19 June 2011 (Sunday) - Slow Worms and Caravans

Having joined the Friends of Kings Wood last year, I’ve since made great show of being a member of the Tree Huggers. And I’m afraid that I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m rather disappointed: there’s not a weirdie-beardie-tree-hugger to be seen. In fact they all seem to be (like most of humanity, really) a rather decent bunch of people. Having said that, I’ve noticed that over the year, the children of the Friends of Kings Wood have taken to calling each other “Tree Huggers” as a form of insult. I can’t help but wonder where they picked that up from.

Today we went on a Reptile Ramble with the Tree Huggers (I shall continue to call them that!). Having met up, we then drove through miles of tracks through Kings Wood to an obscure corner. Having parked up in the obscure corner we then walked along even more obscure paths to find a wonderfully secluded valley. This was perhaps one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen; but the view was marred. There were random bits of corrugated iron here and there, and on closer inspection there were random bits of roofing felt littered about. My immediate reaction was to have a tidy-up, but our guide stopped me.

Our guide was one of the herpetologists from the nearby university, and the corrugated iron and roofing felt were carefully laid out to attract reptiles, and to make it easier to find them. Corrugated iron and roofing felt make warm areas which reptiles like: they formed part of an ongoing survey, and the herpetologists just hated people like me tidying up what looked like litter. Woops!

We were told that four of the UK’s six indigenous species of reptile have been found in this valley, and ten of us spend a couple of hours watching the experts doing their survey. Today we only saw two reptile species: a common lizard that was too fast to be photographed, and about a dozen slow worms. Personally I was hoping that we’d see a snake, but then I would, wouldn’t I?

Our resident expert really brought the subject to life: he was keen and enthusiastic. Amazingly he said that it’s not unusual to find reptiles under the corrugated iron and roofing felt at any time of year. He’d even found adders under them when there was snow on the ground.

And far from being asked not to go back there unsupervised, we were told we were welcome to have a look-see if ever we were passing. But we were told to be sure to report any reptile sightings back to him. I intend to go back in the autumn when the reptiles will be a bit more sluggish.

Rather than going home we then drove on to the motorhome showroom on the Canterbury road. I’m afraid I’m going off the idea of “tent”: “tent” takes hours of setting up, hours of packing away, and can be cold. “Tin tent” might cost a bit more, but will save time and effort, and will effectively lengthen the camping season by a couple of months. Weekends at Sumners Ponds and early and late kite festivals become feasible propositions.

The prices of motorhomes ranged from fifteen thousand pounds up to fifty thousand pounds. I quite liked the look of the ones in the twenty to thirty thousand pound price bracket. We got chatting to the salesman (always a bad thing to do) and it transpires that the road tax and insurance on a motorhome is comparable to that on a car (i.e. affordable). The major problem would be the initial outlay of lots of thousands of pounds for the thing in the first place. We said we’d think about it some more, and made our way home.

On the way home we saw a sign for a new Koi shop, so we thought we’d pop in. The car park was by a second hand caravan showground. One of the caravans caught my eye, so we thought we’d have a look. We got chatting with the salesman. It has to be said that this salesman started at a serious disadvantage – he looked just like Dexter from the BBC series “Survivors”. I was honestly scared of him, and I was expecting him to pull out a shotgun at any minute. But the bloke spoke sense.

The sort of motorhome we’ve been looking at will cost about twenty five thousand pounds. Borrowing that amount of money is easy enough, but the repayments would be crippling. We may well inherit that sort of money following the death of parents (to be rather mercenary and heartless), but that money would be far better given to the fruits of my loin for them to get houses. And if we’re camping in a motorhome and we run out of milk, then the entire motorhome has to go shopping.

I can get a second hand caravan for about a tenth of the price of a motorhome, and it wouldn’t cost anything in road tax or insurance. It would have all the mod-cons of a motorhome and the same storage problems and costs. And when camping if we needed to buy anything we could just unhook the car and go off shopping. Admittedly neither of our cars is up to pulling a caravan for any distance, but the ‘er indoors ^TM –mobile is on its last legs and needs replacing anyway.

I shall think some more about this idea. I’ve asked for advice from friends with caravans and motorhomes. I shall seriously review the situation once the mortgage is paid off in a month or so…

18 June 2011 (Saturday) - Stuff

I wasn’t happy to read this morning’s news about increases to public sector worker’s pension contributions. I’m struggling to find hard figures which will apply to me, but taking as an example some figures quoted for the proposed increase in teacher’s pensions, come the autumn I’m looking to be quite seriously out of pocket. Fortunately my mortgage is paid off in a month or two, so should this hike in pension payments come into force, I won’t actually notice it. What I was paying on mortgage I will now pay in increased pension payments.

