Don't know why . . . there's no sun up in the sky . . .

. . . stormy weather. Well, it's been quite exciting to watch, with our perfect view from our windows of the sea in all its wildness. BIG waves and squalls of hail and rain and nearly-snow hurling themselves towards us across the water. Strong, gusty winds chucking stuff around. Notice the eucalyptus tree in the photo - it's bending seriously to the right - it normally stands up fairly vertically. The sun, however did appear from time to time, as there were nice big breaks in the clouds, as you can see here. You'd hardly believe it was such a wild day, really.

But this is normal weather around here. The trees down the lane are all bent in that direction permanently, because of the prevailing winds.

You have to drive more slowly than usual, especially when you're on roads with overhanging trees, as there's no way of telling if there's going to be a big huge tree limb lying across the road in front of you as you go round a bend. But hey, it's all fun.

Apparently the M6 was closed for a while, and a car ferry on its way across the Irish Sea had to be evacuated by helicopter. Can you imagine being out in the Irish Sea in a car ferry in this weather? I think I'd have stayed ashore and waited for the wind to die down if it'd been me.

Several days' worth of nothing important

The thing is, if you allow yourself one day off from posting on your blog, you sort of slip into a non-blogging area where it no longer matters, and suddenly several days have passed. Well, it's true, it doesn't matter at all, and hardly anybody reads these words of wisdom anyway, but still, it's a sort of discipline thing and it should be good for the soul or something.

So, dear readers, you must be gasping, by now, to know what I've been doing that has taken me away from the . . . er . . . blogosphere. (Can't decide whether that's an appallingly horrible word or not, yet. I'd better try using it for a bit and see how I feel about it.)

The coffee I drank at Friday's class left me with a headache on Saturday, which turned out to be a completely wasted day, so nothing to write about there. Sunday was the usual round of dog-walking in the muddy old cowfield, visiting Sainsbury's and Steve's dad, and trying to catch up on some boring work later, which was interrupted by the welcome distraction of a phonecall from Chris. So . . . nothing to write about there, either.

Monday was back to Carlisle for Class Number Two, which probably was worth writing about, actually. What I am learning is how to say, "no," to the wrong sort of customers, and how to identify the right sort, and offer them something that we do better than any of our competitors. We do lots of things pretty well, and this is our problem, really. We're spread too thinly. If we can identify the things we do better than anyone else - (not necessarily the things we do best, as others may do them equally well) - then we have a competitive edge, and we can concentrate on these, become specialists, and build up a reputation for being the very best at those things, so that when people want those particular things done, we will be the obvious choice to do them. I came away filled with ideas. We go back again next Monday for more. What fun!

The only problem is getting up early. I spent Sunday night packing up parcels for mail order customers, meaning I didn't get to bed until after 1am, but had to get up again about 6am. Not enough sleep. (Hence the coffee!) Fortunately DP is such an interesting tutor that I managed not to doze off at all. Oh, and I won another bottle of wine! (We never had incentives like this at school.)

Had to stop on the way into Carlisle at a small post office to despatch my parcels, and then dash to the bank at lunchtime. It's hard work trying to keep things operating while being incarcerated in a classroom all day. Before I could go home I had to make a trip to pick up a monitor for Steve that we'd found on Freecycle: he's put a W98 computer together to play old games on but had no monitor for it. (Apparently they don't run on WXP.) Then a dash to the other end of town to get catfood.
We need a photo here, don't we? It can get very boring without illustrations. Let's see . . . Here's Mr Fire and Brimstone, proclaiming the wrath of God upon the sinners of Carlisle,(and there are many), doing his rather second-rate best to imitate The Rev Ian Paisley. He stood beneath the statue of a long-deceased mayor of the city, ranting away diligently, with his minder standing quietly by, but nobody stopped to listen. I'm afraid I didn't feel any more doomed than I had before I saw him, and having grown up in the shadow of Pastor Jack Glass in Edinburgh, I'm fairly immune by now.

Down Bank Street I came across yet another Eastern European-looking busker playing accordion - this time a pretty young woman with gappy teeth. (She obviously hasn't come across the other European immigrants to our shores yet - the Polish dentists.) Anyhoo . . . I approached her, smiling, in the same way I'd approached the guys on Friday who had grinned and posed so nicely for me, but she waved me away with a look of alarm on her face. I tried to show her that I'd pay for the privilege of photographing her, pointing to my handbag and purse, but she kept shaking her head and waving my camera away. I have no intention of taking photos of people who want to remain anonymous, so I left her in peace. I suspect, though, that she may be here illegally, or is trying to hide from someone. It would be fascinating to hear her story.

While writing captions for some of my other Carlisle photos on Flickr I had to do a bit of research and discovered the interesting fact that the famous factory chimney (Carlisle's main landmark, really), known as Dixon's Chimney, was the 8th highest factory chimney in the world at 305 feet. I've yet to get a really good photo of it - it always looks wonderful as you drive past, but I've not found the best viewpoint for it yet.

And today? Getting back to normal working again, which means I finished a cane chair at 11.30pm. I hope to deliver it to its owners on Saturday. While working I watched a programme where these two young doctors - identical twins and both completely mad - go around the world finding out about how other cultures deal with sickness and pain. Today they were in Asia, and as an experiment joined in one of these ceremonies where participants get metal skewers pushed through their faces and tongues. One brother went through all the rituals beforehand, which were supposed to make him immune to pain, while the other acted as a control. Didn't seem to work. They both found it excrutiating. However, later on, one of them seemed to find the secret. You still feel the pain, you just no longer let it bother you. It's a state of mind. Fascinating stuff.

Carlisle

There's funding from somewhere for strange training sessions and courses, and once the funding has been secured, the organisers need participants. I'm on the mailing list, and if it sounds interesting, I go along. This time there's the carrot of a £100 bursary at the end of it too.

