Monthly Archives: May 2019

Ooops!

Nearly forgot to post.

There were just four minutes before midnight when I realised I hadn’t posted and leapt into action. It takes three minutes to write a short title, five words and hit the publish button. Well, it takes about 20 seconds, but the whirring and grinding and slowness of an ancient netbook takes two minutes and forty seconds.

Still, I got it done with a minute to spare and now have time to write a few more words in a more leisurely manner.

I was stitched up by my satnav this morning.

Having checked up on Google on Saturday and found that it takes just under two hours to drive to Ely, I sat in the car this morning with two hours and ten minutes to make the journey.

We switched the satnav on, put in the postcode for Ely station and set off. The figures started with 88.5 miles, which was about the same as Google showed. About 400 metres later it had recalculated and was showing 106 miles and two hours 15 minutes. It got worse when we hit roadworks near Cambridge.

The trouble seems to be that the satnav doesn’t do minor roads.

The moral is to prepare better, enter the destination the night before to check it, and, if necessary, write a route down using Google and a map. It used to work in the days before satnav.

The station, when we arrived, was choked with buses. Buses in my way, buses stuck in gaps and buses being helped to reverse. It was chaos.

It was a hectic day, but it doesn’t seem so bad now it’s over.

The the Rain Started…

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Another busy day, another load of parcels, and emails from customers.

We also had a steady flow of customers, two collections to buy and medallions to offer for sale.

I also had tomorrow to plan, which is a bit of a logistics nightmare. I’m picking Number One Son up and we are visiting my Dad as Number One Son is off to New Zealand at the end of the week. Yes, in just one week we will be empty nesters. I’d be inhuman not to feel a slight twinge at the thought. But it is a very small twinge.

The problem is that there is no rail service from Suffolk to Peterborough this weekend and the replacement bus service arrives too early or too late to be useful. So I’m now going to Ely for lunchtime tomorrow.

Then, after a hectic day, it started raining just as I got to the car…

I’ll publish now but may come back to edit and add photos.

A Meeting with History

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I thought I’d managed to sort out the “featured page” problem, but it was still there when I switched on tonight. I think I’ve fixed it now.

I’ve also fixed the small font problem. I must have adjusted it to 50% at some point when I was jabbing viciously and swearing at the slow-loading netbook. It’s now back to full size and I can read it.

This does not, of course, mean that it is worth reading.

Today I put a jital up for sale – a coin I’d never even heard of before.

It’s a small billon coin of Genghis Khan, minted shortly after 1200. Billon is an alloy of copper and silver. The Romans used it. Henry VII also used it, but he used it so that he could use some of the silver for financing his extravagant existence. His tampering with the coinage was so bad that it became known as the Great Debasement.

Meanwhile, I’m still slightly suspicious about the identification of the design as an elephant, It appears to have pointy ears, for one thing…

A Dozen Parcels, an Auction and a Hectic Day (and a Very Bad Magpie)

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I was late getting to work this morning because I had a busy start – taking Julia to breakfast, helping her buy cement, fighting my way through several sets of road works and, finally, dropping her off at the garden.

That left me with twenty minutes to get to work, which was only just enough. Technically,I wasn’t late, as I was still there a few minutes before I was due to start. In practice, it felt late as I like to get settled and have an unhurried start to the day.

There were two big sales on at Spinks in London this morning and the boss was bidding on line. (I won’t add a link to Spinks as I’m currently arguing with them – I bought two lots off them a months ago – they lost one lot and the other was nothing like the description. They are not, currently, my favourite auctioneer.)

The problem was that my computer, though old and clunky, is probably the best in the shop, and is the only one with sound.

That meant I started late, answered some stupid questions from customers, and then had to swap computers when the auction started. It’s surprising how much a strange workstation slows you down.

I don’t mind questions when they have a point, but some are just a waste of time and energy.

Eventually the auction finished. It seems to have been quite successful, though everything seemed a little more expensive than he would have liked.

I had a similar experience when I looked in on an auction in the afternoon. I’d decided to save my money by not bidding, but two the three lots I would have bid on went for more than I wanted to pay so I’d have left empty-handed anyway. I’ve spent enough recently so it’s good to save.

Fortunately we managed to make a few sales in the shop too – it’s nice to get a bit back after all the buying we’ve been doing.

Julia rang me in the afternoon. She’d been working in the garden when she noticed some commotion by the polytunnel. There are two nestboxes with Great Tit families in them and the one by the polytunnel was under attack from a magpie, which had its head stuck in the hole.

Great Tit at Wilford

She chased it away and we’re hoping it won’t be back.

I know it’s nature, but there are plenty of other things to eat.

eBay, Bulldogs and Royal Visits

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I found out about how to unpin the post I mentioned previously. It didn’t take much in the end, I looked at the page as I was getting ready for a new post, saw it was marked “sticky” and prodded a few random buttons until it cleared.

I’m feeling quite tech savvy now,

Today’s main project was writing up a collection of prize medals belonging to a dog breeder who appears to have had a good deal of success in France in 1924 and 1925.

