Notes by the Solway

A new Christmas song

2011-12-27T11:02:00.001Z

I'd like to introduce you to a brand new Christmas song, composed and performed by two very good friends who live in Norway: Edith Nilsberg and Orlando Ortiz.

Edith, a Cumbrian, and a gifted singer throughout her life, has composed the song, and after a couple of years during which her singing has taken a back seat, her voice is very much back on form with this new number.

The superbly talented Mr Ortiz does everything else: all the instruments, all the technical studio work. His easy ability on guitar is particularly noticeable here.

Together, they have produced a happy little song which should bring a smile to everyone's face.

I'm sorry it wasn't ready to upload until after Christmas, but it will still be here for you next year!

Click here to listen to Merry Christmas by Edith and Orlando

The Very Best Chicken

2011-09-17T12:45:00.000+01:00

We played this game in the playground at my school, St. Peter's RC Primary in Falcon Gardens, Edinburgh. I've never seen any mention of it anywhere else, and I've never come across anyone else who has played it, so I thought I ought to blog about it so that it was archived for posterity.

It's in the form of a little play.

THE VERY BEST CHICKEN

CAST OF CHARACTERS

The Mistress
The Maid
The Witch
The Very Best Chicken
Other Chickens (played by everyone else)

SCENE: The Mistress' parlour.
PRESENT: Mistress; Maid.

Mistress: I'm going to the market. I want you to take care of my chickens while I'm out. Don't let the witch get my Very Best Chicken!

They go out and count the chickens, and the mistress points out which one is the Very Best Chicken.

LATER:
The witch arrives and knocks on the door. The maid opens it but doesn't recognise her.

Witch [in a creaky, old-womanish voice]: Can you please get me a glass of water?
Maid: Yes of course. Just wait there while I get it.

The maid goes off to the kitchen. As soon as her back is turned, the witch sneaks in and heads for the chicken coop. She snatches the Very Best Chicken and runs off with it. When the maid gets back with the water, the witch has gone.

LATER:
The mistress returns home.
Mistress: Where are my glasses? I want to go and count my chickens.

The maid doesn't know where the glasses are and makes various suggestions, which can be improvised by the players. The only one I remember that was always suggested at some point, was, "They're up the lum!"

When the glasses are found, the mistress and the maid head for the chicken coop, where the mistress carefully counts the chickens, and finds one missing. To her horror, the missing chicken is The Very Best Chicken, and she is understandably angry with the maid.

Mistress [in a voice of doom]: Where is my Very Best Chicken?
All remaining chickens: It's in the Witch's Den!
[The whole thing, and particularly the word "de-en," should be shouted in a sing-song way, with two syllables, the second syllable being lower than the first.]

The mistress grabs the maid by one arms and starts swinging her round in little circles, attempting to smack her on the bottom, while the maid attempts to get away. [This is like a scene from a panto.]

When the mistress tires of this, the game starts over. She selects a new Very Best Chicken, and goes off to market again. The story repeats itself until no chickens are left. They are all in the witch's den.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has every played, or heard of, a playground game anything like this. If you attended St Pete's and played it there, please get in touch! If you think the story sounds familiar and you might be able to offer some guesses about the origins of the game, I want to hear from you. Or if you just want to make a comment of some sort, please do.

It was actually my favourite playground game at one point in my childhood. We'd recruit players by running round the playground, holding hands, and shouting, "Who wants a game of The Very Best Chicken?" (All games were recruited in this way.) Other kids would grab a hand and run with us until we had enough to get started. For this game you'd need a minimum of 5 players, but that only left you with one spare chicken, so it was much better with more.

2010-11-05T21:41:00.007Z

This is a song I remember from very early childhood on BBC's Listen With Mother. I can't find any reference to it online. It was probably one of those very ephemeral things that was written for one episode of the programme, sung and forgotten ... except that I'm sure they sang it quite often. I can remember almost all of it except for part of one line. Whenever I'm walking in the rain, I find it going through my head.

Here are the lyrics:

Horniman and Todd,
Off we go together.
Horniman and Todd,
We don't mind the weather.
Dashing through the puddles,
Splashing through the rain,
[dah dah dah dah dumdy dah]
and off we go again!

If you happen to remember it, please get in touch! I'm beginning to think I'm the only person on the planet who remembers this song. Who wrote it? Who sang it?

Johannes Würmchen

2010-04-13T23:59:00.006+01:00

My mother, who, unlike my father, was not really a German scholar, had a little German nursery rhyme which she'd recite every time we saw a ladybird. Most English-speaking children, of course, will come out with some variant on this one:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home!
Your house is on fire and your children alone!

But Vere had a German rhyme. As someone who didn't do German at school, and whose sum knowledge of the language is the vocabulary associated with Christmas carols (sheep, angels, trees, anyone?) I had no idea how to spell many of the words.

For some reason it came back to me just now, and I've spent about half an hour trying to track it down via Google and my Langensheidt Compact German Dictionary. Since it doesn't seem to be anywhere online in the version I know it, I'm quoting it here.

Interestingly, the modern German word for "ladybird" seems to be "Maikäfer" but Vere's word was the more poetic, and probably now archaic, "Johannes Würmchen" which seems to mean something like, "St John's little bug".

Here's Vere's version, anyway:

Johnnes Würmchen, flieg!

Dein Vater ist im Krieg,

Dein Mutter ist im Pomerland,

Und Pomerland ist angebrannt.

(Ladybird, fly away! Your father's off to war, your mother's in Pomerania, and Pomerania is on fire. At least that's what they told me angebrannt meant - it doesn't seem to be in my dictionary, so if you know different ...)

Vere almost certainly learned this from her own mother, Allison Robertson, who had gone to a sort of finishing school in Bad Kreutznach in the latter years of the 19th century when she was a teenager. Alice (as she was usually known) spoke fluent German.

Gote Bridge reopening - a cause for celebration!

2010-02-25T23:51:00.004Z

Above - Gote Bridge after the floods. All those stones were brought by the floodwaters. The original riverbank starts where the little bit of grass, bottom right, can be seen.

Ever since the floods in November last year, everyone living in this neck of the woods has had their lives disrupted by the closed bridges across the Derwent. Some, like the Workington North Bridge, collapsed completely, but others, like Broughton Bridge and Gote Bridge in Cockermouth, are not beyond repair. Work is now starting, dredging the river and repairing the bridges, and some of them will be opening in March and April.

Those of us who live in and around Cockermouth will be very happy indeed when Gote Bridge opens on March 24th, and it occurred to us this evening that they'll probably move the barricades ever so quietly in the dead of night. Should we let them? We think this should be cause for celebration!

Let's find out when they're planning to open the bridge, and descend upon it en masse to dance, sing, shout and cheer! ...and drive cars across it, of course.

Above - dredging the Derwent

I've created a Facebook group to help spread the word, here but you don't have to be a member of Facebook to get involved. Just tell your friends, spread the word, and let's have some fun!

Radio Cumbria calls

2010-02-24T23:05:00.002Z

I've been invited to contribute to a feature on BBC Radio Cumbria called Little Cumbria. I hope this doesn't mean the contributors are being compared to the cast of Little Britain ... surely not! Cumbrians are far too sensible for that. Aren't they?

Normally people are invited to keep a diary for a week, writing exactly 130 words per day, and these are read out during the Ian Timms show in the early evening. Steven Greaves, the producer, chatted to me on the phone, and when I mentioned that this would sit rather well with the Flickr project I'm doing, 2010 - A Year In Pictures, he suggested we combine the two. I'm still not entirely sure how they're going to provide links to my photostream on the radio, but to make things easier I'm creating a page on links on our own website. It should be easier to read out marshallmcgurk.com/flickr.htm than http://www.flickr.com/photos/allybeag/collections/72157623205933005/!

So I've to select 5 of the photos I've uploaded to the YIP project, and write 130 words about each. Well. How hard can that be? Actually, that's the hardest part. I could write several pages about each, quite easily, but only 130 words? It's a good exercise for the brain, though, and I seem to have managed it, though it feels a bit like writing War and Peace via SMS-speak.

All five of these mini-masterpieces will appear here shortly.

Not Gerry, but Scamp

2009-08-29T21:54:00.006+01:00

YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

All I'd wished for was something to occupy me for 4 hours in Workington, while I was waiting for my car to be serviced at Kwik-Fit. I could see how I could spend maybe two of those hours wandering round the shops, so I took my bike with me in order to have a bit of an explore further afield as well.

SWANS
First I cycled down to the Mill Field and took photos of a family of starstruck swans who kept posing for the camera like the supermodels they know they are. Had a look at the Yearl with its rushing torrents of water, chatted to a dogwalker, discovered a couple of cycle tracks I hadn't known about, and headed back to the centre of town, having used up only 1½ of those 4 hours.

LOST IN SCOPE
The charity shops were calling me. In Scope, I found the two voluntary ladies discussing a small dog, which was sitting, quite unconcerned, in the middle of the shop floor. It had apparently just wandered in and sat down. Collarless, its identity was a mystery.

The volunteers didn't know what to do. They tried phoning the dog warden, who doesn't work Saturday afternoons, and suggested just turning the poor beast back out into the street, which seemed a bit heartless, with all the traffic out there. They phoned the police, who wouldn't have anything to do with it, and said they should "reject it" which amounted to the same advice as that of the dog warden.

They phoned various animal shelters and vets, but most of them were closed on Saturday afternoons. By this time another customer had become interested, and tried feeling for a microchip under the dog's skin, but couldn't find anything. She also noticed he had lost a claw, and had a rather sore looking patch on his paw.

A RAY OF HOPE
The volunteers were becoming quite disturbed by it all. We all had animals of our own at home, so couldn't take him back with us without causing domestic chaos. Then I remembered that our vet's surgery in Cockermouth have an out-of-hours service - I'd used it once before late at night. I finally tracked them down on my phone, and they said, "yes, bring the dog in as soon as your car is ready - just ring to let us know when you'll be here, and we'll go to the surgery to meet you." Nice people. I have to recommend Millcroft Vets here, as no-one else offered to do anything helpful.

UNEXPECTED DOG-WALKING
So it looked as though I was lumbered for the rest of the afternoon. I was the only one with a car, and the time to spare to look after the animal. The other customer, whose little boy looked like he would happily keep the doggie, helpfully nipped out and bought a cheap collar and lead, which we attached to the stray, and off I marched out of Scope, with the most unusual thing I've yet acquired in a charity shop.

A TEMPORARY NAME
Feeling a bit silly walking a nameless dog I decided to give him a temporary name, so he became Gerry for the duration. He did look very like a Gerry for some reason.

MORE PATTABLE THAN MY DOGS
I was surprised at how many people stopped and patted him - particularly quite small children who were more at his level. Nobody ever stops to pat my dogs! Gerry was perfectly behaved. He trotted along all cheerful and alert, never bothering if we passed another dog, never barking, never rushing ahead or trying to pull me along. You could tell he came from a good home where he was well looked after, and of course this meant that someone, somewhere, must be frantic with worry about him by now.

WORKINGTON HALL
We walked around the shopping area for a while, hoping someone would suddenly come rushing over shouting, "There he is! Thank goodness!" but nobody recognised him. I could see I was going to be on my feet all afternoon, so I checked my bike was securely chained to a railing, and headed off for the grounds around old Workington Hall, a nice grassy area for dogs. (I'll come back later with the sad & disgraceful story of Workington Hall.)

HOME, BOY!
Gerry was very pleased to run on the grass, although obviously I couldn't let him run loose. He had loads of energy for one so small! As we headed back towards the road I realised he seemed to know where he was going, so I let him lead me, in the hope that he'd head for home. I kept saying "home!" in a meaningful voice, and he took me down several footpaths and across the bridge over the Derwent so that we were heading towards Seaton. This seemed just the sort of place he might live - loads of houses there, and for a little while I thought we'd cracked it, but suddenly he paused, and looked puzzled. He couldn't figure out which way to go now. I had to remember that he's only a Jack Russell, not a Border Collie: my dogs can find their way home no bother at all.

"HE THINKS YOU HAVE HIS DOG!"
Back in the town centre, I found him dragging me suddenly towards the door of the multi-storey car park. This seemed like a clue. Perhaps his family had arrived by car and parked there. I was about to go inside to see if he could lead me to his car when my phone rang. Kwik-Fit were ringing to tell me my car was nearly ready, and by the way, there was a man there who seemed to think I had his dog!

WET
I couldn't believe it! How on earth had he tracked me down to Kwik-Fit? I told Kwik-Fit man to keep the dog-owner there, as I'd get there as quickly as I could, just as the heavens opened and soaked both me and Gerry quite thoroughly.

JOYFUL REUNION
So there he was - the dog owner sitting in his car in the Kwik-Fit forecourt. Nice chap, obviously very very fond of his dog, and very very delighted to be reunited with him. I sat in their car for a bit telling my half of the story. Seems they'd been in another shop just a few doors away from Scope, and had tied the dog up outside. When they looked out, he'd gone - spooked by something probably - slipped his collar and departed.

DETECTIVE WORK
They'd been searching all afternoon. They'd been to the animal shelters, (which had been closed) and phoned the police, who, although they'd been no help at the time, had obviously logged the phone call from the shop, and were able to tell him that his dog had been found in Scope. So he'd visited the shop, where the ladies had told him his dog was in safe hands, and they also remembered me telling them that I was picking up my car from Kwik-Fit at 5 o'clock.

I was so happy to see them reunited! Oh, and they do live at Seaton, and the dog's real name is Scamp. (I still think he looked more like a Gerry.)

Someone's nicked my shoes!

2008-08-22T22:57:00.003+01:00

I left them on the bench in the women's changing rooms while I used the gym at Cockermouth Leisure Centre, and when I got back, they were gone. I was quite sure they'd just been tidied up by some over-consciencious member of staff, but it seems they really have been stolen. I'm appalled! They only cost £7 from a charity shop, but I'm very fond of them because they actually fit my wide feet and they're great for cycling and they're nice and bright and red and I can't afford to replace them with a new pair of the same quality.

<sob!>

When I joined the gym I asked where the lockers were, and I was told that although there are lockers for the swimming pool there are none for the gym (although they're planning to install them sometime) so in the meantime you just have to carry all your stuff around with you. I don't like putting my street shoes, which are sometimes a bit dirty, in the same bag with the rest of my clothes to cart around the gym, so I generally just leave them under the bench. They're not worth much so I never imagined anyone would take them. But last night the floor was sopping wet - I think it had just been washed - and because I didn't want my laces trailing on it and getting all wet I put the shoes on top of the bench instead of underneath, making them a lot more visible, I suppose.