It's a thing run by one David Parrish, and based on his book, T-Shirts and Suits, aimed at creative people (the T-shirts) who run businesses, things that are generally run with more efficiency by entrepreneurs (the suits). There are pencils, stripy pencil sharpeners, folders of info, and little piles of coloured origami paper on the desks. I say to the guy next to me, "Oh - are we going to be doing some origami?" but he just shrugs as though it's a silly question.

(Interestingly enough I win a small bottle of sparkling wine later on for making an origami fortune teller.)

There are several women in the group, and only one man - well, two if you count Andy Mackay, the organiser. We spend a pleasant day getting to know one another and thinking about how to run our businesses better. There are 4 more sessions to go. I think I might end up with some useful knowledge so it's well worth the effort.

At lunch time I dash (we've only half an hour) from the Viaduct across the street (no proper crossing place!) and up the pedestrian precinct to the post office, in order to despatch the Partnership Tax Return by Special Delivery. That's it - the last one is gone. Hurrah!

Carlisle's full of interesting buskers. I make the mistake of not photographing them on the way to the post office, and at least 2 of them had sloped off by the time I was on my return journey, meaning I missed the opportunity to capture for posterity the brass quartet playing Handel's Water Music and the double bass/flute duo. I did, however, manage to capture the Eastern European guys with their glorious moustaches playing folk tunes from - where? Bulgaria maybe? - on sax and accordion. As soon as they saw me approach with my camera they started to pose for me. Wish I'd had time to chat to them - I'd like to know where they were from.

When I returned after class finished, and visted Holland and Barratt, I asked one of the staff about the buskers. She groaned, saying, "They've been there since 12 o'clock and they've been playing the same song the whole time. We're sick of it!" I guess the poor lass was tone deaf, as I heard at least 10 different tunes in the time I was there, and there was lots of variety.

I also managed to capture photos of a trumpeter and another rather foreign-looking fellow playing another accordion. Had he been a bit closer to home I'd have been tempted to invite him to come and learn some morris tunes or join our ceilidh band.

The Tragically Hip
Have you heard of these guys? Unless you've been in Canada you probably haven't. They are, apparently, Canada's most popular band, and having listened to a some of the free downloads on their website, I have to admit they're rather good. What other musical gems are lurking in the Canadian wilds, I wonder? There's also Great Big Sea who are a sort of Canadian Runrig, complete with swaying thousands in big stadiums. How come these bands never get heard anywhere else?

Taxing matters

Finally all the relevant info has arrived from the tax office - a variety of security codes, PINs, IDs and so on - so at last I took a deep breath and logged on the to Government Gateway website.

Last year I took my 3 tax returns to my local office, only to be refused a receipt for them. They wouldn't even tell me their surnames so that I could take a note of the people who accepted them from me. For a department who have twice in 10 years managed to mislay one or more of my returns in their capacious offices, they're not doing a lot to instill confidence in their users.

The one thing they kept insisting on, last year, was that for my peace of mind I really ought to be filing my returns online. Soon, they told me, it won't be possible to hand them in personally at all. We were a little worried about the security issues, but with all those codes and PINs I feel a lot safer than handing them into an office with no way of knowing whether they'll ever reach the right person.

So. The two personal returns worked fairly smoothly. Now for the Partnership return. After going through the same security rigmarole as the others, I found there was no dedicated software available with which to file it. I was presented with a list of 3rd party software companies, approved by the Revenue, and with a vague piece of advice stating that neither could they recommend one package over another, nor could they tell us which one was free, although it seemed there was at least one. I've yet to find it. I went through them all, and all of them seemed to cost money, as well as being a lot more complex than what I required.

Sighing heavily, I phoned the helpline. A nice Weegie lassie replied, and with a helpful tone of voice attempted to answer my question. In the end she had to agree that there didn't seem to be a way of filing a Partnership return online without paying for the privilege, and suggested either taking it in person or posting it Special Delivery. I could have done this a week ago, had they not tantalized me with offerings of PINs and easy online filing. Aaarghh!

So. I guess the Special Delivery option is the safest bet. At least I'll get a receipt from the Post Office, and it's guaranteed next day delivery. Costs a bit, but cheaper than buying a complete software package that I only need for a single, very small job.

Carlisle

I'm off on a free course in Carlisle tomorrow. ALL DAY. I'm not used to this sort of thing. How shall I keep awake? It sounds really interesting and useful, but it's an awfully early start - 9.30am. I just hope they have copious supplies of black coffee.

Too much to do . . .

. . . to have anything interesting to write about. Putting caning kits together; printing instruction books; doing invoices; taking phone calls; stripping down 'Cesca seats; caning a small bedroom chair; packing customers' orders; updating clients' websites; making phone calls; replying to emails; printing price lists; wondering when I'm going to get around to the other half dozen chairs and stools that need reseating with seagrass, rush or Danish cord; wondering if I'm ever going to have time to leave the premises again.

I'm tired, I tell ya!

Happy birthday to me

I got 3 actual physical birthday cards, and many virtual ones, which is fine, as it leaves less to recycle, and of the 3 real ones, two were home-made while the third is so pretty that I'll probably want to keep it anyway.

I also got enough reading matter to keep me quiet for a while, enough games to distract me even more than usual from real life, some lovely home-made jewellery and half an acre of Brazilian rain forest, which I plan to visit and set up a holiday home on as soon as I've brushed up my Portuguese a bit. (Oh. I see. I'm not supposed to use it - I'm helping to conserve it. Well, that's actually even better. Thanks Patti.)

I gather it was snowing the day I was born. It was snowing the day Chris was born too, and that was 2 months after my birthday. These sort of things don't happen any more. Yesterday's feeble attempt at snow had vanished completely by lunchtime, and now it's just rain and flood warnings and wind and greyness and general dreichness.

Weather

Eventually we are all reduced to talking about the weather. Well, if we're British, anyway.

Wild today. Wind and that really cold nasty rain that penetrates clothing and chills your skin even if you're just dashing from the car to the Post Office. You don't see people standing around in the street on days like this: they're all dashing from one sanctuary to the next. I didn't even notice the usual knot of smokers outside the pubs, but having been one myself for many years I know that it takes more than bad weather to stop a smoker lighting up, so I guess it was just the wrong time of day or something.

