Monthly Archives: January 2020

It’s Hard Work Being a Prince

I’ve no doubt that Prince Harry is a hard-working and sincere young man, by the standards of royal princes. Same goes for his brother. And his father.

However, if any of us were the children of royalty I’m sure we would all be doing a great job too. It is, I suggest, quite easy to be a patron of charities and suchlike if your mother or grandmother is the Queen.

I’m pretty sure that in addition to helping charity I’d be up to opening a few things, laying some wreaths, visiting the warmer parts of the world on “official duties” and causing outrage by dressing as a Nazi for a fancy dress party or taking all my clothes off at a party in Vegas.

Four Generations on Stamps

Ah, no I was wrong there. I’ve never dressed as a Nazi for a fancy dress party or stripped off at a party in Vegas or any other venue.

I suppose that’s because I had parents who taught me how to behave. Harry’s father is not, despite his green credentials, a great role model, and his mother, well what do I say? I know opinions are divided on Diana, and I’m not going to speak ill of the dead, but if she’d been from a council estate I think Social Services would probably have taken the children away for their own good.

Prince Philip has been a bit of a handful over the years, but he’s worked hard and only retired at the age of 96. The Queen is still going and strikes me as a decent sort.

I can’t think of anything bad about George VI.

Edward VIII, on the other hand, the selfish, playboy, petulant Nazi-lover, is not a man I have any great regard for.

Prince Harry

George V, I know little about, though I don’t think he was much of a parent.

Edward VII was a multiple adulterer as both King and Prince of Wales.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the family has form for self-indulgent, petulant behaviour, they have different values from mine and I’m finding myself becoming steadily more radical as I grow older.

I thought I was supposed to get more right wing as I aged but I’m actually thinking about starting a revolution and lining the Royal Family up against a wall with a firing squad.

George V

Edward VII

Queen Victoria

Various members of the Royal Family are shown, appearing on coins, stamps and School Attendance Medals.

Parcels,Pate and Pakora

9 Replies

Disclaimer – there is not much pakora in this post – but I’m a slave to alliteration so I lied. Sorry about that. I did have pakora in my sandwiches last week so I do at least have a slight excuse to mention them. They were sweet potato pakora and, to my mind, much nicer in sandwiches than the falafel we also tried.

Yesterday I breakfasted on porridge, took Julia to work, cursed several cyclists for their ridiculous strobe lights and arrived at the shop far too early.

I had to use a lot of old self-adhesive stamps where the glue has dried out. This means they have to be fixed using a stick of glue. In turn this means that several of them have to be detached from my finger tips. They were a really bad idea as the glue either dries out or forms an unbreakable bond with the backing paper. I’m sure they are good when they are new, but we, as you know, use a lot of old stamps.

They are First CLass Stamps, but no longer self-adhesive.

My first parcel of the day was a selection of gum cards bound for America. Imagine my surprise when my fourth parcel turned out to be a group of gum cards. To America. It was the same man, who quite clearly hadn’t thought things through.

Fortunately I have strong nerves and a steady hand so I was able to open the parcel with my trusty scalpel and add the second lot of cards. Two lots of cards. one lot of postage and a substantial refund. Hopefully he will be happy with that.

After parcels (and no more mishaps) I proceeded to do more banknotes. This an ongoing project. I have photos loaded up until Myanmar and will be moving on to Nepal tomorrow. I’m looking forward to Zimbabwe…

Nepal – bank notes and an unusual head-dress

In the evening I read and replied to other bloggers, wrote a blog post, then wrote a second blog post, though it was actually too late in the end.

Between the two I cooked ratatouille and sausages, made a batch of smoked mackerel pate and did the sandwiches.

The pate recipe is simple and I’m not sure why I don’t do it more often. Mackerel, cream cheese. yoghurt, spring onion, lemon juice, lemon zest, horseradish sauce and dijon mustard. Quantities range from two bits of mackerel and quite a lot of cream cheese down to juice and zest of half a lemon and a teaspoon of each of the seasonings. Next time I may leave out the yoghurt and add more horseradish. Or I may just buy the pate and avoid the epic amount of washing up it generates.

It has worked out rather well and Julia can have the third bit of fish. She likes fish. I eat it because it’s good for me. I used the small blender and two bits of fish was enough to fill it. I haven’t used it for a while and couldn’t work out how to get the bowl off . Julia eventually sorted it for me.

You can also make fish pate with smoked haddock, though I seem to remember you can do that with a fork. There’s a look of the shoe sole about a smoked mackerel fillet if you aren’t careful. So far it has provided a decent depth of filling for four medium cobs and will probably do at least two more.

