Another day in the life of a blogger

Yesterday Mr Chris our friendly builder and master of many trades arrived about half an hour before we were due to head off for an Indian meal with friends; he had arrived with a vital part for the central heating.  Luckily although we did not have time to change the vital part we were able to remove the old part (the motorised valve drive) to prove that my assessment of the fault was in fact correct. Then before Mr Chris ran away he left the valve fixed in the central heating only position. This means the central heating is working rather well and not being overridden by the hot water thermostat, so although today has been rather chilly the house is nice and toasty and the office radiator is seriously hot. This is rather novel and has not been the case for months.

My trusty vehicle which has been at the garage for a couple of days has returned a bit dented on one of the front wings and although I don’t mind as the car is old, it is a bit annoying as it drives rather well now. The garages are really good and have said they will investigate and will give the car a look at next week.  I have said many times to many folk, never get too attached to a car as scratches and dents are an everyday hazard and if you get worried then you will go mad each time they gain another small injury of some sort. To tell the truth I never clean or wash the car and it is usually full of rubbish and stuff such as an axe, a crowbar, gloves, bits of wood, several small cheap kites and maybe a plastic rat and various things of the unknown.

Funnily enough in the post this morning arrived one of those Car Digital Vehicle Recording camera systems, so if I end up in a bump I will have recorded evidence of what happened. In the old days folk would be honest and admit things but sadly those days have long since become a thing of the past. Now folk blame the other driver, seagulls, trees, snowmen or Zombies.

My eyes seem to be a bit better now than they were and I am also feeling a little more bouncy again and with luck a decent spell of spring weather might turn up soon too.  Finally I noticed on the Midlands news that the British Quidditch Cup is taking place this weekend, now personally all I can say is a sport designed to be played on a flying broomstick either needs to be left to wizards or they need to lose the broomstick entirely. Just a small personally view point that will not make a blind bit of a difference to anything.   

How easy is it to hide a body in the attic. The Big Questions Answered

As some of you know I am in the process of writing another short alternative Harry Potter Story (which is not going well either, the agony of being a failed writer is agonizing).  Anyway tonight we are having a little break to deal with one of those Big Questions that I think people actually prefer me to write about.  Therefore tonight’s Big Question is. . . . . . . . . . How easy is it to hide a body in the attic. . . . . .  OK I can hear the sound of silence as you all go WHAT and it is true it is not the sort of question most of us ask that often but when you do ask it, it’s a Big Question and you need answers fast. And I do have a reason for dealing with this tonight.

You see after a life of not having to consider this question at all, like the old saying about busses turning up on mass, I have had to deal with two of them tonight so I thought I should deal with the question while the issues are still fresh in my mind. Firstly and this is quite important as I don’t want folk to rush off and phone the police saying quick go to that Rob Z Tobor’s house he has an attic full of bodies….. Even if you see it as a cunning way to stop me writing reams of total rubbish about stuff or bad Harry Potter stories. The fact is I have not been killing folk off (honest) what I have been doing is putting two rolls of the old rubber carpet underlay up in the attic and they are sort of body sized and about the same weight and flop about a bit like a body.

So exactly what are the main problems with this. Well it’s not easy because any attic that you can hide bodies in is also one that is not easy to get into. Ours has one of the attic ladders which is OK unless you are trying to carry a large floppy-ish item up it and through a smallish hatch in the ceiling. Ours also does not have boards over its entire area and it would not do to fall through the ceiling clutching a body as the ambulance chaps might be suspicious when you say Uncle George sort of rolled himself up in a carpet you had handy in the garage.  Here in Britain may attics do not have lights in either (luckily ours does) but stumbling about in the dark with your friend draped over your shoulder while holding a torch balancing on 4 inch rafters is far from easy.

So in hindsight all I can say is you might be better to hide the body under the patio. Only as we all know this is the first thing the police dig up and if they don’t if you ever sell the house the new owners will do it just in case you hid a body under there and they are worried about the rumour of Zombies in the neighbourhood. One further point is if you wish to keep your carpet underlay for future use then do not bury it under the patio is has a habit of rotting and going mouldy. Something that you might consider a bonus if it was a body.   