There's a stretch of road between Netherhall School and Maryport that always floods when there's heavy rain, and on my way into town the whole left side of the road was waterlogged, forcing all the traffic to veer to the right side of the road. On my way back the flood had spread so that there was only about a car's width left on the dry side. A little later and it would have filled up completely. Someone told me the Dearham road was flooded too, so the poor Maryportians may have ended up beseiged in their own town, with the only way out being through Flimby.

By the time I got home the rain had turned to sleet, and within minutes the sleet had turned to snow. For a while I got quite excited, but it turned out to be that nasty wet sort of snow, that will certainly lie for a while, but makes crap snowballs and is useless for sledging on. Oh well, with the full moon it looked quite nice in the garden anway. Hmm. Wonder if the moon's still visible? Might be an opportunity for some interesting long-exposure photography if I can find warm enough boots.

I am a calm-assertive pack leader, I am . . . well, sometimes, anyway

Cesar Millan's ideal state for the pack leader is 'calm-assertive', while the dogs in the pack need to be 'calm-submissive'. Since Sky 3 runs two episodes of The Dog Whisperer back to back every night of the week I'm becoming immersed in his ethos, and it's beginning to rub off on me.

Took the dogs out for a quick run round the field before our weekly trip to see Dad, and, horror of horrors, there on the other side of the road was E. with his little lurcher. This dog really dislikes my dogs, and I feel E. also dislikes them, as he has been known to wave his stick in a threatening manner at Ghyll in the past. I've always tried to avoid them if we see them coming, since that incident. As a pair, they are our nemesis. Today, however, I decided to be the calm-assertive pack leader, and march purposefully onwards, leading my pack with the right sort of energy. And it worked! I couldn't believe it. We walked past E. and his dog, and neither Pace nor Ghyll let out so much as a murmer. E's dog, however, did bark a little, but all three of us completely ignored it and walked on. Wow!

We have a long way to go before my dogs are 'balanced' as CM puts it, but we're getting there, and a lot of it is down to my own behaviour, rather than the dogs'. They've always behaved better for Steve, and this is probably because he's closer to the calm-assertive ideal than I am. I'm learning though.

Just a moment ago, as I was typing this, the dogs started barking, hearing something outside. (We're waiting for Steve to come back from his band practice.) Instead of shouting at them, I walked quietly downstairs, and without a word touched Pace, who was doing the barking at that point, gently but firmly on her head, and she became quiet and calm and moved away. Silence followed. This is amazing!

Their behaviour when the phone rings is already improving, though we haven't quite got there yet. Next they have to learn to be calm when customers arrive, and to ignore the postie. I feel optimistic though - I think we're going to do it. Hurrah!

Above: our somewhat extended pack last spring when Steve's mum and Dougal joined us on the beach.

Loweswater, unexpectedly

Below - NOT Loweswater but Cogra Moss
For once it wasn't raining, and my new walking boots needed a good workout. Spent a little while poring over the OS map (English Lakes, NW area), and remembered we hadn't been to Cogra Moss for ages. Lovely remote little baby lake, undiscovered by tourists, and only used by a few peaceful anglers and many waterfowl. (See photo, left.) It's sort of beyond the village of Lamplugh on the other side of the fell from Loweswater.
There's a little off-road carpark, where we left the car, and the dogs and I wandered across the field full of disinterested sheep, which hardly glanced at us as we passed. At the top of the field you reach a gate, and beyond the gate we found an ominous sign, informing us that forestry work was ongoing, and for safety reasons the path down to the lake was closed. There was even a useful map (shown right) explaining exactly which bits of forest were to go. Bugger.

Oh well, not to be put off, we put a brave face on it, returned to the car, and made our way to the next lake along, Loweswater. This turned out to be rather a good idea, as it happens, because I normally only go there in summer for some reason, and at that time of year the water is infested with toxic blue-green algae which makes swimming for the dogs too hazardous to permit. Today the water was clear and bright and the dogs could happily dash in, swimming and splashing to their hearts' content.

Loweswater is quite a moody looking lake on a grey day like today, but in some ways I prefer it without the perfect blue skies you see in the touristy photos. There were plenty of wet and muddy places in which to test the waterproofness of my new boots, and they emerged with shining colours. Well, they emerged covered in mud, actually, but my feet remained dry.

Halfway along the lake shore we came across a lovely little bothy, all clean and tidy and locked up, though it looks like it gets used by whoever can find the key. Through the window you can see a basic kitchen complete with cooker, simple bench seating and an instruction sheet. In the other room there's a ladder leading up into a loft, where walkers or others presumably can sleep. It's a lot cleaner looking than the bothies you find in the Highlands, but those, of course, don't need to be locked up. This one is too near civilization to expect civilized conduct from all who find it.
These are not quiet woods. Further along we hear a commotion ahead, and an army of benevolent English pensioners comes streaming towards us, all outfitted by the best of Keswick's outdoor gear shops complete with backpacks and walking poles. (One of these days I shall devote an entire blog to the pointlessness of walking poles, but I digress . . .) They look happy and fit, chatting pleasantly to each other, and smiling in a genuinely friendly manner to me and my crazy dogs. Sometimes you can't help liking English people, however hard you try not to. Then again, maybe I've just lived here too long, and I'm getting sucked in.

A little further on we find two ladies in identical red anoraks sitting on identical folding camping stools, taking in a superb view across the lake while they share a vacuum flask of tea. Well, honestly, what could be nicer than sitting with a friend (actually they looked like mother and daughter) sipping tea in such surroundings? See what I mean about being sucked in to the niceness of the English? I sometimes feel they need protecting from all these scary immigrants who will surely destroy all this niceness and turn England into a wild and crazy place like the rest of the world. Maybe it's up to us Scots to protect our auld enemies from something much worse. Strange thought, that.