It’s really quite amazing. Some smoked fish and stuff in a blender and I’m already daydreaming about a Michelin star.

Tonight we will finish the ratatouille, add some “French-style lentils” from a packet, bake a potato and have some veggie burgers. This week I have bought the burgers – next week I will be making them. I am also going to start cooking my own lentils. I have become very lazy.I always used to make my own but have drifted off course somewhere.

I’d better try making my own pakora too…

Banknotes of Laos

Sunset

23 Replies

I have frittered my night away and now have seven minutes to keep my new plan (two posts a day for a fortnight) on track.

It was light this evening. At 4.00 it was still almost daylight where it had been srak at tat time only a few weeks ago. This state persisted until I finished my shopping at 4.45 and walked out into a beautiful evening. The day had gone by that time but the sky was still bright with the remains of a sparkling winter day.

There was enough pink in the sky to bring the clouds to life, and depending on which way I was facing, or how high I was, wisps of cloud streaked the sky, or gathered in hollows to bathe the city buildings in a pink halo.

I eventually got home and was able to take more photos. My camera did its best to average out the colour, because that is what it is set up to do by the scientists who designed it. But it couldn’t completely remove the beauty.

Another attempt

I tried some of the special settings – moonlight, sunset, pop art, but they have atendency to alter rather than accentuate. The moonlight setting removed even more colour, the sunset a setting didn’t seem to make any difference and the pop art setting tended towards the garish end of things. I had thought of using the expression “gilding the lily” but the overall effect was like being hit in the face with a high-vis jacket. whilst standing under floodlights.but they mainly make things look garish

This is some sort of lesson in the use of modern technology to remove all that is good from our lives. Or add much that is tawdry.

Call me old-fashioned, or even a Luddite, but the modern taste seems to be for change rather than improvement.

Looks like I’ve missed the target, but I’d rather develop my theme than cut it short for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline. I will add some photographs now and post about 20 minutes late. Twenty minutes, in my flexible world, is not worth worrying about. Or even 30…

Garish & tawdry. The fact that it is blurred is the least of this picture’s worries…

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

11 Replies

There are of course the obvious ones – I regret ever starting smoking, I regret eating so much and exercising so little and I regret not being better with money.

I regret being an indifferent husband, a bad father and an ungrateful child.

Most of all, in this miserable, whining list, I regret not being able to make Julia see my marriage potential when we first met. It took me nine years to persuade her, though as she points out, it might have been easier to persuade her if I’d adopted a life of seclusion, sobriety and celibacy. I, in turn, point out that if she’d married me I wouldn’t have needed the wine, women and song to dull the pain of rejection. I am not by nature, introspective or pale and interesting.

To this day, after 30 years of marriage, she remains unimpressed by my explanation.

Two of my favourite things…

I was born too late to drive a Bentley Speed Six or fly a Sopwith Camel and I didn’t realise you could use a metal detector to find gold in Australia until it was too late. On the other hand, in the absence of parachutes and decent brakes, my regrets are tinged with a feeling of relief.

As for Australia, my suspicions about snakes and spiders mean I am not fully committed to the idea of wandering round with a metal detector, regardless of the possibilities.

You can, after all, find gold in Scotland if you are prepared to brave a cold river.

Finally, I confess that although I did many things I would come to regret, my main regrets are about chances I didn’t take, challenges I ducked and opportunities I missed. There is probably a good quote about this somewhere on the net, but at the moment all I can think of is “A man who never made a mistake never made anything.”

It doesn’t quite fit the subject, but it does provide a good place to break off. And it’s probably a good place to put regrets into perspective. It’s all very well looking back, wondering about “what ifs” and plotting different courses for my life, but it all points to one thing. Destiny needed me to be in Preston on a particular day in 1980. I was there. And I’ve never regretted it.

A pattern develops…

Silver, Survival and Salvage

10 Replies

Here, at last, is the information on the Gibraltar £20 coin I mentioned a few days ago.

There is a tradition in Numismatic circles for collecting coins from shipwrecks, indeed we had a talk on this subject just a few weeks ago at the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. Sadly, I had one of my senior moments and completely forgot about it, even though I had intended going. I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of shipwreck and treasure and it’s a collecting field that has always interested me. However, you can’t collect everything.

There has also been a fascination for collecting relics of ships. It is still possible, if you go round antique centres, to pick up small barrels and oddments like paper knives made from the deck timber of ships like the Warspite, Iron Duke and Ajax. Copper from Nelson’s Victory has also been used to make souvenirs, such as this copper fob from the British and Foreign which we currently have for sale on eBay.

