So very sorry to disappoint you….

I have been watching a lot of The Crown on Netflix recently, but it seems to be a never completed task as no sooner do I get to the end of one series, another comes out. Like painting the Forth bridge. You no sooner finish than you have to start again.

Forth bridge

For those not from the UK, the Forth bridge is a steel railway bridge across the Forth of Forth in Scotland that is renowned for its need for continuous maintenance!

Although The Crown is intended to be fictional in terms of detailed content, the fact that the characters are real people, and the political and social events portrayed also match historical fact, it’s of course quite hard to believe that much of what is presented does not match reality. There have been many eyebrow raising revelations already. For most a quick Google search validates at least the rumour, if not the truth. So quite a number of revised opinions about various political and royal figures is now the state of things.

So why am I sorry to dissapoint? I am not considering writing memoirs at this stage in my life , and no, this is not a deluded rhetorical protest of ‘but surely you are not old enough’ nor is it the reverse. Actually age perception is a funny thing in my family and particularly in late departed mother who lived well past her eighties . From about the age of 60 when having the suggestion of replacing an item of furniture or investing in a new appliance would always say…’ no need for that, it will see me out’. I am glad to say she was very wrong and outlived most of these things as we knew she would.

No, quite simply nothing I could put in memoirs, or even a daily diary. I have no exciting revelations…not a single forgotten romance with a princess, no hidden trips to visit foreign leaders of state and no newspaper headline splashes of a hedonistic lifestyle.

But don’t despair…a recent chance family conversation about a Wallace & Gromit train track game played many years ago by our then school age children gave rise to a throw away comment of ‘would you have liked to be a train driver Dad?’ . Much to everyone’s surprise, I revealed that at age 13 I had actually driven a train! Back then, before I discovered girls I had discovered trains and on a spotting visit to local railway yards to get train numbers I was invited by a friendly train driver to have a go at driving a locomotive. Back in the early 1970’s it seems that Health & Safety , or indeed protection of children from adults hadn’t really been at the top of the agenda.

For the avoidance of doubt I neither crashed the locomotive nor was I subject to anything inappropriate!

The kindly driver will have long since retired and will be driving trains in the sky, but anyway I will maintain a degree of anonymity about when and where.

Brian – a very intelligent squirrel

We have a resident squirrel or two in our garden. One of them in particular is remarkably intelligent.

I can’t really give too much provenance to his early education although I am told he played on 2012 University Challenge Cambridge University team some years ago (but possibly as mascot) and more recently has been a successful contestant in some TV quizzes. His skills are however not confined to the subjects of biochemistry, early English literature and nano physics, but also to how to open a bird feeder that has a spring clip and then to be able to remove nuts out of reach of his legs by swinging said feeder vigorously.

We have actually become very fond of Brian, and although the natural next step might be to just leave the peanuts in a more accessible place, there are downsides to this. Firstly the mental challenges are probably good for him – current restrictions will be limiting his social interaction and there are of course no pub quizzes for him to enter at the moment and a local gymnastics competition that I know he has been considering training for and participating in has just been deferred for some months. The other reason of course is that Brian has a wide circle of friends and providing dinner party facilities for such a group would probably require stocks of peanuts that we just don’t have readily to hand at the moment.

Squirrels are relatively new to our garden….our resident garden guardian Geoffrey also felt it his duty to ‘see them off the premises’ but alas Geoffrey is not with us anymore, but probably looking down from doggy heaven with slight bemusement at the new residents.

Our kindly vet who looked after Geoffrey in his later years would often comment, ‘if Geoffrey could talk, I am sure he would be a very polite dog’ , I think based on the dogs stoicism and acceptance of prods, examinations and the odd injection. Praise indeed , and proof that we always have had only the best in our garden.

The wheels on the bus …..etc.

Those familiar with the children’s song will know that the lyrics do a fine job of stating the obvious…the wheels on the bus go round and round, the ladies on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter, the babies on the bus go waaa, waaa, waaa, (this line far better sung than written), the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish and so on.

There are probably also regional variations on this to meet local needs. For example, If you travel on the bus in Bermuda it is expected practice that you greet each and every other passenger individually. Joining the bus at busy times means most of your journey is occupied just by this!

Anyway, back to this meaningful set of lyrics….although not having the classicism of a Lennon and McCartney Beatles ballad or an Elton John anthem, you get the feeling of that everyone on board knows what is happening, who is doing what and generally feels safe and secure on the bus.

This wasn’t the case outside my home today. We live in a semi rural area and although we have the luxury of one public transport a few times a day, these are mini buses , not much bigger than a large family’s people mover!

Today however a strange scenario…it seems that the nearby small town to us had its link road to larger neighbour blocked for most of today and the regular ‘big grown up’ service featuring a full size double decker bus was being routed along our narrow country roads.