Well, back to the dogwalk. I take photos of all the little streams that flow into Loweswater. Some are named on the map, like Dub Beck and Holme Beck, but others are not. I intend to upload some of these pictures the the River Names of Britain group on Flickr, but I can't use unnamed becks. Not that anyone would be any the wiser if I just named them on the spot - I could call them Oscar Beck and Aineko Beck after my cats. I wonder how long it would take before anyone noticed? Actually they probably never would. The internet is full of errors, mistakes and downright lies, which people just blindly copy from website to blog to social networking site without ever checking their veracity. I used to try to correct things, but after a while you give up. People don't want to know. So the description of the world around us is changing before our eyes: those of us who know what's correct will gradually die off, leaving a generation who rely solely on what they read online to inform them.

Is it a new phenomenon, I wonder, where one has a gut feeling that one's parents' generation was probably the best one, (well, apart from the wars, of course), and things have been sliding downhill ever since?

John Codona, Edinburgh's one-man-band

When I was a little kid we used to get all sorts of people coming round the streets. There was the knife-sharpener with his big grinding wheel; there was Mrs Dunlop with her barrel-organ, pulled by Smokey the pony; there was Jeannie Livingstone the Musselburgh fishwife; there was the daily delivery of milk by St Cuthbert's horse-drawn milk wagons; and of course, there was John Codona, the one-man-band.

John was a member of the Codona family, who still to this day run fairground rides. They've been showmen for generations, probably going back at least to 1800 or beyond. A few members of the family moved sideways from the fairgrounds, and earned their livings doing what we'd now call busking, but in those days I guess you'd call them street performers. John spent his entire life playing in the street, a career lasting over 50 years.

When I first saw him I believe he carried the full one-man-band equipment, complete with big bass drum attached to his back, full Highland bagpipes at the front, and on top of the drum various cymbals and things, operated by foot pedals. I think the bass drum was controlled by clapping his knees together. It was all very technical, and fascinated me as a child. I guess some of my earliest experiences of music came from him, and I'm sure my first hearing of many of the old Scots tunes came from his playing.

My parents, too, appreciated his skills. The tradition, when a street performer came round the Edinburgh tenements, was to wrap a few coins tightly in a scrap of silver paper, open the front window and drop this offering down to street level where the performer could pick it up. Our stair was 3 floors high (4 if you count the ground floor) and some in other parts of the city are much taller, so this was a sensible way of contributing, saving a long trip downstairs.

My father, as a keen photographer, got John to pose on a couple of occasions, first in black and white, and a few years later in colour. Interestingly, none of these photos shows his bagpipes, though I'm convinced he did play them. The earlier one shows him with the big drum on his front, and blowing a set of panpipes. If I remember correctly - and here, the photo backs me up - these weren't the sort of panpipes you can now pick up in ethnic crafts shops, as played by South American performers. I think each tube had its own fipple-type mouthpiece, similar to a penny whistle's. He holds the instrument straight out from his mouth, as you certainly would do if you were playing with that sort of mouthpiece. Andean panpipes have to be blown over the top, and would be held vertically.

Sadly, over the years, John's health gradually deteriorated, and he gradually had to give up carrying the bigger, heavier instruments. The black & white photo may have been taken when he had already given up the bagpipes, and the colour ones show him when he was reduced to just the one instrument.

It's this instrument that intrigues me at the moment. My dad always referred to it as a "chanter", and I'm pretty sure that's what John himself called it, though for the first time I find myself actually looking closely at the instrument in the photo, and this is no chanter. I'm sure I can see some sort of ligature at the mouthpiece end, as though it's holding on a reed in the style of a clarinet. My best guess would be a chalumeau, which is a short, simple type of clarinet that plays only the lower register. I've had suggestions that it might be a toy clarinet or an Ab clarinet; also it's possible that this, as well as the panpipes, was something created or adapted by the musical members of the Codona family as a usefully loud instrument for street performing.

You can see the bigger versions of these photos on Flickr at the following links:
Black and white photo
First colour photo
Second colour photo

I've had these photos up on Flickr for several months, and yesterday I had an email out of the blue from one Frank Bruce who is currently writing a book about the Codona family; during his researches he came across my photos. Of course I'm delighted to be able to let him use them in the book, with Thomas Morgan McGurk acknowledged as photographer (I'm sure he'd be proud). But the whole episode has got me asking questions about John's instruments and style of playing.

For instance, notice that he plays his woodwind instrument, whatever it is, with the right hand at the top and left at the bottom. I know that in the past there was no rule about which hand went where, but I sort of assumed that by the 20th century people had settled down to left at the top and right at the bottom. Apparently, though, this isn't quite true, and I've had all sorts of interesting anecdotes about hand positions.

Here's one from Jack Campin: "The oddest story like this I've heard was about John D. Burgess, who entered a Highland piping competition and after winning it asked the judges, "did you notice anything unusual?" - they hadn't, but about halfway through he'd turned round with his back to them while playing a high A and swapped his hands round on the chanter."

More exciting still, I now find that Jacey Bedford has a large collection of historical photos, which include a couple of John Codona, as well as some of Mrs Dunlop with her barrel organ and the Store Milk Cart! I await their arrival on Flickr with bated breath!

ALL TOGETHER NOW - AAAWW!
One of the troubles with living in a damp and draughty 18th century Cumbrian farmhouse is that it's - well - damp and draughty, and in order not to freeze when sitting motionless at one's computer, one has to wrap oneself in a nice warm fleecy blanket. (It's cheaper than leaving the central heating on, and much better for the planet.) My current computer blanket is red. (Steve's has Spider-Man on it.)

Came back to my chair yesterday to find my blanket already inhabited by Aineko, who had made a very nice nest for herself in the middle of it. I know what you're asking now. And yes, I was mean and cruel and made her move, although she was quite happy to jump back up on my lap once I was properly wrapped.

Too late

. . . to be writing much. I want to go to bed. But I promised myself I'd write a bit every day so here is today's news.