And of course, because it was warm, the back door was open. Anyone could have slipped inside, had a quick look around the changing rooms, picked up my shoes and nipped out again without being noticed.

Of course I complained, and now they tell me that I'm quite welcome to use the swimmers' lockers! That wasn't what I was told when I joined. I am not happy.

I may just spend a bit of time wandering around the streets of Cockermouth looking at people's feet and showing this photo to everyone I meet: "Have you seen these shoes?"

2008-08-16T11:57:00.003+01:00

BLACK CAT UPDATE

Little Snooky2, or whatever his name is, is becoming quite a frequent visitor. If I go to call our cats home, he turns up first, miaowing much louder than Aineko or Oscar do. Last night I opened the door and he was sitting there, quite companionably, with Ainkeo, and they both wanted to come inside. I felt really mean refusing him entrance. It's like your child comes home from school with a new chum, and you let your own kid in but turn the friend away.

But I know cats. I know if I let him in, he'll want to stay, and feel less and less inclined to go home. I also have no idea of the state of his health (although he seems quite bright-eyed and his coat, though needing some grooming seems shiny enough) or what sort of parasites he might be harbouring, ready to pounce on the 2 humans, 2 cats and 2 dogs who already live here.

VISITOR

2008-08-14T22:56:00.004+01:00

A strange little cat has started visiting us. He's very friendly - comes straight over, miaowing as though he's an old friend of the family. As you've probably gathered, I'm pretty fond of cats, but I really can't go round encouraging unknown cats to hang about our house, particularly since he seems very keen to come inside.

For one thing, the cats who actually belong here, assisted by the dogs, would probably make a good attempt at dismantling this little chap, bit by bit, if he dared to pass the threshold. And more importantly, he must belong somewhere, and I'd hate to be responsible for him preferring our house to his own. It was just this sort of scenario that I was afraid of when Aineko went missing: she visits someone who invites her in, feeds her, and gradually takes her over.

Not knowing his real name I'm calling him Snooky2 in honour of the first cat in my life, Snooky, who looked exactly the same and lived in the flat downstairs when I was a toddler. He was mainly responsible for my life-long love of cats. Snooky used to come visiting (his owner was a friend and knew he visited us so it was OK) and charmed me forever. I actually saved Snooky's life when I was about 7 or 8. The big heavy downstairs door to our stair had very strange hinges, which meant that the back of the door swung away from the wall when it was open, and swung back when it was closed. I can still remember seeing Snooky walking through the gap behind the door as someone went outside, not realising he was behind them, and the door starting to close on him. It would certainly have crushed him. I charged down the stair, grabbed the door and stopped it closing at the very last minute.

Postscript
Shortly after taking the photo above, Oscar came home with one eye half shut. The obvious conclusion to draw would be a fight between him and Snooky2, but I never saw or heard anything so I'll reserve judgement for now.

Postscript 2
Something has bitten my leg. I'm not aware of our cats or dogs having fleas at the moment, but Snooky2 was rubbing against my leg with great gusto. Hmm...

Fringed

2008-08-09T22:13:00.006+01:00

Since I had to be in Edinburgh anyway on the first weekend of August, I thought I'd see which Fringe music shows had already got started. Not many, if you look through the enormous programme. I sat in Hilary's kitchen thumbing through it: the first thing we fancied had been cancelled; the next couple were starting in about 10 minutes, leaving us no time to get there. We finally settled on something called Café Cadenza, described thus: "Eclectic wind virtuoso John Sampson and songwriting singer-guitarist Stewart Hanratty produce an hour of classy music, ranging from Stewart's contemporary tales to John's recorder, crumhorn and trumpet, creating a warm, forget-the-word atmosphere."

Well. Mention recorders and crumhorns and I'm yours. Hilary was inclined to agree, so we chucked the Fringe programme in the back of the car and set off. Halfway there, I said to Hilary, " It was at that place in Nicholson Street, wasn't it?" And Hilary replied, with absolute conviction, "No, no, that was the one we couldn't get to - this one's at the Carlton Hotel." "Are you sure?" said I, not at all sure myself now. "Positive," said Hilary. How could I argue with that?

The Carlton Hotel is not the sort of place you can get parked outside, so we parked away back up Nicholson Street and walked very fast down to the North Bridge, as the show would be starting quite shortly. Like most venues during the festival, the Carlton was festooned with a variety of Fringe posters. Hilary started following some people who looked like musicians, in through the front door of the hotel, through the lobby and down a back staircase. Like a sheep, I followed her, feeling the whole thing was somehow wrong. Eventually one of the musicians turned round and explained that although this was indeed the way to the venue, if we followed any further we'd end up on the stage with them, and we ought to go in through the other door.

Back up the stairs we trotted, somewhat faster than before, then out through the main door and back in through the side door, where a girl at a desk claimed she'd never heard of Café Cadenza. I borrowed her copy of the Fringe Programme (for ours was still lurking several blocks away in the back of my car) and discovered that, astonishingly, Hilary had been wrong, and the show was indeed in the venue, named for the duration, as, 'The Zoo, Southside,' back up the road in Nicholson Street.

We nearly ran this time, back up across the High Street, up Nicholson Street, past where I'd parked the car, and about the same distance in the opposite direction until we reached the old church where the show was about to start any moment.

"After all this," I thought, "it had better be bloody good."

We found a seat in a little room set up with 'cabaret seating' as they call it in the Kirkgate - tables, chairs and candles, with a few fairy lights draped around a red velvet curtain to provide a stage.

A man with a guitar appeared, propped up several strange paintings on a chair, and started to sing. I still have no idea what he was singing about as his enunciation wasn't too good, but the songs seemed to be connected in some way with the paintings, which we deduced he had probably created himself. I'm sure this would have been much more enjoyable had we been issued with sheets containing the lyrics - the songs were probably very funny, or sad, or thought-provoking, or profound, or just damn good poetry, but we'll never know.

Had it not been for the promise of recorders and crumhorns I'd have got up and left. I could think of several things I'd rather be doing in Edinburgh on a Saturday night. Suddenly, when I just thought I couldn't take any more, a big man with an interesting beard burst on to the scene playing a post horn with great enthusiasm, and from this point on the whole show livened up.

John Sampson (for it was he) is a skilled performer on a variety of wind instruments, which he plays with aplomb. He's also very funny, and one of those people with the ability to get a laugh with just the odd raised eyebrow. Stewart Hanratty, the guitarist, slipped easily into a role much better suited to him, that of accompanist, and between them they entertained us delightfully for three quarters of an hour.

Shame about those first 15 minutes, really.

If Mr Hanratty really must sing his songs, the least he could do would be to intersperse them throughout the show, in between John Sampson's instrumental pieces, though quite honestly, the whole thing would have been better without the songs at all. Sorry, Stewart.

Stuff

2008-06-28T00:26:00.006+01:00

GYM
Well, all that working out seems to have made my back stronger already, as I was only incapacitated for a few days, rather than the usual couple of weeks. I can actually feel some of these new muscles. If I lie on my back it's like I'm lying on something hard, until I realise it's a couple of muscles that run vertically down the back on either side of the spine. Heh. I've lived all this time without noticing they were there!

The gym has big wide-screen tellies in all the rooms, tuned, with subtitles, to BBC1, a channel I hardly ever watch, apart from the 6 o'clock news. Why are all the characters in Eastenders so ugly? I thought it was supposed to be a reflection of real life, but real people aren't so consistently unpleasant to look at. I can't follow the story at all - no idea who is who or what is what, nor do I care, but you find your eyes being drawn to it as you pedal away furiously on the upright bike or run, boringly, on the spot on the treadmill.

The reason they need subtitles is that they also have piped pop music. I tried using my phone's built-in radio with headphones so that I could listen to something of my own choice, but it's not loud enough to compete. I see people using iPods, but I don't really want to splash out that sort of money just so I can listen to the Archers.

RIGHTS OF WAY
They've recently erected a couple of new signposts in the village, proclaiming a Public Bridleway between Crosby and Crosscanonby. It's been a Public Right Of Way for a very long time, and I've known about it since we've been here, but it's been more or less impassible. Seeing these new signs I thought, "Aha! They must have made some improvements to the path! Hurrah!"

Last time I tried this path, you had to go through a big gate and through the seemingly private drying-green belonging to a farmhouse, and then into a big boggy field, with nothing to show where to go next. If, by dint of much searching, you actually discovered the spot in the fence with the stile, you still had to negotiate deep mud and broken wooden steps over the fence. When I discovered this I had to go back the way I came as it was impossible to get dogs over this stile and there were no dog-gates.

Seeing it was now described as a 'bridleway' I assumed it would now be improved to the extent that you could get a horse through. Hurrah! Entering from the bottom of the path, rather than the top, we made our way across the field to the place where the stile had been several years ago. It was gone. The only way you'd know it's the place to cross the fence is the absence of barbed wire for a couple of feet. I guess I could have climbed over - I'm quite good at climbing over fences - but the dogs wouldn't. It was too high to jump, even for Ghyll, who's happy enough to jump over things of reasonable height. No dog-gates, no holes in the fence, no way to get through. And as for horses? Well, yes, I know some horses do jump, but they'd have to be pretty accurate to jump that little gap, and if they missed they'd be impaled on the barbed wire on either side, or crash unceremoniously into the hawthorn hedge.

They say that if we want to keep our Rights Of Way open, we must use them regularly. How are we supposed to do that?

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS

Just when I thought there weren't going to be any noctilucent clouds this year, I spotted a nice display the other night, as I was on my way to bed. Dropped everything, grabbed me trusty tripod and took a few pics. It's amazingly hard to get a camera to focus properly when the subject matter isn't very bright but I did manage a couple of good ones, of which the photo above is the best. I could sit and watch these mysterious phenomena all night - they're beautiful and fascinating, and, interestingly, a pretty recent thing. They may be related to climate change, in which case we should be worried, but in some ways I feel sorry for my ancestors who may have had darker skies and therefore a better view than we have of the winter stars, but who never even imagined the possibility of these beautiful nebulous things in the summer sky.

A day in the life . . .

2008-06-21T20:09:00.010+01:00

There's a Flickr group called A Day in the Life . . . which I rather like. Four times a year, on the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, all the group members spend the day taking photos of their day-to-day lives. Five of these photos are posted to the group pool, and the rest in a folder on the member's own Flickr page. So four times a year we get a fascinating glimpse into the lives of ordinary people like ourselves, leading ordinary lives, but in different parts of the world.

Today is my 3rd DILO. My first was on December 22nd last year, and it happened to be the day I was driving down to Wasdale to pick up our free range turkey, so I had ample opportunity to take interesting photos. And being Christmas time, the sun came out from time to time. (Gone are the days when it snowed in December . . .)

My second was on 20th March 2008, on Chris' birthday. Not such nice weather, but I was in Cockermouth where lots of houses are painted in bright colours, and was also lucky enough to capture a bird flying over the Moon, which I thought was incredibly cool.

Today, being midsummer's day, it rained continuously. We're mostly quite pleased about this, as our veg garden has been parched and poor Steve has been marching up and down with buckets of water.

I took some midnight photos last night when the sky was still clear and starry and bright with the nautical twilight known in Shetland as the Simmer Dim - the one on the left was taken at nearly 1am.

Sadly, by the time I got up this morning conditions had deteriorated, and it all looked grey. We'd already decided on a trip to Keswick, as for once I didn't have to rush off anywhere playing music for morris dancing or helping people move furniture.

An unexpected phone call took us to Cockermouth first, though, as members of Steve's family were in town, so I took some photos of the little lad playing on his grandfather's electric chair (no, no, not that kind - this is the sort that raises and lowers the seat, making things easier for disabled people) and creating aged paper for the treasure map he was drawing. I was delighted when the neighbour's tiny black cat, Sammy, came wandering in, as I've been trying to capture her in a photo for a while. Today she posed beautifully for me, singing feline airs with gusto.

By the time we left, the rain was well and truly settled in, but who cares? It may be wet, but it's not particularly cold.

Keswick was fairly busy, as you'd expect, as it's full of tourists at this time of year, and there's not much else for them to do on a rainy Saturday but wander round the market stalls or sit in cafés drinking coffee.

The DILO's theme this time round is green, and for once I'd taken very few photos featuring anything green, unlike my usual pics full of hills, trees and fields. We left the main road on the way home and parked up by the Bouncy Bridge, from where I could take some photos of the clouds settling down on the fells and the River Derwent meandering through the farmland.

You can see all my photos from today's DILO here

The day's not over yet of course - it's only 25 past 9 - but it's still raining, so I don't think I'll be finishing off with my usual flourish of a YABS (Yet Another Bloody Sunset).

I am keenly awaiting Chris' contribution to the DILO group. He's in the Czech Republic at the moment with Rudsambee, and they apparently spent the day on a trip to the local spectacular mountains. I guess I'll have to wait until he returns to the UK, as he doesn't seem able to access the internet at the moment, or even use his phone, which for him is probably worse than the pain he suffers from his sinuses while flying. I only hope his batteries have lasted.

Trying to be fit

2008-06-20T22:50:00.004+01:00

I joined a gym. Those who know me of old might be somewhat surprised at this. At school I managed to skive off PT/PE for most of my secondary years by dint of taking Art which involved prolonged trips to Newhaven Harbour to do sketches of boats (and to hide behind the lighthouse smoking and drinking alcoholic things). This was a lot more fun than running round a cold playing field dressed in a divided skirt which showed off one's fat white knees when one was at just that age when one wanted to be admired by the opposite sex, rather than mocked by them. Interestingly enough they were far more inclined to admire someone who spent whole afternoons holed up behind the lighthouse, smoking and peacefully watching the tankers steaming up the Forth to Grangemouth.

It's not that I don't do exercise. I love taking the dogs for walks, and enjoy cycling, so long as the weather's in my favour. Swimming is a great pleasure, so long as it's out of doors in the sea or a nice cold lake, and I can dress in shorts and a t-shirt rather than a stupid swimsuit which does nothing for those with a larger waistline than they'd like.

So, what seems to happen is that in the summer, when it's warm and dry and good weather for cycling and lake swimming, I get sort of fittish, and lose a bit of weight, and feel generally pleased with myself. And then the winter comes, and it gets dark early, and it's cold, and it rains, and I'm too much of a wimp to go cycling in this stuff, and of course swimming in Bass Lake in midwinter would put me on a fast track to the West Cumberland Infirmary, so the only exercise I get is walking the dogs, and even that's not a lot of fun in the dark when you're halfway down the lane and meet strange scary people who shine torches in your face, putting the wind up the dogs and me.