Despite the photos, it’s only about an inch across.

Copper Fob HMS Victory BFSS 1905

British & Foreign Sailor’s Society

Copper Fob HMS Victory BFSS 1905

More recently, I bought some key rings made from the bronze of the Queen Mary’s propellers, and also have some copper cash coins from the Admiral Gardner, which sunk on the Goodwin Sands in 1809.

This year, I have seen mementoes made from the silver recovered from the SS Gairsoppa.

The Gairsoppa, originally built as the War Roebuck, was completed in 1919 by Palmers of Jarrow, just in time to miss the Great War, and was named after the city of Gerusoppa in the state of Mysore. She had one touch of drama in her career in the Merchant Fleet, with just one touch of adventure when she ran aground at Fulta Point on the South Eastern coast of India in 1930.

Palmers closed in 1933 after a long struggle to stay in business during the depression, and the unemployment this caused precipitated the Jarrow March.

In early 1941, whilst carrying a cargo of pig iron, tea and silver, she joined a convoy at Freetown, Sierra Leone to complete a voyage from India to the UK. Running short of fuel, she had to reduce speed, drop out of the convoy and head for Ireland to take on coal. On 16 February 1941, she was spotted by a Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft and was attacked by U-101 later that day, being sunk by a torpedo attack.

There were 82 men on board. Only one lifeboat launched successfully and out of the six men on board three died in the next two weeks. The boat capsized on the fourteenth day and the Lizard lifeboat was only able to rescue one survivor, Second Officer R. H. Ayres.

Sunk by submarine, fourteen days in an open boat, five men dying before rescue…

I can write the facts, but I can’t come up with anything that remotely does justice to the experience. While writing this post I found this item on an on-line forum – amazing to read the words of the man in question. His account doesn’t match up with the Wiki entry, but I suspect it’s more accurate.

The researcher who contacted him did a fine job, as modesty could have prevented us ever knowing the full story.

The eleven British casualties are recorded on theTower Hill Memorial, or, in two cases, on a headstone in the cemetery at Landewednack. The seventy one Indian seamen are commemorated on the Chittagong War Memorial.

The epic nature of the story does not end there, because in 2011 an American salvage company located the wreck and, under licence from the British Government, began lifting the silver. So far they have recovered 61 tonnes, or just over half of the 110 tonnes known to be on board. At 15,000 feet deep (half a mile deeper than the RMS Titanic) this is the record for a salvage operation.

Of course, if the ship didn’t contain silver this would be considered plundering, piracy or desecration of a war grave. It’s amazing how a mountain of silver can make the moral compass swing.

In 2014 the Royal Mint struck 20,000 Quarter Ounce Britannias, using some of the silver.

The Gibraltar Mint followed up in 2016 with a specially made £20 coin, featuring a seafarer design and containing Gairsoppa silver.

SS Gairsoppa Silver Coin

Gibraltar £20 Coin 2016

SS Gairsoppa Silver Coin

The title of the coin is taken from a John Masefield poem, For All Seafarers. It isn’t, in my opinion, one of his best, but it does make a number of telling points.

For all Seafarers

Even in peace, scant quiet is at sea;
In war, each revolution of the screw,
Each breath of air that blows the colours free.
May be the last life movement known to you.

Death, thrusting up or down, may disunite
Spirit from body, purpose from the hull,
With thunder, bringing leaving of the light,
With lightning letting nothingness annul.

No rock, no danger, bears a warning sign,
No lighthouse scatters welcome through the dark;
Above the sea, the bomb ; afloat, the mine;
Beneath, the gangs of the torpedo-shark.

Year after year, with insufficient guard,
Often with, none, you have adventured thus:
Some, reaching harbour, maimed and battle-scarred,
Some, never more, returning, lost to us.

But, if you ‘scape, tomorrow, you will steer
To peril once again, to bring us bread,
To dare again, beneath the sky off ear,
The moon-moved graveyard of your brothers dead.

You were salvation to the army lost,
Trapped, but for you, upon the Dunkirk beach;
Death barred the way to Russia, but you crosst;
To Crete and Malta, but you succoured each.

Unrecognised, you put us in your debt;
Unthanked, you enter, or escape, the grave;
Whether your land remember or forget
You saved the land, or died to try to save.

John Masefield

Catching Up (Part 1)

20 Replies

When WP glitched and locked me out I had quite a lot of things building up for use in the blog. A good day out often gives me material for two or three posts and I was looking forward to an easy couple of days with no need to worry about subjects.

