The Great Battery Scandal

Now here's a thing. Batteries. When that gadget starts failing, we just assume the batteries have nearly run out, and put new ones in. The old ones either get recycled or just chucked in the bin (which we're really not supposed to do). Any idea how much power is left in them? Ever wondered?

I did, so I've just checked. I have an old coffee tin, in which we put all the "dead" batteries until we get round to taking them for recycling. So I got out my trusty multimeter and checked how much power was left in them. Bit of a shocker, really. Most new batteries (AA, AAA or C anyway) start off with 1.5 volts. What would you expect the reading for a "dead" one to be? 0.2v? 0.5v? 1v even? Well, a lot of them were about 1.2v or even 1.36v. Certainly some were down about the 0.4v level, but the vast majority still held over 1 volt. So we're only using 1/3 of the power in a lot of our rather expensive batteries, and chucking out 2/3 of it.

In the pre-digital age I think we used up a lot more of the juice. We let our torches get a bit dim; we put up with radios getting fainter and fainter. But so many of our modern gadgets simply won't work at lower than optimum voltage, so we have no choice.

I suppose one solution is only to use rechargeable batteries, but they don't actually work very well in some gadgets, as a lot of them never charge right up to 1.5v in the first place.

So how much power is being wasted, producing batteries that aren't even half-used? It's equivalent to leaving your lights on all day and night when you only need the light for 8 hours out of 24.

What I want is some sort of gadget whereby you can extract the power from part-used batteries. I don't have enough technical expertise to design such a thing, but it must be possible, surely. What about some sort of box containing an array of battery sockets of varying sizes, which can be filled up with an assortment of batteries of different sizes whose residual power would add up to produce enough power to run something analogue like a radio or a clock? Does such a thing exist?

A new Christmas song

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

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.

HORNIMAN AND SIR

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 Sir,
Off we go together.
Horniman and Sir,
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?

[Edited 121017 to change the word "Todd" to "Sir"]

BREAKING NEWS! 24.12.17

With a great deal of help from Mary, I have acquired an audio recording of the original broadcast. I won't have time to deal with it properly over the next few busy days, but as a little Christmas present for everyone who's commented on this thread over the past seven years, here's the updated version of the verses. The sound is a bit blurry on some of the lines, but we're pretty sure it is as you can see here. Oh, and it's not HORNIMAN - it's HORNYMAN! (I've also added a few simple guitar chords if anyone fancies trying to play it. Afraid my skills don't quite reach to transcribing the piano part accurately - someone else is welcome to try that once we upload the audio.)

Merry Christmas everyone! 

Johannes Würmchen

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!

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

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.