Eight years ago I gave up smoking. Not because I didn't like smoking, 'cause I did. I really enjoyed it. But I knew I'd live longer if I quit, and somehow I managed it (this is another story which I might tell some time) and now feel there's a very good chance of living longer. However, round people tend to live shorter lives than lean people, and my biggest ambition is to live as long as possible, so the next unpleasant thing I have to do is to take more, regular exercise, and start now while I'm still young and fit enough to do it.

People who have had heart attacks and other life-threatening illnesses are sent to the gym to work out and recover, and some of them recover so well that they run marathons and all sorts of things. If they can do all that, surely someone like me who is perfectly healthy and whose only problem is not particularly enjoying repetitive exercise, can do it too! So I signed up at the gym.

I don't expect to enjoy it. But you pay a month in advance, and being a Scot I have to get my money's worth once I've paid for it.

So far it's been working out quite well. The place is full of machinery that looks like the contents of a torture chamber. There's a treadmill (the very name conjures up images of doing boring repetitive work, doesn't it?), an upright bike (i.e., a bike that goes nowhere), a recumbant bike (ah, cycling in a comfy chair!), and a couple of other bizarre things: one that feels like plodding through thick snow and one where you work your arms and legs together in a completely unnatural fashion and whose name I've completely forgotten. Oh yes, and a rowing machine, but I can't use that because I've got a wonky knee and the last time I tried one I was crippled for a week.

Having used this lot for a few days I was 'inducted' into the weights room, which is filled with even more extraordinary machinery. (Who invents these things? They're amazingly clever, once you realise they're not designed to remove your legs and arms, one at a time, in slow motion.) Funnily enough I almost enjoy this room. Each time I go I find I can move a greater weight, and I seem to have incredibly powerful thighs. Maybe I should have been one of those stocky Eastern European female weight-lifters or shot putters. I'll move on to the free weights in due course, which is good, as I've inherited a set of them, complete with bench, from a friend who was moving house, and I'm scared to try them until I've been shown the right way.

So . . . everything was going just speldidly, and then I managed to hurt my back. Nothing to do with the gym workouts, just the bit that tends to 'go' from time to time - I seem to have a bit of a weakness there. So frustrating. I'll need to leave it at least a week before I can get back to the weights, and I'll probably find I'm back where I started again. Buggabuggabugga . . .

Spring?

2008-04-16T23:00:00.003+01:00

Signs of spring

Well, it's spring, and for once the sun was shining, and I didn't have anything too big to carry, so at last I was able to get on my bike again and nip into Maryport for some stuff. Lovely it was, to be cycling in the fresh air again, with a blue sky and the smell of blossom and grass on the wind. (... and diesel fumes, but we'll not get into that . . .) Coming back up the hill was harder, as I'm out of condition, but I resolved to be brave and keep pedalling, as the more you do, the easier it gets. Eventually. It was fine until I stopped and tried to stand up.

Somehow I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back, while cycling up the brae. 'Snot fair! I was feeling all good and energetic and keen to get fit again, and now I'm creeping about like a bent thing, unable to stand up straight.

With the help of good old paracetamol I was able to get to the Piping Hot practice, but felt somewhat woozy because of the medication. It's amazing how one can carry on playing music one knows really well, even when one is somewhat away with the fairies.

Coming home, approaching the turn-off to our driveway, I had to slow down as I spotted two cats charging across the main road, a small one in pursuit of a slightly larger one. "Hang on," says I. "That small one looks familiar." Even in the darkness, Aineko is quite recognisable. Apparently she was seeing off some feline interloper who had dared to enter her territory. Well, fine, but please Aineko, don't run across the main road without the green cross code!

In trouble again

2008-03-14T23:57:00.005Z

I just can't resist taking photos of musicians on stage. I don't use flash. Why don't theatres approve? Tonight I was sitting quietly in the middle of Row F, taking a few very inconspicuous photos of Red Priest in full flight, when this old bloke on my left suddenly spoke out: "Will you stop breaking the theatre's rules?" he said, quite loudly, causing people's heads to turn. He'd obviously been thinking about it for a while. I didn't know they had rules about photography. Usually the places that disapprove make some sort of announcement at the start of the show, but no-one said anything here, so I assumed it was OK. Trying to be polite, I said, "Oh - I didn't know," rather than telling him to mind his own business. "It's in the programme, Madam!" he said, louder still. (Funny how some people manage to make the word, "madam" sound like an insult.) "I don't have a programme," I informed him, but regretfully put my camera away, while realising that he was the one who should now be embarrassed, having shown everyone around what an officious person he was.

Trying to rationalise his outburst, I came to the conclusion that (a) he is one of the volunteers who work at the theatre and is therefore personally involved in this stupid rule and making sure it's kept or (b) he's spent years wishing he could take photos in there, but always stuck to the rules himself, and can't bear to see someone else getting away with it.

After the interval I moved to an empty seat beside my friends several rows back. Poorer view, but nicer company.

What I'd like to know now, though, is whether Piping Hot should start dressing in red leather corsets like Red Priest's violinist? Or does it help to be young, pretty and blonde? And will I now be on the theatre's blacklist, for not only taking photos but publishing them online? I'm booked in to a recorder workshop with Piers Adams tomorrow morning, so maybe I should go in disguise.

Storms? What storms?

2008-03-10T23:45:00.001Z

Doesn't look very stormy to me.

Apparently the south of England has been devastated by storms. I'm genuinely sorry for the people down there. Here, however, it's been quite mild, a bit grey and sorta driech, but nothing much. Oh, it rained a little bit, earlier.

What surprised me was to find a headline in the local paper informing me that the road at Dubmill Point had collapsed in the stormy weather. Dubmill Point is the bit of the coast road just beyond Allonby, on the way to Silloth, that sort of juts out into the Solway, and always gets the worst of the storms. It's so close I can see it from my window. And I was quite unaware of any storms in the past few days. I'd have noticed. Certainly there has been a spring tide, which is higher than normal, but the road must have been in a pretty bad state already if the spring tide was enough to undermine it and cause a collapse.

BELFAGAN

Haven't been to Belfagan for 2 weeks, but tonight I felt I really had to go, as I'd been contacted by a potential new recruit, and thought I really ought to be there to greet her. She turned out to be just the sort of person we want - good fun, enthusiastic, a quick learner and best of all she really enjoyed herself! She will not be allowed to escape . . . heh heh heh . . .

My feet, though, are killing me. Haven't done any dancing for ages, and I've been so busy (see previous blog entry) that I haven't even had as much dog-walking exercise as usual. (Though I have actually been out with them 3 days running so I'm not that bad.)

Busy . . . busy . . . busy . . .

2008-03-08T23:12:00.005Z

It's all David Parrish's fault, for making me take control of my life and actually get lots of work done, every day, regularly. That course I went on has made me work, so much that the other important things in life aren't getting done any more, like blogging and gazing vacantly into space.

I've missed Belfagan 2 weeks running - though admittedly one of those days I stayed at home because I had a bad cold. I've been working most evenings, and getting jobs finished that have been hiding in dark corners, sobbing, wondering when I'd notice them. It's awful! I've more or less got to the end of the queue of chairs to be reseated, and I've been putting money in the bank, too! Give me another week or two of this and my bookkeeping will be up to date, for the first time ever since I started being self-employed.

Of course, this will only happen if I can keep it up. And I'm not properly organised yet, as I haven't managed to fit a regular dog-walk in to all this busyness (just as well Steve takes them), and the house still looks like a bomb has hit it. There's still a lot of deck-clearing to do.

MUSIC (1) - los Huevos Bandidos

Last Saturday at this time I was at the Kirkgate watching Steve's illustrious band, Los Huevos Bandidos, doing their first gig of 2008. One of their best for a long time, it was, and after much angst about the lack of a percussionist, they ended up with 2 Andys. Andy1, the Original Andy, who has in fact left the band, came back for the night and played his congas, bongos and other latin percussion, while Andy2, the New Andy, was there with his drum kit. He seems to be fitting in well, so long may he stay.

The local salsa dance class turned up, as usual, and for the first time included several quite young children, who danced happily and confidently, though it was the expert adults, as always, who stole the show.

The Kirkgate had put on food with a vaguely Tex-Mex bias, perhaps thinking, erroneously, that there was some connection between Mexico and Afro-Cuban jazz. (There isn't. Well, apart from the use of Spanish, I suppose. But that's like serving up Aussie beer at Glyndebourne just because the English language is spoken in both countries.) Anyway, despite the mismatch, the food went down a storm, so well, in fact, that most of the audience went on strike after the interval and refused to come back upstairs until they'd eaten their fill, despite the band being ready to start playing again.

Well, who cares? The main thing is that the audience enjoyed themselves and got their money's worth. The place was full. Everyone was happy. Well, apart from Peter, who tends to panic a bit if shows overrun at the end, but there's no pleasing him, really . . .

MUSIC (2) - Piping Hot

Piping Hot are now practising for our Georgian Fair gig, though it's beginning to look like we'll be very lucky if we all manage to get together at the same practice even once before the concert.

We're doing three Dowland pieces from our back catalogue, some Playford sets that we did at the Playford ball two years ago, an arrangement for recorders of Mozart's Horn Concerto No.3 (KV 447), Brian Bonsor's Serenata and a piece by JC Bach whose name I've forgotten as I haven't actually got a copy of the music yet.

Doesn't sound much? Well, it's not. It's just a sort of mini-gig. Most of the musical groups in the Cockermouth area are getting half an hour to put on a performance, one after the other, and this is our half hour.

The trouble is that it's coinciding with Belfagan's Day of Dance, which will be happening around Cockermouth all day. Bridget and I will have to slope off and play recorders for half an hour, and then back to the morris dancing. (Actually Bridget is so tied up with the Georgian Fair that I can't see how she'll manage to do much for Belfagan at all that day.) And to make matters worse, my Georgian (well, Tudor actually) corset doesn't fit properly since I lost weight, so I really ought to make a new one, but because of being BUSYBUSYBUSY (see above) I haven't got time.

Just as well I'm putting "Practice recorder music" on my list every day, mixed in with work reminders!

The Fraser Fifield Band with the Nedyalko Nedyalkov Quartet from Bulgaria

2008-02-26T23:48:00.002Z

Above: Nedyalko Nedyalkov on kaval with Fraser Fifield on bagpipes.

The Fraser Fifield Band are touring Scotland just now, accompanied by the most amazing group of Bulgarian musicians, the Nedyalko Nedyalkov Quartet. I went to see them this evening, but I can't tell you where as I feel a bit guilty about taking photos after being told not to. I'm not sure why you're not to take photos - all I'm doing with them is using them to publicize the bands and their tour. I never use flash in these situations - I know what it's like standing on a stage playing your heart out and suddenly being alarmed by bright lights going off. Not fun. So I keep a very low profile, use a fast ISO setting and try to remain invisible. It almost worked. The man didn't tap me on the shoulder until near the end. If he's reading this . . . please forgive me! I enjoy these things so much more if I've got photos to remind me of it!

I've seen F.F. before, at the Edinburgh Fringe, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but the addition of an eastern European band made the prospect of a second visit irresistible. Did I mention I love Eastern European folk music? I think this was the first time I'd seen it live, though.

Nedyalko Nedyalkov (N.N. from now on, for brevity's sake) is an amazing player of an instrument whose very existence I was only vaguely aware of, the kaval, an end-blown flute similar to the ney, but with an enormous range, and the ability to sound like 3 different instruments within the space of half a dozen notes.

Born in 1970, N.N. is known as one of the world's top kaval players. He was already playing music at the tender age of 7 and although he started off on the accordion he soon took up the traditional kaval and spend many years developing his skills until he graduated in 1989 with high honours. He joined the Bulgarian National Radio Folk Orchestra in 1996 and still plays with them as a soloist. He seems to be internationally famous, and has played with all sorts of bands and musicians I've never heard of, but probably should have.

This guy is jaw-droppingly amazing. I've tried playing a ney - it's a very difficult technique, as these instruments are end-blown rather than transverse like our orchestral flute, or fippled, like the recorder. The kaval and its cousins are just open at the top, with an edge over which you have to blow, letting the edge cut the airstream and producing a sound. It's much harder than it sounds, and it sounds hard enough! N.N. makes it look so easy, and then his fingers start moving, faster and faster (he plays with flat fingers like a bagpipe player, rather than bent like a recorder player), and he moves seamlessly through several octaves, producing deep breathy sounds one moment and high trills the next. I was completely gobsmacked by the performance and can't do it justice with simple words. Go to his MySpace site and listen!

N.N.'s wife Stoimenka is even more amazing. She sings effortlessly, with ululations and microtones that sound just impossible for a human voice to produce. The melodies, so heartwrenchingly sad, almost brought tears to my eyes.

Urrr. . . Sorry . . . gotta give myself a shake here. Getting a bit carried away. But you can see, can't you, that this band are very very good. I'd gone mainly to see Fraser Fifield, who is also very very good, but I knew that already, and I know about the instruments he plays - soprano sax, low whistle, bagpipes - so, impressive though it is to see these things being played with such virtuosity, I did sort of know what to expect.

This is one of the exciting consequences of the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the introduction of Eastern European nations into the EU. We are now, at last, getting the chance to experience music that in the pre-internet past could only be heard on fuzzy, distant radio stations, late at night when dial-twiddling was all there was to occupy insomniacs. Eastern Europe is full of exciting bands who are still completely new to us - musicians playing instruments we've neither seen nor heard before, in styles we've never come across.

If you're near any of the towns on the itinerary of this tour, I urge you to go and see them. Check it out here. You won't be disappointed!

Snake Davies Woodwind workshop

2008-02-24T23:17:00.006Z

Busy old week, this. Still recovering from Michael Schenker's gig last night, I find myself at the Rosehill Barn clutching Steve's lovely Martin alto sax and learning some tricks of the trade from Snake Davies, virtuoso jazz saxophonist/flautist.

I find the place full of our customers: mostly sax players, but a couple of flutes and a clarinet as well. I did toy with the idea of bringing one of my recorders, but decided it might be just a bit too radical, expecting such a thing to be accepted as a potential jazz instrument.

After too many years playing classical music from the dots, and folk music from memory (but sticking to the same tune all the time) I find it really hard to let loose and play solos based only a chord pattern. It's OK on a guitar - your fingers fall into the chord shape and all you have to do is play those particular notes in some random sort of sequence for it to sound like an interesting improvised solo, but on a wind instrument it's much harder. I tend to start off OK, and then get lost in whatever I've started playing, and by the time I'm halfway through I've completely lost track of which chord I'm supposed to be playing with. I guess practising occasionally might help . . .