The fact that I was looking forward to a tad of financial solvency having paid off my mortgage is clearly neither here nor there.

I must admit I’m a tad hacked off with the whole pension squabbling. Thirty years ago I was sold a pension by the state. We both (me & HM Government) knew it was a long term investment. Over the years I had the option to change it for a private scheme, but we both agreed to keep what I’d bought. And now it’s three-quarters paid off, I can’t help but feel it’s rather late for HM Government to start quibbling about it. The thing was bought and sold in good faith. If it’s now an unaffordable proposition, the government should go kick the ass of the people who’ve caused that, not me.

It’s odd how a free market economy is such a brilliant idea all the time its working….

And it’s also odd how we begrudge the pensions of workers, but happily throw away public money…

Leicester City Council has admitted that it is not ready for an attack by zombies. Some twit wrote to Leicester City Council and asked for details of their plans to combat a possible zombie attack. Normally such idiocy would be treated with the contempt it deserves, but if one asks for such information and quotes the Freedom of Information Act, then public bodies crap themselves in terror and provide whatever trivial information the public demands.

However, for all that this might seem like a frivolous joke, it’s a joke which costs the taxpayer. Freedom of Information requests are dealt with by Information Governance Officers who are paid (about) twenty three quid per hour.

Take our newspapers for example. There was an article on Radio Four today which claimed that the Daily Express runs about ten stories every day based on information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Even if each of the paper’s enquiries only takes half an hour of a single Information Governance Officers’ time, that’s thirty thousand quid a year that newspaper is costing us.

Somewhat closer to home, after a morning at work I had a plan to mow the lawn. It’s not been mowed for some time. But rain stopped play. Having checked blog entries, every Saturday from the end of February till the end of May has been dry. And now we are in what one traditionally considers to be the summer, it rains every weekend. What’s that all about?

Bearing in mind that its three weeks since the lawn was last mowed, I gave it a haircut despite the rain. And I then gave myself a haircut. Spending fifteen quid on a pair of shears about fifteen years ago was one of the best investments I ever made. I then did the ironing – it’s a couple of weeks since I did any of that.

We then made out way to the Trattoria Romano in Bank Street for a friend’s birthday meal. I can’t believe I’ve lived in Ashford for twenty five years and have never been there before – the food was excellent, and with great company we had a wonderful time. And after the meal we went back to Steve & Sarah’s for coffee, lanterns and Uno Extreme.

We came home to find the prod-it-all son has returned from his fishing expedition. He’s caught loads of big fish. He’ll be publishing an album later, but for now he said I could use one photo for today’s blog piccie. I am seriously considering going with him next year….

17 June 2011 (Friday) - Some Ranting

Whilst surfing the web over brekkie this morning something caught my eye. Whilst out and about in California a few days ago, a couple of people saw what they thought was a Bigfoot. They’ve even got some fur from the beast which they intend to subject to DNA analysis.

An interesting article: there may well be Bigfoots in the USA. If there are, then they must be a seriously endangered species. Proving their existence could go a long way to setting up Bigfoot reserves and ensuring their protection.

And then I read the article some more. The bloke who claims to have found the Bigfoot fur runs a website. On this website he posts crackpot gibberish about UFO sightings, ghosts, conspiracy theory nonsense and no end of old tripe.

Why is it that non-loony people rarely report seeing Bigfoots or UFOs or ghosts? Having seen what I think may well have been a ghost myself, I know that my experience doesn’t mesh at all with what the paranormalist crackpots would have us believe.

And then I found that a good friend had posted something onto my Facebook page. The article warned us not to expect to inherit great sums of money from our parents. What with one thing and another the article seemed to think that most people won’t have great heaps of cash to pass on to their descendants when the reaper comes calling.

But realistically are people seriously waiting for their parents to croak in order to maintain financial solvency? I actually laughed out loud when the phrase “needy children” was used to describe the average man in the street. At forty seven (and a third) years old I can hardly be described as a “needy child”.

But apparently one person in ten is depending on an inheritance to pay their pension. Bearing in mind how much cash one gets from the sale of someone’s estate, and also bearing in mind the general cost of living, this one person in ten must either be the offspring of someone very rich or living in cloud cuckoo land.

Talking of cloud cuckoo land, my piss boiled when I read a comment on a good friend’s blog this morning. My friend is not well: she is looking at embarking on another course of therapy which will involve drugs and feeling very sick and nauseous. She is understandably nervous about the prospect, and is wondering if embarking on this would be for the best.