Why do we never seem to have enough time in the day. . . . The Big Question.

How come we never seem to have enough time to do stuff? Yes I think this is a Big Question for many of us.  OK I may be a bit disorganised at getting stuff done and I guess that can't help one bit, but the fact is even organized folk will often say things like I have all this stuff to do and I just DON'T seem to have the time.  As far as I can tell this is definitely a problem of us decedent imperialist westerners because if you watch things on the TV where some celeb is trekking through the wilds in some exotic country they often seem to pass folk sat at the side of the road looking chilled and saying things like . . . . . .  OOOoooo look its him off the tele the chap with the parrot and the ray gun who travels through time in that ICE CREAM van eating jellied eels. . . . .  They seem to be able to sit for days on end, just sitting and being chilled as they watch the world pass by.

But how come we can’t sit about it must be due to the way we live and think. I have realized for a long time now I think I can do more than I can, and by that I mean I often think stuff like . . .  if I cut this old bicycle up and weld the engine of this knackered mower to this I beam and use the gearbox from a Model T ford to fix a Box Brownie to the Grizolme Bevel thrust plate I can toast bread rolls. . . .  The truth is I don't have the time and by adding such ideas to the other ideas already on the list of stuff that needs to be done it results in overload as the list also contains stuff like remove wallpaper from old office walls, remove old office walls, cut grass, plant grass, feed cats, chase seagulls, wash hair, stick mancky clothes in big pile in dark corner of room.

I know this is normal most people have exactly the same issue I often stop people in the street and ask them if they are busy and they always say Yes I’m off to find a  Grizolme Bevel thrust plate.   OK the men say stuff like that for reasons I may discuss another time, women seldom have any interest in Grizolme Bevel thrust plates   but none the less seem very busy.   They often say they are so busy because their partner is doing something stupid with an old bicycle and the lawn mower and someone has to sort the house out, pay the bills and go to work and cook dinner.

Anyway I have to say this is probably the hardest question to date I have dealt with so I need a break and have a round metal thing I might put pointy bits on so I can hang it from a tree to attract Woodpeckers to scare off the Zombies. All we can do is prioritize stuff so that’s it I'm off to hunt for that round metal thing right now.

Ooooooooo look a Seagull.    

Pianos, up-cycling, Skip Diving, trendy city folk and Kristy Allsop

OK I can't draw piano players or piano's (its a time thing) 

Today was a quietish day except for one thing. You see here in Britain among the trendy city folk it is very popular to go scurrying off hunting down the rubbish of others and leaping into Skips (Skip Diving) finding old battered stuff.  Then with your pile of old battered stuff you do a bit of rubbing down and painting and a quick change of use such as that old bicycle wheel becomes a useful lamp shade.  You can then set up a stall down the market and sell your up-cycled items for loads of money or show them off at a  posh dinner party as your guests struggle to drink champagne from the modified old Chrome hub caps from a 1953 Morris Minor (Chrome Hub Caps, those were the days).

Even television in recent years has taken to this idea with much gusto with all shorts of shows where folk such as Kristy Allsop (who is OK I think) make sheds,  decorate homes and stuff out of old stuff. Although sometimes on the TV I feel they cheat, when someone says we found this old submarine periscope and grandfather clock in a skip, you just know things are going on that we are not being told about. This is the way of television no one wants to watch a chap make a model seagull out of a broken damp and mouldy chipboard shelf from a 25 year old bookcase that is knackered.

Of course us folk who live in the Country have rather mixed views about all this, some think these city folk are Idiots . . . .  I’ve got a whole barn of old rubbish if the want to buy it. And then there are those of us who have spent most of our lives picking up free stuff and using it for one thing or another and we tend to call it scavenging and folk look at us and say . .  He’s as tight as a ducks ****** . . . .   No one sees it as trendy up-cycling.

Which sort of brings us back to today and the arrival of a Piano from Chris and Chris, which was abandoned in a carport for a short while as the house it has been in is being sold. Luckily the piano is in fairly good condition and it’s main issue is it is a bit sun bleached as it has been in a sunny location for many a happy year.  Anyway it is a C. Bechstein piano (and an old one I think) so it’s one of the better makes, and it almost certainly will need the magic hands of our good friend Mr Ian the Musical Hat Maker to come and tune it at some time.  