Michael Schenker at Workington

2008-02-23T22:29:00.003Z

Seems odd how these big rock stars end up playing on the stage of the little Carnegie Theatre in Workington, a place even Steve's Los Huevos Bandidos have been known to strut their stuff. Hell, I've explored the backstage area myself, and turned up my nose at the grotty dressing rooms, and yet Michael Schenker turns up and plays there.

I had no idea if I'd like it or not, but it's always worthwhile accompanying Steve to see his heroes, even though he won't return the favour. (I'm off to Langholm - alone - next week to see Fraser Fifield - a brilliant Scots sax player - the sort of thing you'd expect Steve to like, but on the strength of 4 tracks on his MySpace site he's decided he doesn't like him. Oh well, it's his loss.)

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed Schenker, and even more so because I've finally given in and bought myself a packet of fluorescent yellow expanding foam earplugs from B&Q. Meant to protect your lugs while using power tools, they're brilliant for taking the edge off very loud rock music, to the extent that you can actually hear the notes being played, adding a whole new dimension to this wonderful art form.

The singer and bass player were as good to look at as to listen to, and I now have, I think, the definitive list of players: Leif Sundin - vocals; Thoman Broman- drums; Wayne Findlay - guitar/keyboards; Thomas Torberg - bass.

The rest of the photos can be seen here.

Buttermere

2008-02-16T23:23:00.000Z

When the sun shines on a Saturday I feel obliged to make the most of it, so I took the dogs down to Buttermere for a bit of a wander. Beautiful lake, of course, but I thought at this time of year it wouldn't be too inundated with tourists. Well, perhaps it's even worse in summer, but honestly, it felt like bloody Princes Street down there, squeezing past families with kids and babies, dogs and grannies, on the narrow path by the lake shore. I've never been to such a busy lake. You can see why, of course - it's crystal clear, flat and mirror-like, surrounded by statuesque mountains, and even boasts a selection of heartstoppingly amazing trees. A photographer's dream, except that at times it's just too flat and mirror-like. I prefer a mirror disturbed by a dog's wake as it dashes in to retrieve a stick.

I mean, honestly, just look at this. Too beautiful, or what?

Anyway, Pace, having just celebrated her 10th birthday, is beginning to show her age. Just as we'd reached more or less the point on our walk that was furthest from the car, she started lagging behind, and at one point looked about to sit down in the middle of the path. I guess I'd better stop letting her do so much swimming, even though she thinks she wants to do it. She needs new batteries, but I don't know where to insert them . . .

I hope this isn't the last photo I'll be taking of Pace swimming with a stick, though.

Fixed. Sort of.

2008-02-15T23:35:00.000Z

Well, I took the dodgy drive to Westcom in Workington, told them it was urgent, and returned home. About an hour later I received a phone call to tell me it was ready for collection - it was the container holding the drive that had failed, rather than the drive itself. This was more or less what I thought was the matter, so I was very happy, and returned later in the afternoon to collect it.

Plugging it in to my computer, though, I found it still not working, though the computer detected an MTP device (MTP - music transfer protocol - isn't that something like an MP3 player, rather than a hard drive?). Whatever it is, I was informed that it was installed, but wasn't working properly. Oh, great. Tried all sorts of things but nothing happened. Finally I took it to Steve's computer, where it worked perfectly well. Well, at least I know my files are safe and sound . . . I just can't get at them. Used Steve's computer to make 2 DVDs' worth of copies of the stuff I can't do without, but there aren't enough DVDs in the world (well, that's a complete lie, of course. But there probably aren't enough in our house) to copy all my photos and mp3s and stuff so they'll just have to languish for now, unaccessed but safe, until I get my stupid PC to recognise the drive. At least I can get on with some work.

Did I mention that my computer is seriously f***ed up?

Heigh.
Ho.

Making besoms!

2008-02-14T22:58:00.005Z

Spent the morning at Ashgill Quarry, Plumbland, learning to make birch besoms. Quite a contrast to my previous learning activity, but a lot of fun, and it was nice to be able to go out wearing scruffy old clothes for a change. Bloody cold, so warmth was more important than haute couture.

Got stuck behind a flock of escaped young herdwicks on the way, which was fun, as I love herdwicks, and they did seem to be rather revelling in their newfound, but probably short-lived freedom.

Helen rests her weary legs: Hannah shows off a newly-made besom as one of the students watches in admiration.

The sun shone, the resident border collies brought sticks to be thrown, and we tied birch brushwood together and stuck poles through the middle. I now have a besom HP himself would be proud of, though, sadly, none of us managed to rise so much as a couple of inches off the ground.

BLOODY COMPUTERS
Spent the rest of the day, on and off, trying to figure out why my external hard drive has suddenly become invisible to my PC. Yesterday morning it was working, but when I switched on the computer again later, it had vanished. Well, it's still there - I can see it - and the LED is lighting up, so it's getting power, but the computer isn't recognising it. Tried it on Steve's PC but it, too, ignores the thing completely. Seems to me it's a mechanical fault, rather than a software problem, which means (a) we can't fix it ourselves, but (b) at least the data is probably safe. So I phoned up Westcom, our trusty local computer repairers, and have booked it in for tomorrow morning.

SECURE BACKUPS?
In the meantime I am bereft. I'm searching through backup CDs for out-of-date copies of my price list so I can update them and send them to enquirers; found one at last, as well as an old copy of several other things I need. But there are a number of jobs I intended to get on with today and tomorrow, and they'll have to be postponed for a wee while now, as I don't have recent enough backups. That'll larn me . . . The question is, though - What is a safe backup method? Everything can fail. I don't trust CDs and DVDs particularly, but that's where my backups are. I thought the external HD was more secure, but now it's failed! I gave up on minidisks because of the nightmare scenerio of some of the drives turning rogue and destroying any disk that was put in them. I just don't think anything's 100% secure. Perhaps I should upload copies of everything to some secure online vault or something . . . but how long would that take? And why should I trust them any more than my own local drives?

NO NUDE FEMALE DANCERS HERE
Heh heh. I've just uploaded to Flickr a batch of photos taken this morning during the besom workshop, one of which showed a strange figure I discovered on site, carved from scrap timber, and depicting an ethnic looking female dancer, apparently unclothed. Among the Flickr tags for this were words such as, "nude, female," and "dancer". It's now an hour or two since I uploaded the photos. Unsurprisingly, since it's Feb 14th and many people probably have better things to do than browsing Flickr, I've had no views at all on most of my photos, except for one . . . guess which one has already had 10 views! I'd love to have seen their faces when, after following links leading to the "nude female dancer" they were expecting,they found this instead!

The Final Session

2008-02-13T22:39:00.003Z

... of the course I was on, was held this evening in Denton Holme Community Centre, a nice sort of village hall place at the back of the library. But we had to be there for 6pm. 6pm! Whose silly idea was that? No time for anyone to have a meal beforehand, unless, like me, they decided to clock off early, get to the hall before the doors opened, and eat cold bean stir fry and rice out of a plastic box in the car while waiting.

After the course proper, so well organised, so inspirational, so life-changing for some participants, this final session was a complete waste of time. In charge was a pleasant fellow from the new University of Cumbria, who, to give him his due, made the best of the bad situation he'd found himself in, but the whole exercise was pointless.

We'd been given these workbooks to fill in, labelled CREATE '08, which is the name of the course, with the list of the bodies behind it at the top: EU Social Fund; University of Cumbria; Cumbria Cultural Skills Partnership; Leading Learning and Skills. I guess all of these had to be assured that the participants in the course had actually attended the sessions, done some work, and learned something, in order for the funding to go through. The chappie from the UC told us sadly that he had nothing to do with writing the questions, so he was as much in the dark as we were when it came to figuring out exactly what sort of answers were expected.

For example, what sort of reply were we expected to give to this? (A whole A4 page was provided, blank and threatening looking, for our answers): "Please list the types of methods that you would consider using to record your learning activities (for example, written, video production, sound recording etc). Give examples of how you would research these media." Now this was a course where we sat at desks and took notes. One or two of us took some photos. How d'you fill an entire A4 page with that? And what on earth do they want when they ask for, "recording the outcomes of a reflective process"?

Most of us, being conscientious sort of people, had spent many hours labouring over this document, but after 3 hours in the community hall with the so-called expert, we were still none the wiser as to whether we'd passed the course or not. Whether we'll ever find out I've no idea: Veronica and I are still waiting for the results of the course we did in November 2006 . . . we stopped holding our breaths about that one some time ago.

For those of us who are self-employed it hardly matters, but for those like my friend Krishna, who are employed and whose employers paid for their participation, it matters a lot.

David Parrish would be appalled at this disorganised last session. When we left his 4th class we were all on a high, full of inspiration and ideas for developing and transforming our businesses; after tonight we felt crushed by bureaucracy.

Stripping today

2008-02-11T23:13:00.000Z

Yes - stripping down rush chairs, prior to re-seating them. Some jobs are just too messy to do indoors, so you have to wait for decent weather and be prepared to drop everything else if the sun does come out. Someone a long time ago had covered the worn-out rush seat pads of these 3 chairs with fabric, to make them look upholstered. Presumably they couldn't find anyone at the time to re-rush them. Anyway, the fabric has done a very good job of containing every little scrap of broken, disintegrated rush, and as soon as I pulled out the nails and removed the cloth, a fine powdery dust started to escape. Once I started attacking the actual rush pad with my Stanley knife, huge clouds of what looked like smoke were released, and I had to make a quick makeshift facemask from the scarf I was wearing.

Above - not smoke, but powdered rush!

Aineko followed me outside and sat patiently on the picnic bench while I worked. She's good at her job. When I'm inside, working on the computer, she comes and sits on my lap. She's a companionable cat, which is nice.

Misty

2008-02-10T22:18:00.000Z

Misty today. All day. You could lose your dog on a day like this. Fortunately, I didn't.

Carlisle Enterprise Centre

2008-02-04T23:22:00.000Z

An interesting old art deco building which seems to have been a factory or something originally (did someone suggest it had been a power station?) and which has now been given a new lease of life, Carlisle Enterprise Centre stands on the banks of the River Caldew below Nelson Bridge, and is the sort of building quite easily overlooked if you don't have to go there for some reason. This is where the course I've been going to is being held. Inside it's full of corridors and fire doors and confusing corners and signs, but you gradually get the layout in your head, and stop getting lost on the trip between the classroom and the loos.

It reminds me of Portobello Pool, or at least the building at the end of it, inside which there was a big cafeteria smelling of chips and with water and detritus all over the floor. I hated going in there in my bare feet, straight out of the water, as you'd end up stepping in squashed chips or pools of spilt Coke. But from outside it looked great, and could easily pass for the long-lost brother of Carlisle Enterprise Centre.Unfortunately Edinburgh City Council didn't think this fine old edifice worth preserving, and all that's left is memories and photos like this.

I keep winning bottles of wine - well, small bottles of wine, but still. Gees. . . it's embarrassing being a smartarse . . . Mind you, if they'd had incentives like this at school I suspect a lot of people would have done a lot better than they did. We had to buy our own booze back then, for heavens' sake!

Ow!

2008-02-03T23:01:00.000Z

Saturday. Trying to do several things at once, in a bit of a hurry. Trying to slide the back door of the car closed while opening the front one, in order to put my hand in and push down the button to lock the back door. (No, I don't have central locking. I don't like it.) I do this often, though in future I may not, because on this occasion my timing was all to pot, and I managed to complete the sliding-the-back-door-closed bit before starting the opening-the-front-door bit, with the result that part of my right hand, viz., my right pinkie, ended up between the two doors as they collided. Fortunately neither of them was locked at the time, so I was able to slide the back one open again very smartly, but the damage was done. It was incredibly painful. I went jumping back into the house going, "ow! OW! OW! OWWWW!" followed by the cat, who was going, "miaow, miaow, miaow," in a normal, catlike manner, which led Steve to think I was doing cat impressions instead of screaming in agony. I didn't even realise I'd left a trail of blood. I thought I'd just crushed the finger, not burst it open too.

Well, once I'd finished hyperventilating and bleeding all over the kitchen I managed to clean and bandage the wound, which isn't actually quite as bad as it felt. There's quite a deep cut, but nothing's broken, and the wound's nice and clean. The finger's bruised a bit, and of course it's difficult to type with a bandage on your finger if you're the sort of typist who's been using all her fingers on the keyboard ever since that summer when she was 9, and bored, and decided to learn to touch-type on an ancient antique typewriter using her mother's old workbooks which gave her loads of practice in producing nice neat bits of typescript declaring over and over such words of wisdom as, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party".

Heigh ho. I've damaged practically all my fingers at one time or another, so it's nothing new. Let's see: when I was still at school I embedded a penknife in my left hand ring finger while trying to remove the crown cap from a glass Coke bottle; twice I've sliced a bit off the tip of a finger, sending me once to sit in a long queue in the casualty department of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and on the other occasion to the doctor's surgery; I've had an axe through my thumb, cut a piece of finger while slicing onions, burnt a finger on a hot exhaust pipe, squashed a thumb between two rocks while chucking them into a wheelbarrow, lost a couple of nails which eventually grew in again, and of course had my right index finger bitten by a jealous dog when the new dog arrived. Then there are the everyday cuts and scratches caused by sharp tools, hammers and pointy bits of cane, and the burns from touching things that have been soldered without waiting for them to cool down, or from taking bread out of the oven and brushing against a hot oven shelf. There was a nasty blister too, when the steam from the kettle attacked my thumb, and another occasion when a couple of fingers, for no apparent reason, developed a swelling which would quite likely have spread to the rest of my hand and then my arm had I not lived in an era and a place where antibiotics are available.

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

2008-01-31T23:34:00.000Z

. . . 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

2008-01-29T23:24:00.000Z

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

2008-01-25T23:21:00.000Z

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

2008-01-24T21:30:00.000Z

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 . . .

2008-01-23T23:15:00.000Z

. . . 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

2008-01-22T23:49:00.000Z

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

2008-01-21T23:43:00.000Z

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

2008-01-20T23:00:00.000Z

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

2008-01-19T23:45:00.000Z

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

2008-01-18T21:41:00.001Z

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!

2008-01-17T23:11:00.001Z

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

2008-01-16T23:28:00.000Z

. . . 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

2008-01-15T20:56:00.000Z

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

2008-01-14T23:09:00.000Z

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

2008-01-13T20:29:00.000Z

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

2008-01-12T22:36:00.000Z

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!

2008-01-11T23:57:00.000Z

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

2008-01-10T23:58:00.000Z

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

2008-01-09T23:24:00.000Z

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

2008-01-08T23:06:00.000Z

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

2008-01-07T23:57:00.000Z

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 . . .

