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2009年01月の記事
全31件 (31件中 1-31件目)
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Cat licence
Apparently in Australia you have to pay to keep a cat. Now, I like cats but I do think that this is a good idea. They can be very destructive to native wildlife, not to mention one’s own vegetable garden. All cats kept in Australia are next year going to be subject to a registration fee of something in excess of a hundred dollars. The rate will be more if the animal is not desexed or microchipped. The licence for dogs is around a hundred dollars. I wonder why it is cheaper?I asked Aspi how he knows that yesterday’s picture was of fruit bat poo. His reply was that some people are train spotters, others know about which cars are which, some are interested in rock music history and still more are into clothes and fashion. In his case he is more interested in poo. Well, I suppose that is a fair enough answer!And here is what Aspi did with the old saucepan. A post cap to stop the rain going down the grain and rotting the post.
2009年01月31日
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Bat poo
Aspi tells me that this photo is of some bat poo that landed on the fly screen door sometime during last night. From a fruit bat. That’s quite a large bat, too. Honestly though, Aspi, is this a good subject for a diary entry?And there is more from Aspi, he tells me that he was kind of joking about the ‘snake mesh’ he repaired a few days ago, it was really just a piece of fabric with a coarse weave he put into the ceiling vent to stop any mosquitoes or other insects, which had got into the roof space, getting into the house through the venting system.There was a problem with the pictures on my diary yesterday. Couldn’t see them at all. I don’t use Rakuten pictures as the space that they offer is very limited, so ages ago I bought some webspace for this diary and other things. They must have been having trouble with something yesterday, so no pictures. I could upload things, but after that I couldn’t access them. Very strange. Anyway, it’s all better now.
2009年01月30日
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A five minute job
The other day Junko asked me to change a lampshade on a light in the middle of one of our bedrooms. No problem I thought. An hour later I was still struggling with it! I was surprised that I had problems because I had replaced this fitting not so very long ago (but thinking about it, it probably was fifteen years ago!). Anyway, what had happened is that the heat generated by the bulb had made the plastic hard and brittle on the fitting. Firstly I couldn’t get the retaining ring off to remove the old shade. I finally got that clear but then found that the rest of the fitting was also on the verge of disintegrating. I turned the power off and removed it, only to have to trim the wires back and fit them properly to the new fitting. In the process of this I discovered that the cable wasn’t properly secured, so that was another little thing to attend to. Luckily I had a brand new fitting down in the cellar (in anticipation of this very event) and so didn’t have to traipse all the way to B&Q to get a replacement. However, replaced the fitting I then found that the new lampshade which Junko was keen to hang had the wrong sized hole in it, where attached to fitting. This is not something I have come across before, but it involved quite a bit of modification to get it to fit and hang straight. All the while I was getting more and more frustrated, and finding that I had a bigger and bigger collection of tools surrounding me, each new one that was required necessitating a trip from the top of the house right down to the cellar and back, that’s four flights of stairs down and four back up again! So that is how a five minute job (or really a two minute job in this case) can easily become something that spans a whole morning. Touch anything like this and you open an absolute can of worms. Often, perhaps even usually, it is worse than what I have just experienced! Taps are another booby trapped item! In fact almost anything to do with plumbing has a touch of the horrors about it.This is the kind of thing I am talking about. There are usually three parts, a top piece is missing here. Usually the white piece screws onto the brown bit, but over time the threads seem to get stuck together. If you can get the white piece off then you almost certainly can’t get it back on. The same for the white piece that goes on the top. And often the metal bits which hold the bayonet on the bulb in, they get bent. And also the pins which are spring loaded and provide the current to the bulb, they get jammed, the springs don’t spring any more. And it’s all because of the heat that is generated by the light bulb itself. Another plus for the energy saving bulbs, they don’t get hot and ruin the fittings.
2009年01月29日
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Aspi’s saucepan quiz
Aspi sent me this photo and asked me to try and guess what he was going to do with this old aluminium saucepan. I don’t know Aspi, it looks as if you used it for something to do with painting, but what you are going to do with it now escapes me. Throw it away? Take it to the scrap metal recycler’s? Well, it’s just over a month since Christmas. It seems more like three or four months really. The winter just goes so slowly. All those grey skies, rain, sleet, snow, frost and general misery. Oh to be somewhere where the temperature is just below thirty degrees, the sky is blue and dotted with white clouds, there is a gentle breeze and the sea is perfect for paddling. This is why so many holidays are sold at this time of the year.‘As clean as a whistle’ means ‘very clean’. I wonder why?
