Monthly Archives: December 2022

The Frozen Nozzle Problem

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We have put men on the moon. We have designed drones, spy satellites and mobile phones you can watch TV on. But it seems beyond human wits to design a system for washing windscreens on a cold day.

No doubt I could search the internet for a cunning mixture to stop the water freezing, but it would probably be strong enough to strip paint or damage passing pedestrians. I once had a plastic attachment that you inserted into the coolant hoses in the car. It used the heat from the water in the car’s cooling system to warm water from the washing system and, theoretically, stop it from freezing. Unfortunately, when it is cold enough to stop your nozzles from thawing all day, a drop of warm water held several feet away from the nozzles in a plastic gadget, is not going to do much.

However, I stick to my point. If you can kill people on the other side of the Earth, watch terrorists in training or see  cats playing the piano on your phone, we could surely invent a system for heating the nozzles of windscreen washer systems. I really must ask Number Two Son how Canadians do it. You can’t possibly go through a Canadian winter with an increasingly  opaque windscreen and no forward vision. There must be some way of washing windscreens in winter.

I did develop a way when the washers on my Ford Escort went wrong. Things on Ford Escorts were always going wrong. That’s how we used to learn about fixing cars. My system, which I employed for a 90 mile trip in winter, consisted of a bottle of water and an arm. When the windscreen grew too dirty with the mud thrown up from the road I wound my window down and squirted water from the bottle onto the screen.

It worked tolerably well but I quickly developed a Mark II system. It was like the original system but I used to stop the car and walk round to the front before pouring the water. That way the slipstream didn’t blow half a pint of freezing water up your sleeve.

In case you can’t tell, it’s been a cold day in Nottingham, my car windows are dirty and I have not had to use all my brain for work.

I also have a picture of the cake from yesterday. My sister emailed it to me.

Cheese, Cake and Christmas

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We went to Downtown at Grantham today. It’s a shop the size of an aircraft hanger with an attached garden centre. You can buy expensive furniture, expensive tat for Christmas and boring books . Unusually, you can still buy tools and seeds in the Garden Centre. Most local “Garden Centres” are big on giftware and a bit light on the gardening side of things. It attracts old people like a moth to a flame.

It isn’t really my natural habitat. It was OK when it used to do a lot of discounting and the book section was larger, but over the years it became ever more dull and we stopped going. When my sister suggested meeting at a halfway point it seemed a good idea.

We ended up spending four hours there – from elevenses to a late lunch. It started with tea and cake and ended with lasagne and chips. In the middle I bought a cheap diary, a few Christmas presents and sat around as the womenfolk shopped. At one point  a confused elderly gent tried to follow me into the disabled toilet. As I tried to pull the door shut he pulled it open. It was a bad bit of design – as my door opened it covered the door to the Gents and was a bit awkward from a social point of view.  I have checked for the etiquette of such a situation but there appears to be no recommended way of coping, so I merely pointed out his error and pointed him to the correct door.

Cropwell Bishop 

We went home via the creamery at Cropwell Bishop and bought Stilton for Christmas, plus a block of Red Leicester and some Christmas chutney. The picture is from pre-Lockdown days – the last time we went. It’s peculiar that you can’t produce Stilton in Stilton, because of the legal protection of the brand, but the Nottinghamshire based dairy is allowed to produce Red Leicester and Shropshire Blue.

We arrived home just as dark was falling, covered  the car windscreen in case of frost and settled down to watch TV and eat pizza.

We saw a perching buzzard, fieldfares and redwings an even a small flock of geese in a roadside field  (though we couldn’t be sure what species as we only saw them as shapes through a hedge), so it was quite a pleasant run.

Cropwell Bishop Creamery

Tales from a Cold Room

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It was the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire meeting on Monday night. Twelve middle-aged men huddled in our outdoor coats, listening to a wild-eyes enthusiast talking about the Morgan Dollar. Thanks to a combination of cold, facts and hunger I gradually retreated into a small ball and started losing the will to live.

To sum up the talk the Morgan Dollar, an American icon, was designed by George Morgan, an Englishman, and minted from 1878-1904 and again in 1921. It is a big coin and was produced in the early days of mass-production in five American Mints. This meant that the dies used for striking the coins wore out, were accidentally damaged, were re-cut or repaired and were used in different combinations. Coin collectors have been cataloguing varieties of dollar, caused by these imperfections, which are known as VAMS (from Van Allen and Mallis, the two leaders of the hobby). It is a hobby for people with an eye for detail and (let’s call a spade a spade) too much time on their hands. Normal collectors are a bit strange, I admit, but this is taking collecting one step beyond.