Fortunately not many passengers on the bus being a Sunday, but a quick look at them said that they had not been told of this foray into rural Yorkshire…the faces gave an impression of a range of feelings from kidnap victim to horror story….calling for a quick rendition of the final and least known verse of the above song…the people on the bus screamed help, help, help……

It’s all about communication..!

Happiness is a sharp axe….

For anyone alarmed by this title …please don’t be. I may have considered many mid life career changes, but being an axe waving terror figure has never made it to the list.

My axe activities are solely directed towards chopping logs into kindling for my wood burning stove. I actually (no pun intended…) own three axes..one being a real hand-me-down from my parents home. It’s worryingly  quite lethal and although it’s blade is not sharp, having probably last been sharpened in 1967 and chopped a lot of firewood since then, the axe head does have a tendency to detach mid-chop and fly off the handle (literally) at an unexpected trajectory. No amount of gloves and  safety goggles has been proved to be sufficient PPE when using this lethal weapon, so it’s had to be retired.

The remaining two are both young entrants to the world of domestic tools…the first being one I purchased myself and it’s near twin, arriving only a few weeks later, a kindly but unexpected gift from my father in law when we had just moved into our current house and became proud owners of a wood burning stove.

This though was some years ago. When we bought our house it was the very opposite story to some of the horror tales one hears where the previous owners remove every last thing they can. Our predecessors were very generous and left large amounts of logs, chopped and bagged kindling and much more.

They did however leave us a few mysteries as well…a confusing lighting system, numerous electronic gadgets and control systems, but with a bit of detective work we have probably got to grips with most of these.

Anyway we have finally finished the bequeathed kindling and are now making our own.

I think I have found a new vocation…it’s cold, damp, still some snow on the ground but a few hours chopping logs into kindling has been surprisingly very gratifying. Who needs visits to stately homes, gift shops or tea and cake in tea  rooms on a winter Sunday anymore?

Look out for next week’s blog where I make myself clothing from animal skins and build a cave house.

New dogs required?

Driving along one of our local motorways a few days ago, I was a bit perturbed to see numerous overhead gantry signs with the message ‘ The UK leaves the EU on 31 December, new dogs required’ . I knew things were changing but not that every pet owner had to replace their four legged friends. With the average price for any pedigree puppy being around GBP£2000, it could be an expensive business.

Who wouldn’t like a new dog?

The displays certainly aren’t clear……as my mother in law,  on a separate journey actually read it as New Docks required and was left wondering why Dover, Southampton, Hull etc. were all being consigned to the history books.

It took an eagle eyed family member in the car who could focus on the signs and not the road ahead …..to note that the message is actually all about ‘docs’ as in documents ..not dogs or seaports.

Another sign I spotted a junction or so later helpfully asked the question ‘Travelling to France? Covid Test required’.  Very helpful info you may say, but this road junction in Yorkshire, Northern England and is some 4 hours drive (about 250 miles) from the nearest seaport from where you can take the ferry to France! In reality the majority of cars who use this particular exit are either travelling to the local Ikea or Lidl and really not much further!

As a nation, in the UK we are actually quite used to unusual signage..in the early 1990’s we had the Traffic Cones hotline promoted all along our motorways  complete with a freephone 0800 number. The only problem being nobody had a clue why it was there?

Some people thought it was to report stray or lost traffic cones, others a counselling service for those to report and get advice on an unhealthy romantic attraction to these plastic hat impersonators, some assumed it was to complain about there being too many of them and so on. In fact it was actually an information line you could ring to find out where there were roadworks on the country’s motorway network, presumably to avoid them…or if you had a strange interest in them, so that you could plan a Happy weekend of contra-flow driving complete with other features including those family favourites…’raised man hole covers’ and ‘temporary road service’.

Anyway, such signs are now just history.

But despair not, visit Scotland’s motorways and you will still find signage to delight. In Scotland, people just generally say it as it is and this is the tone of the signage there too. My favourites are the signs displayed on many stretches of motorway with helpful motoring advice…’Watch your speed’. Yes for sure many a driver will be prodded by this reminder and ease off the accelerator pedal a bit; another is , ‘Check your fuel’..likewise a quick glance at the fuel gauge makes sense….but the ‘icing on the cake’ goes to ‘Check your tyres’….really??? At 70 miles per hour in the fast lane!!!

Just call me Baked Potato?

Go into the world of song lyrics and you will find a lot of artists giving hints about to what to call them. Paul Simon from the Graceland Album has one of the more well known ones – ‘ You can call me Al’ , well that is if you are in the over 40’s age group.

For those of a younger musical generation, I can offer ‘Call me Maybe’ from Carly Rae Jepsen ….and probably many others if I put my mind to it. Perhaps another time……………..