2009年01月28日
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A day in the life
Aspi doesn’t write a diary, but he does write down everything he does in the renovation he is currently involved with in Australia. This is what he did the other day. Sanded down the plaster patching in kitchen two that I had done yesterday. Washed the walls and ceiling. I realised how dirty the whole place had been before I started, it was filthy. Filled in all the little holes and cleaned off the blutak, again I realised how many holes there had been in the unit as a whole before I started, and how much blutak.Filled all the holes.Painted the ceiling. One coat of ceiling white. Stainblocked a stain.Cleaned the ceiling vent in kitchen two and replaced the snake mesh.Replaced the outside lampshade in unit two.Cleaned the glass in the kitchen window, it was very grimy. Cleaned the muck out of the little wheels, oiled them and sanded the runner down. It now runs pretty smoothly, though the fibre seals need replacing.Did the ceiling again with ceiling white. Cleaned the shower tray in bathroom two. Finally remembered to do the sanding on the repair to the window frame in bathroom two. Had to fill it a bit more.Glossed one side of the new door for bathroom two. Looks good (this is the door that I cut down to the right size a few days ago).Glossed the window in kitchen two.Did a fair bit of touching up of gloss white in unit one, bits that had been missed, scratched etc.Glossed the remaining half of the back window, fly screen frame and door frame in unit one.Took a load to the dumpRepaired a sandal with liquid nails. Aspi, I am intrigued by the ‘snake mesh’. What’s that?I would be lost without this memory card adaptor. I use it from both my phone and my camera to drop things into the computer. If I remember rightly I bought it on eBay.
2009年01月27日
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Bicycle
Perhaps you remember a few weeks ago, around 8th January, that I wrote about what I would buy if I won the lottery. I know that I wanted a hat and a few other things, now I have thought of something else that I would buy. A bicycle with an aluminium frame, adjustable handlebars, a comfortable saddle and panniers. Gosh, aren’t I just a real spendthrift! Aspi read yesterday’s diary and tells me that you can no longer buy incandescent bulbs in Australia. It’s going to be so in Britain too, fairly shortly, I believe. They won’t be on sale any more by 2016.I did some plastering the other day, this is my plastering trowel.Actually, I didn’t buy this trowel, some of our neighbours moved house a few months ago and they threw this into the skip outside their house. They had the skip for their rubbish, which was a very good idea, and lucky for me! I took it out, and some other tools (I asked them, first, of course). It’s a very good trowel, it would have been quite expensive when it was new, and I don’t think they had ever used it. So that was good.
2009年01月26日
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Light bulbs
Incandescent or energy saving fluorescent? When it comes to light bulbs, this seems to be a big question these days. We have a mixture. As the old incandescent ones burn out we replace them with their fluorescent equivalent, and I must say that, on the whole, the energy saving ones are better. They use a quarter of the electricity, do not generate heat and last much longer, maybe even ten times as long. On the downside they look a little ugly (though it’s just a question of their being different I think), give a harsher light, aren’t as bright as they are supposed to be and are perhaps a problem environmentally to dispose of. But all the time they are improving, and becoming cheaper too.I’m happy to use them any day and definitely prefer them, though we do have some light fittings, such as our small candelabra things, which they won’t look good in.I suspect that the energy saving bulbs produce less positive ions, too (remember, when we are talking about ions, positive is bad!).Incredibly, incandescent bulbs waste 95% of their energy; it is turned into heat rather than light.
2009年01月25日
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A plasterboard thing
Aspi sent me this photo and this explanation about what a ‘plasterboard thing’ is. It’s very clever, and simple, which makes it even cleverer! Apparently, you drill a small hole into your plasterboard wall, then screw the ‘thing’ into it. Then you can screw something else, such as a cupboard, shelves etc into the ‘thing’. As Aspi says, easy. Without one of these ‘things’, it is often difficult to fix things like shelves and cupboards to plasterboard walls. If your wall is a plasterboard panelled wall and therefore hollow, you can’t just screw something into it, the plasterboard is too soft and crumbly and is only 13 mm thick anyway. There is nothing behind the plasterboard for the screw to grip on because the wall is hollow. Ordinary wall fixing plugs are no good at all (they are fine for wooden walls, or brick ones but totally useless when it comes to plasterboard!). So this is the answer.Hot buttered toast. Now there’s a thing for those cold winter evenings. Nice thick bread, with just enough butter. Not too much. Mouthwatering. Japanese bread is especially good, it’s much thicker and softer than the bread we have in England. I could eat a whole loaf, that’s the problem!Problems with the boiler again, oh dear.