FLICKR EXPLORE


Why does it seem such an honour to have some of your photos appearing in Flickr's Explore? It's a computer algorythm for heavens' sake. Why should it matter? But I've just discovered I've had 2 photos put there, having a high degree of interestingness (now there's a neologism that just slips smoothly off the tongue, isn't it?) Both are photos of the Cumbrian sky, and one of them wasn't even taken with a camera, but with my O2 Cocoon phone. I dunno. Really, I dun. But for some reason I now want more pics in Explore.

TRYING OUT NEW BOOTS
Took dogs down very muddy lane, wearing my new walking boots, purchased in Keswick at the weekend. Came back with dry feet and dirty boots. They seem to work, then.

PIPING HOT
Supposed to be 8 of us, but only 6 stayed to play. Helen turned up long enough to convey her apologies, but they've sold their house and will be moving away on February 1st, so she will, sadly, no longer be available to play with us. The rest of us played a Petite Symphony by Gounod, and a few other things, and laughed a lot. This is what it's all about, really.

Books

Reading Chris' blog today reminds me that if there's nothing much else to write about, there's always the book you're currently reading. Just finished Northern Lights which I've read after seeing the film. It's a strange experience, that. I usually read the book first, if there is one. In this case I approached the book thinking I knew what was going to happen, and that it would just be fleshed out a bit more, but of course things happen in the book that are avoided in the film for one reason or another. It's well written. Pullman has a much better command of the English language than Rowling, for example. The story flows along nicely and I never once stopped to groan about style, which tends to happen a lot with HP books. (Thank goodness I'll never have to read another one of those.)

So, I'd finished Lyra's story, and not having books 2 or 3 yet, I needed something else to read last night. Had a poke about in the pile of books I've never got around to reading, and found one I'd picked up for 10p at Eaglesfield Village Hall, where hall users bring in books which are bought by other hall users: 10p for each book is left in a jam jar. I gather the vast proceeds from these transactions go towards the hall fund or something. The last one from there that I read was called, intriguingly (if you're an arctophile anyway) The Bear Went over the Mountain by William Kotzwinkle, the chap who wrote the original story behind E.T. Very strange story, that was, about a bear who stole an author's manuscript, took it to New York and, posing as said author, became a celebrity, while the real author gradually started turning into a bear and spent the winter hibernating in a cave. So, anyway, this is how I come to be reading, for a change, a classic of English literature - Brideshead Revisted. And since I'm probably in a very small minority here - the group of people who never saw the TV adaptation - I shall be approaching it fresh and eager and with very little idea of what happens. I shall let you know how I get on.

What I really want is Iain Banks' latest opi. (That looks silly. What's the plural of opus, for heaven's sake? Can this be right?) I've had The Steep Approach to Garbadale on my wish list for ages, but I'm going to buy it for myself shortly, as soon as his newest SF book, Matter hits the shelves. Probably buy them both at once. Embarras de richesse!

And now, finding myself almost out of teabags, I think a quick trip to Tesco might be in order. Adieu.

An average Monday

Even when you work from home, Mondays can be a bit miserable, especially if the sky's constantly grey and it rains from time to time. There's no need to go outside so you just stay where you are and get on with some work.

You dash off later to a Belfagan practice, via Sainsbury's and Steve's dad's house to deliver his projector which Steve had been fixing - again. (It keeps falling over.) Bit of dancing, bit of playing, bit of bitching. Heigh ho. Same old.

Checking in on uklc I find that Edith has sold her flat in Horten, which seems like a wise move. She seems to have made a decent profit on it too. I wonder if she'll invest in a small Lake District property now?

Above: (left) Edith's famous front verandah; (right) the view from the verandah.

The sax doctor and other stuff

Today Steve wore his Sax Doctor hat, so we had to get up early (on a Sunday!) in order to get to the venue in Carlisle by the back of 10. Roz holds these Sax Days from time to time, mainly to give her own students (of whom there are many) a chance to play together in ensemble, and stretch themselves a bit, but it's also open to other sax players, and a good crowd usually turns up. There are various playing sessions throughout the day, and at lunchtime and tea break times The Sax Doctor is available for free consultations.

The majority of those who arrive at his surgery are, of course, people who are already customers of ours - most woodwind & brass players in this area gravitate to Marshall McGurk sooner or later (there's nowhere else to go if your instrument breaks down, and after all, we are very good). Big overhauls can't be done, but odd little leaks and bits of missing cork can be dealt with, advice can be asked for and given, and a nice chatty atmosphere fills the room.

I, of course, benefit from all this by being allowed to sit in on the playing sessions, simply by virtue of being The Sax Doctor's trusty chauffeuse, and let's face it, I could really do with some help in the sort of sax playing Roz specializes in. I've been sight-reading music almost as long as I've been reading words, and I'm also good at memorizing a tune, but the one thing I still haven't learned is the gentle art of improvisation.

Even after a lot of well-explained theory (Roz is an excellent teacher!) it's still very stressful having to do a solo, however simple, in front of a group of other, equally stressed, people. I don't think I was the worst in the room, so at least I didn't go home feeling embarrassed, but some of the others were very good indeed. I feel keen to keep working at this now, so watch this space.

We were also treated to one of Peter Gardner's fascinating talks on great sax players of the past: on this occasion his subject was Johnny Hodges (1907-1970), an alto saxophonist of whom I was only vaguely aware. He played with Duke Ellington's band for 38 years and had a beautifully clear tone. As someone who is a folkie first and a classicist second, I love listening to Peter's enthusiastic descriptions of people like this, superb musicians who played in a field quite different from my own. I come away full of new knowledge and understanding and a desire to find out more.

BLOODY FLICKR, though . . .
is still not working, despite messages on the Flickr blog to the contrary. At sometime after 7.30 PST (which stands for what? Er. . . Pacific Standard Time or something? How many hours behind us are they in San Francisco anyway?) they claimed to have fixed everything, but all I get is stupid messages about Flickr having a massage.