2008-01-06T23:12:00.000Z

. . . 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 . . .

2008-01-05T21:58:00.000Z

. . . 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

2008-01-04T23:15:00.000Z

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?

2008-01-03T20:59:00.000Z

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

2008-01-02T21:25:00.000Z

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

2008-01-01T19:10:00.000Z

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.

Charles Chaplin

2007-12-31T10:48:00.000Z

It's easy to forget Charles Chaplin was also a well-respected composer, although his arguably most famous piece, the theme from the film, Limelight, is a tune many people will recognise though perhaps fail to put a name to.

I discovered a copy of the piano music for this theme in a box of music I acquired through FreeCycle. Here's my first draft of it as a piece for recorder quintet (Tr Tr T B B). Still needs a bit of proofreading, and most of the dynamics are still missing, but I think it'll work OK, and by the time Piping Hot Recorders reassemble after the festive season I should have a working version of it for us to try.

Listen to Limelight

This is an mp3 file created from the wav file generated by Sibelius Kontact player, so it's a bit artificial-sounding, to say the least, but somewhat better than a midi file I suppose. Not sure about the supposed 'recorder' sound, though: sounds more like flutes to me. I guess we'd better do it for real.

Nothing happened today . . . ?

2007-12-30T21:14:00.000Z

I used to keep a diary when I was a kid. A page to a day, it always was, and at the start of each year I'd busily fill in everything that happened over the course of a day. Some days were full of things and others read something like this: " Got up. Had breakfast. Went to school. Came home. Did homework. Went to bed."

By the time February came along, those sort of days had degenerated into: "Nothing happened today." And by the beginning of April, most days would be completely blank. If a lot was happening in my life, I was too busy to write it down, and if nothing much was happening, I couldn't see much point in writing, yet again, "nothing happened".

Somewhere in the attic there's a box full of such diaries. Fully documented Januarys and Februarys, skimpy springs, and a big blank space for the rest of the year. Occasionally I'd write up my diary when we went on holiday, as there was no homework to do, and probably no TV to watch either, but other than that . . .

But is a blog the same as a diary? Probably not. And in those childhood diaries I suspect I had the wrong approach, anyway. It doesn't have to be a description of what you did all day, does it?
(Today - took the dogs for a walk in a waterlogged field; went to Sainsbury's; visited Steve's dad; watched yet more old episodes of Friends; read graphic novel; got legs squashed by heavy cat.)

So what is a blog for? Sharing my opinions with a largely uninterested world? Proving some sort of point? I really don't know. Why am I doing this? Um . . .

OK, here's a question: Is there any point in my arranging Charlie Chaplin's theme from Limelight for recorder quartet? Oh, wtf, I'll do it anyway. It's fun.

Stormy weather

2007-12-29T23:47:00.000Z

Through the night the wind howled, the thunder crashed and the rain battered the rooftops. If you opened a window you could hear the roar of the waves crashing on the shore, just a mile away. I just couldn't wait to get down there with my camera!

There's not a lot else you can do in weather like this, and if you live near the sea it would be a crime to pass up such a fine opportunity.

Took over 200 photos in the end. Some of the better ones can be seen here. The sea is usually quite calm around here, so it was quite exciting to see real big breakers, crashing over the promenade or the pier. Anglers, hardy souls, were out in force in their gaily coloured jackets. I saw a swan, apparently surfing for pleasure, great flocks of seagulls (mostly the smaller gulls rather than the evil herring gulls) and oystercatchers.

Eventually the sun came out, making the big waves blue, but still just as loud and stormy. But the colour and quality of light that comes after a storm is quite beautiful, and even Maryport looked lovely for a little while.

It's a shame that Flickr was having an off day. Suddenly everyone was finding that only some of the photos they were uploading could be accessed, and chaos reigned around the globe for a while until they fixed it and we heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Laser cats

2007-12-28T23:53:00.000Z

Picked up a laser level thingy in a sale for £1.87 - cheap fun for the cats! I've had them chasing it up and down for hours. It projects a line, rather than a point, so they don't know which end of it to catch. Great fun. And better still, it uses ordinary AAA batteries rather than those expensive coin-shaped ones that usually go into laser pointers, so it's cheap to run. I like it.

BODY PARTS PROBE!

Seen outside Tesco today
As my Aussie friend ObLiterated observed: "I bet the Coal Workers'll have something to say about having their body parts probed :)))"

FLOOD WARNINGS
Many people in this area are waiting nervously tonight for high tide, to see whether their local river will burst its banks (again) and flood their houses (again). It's the same places, too, that were inundated last time - the Warwick area of Carlisle, parts of Keswick near the River Greta, parts of Cockermouth near the River Derwent, and so on. The council knows what can happen, and yet not enough has been done, and people will once again lose property and have their lives disrupted. Of course it doesn't help that new houses continue to be built on flood plains.

This is what happened last time:

Above - Waterloo Street, Cockermouth, during the January 2005 floods.

On becoming a pack leader

2007-12-27T17:21:00.000Z

Above: my pack
I'm reading Cesar Millan's book about dog psychology, Be A Pack Leader, which I got for Christmas. (Is someone trying to tell me something, do you think?) Having watched some of his TV programmes I can see where he's going with this: all I have to do is convince my dogs that I'm the leader, and then they'll be happy, well-rounded, well-behaved animals who will walk obediently behind me and never again get overexcited when they meet other dogs outside; Pace will no longer snarl if you come near her when she's eating; Ghyll won't try to eat the mail as it comes in the letterbox; Pace will at last be prepared to make friends with the cats; they will both sit quietly and benignly when the phone rings or a customer turns up at the door. It seems to involve saying, "tch!" to them each time they overstep the mark, but sometimes they're making so much racket they'd never hear it. Obviously there's more to it, but I've only read Chapter 1 so far so I haven't reached the clever bits yet.

Cesar Millan is Mexican, living in California. The 'Cesar' bit sounds Mexican enough, but 'Millan'? Has he got Scots ancestry, d'you think? He certainly has a way with dogs, but of course what he's really doing is training people, and some of the people on his TV series are as thick as they come, treating their dogs like children - no, no - if you treated children like that they'd be out in the streets causing riots.

I'd really like it to work. Both dogs have caused so much chaos in their own individual and not at all endearing ways that taking them out for a walk in a place where there might be other dogs about now requires a good deal of courage on my part. Sometimes the mental effort involved is all too much. Mostly they're brilliant dogs, but . . . if only they were more like cats.

Above: dogs should be more like this

NOT A PANTO EXACTLY . . .

2007-12-26T17:59:00.000Z

. . . more a Christmas production, The Borrowers at Keswick's famous Theatre by the Lake is quite a clever version of the popular children's book. It's hard to portray characters who are small enough to live under the floorboards on the same stage as others who are full-sized "human beans" but they did a passable job of creating the illusion of different sizes by using a variety of techniques including our favourite - the miniature puppet versions of the Borrowers, whose little arms moved, and who seemed able to walk around the stage. We never quite figured out how they did that.

The kids loved it, and that's the main thing. Some of the adults, though, found the seats too small and too close together - Steve and I were both very glad to get up and walk about in the interval - me, because the seat was too high for my short legs, and Steve because there wasn't enough space for his longer ones. I seem to remember the seats downstairs in the stalls being a lot more comfortable - something to remember if you're planning to book there.

KESWICK SHOPS CLOSED AGAIN
Once again, though, Keswick missed a trick by not opening up for business on a bank holiday when a lot of potential customers were wandering the streets looking for something to do. I'd hoped to grab an espresso in one of the excellent coffee shops that have sprung up in recent years, but they were all shut. The few cafés that were open were doing a roaring trade, funnily enough, and the only other shops open were the outdoor gear shops, which, I suspect, never close at all, as of course there is a constant demand for yet more fleece jackets.

The Christmas Season

2007-12-25T23:35:00.000Z

INTERNET DODGERS

The obvious questions are, (a) why would anyone want to dodge the internet and (b) assuming such people do exist, why do they need a café in which to do it? Oh, and is that somewhat pissed-off looking Santa one of said Internet Dodgers? At least they've got a satellite dish, so while they're studiously avoiding the internet they can amuse themselves with sky TV.

EVEN CHRIS IS AT IT NOW
Hmmm. Even Chris has now started a blog, and plans to write something every day! I can't believe he'll keep it up: well, I didn't manage it, did I? The minute life started getting busy, and things worth writing about started happening, I ceased to have time to write them down, and the blog got forgotten.

However . . . let's see which of us drops out first, eh?

CHRISTMAS DAY

This is Smokey Joe, my in-laws' new young lurcher. She's a nice wee dog, and seems - so far - well behaved.

Pretty decent Christmas. Nothing awful happened, despite having 8 people (with a 60-year age gap between the youngest and the oldest) and 2 dogs present, as well as 2 more dogs and 2 cats absent (i.e., left at our house while we had Christmas dinner elsewhere). Even finding the poor cats had been left outside in the rain all afternoon didn't cause any particular trouble. They just came inside on our return, licked themselves dry and settled down for the evening. Everyone got at least some presents they were really happy with, nobody was sick, nobody fell out with anyone else, and even my flat tyre was only a little bit soft and worked fine once we found a garage with a working air machine.

We are now looking forward to a family trip to see The Borrowers at Keswick tomorrow afternoon.

BANG

2007-11-03T20:49:00.000Z

You know, I love fireworks. I love big brassy displays like the ones at Edinburgh Castle, or over Whitehaven Harbour. There's nothing quite so exciting as those awe-inspiring pyrotechnics.

However.

I'm not a dog. I'm not a cat either, though I have to admit I'm one of those people who wouldn't mind coming back next time in feline form, so long as I can live with a nice soft-hearted old sweetie. Cats and dogs hate fireworks, and we have two of each.

I took the dogs out before darkness set in, hoping there wouldnt' be too many bags and crashes, and it seemed fine to begin with. We went off down the lane as dusk fell, and by the time we were coming back up it was nearly dark. I could barely see the dogs. There was enough light in the sky to see the path, though, and not wanting to damage my night vision I was reluctant to use my headlamp. From time to time I called the dogs, and they came running back, so I knew they were nearby.

And then one time, only one dog came back. No sign of Ghyll. I'd seen him disappear into the gloom somewhere in front, but he wasn't responding to shouts or whistles. The headlight didn't help either. We searched high and low, but there was no sign of him, so I put Pace on her lead and we hurried back home, whistling and calling his name all the way.

Almost back, my phone rang - Ghyll had returned home alone, causing Steve to think some awful fate had befallen Pace and me, of course.

We were glad that he had the sense to go home, at least, but I've no idea what spooked him. There had been a few distant fireworks, but nothing major. I guess my idea of major is different from his. I think I'll wait until after the 5th before taking them out in the dark again.

So, the dogs were safely back indoors, but the cats had been out all day and there was no sign of them at all. This is their first Guy Fawkes, really, as last November they'd been too small to go outside. Up and down the veg garden I went, fluorescent lamp in hand, shouting, "Pussycats!" as I went, but the bangs, by now, were nearby, and loud, and cats are small and able to vanish inside a hedge, so there wasn't much chance of finding them.

Finally Aineko came running back inside, but it was an hour later before her nervous brother made an appearance.

I guess we're lucky. All of us - 2 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats - are safe and well and indoors tonight, but you can be sure the casualty units of hospitals up and down the country are full up this weekend with silly kids who've got too close to explosives and didn't know any better than to get injured. Some of them will die. Some will be scarred for life. They deserve better from us, who are a bit older and a bit wiser and a bit more experienced in life.

It really is time we banned fireworks from general sale. It's crazy allowing ordinary people to set these things off in their back gardens, let alone letting them fall into the hands of people who may be far too young to understand the dangers. Big licensed displays can be put on in every town and village: if everyone in a community contributed to their local firework fund the money they'd have spent on their own back garden squibs, can you imagine what a nice big show they could put on? And surely it's more fun to stand around in the company of your friends and neighbours enjoying something like this all together?

Sure, the dogs & cats would still be scared, but it would be just one night, not a fortnight leading up to it as well.

"Dreaming of the outdoors"

2007-10-28T21:43:00.000Z

Don't you just love those instructions translated into English by well-meaning manufacturers, who not only don't speak English, but don't even use our alphabet?

Here's a little gadget I picked up at a stall on Keswick market. Looks like it might come in quite handy - a little LED lamp that holds on to your head with elastic, leaving your hands free. Just as well it's easy enough to figure out how to work it without instructions, though.

Let's see now.... How do we fit the battery?

BATTERY REPLACEMENT

2 Twist off the shot's direction

2x Cr2032 3V Lithium Batteries [Yeah! This bit makes sense!] auording to cubic use. [huh?]

Please remove the batteries when it will be enlightened.

Right. I think I've got that. I think. Now what?

FLASHING MODE [ooh this sounds fun]

Tw'st off the "on"'s direction

Can testing the shot' salfitude

Lower down we find,
Turforwation of product, which of course is something I really needed to know.

I was pleased to see on the front, though, a label saying,
DREAMING OF THE OUTDOORS" which I thought was rather sweet, and they sign off with,
Had a wonderful time. the chinese manufacturing!

Now, how many Western manufacturers (assuming there are any left) send you on your way with such a pleasant sentiment?

Dogs, too

2007-10-21T21:41:00.000+01:00

Took the dogs for a quick dash down to the river early this afternoon, but got slightly delayed by Chris phoning - I kept expecting the signal to disappear, so I walked more slowly. (No, I realise this doesn't make very much logical sense, but there you are, that's how it happened.)

Amazingly, we still had a signal by the time I reached the field at the bottom, beyond Roseghyll. It's quite interesting trying to carry on a telephone conversation while (a) taking photos and (b) attempting to throw sticks in the river for your dogs without (c) dropping your phone in the water or (d) getting your camera wet. I'm surprised I didn't throw the phone for the dogs to retrieve while taking photos with the stick and talking to the camera.

At one point Pace found a small plank, which she insisted I threw for her. It was so heavy it went whizzing off downstream rather fast, and Pace almost went with it. Visions of Baby Roo flitted through my memory.

Above - Pace finds a plank

COWS
Last week, it was cows. The cows think they own the field. Well, I suppose they do spend more time there than we do, but still....

You go down to the water's edge to throw sticks for your dogs, get the dogs nice and wet, and then, when you're ready to go, you find the field, previously apparently empty, now contains a herd of curious Fresians, staring languidly down at you.

I don't mind cows. They're slow and harmless, and the worst thing they do is create mud and shite in the places I want to walk. Other than that, they're just fine. And they've got rather nice eyes, too. Ghyll, however, isn't fond of cows, and gets somewhat spooked by their silent gazing. So he barks at them, rather loudly, until they shrug their shoulders in an impenetrable bovine way and wander off.