2009年01月24日
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Yet another mystery photo, but something from Aspi too
Well, this is another one that Aspi sent me. Again no mention of what it is. Rather a strange looking thing, isn't it?This is an extract from Aspi’s diary. He writes down everything he does, it seems. I have had a week of doing lots of other things, which have kept me occupied the whole time. Visas, health insurance, friends and family obligations. So I have done nothing on the renovations for six or seven days.But this morning I started again. I still have a lot to do, not only decorating but other things too.Tidied all the boxes and bits (screws, bolts, nails, fixings, tools etc) out in the garage. Pitched all the useless bits and sorted the tools out. Took me two hours.Cleaned the bits of glue off the tiles in unit one. For some reason there were lots of bits stuck on. Some left by the tiler (you can’t see them until they dry and get dirty) and some left by the electrician, and probably some made by me. Swept and mopped the floor. This took a long time, you mustn’t underestimate how long jobs like this take.Cleaned the gutters out.Cut back the bush by the bedroom window. Put it all in the bin, filled the bin. Took well over an hour to do this.Fixed the skirting in veranda two. Not easy. Filled the gaps. Large gaps.Filled the gaps in the panels in veranda two.Fitted the door stop and retaining hook and eye to the veranda door in number two. Should have been easy, but as usual, it wasn’t.Put the door stops back on four doors. Easy because I had the things that go into plasterboard. I cleaned the stops first.Painted the floor in verandas one and two, for the last time I hope. This sounds an easy job, but when you add the preparation (cleaning everything ready, and finding the tray, roller, brushes, paint, cleaner etc) and then add in the clearing up afterwards (washing the roller, tray, brushes, rags and the washing up bucket, and of course yourself!) it takes on a proportion far greater than it would initially seem to have. So, this ‘simple’ job took over three hours.Sounds like pretty hard work to me, Aspi. But we still don’t know what these photos are! And what are the ‘things that go into plasterboard’?
2009年01月23日
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More about negative ions
I have been doing some more reading about negative ions and their beneficial effects. And now I think I think I have got it all under control.There are four main areas where negative ions are beneficial to our bodies. 1. They make us feel better.2. They increase our resistance to disease and help us heal more quickly.3. They freshen and purify the air.4. They affect the levels of ‘serotonin’ in your brain1. They make us feel better because the negative ions help speed the passage of exygen to our cells and tissues. The more negative ions, the faster burned up oxygen is replaced, giving us more energy. So, if we breathe in air from close to water and thus with a lot of negative ions in it, we get more oxygen to our bodies and therefore feel livelier and generally better. It’s quite simple! 2. Negative ions stimulate the reticuloendothelial system; a group of defense cells in our bodies which makes us more resistant to disease (I don’t say I understand this, but at least I can see what they are talking about). This application is very useful in hospitals, and in fact I believe that hospitals in Britain are all equipped with equipment to negatively charge the air.3. There are lots of dirty bits and pieces in the air, pollen, dander (dead skin from animals), mould spores, dust, etc which are floating around in the air all around us. These particles are charged either neutrally or positively. As opposites attract, the negative ions are attracted to these particles and cause them to all stick together. As they become bigger they become heavier and drift to the ground where they can be cleaned up (in the case of your living room), and therefore removed. This is especially important for people with allergies of one sort or another.4. Negative ions affect the levels of ‘serotonin’ in your brain. I don’t know whether negative ions increase or decrease the levels of serotonin, but they change the level one way or another. The significance of this change in the serotonin level is that it is often an effective treatment for depression, particularly SAD (seasonally affective disorder), which comes about in northern latitudes and is prompted by the lack of daylight and fresh air.I am most interested in the first and four beneficial effects. I hope all this is true, it is only what I have read.This is an interesting photo, showing the passage of history. I took it along the Greenway. You have the wooden post that was put there in the 1870’s when the railway was built. Then the steel rail which replaced the wooden post, it’s part of real train rail, I think. Then the age of the concrete post, which was probably the 1940’s. The round steel post is something from the 1960’s or later, I guess. And then there is the telegraph pole. You could almost tell the history of Britain from these gate posts! The rise and fall of a society.
2009年01月22日
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Another mystery photo
Aspi has sent me another mystery picture. This one is called ‘insect house’, so perhaps that is what it is.Come on Aspi, send me a message not just these mystery photos. Interesting as the photos are, it would be nice to hear from you as well!Junko caught the bus to Bidford the other day. Bidford is only five miles away from Stratford, but a return ticket cost her more than five pounds. She was disgusted, and I am not happy about it either, it seems awfully expensive. At least she had a nice day out.I notice that the broccoli in the garden are doing well, even though they have been frozen solid on a number of occasions. They will probably do better for having been so.