Phew!
At last . . . nearly 2230 GMT (no idea what that would be in PST terms) and Flickr's working again. I don't quite understand how one can become addicted to a photo-sharing website, but of course, as we Flickrites know, there's a lot more to it than that.

Flickr withdrawr

Argh . . . Flickr's offline. Here's what they say:
" We started on a database upgrade and a few alters to the database structure last night. Given our scale, tasks like this takes a long time, and makes a definite impact on site performance.

You may have noticed today that the site is having lots of hiccups and that behaviour is generally pretty erratic. So, we’ve decided to take the site offline until things settle down. We’re anticipating a couple of hours is all we need at this point.

Sorry about this! It will be one of those massages that ‘hurts so good’. We’ll post updates here as we have them."

How will I survive? I need my Flickr fix.

I do love my phone's camera!

You just don't get artistic-looking photos like this with a proper camera. I was on my way back from Maryport, noticed the sun was setting, and took a slight detour along the coast road. Stopped briefly in the beach car park, tried to remove the fluff from the phone's lens, and took a few quick pics. Extraordinary results, really. Mind you, the sky really was something special - you need good subject matter to get any decent results at all from the phone.

By the time I got back to the house the sky had turned red and orange and was quite spectacular, so I went out in the garden with my real camera and tried to capture it, but none of these were nearly as good as the quick ones I'd snatched on the beach.

See what I mean? I mean, it's OK, but it's just another bloody sunset, isn't it?

There's always something to say

If you're so busy doing boring work all day that nothing worth blogging about happens, what do you do? If you've been paying attention to the outside world you can comment on current affairs or politics, or the neighbours' affairs, but apart from dog- and cat-watching I've not seen anything worth commenting on.

Well, you could try picking a photo at random from your 2018 pics on Flickr and commenting on that. (Two thousand and eighteen photos? Can this be true? And the ones on Flickr are only about 10% of my actual stash of photos taken since I got my first digital camera, which can't be more than about 5 years ago. And then there are the boxes and boxes of slides and prints and dageurrotypes and hand-tinted sepia-toned Victorian photos, and the little black & white snaps taken by my mother on her Voigtlander during her Indian travels, and the hundreds of prints made by my father while cooped up in his smoke-filled darkroom, and my grandfather's collection of prints of engineering works in India, taken on a home-made camera on hand-made film, and the pictures of various ancestors, posed formally in a succession of professional photographers' studios from Blairgowrie to Darjeeling, and the stereoscopic pairs, also created by my grandfather, showing views across fragile rope bridges spanning precipitous Indian gorges, and many many others.)

OK - random photo coming up. Well, not completely random - it had to be something vaguely interesting.



So, what's this about? I took this photo on 15th December last year, just after I'd parked my car in the big car park in Carlisle, just under the castle. Glanced into the cab of a white van as I passed it, and realised the smiling old man was only the face of a smiling old man.

Is it a mask? Did someone wear it while committing a crime? Was it for a fancy-dress party? Is it a copy of the actual face of an actual person, or is it an invented face? (It does look sort of like a real person, doesn't it? Even in its hollowed-out state.)

Why did the owner leave it so conspicuously on the headrest? Is it to deter car thieves? Is it to provoke controversy?

Or . . . was it a real man, whose insides and torso have been sucked out and consumed by hungry aliens/vampires/monsters? You know, the sort of hungry aliens/vampires/monsters that can eat anything and everything apart from elderly people's faces? They know from experience that this sort of thing is likely to make them sick. (Well, would you want to eat an old man's face? You can't blame them really, now, can you?)

Now, if you happen to be the owner of that van and that face, and you're reading this PLEASE talk to me!

Today's News

COCKERMOUTH
Castlegate is closed at the moment so that they can resurface the road. It's a very narrow street - I mean VERY narrow - and they seem to be making the pavements wider, which makes me wonder if they're planning to make it one-way. But if they do, where will the traffic going the other way go? Perhaps they're going to install traffic lights? Nice fancy new paving stones going down. Causing temporary chaos for people wanting to drive up to the school or the Leisure Centre though, as they have to go away up Market Place to the top end of town and then back down past the school. Half of Market Place itself is also being re-done, though I'm assured it will all be finished in time for the Georgian Fair in May. It'd better be.

DEAD HORSES
I'm horrified after hearing about the RSPCA going into a Buckinghamshire farm and finding 32 dead horses lying around, and another 80-odd that had to be rescued. A few of these were in such bad shape they had to be put down.

PIPING HOT
Our first get-together after the festive season, and now we're starting to plan our programme for the Georgian Fair. Five of us present, which is enough for the moment, although by the time the concert comes round Helen will be gone, as she's selling her house and moving down south. We played through some JC Bach, a Mozart horn concerto (no, not the Flanders & Swann one!) and some Dowland almains and a galliard, all of which are possibles for May. We also ran through Limelight which caused much merriment as it's not as easy as it looks. Amazingly, despite growing up in Leftpondia, Rachel had never heard it before. She had also never heard Autumn Leaves before, leaving me believing the poor girl, despite appearances to the contrary, must have had a deprived childhood.

FIRE
Steve lit the fire in the living room. We don't do this very often, but it's really nice, and makes you want to just sit there in front of it and do nothing. Shame my computer is in a completely different part of the house. The cats don't seem to have noticed it yet - I don't think they realise the joys of an open fire, but once they do . . .

I hate bookkeeping

It's not that it's difficult -it's just mindnumbingly boring. So I leave it to the last minute, when the deadline for the tax return is looming, and consequently January ends up being the worst month of the year. Every year I vow to keep up to date with it, and I usually get a certain amount done before January, but never enough.

There are so many things I'd rather be doing. Like standing outside in the garden in the dark and the rain and the cold getting wet for example, or sitting quietly downstairs while the cats practise their nibbling techniques on my hands.

A very nerdy video and a bit of morrising

Making a triode valve from scratch! As someone on the newsgroup where I found a link to this commented, ". . . absolutely astonishing - I had no idea anyone had attempted that since about
1905!" It's completely riveting.