I’m back on it now, and ready to write a post on the subject of our visit to Springfields, one of our local shopping outlets. It’s not the most exciting destination, but it has a number of craft shops and a bookshop, of sorts. It used to be a show garden for the tulip industry and the base for the annual tulip festival. It was very boring for an 11-year-old.

These days the gardens are much depleted, the garden centre is nothing more than a massive gift shop and it is, to be honest, very boring for a 61-year-old.

Even Julia struggles to find something of interest these days. They have just announced an expansion plan but as the interesting shops keep closing I’m not sure that more boring shops is the way to go…

The future of retail, in the face of internet competition, is uncertain, but plenty of people seem keen to pump money into redeveloping large centres. I’m glad I’m not involved in spending millions on retail projects. I don’t always sleep well now, but I suspect I’d sleep less well if I’d just decided to spend a million pounds on new shops.

I bought a couple of detective novels, but couldn’t even find three decent ones to qualify for the “3 for £5” offer. That’s twice I’ve been failed by The Works in the last month.

It was quiet, as you can see from the photos, and the previous photos of our coffee shop visit. However, there was a cheery picture to be had, as I was able to watch some workmen taking down the Christmas lights. Things always seem a little better once we are able to clear Christmas away and get on with the rest of the year.

Taking down the lights – Springfields, Spalding

The final photo is a new hessian bag I bought from the bookshop. I didn’t really need it, as we had a reusable bag with us, but I thought it would make a good photograph for the visit report.

The New Hessian Bag

The New Project

37 Replies

It’s nothing grand, but I will shortly be embarking on a fortnight of writing two posts a day. This is an effort to catch up both with my material, and the target I set myself some time ago. If I do one week of two posts a day I catch up with the things I missed in the week I was cast into the wilderness by WP. If I do two weeks of it I should return myself somewhere on course for the target I set myself a while back. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the target was or where I wrote it down. It probably isn’t that important if I can’t remember it.

Anyway, the new project is two posts a day for fourteen days.

This isn’t one of them because I’m going to prepare myself overnight and start tomorrow, refreshed by a good night’s sleep and provisioned with a suitable breakfast of eggs and bacon. I may have gone a little bit veggie recently, but a serious project requires a serious start.

In the old days they would have employed a haruspex to check the omens and probably have made a small sacrifice. In this case we will use the eggs rather than the entrails and I’ll let the pig make the sacrifice. Having just linked to Wiki I’m amazed at just how much I didn’t know about such things – I didn’t know, for instance, that they also used sheep for divination and specialised in livers. There is always so much to learn. I also learned a new thing about Thomas Becket. Who would have thought that a Christian saint would have dabbled in entrails? Didn’t do him much good in the end, but such is life.

The new posts will be at least 250 words long and will include photographs and links. They may. on a good day, include wit, humour and wisdom.

I had thought of writing it in an upbeat tone, just to make it more of a challenge, but even as I wrote the words, I shuddered. It is, frankly, more likely that if I need a challenge I will write in Latin. I am not a Classics scholar, but I am even less of an optimist.

Sunrise, Trent Bridge

Cream Tea with plastic

Magistrates’ Court Medallion

Today’s photos are recycled. They are photos I took 12 months ago and serve the artistic purpose of highlighting the cyclical nature of life. Or they may highlight the amount of waffle talked by artists, and be reused because I’m too lazy to walk to the other room and fetch my camera card.

An Addiction to WordPress

40 Replies

Just over five years ago I wandered into WordPress with the intention of practising my writing, gaining some publicity for the Quercus Community group and learning a bit more about Social Media.

As things turned out, I did learn to write faster, even if the accuracy and quality is a bit uneven. The group closed. I’ll say no more about that or I will find myself dwelling on how we were stabbed in the back by a hypocrite. I realised, after a while, that I wasn’t meant for Social Media. If they had Anti-Social Media I am your man.

I first learned there was more to WP than just writing about myself when I read a few posts. One that stuck in my mind was by some doddery old geezer in Hampshire. He pottered about, took photos and ended all his blogs with a description of what he had for tea and what he drank with it.

Five years later I’m addicted to his blog. Whether this is because it’s deceptively beguiling, or whether it’s because I’ve turned into a doddery old git is difficult to say.

His legions of followers argue for the former, but a quick look in the mirror also suggests the latter is not far from the truth.

And that sums up my WordPress experience – gentle addiction. I have really missed the reading and writing and companionship over the last week while I have been condemned to cyber-limbo. This applies to all of you who haven’t been mentioned too.

This post is a bit gushing and upbeat for my taste, which I blame on reading all these Pollyanna-style American blog posts. Don’t think it’s going to be repeated. I missed you all. I’ve admitted it. And I don’t think we need to mention it again.