2009年01月21日
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Beetle
Aspi sent me this photo. No message, just this photo. Strange. It seems as though it is an elephant beetle because that is what the photo is named. It’s certainly big enough! What a monster, I wonder where he saw that? I hope it wasn’t in the kitchen! Clearly it isn’t dangerous or anything, or else he wouldn’t be holding it.Fluorescent lights are another one of my pet dislikes. And, surprise, surprise, they also give off positive ions. Many people say that this kind of light is also responsible for triggering attention deficit disorders. Junko had a nice day with her friends yesterday. Just a spot of lunch and then a look at a new boat that Atsuko and Andy are building. Well, they had the hull built, they are fitting it out with beds, kitchen, living room and engine etc themselves. Should be nice. It’s strange how a system of transport which was used two hundred years ago to move materials such as coal, iron and various simple manufactured goods, is now used exclusively by pleasure boats.By the way, the original boats were pretty much the same size and shape as the one you can see in yesterday’s photo, but they were only a hull, with a very small tent kind of thing at the back for sleeping in. The superstructure is something that has come with these boats being used as pleasure craft.
2009年01月20日
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Narrowboat
Junko has taken a bus ride to Bidford to see some of our friends there. Astuko and Andy have got a narrowboat, and they live on it most of the time. These narrowboats were the main form of transportation in the early Industrial Revolution, when Britain was crisscrossed with an enormous network or canals. The boats have to be narrow to get through the locks on the canals, and the locks have to be built small to save water and costs. Why are locks necessary? Because canals have to be level otherwise the water drains away! And a flight of locks allows the canal to go uphill. Originally the families who worked on the boats lived on them, too, and had a horse which pulled the boat. There was a path alongside all rivers and canals which the horse used to walk along, called a towpath. These days, narrowboats such as the one that our friends have, are powered by a diesel engine and are used solely for leisure purposes.Here is the boat.And thinking about ions, as in yesterday’s post. It is strange that ‘negative’ ions are the ones that are good for you, it’s usually positive things that are good.
2009年01月19日
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Negative ions
I was just flicking through a magazine the other day when I came across an article on ‘negative ions’. I had heard of them before but never really knew what they were or how they affected you, but while reading this article it seemed to me that everything that was mentioned applied to me and how I feel.Positive ions in the air make you feel bad, and negative ones make you feel good.Positive ions are caused by air conditioning, overheated rooms, smoking, general stuffiness and lack of ventilation, flourescent lights, televisions (I think) and wifi. Further items which generate positive ions are synthetic materials used in furnishings (carpets, cushions, curtains, sofa coverings and fillings), bed linen (mattresses, pillows, duvets, sheets etc) and clothes.I dislike all of the above (except wifi)! And Junko and I always try to use natural materials. I like cotton clothes. We have a feather duvet and feather pillows and a cotton flock mattress. Silk pyjamas are pretty nice too! (aside from the negative ions of natural materials, they also appear to keep you warmer in winter and cooler in summer)I always feel better when I am close to water, particularly the sea, and when there is a gentle breeze blowing through the house. Fresh air contains negative ions, and particularly so when it is air close to the sea, a waterfall or river. Of course it goes without saying that being outdoors in clean air enables you to collect a lot more negative ions and therefore feel happier.The article recommends always turning off electrical items at the socket, drying your hair without using a hair dryer and also drying your washing outside whenever possible rather than using a tumble dryer. Junko and I do all of the above things by choice.I love walking along the beach. Junko must have plants growing in the house. Both of these activities are also highly recommended.It’s quite amazing how Junko and I automatically do almost everything that is recommended in this particular article. I’m still too fat, though!Aspi sent me this photo of a stick insect he saw on the back door. He apologises for it being a bit out of focus but he says his camera isn’t good enough to focus on something as close as this, the auto focus always chooses something else! (My camera has an option to switch off the autofocus, Aspi) Anyway, we can see it well enough. Thanks.
2009年01月18日
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Another strange noise
While riding along the Greenway in the summer, we saw lots of sheep happily munching away at the lovely green grass in the fields beside the old railway track. They are often kept in quite scruffy pastures with barbed wire fences all mixed up with the hedges (where we pick the blackberries), and on the barbs of the wire fences there are usually balls of wool, grey and oily, which the sheep have left there, possibly while scratching an itch. But I digress. Well, I was talking about sheep. Amongst the sheep, as I am sure you know, there are often crows, quite why they are associated so I don’t know. Now, crows make a ‘cawing’ kind of sound (in English anyway, doubtless it is different in Japanese!), and sheep ‘baa’. The odd sound that I have heard a great deal over the past weeks is a crow which instead of cawing, makes a sound just like a sheep. Odd. But perhaps not so odd. These intelligent birds are probably excellent mimics, and this particular one may have grown up amongst a flock of sheep. Like the singing dog, this crow also causes me to chuckle and forget where I am when I hear its call from high on a telegraph pole near the house.It has again been very windy.Sheep on the Greenway.
