Tag Archives: apples

Men in Sheds

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Try to bring this picture to mind – five middle-aged men in a barn, one holding a microphone, one talking at length and three more standing round muttering. They are either about to deny allegations about their past or discuss our new Men in Sheds project.

If you  listen to radio Nottingham at around 11.00 tomorrow morning you may hear me. I’m the one heard answering “About this big.” as I hold my hands apart to the microphone. It’s not great radio, but I’m working on the basis that if you’re good at things they will ask you again.

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Assuming that you miss it, because the lead time is short and the time is imprecise, it should be available on some sort of archival player (I’m hazy on technological detail) for a month or so. However, I’m in a good position to tell you that it won’t be worth the effort of finding it.

The only important thing I said was that we have a new small scratter for kids to use when they visit for apple pressing this Saturday.

Meanwhile we are doing farm stuff – trying to teach people the six times table so they can count the eggs after we’ve boxed them up. It’s not as easy as you’d think. We’ve also had a cut-throat session of Hangman – I came close to being hanged searching for Family Guy and repaid the compliment by hanging the group by going for zip. I nearly got them with jive too, but they squeaked in with one limb left. What you need to win at Hangman is an overly competitive attitude (or so Julia tells me) and a selection of short words featuring unusual letters. (I checked up this strategy on the internet – a sure sign of being unsuitably fixated on winning, but after the “dik-dik affair” I decided not to rely on unusual names.)

For those of you unfamiliar with the full details of the “did-dik affair” I did try to insert a link but can’t remember which post originally had details. What happened was that I was banned from playing Hangman by Julia after I used the name of an obscure antelope

which caused far too much hilarity (and repetition of the words dik-dik) amongst our clients. It’s not the first time she’s had occasion to put the dampers on me in our 26 years of marriage and won’t be the last.

A blog in in which fingers are mentioned

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I’ve been sleeping badly for the last few nights because I have a painful finger. Yes, that’s right, the large bearded man is whining about his finger. Sorry, but it hurts and I can’t get to sleep.

I know it doesn’t measure up to the pain of childbirth and stuff like that, and I realise that having to open bottles with my left hand isn’t officially recognised as a disability but it’s amazing how a little thing like that can affect your life.

Probably the worst thing is the uhtceare. (Read the list behind this link by all means, but if you are one of those people who thinks in pictures, do not click the link in Number 9). Yes, fitful sleep causes a constant state of uhtceare, and for a man that has a lot to regret, this is not good. The result was that I travelled to work this morning wishing I didn’t have to go. This is very unusual.

Now, just in case you are thinking of telling me, as Julia does, that “it’s just arthritis”, stop and pause a minute – I don’t want to be told that bits of my body have entered old age.

Anyway, things got better when I reached the farm. The new apple press and scratter have arrived! We can now travel with and demonstrate pressing in schools (if anybody wants us while we have apples) and we can use it for the juicing days (starting from 12th September) instead of having to set the big one up to do a bucket of apples. That’s why the picture at the top of the blog shows two cardboard boxes. Not a very interesting picture by most standards, but quite exciting for me.

We had a nice steady flow of breakfast, there wasn’t much I needed to do and it was all very relaxed.I met the author of the nottsvillages blog, showed several people the visiting Painted Lady (it came back!), secured the offer of a moth trap, found a volunteer to do the job of Santa (let’s face it, I’m not a natural), took details from someone who wants to help with the bread group and took £10 after we were supposedly closed.

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As if that wasn’t enough, I also took the name of another baker, persuaded someone to come and do crafts at our Winter Event and had a good look round Project Molish (which started this weekend).

That, in the language of my youth, is a result!

I’m tired now – time for tea and cake, I think.