This name calling seems to have extended to the world of internet fraudsters ‘phishing’ for my personal details. Like many people I have ended up with a few e-mail addresses, mostly from when I have had to register myself on-line and create an account for something and have either got caught in a loop of where they say they already have me, and I can’t reuse the same address (…but I can’t find the password!) or sometimes when I have been so reluctant to give them my routine address, I have created a new one just for them and other questionable organisations to share.

Typically these alternate e-mail addresses I have created bear no relation to my name and depending on my mood at the time of having to quickly create a new one, may be a bit off the wall. bakedpotato@myisp.com was one of my favoured choices at the time, but it seems somebody had got there before me so I couldn’t register it.

Anyway it therefore  becomes very obvious when I get the e-mails from fraudsters addressed to these as though it was my first name telling me that I have got a income tax refund (I wish…!) or my EE mobile account is about to expire (….funny, I don’t have an account with them) or my campervan vehicle duty is unpaid, and if it isn’t paid immediately it will be crushed. Or was it that I will be crushed? Anyway, I don’t have one of those either…and having quite a dislike of them (with all due respect to people who love them….), I would be quite delighted for any campervan to be recycled into food packaging . Dear Baked Potato , we regret to inform you that your vehicle will become Heinz Baked Bean tins must have a certain irony to it.

The world is generally full of good people, but the bad guys and girls are out there trying to cheat our friends, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and so on via these scams…I think for those of us who are tech savvy and scam savvy,  it is  our duty to always to remind those who are not,  of these people and the methods used to steal data. Anyway to help me remain aware, I have decided on a new address (assuming its available) of pleasejustignorethisemailitsascam@gmail.com and look forward to my first e-mail addressed to Dear PleaseJustIgnoreThisemailItsAScam it appears you have not paid for your TV Licence etc.

Those of us of a certain age in the early days of e-mail will all have had the communications from the very polite man in Nigeria explaining that his family millions rightly owned by him need transferring safely out of the country away from corrupt officials, banks and car park attendants and he just needs a little help from me as I am known as honest and trustworthy person. If I could just send him 100 dollars this will pay for a bank transfer fee and then 100,000 dollars  will be in my account which he and his honourable family will gladly share with me.

Ah…those were the days, I wonder how that man is now? Is he happy and well and living in Suburban Surrey and did he ever transfer his millions….

I have become (well) connected….

I have been researching part of my family tree on and off for quite a few months now using one of the many on-line services for doing this.

In some ways it’s a bit of a combination of detective work, guesswork and trying to remember family conversations that went on around you when you were a child.

For those of us who are now orphans … and I use the term slightly jokingly as although my father died when I was just sixteen, my mother lived into her eighties and my sister and I were blessed to have her well into our middle age. But of course like so many people we have the regret of why didn’t we ask more about aunties, uncles, cousins etc. rather than researching their death notices!

But we can’t turn the clock back and have to rely on our research and intuition now.

To be fair the family tree apps are very good and will give hints and suggestions that often help filling in the gaps. I also did one of the genealogy DNA tests that not only tells you your ethnicity but will from time to time will send you suggestions of possible family members based on DNA matches.

Well I think I have had quite a few of these e-mailed to me over the past year, and I generally just file these for investigation in due course.

However one arrived last week suggesting I was very well connected….Bill Gates from USA. Now I know the sensationally wealthy founder of Microsoft has very sensibly planned to leave not much of his multi-millions to his children to keep them grounded and will instead leave most to his charitable foundation and other causes. And I commend (cousin!) Bill for this!

However I don’t recall though seeing any plans as to what he has intended for his 3rd Cousins…………

Anyway…bubble now burst, looking at the age, perhaps not the same Bill Gates.

Who needs a free Windows 10 upgrade anyway?

What’s in a name?

My parents generation, probably like all generations, would from time to time have a bit of a moan about things. Actually, lets be careful here as we all find ourselves turning into our parents in various ways whether it is looks, temperament, idiosyncrasies , dress senses or driving habits!

Anyway my father would from time to time comment about how the world was becoming very depersonalised – small shops being swamped by large supermarkets, characterless motorways with no landmarks and so on. He did have a point here…I recall finding myself driving along a motorway on a work business trip that was one of many trips over a short period of time and gazing out of the car window (I hasten to add I was not the driver!) and having a mind-blanking moment about where on earth in the country are we? For those not so familiar with our UK motorways , they often have high grass banks and you see nothing of where you are passing for miles at a time – exit signs are the only clue!

Things have moved on (although obviously not on the motorways) in that the clever marketing people now want us to feel warm and fuzzy and upfront and personal about everything. I have a parcel delivery due later today and the courier company reassured me with a message that John Higgins would be with me between 17.32pm and 18.32pm. I am assuming he will be delivering the parcel and they are not just sending one of their employees round for a welfare visit?

