7 June 2009 (Sunday) - Tea & Cake with Sir Patrick

One of the things the astronomy club was thinking about for the International Year of Astronomy was a trip to somewhere astronomical. There’s a planetarium in central London, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, and the South Downs Planetarium in Chichester. Some of the committee had been to the place in Chichester before, where they had met Sir Patrick Moore. Sir Patrick was very kind in giving the astronomy club signed books, and he said to both Jason and Monica that if ever they were in that part of the world again, they should call in to visit him at home. As secretary Jason wrote to thank Sir Patrick for the book. Sir Patrick phoned him back and renewed the offer to come to visit him.

We had a committee meeting. We would visit the planetarium in Chichester, to see if it would be suitable for a club day out. And write to Sir Patrick taking him up on his offer to visit him as we would be in the area. After all, if he was just being polite, someone like him could come up with any number of plausible excuses for us not to call. However Sir Patrick was overjoyed at the thought of us coming down, and so today the committee of the astro club set off for West Sussex. Pausing only briefly to reverse into a carwash machine near Arundel, we made good time until we found the A27 was closed. The plan was to leave home early, a two and a half hour journey, a pub lunch and then meet Sir Patrick at 2pm. What with delays and diversions we skipped the meal, went straight to the cottage and arrived with four minutes to spare. It was easy to find – it was the one festooned with UKIP posters from last week’s elections.





Sir Patrick is a wonderful chap – I can remember him being on the telly over forty years ago, and…. I won’t say he hasn’t changed. Physically he appears rather frail. But mentally, he’s as I imagined him to be from what I’ve read and heard of him. Whilst chatting over tea and cakes, he commented that he hasn’t done a day’s work in his life. It must be wonderful to have done what he has, and not consider any of it to be work. We mentioned about his meeting Albert Einstein, and he chatted about Albert. We spoke of his rumoured appearance on Big Brother, and he laughed about that. He said he’d rather be found dead in a ditch. He spoke of his love for tennis and cricket. He’d played cricket up until six years ago. We gave him a certificate of honorary membership of the astro club. Compared to the plaudits he’d already got, I would have thought this must have seemed rather weak. But no – he was genuinely thrilled by it.

His housekeeper took us around his garden and showed us his telescopes. And his house – it really was an Aladdin’s cave. Certificates and diplomas of honorary degrees and memberships of all sorts of prestigious bodies, as you would expect. But all sorts of bric-a-brac. Books everywhere, I saw his famous “Woodstock” typewriter. And there were a couple of Clangers next to his BAFTA award.

Sir Patrick gave us several books for the astronomy club, and whilst the others were looking round his cottage, I took the chance for a quick five minutes alone with the man. He’d given us a book about Neptune – exactly the subject I’d spoken about at astro club a couple of weeks ago. I would have liked to have seen his xylophone, but given the choice I chatted with Patrick about the book he’d written. He told me to drop the “Sir”. I told him that I would try, but asked him to forgive me if I felt I couldn’t.



We stayed for an hour. I could have stayed all day. The man was so welcoming, and so interesting. And he was genuinely pleased to see us. He’s offered to write for any future club magazine we may produce. But we didn’t want to outstay our welcome, and so we left. Assuring him we’d return. As we left, his housekeeper confirmed that he meant for us to return. He loves company.

After that, the South Downs Planetarium was something of a disappointment. I slept through large parts of the show. Quite frankly for all that it’s quite spectacular laying back and looking at the night sky projected above you, we’ve done better shows on Friday nights at the astro club. And as for the rest of the Planetarium… well, there wasn’t anything else. I don’t think people would want to travel for three hours to see it. Unless we can take the whole club to visit Patrick…

Saturday June 2009 (Saturday) - Gardening

Something happened today that simply never happens. I overslept. The morning was somewhat rushed getting together, and pausing only briefly to get new shovels it was off to Sevenoaks to help with some gardening. I use the term “gardening” somewhat loosely. There was a vague plan to dig up a lawn which was established on a steep slope, and to re-lay the whole lot as a flat surface against a brick wall. However, as I have mentioned before, sometimes writing about these things in a blog is much easier than actually doing them.

The soil surrounding the abode of “Chez Wakefield” is solid. Really solid. In my back garden when I put a shovel in place and jump on it, the shovel sinks all the way into the soil. Today when I jumped on the shovel, it just bounced off the soil without making any impact whatsoever. I had been warned of this, and I had been promised something amazing to deal with the problem. I was a tad disappointed. Because of the hard ground, Bryan had borrowed a Kango. I was under the impression that a Kango was some sort of JCB/excavator/digger thingy. It wasn’t It was an electric shovel. And not just any electric shovel, but a rather weedy one that gave up within half an hour.

It has become something of a tradition that no serious gardening can be done without a tool breaking. In the past we have folded shovels, snapped spades and pick axes, to say nothing of strimmers catching fire. Following in the wake of quite frankly spectacular gardening failures, the death of the Kango was rather lame. It just started sounding rather pathetic, before packing up and leaking some oil. We made do with pick axes instead, but it was a bit more like hard work that way. After a few hours the pick axes started making some clanging noises as they hit the ground. Some six inches beneath the grass was a lot of rather solid concrete. Eventually these turned out to be buried concrete fence posts, but they took some shifting. By five o’clock we were all completely exhausted. I say five o’clock – my arms had got into cramp spasms a couple of hours before this, and for some time I’d been doing little more than dragging the wheelbarrow around.

