Monthly Archives: September 2019

Time to Stand and Stare

I’m going to post about the garden to start with. It’s a nice calm place to start.

We bought sausage baguettes from the Co-op on Wilford Lane and ate them as we watched the geese fly over on their daily trip to the river. It’s an extravagance but it’s nice to eat out once in a while, and it’s hardly Babylonian in its excess.

There was a robin, a crow, a few pigeons, some magpies and a flight of about a dozen long-tailed tits. You’s think I’d manage some decent photos but I had the small camera and it was set for close-ups. By the time I’d adjusted it I normally found I was zooming in on an empty branch.

The flowers were less flighty and I even got a couple of wildlife shots, though bees and caterpillars aren’t the hardest of subjects.

Caterpillar and flower. My flimsy knowledge of plants and wildlife is revealed for all to see.

Safer ground here – it’s a bee and a nasturtium

Imagine my mind like an over-full bookcase. As you force a volume of coin knowledge in at one end a book of insect knowledge falls off the other end.

Eventually the Council House clock struck nine and I had to leave for work. I may cover the events of the day later – breaking a grandmother’s heart, talking to a lunatic and cynically laying a trap for a potential young collector.

Those, of course, are just the highlights.

Runner Beans – guess what’s for tea

In Victorian times they were grown for their decorative flowers rather than the beans. You have to wonder who first decided to taste them.

Antidote to Happiness

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I had an interesting phone call today – someone trying to sell me “old coins”.

They were actually sets of football medallions from the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, which were sold or given away in supermarkets at the time. They are virtually worthless and even with the help of eBay they are almost unsaleable. We buy them if they come in with other things and even then we try to avoid them because they clutter the place up and encourage people to bring in even more useless junk.

Like Gresham’s Law, in which bad money drives out good, a shelf of unsaleable crap seems to just grow and grow until you become a junk shop rather than a coin shop. Actually, that’s more like Topsy, but I’m trying to sound intellectual.

I apologised, even though it’s not my fault, and said that we didn’t buy them. This started an argument as the caller pointed out that we were a coin shop and these were “over 30 years old” so we had to buy them. (As I write that, I realise they are only 20 years old).

I’d been in the middle of a tricky email, using Google Translate, to an idiot on eBay, and this new idiot had interrupted me, so I’m afraid I didn’t put things as tactfully as I might have done.

I could have been less blunt in telling him we had coins that were 2,000 years old so 30 years wasn’t a selling point.

But the problem really started when I told him they were medallions not coins. He couldn’t understand the difference. And I, unfortunately, was even less tactful in my explanation of why they weren’t coins. Well, to be fair to me, I was tactful on the first and second time I tried to explain it. I was, I admit, a bit sharp on my third attempted explanation. He just couldn’t grasp the ideas that not all round flat things are coins or that I was free not to buy them.

It ended with him shouting “I’m not an effing idiot you know!” and disconnecting the call. (I have altered the language slightly.)

Of course, he was wrong in that too, because he was an idiot.

After that, I went back to the email. We have an unhappy Spanish customer but we aren’t sure why. He has now sent us two messages in Spanish and the translation websites are struggling. I can’t work out what he is actually unhappy about – it seems that I got it wrong on my first attempt but his second email is no more help. I’ve composed a message using short sentences and very simple concepts in the hope that the translator won’t garble it.

No doubt we will sort it out one way or another.

This was probably the sort of day I needed as an antidote to my recent unusual happiness.

Happiness and Haibun

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I’ve just had a rejection letter from an editor.

My current levels of happiness are such that I have offered him my sincere thanks for his feedback and have already rewritten one of the pieces to send elsewhere later this week.

I am seriously worried about my levels of positivity.

It’s not natural, it’s not me and I know it will all end in tears. I’m wondering if I’m associating with too many Americans. What with Pollyanna and a can-do attitude you lot ought to be quarantined.