Someone has commented on her blog “…but I do think that we (the patients) have a RIGHT to say what we want, and When we want it, and how we want it. No matter what that IT is.”

I *so* disagree with the whole concept of “patient choice”. When a consultant physician (hospital doctor) proposes a course of treatment, it will be the treatment that in their opinion would give the optimum result. Any deviation from that course of treatment will (by definition) give a non-optimal outcome.

Those who advocate “patient choice” are often doing so to people who are ill, and are often a little confused and unsure. And these people find themselves having their confidence in their doctors undermined by those who (while are very well-meaning) have absolutely no medical knowledge or experience whatsoever.

“Patient Choice” works well in alternative (crackpot) medicine because alternative (crackpot) medicine is mostly all psychosomatic: it works because one thinks it works and if you feel that snake oil would be better for you than horse dung, then swapping treatment is fine. Neither works anyway.

But in reality, “patient choice” starts and finishes at the point of deciding what treatment to get. It is about deciding whether one is going to take sage and considered medical advice, or whether one is going to drink bleach for medicinal purposes on the advice of some old loony.

It should not be about picking and choosing what parts of proposed treatments one will and will not take, and then afterwards whinging that one is still ill….

I mention drinking bleach because there are those who actually regularly drink bleach for medicinal purposes. I personally think this is crackpot behaviour, bordering on the eccentric, but this really is “patient choice” in action….

16 June 2011 (Thursday) - This n That

Following on from a talk I gave to the astro club last year, the nice people at the South East Kent Astronomical Society have asked me to talk to them. Well, not so much talk to them as give a lecture. I’ve given loads of talks on astronomically-related subjects before, but they have mostly been to my own astro club where they all know me. I’m the amiable harmless bloke on the door who sells raffle tickets (noisily). But SEKAS say on their website “ALL our speakers are distinguished and are worthy of support and should be honoured with a good-sized audience.” I somehow can’t see myself as “distinguished”, but I won’t tell them that. I’ll let them find out the hard way. I’ve got a lecture on comets which I’m preparing for our own astro club. I’ll give them the same talk and see if they like it. After all, the worst that can happen is that they won’t ask me back again.

A late start gave me some time to fiddle around putting the finishing touches to this talk on comets. Having gone through it a few times I can’t help but feel it’s a bit light on knob jokes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for an astronomical lecture.

And so to work. Yesterday I mentioned that a colleague had crashed his bicycle. I saw him in the gents as I came into work. He was dusting himself down as best he could. He had a nasty graze on his arm, and I suggested that (since we work in a hospital anyway) he might pop up to the A&E department and get himself a once-over. He wasn’t too keen on the idea initially, but I insisted. As he went he said that his side did hurt.

This morning we found that he’d got a deflated lung and a broken thumb. It’s made me think twice about getting back on my pedal bike.

After work was committee meeting – the astro club is making plans. Possibly a day out at Herstmonceux Castle, probably something for “Observe the Moon Night”, definitely a new club logo for clothing and merchandising. All sorts of stuff in the pipeline. The club is going from strength to strength.

And in closing, some news from over the Channel. A few days ago I mentioned that “My Boy ^TM ” has gone to France on a fishing trip. The arrangement was that he’d let me know by text whenever he caught a fish worthy of note. He’d not been in touch since Saturday, and I was beginning to worry. Either he’d caught nothing, or he had dropped his phone in the pond. So it was with a sense of relief that I’ve just got a text message from him. He’s now had nine big fish, six of them being over thirty pounds in weight. One of which was his first ever grass carp.

Bearing in mind his definition of “a big fish” starts at over twice the weight of the biggest fish I’ve ever caught, I’m tempted to go with him next year.

15 June 2011 (Wednesday) - A Lunar Eclipse

 

Back to work after a few days off, and within a few minutes it was as though I had never been away. It’s not that I actively dislike my job: more that I’ve been doing it since September 1981, and I’m so bored with it.

We had the weekly weigh-in; I’ve not lost any weight since last week, nor have I gained any. Which in a non-dieting frame of mind is probably how it should be.  Apart from a colleague crashing his bicycle, the rest of the day was dull, and I came home to sleep in front of my PC for an hour or so.

And then after a cracking bit of scoff we set off to Folkestone. A few weeks ago Stevey organised an astro club event to watch tonight’s eclipse, and the event grew to encompass the South East Kent Astronomical Society as well. About a dozen of us met up near the Martello tower in Folkestone, and we looked at France through binoculars and speculated on the possibility of the eclipsed moon being seen through breaks in the cloud later.