CA had done us a smashing bit of tea of sossies & chips, and as we ate, we broke the sad news of the demise of the Kango. It transpired that the thing had been borrowed from a friend of CA’s friend. And it’s not really good form to take the thing back broken. So we had a look on eBay. The good news – a replacement could be bought. The bad news – for about five hundred quid. It turns out the man over the road will have a look at it. I offered to have a look at it, but it seems the man over the road might be able to do more than just announce that he thing has died.

Home to find a letter had arrived from the chokey. Regular readers of this drivel may recall that last Wednesday I posted some “literature” off to the chokey. Today his letter says that it was all a joke and he can’t believe I went out to get the stuff. I can’t wait to hear his reaction if the thing gets to him….

5 June 2009 (Friday) - A New Front Door

Because I was on a late start this morning, the idea was the nice man from the door company would arrive, make a start and probably be finished by the time I left for work. No such luck. It was as well ‘er indoors (TM) had taken the day off work too – they didn’t show up until gone 3pm. They seem to have made a good job of the door, but I haven’t inspected it that closely. Mind you, for all that it’s a pretty impressive door, I must admit to a degree of disappointment. It’s just a door. I was somehow expecting more from it. I don’t really know precisely what, but something more.
“Daddies Little Angel (TM)” ain’t happy with it either. Oh well, As long as the thing actually opens when we want it to, and the letterbox flap stays on, it will be better than it’s predecessor.

Some days in my life are rather exciting. Others not so….

4 June 2009 (Thursday) - Democracy

I always vote at elections. I have this vague feeling that if I don’t, I have no right to complain about the state of the world. The trouble is, I know that it doesn’t matter who gets in: they will do some things well, and make a right stuff of others. I could stand for election myself, but I choose not to. And that I suppose is what’s wrong with the world.

I had a choice of three candidates today for the local elections. And there was nothing to choose between them. Back when I was a lad, there was a proper choice at elections. You had self-seeking greed on the one hand, rampant lefty socialism on the other and namby-pamby indecisive dithering in between. And then they invented Margaret Thatcher. Everyone voted for her bunch because we were all too scared not to. Once she jacked it all in, the distinction between the political parties wasn’t quite so clear. The bunch that once espoused rampant lefty socialism had taken a leaf out of the greedy beggers’ book. And it worked. Tony Blair’s lot got in. And so in order to curry favour, those who’d lost out abandoned their policies of feathering one’s own nest and tried to develop a social conscience. Meanwhile just as namby-pamby indecisive dithering was getting its act together, the jingoistic nationalistic minorities came along and made serious inroads into the floating voters.

So here we are today, with Labour and Conservative parties which seem to have little to distinguish one from another, and the democrats squeezed into what little space political remains, and fighting with the crackpots for that space. There really isn’t much difference between any of the three main parties. I had three candidates next to whose names I can put my vote. Each represented one of the big three political parties. I went with the democrats for the simple reason that they seem to be the lot who will do the least harm.

Now the European election was a different matter. Normally I’d say that given the choice I’d vote for one of the crackpot minorities. But there were some serious crackpots there. The jingoistic vote was split between five different candidates, there were two distinct flavours of hippies standing, and I’ve absolutely no idea what another five were standing for. Which only left the big three parties again.

One doesn’t so much vote for the party of one’s choice – rather against those that really shouldn’t get in. It’s hardly a sound political position, is it…..

3 June 2009 (Wednesday) - Birthdays, Web Sites, Magazines

I was up doing the family’s ironing at 5.30am. I really must love it. I had this idea to see the birthday girl before I went to work, but she’d still not come home by the time I left. It’s a scary thought that I no longer have teenaged children.
The morning at work was… well, odd, really. In my old job I felt that I had the responsibility to do absolutely everything and never had time to do anything. Now on the fifth week of my secondment I’m getting through loads of the work I’m supposed to be doing, but I still have this nagging feeling that I should really be doing hands-on blood tests and all the other stuff I’ve left behind. It’s odd – I get this feeling whilst in the hospital, but when working at Margate or working from home (like I did this afternoon) I’m quite content doing my own thing. Today’s “own thing” was some advice for students doing a post graduate qualification. I’ve put what I’ve done here. I’m soon going to run out of available web space. I suppose I shouldn’t really use my own, but should use work’s web space. Perhaps that could be a task for later in the week. Or if I reorganise my personal drivel, I could put off having to bother I.T. departments for a few days.

Last week I attempted to buy a mucky magazine to send into the Chokey, but failed miserably in my attempt to find a post office that sold such filth. Today I found one – only to find that the post office counter bit had closed down months (if not years) ago. Fortunately I’d already written out the envelope and was able to quickly stash the offending publication out of sight. As I walked into a functioning post office a couple of miles away I was bearing a very innocent-looking plain brown envelope. No one would ever know what I was sending through the post. Or that is they wouldn’t have if I hadn’t told the world what I was up to. I was expecting to have to spend pounds on posting the thing. It cost 76 pence. That’s not bad.