Above - the cows who think they own the field.

Bigger Prey

2007-10-21T21:30:00.000+01:00

Last night I went out in the garden after dark to get something from the car. The Security light went on, and I looked across the cobbles. There was Aineko, out in the middle, crunching something. At first I thought it was a bird, but as I got nearer I realised it had fur. Oh. My little cat had killed a small rabbit and was in the process of eating it, head first.

Right. OK. I can handle this.

So I sort of slunk away back to the house and left her to get on with it.

Above - could it have been this one?

Rabbits are a pain in the bottom around here. They eat everything we try to grow in the veg garden, and dig holes. They're a bloody nuisance. They are also incredibly cute. It's very hard to reconcile these feelings. I remind myself that cats are predators, and rabbits are prey, and this is the way things are supposed to be. Rabbits are not an endangered species. They don't behave like the ones in Watership Down. It's perfectly OK and fine for Aineko to eat them, and I should be proud of her.

I suppose I am, sort of. Just don't make me watch her do it.

I went out later and found a few furry bits. Most of it was gone.

PERCUSSION DISCUSSION

2007-08-25T10:25:00.000+01:00

We've just got hold of a pile of old magazines from 1976, called Crescendo International - magazines for musicians. Fascinating stuff.

Having reviewed the gig at the Keswick Museum recently, (See here) where the musical stones were played, I thought it might be interesting to copy part of one of the articles from this magazine, in which the stones get a mention. This is from the August 1976 issue. (It cost 55p and on the front cover there's a photo of Mel Tormé singing and playing the piano.)

It's a discussion between two people I hadn't heard of - James Blades (photo left) (1901 - 1999) and Emil Richards (photo right) (1932- ). James Blades, despite being one of the most celebrated percussionists of his time, was best known for striking the gong at the start of Rank Organization films. Emil Richards specialises in playing percussion on movie soundtracks, but has also played with people such as Frank Sinatra, the Doors and George Harrison.

I come in at a point where they're discussing ancient and ethnic percussion instruments, including things like the cymbals from the Old Testament that Praised The Lord...

ER:...In Santa Barbara, California, there's a museum that has a set of stone chimes from Peru; I'm dying to hear them, but they won't let you play them.

JB: It's a pity you haven't the time to go up to the North of England, to Keswick, in the Lake District, where they have a tremendous five-octave marimba made of rocks from the famous mountain called Skiddaw; it's on the edge of Scotland and England, and they used to light a fire on it as a warning that the Scots were invading. This family of stonemasons found huge rocks that rang; they spent thirty-seven years, and they built this lithophone - it would be wrong to call it a xylophone, because xylo means wood.

This instrument is in Keswick Museum, and they gave me the privilege of recording it. I put it on my LP, and I played Fossils from The Carnival of the Animals, following it up by saying that had Saint-Saens had this instrument available, he probably would have used it in the place of the xylophone.

The interesting thing about this is that I got friendly with a geologist who's spend his life studying the mountains of England and Scotland. And he found that this stone was from a volcanic eruption that had happened many, many thousands of yaers ago; the molten lava came out of the top of the mountain, and at the position where it cooled, the stones rang. On no other part of the mountain, higher up or lower down, did the stones ring. There are only five places in the world where these ringing stones can be found.

The next time you come to Britain, if you have the time to spare, I will take you to Keswick; you can play the stone instrument, and you can make a recording of it.

ER: I wonder if there would be any extra bars, that we could take home with us?

JB: Ah! The only extra bars, I'm afraid, have actually gone, because the man in charge, who I made friends with, gave me a piece of stone from it. He claimed that this could be into billions of years old; as the years go on, the stone becomes more compressed, and gets harder.
. . . .
Now, when I went to this Keswick Museum .... the man in charge said, "We have much material downstairs that might interest you." And he found a bass drum that was tightened with one key, and the rope pulled all the keys, made in 1837; also a bass drum pedal, that you pressed the pedal foot, it operated on a rope, and it pulled the beater on the drum. Then he showed me - which I tried to get, but I couldn't - two pairs of fork-shaped beaters, with which these brothers Richardson had played this stone instrument.

In about 1850, they took the stone instrument to Buckingham Palace and they played it to Queen Victoria. She liked it, and she sent for them to play it again; they used to play overtures, waltzes and other period pieces. In the meantime, they had gone further with it; they'd put this bass drum with it, with the pedal, and over the top of the stone bars they had arranged little bells. But after they'd played one piece, the Queen told them to take all the other things away, and only play on the stones - becaue that, to her, was the music. Isn't it amazing? That was in 1850. They toured the world, including America, with this instrument.

And - if you go up to Keswick with me - there was another, that this geologist made from the only rocks that were left, that he collected. He had a big photograph shop, and he kept it there. He sold the shop, and it is now a shop that sells what I call junk - all these things that the boys and girls buy: souvenirs, queer sorts of dresses and all the rest of it. I went into the shop, and I said to the man: "Where is the big instrument, with the stone bars?" "Oh, I've got no time for that," he said, "it's in the cellar." I tried to buy it from him, but he was too busy selling souvenirs; he didn't want to have any bother with me - he was polite, mark you. But if those stones aer in that shop, you could still get 'em - in that cellar. And I could take you to the shop.

ER: We'll get 'em. We're gonna get those, for sure!

Steve, who spent much of his youth in Keswick in the 70s, thinks the 'big photograph shop' may have been the place that is now Maysons, down on Lake Road. At the time he knew it, it was no longer a photographer's, but hadn't yet become Maysons. Which set of musical stones was in their basement we're not sure, but the only other set he knows of is in the hands of a local family who were friends of his family's. And there are, of course, two sets in the museum, so it's possible the second set there is the one that languished in the shop basement for many years.

CYCLING THE BACK ROADS

2007-08-11T10:34:00.001+01:00

There are roads you never use in a car. They don't go anywhere. . . well, they don't go anywhere you'd normally want to go. People live down those roads, in farms, or isolated cottages, of course. Farmers use these lanes to take their tractors from field to field, to drive sheep from pasture to pasture or cattle from grass to milking parlour. They are good places to walk your dog or go for a jog. And they're havens for small animals - red squirrels, feral cats, pheasants, rabbits, barn owls are all common sights, and if you look closely enough there are the little scuttling shrews and mice as well as small hedge birds like dunnocks and wrens.

Cycling quietly along you even notice a black beetle scuttling out of your way, or a huge shiny slug, stretched across your path, laying down its sluggy life in the cause of greater slugdom.

It's nice getting off the main road on your bike. The wild flowers that line the hedgerows smell sweeter - ah, meadowsweet! - and the diesel fumes are far away. Too quiet for me, though, so I start composing a song as I go, singing at the top of my voice and trying to memorize the lyrics to scribble them all down when I get home.

I stop to look over a little hump backed bridge that crosses the River Ellen - my River Ellen, that flows quite near our village, through a field where we often take the dogs. It's narrower here. Just a gentle, inconsequential little river of little interest to anyone who doesn't live near its banks. I like it, though. I notice that Aspatria Angling Club wouldn't allow me to fish here. I guess that means it's a good place to find fish. Just as well I prefer to leave them in the river.

There are some long-disused lime kilns somewhere near Wardhall Guards, a strangely named spot on the OS map and near where I'm cycling. Russell Barnes, who knows about these things, has a couple of photos of them on Flickr but I can't find them. Maybe next time. I do find some huge piles of white stuff in a field - could be lime? Not sure what it looks like, but I do know there's masses of limestone in this area.

Sore leg muscles the next day.11 miles may not seem far to those who cycle a lot, but for me it's a lot. Next time, though, it'll be further!

Addendum April 15th 2008
Apparently I misunderstood the Aspatria Angling Club sign. Never having been an angler, I wasn't aware that for only £20 you can buy a season ticket to fish away in these waters to your heart's content. Gosh! A bargain, and if you're good at it it's probably a lot cheaper than going to the local wet fish shop. My apologies to AM Rankin, and here's a link to their website so that potential fisherpeople can find out exactly what's in store for them: Aspatria Angling Club website

Maryport Blues Festival 2007

2007-08-04T23:50:00.000+01:00

Everyone wants to hear about Gary Moore... well, what can you say? He was great, of course. Brilliant performance. Here's a photo:

He doesn't half milk some of those songs, though. You think he's coming to the end, and then he's off again, with long long notes and howling bluesy passages, and then surely it's going to finish this time - those sound like final chords - but no - off he goes again, dragging it out, piling on the agony. If he wasn't such a bloody good guitar player I'd have been off browsing the music stalls by that time, but when someone plays like that, well, you've just got to forgive him.

It's handy being small. People actually push you to the front. All the medium-sized guys get stuck at the back, trying to take photos over people's heads, while wee folk like me can push their way through and end up getting an exceptional view.

I was about 3 rows from the front when Gary Moore was playing, but when Eric Bibb was on, I got right to the front. Did I hear you ask who Eric Bibb is? Fabulous acoustic blues guitarist, with a unique singing voice. Son of Leon Bibb, who was a very well-known American folksinger back in the 60s. Eric grew up in a house in Greenwich Village where people like Bob Dylan or Woodie Guthrie would pop in from time to time. He was surrounded by fine music, so it's not surprising he grew up to be a fine musician.

I was thrilled, though, to find he was being backed by two of the finest musicians money could buy - Danny Thompson on bass and Larry Crockett on drums.

Danny Thompson has played with everybody - well, everybody that matters, anyway. Let's see - to name but a few from his extensive back catalogue which goes back to 1964 - Alexis Korner, the Incredible String Band, Davey Graham, Marianne Faithful, Julie Felix, Pentangle, Cliff Richard, Donovan, Nick Drake, John Martyn, John Renbourn, Rod Stewart, John Williams, Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, Sandy Denny, Lynsey de Paul, Tom Paxton, T Rex, Kate Bush, Loudon Wainwright III, Billy Bragg, Sam Brown, Richard Thompson, June Tabor, Kathryn Tickell, Tim Buckley, Alison Moyet, Ali Bain, Nigel Kennedy, Savourna Stevenson, Norma Waterson, Kate Rusby, Peter Gabriel, Paul Weller, and many others. Is there any other musician you can name who's performed with such an assortment of stars from many branches of music?

As for Larry Crockett - well, what an exceptional drummer. I hadn't come across him before, but I was well impressed. Read about him here - www.lcrockett.com . He, too, has played with a huge variety of big names over the years, and once you see him play, you understand why he's in such demand. This guy uses a really minimal drum kit in ways I've never seen drums used before. He's never still. He turns his sticks over, and uses both ends, he tickles the cymbals and brushes and touches his instruments creating gentle sounds that are as far removed from the output of a 'normal' drummer as you could get. Never once did I see him just sitting there, as drummers usually do, bashing away rhythmically with a spaced-out look on the face. No, Larry was aware of every note Eric was playing, and enhancing each note by what he did on his drums. I was amazed. Oh, and he's quite beautiful too!

Exploring the Bowness marshes

2007-08-04T23:37:00.001+01:00

Solway Railway embankment 2
Originally uploaded by allybeag

Long ago, a railway bridge used to span the Solway Firth from Bowness to Annan. It's long gone, but the evidence remains. On www.local.live.com you can trace the route of the defunct railway all the way from Aspatria to the Solway coast, and then again on the Scottish side from Annan northwards.

It's very strange, marshy ground by the water's edge here, near Bowness. The dogs leapt gracefully from lump of grass to lump of grass, but for 2-legged humans it was much harder going. I hoped to get up on to the embankment from the side, but the tide was in, and it's surrounded by almost impassible marsh so I had to give in for today. I'll be back another day though!

Man has fire

2007-07-22T23:15:00.000+01:00

Our mate Dave has recently bought a new house in Carlisle, and today held his grand housewarming barbeque. Since all the rest of Britain seems to be inundated with flood waters, I was convinced an outside party was a silly idea, and asked our pet Sun Goddess to do us a wee sun dance. In the event, though, she didn't read my request in time, and it didn't matter, as we managed a nice sunny afternoon without her help. I guess we deserve a break here in Cumbria, after last year's catastrophic flooding. It's someone else's turn this time.

So, what is it about blokes and barbies? They'll spend half an hour or more fighting to get the thing lit, then get fed up waiting and stick the food on top anyway, even though it's still not hot enough. They believe that pouring fat on the charcoal to create smoke speeds up the cooking process. They'll happily stand in the garden all afternoon watching a miniscule bit of flame sputtering under half a dozen sausages.

We women, now, if we're hungry, we put the food in the kitchen cooker, cook it and eat it. Done. And... in the end, the blokes ended up doing just the same. The sausages, burgers and kebabs went in the oven, got cooked, and were laid on top of the BBQ supposedly to keep them hot. (They didn't. They cooled down.) And the smoke wafted and gusted round the garden, making sure everyone got a turn.

Halfway through this non-cooking process I got fed up and took a wee trip to Asda as I'd heard they were selling the new Harry Potter book there for a fiver, but of course they were sold out. The kebabs still weren't ready when I got back. Mind you, they were worth waiting for. Absolutely delicious. Yum. And certainly nobody would have left hungry - there was loads to eat besides the hot food.

Since Dave's a Carlisle United fan (I was about to say the Carlisle United fan, but that's unfair - there must be another one) and his brother, who's also going to be living there, is a Workington Reds fan, I created a picture as a housewarming gift, showing a fictional tackle between two players from Carlisle and the Reds. I suspect this would be impossible in real life as they play in different leagues, but this is a bit of fantasy, so why not? Note the group of fans behind the Cumbrian flag, by the way...

And today's pest is...

2007-07-22T00:20:00.000+01:00

...Himalayan balsam. Yes, this pleasant-looking plant, which was originally introduced to this country as a garden plant (just like giant hogweed - see below) is now in danger of taking over our rural river banks and smothering our indiginous wild flowers.

Went for a wee wander on my bike at teatime - up the main road past Crosby Villa, down into the dip, up the long climb known locally as 'Slowly On', and turned right up a narrow road I'd never been along before. It leads down a long hill towards the River Ellen. As I whizzed downhill I thought to myself, "you'll pay for this when you have to use your muscles to get back uphill on the way home," but it was lovely to fly past meadowsweet and red campion, cow parsely and knapweed, and many other wild flowers with their gentle scents.

Halfway along there's a turn off to the right, that takes those who wish to do so to Cockermouth, and this road crosses a little hump-backed bridge across the river. I stopped to have a look, and found a huge swathe of Himalayan balsam all along the river bank. Pretty stuff, but lethal.