As the cloud thickened and we lost sight of Dover we began to have doubts about the evening, but we got chatting. I was talking to a chap who was telling me of an astronomy festival at Herstmonceux Castle in September. From his description this event seems to be akin to a kite festival, but without drunken teenagers pissing in your mess tent. My personal feeling is that this is something that may well warrant closer examination.

By now the mist was rolling in, and it was no longer possible to see Capel which was only one mile distant, and one or two of the more fair-weather astronomers were beginning to speculate on the possibility of daring to question the wisdom of attempting to see the moon when we couldn’t actually see the end of the street. And there’s no denying that had this event not been run in conjunction with SEKAS but had been run just by the Ashford Astronomical Society, we would all have gone inside and looked at pictures of what an eclipse would look like if there was no clouds.

The mist was rather thick by this point, and it was raining; so much so that my trousers were soaked and my pants were damp. So we decided to give up and try again next time.

Next time being 7pm on Saturday 10 December. See you then…?

14 June 2011 (Tuesday) - Road Trip

 

I woke feeling rather exhausted after a night of very vivid dreaming. Perhaps I shouldn’t eat Monster Munch just before bed time. Over brekkie I spent a little time looking at some of the blog’s settings including font sizes and the like. I’ve also (hopefully) made the blog appear much better when viewed on mobile devices. Having said that it looks awful on my mobile, but then most stuff does. I think that when I bought my SmartPhone I actually got a DumbPhone. For all that one hears talk of “Android” and “iPhone”, having bought one I’ve never heard any mention of the Nokia N8.

I also updated the “Dates for the Diary” section of the blog – I now have stuff planned for most of the weekends over the summer. This leaves me with precious little time for fishing. Talking of which, if anyone would like to take up membership of a rather exclusive syndicate with rights to fish a private late just outside Ashford (for only twenty quid a year), please let me know.

Having spread the canvas of our mess tent out to dry and having put my tent’s carpet on the washing line I then phoned Kent Police. Whilst on a shopping mission when camping last week, ‘er indoors ^TM inadvertently parked where she shouldn’t and got a parking ticket from “AM Secure Services Ltd”. I phoned the Old Bill to check the validity of this parking ticket. The Old Bill neither knew nor cared and said to phone Tesco. Tesco didn’t care either. They changed their tune slightly when I told them that I was going to tell the hundreds of people at the kite festival to do their shopping elsewhere. But they still maintained it wasn’t their problem.

So in the end I phoned “AM Secure Services Ltd” themselves and told them I had some land I might like to use as a car park. I asked how they would deal with someone who wouldn’t pay the parking ticket. Eventually they said they would take the person to court, and whether or not the court ruled in favour of the parker or the ticketing company was entirely down to the whim of the presiding judge. I’ve told ‘er indoors ^TM that if it was me who’d had the ticket I’d let them take me to court.

And seeing as today was booked as holiday I went on a bit of a road trip. First of all to PC World to have a look-see. Since I got the new wireless modem I’ve had far fewer (i.e. hardly any) connection problems. And since I abandoned using Safari as a browser and went to Firefox instead I’ve had far fewer (i.e. hardly any) incidents of the PC freezing up. But it wouldn’t hurt to see how much replacing the PC is going to cost. And I got the answer – about five hundred quid. I then popped into the Home Brew shop to get the makings of some beer for our next trip to Teston. I expect that I shall be there again in August, but there’s no denying that following two wet camps I’m rather having a downer on the idea of camping at the moment.

Mind you not that much of a downer – I then went on to Aldi in Hythe because I’d heard they were selling self-inflating camping mattresses cheaply. They were. I picked one up for twelve quid. It still remains to be seen how much of a bargain it actually was. The last one sprung a rupture last weekend and had lasted about four years. Camping shops are doing them for about twenty five quid, so I would hope that this one will last me at least two seasons.

And then onwards. As I drove through Folkestone I saw the house that we rented for two years (Sept 84 – Apr 86) is currently up for sale. It’s listed as having four bedrooms: it had one when we rented it. I wonder what’s going on there? I’m very tempted to arrange a viewing just to be nosey.

I then popped in to the Battle of Britain museum to use their facilities. Whilst I was there I bought a souvenir bookmark – the shop was closed when I called in last year.

I then went to a car showroom in Capel – the last time I drove past they were selling motorhomes and campervans. They weren’t today. So I kept on going and eventually found the camping shop in Sturry where I had a look-see. The pet shop next door was interesting as always, and the motorhomes round the corner were cheap. Mind you they weren’t unlocked. The bloke there offered to open the one(s) I wanted to look at and stand over me, but I wasn’t keen to have this sort of pressure, so I thanked him and made my way to the motorhome showroom in Canterbury. The chap there was helpful and left me to browse. I might go back there for another look at the weekend.