I hope he’s happy with it. Come to that - I hope he gets it - I’ve not looked inside the thing so I’ve absolutely no idea of how good, bad or indifferent the contents are. If it’s too saucy he might not be allowed to have it. Oh well – he asked me for it, and I’ve sent it off in the post. I’ve done my bit…

2 June 2009 (Tuesday) - A Funeral

One of the things I used to do with my old blog over on Yahoo 360 was to save the pictures I used and once a year I would compile them into a video show. Blogger does that for me automatically. I say “automatically” – it took a few clicks to do, but I’m quite pleased with the result at the top right of the screen. Or, that is I will be in a few weeks time, once there’s some more piccies in there; it’s rather repetitive at the moment.

I sat down to do the household accounts over a bit of brekkie this morning. I have absolutely no confidence in EDF (who supply my gas and leccie). Regular readers of my drivel may recall that a few months ago, despite my being in credit with the electricity they helped themselves to a one-off payment of over two hundred quid. Today I see I’m overdrawn on my gas account, but they want to reduce the monthly payment by twenty quid each time. What on earth are they playing at? I phoned them to ask them, and they weren’t happy that I’d dared to question them.

The morning’s post brought reminders (in separate envelopes) that the service & MOT were due on the car I sold a year ago. That’s nice.

And so to Hastings for a funeral. Dave Morley was someone I grew up with. As the years have gone by, anyone who knows me knows that I take photos of anything and everything. It bothers me that I don’t have photos of Dave from those halcyon years. As teenagers we went to Boys Brigade together. He was one of those people who made the world a better place. He was head launcher for Hastings lifeboat. He bowled competitively at county level. He was on the committee of the Winkle Club. He was secretary of his local working men’s club. For years he’d been a leader at my old Boys Brigade. And he was a good mate – not just to me, but to the world at large. He’d do anything for anyone.


Funerals are funny things – at some I’ve blubbed like a girl. But this one wasn’t about being unhappy about his passing. It really was celebrating the fact that we’d all known a wonderful person. The church was packed to overflowing. Not an empty seat in the house, and people were standing at the back. The service started with Country & Western, and ended up with a rousing chorus of “Land of Hope and Glory”. I just hope that when my number is up, I get half the turn-out that he did.
It was quite humbling to see hundreds of people who’d come to bury my old mate, and I didn’t know any of them. Eventually one chap came up to me. Didn’t he know me from somewhere? Thirty years ago I’d messed him about something rotten when he’d been a leader whilst I was twelve years old in the 8th Hastings Boys Brigade. Eventually I found three faces I recognised, and I went to sit with them. If I was going to blub, it would not be in the company of strangers.
After the service we walked through an honour guard from the lifeboat crew, and were invited to tea and biscuits in the church hall. One of our number felt he ought to go, but together with Rick and Kev, I went to the pub to toast our old mucker.

Perhaps I’m an old alky, but you can’t say goodbye to someone you’ve known for thirty years over a cup of tea. Especially not when in the company of old friends you’ve known for even longer. A crafty half, and then Rick had to go. We gave Kev a lift to his mother’s house, which by a strange co-incidence is in Hastings Old Town. Seeing as we’d just said goodbye to someone who’d been so active in the social life of the area, we felt we had to have a pint in the Old Town to remember him.
I slept all the way home….

1 June 2009 (Monday) - A New Beginning

Today I wrote my one thousandth blog entry. Yes – I know this *looks* like it’s the third one, but actually it’s my one thousand and first. As some of my loyal readers might know (hoping for a new crop of loyal readers here on Blogger!), I’ve been blogging like a thing possessed over on Yahoo 360 for two and a half years. Who would ever have thought I would have kept it going this long? Every day over the last two and a half years, my blog got (on average) sixty three hits. That’s a respectable number – one I’m rather pleased about.
I’ve been playing with this blog here for two days, and I’ve decided I like it. I must thank Andy for finding it. Life is so much easier when someone else does all the leg-work for you :o)
So far, I’m quite pleased with the new layout, but I’m not sure that the blog section is wide enough. It’s funny – on my last blog I didn’t have a choice of layout, but now that I do, I keep fiddling with it.
I’ve installed a hit counter. I’m wondering if it will be as flattering as the one Yahoo gave me. As I write this, it says it says I’ve had 22 page views from 10 distinct different people. That seems promising.
I’ve had comments – that bit seems to work. Anonymous comments are fine, since I get the option to delete them before they appear, but I would remind my loyal readers that you don’t need a blogger account to comment – you can add your name to a comment should you wish to.
I can add links from this blog to fellow bloggers. So far I haven’t added everyone, since most of my fellow bloggers are also on Yahoo 360, and I’ll wait to see where people end up before going through the thirty seconds of effort it will take to add a link that will soon be out of date,

So here we are – on one hand we have the end of an era, and on the other, it’s the dawn of a brave new world of spouting drivel.