2009年01月17日
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Fitting a roller blind
I am sure you won’t believe this, it is nonetheless true. I have just spent upwards of three hours fitting a roller blind. I hate roller blinds but for this particular window it seems the only option available. I’d like to put a Roman blind there, as I have on the other windows but the this is such a shallow window that the only Roman blind sizes available ‘off the shelf’ would fill half the window space when pulled up. And they aren’t cheap, even the ready made ones and a custom made one would doubtless be a fortune. The window is only 120 cm by 60 cm and so to have half of that full of open blind rather defeats the object of having one at all, and as the ready made blinds are 210cm long around 75% of it would be totally useless. So I decided that the best, if not the most aesthetically pleasing option, was a roller.The closest size I could find was 123cm. ‘Width easily adjustable’ it said on the packet. I asked the assistant how this adjustment was made and he said with a saw and a pair of scissors. Not so easy as all that then. Rather dubiously I bought the said blind. I read the kind of Pidgin English instructions and then measured the fabric width, which was Step 1. Then I cut the fabric (actually it is plastic). Step 2 was to trim the pole to length. And here is where I was unlucky. In step one it never said which side to trim, and I found when I started on step two that I had trimmed the wrong side as only one end of the pole could be removed. Typical. I had to remove the fabric from the pole and then stick it back on after I had trimmed the pole to length. Luckily I had some contact adhesive in the drawer so didn’t have to go out and get some. Well, that didn’t like the plastic, it just melted it. So I had to trim the end of the fabric and try another kind of glue. All the while I had to be careful to get the whole thing square again otherwise it would neither hang nor roll straight. I managed this with the second kind of glue, but it took a while to go off. While this was going on I mounted the brackets, of course I did the left one on the right side first and vica versa as you would expect, but at least it gave the glue time to set. Having done all this, however, the blind did fit in the end when I offered it up, and perhaps even more surprisingly it actually rolls, though for how long is anyone’s guess!Here it is, not particularly pretty, but not too bad, and, aside from curtains I think you will agree it was probably my only option.It has been very windy all day.
2009年01月16日
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The sound of sirens
Our house is on quite a big road which is at times rather busy, though the traffic doesn’t really bother us and actually it’s nice to see the world pass by. Amongst other things which pass by are police cars, ambulances and fire engines. We probably get a fire engine a day as we live really not that far away from the fire station. Anyway, all of these vehicles sound their sirens as they pass because there is a light controlled pedestrian crossing, a roundabout and a busy road junction all within a hundred or so metres of each other. Now, there is a large black dog which lives a few doors down from us, and this dog, for some reason, has recently taken to imitating these sirens! Most of the time he/she barks normally but when the emergency vehicles approach an extraordinary sound emanates from the kennel. I suppose it sounds vaguely like the siren (it’s certainly not a bark), and I am sure it is the dog’s effort at imitation because once the siren stops or fades away as the distance from the kennel increases, the dog also stops making this strange noise. Until the next time that some emergency vehicle passes. It’s odd, isn’t it, though I am sure not particularly unusual. It always makes me laugh.It’s a bit warmer these days in Stratford and it’s raining, too. That makes a change from the cold weather that has been the norm for the past few weeks.This is an old railway carriage, which has been turned into a café, along the Greenway. We’ve never been in it, but it’s a good idea. Mostly for cyclists and walkers who have been much further than we have!
2009年01月15日
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A heap of scrap
Remember I said that Aspi had dismantled a cooker and taken it to the dump? Well, this is where he threw it. An impressive pile of scrap metal, isn’t it? I can’t see the cooker there, though.Three further painting observationsq) To paint with gloss paint is a real skillr) Doors look easy because they are big and flat, but in fact their being ‘big and flat’ is exactly what makes them difficult. Doing a door nicely takes hours.s) You must sandpaper before glossing.Today I saw a man in a 4x4 vehicle in the middle of a traffic light intersection. The lights were red for him. So to avoid the oncoming traffic he was reversing to where he should have been. That was fine (not really, though), but he was not looking behind him at all, and all the time he was doing this dangerous manoeuvre he was talking on the telephone which he was holding in one hand, while holding a sandwich in the other! Amazing, I am sure all around him were as flabbergasted as I was.