I am, of course, a little bit annoyed at the rejection because I’ve clearly sent out sub-standard work and I need to tighten up on it. Fortunately the feedback I was given made the rewrite on one of them quite easy. That will be going to an editor who has never accepted anything from me before. It is very likely to be rejected again, because I don’t think the two of us are on the same wavelength, but you never know…

I’ve actually looked back on one or two posts that mention rejection and seem to have taken it in my stride. However, there was one double rejection that I had, which did stop me in my tracks for a few weeks. I can’t find any mention of it in the blog and may have kept it to myself. That’s how you look successful – talk about the acceptances and gloss over the rejections.

I have had, if I remember rightly, I’ve had nine acceptances and six rejections in the 12 months since I started sending things out. It’s all written down but it’s in another room and I’m lazy. As I started off with three rejections the average isn’t looking too bad.

In some ways, acceptance is worse than rejection. Every time I’m accepted I worry about if I’ll ever manage it again, or if editors will ever realise I actually don’t have a clue about what I’m doing.

The key to a good haibun is, it seems, a good haiku, which should be the first thing you write. Well, that’s what a number of well-respected people have said on more than one occasion. It makes sense. You should not, they add, start writing haibun until you are having haiku accepted regularly by reputable journals.

If I’d known that in the beginning I’d never have written haibun. In truth, I started writing them because my haiku are rubbish and I was hoping to conceal this by hiding them in a chunk of prose.

My writing method is to write the prose and then wait, sometimes for weeks, until a thought for the haibun presents itself. If I make a half-decent attempt the editor often suggests improvements, which I immediately agree to.

It may not be the classic method but it seems to work.

Happiness

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The house needs repair, summer is ending, I am old and arthritic. Politics has degenerated to infantile levels, nuclear war is just around the corner and the planet is dying.

For some reason, as detailed yesterday, I am inexplicably happy.

There is quite clearly no reason to be happy, and I don’t consider it to be normal. I prefer gloom and think that a sensible man should expect nothing from life because that is what life is likely to give him.

Botham’s Whitby – an excellent pork pie

I could probably go to the doctor for pills – there must be something I can take to calm me down a bit – though they are likely, as so often, to find something else wrong with me. I wouldn’t mind if it was something interesting but at my age it’s usually something that involves taking your trousers down.

With an interesting disease I could have a whole new career ahead of me. If you can build a modern TV career on being from Essex what could you do if you had scrofula, also known as the King’s Evil or, less interestingly, cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis. That has good historical roots, gives a chance to talk about coins and I feel less guilty making jokes about it than I do about leprosy.

Julia – looking sophisticated in Bakewell

Leprosy used to be a good area for humour when I was younger, as Monty Python proves, but when you read up about it and the fact that more than 50 kids a day are diagnosed with Leprosy worldwide it doesn’t seem so funny.

When you think about it, I do have a lot to be happy about.

Maybe I should look on the bright side of life.

Tea, scones and sunshine. Bettys, Harlow Carr

I added the photos later, when WP was working properly – they are things which make me feel happy. And in case you were wondering, they are in no particular order.

Brimming with Bonhomie

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I’m absolutely full of it today. I enjoyed writing about the sweethearts yesterday, the boss is going away on a trip, and, when I returned home tonight, my anticoagulant results were in.

They were spot on target and I don’t have a retest until early December. This is a better way to live – free from the tyranny of medical tests – though it does mean that I tend to bleed a little too freely when I nick a finger tip in the kitchen.

I must improve my knife skills. Or make Julia do more of the cooking.

Last night we had a very enjoyable talk at the Numismatic Society.

They weren’t big on portraits in the early days of coinage, but the production method didn’t really lend itself to quality work. This is Edward I from a Canterbury Mint penny of 1272-1307. It could, however, be any one of a number of Kings, or even Shrek

I grant you, Coins in the later Medieval Countryside is not a title calculated to cause rapturous outbursts of enthusiasm, even amongst the members of the Numismatic Society. There were a number of familiar faces missing, but as they are normally the ones who sit at the back and mutter it actually improved the evening.

The talk was mainly about the archaeology of the coins from Rendlesham in Suffolk, which seems to have been an active high-status estate in Anglo-Saxon and early Mediaeval times. It is close to Sutton Hoo, which is a lot more famous and, let’s face it, a lot more interesting.