Now you may be wondering what we plan to up-cycle this into, well our plan it to turn it into a piano and leave it exactly as it is.  I know us country folk are fools . . . . . 

President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, President Putin, The G8 summit (2013), Bovril, Kendal Mint Cake and Grizzly Bears.

Yesterday I happened to suggest that it was no coincidence that President Putin of Russia had turned up only days after my original President Putin picture had been shown in my diary in cyberspace. And many of you have said things like Run for the hills or Hide in the Patagonian Embassy for a few weeks till it is safe or Rob Who? never heard of him, he is no friend of ours. Now I know he has to pop over to Ireland to join fellow world leaders for the G8 summit to discuss important issues, which as it happens the leaders all have different views about. So some sort of botched statement will be put together to make it all sound like it was a useful meeting and worth every penny of the X million pounds it cost.

I think it all goes wrong because they call it a summit when it is plainly held in a posh hotel on the flat with no mountains anywhere near. Lets face it food is always much better on the flat rather than the top of a mountain where it tends to be bully beef, Kendal Mint Cake, and hot Bovril, not the food of world leaders, OK President Putin is the only one who might be up for it, climbing fearless up into the unknown chewing his bully beef and laughing in the face of Grizzly Bears.

OK yes where was I (again), President Putin and my picture, now what I would like to know and it is important; exactly where has he got to today because he seems to have vanished. There is talk in the local village of a huge bullet proof car sitting in a lay-by with a group of suspicious men in wearing dark designer sunglasses and drinking Vodka and feeding Caviar to the ducks in the duck pond.

I did notice in the news while I scanned for news for you know who that President Obama of the USA and Prime Minister Cameron of Britain have announced a multi-billion pound trade deal to sell each other loads of stuff. So America will make loads of stuff and sell it to us and we will make loads of stuff and sell it to them and everyone will be happy. Sorry call me stupid but most countries I thought were in debt and all the folk in the countries feeling the cold mountain winds and the smell of Bovril mixed with the far away singing of a Russian fighting Grizzly bears. . . . . . .  Who has all this money to buy all this stuff that we don’t need. Ooooooooo sorry I have gat all political again that’s not good for a witty block buster movie about an eccentric and sadly I now have no time to tell you what I did today as I need to go and make a cardboard Dragonfly, (part of a trade deal worth absolutely nothing).

The Stuff of Summer

What a lovely day it really was summer here today, a whole day of summer may not seem a great deal to some of you but to us in the UK that is about one day more than we got last year. There is even rumour that tomorrow may be summer too, however Monday which is a bank holiday in the UK (for some) is rumoured to be wet with loads of rain attacking us from the West. I plan to draw Blinkanditsgon the Micro God of British Summer outside while I eat my tea tonight in the setting sun, let’s face it we need to make the most of it while we can. And I need to remind myself of what the sun looks like to draw a suitable image.

I have had a good day of sawing stuff, moving stuff, eating stuff, poking sticks at stuff, throwing stuff at more stuff, shouting stuff, climbing stuff, hiding stuff, loosing stuff, smelling stuff, looking at stuff, kicking stuff, finding the stuff I lost, making stuff with stuff, and I will soon be drawing stuff to add to the stuff I have written about stuff in my diary, which quite frankly is enough stuff for one day.

So I will go now and do more stuff, well draw stuff but as you will only read this after the stuff I am about to do is done I guess in reality there is stuff you don’t need to know. There is loads of stuff I don’t know about stuff which if I did I could tell you about but I don’t so I can’t. . . . . . . . Mum says IDIOT  . . . . . . . She says stuff like that. 

Singing and fighting at the same time is impossible.

The snow lingers still and is going nowhere I really should be out making more things while it is about, but it is getting a crusty surface a result of the sun melting it slightly and then it all refreezing. So making stuff is tricky.

We also had a visit from Miss Tiggy and Mr Chris who came to chat, look at the sun and have a bite to eat, it is after all what us humans do best well that and fighting, but none of us really fancied fighting, we are not really fighting people. Mr Chris is a singer and it is very difficult to sing and fight at the same time; I think this may be to do with the brain as I suspect that the two things use different parts of the brain, and as a chap I can testify that doing two things at the same time is hard enough without trying to use two different parts of the brain at the same time.