I am now going to visit the blog of a man whom I regard as my spiritual mentor. Thanks to him I now take my porridge with salt and water and have learned more about choral singing than I am ever likely to need, bearing in mind that I have a voice that grates like the creaking of hinges on a crypt door.

Those of you who require an antidote to the modern fashion for inappropriate cheerfulness could do worse than join me.

I’m off to find some photos now, probably the ones of sunrise which I unwillingly took a couple of days ago when, due to the stupidity of an auctioneer, I had to go to the Sorting Office to pick up a parcel.

Sunrise – Arnold, Notts

Sunrise – Wilford, Notts

Sunrise – Arnold, Notts

A Week is a Long Time on WordPress

32 Replies

And a week is even longer when you can’t get on WordPress…

I had been having intermittent trouble looking at comments for a while, but thought it would probably correct itself. Then, about a week ago, I switched on and couldn’t connect with the site. I tried the other computer, with the same result.

I left it a day because both computers are a bit old, and tried it again, having given them time to rest and regather their strength, or whatever computers do. No connection.

It took a while to find a way of getting help from WP, because I’ve just been used to switching on, clicking a few buttons and getting connected. I couldn’t get onto WP to ask for help and I couldn’t remember addresses or passwords or anything.

Eventually I managed to find help and WP proved very helpful. I was able to provide proof that I owned the site, despite knowing very little about it (tip here – if you don’t remember passwords and things, at least keep some of the reciepts/payment details as proof).

I secured a new password, signed in and…brick wall. I hit the same blank page.

I left it a while and tried again next day. This time I couldn’t even get onto WP, let alone the blank page which originally troubled me. I had been going to contact a few people via Comments and tell them I was temporarily, and involuntarily, off WP but had left it too late – I was completely shut out.

Again I left it. Tried and failed and, after spending several days of rising panic at being deprived of my daily fix of writing about myself (how vain I am, it seems), I decided to register a new account tonight.

As the log-in screen came up, I gave it one last try and connected. I don’t know how, or why, and if anyone explains it I probably still won’t understand.

So I’m back and ready to start writing again. The first thing I am going to work on is a note about keeping proper records so you don’t find yourself unable to log in.

Horses, stable doors, bolted…

Scone Chronicles XXVIII

26 Replies

Cafe Nero, Springfields Outlet Centre, Lincolnshire. A scone-free report.

We hadn’t expected much from the day as we had an electrician coming round to give us a quote and British Gas would only tell us it was between 8.00 and 1.00. Fortunately he texted ahead and arrived just after 9.00. The news was not good – we need to declutter a lot more before they can start ripping floorboards up to rewire.

That left us at a loose end by 10.00 so we set off to look for adventure, This is “adventure” as we now define it, rather than how we used to define it. Standing on one leg to put my trousers on is dangerous enough for me, so we set off to seek lunch and relaxation.

In the car we discussed our spending. Julia is feeling guilty about the amount she spends on herself – which is basically gym membership and hair appointments. She worked it out as £3,000 a year. She really is a bear of very little brain – cute but rubbish at mental arithmetic. The true cost of this spending was, as I pointed out, just £600 a year. Having saved us £2,400 I felt quite good about things. This also diverted attention from my eBay habit, which has been getting out of hand recently.

At Springfields we had a look round The Works and confirmed that the stock situation is woeful, before deciding to have a coffee. Considering our earlier conversation, this ironic as coffee is one of the hidden costs of modern life.

Two Coffees

Cafe Nero seemed rather empty, to say it was lunch time.

The coffee – the cheapest they had, was just under £5 for the two of us. If we do that once a week it will cost us £250 in a year, which is a lot of haircuts.

We didn’t have anything to eat. The staff were neither good nor bad. They let dogs in. The one that came in whined a lot then dog and master went to sit outside. Fair enough – better than tying it up outside. Chairs are comfortable. Snacks looked well presented but we were saving our appetites so didn’t have anything.

They now have a vegan range, which seems to be the new fashion. You may be expecting some sarcastic comment about vegans, evolutionary dead ends and modern fashions, but you will be disappointed. I like vegans.

Though I couldn’t eat a whole one.

Cafe Nero Vegan Menu

The sound you hear when viewing the vegan menu is that of a bandwagon being jumped on. Once Gregg’s went for the vegan sausage roll, everyone followed.

All in all, nothing to rave about and nothing to complain about. It’s a more leisurely atmosphere than Costa Coffee further down the centre, and I enjoyed the break.

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm