The Village

The newest residential settlement in East Yorkshire could be the ideal model for the future of rural living. The village has sprung up very quickly, from a greenfield site to fully functional in only a few months. The houses are eco-friendly in timber and with a lightweight roof cladding which can be easily assembled and repaired. The design is classic in its simplicity and symmetry, just shiplap clad walls, a minimum of openings to retain heat yet naturally ventilated to minimise harmful moisture and condensation. The front elevation has a large arched aperture and the buildings through the development are aligned east to west to maximise solar gain.
The internal layout is fully open plan and can easily accommodate a large family in comfort. The interior and exterior are integrated so that a large proportion of time can be spent outside in the generous sized grounds with designated areas for recreation and eating. The site is easily maintained and can cope with normal family activities.It is a common sight for mother to be closely followed by her infants in play and educational learning. There is a special area for parents and offspring to lounge and rest and take advantage of the outdoor rural life. Social interaction with nearest neighbours often involves meeting at the fence. There is no one-upmanship or competition. It is never the case of the grass looks greener on the other side. In fact, the lifestyle and communal spirit has much to be commended representing an ideal long lost in society as a whole.
Everyone mucks in together, but after all they are pigs.

Fathers VW's- Part 2. Scirocco. Wind of Change

I am convinced that I saw the Scirocco headlights blink in the bright sunlight as the wooden doors of garage number 6 were fully opened yesterday. The car is in excellent condition save a bit of dust, some strange animal footprints (Meerkat, possibly) and a couple of flat tyres. Alex and Sam were convinced that Doc Brown had left the car for safe-keeping as the tapered bonnet edge and lights are very De Lorean-esque. The flux capacitor was nowhere to be seen-(stolen by the very same Meerkat who was careless enough to leave a trail and now, no doubt, attached to a Moskvitch or Lada within the old Soviet Bloc). Dominic crawled in through the hatchback door with no regard for his Chino's and boating shoes heroically releasing the sun roof. Beckie and Jonathan were swiftly on the scene with buckets and brushes. Hannah, still in awe of Doms' reckless actions, was soon armed and dangerous with sponge and water but horrified at the various stages of dessicated spiders revealed when the manual wind down windows (what are they?) were operated. The carnage of arachnids confirmed that VW's are perfectly hermetically sealed suggesting that there may have been a surprising by-product of the brainchild of Mr Hitler and Ferdinand Porsche. Kubelwagen-People's Car- VW- Tuppervare. William, putting chamois aside, captured the now sparkling coupe on camera. No one really minded that the Scirocco remained rooted to the spot or that Gene Hunt stood idle close by, seemingly frustrated that all cloths and buckets were already in full use.

I have boundary issues

It is just a hedge, that hedge. It runs in a westerly direction forming a boundary between my garden and the neighbours. It's is not however there to suppress freedom of speech or the liberty of individuals. Imagine- The Berlin Hedge. It is not indended to keep out marauding hordes or be visible from space, it's no Great Hedge of China. I am not going to get rich in monetary terms from speculating on the greenery or mortgaging future generations through a Hedge Fund. There may be a health risk from standing too close and passively inhaling but I keep at wary distance from benson and hedges. I am determined to give free access for those wanting to share in my good fortune so it will not be an exclusive or privet function, no way, I do not want to be accused of hogging the hedge.

Car Boot Sale

On analysis I have come to the conclusion that I have a fear of car boot sales. It is very easy to make the decision not to load up and go to sell on the basis one or more of the following excuses.
 a) Not enough stock b)Not enough good/crap stock c)No cash float d) No sufficiently sticky labels e)Poor pricing strategy f) Ridiculously early start g)It's raining.
h) creaky hinge on metal cash box i) packed the car but forgot to leave room for pasting table j) Not shaved.
The whole prospect of setting up shop in a field and hawking a cross section of mementos, unwanted gifts, out of favour prints and pictures and, frankly, part of your life is very daunting. I liken the first 30 minutes of public access to the prospect of facing St Peter at The Pearly Gates. "What have you done in your life?"
Well, based on two wooden chopping boards, a DVD player minus remote, a vintage toilet roll holder and a collection of handbags I would expect any interview and Saintly decision to be a very short affair indeed.
Best sellers are practical things, warm clothes, holiday attire, stout shoes, good labels. No shortage of buyers for such things. Impulse buys are next in line with ornaments, small pottery houses, anything with a fairy or angel theme, potential antiques. Avoid toys as children are the worst customers ever unless they are with a parent with access rights for the day. I haggled with a small child over a 1p difference for a quaint wooden trinket box. He said he would think about it. Progress is often slow to meet target expectations or at least a decent return for the day less the pitch fee. Demoralised souls are soon deserting the field of battle and then it is decision time. Return home via the Civic Dump with an empty car or preserve the stock until the next time?

The Life of a Spider-Large domestic

Hide in a hole. Compress legs and abdomen into as small a crevice as possible. Look out with one eye. Scan for an insect, any in season will do, fly, aphid, distant spider relative, anything already dead. Cower a bit as a shadow crosses the gap of the bolthole. False alarm, bird but outside the window. Must remember that I am a predator but also prey to larger creatures. Some movement detected across the carpet. Ladybird. Bright colour but can be hard and chewy, slow to overwhelm and can be a bit heavy in the web. Disregard unless desperate. Same goes for those armoured woodlice. In retrospect not a very good hole. Try another position on the other side of the room. Some human forms but still. Go, Go, Go. Short spurt, stop, look, dash to foot of sofa, clear path to rug edge, wait, now, no wait, now, no, yes.
The humans shout in unison "Spider, big spider-dad do something" Expectant glances towards the male of the family. Some reluctance to raise body from comfortable chair. Quick calculated assessment of spider hunting equipment. Resort to sound and trusted wine glass. Drain last contents and then carefully lower the crystal bell over the panic stricken but also annoyed arachnid. Grateful acknowledgement all round. "Good catch dad".
Leave for a couple of minutes listening for the frantic scrabblings of the black blur in the trap. Slide newspaper between the carpet and glass. The patter of eight legs can be felt through 32 pages of print.
One last victory dance for dad and a display of the catch to a screaming and relieved audience.
The policy of dad is repatriation for spiders so a bare-foot walk down the front path and a short flick of the
glass and paper to release the spider onto the pavement.
The spider stretches and runs in zig zag.No glance back or adversarial taunt.
Hide in a hole.

Shower the people

It has been raining all day in East Yorkshire and with the rain comes the inevitable grumbles and complaints but put these into a world perspective;

It actually has rained today. In Somalia and Ethiopia it has not rained for months.
The roads are so waterlogged. In Zimbabwe the rain washes away the roads beyond salvage
The water is really dirty and muddy. In Bangladesh this applies to drinking water.
The flowerbeds are awash. Chanelling rainwater provides essential irrigation to the rice fields in Vietnam
The water will take an age to drain away. The ground water will replenish the boreholes and wells in Chad.
I got soaked running between the car and my house. A walk to find clean water can take 5 hours in remote parts of Kenya, come rain or shine
The barbecue is cancelled due to rain. The wildfires and bushfires are assuaged in Borneo.

What a shower we are....

The road to York

Motoring from Hull to York can either be the most boring and tedious journey or the swiftest most pleasant 40 minutes you may wish to spend on a trunk road. The 35 mile drive is steeped in history and mystery and cannot fail to amaze and entertain. The first leg passes under the Humber Bridge feeder road at Hessle. Although well down the league table of suspension bridges by length it remains a striking exhibition of constructional engineering. The A63 skirts Welton and then Brough, now a sprawling residential estate, but historically a major Roman port and shelter for the North Sea fleet as guardians of the Humber as a gateway into much of the hinterland of England. The roads inland from Brough show their Roman origins through South Cave and then following an undulating course at the foot of the East Yorkshire Wolds which were populated with a scattering of Villas and farmsteads. Sancton is nestled in a shallow hollow and then on to Market Weighton by pass. The main road is then full tilt sometimes with a glider overhead at Pocklington and with small villages either breezed through or passed by with reference to ancient names and settlements, Fangfoss and Wilberfoss being strongly Norse. A road sign points to Stamford Bridge, the battleground for Harold before his long straggle to Hastings.
The City boundary for York is reached long before the urban development and with a small packhorse bridge being a surviving feature of the old narrow road at a crossing of the River Derwent. The final approach to York from the east is understated with a large junction with the A64 and the Park and Ride at Grimston Bar. There is a mad rush to get out of the bus lane overlooked by a Cyberman and Daleks on the roof of a petrol station. The first houses are suburban but soon  the mellow brick Victorian houses are in view and then the first sight of the City walls. The motorist is probably as relieved to reach York today as the roadweary Centurion was some 1800 years in the past.

Panic at the DIY CO

It is quite satisfying doing some manual labour in so far as a bit of painting can be called labour. Apologies to the working masses and brothers in industry and commerce for my own secondment to their ranks for a few hours of cosmetic effort in the front porch.
I panic in B&Q when confronted by DIY products mainly because I know that my initial enthusiasm for a project soon turns to guilt because I am very poor at doing things well if at all.
My purchases today were quite harmless, or so you may think, being confined to masonry paint, red tile paint, brushes, letter box cover and a cheap wireless door bell. The outcome of this investment was as follows;
Battery missing from door bell. Return to shop. Letter box cover wrong colour for door furniture-recycle existing one by putting inside flap on the outside, red tile paint- attack everything slightly red in colour and masonry paint- two coats later the porch looks exactly the same as it has done for the past 15 years.
I did have a good time though. Might enrol in a night class in construction now that I have the hunger for manual labour. What next, build a house...........

Sunk Island infinity

I had an uplifting drive out to Sunk Island today. A vast flat area reclaimed from the River Humber since the 17th Century and covering some 7500 acres. The agricultural land is crossed by single track roads and from Ottringham to Brick Lane there is a fantastic straight section flanked by trees, must be 2 miles long, and with a distant arched greensward canopy which gives a feeling of heading towards infinity.

Father's VW's-The Quest

I am determined to find good homes for Father's classic VW's. I have had a great response from The VW Owners Club who have been tremendously helpful and want to come across and see them and advise. They must go to enthusiasts who want them for what they are. Need washing first.

The VW estate is a 1971 Variant also known as a Type 3 Squareback (USA description). Harrison Ford borrowed his sisters and crashed it into a dovecote in the film Witness. They are now quite rare. I remember Father taking me for a test drive in the fastback saloon version in 1971 and we went to the coast. SNM 737J came from Luton or Dunstable and the list price was just under £1000. I was mortified when I snapped off the wing mirror putting it in the garage in 1979 where it has been ever since. Not sure if it can actually be moved, even pushed.

The VW Scirocco is a Mark 2, E registered but I do not remember much about it as Father had it when I was away at Trent Poly in the early 1980's. Sporty coupe with spoiler across the rear glass hatchback. Not as nice or striking as the Mark 1 Father had in the late 1970's.

Both cars would be good projects. Most Type 3's get customised. There is a Type 3 on a Classic Car web site being advertised at £19,500. Fab motor though.

We will see what we can do..................................

Care for Snails

Please be careful to ensure that your domestic snails are not forcibly removed from their familiar surroundings. This is a particular risk where a large number of snails are attached to the garden waste bags and can get transported to the municipal dump.

At best repatriate them prior to loading up the car. Second best is ease them off the inside of the windscreen some two days after the trip to the tip as they can be a distraction from driving if they appear in view quite unexpectedly.

Stone Age Man invents Barbecue

The act of barbecue brings us all back to our primitive roots, (excepting those swanky so and so's who have a top of the range gas fired range which is likened to an advanced race visiting stone age man in their scramjet flying saucers). The gathering of wood, creation of charcoal, forming of a shallow recess to assemble the fuel and crouching low to ignite it with the last few means of lighting whilst shielding the fragile flame from the hot summer wind- skip this bit if you can and buy a small sized portable metal tray barbecue from your local Tesco Express. I did and speeded up the progress of Man from near Neolithic to just near the town centre.
The food is reward of the labour of the stalk, hunt, challenge and kill. The quiet words of reassurance to the fallen beast in its dying throes that all is not in vain and its Spirit lives on. The ceremony of stripping the carcass, reserving the hide and sinews, trimming the fat for the night wick light and marvelling at the blood red richness of the prime joints and cuts. Oh Yeah, 2 packs of burgers and peppered grill steaks from Co-Operative seem a much better option. Please dispose of the wrappers sensibly.
So what have we learned from our time travel to the Stone Age. Make sure your cave is within easy distance of a convenience store.

Return to the part demolished house

We used to live in a terraced house

Nestled in neighbourly obscurity

But now, upon revisiting it has been cut apart

In the name of progress to make way

For a super school

or community empowering facility

or something

My mum and dad aspired to a semi detached

But not like this

The old wallpaper that I helped to paste

Hangs listless like an abandoned hoarding

The nicotine stains are surprisingly yellow

In natural light

The chimney breast hangs on like a cliff face

A floorboard sticks out like a fractured rib

The dismantled elements lie smouldering

In an undignified pile of debris

Which we were happy to call our life

When we used to live in a terraced house

The etiquette of the Call Centre

The western world has been founded on the hard sell and will no doubt founder the same way.

I was hoping that the emerging Nations would follow their own way and not simply get into the bad habits in commerce and business that is, unfortunately, the trademark of our life and culture.

Imagine therefore my shock and dismay at the following series of telephonic events on the evening of 19th August 2011.

6.06pm. Telephone rings..........I do not get there in time (The Simpsons on TV)

6.12pm. Telephone rings. I pick up but do not say anything (after all it is my downtime and I can refuse to speak if I want to). Sound of static, rings off.

6.20pm. Telephone rings. I am ready. Pick up with courteous welcome. Distant voice

"Mr Thomson. I would like to speak to you about your computer".

I reply

"I do not have one in the house" (a technical untruth).

The caller replies "don't waste my time, **** off, goodbye".

I assume that on this occasion that the practice of recording the conversation for training purposes was switched off.