This does make you think that maybe in parts of the world that rely on international peacekeeping forces, rather than arm them to the teeth with scary things it would make far more sense to teach them to sing bright and cheery songs and smile loads……

At school Esmeralda has sort of gone a bit erratic; it is not entirely her fault because when you are a part bionic person and rely on steam powered parts in this weather, antifreeze is rather useful to keep the bionic parts working. However no one informed Esmeralda that adding the antifreeze to the bionic parts did not involve drinking it, luckily she is made of strong stuff (The Esmeralda parts of Esmeralda not the bionic parts, although they are too), but it is not like Esmeralda to tell everyone “YOU ARE MY BEST MATE YOU ARE” and smile and enjoy maths.

If you are new to my diary and are wondering why Esmeralda is bionic and has loads of missing parts it is because she was partly eaten by the school goat some time back.

Oooooo yes two other things before I go, apparently the postman said he did not see the snow dog until he was reversing and suddenly noticed a huge dog staring at him in his wing mirror which was a bit of a shock. And secondly the birds are starting to eat more and more food and have been plotting ways of raiding the kitchen, I have heard rumour that one of the robins knows a duck who knows a puffin who knows a rabbit.

.

Putting things in a safe place and drilling holes

I chopped some logs today and drilled a hole in a wall and found some cables for the digital studio in order to help multi-track my drumming, I found the cables while looking for something else in connection with the hole in the wall.  I had put the item I could not find in a safe place last time I found it knowing that I would soon be needing it, but I can not remember where the safe place is now . . . . . .DAMN. This is not the first time I have not been able to find something in a safe place and so I have come to the conclusion that the least safe place to put something is the safe place, unless it is say for example a very large box with a narrow pointing at it saying safe place. And my advice is not to have lots of safe places either but just the one that has space for everything that you might wish to keep safe.

So I am abandoning the search for things in safe places now and hoping that maybe I might find it tomorrow. In fact I think that is it again for the day. These sorts of things tend to happen in the Winter months I run out of steam a bit quicker than I would in the summer. I have just checked what was happening this very day last year and as it happens President Putin was dancing on top of the Ritz hotel in a re-enactment of an old Fred Astaire movie as he started his presidential campaign. I spent the day making an L shape rather than this year, drilling a hole and we had a curry for dinner, and this year we did not. And a year ago tomorrow we had the very first snow of winter….

It just goes to show how useful a daily diary can be….  

.

.

Art, 1956, useful stuff and cows

We headed off to Monty this morning to see the artwork of Mr Edmonds one of the founders of the 56 group which was so called because it was formed in 1956. In recent years it has become more well known and is now recognized as one of the very few Welsh based art movements in its own right. We have always said you should try and buy original art if you can, and so we do. And although you might think gosh loads of money it is not true, well not always, as with most things some will rip you off if they can but not if you have a huge dog and a flame thrower.  Anyway Mr Edmonds was exhibiting in a pop up Gallery so we went to look as he is a good friend and a jolly good artist.

We now have two little painting of Venice to hang on the wall with the other painting that hangs on the wall. The dog says the pictures of Venice will remind us of the British Summer as all the roads are flooded and the best way to shop in the big out of town supermarket is in a gondola. The dog has also added that the betting shop is full of punters (HAH HAHAH HHAHAHH HAHHAH HAH HAH HAHHAHH hahaha hah hah ahah ha).

I spent the afternoon sorting boxes out from when we moved and moving them from one place to another in order to do some work so they can be moved to another place. Some say we should just get rid of the boxes full of stuff but it is useful stuff, it is not our fault that we can never find the right useful bit at the time the useful bit would be useful. We just find the useful stuff that is not useful at the time we need the thing that is useful, so all those other useful things are of no use at that time. I’m sure there must be a theory about the quantity of useful things calculated against the ability to find them when you need them.