(There was also the carcase of a dead cow on a little island in the river, but I thought you'd prefer the photo of the Himalayan balsam to the one of the mouldering bovine.)

And the steep uphill stretch? Yes, I found it all right, on the stretch up through Oughterside towards Prospect before rejoining the main A596. Oh well, I keep reminding myself that every time I pedal my way up something like that I'm getting fitter.

Slug Slalom on a pushbike

2007-07-21T21:34:00.000+01:00

Must be something to do with all this damp weather we've been having, but there do seem to be more slugs about this summer than usual. Now when I'm trying to be a gardener, I despise them and their leaf-nibbling habits, but from an aesthetic point of view there's something quite wonderful about a nice big black slug, with its surface of Klingonesque corrugations and its wet shiny coat. They remind me of tiny wee bikers, black and tough.

They're everywhere this year. Trying to avoid standing on them while walking is bad enough, but this afternoon I discovered a new sport - slug slalom on a pushbike. Because the rural roads are busy, and the rural footpaths are almost unused, its safer to cycle on the path around here. Easy enough to dismount on those rare occasions when you meet a pedestrian.

Today, however, all the local slugs had come out to promenade and show off their black shiny finery. Sure, there's plenty of room to get your wheel between them, but it involves quite a bit of weaving to and fro. So I wove and meandered, to and fro avoiding slugs with great care and diligence. I don't think I squashed a single one. Hurrah!

Unfortunately, so concerned was I to miss the slugs that I almost didn't notice the scattering of broken glass. Coulda been nasty, that.

THE DEAD ORCHID

2007-07-20T14:40:00.000+01:00

Someone left a dead pot plant behind in the flat Chris was staying in last year. I took it home, pruned it a bit and kept it wet, and now look at it! This is not a dead orchid. Isn't it pretty? Thank you, nameless person who abandoned it!

WILDLIFE FOR FRIDAY

2007-07-20T14:31:00.000+01:00

They've devastated our vegetable crops this year, but how can you be angry with something as cute as this? It appeared, for the first time, in the front garden this morning, and spent a long time working on the long grass. If they want to mow the lawn, that's fine. Bring your brothers and sisters, little Bunny! Bring your aunties and uncles, your parents and your children! Let them eat grass. But leave the bloody veg alone.... what's left of it.

LAST WEEK'S JAUNT TO EDINBURGH

2007-07-19T23:24:00.000+01:00

Spent a couple of days in Edinburgh last week. This was in order to meet up with some people I hadn't seen since I was about 20, but all sorts of things happen, of course when you're there.

A TRIP TO TESCO'S
Going grocery shopping with my son has always been fun, ever since he discovered, at the age of about 3, that he could get his name shouted out over the tannoy if he wandered up to a member of staff and pretended to be lost. Nowadays he sticks defenceless women in shopping trolleys and gives them a quick hurl around the car park. (But then again, just how defenceless is Jenny, really....?)

GIANT HOGWEED AT FORT KINNAIRD
I was surprised to see this stuff still growing in Edinburgh, and in such large, obvious clumps too, after all the work people did in the past trying to eradicate it. Squads of people went out, hauling it up by the roots and burning it. But here it is, growing at the roadside next to Fort Kinnaird, one of those big retail parks that have sprung up around the town since I left. Giant hogweed was a serious pest in Edinburgh when I lived there. It infested the banks of rivers, railway tracks - anywhere that the seeds could be transported. The sap can cause skin lesions if exposed to sunlight, and children used to uproot the stuff to use the stems as telescopes or pea-shooters. You can imagine the results. Why is it being allowed to grow in such a populous area?

THE WAVERLEY
We used to hang around there when we were young and even more foolish than we now are. It's hardly changed. Every Saturday night there was folk music upstairs, and in those days, in Edinburgh, the folk scene was the cool place to be. (Yeah, I know, from our ever-so-knowing
21st-century viewpoint that might be hard to believe, but really, it's true.) We played music, folk and blues and stuff, and there was good Scottish heavy beer, and certain other substances, and everything else you might associate with groups of young people - and some not quite so young - under the influence of such substances. As time passed some of us went here, and others went there, and others stayed put and drank themselves to death, or just got old. Some survived, others disappeared, but most settled down, had kids and played music to them. We all lost touch.

The nice thing about the internet is that you sometimes find people again, quite unexpectedly, even when you're not looking for them. Jim (above) and I found each other by chance, and although neither of us now lives in Edinburgh we thought it'd be fun to track down a few other old reprobates and get together in the old place. Amazingly, this actually happened, and was so successful that we're hoping to do it again soon. I was surprised to see Jim's astonishing hair, but even more surprised to find that Harry (above) is now 74 and still - after a brief respite of a few decades - a master of the blues guitar. He has always looked younger than his years.

There are other photos to be seen here - some of these are the ancient black and white ones which started this whole thing off when I published them on Flickr, and people started creeping out of dusty corners, giving themselves a shake, and declaring their memories of Sandy Bell's, Stewart's, the Waverley and other somewhat disreputable musical pubs of the late 60s and 70s.

A BIG EMPTY HOUSE AND FOXES ON THE LAWN
Camping overnight in a big empty house with hardly any lightbulbs should be a creepy experience, but it wasn't really. I had my torch, and a comfy bed, and a MÖRKER table lamp from Ikea. What more could I ask for? Foxes, of course.

You open the shutters on a fine Tuesday morning, look out across the lawn, and see a family of 4 big healthy foxes cavorting on the grass by the shrubbery. That's the way to start your day. It really is. And even better, you discover your camera is lying there beside you, just waiting to be used.

I watched them for about half an hour as they chased each other across the grass, engaged in play-fighting, and scrambled up and down on to walls like cats. Eventually they went off in search of food, which kindly Edinburgh people tend to leave out for them. No huntsmen with hounds here.

I was interested to note that their behaviour is far more cat-like than dog-like, despite their canine appearance. They are quiet, graceful in their movements and have the ability to climb and jump and land elegantly. Like cats, of course, they're predators. Here in the country they're not popular, as people keep poultry, but in the cities they have found a safe haven. Good luck to them, beautiful wild creatures that they are.

There are more foxy photos here

The PH Ceilidh Band's First Gig

2007-07-19T23:17:00.000+01:00

Well, it went fine last night. 5 of us plus the caller took to the Kirkgate stage, and after a certain amount of faffing about with mics and lights managed to produce a pretty good sound for a scratch band. I know I made loads of mistakes: I hope I wasn't the only one.... but so long as you keep the speed up people keep dancing. We'll get better.

It was an end-of-term event for a bunch of teachers from a local school, and they were all up for a good time so the floor was never empty. It was a lot of fun, but amazingly tiring. Don't know which takes more out of you - playing the music or dancing all night.

So. There ya go. If you want a ceildh band, you can now call on us.

SEAGULLS: THE LATEST

2007-07-19T23:06:00.000+01:00

Questions have been asked.

Well the chicks are now enormous, and ready to fly off any day. They have taken to hopping from roof to roof, and sit on the apex stretching their wings and making loud bizarre squeaking noises. The adults are still in protective mode, but don't seem to be attacking up quite so diligently. Today I watched 5 adults trying to see off a flock of swallows which are nesting in our barn. This had very little effect. There's not much a big clumsy seagull can do in pursuit of a nippy elegant wee swallow, which can fly at top speed towards the tiny broken pane of glass in the barn window and swoop straight inside without even slowing down.

THE DOGS ARE DIFFERENT

2007-07-19T22:58:00.000+01:00

When we encountered a place in the fence at the top of the field where I could climb over into the next field, I saw the wire was bent down in such a way that other animals must have used it before. I clambered over, and pointed to the top. Ghyll jumped up and down, examined it a bit, put his paws on it, had a wee think, and then, quite elegantly for a border collie, leapt very neatly over it.

"Right Pace, " says I. "Your turn next." But Pace steadfastly kept all four feet on the ground and refused to budge. She tries to find somewhere to squeeze through, but it's hopeless. Ghyll and I try to encourage her to attempt a jump, but she's not interested. OK, she's getting on years a bit, and she's quite a heavy dog these days, but I thought she might have at least tried.

Ghyll and I return to Pace's field, and wander back the way we came, contemplating. I realise that although Ghyll will jump a fence, and he's slim enough to slither under a gate, he won't swim under water like Pace - in fact, he won't swim at all, whereas she'll jump into any depth of water with no qualms, and swim to the bottom to retrieve a toy. I also realise that a few weeks ago Pace discovered how to negotiate a cattle grid, quite a clever feat for a quadruped. Ghyll had to be manhandled through a gap in the fence that time.

Between them we have one perfect dog. I guess I'll just have to keep them both...

Keswick

2007-07-07T23:37:00.000+01:00

KESWICK THROUGH THE SEASONS
I've lived In Cumbria for nearly 11 years, and I've been visiting Keswick on and off for more like 18, so I'm pretty familiar with the place by now. One of the things you notice is that during the tourist season all the shops are occupied with some business or other - some old, long-established ones (those these, sadly, are dwindling) and others belonging to optimistic enterprising souls hoping to start up the next Big Thing in town. A few of these survive but most vanish as soon as the tourists do.

When you visit Keswick in the winter there are always a number of empty retail premises, but in summer they're always in use. The only exception was 2001 during the nightmare year of Foot & Mouth disease, when visitors had to be discouraged from coming to the Lake District in case they spread the disease across the bare, sheep-free landscape.

EMPTY SHOPS?
OK. I've set the scene. Now, it's July, surely one of the busiest months for a town like Keswick. All the shops will be occupied, won't they? But they're not. Shop after shop is empty, with a 'To Let' sign on the window. It's eerie. There are plenty of visitors strolling around the market place with its fancy new tented stalls, but fewer shops for them to spend their money in. I wonder what's going on?

Piping Hot's Scratchy Ceilidh Band

2007-07-05T00:08:00.000+01:00

We've been invited, rather suddenly, to become a scratch ceilidh band. Well, a few of us either play for another ceilidh band at the moment, or have played with ceilidh bands in the past, so it's not exactly an alien concept, but it's going to be a nice change from playing recorder music with intricate harmonies.

J, a friend of B's, is a caller, and needed a band, so here we are, practising for a gig at the Kirkgate in a couple of weeks' time. And we are actually going to get paid for it. Gosh.

J turns out to have been one of the founder members of Belfagan, way back 26 years ago. I thought her name was familiar. It's a small world around here.

So it's B on accordion, K on fiddle, S on flute and R on flute and recorder, with me providing a steady rhythm on guitar. I am impressed by R and S who sight read accurately music they haven't seen before at top speed on woodwind instruments. I couldn't do that. I'd have to go home and practice. (It's dead easy to rattle out a few guitar chords, but playing the tune is much harder.)

We sound bloody good. If it goes down well on the 18th we might want to do this more often, though I don't know how S2 would feel about a rival ceilidh band in the area, especially since it uses a couple of his musicians...

S, B and I decide to have a separate practice session next week to work on some of my songs to play in the interval. It looks like our little virtuoso folk trio may end up being called Sheeps in the Oven.... (more on this later).

Seagull Update

2007-06-30T23:22:00.000+01:00

4.45am I looked out of the back window to the most glorious golden dawn. The light streamed through the windows and woke me up. I was glad it did. I hung my head out of the back window and watched my beautiful rooftop foes flying in big circles round and round the garden in the early morning light. Their big white bellies caught the golden light and they glowed like angel birds as they swooped round.

The most dangerous time is when the chicks are out on the roof, exposed. Picking these times times to take the dogs for a walk means taking your life in your hands.

We were chased this evening by a very angry gull, which swooped repeatedly at us as we walked away from the house. You'd think it would realise we were going away from its nest, and therefore decreasing the danger to its chicks, but then, seagulls are not very bright.

By the time we were returning, dusk was setting in, and I hoped the birds would have settled down for the night. No such luck. Quite a long way off, the sentinal on the chimney stack spotted us and came charging over, swooping low, divebombing me. I had a hat on (of course!) but no weapon, unless I could have thrown a collie at it...

We slunk along by the wall, under overhanging trees and shrubbery, but it wouldn't leave us alone: I could see the whites of its eyes it got that close. (OK OK, birds don't have whites in their eyes - it's a figure of speech - all right?)

There's an exposed stretch between the last overhanging tree and our barn, and I just didn't have the nerve to cross this open ground without something to protect me, so I phoned the house and asked my other half to come outside with a Big Stick please. He soon emerged with a long-handled hoe, and before he came into view I saw the seagull turn its attention to him as he went out into the back garden.

Safely escorted back indoors I heaved a sigh of relief. Fortunately we don't have to go outside again tonight.

The chicks are getting pretty big now. If you go up the top end of the garden and shelter under a tree you can watch them, stretching their fluffy wings and trying to figure out what being a seagull is all about.

CONCERT AT THE KESWICK MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, 28th JUNE 2007

2007-06-29T22:57:00.000+01:00

THE ROCK ORGAN
(See also my later post - here with a 1976 reference to this instrument)
Well I enjoyed the concert a lot more than I expected. I’d gone along mainly out of curiosity, hoping to hear and see the famous musical stones being played by someone who knew what they were doing. In the end the stones were the least interesting part of the gig, mainly because, surprisingly because the instrument is so BIG, they were almost inaudible and were mostly drowned out by the fiddlers and the Lancashire step dancer.

Jamie Barnes, the museum’s Curatorial Assistant and House Manger, played them, and so far as I could tell he probably played them very well, albeit with rather piddly little rubber mallets which probably did nothing to increase the volume of his output.

EVELYN GLENNIE AND THE ORIGINAL, SMALLER, ROCK ORGAN
The instrument normally stands just inside the door of the museum, and most of it was still there when I arrived: they’d only taken about a third of it - the easiest part to move, I suppose - into the art gallery area. This meant they’d left the ‘black notes’ behind, restricting somewhat the sort of tunes that could be played.

With this part removed, though, you can see, hidden underneath the rest of the beast, the little, original, 17-note rock organ, which was made before the more famous behemoth. It sits on a little sort of barrow thingy. When Evelyn Glennie came to play she tried both instruments with a variety of beaters, and apparently pronounced the smaller, older model to have a better tone.

THE LAKELAND FIDDLERS
The Lakeland Fiddlers started the concert with a selection of long-neglected Cumbrian tunes. These were almost exclusively hornpipes to begin with, and most of their repertoire, in fact, seems to be dance tunes. As well as a number of fiddle players the band also has a guitarist, a bodhran player and one of the oldest double bass players on the circuit - I’m told he’s 83 but he doesn’t look a day over 70. The audience obviously loved them!