2009年01月14日
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A lucky ‘call for help’
A kind of gurgling bell sound woke me up at around two thirty last night. I had no idea what it was. I heard it once. And then, five minutes later I heard it again. Where was it coming from? By the time I had heard it three times I had decided that it was coming from the computer. So I turned it on and then switched it off again. But as soon as I had done that I heard it again. The problem was that this rather strange sound lasted only half a second so I was unable to isolate its source. By the time I had heard the noise four or five times I was completely awake. Being completely awake, for some unknown reason I decided to get something from the garage, and this is where the ‘luck’ comes into the story. When I went into the garage I discovered that the interior light in the car was on. The doors were locked but the light was shining brightly. How was that? I must have inadvertently knocked the switch while I was loading something yesterday, though I can’t imagine how. Anyway I went back inside and got the keys and switched it off. Had that light been left on all night I suspect that I wouldn’t have had enough power in the battery to start the car the following morning. Lucky. I then went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep again wondering if the car would start in the morning, so I had to get up again! I tried it and all was OK. While I was up the noise came again and I noticed a glow in my everyday bag. That was it!!!! My phone was calling for assistance because its battery was nearly flat! Thank you phone for saving me some trouble with the car.Aspi has bought a new cooker and had it installed, in fact he has bought two, so he says. He had one to throw away but it was too big and heavy to get into the car so he took it to pieces as much as he could. He sent this picture of what it was like in bits.
2009年01月13日
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Decorating observations
You know that Aspi is doing some decorating in Australia. Spare a thought for him as it is a really thankless task. Here are a few observations about decorating that I have discovered while doing various jobs around our house in Stratford.a) most people completely underestimate how long the job will take.b) almost everybody underestimates how much the paint will costc) preparation time (cleaning, sanding, repairing, patching plaster, cutting out old paint round doorframes, gap filling etc) takes much longer than the actual painting itself doesd) painting a big wall is easye) painting edges and corners takes more time than painting the wallf) a small room takes just as long to paint as a large room, if not longerg) using masking tape is not an answer to anythingh) windows, particularly ones with panes in them, are a nightmarei) cheap paint wastes you time and moneyk) cheap brushes similarlyl) clearing up and washing the brushes takes a long time and you can never do it properlym) you always have to touch up and clean bits of paint off and this takes quite some timen) you nearly always need two coats when you thought one would be OKo) a few hours with a sharp blade and a small brush just finishing off makes the job look much betterp) people never believe you when you tell them how long it all tookNo wonder people don’t like decorating!We don’t use these coins any more.The one on the left is a fifty pence piece. We still use fifty pence as a unit in our coinage, but we have a new and much smaller coin, actually, we have used a different coin from this one for about twenty years. And the little coin on the right is a 'half pence piece'. We haven't used this for a similar length of time. When we changed to decimal currency in the early 1970's we had to use this coin because it was roughly the equivalent to one old penny and it made the conversion from 'imperial' to 'decimal' currency much easier, so they said.
2009年01月12日
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Found
We bought a new DVD player a while ago. I unpacked it carefully and set it up without a problem at all. I disposed of the packaging and we enjoyed watching a few videos, playing a game and listening to some music, both MP3 and just plain CD’s. This situation went on for several months and then I noticed a few strange buttons on the remote control. I pressed them and nothing happened. What were they for, I wondered? Time to get the instruction manual out. I knew that it was in an unopened A4 polythene bag, but where was that? I searched, and then searched again in all the usual places, but nothing turned up. Over the next few days I kept it in mind while sorting though things in the general routine of things, but no luck. It was a bit of a mystery. Three weeks after beginning the initial search, while I was looking for something completely different, I spotted it lurking in a pile of Junko’s magazines. Lucky it hadn’t been thrown away because they were destined for the dump. And why hadn’t I found it before? I was looking for the wrong sized polythene bag. This bag is much smaller than I had believed; it was only B4, (I think this is the size). How many times has this happened to you? You think you are looking for a small blue thing only to find that it is yellow! Anway, all is solved except that I still don’t know what the buttons do!I was going to watch a TV programme about ‘The Battle of the Somme’, a First World War battle, but as it was about to start I thought better of it. The Somme was a terrible battle, hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in dreadful conditions in a very short time; I think something like 50,000 were killed in one afternoon. Check on Wikipedia. Learning about the First World War invariably brings me to tears.How about this garden chair? Junko is going to clean it up ready for next summer, if it ever arrives (the summer that is, not the chair).
2009年01月11日
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Painting and bats
Aspi says that he has spent over a thousand Australian dollars on paint alone in the renovation he is working on. Crikey Aspi, what are you painting, an aircraft carrier? Seriously though, paint is very expensive. However, nicely finished decoration makes a very big difference to whatever you are doing. And there is one golden rule when it comes to paint, don’t buy the cheapest, go for the best or close to it, because even though Aspi has spent a lot of money on paint, the amount of time he has spent on decorating would probably be worth ten times this amount, and he would have spent even longer on the job had he used cheaper paint. Cheap paint is thinner (thus often necessitating two coats where one of a better quality product will suffice), more difficult to use and the results are both less satisfactory and shorter lived, at least in my experience.I still can’t remember what it was that I was going to write in yesterday’s diary. Oh well, it may return to my fading brain, but I somehow doubt it.I saw a bat the other day. When I see a bat it always reminds me of the time when Junko saw a large green grasshopper or locust and came running inside screaming that there was a ‘bat’ eating the vegetables in her garden! This was some time ago, I think she knows what a bat is now!We’ve got this tea strainer. It’s rather clever, you kind of push the handle and the place where you put the tea opens up. Junko bought it at a bootsale, I think it was twenty pence.