Long cross penny of Edward I – Lincoln Mint 1270

The project at Rendlesham has consisted, as far as the coins go, in using metal detectors in a scientific manner to search surrounding fields, and graph the types and frequency of coins, to give an idea of they way money was used. They have found over a thousand coins during the project and one of the questions coming out of the research is whether other sites could produce as many coins if they were worked in a similar intensive way.

Another equally important question, for me at least, was why did they never tell you there were jobs like this when I was at school? A job playing with coins, writing books and giving talks to numismatic societies – what more could you want?

Anyway, it’s time for me to go and practice my knife skills – roast veg with cumin served with steak and kidney pies and fruit crumble. As long as I don’t cut either of my typing fingers I should be OK.

Sorry about the photos – they are from an old post and could have been presented better. Unfortunately WP has been acting up again and I can’t work on them tonight.

Blood, toil, sweat and sweetheart brooches

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Today started well when I had just a short wait to have my arm stabbed. The blood flowed well and I was able to et out and get Julia to work in plenty of time. I’m hoping the free flow of blood indicates that it is going to give me another five or six weeks before the re-test. Tomorrow’s post will tell.

We will spool forward to my recent telephone conversation with the doctor. It seems that while testing for the arthritis consultation they took it upon themselves to test for liver function using a new test they can now do.

So, I had a test done for something we hadn’t discussed, for a condition I’m showing no symptoms of, to get a result that isn’t germane to the current issue so that I can be investigated for a result that isn’t any cause for concern and that isn’t going to cause any problems.

Meanwhile, I still have trouble dressing myself because of the arthritis in my fingers and would like to get that sorted before winter sets in.

But that doesn’t matter because they have a new test they can do for something that’s more interesting. I’ve agreed to have a scan because I was so tightly wound up by this point that I was on the point of being rude, and I’ve been brought up to be polite. I also don’t believe in being rude to people who may have to check my prostate at some time in the future.

But I am not happy.

On a brighter note, Number One son will be home tonight. He’s having two nights in Nottingham then going up to Leeds to look for a job. This is good as we get to see him and discuss his trip, then we get rid of him. This, despite what Julia may think, is the natural cycle of life. You are born, you grow, you get a job, you leave home and pay your own bills. Then it starts over again. You settle down, you have kids, you moan about their effect on your finances…

The grandparents turn up and get them excited, give them fizzy drinks then go home and leave the consequences. I’m looking forward to that bit.

In the middle of all this, I had a delivery in the shop.

My military sweetheart collection is progressing in a shaky and uncertain manner. Like all my collections it is under-financed, under-researched and badly neglected. I’ve decided to put a bit more structure into my collecting. With the sweethearts I’m going to start looking at eBay a couple of times a month and buying something that seems reasonably priced. If I don’t find anything it doesn’t matter. If I do, it will be a bonus. If I buy one item a month for the next ten years that will be 120 extra brooches for the collection.

Hampshire Regiment Sweetheart Brooch

Royal Scots Greys Sweetheart Brooch

Lothian & Border Horse Sweetheart brooch

Last week I bought a lot of brooches from eBay consisting of six pieces. I therefore stuck to my principles (just about) but managed to add five to the collection – one, I think, is destined for the swaps box. They have a definite Scottish theme to them with four out of the six being Scottish Regiments.

They are a sort you don’t often see – made to look like a hanging banner by folding celluloid over a pin. I suspect they were cheap at the time and , because they don’t look like jewellery, they didn’t survive in such numbers as the more durable and attractive metal ones.

Royal Scots Sweetheart Brooch 1

Royal Scots Sweetheart Brooch 2

Royal Engineers (Broken Pin)

At 600 words that’s more of a memoir than a post, so I’ll let you go now. Thanks for sticking with it so long.

Plans, Politics and Phlebotomy

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The day has gone so fast, as have my good intentions.

Despite this, it’s been a pleasant day. We had butterflies in the garden all day and the goldfinch on the TV aerial keeps singing. We’ve lived here 30 years and we’ve never had such a good butterfly year, or a singing goldfinch. Things aren’t all bad, despite the weather, the politics and the slide into old age.

The plan had been to get up early, for instance, but at seven this morning it underwent alteration, and I went back to bed. It’s been a bit nippy over the last few days and bed seemed such a nice warm idea.

From there the deviation from plan just seemed to snowball, and now, with an hour before midnight, I need to blog, make sandwiches sort my stuff for tomorrow and get to bed. Six am start tomorrow, ready for another blood test.

So many blood tests…

Small Tortoiseshell

Ten years ago “phlebotomy” was an interesting new word, a couple of years ago I still couldn’t spell it properly, and today it is woven into the very fabric of my life. I say woven, but embroidered might be more accurate. Which, of course, allows me to use the word “needlepoint”.

At times like this it’s probably good to spend a few minutes thinking about how lucky I am compared to some other people. I have a bed to get back into, for instance, and a medical system that cares enough about me to stab me in the arm on a regular basis without charge.

Of course, this may change once we leave the EU. If we ever do.

I have a waking nightmare, which is becoming more real as time moves on. It isn’t about shortages, or poor quality food. It’s not even about the economy or that blonde buffoon being in power. I’m simply afraid that, like a hamster, we are all trapped in a wheel and no matter how fast we run we won’t be able to break free from the current cycle of politics, with its lies and low-quality leadership.

I actually saw a car on the road today with hand-written posters detailing how the European Union had been formed by the CIA as part of America’s plot to control the world.

This is what happens when you let idiots have an opinion. First you have to listen to them talking rubbish, then you have to leave Europe, and now we have to read posters about the CIA and world domination.

I was about to suggest that the CIA, from some of the things I’ve read over the years, would probably have trouble tying its own shoelaces, let alone dominating the world, when I found this site.

Coins and the holes where coins used to be…

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I’ve been looking back through a few old posts and have noticed that I seem to be running to a pattern. I moan, I rant, I explain why things are chaotic and I discuss the shortcomings of other road users. For variety I sometimes describe how my wife bullies, browbeats or outwits me.

Once in a while I complain about my aches and pains, disparage the medical profession and denigrate editors.

I also have problems with technology. Considering that I have problems with such basic things as sleeping and the use of apostrophes, it’s hardly surprising that technology beats me. I say “beats me”… It doesn’t actually beat me; I have three sledge hammers in the tool shed so in purely physical terms I have the upper hand. I suppose what I mean is that technology confuses me into a state of near surrender, but if the machines ever get too cocky I have the ultimate sanction.

This is actually the start of a post I wrote two days ago. It wasn’t good enough, so I sidelined it, made the sandwiches, played Scrabble against the computer, lost again, and went to sleep.

Tonight I wrote the first few paragraphs of a much better post, and lost it. I’m not actually sure where it went. Here, we return to my earlier thoughts and review my comments on technology. The day when I hammer my computer flat is rapidly approaching.

I have therefore “improved” the previous attempt by throwing half of it away and grafting a few moans on to the end.

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Today I spent much of my time in the shop entering cards for coin year sets onto eBay. If you consider coins dull, and I do, then the empty cards for making up year sets are, I promise you, duller.

I have had the results from my last chest X-Ray and it was OK, I do have a chest. This is handy as it gives me somewhere to keep my lungs, which, in turn, allows me to breathe, an activity considered essential for good health. It also stops your shirt getting messy. Imagine the laundry situation if your lungs were externally mounted.

Unfortunately I failed my last blood test. I do have blood, and it seems to be going round OK, but it seems that I need to talk to a doctor about it. I can do this on the phone but, there was a six day waiting list for a telephone consultation slot. I take it that there is nothing urgent about whatever problem their expensive testing machinery has come up with.

And that is why I find it reasonably easy to criticise doctors.

I now have a new date with the specialist and am hoping that in four weeks I may have a diagnosis. I bet they are going to tell me I have arthritis. I know this because it is following exactly the same path as my last outbreak. The difference is that it took just over a week to sort it out last time and it will have taken about eleven this time.

