Umbrellas – Bowness

Oh dear, it’s been a fortnight since I last posted. That’s lax, even by my standards. For my international readers, may I point out that a fortnight is two weeks – or fourteen nights. I’m not sure how common an expression that is across the world, as I once had to explain it to some Americans. The old word  for a week is a sennight, or seven nights. We don’t use that these days.

The trouble is that I start writing, but I end up being diverted. I’ve just been wading through the FFF System of measurements ( Furlong Firkin Fortnight System, which could also use Fahrenheit, Farthings and Fathoms, I suppose. That led me to the Hawking Index and the New York Minute. Then to a discussion on the old measurements for marking out rugby pitches.

I am one of the people who gave up reading A Brief History of Time, though I did finish The Great Gatsby. However, that was fifty years ago and I have forgotten most of it. Of the 11 books measured in the article, I have never even started the other nine, and, in truth, hadn’t even heard of 7 of them.

A Leaf on the Ground

I also liked the ohnosecond – the length of time between accidentally pressing a button on a computer and realising you just did a really bad thing.

In the last 15 days we have committed to spending a lot of money on a new roof for the conservatory. The first house I thought of buying cost less than this new conservatory roof. It was a small house and I didn’t go ahead with it, but it was cheap. Then we had the surveyor round to measure up for the job. He fixed the hole in the roof while he was here, so the house is now warmer and the conservatory is dryer. Julia made a candlestick and a potato/bulb dibber on the lathe. I did some more notes for the Nottinghamshire medallion book and studied more about the Lusitania.

I’ve been writing a longer piece on it for the Military History Group and have found an unexpected talent for making interesting subjects very dull. It’s the length. I can be interesting for about a thousand words (though my blog posts may suggest otherwise) but after that I fade away when I read through it, I start to hear a droning sound in my head.

That’s about it. Not much has happened.

No, somethings have happened. We had a wren on the windowsill, staring in at us with a frown. We sometimes have blue tits but a wren is a first.

I also seem to have ruined a Le Creuset casserole dish. I turned the gas up. Even though it was already warm and I’ve used it to boil on the gas hob before, two pieces of enamel pinged off. After 40 years this is quite annoying, particularly when you look at the price of a replacement. Even a replacement from a (much) cheaper source, is expensive when you consider that we will be eating baked beans for months to pay for the conservatory roof.  I am very annoyed with myself.

Oak Leaf at Bowness