BELFAGAN
Back to normal Mondays again - nothing like a bit of North West morris to strengthen up the leg muscles. And to give you sore feet, if it's a while since you've done it. Two new girls tonight - Thelma and Beryl - wonderful names - I don't think I've ever met a real Thelma or a real Beryl in my entire life, and here's one of each at the same time! Better still, they both seemed to be picking up the dancing at an amazingly fast rate, so let us hope they keep coming back. We could do with some new blood . . . (Cue Count Duckula theme.)

It can be hard . . .

. . . to think of something new to say each day. Hmm . . . well, it's been Sunday, and a fairly sunny Sunday, at that, though some would say it was a bit chilly. (Oh dear, I've sunk to the level of talking about the weather.)

Above - the Shadow People
Took dogs down to Rose Ghyll, which I usually do on a Sunday lunchtime. Bit muddy down there, but not as muddy as last week. Must get new walking boots: either my old ones have shrunk or my feet are still growing. Whatever the reason, they are now too tight and my feet hurt in them. Unfortunately they are my only waterproof pair.

Above: Rose Gill (left) and Cowfield Burn (right) its tributary.
Our local river, the Ellen, flows through the field down there. Nice, minor river - I like it. It enters the sea at Maryport, and never gets particularly big, though it's big enough at its mouth. Down at Roseghyll, though, it's overhung with trees, and in summer a great place for dogs to swim. At this time of year I worry about them getting washed away in the torrent, though, so I direct them to its smaller tributary, the Rose Gill. Until recently I thought this little burn was unnamed, and tended to refer to it as the Cowfield Burn for obvious reasons. However, I have now recycled this name to refer to the even smaller tributary of the Rose Gill, which doesn't even seem to be marked on the large scale map.

Watching the printer . . .

. . . is mindnumbing. I'm printing out 2 copies of each of the 5 parts of Limelight, plus 2 copies of the score, which I've promised to the rest of the gang, even though we haven't actually settled on the date of our next practice. You sit and watch it going chugga chugga chugga, page after page, and start wishing you had one of those mythical printers that never goes wrong, so that you can go away and make a cup of tea while it's working. That, of course, as we know, is a recipe for disaster.

This time I'm using a nice gold coloured foolscap, from Sharon's stash that she left me before decamping for Kiwi-land. PH are used to it by now, but I love the puzzled look that appears on people's faces the first time I hand them something printed on foolscap.

Now, talk of the devil, as they say (well, talk of the minister's wife, actually . . .) just as I was typing her name, Sharon appeared on Skype, so I'm typing this and having a conversation with her at the same time, hearing about her hot and sunny NZ Christmas. Funny old world.

WORKINGTON DOCKS

Having been chatting with my mate Russell on UKLC about Workington's industrial heritage, I decided to take a quicky shufty round the docks area this afternoon before venturing to Tesco. Lovely wild and stormy day to be in an area like this - wish I'd worn the same gear I had on my photographic tour of the Maryport coastline last week.

I get the feeling that a lot more went on in the old days. Everything looks delapidated and rusted. This curious little building in the photo is a tide-watcher's building where, as Russell tells me, " . . . he would, ahem, raise or lower his balls to warn mariners of the state of the tides." All the doors and windows are bricked up, presumably to prevent unspeakable things from happening inside.

The next thing is to investigate the mill stream, which was cut from the Yearl or weir further up the Derwent, and crosses the Mill Field where it used to power a water wheel at the mill (now converted to a dwelling house). This artificial watercourse flows in a deep channel in front of Tesco's, and I've always just referred to it as The Stank, not knowing what it was. It re-enters the Derwent just before the river flows into the sea, at the point where I photographed the moored boats the other day - at that point it's wide and tidal, but the rest of it's narrow.

Depending on your interests, gentle reader, this is either fascinating or deeply boring.

Working

Not much else to do on grey days like this, apart from work. Finished the bamboo chair with its Danish cord seat. Normally I'd have taken it outside to photograph it, but I don't think the owner would thank me for taking it outside into the rain/sleet/hail that was going on at the time, so it remains, for now, unphotographed.

Spent some time attempting to get the bookkeeping up to date. Every year I have a failed new year resolution which goes something like this: This year I shall keep my bookkeeping up to date. Never works. Depressing, isn't it?

Decided to start practising the alto sax in preparation for Roz' Sax Day in about 10 days' time. The funny thing is, when I'm playing my C-melody, all I play is folk music, but the minute I get an alto in my hands I want to play jazz. NB - I want to play jazz. I don't think I really can play jazz, but at least the desire to try it is there.

When Roz holds a Sax Day, she ropes in Steve to be the Sax Doctor, doing running repairs and tweaks for her students who come along, en masse, to play together for a day. And if Steve's there, so am I, as I am his loyal chauffeuse, and if I am there, I might as well join in the fun, even though I am not, as yet, one of Roz' students. Well, it was fun last time.

Playing my C-melody for Belfagan in Keswick a few years back.

A few resolutions for 2008:
1) Practise the sax.
2) Get bookkeeping up to date.
3) Get more exercise.
4) Don't leave sarcastic comments on poor fragile son's blog.

January is Tax Return Month - but where's the snow?

grrr..... b)(*&£(*$^) f")*£%£&%)(%@>!!!!

Right, that's got that out of my system then.

It seems to be snowing. Well, it's been snowing in Canada (well, of course) and Edinburgh, and north east England, and up in the Pennines, and even Rex in Rutland is watching ominous clouds approaching, but here in NW Cumbria by the coast all we've had is a few tantalizingly lovely flakes, drifting down, lying on the picnic table, and waiting in vain for enough more of the same to turn things white.

I know I could get all the snow I wanted if I was daft enough to drive to Edinburgh - I'd probably get stuck half way again, like last winter, and I'd have ample time to take as many photos as I wanted while I awaited the snow ploughs.

Look - this is what I mean:
Above - the Pentlands under snow, January 2003.