Still, it’s nice to see an enthusiast at work, even if it would have been more relaxing to have had less detail. Detail is for the real enthusiast. Dabblers like me need a bit more explanation and would have liked to have heard more about his hunt for coins rather than the hundreds of facts he threw at us.

All this, of course, reminds me that there is just one more meeting until I give my talk on medallions and the history of the 20th Century. There is a lot to sort out before then, including how to use the Open Office Presentation software, and whether it’s going to work on the screen in the meeting room. Once that is done I can concentrate on avoiding the faults I am so keen to mention when reviewing the talks given by others.

However, as the poet Cowper reminds us in the Olney Hymns, God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform. I will be talking about that, because one of the medallions in the collection relates to Cowper and Olney. I’mm hoping that by some sort of magic a random collection of medals and facts becomes a wonder of numismatic entertainment.

Royal Wedding Medallion 1947 Reverse

Royal Wedding Medallion 1947 Reverse

My Hibernation Plan

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Some days just don’t live up to their early promise. Today was one of them. I started reasonably early, and if staring at a blank screen  had been on my list of activities, I would have nailed it. However, it didn’t, and I have to count it as a failure.

There is a pasta bake in the fridge ready for tomorrow, the washing up is done and the evening meal is about to go into the oven.  It’s pie and roast vegetable. The gravy will be made by pouring boiling water onto gravy granules. It is, like me, simple.

Ironic that the Masterchef final is on to tonight. Watching it obviously does not improve my cookery skills.

I’m fairly sure that hibernating is not as easy as it looks, particularly as I get older.  Waking up every few hours to use the bathroom seems to defeat the whole idea of hibernation. I want to sleep from November to 24th December and go back to sleep around 29th December until April. Based on my last stay in hospital, I may have an idea.

For those of you who don’t remember, that was the visit to hospital where the medical profession shoved a camera into a body orifice not designed to accommodate cameras, checked my bladder and sent me home with a plastic bag of urine attached to my leg for three months. Obviously not the same urine, I had to drain that, including, once, into my shoe after knocking the valve that controlled such things.

However, amusing as I find it in hindsight, it wasn’t fun at the time. The only good bit was that I spent three months sleeping through the night. At bedtime you detach the “day bag” and attach the extension pipe and “night bag”. You throw the bag on the floor, arrange the plastic tubing and go to sleep. Eight hours later you wake up, detach the night bag, dispose of the contents and attach the day bag.

I often dream of those carefree nights of sleep. The only problem is that when you are attached to a catheter you can’t help thinking about your own mortality. And then there’s the first night of non-catheterisation. After 12 weeks of urinating automatically, wherever you are and whatever you are doing (a bit like a mouse) it’s hard to fall asleep without worrying about whether you will wake up at the necessary times, or whether . . .

Perhaps I will stop there.

The top picture is to remind me it will be spring soon.

Early(ish) one morning

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Last night I went to bed a t a reasonable time, slept reasonably well and, around 5.30 found myself lying in bed ordering if it was time to get up. It wasn’t, I decided. It was cold, dark and definitely time to go back to sleep. I did this for a while, then decided to get up anyway. It’s now 8.05 and I have already answered my comments and eaten a large plate of scrambled eggs. The egg shortage seems to be over for now and they are a great source of protein and other good stuff.

I note that Derrick Knight is also up and about because he answered my answers to his comments.

I thought I’d knock out a blog post before setting off for work so I don’t need to worry about doing one tonight. I’ve been getting steadily worse at blogging reliably, which is one of the reasons I decided that writing before breakfast might be a good idea.

The new issue of Drifting Sands Haibun  (or dsh as it is generally styled) is out now. I am, of course, telling you this, because I have a piece in there and, as it’s an on-line journal, I can provide a link.

I’ve done that dreadful writer thing. Last night I remembered to check if it was on-line, went straight to my own piece. Read it. Read the editor’s comments and started doing something else. Today I read one poem and posted the link on my blog. I think this is one of the reasons I am not writing so freely at the moment – not enough reading. Unfortunately with Christmas and various other things (my talk on medallions is only two months away and I haven’t really got much shape in it yet) my reading time seems limited. I must do something about that.