And so home where I slept through the third “Alien” film. And once I awoke I folded away the last of the camping gear which I’d popped on the line this morning. I was going to then put my tent, the carpet and the mess tent away, but the lock-ups are full to the point of being overflowing already. So I need to strip them all out and re-pack them. That which needs to go away can stay in the shed for the time being: I’ll worry about it later…

Meanwhile if any of my loyal readers think I might be storing any camping gear, tents or chairs for them, could they please retrieve them by the end of the week. There is stuff in there which I know is not mine, and I do not have enough space in the garden lock-ups. That which is still unclaimed on Sunday will be either eBay-ed or taken to the tip (!)

13 June 2011 (Monday) - Bayham Old Abbey

I went to bed last time, listening to the rain in a rather smug sort of way. Camping is all good fun when it’s warm and dry. And you can cope with a degree of cold and wet. And this morning I awoke to find it had rained seriously hard overnight: the water level in my fish pond had gone up a couple of inches. For all that it was mostly dry today, the grass in the garden was still wet at midday. If I had any doubts about the sensibility of packing up camp early yesterday; I’m now convinced we made the right decision.

Talking of decisions, I’ve told my nephew not to bring his idiot friend camping again. Over the years we’ve had no end of kids and teenagers camping with us in various places, and this is the first time there’s ever been a major problem. My immediate reaction yesterday was to ban all under-18s from our mess tent. Which would have been utterly unfair on the vast majority of under-18s because they are (99.9+%) decent well-mannered people.

People like my nephew’s idiot friend annoy me. Not so much because of their behaviour, but because the actions of one idiot spoil everything for everyone else. He made me (nearly) tar everyone of his age with the same brush when I know full well that not all youngsters are like that. And I don’t like that!

Take for example the contingent that “My Boy ^TM ” is currently with. A gaggle of them set off to France last Friday for a week’s fishing. They will have a beer or two (like I do), but they will have fun without causing upset. And catch a fish or two along the way. When they go fishing they might not shout “Haddock!” as often as I do, but when they do it will be for a fish worth catching. So far I’m reliably informed that “My Boy ^TM ” has had five fish over twenty pounds in weight, two of them being over thirty pounds.

I woke rather early this morning very conscious of all the wet tents needing drying, and seeing how it wasn’t actually raining at the time I thought I’d get some of the tents on the line. After all, if it should start raining they were already wet. I got my tent’s groundsheet on the washing line…

How easy it is to type that: I wrestled with the thing for forty minutes, covering myself with day-old mud from the groundsheet. And having got it on the line I realised that having fought like that with a groundsheet, there was no way I could do anything else on my own. So I went back to bed. After a bit of a lie-in and a bit of brekkie I enlisted the help of ‘er indoors ^TM. The groundsheet was dry, but the grass was still very wet, so we got the groundsheet in without letting it get near the ground, which is another thing much easier said than done. And then we pegged out our tent on the washing line and left it for the day.

We mucked and fiddled about for the morning putting the last of the bits and bobs from camping away. And at midday I went out to see our tent. Not quite dry. I then noticed my feet were wet. For all that the rain had stopped, the grass was still sodden. Again feeling vindicated for packing up camp early we decided to do something with the day we had taken off work.

We started with McDinner. There were a whole load of soldiers at McDonalds. Soldiers all have their names emblazoned on their uniform chests. I sniggered at Private Sergeant; I don’t think he saw me. It’s odd; for all that soldiers have guns I felt somehow reassured that there were a gaggle of squaddies in McDonalds.  I know that I would have felt most uncomfortable if there was a similar contingent of police in their place.

And then we went on to Bayham Old Abbey. The official line is that Bayham Old Abbey makes “a fascinating day out on the Kent Sussex border. The impressive ruins include much of the 13th to 15th-century church, the chapter house, and a picturesque 14th-century gatehouse”. My personal view is that it’s not a bad place to waste half an hour purely because I get in free with my English Heritage membership. It’s not worth the fiver (near enough) that the general punter would have to pay.

We came home via the caravan shop in Hurst Green where they had the same chair that he Rear Admiral used this weekend. For ten quid cheaper than he paid for it. I did snigger. And then on to John’s Cross. I wanted one or two camping bits, but we found ourselves spending about an hour looking at the motorhomes. We can’t afford one yet, but one day…..