Other things have happened today but I will go now and not bore you with other stuff….. Hang on I will bore you with one more thing. I went and had a chat with the cows in the field next to us, they like a bit of a chat people don’t talk to cows much these days. But the cows were away again for a few days then they arrived back just a couple of days ago. Nothing odd about that only we have never seen them leave or arrive yet in the six or seven months we have lived here, so how are they doing that. Maybe Mr Jones is right they are in cahoots with aliens……

I spy with my little eye ME

Or another ME

The Olympic Torch and other stuff

The Olympic torch went through Welshpool today on its journey round the country, so the school all went down to see it, well all the schools did. I thought it is worth seeing in the flesh as I have to make a cardboard one for the Olympic sculpture with poetry flickering out of the top. It was all rather noisy and seemed like a rather large entourage but then there is the backup flame and then there is a back up to the backup and of course the media and the Olympic flames minders. Napoleon Beelzebub is a bit miffed as it happens because he says if they are going to mess with fire then they should ask him. He is of course quite right and there is not much Mr Beelzebub does not know about fire.

Not long after it passed through town if rained for a while so maybe he was just sort of warning then that one false move and he will bring rain to the Olympics for a couple of weeks, rather than fire and brimstone. So the mention of rain makes it clear that here at least is was a little bit cooler today (phew), although only a little bit. I have not been back on the roof again yet because I have had other things to do although the dog says it is because I am a snivelling coward, as I have pointed out if is easy for him to say that (obviously not very easy for other dogs) but he has got four legs and huge claws and climbing equipment.

The farm next door has now cut all the grass for silage, and as far as I can tell bearing in mind I know nothing about farms it is probably a bumper crop because of the weather, OK I am rambling a bit it is because I am doing stuff and time is limited. Apparently even with the ability to travel in time you do not gain more time so going backwards and forwards may seem like a way of gaining some time but mathematically that is incorrect. I will not expand on this right now because it involves constants and I get enough complaints about going on constantly.

I must go and consider Olympic torches now and how to make poetically correct fire HAH HAH HAH AH HAH HAH HAH HAHH hahah ahahahahahhahaha hahahah.

Ooooo Politics I have not said a lot lately but I am taking notes and have a list of politicians all lined up for a future of Hell and damnation sometime just after they have all been drenched in rain…………. So you are being watched, eternity is a long time in hell……

.

The Heatwave and the swimming pool

Well yesterday I said it was hot and it was, but today is very hot in fact I think it is safe to say it has been very *********** hot. As I write this it is fifteen minutes past five in the afternoon and I have just been to look at the outside thermometer (kept in the shade and is trusted to be accurate) it says at present it is 31C or 86F (in old money). Now I know in some parts of the world that is quite normal but not here in the Shropshire hills in May, after all only a week ago we had frost in the evening.  What makes us British grumble is the fact one day it can be near to zero and raining then it will be bright sun and hot and humid the next. It is why we talk about the weather all the time (see look what I have just done)

In order to help we were doing maths and science in the swimming pool at school with the caretaker ordered to make as much ice as possible and keep putting it in the deep end. It is not easy to do maths in the deep end of the swimming pool and anyway the headmaster had moved his office into that end of the pool. It is one advantage of using traditional old fashioned solid wooden desks, they float and will not fall apart after a few hours of being submerged in chlorinated water with passing ice cubes.  On the subject of passing ice cubes I did warm Freddie that carving Titanic into the top of his desk was tempting fate and sure enough he ended up having to share my desk all afternoon.  But it did give the history teacher something to talk about while he trod water near the springboard.

We ended up having to do all our maths the old fashioned way (long hand) because we have discovered that Casio Economy Scientific Calculators do not really like swimming pools much, nor do iphones, I knew they were rubbish. The Steam Powered Electro-Magnetic Speech Communicating Device that dad made me was fine, all that water kept in cool; and in the water it weighed less that its normal eight pounds three ounces. This, the science teacher said was due to the water displacement and the differences in specific density between the distilled water in the Steam Powered Electro-Magnetic Speech Communicating Device and the chlorinated water in the swimming pool.