CAROLYN FRANCIS & HER BORDER PIPES

The fiddlers are led by the talented and versatile Carolyn Francis, who is also a member of Striding Edge, one of Cumbria’s top ceilidh bands. As well as leading the fiddlers with style, she also plays a rather unusual set of border pipes, which she had specially made for her by Julian Goodacre of Peebles. Modern border pipes are
bellows-driven, and have the unusual feature of stopped end-holes, making the fingering quite bizarre to us ‘normal’ woodwind players, as you have to lift just one finger at a time and replace it before you lift the next one. These older, mouth-blown pipes had more or less died out, but have the more sensible open ended
chanter.

ALEX FISHER, LAKELAND STEP & CLOG DANCER
Alex Fisher the virtuoso Lakeland step & clog dancer, was recording a DVD about the history of clog dancing, and so we were treated to a fascinating trip through time as she described and then demonstrated the various types of dancing.

Lancashire is the natural home of clog dancing, but it was also found in other industrial areas such as Yorkshire, the Midlands and Glasgow. Lakeland step dancing, though, wasn’t traditionally done in clogs. The men did step dancing and turned it
into a very competitive art form. The first World Championships were held in 1880, and won by Dan Leno, who went on, like many others, to lead a career on the music hall stage.

A PACKED HOUSE
The concert was much busier than the museum staff had expected, and the biggest audience they’ve had for years. With over 100 bums on and off seats they soon ran out of chairs. I guess the rain might have driven a few damp tourists inside, but most people seemed to be really enjoying themselves.

This time it's Aineko who has caught the shrew

2007-06-26T23:38:00.000+01:00

It was still alive when I found her playing with it. It didn't survive much longer.

If you're interested in these sort of things, click on the pic to see the rest of the set.

Hiding in the bushes, I point my camera skywards

2007-06-26T23:31:00.000+01:00

They're so graceful in the air... until they come swooping down towards you, big feet extended.

This ugly critter, however, is the reason they keep attacking us.

Only a mother could love it... but its mother has many friends and relations willing to injure anyone in its defence.

On me bike

2007-06-26T16:26:00.000+01:00

That's the third time I've cycled into town and back in the past week, having got the bike serviced last week. The first time was quite hard work, especially on the long uphill stretch on the way home, but today I realised my cycling muscles have remembered how to work, and things were much easier.

I'm going to keep at this, regularly, and when the winter creeps in with its foul weather and early darkness, I'll be ready for it, fit and lean (well, I can dream, can't I?) and able to keep pedalling away right through the year.

I need to find a better way to carry eggs on my bike though. Despite being in a nice strong eggbox, one of them broke and another cracked. The dogs enjoyed the yokey drips that fell between the slate on the picnic table.

Reinforcements

2007-06-25T10:33:00.000+01:00

Monday is bucket day (bin day? What exactly d'you call it in England?) around here. I put on my hat, picked up a nice long hoe, and marched round the house to the front pulling the first wheely bin. They saw me of course. By the time I'd got back to collect the second bin there were the original 2 seagulls on our roof, 6 more wheeling around above my head, plus a ninth arriving from a southerly direction.

It'll cost her a fortune in bread to feed that lot...

No wonder those gulls like it here

2007-06-25T00:33:00.001+01:00

seagull_feeding
Originally uploaded by allybeag

I watched the neighbour this afternoon preparing a bowl of food as lovingly as though she was feeding her pet cat. She laid it on the picnic table and stood by, watching indulgently, as one of the fiercest gulls landed ever so gently and started feeding.

Next week - inviting crocodiles to swim in your garden pond.

Belfagan in Hartlepool

2007-06-24T22:30:00.000+01:00

Saturday 23rd June and we were off to monkey-hanger country, as it's rather cruelly known, to celebrate a remarkable achievement. Redcar Sword Dancers have been practising the same dance for 40 years - a long-sword dance called Greatham - and invited us to come and dance with them in the North East.

EARLY
It's a long way from West Cumbria to Hartlepool, and getting up at 5.30 when you normally rise at 8 isn't easy, but it was worth the effort.

Only 3 dance teams were present at Hartlepool Historic Quayside, and in many ways the small number was a good thing as it became a very happy friendly event over the course of the day. Jet Set border morris from Whitby wear sunglasses and black dresses instead of the traditional black facepaint, and look very stylish because of it. Redcar wear bright red military-style jackets with ribbons attached all over.

TALL SHIPS
We danced by the berthed tall ship, the Trincomalee, with a flat blue harbour stretching out under the hazy morning sky. I thought of how it all must have looked in the days when Hartlepool was a bustling seaport with huge traffic jams of 3-masted sailing ships filling those now flat, empty waters.

THE REDCAR MUMMERS' PLAY - CALL FOR THE DOCTOR!
Redcar performed their famous mummers' play, which, like many of its ilk, involves some poor sod having his head removed as the sword dancers revolve around him. He lies dead on the tarmac and the doctor is called, who boasts about his many achievements, before borrowing my bottle of Badoit mineral water (a much cheaper brand will do, actually) which he duly pours into the open mouth of the spluttering victim. The play closes and the dancers move smoothly on into their famous dance, Greatham, which seems to be their main reason for existence. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they actually know several other sword dances as well, though to the untrained eye they all look very similar: the only distinguishing feature is the fact that the tune's different for each one.

LUNCH & A SEARCH FOR CAT FOOD
Lunch was arranged at the local pub - Jackson's Landing - but not being able to eat the gluten-filled food I gobbled a couple of hasty rice cakes and sloped off in search of Pets At Home where I had to buy some catfood before we started the afternoon session. Big shopping centre here, but as confusing as Livingston if you want to get from one set of shops to another. You go round a carpark, find you're in the wrong bit, re-enter the main road only to find it's a dual carriageway so you have to drive all the way to the next roundabout, go right round it, double back on yourself and try the next set of shops to see if the elusive petshop is in there. Of course, it's not, so it's back out onto the dual carriageway again, up to the roundabout, turn around, back down.... finally I got to the right shop, got the catfood, and then had to do the whole thing again to find my way back to Jackson's Landing where Belfagan, Redcar and Jetset were still in the midst of a leisurely lunch. Whew.

THUNDER & LIGHTNING
The rain started before everyone had finished eating. We sat staring out of the windows as it battered down on the harbour cobbles: lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Someone announced that the coach had arrived. Oh joy. A trip to some godforsaken country pub where we're expected to dance in a car park in a torrential deluge. I got up at 5.30am for this?

DANCING IN THE RAIN
The bus driver was dead nice though. He did his best to park as close to the door as possible at each place we visited. We were conveyed to 3 venues - the Raby Arms at Hart Village, the Wellington Inn at Wolviston, and then to Greatham itself. At one spot we musicians donned our polythene ponchos to protect our instruments while Belfagan danced with umbrellas instead of garlands. Jet Set danced under the trees, but Redcar refused to get their swords out in case they got rusty.

DANCING IN THE PUB
We were invited to dance indoors at Wolviston, causing great surprise to the locals who had turned up for a quiet Saturday lunch, as we lurched between their tables, bells jangling and swords clattering, bumping people with our accordions and saxophone as we passed.

Greatham was supposed to be having a Village Feast, but rain had stopped play. A few oddly-dressed people were spotted still wandering the streets. (No no - there's nothing odd about our dress! We always dress like this - it was everyone else who was odd...) Redcar recently won some sort of award for dancing Greatham, and we feel it's well deserved. Surely after doing it every week for 40 years they should have got the hang of it by now.

JAN'S BIRTHDAY CAKE

As we all piled back on to the bus we agreed that despite the rain we'd had a really very nice time. There was more dancing back on the quayside, where the rain had stopped by this time, and then all of Belfagan made our way across to MacDonald's where Jan's surprise birthday cake was produced, candles were inserted, lit and blown out, to the sound od great cheers.

So the dancers departed - 8 people in Helen's commodious car. Stuart and Margaret went off to spend the evening with their Redcar pals. Bridget departed to catch up with her 5th granddaughter who was born earlier in the week, and I sloped off to TK Maxx and Asda. Heigh Ho.

ALL I WANTED WAS A CUP OF BLACK COFFEE
There was a long drive home ahead of me and I needed caffeine. Asda has a café with a self-service hot drinks machine - you know the sort of thing - you stick a mug under a spout, press a button, and tea, coffee or whatever comes spurting out. You take it to the checkout where you pay for it. It was dead quiet, which was good as I'd not have to queue. I filled a cup with black coffee and headed for the till. Um. Nobody there. I looked around. Nobody anywhere. One completely deserted café. I suppose I could have (a) gone to customer service to demand that someone take my money or (b) left the cup and gone off without it. If I'd tried (a) I'm certain they'd have told me the café was shut and I couldn't have my coffee, which I'd cling on to desperately while they tried to force me to hand it over. And (b) would be just plain silly. So I chose (c) - drank it very quickly and left the shop. I realise I am now admitting publicly that I owe Asda for one cup of coffee, and if they'd like to bill me for it I promise I will pay up.

The Rural Idyll

2007-06-24T21:36:00.000+01:00

The cats have discovered the joys of the summer moth-hunt, and can be hard to persuade indoors at bedtime. They have also discovered their good fortune in coming to live with a family which keeps its car parked off the road in the back yard - a perfect hidey-hole if you don't want to be caught at bedtime.

When I went the other night to get them in, they were both under there, making friends with a high-pitched squeak of some sort. At least I thought they were making friends. Turned out they were bullying it. After I'd grabbed amenable Aineko and taken her indoors, I had a better look at the more elusive Oscar and found he was messing about with a somewhat disabled shrew, which was too weak to escape. No way was Oscar going to let me catch him. He knows exactly how wide the car is and how far under it I can reach.

On my knees on the cobbles I peered under the car and watched as he picked up the shrew in his mouth, walked a few steps with it danging from his jaws, dropped it again, prodded it a bit, and picked it up again. It squeaked piteously. "It's Nature's Way," I thought, quoting those couthy Sunday Post wildlife articles of long ago. "It's the Law of the Jungle", I told myself, as images of Shere Khan padded through my imagination.

"Leave the poor wee thing alone, Oscar!" I cried, not really expecting him to comply.

Well, if I couldn't grab the cat, perhaps I could grab the shrew. It was too damaged and bemused to run very fast. All I had to do was wait until the next time Oscar dropped it within my reach. An opportunity soon presented itself: I stretched in under the car and soon the soft little animal was in my hand....

Ow! They've got sharp teeth, these wee buggers! Fixed in a death grip to my third finger the rodent hung on fiercely as I stood up, yelling and shaking my hand, trying to make it come loose. I ran across the cobbles to the grass and shook it furiously off, where it lay panting and unable to do more than crawl for safety. "Ungrateful so-and-so! I was trying to rescue you, and this is the thanks you give me!"

So, there I was, standing stupidly in the middle of my garden at midnight shouting at a half-chewed shrew. Inevitably, I was spotted. Within seconds an angry seagull came swooping down off the chimney stack, screeching and screaming at me. Within a few more seconds I was back in the house, ducking for cover.

Oscar, totally laid-back, stayed under the car, looking slightly bewildered at his lost playmate but otherwise quite unperturbed.

Yes, eventually we did get him inside, but by this time I was kitted out in my safety garb with a big hat and a long-handled hoe. The seagull returned to its outpost grinning maliciously, daring me to go out again.

We called in a man

2007-06-24T21:28:00.000+01:00

We called in a man - a pest control man - who said he could easily shoot the seagulls. Just give him a ring if we wanted him. Oh, and by the way, were the neighbours OK about this? We had to explain that one set of neighbours are anything but OK about it. He looked thoughtful. By the time we phoned him back a couple of days later, he admitted that he wasn't at all keen to shoot the birds now. It would be fine if he could get a nice clean shot at them, but one of them ended up wounded and didn't die cleanly, the neighbours might well call in the police or the RSPCA and put in a complaint.

I could see he was worrying about his professional reputation, but I was also concerned about injured birds from a welfare point of view. I didn't like the idea of shooting them in the first place, but reluctantly accepted that it was probably necessary, and only if they could be despatched swiftly and painlessly. Now there seemed to be a chance that they might suffer a lingering death, not to mention the fate of their flightless chicks left to starve. Much as I dislike them, I couldn't subject them to such a fate. It's not their fault they're seagulls, after all. They're just doing what seagulls do.

So we continue to sneak out into our own garden, quiet and sneaky, wearing big hats and waving hoes, sweeping brushes and other implements over our heads, and the gulls continue to swoop, screeching down towards us each time we venture outside.

Whitehaven Maritime Festival 07

2007-06-17T00:10:00.001+01:00

Whitehaven Maritime Festival 07 busking morris bunny
Originally uploaded by allybeag

It happens biennially, so I forget each time how tiring it is. It's all right for the dancers, who only have to carry a pair of clogs and perhaps a bottle of water. They don't have to humph great hulking saxophones about town all day.

You park at the top of the hill at Bransty, and walk down. It takes 6 minutes to get from the car to Tesco's, at the bottom. On the way home it takes 14 minutes to do the same journey back up to the car, what with the steep slope and the sore feet. Oh yes, and it takes over half an hour to get through the heaving mass of fast-food guzzling humanity on the quayside before finding the rest of Belfagan.

There are tall ships and short ships, jetskis and aerial display teams, actors dressed as pirates and people dressed as pirate ships, an old seaplane, buskers and jazz bands and singers and dancers and yachts decked with flags. The chip vans do a roaring trade; the pubs' clientele overflows into the street; stalls sell German sausages, Chinese teddy bears, Cumbrian foods, hippy garb, toys, pirate flags and model boats.

We play and Belfagan dance, up on Sugar Tongue. The crowd is happy and relaxed and enjoys the show. It's OK, but my feet ache and my bags are heavy and it's a long walk back. Each time I say, "never again," so why am I here?

The Enemy

2007-06-15T23:43:00.001+01:00

the_sentinal
Originally uploaded by allybeag

Looks all sweet and innocent, doesn't it? Don't be fooled.

First Blood to the Seagulls. It's war...

2007-06-15T23:06:00.002+01:00

They've been divebombing us for weeks, but today one of them drew blood. Poor innocent S, walking towards the car, was hit from behind by one of our mafia attack seagulls with both feet extended. With blood pouring down his face he returned indoors where his wounds were bathed and bandaged.

The chicks have hatched. They'd got out of the nest and wandered round to the wrong side of the chimneystack, causing havoc amongst their extended family. At least eight adult gulls swooped and screamed over our roof as we made a second attempt to reach the car. Only by dint of wearing strong hats and waving sweeping brushes at them did we manage it.