Here's a photo of the Pentlands taken when I was travelling to - or perhaps from - Edinburgh, 4 years ago. You always get loads of the stuff between there and here, and even quite a bit there, but never here. Well, we have had a little over the years, but only just enough to make me gasp for more . . .

I know. I know. I should be careful what I wish for. I'll probably get stuck in a blizzard on my way to hand in my Tax Return at Whitehaven and end up getting fined for handing it in late . . .

Back to work

Fed up with all this gratuitous holidaying, I decided it was time to get back to work. It's all very well for people with jobs, who get paid leave at this time of year, but if you're self-employed you only get paid if you work, so unless there's something more important to take up your time (like morris dancing, for instance) you might as well be earning a living.

I'm in the middle of repairing at least 3 woven seats at the moment. There's the big ongoing project of course - The World's Biggest And Slowest Double-Panelled Cane Sofa - and I keep trying to do bits on this so that eventually it will be finished. This one is taking somewhat longer than I suggested to my long-suffering client when I took on the job, and I'm feeling suitably guilty about it. So I'm now trying to clear the decks and get all the smaller ones out of the way, so that I can concentrate on the big one.

Nearly finished the bamboo rocking chair, which, after giving me several weeks of wondering what on earth I was going to do with it is now turning out to be rather fun. It had originally been covered - seat and back - with ready-woven rattan webbing of a type I can't get, and although the owner was quite happy for me to use a different type I realised that removing the framework in order to install the new stuff would involve taking out rusty nails and trying to put back new nails in the very dry bamboo, which I didn't really want to get into, as this sort of thing is a recipe for disaster. So, having had a chat with the customer, and his blessing to do anything I liked with it so long as it ended up usable, I'm doing it in a completely different way, and it's turning out really well. I'm using Danish cord. It looks great. Just a little more to do tomorrow, and lots of loose ends to tuck in and tidy up, and maybe a few bits of lapping cane to replace over the joints, and it'll be done.

I'd have finished it if I hadn't had to go to Workington with my leaky tyre. The nice man at KwikFit discovered it was punctured in the tyre wall, which is, apparently, unrepairable, so I had to have a new tyre. Bugger. Oh well, at least it's safe again.

Above - boats in Workington harbour. A tripod would have made this photo sharper, but I love the colours. It's my mission to try to improve the image of places normally thought of as ugly and industrial.

Took a detour via the harbour on the way home and took a couple of photos of the boats as the sun went down. I really must start leaving a tripod in the boot, just in case, for occasions like this. Anyone would think I don't take photography seriously.

Hello 2008

Well, here we go - another year and still alive.

When I first moved to Cumbria from Scotland I couldn't believe anyone would be mad enough - no, I really mean sober enough - to go out morris dancing on New Year's Day. I grew up in a world where sensible people didn't emerge from the safety of their duvets until late afternoon. In England, New Year's Day is a bank holiday, and most people go back to work on the 2nd. In Scotland both the 1st and the 2nd are holidays. Even if they were supposed to go back on the 2nd, very few people would, so there's no point.

Anyway. I'm used to it now. It's a tradition now. We go out on New Year's day, meet up at a pub somewhere (yes, there's still a little drink involved) at about noon, and perform a few dances in the street outside before wandering back to someone's house for a bit of a party.

This year it was the Bush in Cockermouth Main Street. It rained, but the landlord refused to let us dance inside on the nice wooden floor in case it upset the 2 customers who were sitting there. Fortunately the rain eased off a bit so we were able, in the end, to dance outside.

It could have been a lot worse. Two years ago we danced at the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, on New Year's Day, and the rain practically washed us away (see photo, left).

So, everything seemed to be going nice and smoothly. We all sloped off to Susie's house for food and wine and good conversation. Two of Bridget's beautiful granddaughters (they have 5 - so far!) were there too, one aged 6 and the other 2½.

Phil got talking about his electric guitar, and before we knew it we'd all got our instruments out - my guitar emerged from the car, Bridget's accordion, Gin's concertinas (she's got a new one for Christmas too), Pete's bouzouki, and Chiara joined in with her shakers. There were probably more songs than usual along the lines of The Wheels of the Bus or The Bear went over the Mountain, but we managed some grown-up stuff too and everyone had fun.

It wasn't until I was on my way home, driving up the really wiggly, narrow, dark bit of the road between Dearham and Crosby, that I noticed the regular thumping noise from under the car somewhere. Not the best place in the world to stop, on a nearly-single-track road in the pitch dark where drivers are trying to negotiate several tricky bends, so I crept gingerly along until I got to the lights of Crosby and found a safe place to stop.

We'd just had a leaky tyre recently, so my first thought was that the spare, which Steve had put on the other day, was also leaky and had gone flat, but it looked OK. Couldn't see anything obviously wrong, but the thumping sounded serious and worrying, so I heaved both the sax and the guitar out of the back, strapped them on to my back, and trekked homewards on foot. (Not as bad as it sounds - something like a 10-minute walk.)

Having changed into old clothes at home I brought Steve back to look at it, and eventually we discovered that the spare wheel had started coming loose. Oops. Just as well I drove slowly on it! I shall go see the nice man at KwikFit tomorrow.

I was once, many years ago, in the passenger seat of a car whose nearside front wheel decided to make a break for independence, and funnily enough, it was also on New Year's Day, though it would have been the year when I was about 19 or 20, and before I had a car of my own. Hilary had a mini (a proper mini - the original sort) and like all her cars in those days it was old and battered and, had the MOT test been invented then, would almost certainly have failed.

We were driving along Bucchleuch Street when I pointed out to her that there was something - oh, yes, it looked like a wheel - rolling along the road in front of us. Casually we both wondered where it had come from, and then the car seemed to realise something was missing and went, THUMP! SCRAPE! and sort of collapsed at the front left hand corner. The wheel, released from the burden of being attached to a heavy car, went rolling merrily off down the road, and we had to run after it to retrieve it once we realised it was ours.

Well, that's enough excitement for one day. I'll be glad to get back to work.