I have recently been having a rant with my credit card provider and all the conversations, at least from their side(!) are very first name and friendly – sincere Steven from Customer Care has called twice, Michael from ‘escalations’ team and level headed Laura whose job it seemed was to call me about my complaints about the lack of service from sincere Steven and escalation Mike and re-assure me that she was on my case.

She told me more or less on our last call that her life has no higher or more important priorities than me and my banking needs at the moment. This concerns me slightly as her household may be expecting some contribution from her in terms of Christmas shopping, tree decoration or mince pie making or whatever her role normally is in such festivities and to me I think these are of greater need for focus in her life rather than an erroneous charge on my account.

And then of course there is Starbucks…it is impossible to order a coffee or hot chocolate with anonymity…I am not a huge customer of them normally and it is usually more when I am in the US for work related travel that I frequent them. When asked my name I always say , my best House of Windsor accent ….’Prince Charles’..there is never really any reaction from the order taker…other than mutters how , how will all this fit on the side of the cup? But when it gets shouted out to a crowded coffee shop, that is when the fun starts!

Enjoying this blog? …you know its just written for you ‘insert name here’

…oh and finally an update on the parcel, John hasn’t made it yet but I have been told of his exact co-ordinates. I have noted these in case things deteriorate and I need to give the info to the local mountain rescue team.

Catch of the day?

My teenage years are some time ago now, but as far as I can recall, none of my girlfriends mothers ever said, ‘ wow he is such a catch’…or of they did it was certainly kept from my by said girlfriend(s) of the time. Egos in teenage boys are never something to be encouraged I believe.

No, this is about fish….well actually a little bit about fish and in fact anything that people think is something worth you having or trying.

We are located in a semi rural area and in these ‘new times’ we live in, we have like many others been trying to support local businesses, avoid travel, shop for others etc. One of the places we have been frequenting is our local fish shop – the proprietor knows his fish, and in fact not just his fish but the actual origin of it and in some cases the providers of it. Considering that we live in the very middle of England, we are about 70 miles away from our nearest fishing port that is quite a feat but that doesn’t faze him.

Ok, there is probably a bit of salesmanship in this, but actually the quality is great and he does know the provenance, and more importantly will discuss how to prepare it, and based on preferences shared with him he gives suggestions on what we may like and so on.

So that is all well and good on fish, and actually we have independent butchers that will do the same…and also a couple of small artisan bakers that do wonderful bread that you can see and smell it being prepared behind them . That all great and for those nostalgic of the past it is a return to how our grandparents generation would have done their food shopping in the pre-supermarket era.

Good food for our physical well being is good news of course, but food for the mind is needed too which leads me to our local bookshop. I have mentioned them in passing, really just because they have a name for the shop that just says it as it is….. ‘Read’ ! One of the great things about this little shop, is that although its little, they not only have a lot of books in a small space but they do have an an impressive knowledge of the style, content, plot and readability of so many of the works of fiction on the shelves.

Ask them for something with just a few parameters and they come up with some ideas and personal reviews. So far , they haven’t failed to please and in fact have introduced me to some new authors.

What’s not to like about that! There is a series of TV ads running in the UK at the moment from Google encouraging you to use and review your local traders; American Express have done similar campaigns in the past where they reward their customers when using independent businesses…ok the cynics out there may say this is just PR for these organisations…it may be but if it helps keep these local businesses alive, then surely that is to the good.

Anyway, I am off to read my book now….. Happy Sunday

Yes, it’s you I am talking to…..

When I was at school, which admittedly was quite a few years ago, I would dread these words and the death wish glare of the headmaster or other scary teacher beaming down at you in assembly or class if you were a bit distracted and more interested in your friends conversation rather than the droning from ahead of you!

Life has moved on, and now it’s me uttering these words but in a nice way. One of the many advantages of being a blogger who does it for fun and not for clicks, stats or advertising revenue is that when I occasionally get a new follower (and these over 1 week can be counted on the fingers of one hand) is that I can actually take note of this and if they are following via WordPress (rather than an e mail or social media link) I can see their blog, what country they are in , what their interests are etc. This is not from a stalkerish or any other kind of undesirable curiosity, but a genuine interest in who likes what I write and wants to read more and also making me cogniscent of a varied readership.

I always pin my hopes on the fact that if some weeks, it’s not an interesting read to the reader, it’s only 2 minutes of their life I have used up!

So thanks this week to the Deli that is now following me (by the way, your produce looks great), the futness instructor who is also now a reader (maybe you are worried about my connection now with the Deli, and also the previous week the amazing marzipan lover who also joined me) and so on. It’s really good to have my little bit of my life in England, and specifically this corner of Yorkshire now part of yours.

Thanks also for the comments..feedback is good.

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