2009年01月10日
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Oh dear
I did have something really interesting that I was going to write today, but it has completely gone from my mind. What a pity! I wonder what it was?Aspi writes and tells me that he is getting along OK with the renovations. And another interesting thing he told me was that they are very short of water in South East Queensland where he is. Everyone is encouraged to be very careful with what they use and many things are prohibited, like watering the garden and washing your car. Only one shower per day is recommended and that is to be no longer than four minutes. To get around these water restrictions many people now have tanks in their back yards, they save the rain which falls on the roof and use it for washing the car and watering the garden. Many people are now beginning to use it for flushing the toilet and washing their clothes in the washing machine. And people have begun to use grey water to water their gardens.This is an example of a Queensland domestic water tank.Well, that’s interesting but definitely not as interesting as what I had planned to write, I really do wonder what it was! I will probably never remember now.Near where Bill lives has been in the news a lot lately, well, twice. Firstly, a week or so ago, there were a lot of UFO’s sighted close by and yesterday, sadly, a young man was killed in an armed raid at a post office.
2009年01月09日
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What would you buy?
We were talking the other night about winning the lottery. Wouldn’t it be nice? But what would you actually buy if you did win it? Of course I would make sure that I had nice house and would save a good deal of the cash, but I am talking about things which don’t cost a great deal of money.I’d like another hat like this one. And some Hames tube socks. If I were in a warm climate I’d like some of those photovoltaic cells that you put on the roof to generate your own electricity. And a solar water heating panel. I think I’d get a nice SLR digital camera and a comfortable and good set of headphones. I’d like one of those mouses with the big ball that your thumb moves (I used to have one but it used up the batteries very quickly so I ditched it). I’d like a bike with an aluminium frame, comfortable saddle and adjustable handlebars, with a saddle bag. I’d like a 4GB memory card for my phone. I’d like a nice new copy of Windows 2000 with service pack four and all the updates. Most of all, I’d like to be totally independent, to not have to buy water, gas and electricity. Wouldn’t that be nice. To be master of one’s own life.But I will just have to make do with a hat!
2009年01月08日
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Aspi and the tiles
Aspi tells me that he is making good progress on the renovation. The tiler has been there for the past few days and has now finished. That is progress indeed, it seems, though I don’t really know how much more there is for Aspi to do, quite a lot, I suspect. It would be nice to see a photo of what has been done, but he doesn’t seem to be interested in sending those!It’s still very cold, but this has to be expected in winter.Peter Gabriel is a fabulous maker of music. I have just been listening to his live album ‘Secret World’ from about 1994. Fantastic. Definitely one of my favourites. I only discovered it six months ago, even though I have always liked this particular artist. It always pays to revisit things.A quality piece of design and manufacture from Robert Welch. I may have shown you this before, but you can revisit it! This is an old one of something that is still made. The quality of the current version is nothing like as good as this one. The casting is rough these days, and the enamel is thin and bubbly. But this one has been well finished and the enamel is smooth and tactile. Isn’t it a pity when quality deteriorates on nice products. Nearly everything suffers in this way, but perhaps not quite as dramatically as it has with some Robert Welch items.
2009年01月07日
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Snow
Well it is snowing in Stratford, and it is pretty cold. This is the coldest winter we have had for a long time. I guess that most of Junko’s geraniums which are in the greenhouse will have perished, but that can’t be helped. A hard winter is sometimes good because it kills a lot of harmful insects and diseases.But it’s not nice having cold feet!It seems a very long time ago that Junko and I were cycling along the Greenway enjoying the summer sun and sights, oh it would be nice to do that again now. What a different sight we would see!On these cold days you need to have lots of warming food, and this cabbage and bacon soup is just the kind of thing you need. That and a bit of exercise!
2009年01月06日
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Aspi's blood
I had a message from Aspi today. He seems fine, but sounds tired. He’s had an interesting experience while discussing a blood donation. Here’s what he wrote about that.Hi there Pete,Hope you are well and surviving the freezing weather in the UK. It sounds cold, and they say it is the coldest it has been for years. Is this true? Here the weather is pretty good, not too hot and with a bit of rain from time to time. The renovations are going fine, and I now have a few days off because I can’t do anything much as the tiler is at work on the second unit. I had a funny experience at the blood donor truck which was parked in the shopping centre close by the house. For some time I have been thinking about giving blood. Some years ago I did get as far as going into a blood donation place, but when my blood was tested they said they didn’t want it. I never knew why, so I thought I’d ask again today. I saw a nurse. She asked me if I knew my blood group, I do, and it’s B negative. She seemed pleased about that but then said that they couldn’t take my blood because I had been in Britain for more than six months between 1986 and 1996. They are worried that my blood might be infected by ‘mad cow disease’. haha. So I still have a body full of the red stuff. Oh well, if they are not keen to take I am not keen to give. Oh dear, poor Aspi, nobody wants him or his charitable deed!These are two of Junko’s jampots which are universally admired. They are rather unusual. I think she bought them at the recycle shop up at the dump. We’ve had ever so many people wanting to get the same for themselves. It’s a pity we don’t know which shop they came from originally.