However, my life is full of good intentions and rather short of actual results.

And on that note, I will potter off to work and pack some parcels.

Chilly . . .

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The flower in the picture was waiting for Julia when she arrived at the garden yesterday.  Today followed much the same pattern as yesterday, though we did put the cover on the car windscreen so there was less to clear.

It was -4 when e set off this morning and -2 when I emerged from work. This is probably regarded as shirt sleeve weather in Canada, but we find it quite chilly. The houses opposite the shop still had frost on the roof so I expect it had been that temperature for much of the day. I’m getting too old for this. Old bones need more warmth.

I’ve done some proper menu planning for the first time in ages. It’s not so much that we need to plan the food, but it can be a bit cold in the kitchen (to the extent of food thawing faster in the fridge than if we leave it on the work surface) due to our budgetary restraints. The menu planning is not so much about maximising nutrition as minimising time spent in the kitchen.  If I can organise things to cook two or three meals at a time the kitchen is warm enough. If I just want to chop a few veg and bake one thing it can be an inhospitable place.

 

One day we will look back on this time and realise that we would have been better spending the money and keeping warm. To be honest, we’d have been better moving house thirty years ago while we were both working. We could have bought one that wasn’t draughty, and which didn’t front up to the north wind quite so much. Being on a ridge, we get a good view and flooding isn’t a problem. However, it can be a bit breezy.

That’s enough for now. I need to sit by the fireside talking to Julia and sipping tea, but mainly, eating cake. We have quite a lot of cake to eat (lemon and blueberry) because it was reduced and it called out to her as she passed the shelf  . . .

First Frost and That Time of Year Again

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We had our first frost today. It was very late this year. If I’d been a better diarist over the years I would be able to compare it properly, but can’t. Tonight, a day late, I put the cover on my windscreen to prevent it frosting up. It probably won’t freeze now, though they were gritting roads tonight so the council must expect it. We’ve been lucky so far but, realistically, winter hasn’t really started yet.

I’m spending my evenings daydreaming about the house I will build if I win the lottery. This isn’t the one in an air-conditioned bubble in the desert, this is the slightly mor realistic one with ground source heat pumps, solar panels, a windmill and lots of insulation. I’ve not decided whether to build it into the side of a hill yet, but will probably have a garage I can drive straight into. And a narrow gauge railway for taking the bins to the bottom of the drive.

This, of course, relies on a larger win that my normal disappointing wins of between £2 and £5. It always seems like I’ve used all my luck up with one of those wins, when I would rather save all my luck up for one big win. Sadly, the laws of probability don’t seem to work like that. It’s a bit like good luck charms – if that “lucky” rabbit’s foot was really that lucky it would still be attached to a rabbit.

I’ve just been looking at my household insurance renewal. We have never claimed on it and it has just gone up by 25%. The broker I use lost my car insurance business with an outlandish renewal price a couple of years ago and it looks like they are heading the same way with the house now. There’s something distinctly unsavoury about insurance companies and the way prices rise at random. The problem I always have at this time of year is that I’m too busy to mess around with quotes so I tend to nod it through. To be fair their prices have always been reasonable, but this move is a bit steep.

I’ll give them another year, but after that it looks like it will be the end. Once an insurance broker loses your trust, the end is not far away.

Frosted bamboo

Photos are from December 2017 – a colder winter.

Wednesday Part 2

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The second one of the day, being the one that really belongs to Wednesday (despite being written Thursday in the early hours). The other Wednesday one was Tuesday, but a day late. Such is, as I have noted before, the flexibility of WordPress.

I received two poetry magazines through the post on Tuesday night – one containing two tanka of mine and one containing three tanka and a haiku.. Because they are print journals I can’t provide a link, and can’t quote them just yet, as I always feel the print journals should have a period without competition. Some of them do specify a time, most don’t, but I feel it’s fair to give them a while.

Humorous postcard from a time when they taught spelling in schools. Not times when people email “u” for you.

This proves I must be doing something right, though in the case of the haiku I am doing less right than I am with the tanka. Time now, with half a dozen publication windows open, to knuckle down and get some work done. Part of this work really should be writing haiku to practice, but it’s far easier to write tanka. I may have to come up with some academic, poetic reason, but the truth is that they are easier to write and people publish them.

On a less artistic level, the carrot and lentil soup turned out well. It has solidified as it cooled but it tastes good and the question of density is soon corrected with a little water. If only poetry were as easy to fix.

