see many other bits of Ox for sale only tongue and tail. What happens to the rest of the Ox? He mentioned that it probably was not Ox at all but cow and that he happened to be a pork butcher so he would not know. Is this not a case for trading standards to inspect?

Onto the week and some mindless morons, probably illiterate, inbred halfwits, have started egging my windows and my car. Mindful of what happened to Gary Newlove and that was not an isolated incident, I sat and ignored it. Mine is not the only property to be attacked but it shows the isolation and sense of being unable to “do” anything when some thing like that happens. Peaceful law abiding citizens are slowly being hounded out of the UK aided by a police force that turns a blind eye to criminal damage under 500 pounds because it is not cost worthy to investigate it. The PSCO’s seem to have had limited success mainly because the powers they employ are so limited. I have not seen one in my area and I have never seen one in any area after 7-30pm.  Are they worth having? Well not from my point of view.

No post these days would be complete without an update on Genghis. He is now putting on some weight and has become increasingly playful. I suspect this is mainly due to me feeding him raw steak and full fat cream. In a few weeks he will go for his injections and inoculations and then after a couple more weeks, mainly when the clocks have gone forward, he will be unleashed onto the world at large. Rather than having him bring dead birds and frogs into my house I expect him to be dragging half dead mindless vandals. If that does not work then it’s either move or get a tiger.

Last night I went to see a Thin Lizzy tribute band called Limehouse Lizzy. They are probably the best tribute band I have ever seen or heard. The bass player looks remotely like Phil Lynott and the guitarists looked remarkably like Scot Gorham and John Sykes. The Lynott look-alike had the accent and actions off to a T. All thrusting groins, sexual innuendo, searing guitar licks, long hair leather and denim. The very stuff that rock n roll is made of. Would I go and see them again? definitely.  It was so different to the last time I went to see a band or artiste. Some time ago I had booked to see an amazing guitarist by the name of Alvin Lee. All pumped up I arrived at the venue to see one of the great rock n roll legends and relive some of my fast fading youth (some might say bleached beyond recognition).  

I knew something was wrong when said artiste walked on stage. His gait and manner were not what I had expected and he didn’t look entirely like I remembered him from his days with Ten years After. Within a few seconds the awful truth had dawned on me. It was Albert Lee on stage. I had booked to see the wrong guy. An easy enough mistake to happen when you book online after having had a few beers! Albert is also a great guitarist, born at the same time as Alvin and from the same country and indeed the same part of the UK. However, Albert is mainly a country guitarist while Alvin is pure rock. Both have the same skill and are equally talented but I hate country music. I stayed as long as I could for I really appreciated his skill and talent, but I could not bare the music he was making.

Ted Magnum has contacted me from Argentina and over the course of a few emails we have discussed the possibility of the two of us travelling from Alaska to Ushia some time in 2011. It’s a distinct possibility although anything can happen in three years. I have given some thought to travelling around the world when Château Ghastanbury has been sold. Last year I was given a rucksack and some rather fine walking boots and shoes for this very purpose. The trip if it comes off will be via motorcycle or Landrover. There are pluses and minuses for each form of transport however the rucksack and boots will be used whatever method is decided upon for the trip.

Sitting at my desk and looking out of the window at the bright blue sky and watching my old friends the Collared Doves attempting to build a nest for the coming season, the world seems fine and all is well. Plans are afoot for a financial venture and travel beckons at some far away point. The future looks bright, a different planet away from the chaos and bad news. What bad news? Well the Traveller who arrived an hour ago tells me that Japanese fighter planes have been scrambled to escort a Russian bomber out of Japanese airspace. The Russians are also building a naval base at a Syrian port that will give them the largest naval base in the Mediterranean. Combined with their flights into British air space at regular intervals and their increased control of gas and oil throughout Europe it looks ominous. Kosovo is expected to declare UDI which will be opposed by Bosnia and Russia oh and the Archbishop of Canterbury has suggested that the UK accepts certain parts of Sharia law for some sectors of the community. Its time to get out before the Russians bomb us to bits and those who are left have to buy prayer mats and face east every morning. Mind you the Mayans did say the world would end on December 23^rd 2012. We had best enjoy what time is left while we can!