Fun, fun fun...

I seem to have been a bit remiss about keeping up the blog flow (which sounds like something only people who maintain cassette toilets would have to do), but it's not because nothing has been happening.  I've actually crossed some tasks off the list! (see Day Four)

First off,  mending the electric mirror on the camper van.  I diagnosed brokenness, so I bought a new pattern one, only £50 delivered, which seemed too cheap for a fully motorised, heated jobby with dual-curvature lens, but it seems OK except for one tiny detail - since it's a driver's side mirror for a RH drive van, instead of a passenger side mirror for my LH drive van, you can't get it to go quite far enough round to see the back wheel of the van and the kerb without craning across the passenger's seat.  I think this is OK because the passenger is usually the lovely Jackie, who doesn't mind that sort of attention from me.

Next, replacing the door speakers in the van.  I got "correct fit" ones without mounting tabs, but with the right connectors for the door looms, all the way from Germany.  The speakers don't buzz any more, but the driver's door card does.  Isn't it sweet that this huge piece of plastic, which holds up the door pocket (retained by a Cambium Networks-style eighteen screws!) including the heavy speaker, is called a door card?  I remember cars where they were actually made of something very like cardboard, and fell to pieces when you levered them off, leaving half the little popper things in the door.  But then, those cars also had floors with rusty holes in, and a Morris badge on the back.

What else?  Lazy days and summer ways, and skies, cornflower blue (credit: Mike Absalom) for the most part.  Riding the blue bike, which is still awesome - I discovered a fantastic road between Bampton and Wiveliscombe - sweeping, open and deserted.  One could go quite fast there, if so minded. Playing grandfather to little Layla on the lawn with the newly acquired paddling pool.  Watching the French Open on TV - for the first time ever, I enjoyed the womens competition more than the mens.  Hooray for Jelena Ostapenko, who plays like I always wanted to.  None of your dreary percentage tennis there!  One commentator described her strategy as "see ball, hit winner" - excellent!  Oh, and the Isle of Man TT - John McGuinness not there due to injury from the North West 200, Guy Martin fell off and injured his wrist, Hutchie, who was out of action for a long time after breaking his leg very badly (twice) won 2 races and then broke his leg again in the Senior, and three other riders died.  Lap record unchanged at 133.962mph (average). Altogether another typical year for the world's most extraordinary "sporting event".

So really, it's just fun, fun fun.  What's more, there's no apparent sign of daddy taking the T-bird away any time soon (credit: Beach Boys).

Blue bike enjoying lunch at Wiveliscombe

Gardening

One of the things that people do when they retire is gardening.  My contribution to gardening thus far has been occasionally to mow what we jokingly call "the lawn":

Before gardening

Now for gardening!

After gardening

There you go!  Easy, isn't it?  I used to amuse myself by mowing a different pattern each time, but the spiral has proved by far the most popular, so I bow to my public in this regard.


Unfortunately, the downside of gardening is that MANY plants WERE injured in this process.  Look more closely at the "before "state:

All these lovely little miracles of nature had to be destroyed to make that little spiral, which will only last a week or two.  I suppose the upside is that all the little miracles will be back in a week or two, as well.  Life goes on, after all, come what may. What was it our nearly-ex-prime minister May said?  Breakfast means breakfast.  I think that was it.  I agree.

Polling day

Today is polling day! 

In case you missed the introduction, it's between a bunch of cynical privileged self-serving opportunist liars with very dubious economic models and no scruples whatsoever who have increased the National Debt whilst consistently reducing spending on health, defence, education and social protection for the last six years, and are rapidly selling off the NHS to make the UK's health system into America's (Conservative), and a bunch of relative unknowns who don't share much of an ideology or economic strategy, grudgingly allowing themselves to be led by a popular, peace-loving, principled, genuine socialist with a vision of a better society and a less confrontational world (Labour).   Or the Greens, who are lovely and all that, but who won't get in (Green).

I hope you all voted with your conscience, one way or another.

A Pole on a pole for polling day (Anna Rogowska, with thanks to Getty images; fair use and all that)

A project (not on the list though)

Leo is my wife’s second son, by a previous marriage, which makes him my stepson. Does that make his wife Ellen my step-daughter-in-law? I find relationships quite confusing. Anyway, they have a daughter Layla (see Day Three), who is six months old, disarmingly cute, something of an insomniac, and (I can only presume) my step-grand-daughter. This little family lives in what I like to call “The House of Luuurve”, but The House of Luuurve is about to be extended, which will render it temporarily uninhabitable and cause it to be renamed “The House of Brickdust”. This will lead to an accommodation shortage which has only been partially filled by planning, so there’s a chance that the house of luuurve will need to come and live with us for a while. We don’t have enough proper bedrooms for that, so we may have to bring the loft into play. The loft is quite nice when you’re up there, but access is by a folding ladder and there’s no way to lift it from inside the loft – yet. I sense a project, with all the right ingredients! I have a vision of a fully-automated thing like a fancy electrically powered soft-top car roof – preferably driven by one or more battery drills which you can’t get replacement batteries for any more. I have at least two of those, both in excellent condition, just waiting for an opportunity like this.
First, how to operate the folding ladder from above? It’s a z-shaped ladder when folded, mounted on a hatch flap which extends downwards to the appropriate angle for the straightened ladder to hit the ground. The first tricky bit is the lower part which needs to be straightened just before it lands on the way down. Gravity alone causes it to go vertical and jam.