If you want a test of your creative writing skills try writing up a pile of dog prize medals in an attractive yet accurate way. They are lovely medals, but they are a real test of writing skill.

I’m also working on a drop-down menu for Royal Visit medallions. These used to be quite popular before the Great War. These are some of the better ones.

Royal Visit to Derby 1906

This is for the Royal Visit to Derby in 1906

Opening of Kew Bridge

This is for the opening of Kew Bridge in 1903

Messing with Camera Settings

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I seem to have pinned a featured post to the top of the blog. This was an accident and I can’t seem to find a way to unplug it. This is partly because I am not good with WP and partly because the typeface on the rickety netbook is very tiny and difficult to read. It should be possible to increase the font size.

For further comments on the situation see the above comments on ineptitude and small typeface.

The “Dramatic” setting

The photos show Harlow Carr Gardens using the “Dramatic” setting. If the weather forecast had been correct this could have been what the weather looked like.

Fortunately, the weather forecast wasn’t accurate, but I think I probably mentioned that before.

The “Dramatic” setting

We had a lot of parcels to send this morning in the shop – many of them being 50p pieces.

You need to be very organised when sending out multiple orders of this sort, because they all start to look the same. We had orders for Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Falklands, Ireland and St Helena.

I don’t have any pictures at the moment, but will load some for tomorrow.

Getting up to Date

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I’ve finally uploaded photos of the Harlow Carr visit. Sorry it took so long but I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather over the last few days, despite the intake of therapeutic cake.

As I get older, I’m clearly getting more delicate and the sudden cold snap has caught me out. It’s either that or I’m turning nesh in my old age, as we say round here. According to my search facility I’ve not used the word before in a blog so I added a link. If I have used it before, I apologise for the ,ink.

We went to see my Dad today with NumberTwo son. It was a bit sad. Dad is healthy enough, and well looked after both by my sister and the home, but he’s not likely to remember Number Two Son on his return from Canada in two year’s time. It’s easy to ignore this when it happens gradually, but you can’t ignore it when looking so far into the future.

More pictures here from Harlow Carr, including the current state of the dogwood fedge.

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Cake as a Cure

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Just a quick post today as I have had a lazy day eating cake and anti-inflammatories.

One of them seems to have worked as the pain and swelling in my foot has gone down. If I am attacked by joint pain in future I will try cake as my first choice of treatment.

I’m currently watching Sense and Sensibility on TV. For me, Jane Austen is better on TV, and Sense and Sensibility is also better in the Emma Thompson version. I confess I’ve always found Austen difficult to read. While I’m at it I may as well admit I feel the same about the Brontes.

I am not a great reader of classical literature, as my attempts at self-improvement have shown over the last few years, as I tried to plough through several variations of the 100 greatest novels.

Although the plots may end up tweaked for film and TV it doesn’t really matter as I’m watching for entertainment rather than as an academic pursuit.

Owl Sculpture – Harlow Carr

Today’s photos are of the owl sculpture at Harlow Carr garden – it works better when you are standing there next to it, rather than in a photograph.

Update

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Well, it’s been a chequered few days.

I’ve struggled with technology in various ways, but am managing to get round the problems in a variety of ways (even if I did fall asleep before posting last night!)

I’ve put photos up for the Scone post, as I said last night, and I’ve now put photos on the enamelled coin post. With any luck I’ll get some on the Harlow Carr post next. That might be tomorrow as the netbook doesn’t make things easy.

I’ll keep plugging away and next week I’ll try to get my laptop in for repair.

Moan, moan, moan, etc…

Today’s photo (which I already used on the enamelled coin post) shows a parcel I prepared for posting today – every stamp ends with half a penny, a coin that was withdrawn in 1984, In other words, all the stamps are at least 35 years old. The fact that we are now using them on envelopes indicates they may not have been a great investment.

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Stamps from 35 years ago…

The William Caxton stamp is actually from 1976 – 43 years ago. A lot has happened since then. But not to the stamp – it just lay there in an album and did nothing until I pulled it from a packet, licked the back and stuck it on an envelope. It’s now on its way to London, and probably to a bin.

Struggling with Technology

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The netbook is a little slow and awkward compared to my laptop, but it’s still charging, which is more than you can say for the laptop.

I’ve even managed to put some photos on, starting with the Fat Rascals from Wednesday. I’ll put some others on as I go along.

It seems that there is a USB port on the netbook, but I had failed to see it. – I’m not the sharpest tool in the box.

I tried downloading from the camera, but the netbook kept trying to reformat the card. Reformat sounds like an improvement, but as most of you will know it really means destroy the several thousand photos I have carelessly stored there. I don’t want to do that.

I’m going to have to improve the way I store my photos before something bad happens to them.

Eventually I loaded some photos onto a flash drive and transferred them that way.

At work, amongst other things, I loaded up some engraved coins., known as Love Tokens. They are quite common on Victorian coins and often crop up in mixed lots of coins. They were, it is usually said, engraved by young men for their girlfriends. If that is true there were a lot of talented young men out there.

Engraved sixpence

Engraved farthing

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Life after the Care Farm