Luckily by the time we all got home after school everyone’s uniform had dried out so we did not drip on the carpet which I know some parents might have got a bit upset about. But when I complained about the heat at home the dog turned the hosepipe on me. That sounds like it would be nice and cool but water that has spent all day heating up in a black hosepipe can be rather hot, still hot water does take your mind of hot air………

Taking of hot air I must go I have a head to make, I am not going to tell you whose head because you really should know by now.  

.

The bird table and the scarecrow

As part of the great mushroom race I have moved my mushroom kit to a warmer place, I think possibly they have been a bit cooler than required during cold days and nights so they are now in the office. It now means that once they start to grow they will be able to assist me with my diary. One thing that I don’t think all those involved realize yet is that some folk had brown mushrooms and some white, although it should not make a different to growing times.

After a quiet day at school day dreaming and making pigeon sounds at the pigeons, (maybe I shouldn’t write that or mum will go ……………AH. Mum has just shouted IDIOT) I decided it was time to build a bird table. Just in case, and for the benefit of my international readers that’s a table that birds go to eat food on, not a table made with birds. In the UK there are not enough large birds about to make a table with, thinking about it that may not be true we do have turkeys, swans and geese. Our neighbour has got some white geese now who like to shout at Sooty the Cat, who in turn likes to run away from them very fast, so maybe our neighbour is planning to make a table out of birds.

OK right; enough of this distraction what I am saying is that I made a bird table in the dark I think it is OK but as it was made in the dark, I don’t really know yet, and I think I have got a few small things to do before it is finished, but it does have food on it so in the morning it will be a bit of a surprise for the birds. It is loosely based on an old Welsh bird scaring device that fell into disuse back in the twelfth centenary when it was discovered all the birds were landing on it and laughing. Much as they do these days with scarecrows, which seem to scare people more than birds particularly crows who make scarecrows look even scarier when they sit on them. 

The skip of Chaos, Dorian Gray, Trick or Treaters and the Spanish Inquisition

The house is not nice a present it usually resembles The Museum of Stuff (despite the pics where it looked well posh) only it now looks like The skip of Chaos and not all the stuff is even in the house anymore. Mr Beelzebub is looking after the pictures, and the house is a bit strange with bare walls, normally there are a least a hundred pictures on the wall.

Mr Beelzebub is not a great fan of our artwork, he says he likes Hieronymus Bosch paintings, and he has a really nice picture of that Dorian Gray bloke. I am not sure about that one; that Dorian Gray always looks a bit poorly to me.

Heavy Harry the Cat has been trying to sun bath under the desk lamp today but got just a little too close, so was smouldering a bit and smelt horrible, he is a stubborn cat so refused to move until he realized he might be on fire. I think I may rename him Charcoal. He is grumpy at the best of times, but is very grumpy how.

Dad was clearing The Void, the area above our living room where things go and sort of vanish, it is great to have, The Void until someone else buys it and it becomes theirs, then all the stuff in The Void can’t be avoided any longer (HA HAH Hah ahh haahh ahah hahah). There are some cool spiders webs in there, but what really annoyed dad is the mice had sneaked in and eaten a hole in the side of the big plastic tub of mouse poison and eaten it all, the entire lot. Well that is just not right is it, they had left everything else alone but that’s not the point. Mice can be very greedy and dad now knows who left the note on the breakfast table last week saying YUM THANKS ………….. Hang on we feel a bit poorly now, maybe it was the red wine…….. I am sure there is some old saying about never mix grape and Grain so maybe it’s true……….

We are not doing a grand Halloween tale tonight, lets face it Dorian Gray is not looking too good, the house is in a state of shock, so not looking too good, Heavy Harry the Cat’s fur is smoking a bit so he is not looking too good. And the mice are a bit dead so not looking too good either.  Sooty the Cat is off his food too, we think he has just got the transition point where he has been a wild stray and thinks FOOD EAT to becoming a pampered domestic fat and thinks OOO NO I Want FRESH chicken, nicely chopped up with a little gravy, and maybe a few of those nice biscuits, followed by some cream and a sardine.  Actually on investigation it may be that Sooty the Cat could be poorly, so off he goes to the vet in the morning to find out, he is turning into a very expensive cat.

We did have one lot of early trick or treaters who dad said looked like the Spanish Inquisition only they said ……. No we are English.  Mum did mutter something in the background but no one heard what it was.