Ladder jammed

I am going to attempt a cunningly calibrated over-centre thingy made of bungy rope to keep it straight when nearly vertical, but folded when nearly horizontal, using the weight of the lower part to switch between modes.  And here it is!

 

Held straight by bungy when near vertical...

...but folds when near horizontal

I'm proud to say that the only bits I had to buy were the little plastic eye and the crimp for the the main operating rope.  Total project cost so far, £1.  It is possible to operate the whole thing for above by hand, now.  Success!
Much sawing, drilling, filing and vice work to get this far - excellent.  Also, using bits of scrap from what used to be work to make nice little shouldered stand-offs so that the bungy doesn't chafe.

 Jolly good show!

The fully automated edition presents some more challenges though. In order to operate it with one main lifting cord you have to pull from various different places at different times during the lifting and lowering operations.  Visions of a thing like an enormous windcreen wiper with a pulley on the end or a three-foot long leadscrew keep occurring.  For now, I'll just keep on with the meds.

Sport

Exeter Chiefs just won their last match of the season with a penalty in extra time to claim the Aviva Premiership title, so it sort of seems that we should feel proud – or something – because we live in Exeter. Hmmm. I don’t really follow the logic there.
At almost the same time, Huddersfield Town football club won a nail-biting penalty shoot-out to beat Reading and claim promotion to the Premier League. Jackie’s family come from Huddersfield, so we are, once again, filled with joy – or something – because some people we know live in a town which has a great team this year.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t care much about either Rugby or Football, but I don’t think I’m doing this right.
Now it’s time for tennis, with the French Open and Wimbledon. I don’t really care who wins at tennis, either, but I like watching some people more than others. Maybe that’s a start.

some people more than others...

A Bank Holiday

Guess what? Bank Holidays are just like normal days, when every day is a weekend.

Bank Holiday?

First Weekend

We had people to stay - Jackie’s nephew and his fiance. They are young, clever, happy, and optimistic, which provides a foil to my dismal prospect of the future of the world. The journey from London took them more than six hours (on the Friday evening before a Bank Holiday) instead of less than four, just because of traffic Still, their youthful vigour was undented, they were charming company, we had a great day out at Teignmouth, and since they missed dinner on Friday, and left on Sunday morning, we had lots of food left over.   I’m still looking forward to having the place to ourselves, though.

The pier at Teignmouth boasts a set of "Tuck Shop" machines, very possibly the crappiest pinball machines still in daily use on planet Earth.  They don't have any controls except the ball release, and nothing much happens after that.  It seems you win by co-ordinating the ball's final demise with the appearance of a red traffic light, although I didn't chance an actual 10p on having a go.  Pity really.  I should be more adventurous.

Tuck Shop machines - yum yum!

Day Four

Well, that didn’t take long. My wife, the lovely Jackie, insisted that we make lists of all the tasks which need to be done around the house. My list amounts to 23 things, ranging from building a bizarrely shaped garden shed with a curved veranda, through mending the electric mirrors on the camper van to upgrading the expenses database to support concurrent users. It doesn’t look like a list of things to do when you’ve retired – where’s “take up paragliding” or “build a cafe racer” or “play the piano”? It doesn’t even contain “clear 20 years of accumulated rubbish out of the garage” which would sort-of bridge the gap towards a future filled with possibilities. Anyway, I don’t like lists. They make me realise the enormity of the tasks ahead, rather than feeling I have them under control. I intend to go on as before.

The list (on the fridge door, natch).  My tasks are on the right.

Day Three

So far, so good. The weather is fine, and all is peachy. I seem to be providing a service by driving other people’s cars for them. I got our neighbour Bobbie’s car back from the garage, because Bobbie doesn’t drive any more, following a bizarre brake-failure accident resulting in a collision with an electricity sub-station. No-one was hurt, but Bobbie was quite shaken up. The electricity sub-station had its quaint wooden box replaced with a new plastic one. Curiously, the same electricity sub-station was more or less destroyed soon afterwards by someone who failed to negotiate the adjacent bend, and hit it at sufficient speed to move the whole thing down the road by about two feet.. The power was out for days. I suspect alcohol was involved.
Then I drove my step-daughter Ellen’s car from the car park to the other end of town to relieve her from carrying her six-month-old daughter Layla all the way back there. Layla is super-cute.

Electricity sub-station

Day One

The first day of my retirement was also the day of my mother’s funeral. My mother was cremated, in a willow coffin, in a place called “Mortlake” - lake of the dead. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to organize anything; that’s one benefit of being the youngest sibling. I just had to turn up and pretend to be at church again, singing hymns and chanting the Lord’s prayer as we used to do long ago, before I became a fully convinced atheist. There were eulogies, everyone said what a wonderful, saintly person she had been, and nobody mentioned that she died as a consequence of being tipped out of a wheelchair at church, and then bundled off in a taxi instead of someone calling an ambulance. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the first time her church had failed to look after her. She had to move out of her beloved house and into a care home when she was knocked over (zimmer frame and all) by a car (driven by an ex-minister) in the church car park. Nobody called an ambulance that time, either. It turned out she had broken her pelvis in several places. Oh well. C’est la vie – or perhaps this time, c’est la mort.

My mother, in her tennis-playing days