20 April 2010 (Tuesday) - Painting, Ranting

Whilst going to my car this morning I saw signs had gone up in our road. Apparently the council were coming to scrub the gutters, and would like people not to park up the road during the day. I would have thought they might have given us more notice, but what do I know?

On Sunday I mentioned my masonry paint was broken, so being on an early finish today I popped into B&Q to get some more. And seeing how lovely the evening was, I made a start on painting my wall. The paint tin says it comes with a fifteen year guarantee. Fifteen years? I painted the wall last September, and it’s flaking already. I make that seven months. But the wall looked better once I’d finished, and as the evening was still so lovely, I then carried on and painted the front of the house. Painting the house was originally supposed to be the plan for tomorrow, but I expect I’ll find something else to do. Finding somewhere to park the car might be something I could do instead…..

Regular readers of this blog might remember a rant I published on 15 October 2006 when I attended the Annual General Meeting of the British Kite Flying Association. At the time it looked like there were going to be all sorts of restrictions on the flying of kites in the UK (especially the big ones), and the BKFA had been formed to stand up for the man in the kite-flying field. At the time I thought the BKFA was getting bogged down with trivial paperwork and was losing its way. But at that meeting four years ago I was firmly told to get stuffed and to mind my own business. They knew what they were doing.

Today they emailed me “News Update #13”. They have put a lot of effort into developing a child protection policy (why?) and into developing an incident reporting scheme (reporting what to who?). They are still trying to undermine local kiting clubs by offering cheap insurance, and they are now attempting to form a gallery of other people’s kiting photographs for which they can take the credit. In fact the only thing they’ve done which is in any way related to what I thought they were formed for was to organise an Edwardian Kite Competition which will take place in three weeks time. There’s nothing like being given enough notice of these things, is there?

Interestingly neither “News Update #13” nor any of its predecessors have ever carried news of bans on kite flying having been lifted. The phrase “Still fiddling whilst Rome burns” springs to mind.

Still bitter? – Me?......