It’s time to start addressing the Christmas cards now. I’m never quite sure when it is a good time to do this. It needs to be early enough for the cards to get there but not so early that you look like someone who spends all year organising themselves for Christmas. Then there is the etiquette of the Christmas letter. Nobody has died this year, so I haven’t seen any of my cousins. The enclosed letter needs to have enough news to justify the writing, but not so much that it is boring. This year I think the news that Number One Son has moved to Norwich and Number two Son has bought a flat in Toronto and bought a dog is probably enough.  They don’t need to know that I am becoming steadily more decrepit, am too tight to put the heating on or cook soup from leftovers of questionable quality. I reserve that sort of news for WordPress.

A card that only makes sense if you remember times before zip flies were universal.

Today’s selection of cards are pre-war humour containing such concepts as winter drawers, home sewing, spelling and button flies. |What different times we live in.

Too Many Carrots

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I’m currently cooking with one half of my brain and blogging with the other. Or, to clarify, in case this conjures up pictures of more activity than is actually happening, I’m waiting for a timer to go off, wondering about what else to cook and thinking about recipes. At the same time, having missed a post last night, I’m typing a post while I have a few minutes and feel warm enough to do it. We are still economising on heating, which means I don’t get to the keyboard as much as I would like, as I’m still determined not to take the laptop into the living room.

We have not been doing as much menu planning as we should, and I’m faced with a problem of what to make with carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes and onions. We’ve already had vegetable stew and vegetable soup in the last few days. Julia did something Chinese with chilli, rice and prawns on Monday but I’m struggling to be inventive. We would have had fish pie but we are trying to clear the freezer for Christmas and all the fish is currently frozen as we aren’t very good at forward planning and anything takes days to defrost at the moment. I could, I suppose, bake pieces of fish in foil. They will defrost like that, but I’m not sure that they go with root vegetables. In the hands of a Masterchef contestant, with a carrot puree here and a parsnip foam there, and probably a sweet potato pickle and a fondant potato, I’m sure my list of ingredients would be wonderful. In mine, not quite so much . . .

We could have the good old standby of pasta with stuff in it and pesto poured on – we have prawns and mussels in the freezer and they take no time to defrost – but it doesn’t seem much of a meal in winter.

Julia just rang as I was juggling pans. She’s on her way back from a meeting and wanted to know if she should go to the chip shop on the way past.

So, tonight’s menu is fish and chips with peas. Tomorrow we will be having mixed vegetable hash with corned beef (it could be eaten tonight, but I’d rather have chips) and I’m currently using the vegetable water from parboiling the hash vegetables to make a carrot, lentil and garlic soup. It was going to be carrot and lentil, but the garlic paste jar looked about empty so I used it all, and the resulting smell from the pan is rather garlicky.

In fact the chips just arrived so I’ll eat now and finish this later.

More Time Passes

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It is getting colder and I am wearing more layers. As we move into December I have to remind myself that it is only 15 days until the shortest day. I like the idea of more daylight, and the year starting to turn towards spring already. I am less keen on the thought of my life rushing by. It is now only five days until I have to inject myself again, and I need to organise two blood tests. I just hope that I don’t run out of blood.

Casting an eye over various things, I noted a BBC podcast titled “Why do we procrastinate?” I’ve made a mental note to go back and read it when I have time. There is so much interesting stuff available on the internet that it is hard to keep up.

We have frost forecast for the coming week, but so far it has been very mild. This is probably a surprise to those of you living in cold places, as we rattle on about winter so much in UK but rarely have much real winter weather. I have never, for instance, felt the need to wear snow shoes when going about my normal business in winter, or to use a snow blower. Mostly we sprinkle a bit of salt about and walk carefully. Photographs from a few years ago show frost, but I haven’t had to clear my windscreen yet, though this may change.

It’s getting close to Christmas, and with more Post Office strikes coming, I really must send the cards, as all the final delivery dates have been rescheduled. I am starting to worry about the future of our postal service. The constant strikes, on top of the reduced service levels suffered since Covid, are very wearing, particularly as prices keep rising as service levels decline. eBay is already starting to recommend alternatives, which is worrying when you consider how much Royal Mail depends on eBay business. I wonder how long it will be before we see a catastrophic change in UK postal services. You can send emails instead of letters, and use other delivery services for parcels, but what about Christmas? Emails are not an acceptable substitute for Christmas cards.