I have added a few coins to the end, as a relief from the hundreds of empty holes staring from the other pictures like hundreds of dead eye sockets. There’s a Battle of Hastings 50p, a Magna Carta £2 and moon landing £5 from Guernsey,

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The £5, which is from 10 years ago shows early use of colour, which later became the garishly awful later use of colour. It doesn’t look the thin end of a wedge does it?.

Gotcha!

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Finally, after days of trying, I got some half-decent butterfly shots. The newly hatched Red Admiral finally held still for me, though the windy conditions were a bit of a challenge. The Red Valerian does tend to move a bit in the wind.

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Then the Small Tortoiseshell – the first of the year in the front garden – stopped by. No Painted Ladies today, but I’m happy with the others.

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More later. I just wanted to get these posted.

The Scone Chronicles XXIII – Afternoon Tea. Again.

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The Afternoon Teas were actually ten days apart, despite the two reports being published on the same day. Sorry if this seems like overkill, but it’s just the chaotic nature of my life.

I have reported on Mrs Botham’s Tearoom before. They produce excellent pork pies and capital crab sandwiches.

Today we selected Afternoon Tea. This proved to be a good decision.

At £12.95 it’s a mid-range option compared to the prices of the other teas we’ve had (though the comparison is with the special offer price at the St James Hotel).

It’s a typical Mrs Botham’s production, with freshly made sandwiches and a bit of salad with citrus dressing. This dressing did make a couple of the sandwiches soggy on the lower edge, as they were served on the same plate, but it wasn’t much of a problem as they didn’t have long to wait before consumption, and it’s all going to end up in the same place anyway.

Botham’s Whitby

They were a definite level up from the curly Bettys sandwiches. They may have benefitted from some variety of brown bread, but let’s be honest, there is a reason why soft white bread is a top seller.

Apart from being fresh they were also well-filled, the cucumber being particularly good.

The cakes were, for me, the least good bit of the meal. They were good and fresh, being baked by Bothams and sold in the shop downstairs. The meringue was fine, and about twice the size of the St James one.

The chocolate thing (my command of cakey vocabulary is buckling under the strain here) seemed to have a biscuit in it, probably with hazel nuts, and was difficult to manage with a cake fork, though it did break up when bitten, It was OK, but I wouldn’t go and buy one in the shop as a result of the one I ate.

The fondant fancy was lovely, but rather sweet. And if I say it’s too sweet that is serious sugar, as I’m not known for my sensitivity to sugar. The icing was too sweet and the creamy bit inside was too large and too sweet. I’m a lover of fondant fancies, so this is hurting me to write.

The scones were nice and soft with good texture. We had a clotted cream portion each and it was a perfect way to round off the meal, along with another cup of tea. The tea was prompt and plentiful and there was a jug of hot water to top the pot up.

Sandwiches – they best we’ve had. The salad was good, though you know my thoughts on salad. Cakes too sweet. Scone – lovely. Tea – excellent. Surroundings and service – excellent.

So far, this is the winner.

Botham’s Whitby

Did I mention the pork pies? We brought some home. I had one for tea, with a cheese scone and soup, and had one for lunch with my sandwiches. Don’t be tempted by the pork and apple.

If you are in Yorkshire looking for an afternoon tea, I’d definitely go for Botham’s in preference to Bettys.

This, of course, brings me to another point. Bettys has dropped the apostrophe and Botham’s have kept it. I think the lesson is clear here. Old fashioned values still rule where Afternoon Tea is concerned.

Please note the picture of the stair-lift leading up to the tea room – they know their market!

Stairlift at Botham’s tearoom, Whitby

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Life after the Care Farm

Monthly Archives: September 2019

Time to Stand and Stare

Antidote to Happiness

Happiness and Haibun

Happiness

Brimming with Bonhomie

Blood, toil, sweat and sweetheart brooches

Plans, Politics and Phlebotomy

Coins and the holes where coins used to be…

Gotcha!

The Scone Chronicles XXIII – Afternoon Tea. Again.