2009年01月05日
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Red sky at night
There is a an old saying, my father used to say it to me. “Red sky at night shepherds’ delight, red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning”. It refers to the weather, I think. But I have never really understood it. Yesterday there was a red sky in the morning and one at night, a beautiful sunset in fact, which sadly I missed because I didn’t have my camera with me, but the weather was fine all day. I have never know it be bad weather when the sky is red in the morning, in fact. Perhaps I have completely misunderstood the meaning of this little saying.I have found the second Dare Iced Coffee video, and so here it is.How about we go for a Dare Iced Coffee, part IIhttp://www.youtube.com/v/HFPDq6-42fA&hl=en&fs=1Junko has been using Yahoo messenger, but she is still a bit unsure what to do.Stephan has caught another mouse, that makes twenty one.I had a dream about, of all thing, horse muck!I’m sorry I missed the sunset last night because I could have posted a photo of if, so you will have to make do with another summery scene.There is a public footpath which runs across fields and the old railway. This is how you get over the hedge. It’s called a stile.
2009年01月04日
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How about we go for a ‘Dare Iced Coffee’?
This is the punchline from a couple of very amusing adverts on TV. Now, I don’t watch TV a great deal, but I find myself almost waiting for these adverts to come on, and laughing each time I see one. I can almost remember the lines that the two people involved speak. One advert involves a young lady and her boyfriend. The scene is set when she says to him something as simple as ‘Hey, babe, can we grab a coffee?’His face goes blank as he imagines half a dozen or more awful things that she is going to say to him. I won’t repeat the small scenes here, just take it from me that they are very amusing. He snaps out his trance when she calls his name and he responds with ‘How about we go for a Dare Iced Coffee’. The idea of the whole thing being that coffee shops are where people break bad news, so he reckons he will avoid the dreadful ‘moment’ by getting a can of coffee (or maybe it’s a bottle).The coffee, without the moment.I have just found a link to the ad on Youtube. Hope you enjoy it.http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=80F19AKfapc&feature=channel_pageI heard from Aspi yesterday. He’s getting on all right. The photo of the trees that I posted a few days ago is what he can see from his bedroom window, and the one I posted the day before that was of his demolition act upon a laundry sink. He didn’t injure his toes, you will be pleased to note.Pam gave us this rubber tree in the summer, it’s going along all right.
2009年01月03日
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What colour are carrots, really?
Well, we all think of carrots as being orange. But they were not always so. Apparently in the 17th century some Dutch agricultural scientists modified them to match the colour of their national flag! And what colour were they originally? Purple! I read this on the BBC news website today.I have it in mind that tomatoes were originally black and yellow, and certainly not the smooth round red things we know today. I am sure that they used to have tougher skins and were almost certainly much tastier. I am pretty sure that they have only been in their present form for a little over a hundred years.There has been some trouble with our doorbell. It doesn’t work. Well, it didn’t work for three or four days and no one knew that people were pushing the button! It was just silent. No ringing or buzzing at all. Junko discovered that it wasn’t working, and then found out what had happened to it. It seems that when she was cleaning she had snagged the duster on a wire and pulled it out of its connection. It’s always nice when a problem is easily solved, isn’t it?This door wedge holds one of our doors open. I have been looking for a nice one, made from boxwood, but this one will do until I see what I am after.
2009年01月02日
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Sad shirt
The big news is that my stomach is much better today. Still a little off, but I’m feeling more confident of moving around! A relief.About twenty years ago I bought a number of T shirts. They were fake Benetton and I bought them in Kuwait. This really is some time ago, because it was before I knew Junko! Over the years they have worn out and been thrown away and I think I am down to the last two now. Sadly, one of those is beginning to look rather more than a little threadbare, and I noticed that some of the stitching has come apart. Rather sad. I remember buying them from a Palestinian man in a little backstreet marketing Kuwait in the days before Saddam Hussain invaded the place. Funny how you remember things like this so well and how their passing saddens you. Oh well, must move on.This is another mystery photo that Aspi sent me the other day. Not sure what it is but it is quite pleasant.
2009年01月01日
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