Grand Pierre

Well, today's news is that I have just gone solo in grandparenting.  I was entrusted with over two hours of entirely unassisted baby-minding, and achieved a perfect score on the basic skills of (1) keeping both parties alive, and (2) avoiding any shrieks of such ear-piecing loudness as to cause permanent deafness.  I did all this by merely accommodating little Layla's every whim, so far as I was able to determine them.  Of course, that requires a certain amount of creative empathy because she can basically only squeal and squeak, but it's pretty obvious that the only thing she cares about most of the time is standing up. She hasn't quite mastered it yet and she does need something to grab hold of, to elevate herself out of the default sitting position, but her determination is quite something to behold. She hasn't got very far with balance yet though.  And there are so many distractions.  Especially shiny things.

All this preoccupation with standing means that crawling isn't really a thing yet.  Layla's nearest approach to a crawling stance looks more like AdhoMukha Svasasana (downward facing dog).  The next move is to lift one arm and rotate backwards (somewhat in the manner of Utthita Trikoasana or Ardha Chandrasana) until equilibrium is finally restored by a gentle collapse into a sort of floppy Sukhasana (sitting cross legged).  None of this provides any locomotion, however, which is source of frustration, especially when there are so many interesting things just out of reach.

Meanwhile, it seems that one must adopt a special name to be a grand parent (especially a fake one like me).  I have been awarded the name Grand Pierre, which I quite like, as it reminds me of my great mate Pierre.  We met at university, and he declared that since it was confusing that I was called Pete and so was he, he would call me Pierre.  I declared that for the sake of symmetry, I would call him Pierre.  And so it was, until he died some years ago.

Pierre smoked roll-ups all his life, and then died of a form of lung cancer which, they told him, is not associated with smoking.  He found this very ironic (but he was still very pissed off about it).

I did overhear someone, who was speaking baby-talk to Layla at the time, refer to me as Petey-poos.  So there's another reason to be pleased that it's officially Grand Pierre.

Pierre

Happy families

While all this constructional endeavour has been taking place, it has come to pass that the House Of Luuurve has come to stay, as promised, so the old folks (me and Jackie) are sleeping in the loft.  Sad to say, even after all this time, the loft ladder is still being manually operated (using a single string to open and close it from above).  Well, it works.

Slightly surprisingly, we all seem to be getting along just fine in the overcrowded bungalow, with Leo on parental leave and Ellen going out to work at the moment.  Layla, of course, gets a lot of attention from everybody all the time.  There are altogether too many delights in this arrangement to document, so here are just three snaps:

Paddling pool on the grass:

The lawn in summer (see gardening)

Layla enjoying her first ever restaurant outing:

Pizza and beer

Bruce posing with a delphinium:

The noble Bruce

Work, rest and play

Once again, the astute reader of this blog will has have noticed that nothing seems to have happened for ages.  Of course, it's not true - I've just been to engaged with all the myriad things which retirement unexpectedly throws one's way.  There's been a bit of work (e.g. erecting a 12m x 6m marquee in a field in the pouring rain, and building an enclosure for two compost loos out of ex-military tent canvas, scaffold tubes, ratchet straps and rope) as well as quite a bit of rest (it is still the tennis-watching season, after all) and quite a bit of play, including a few classic tasks.  My favourite at the moment is fixing my Tannoy SFX sub-woofer, which started making an impressively loud 50Hz buzz whenever it was switched on, about a year ago.  It has taken this long to even look inside.  I started with the internet, which turned up one chap showing off his fix for one with no sound at all, due to a PSU fault.  He replaced an open-circuit transistor Q152, which (he says) controls the -12V line.

Here's my PSU PCB:

Ha!  Evidently there has been overheating in the region of Q152 (actually removed before I took this picture)...  Obviously mine has gone short-circuit, and the 12V line has been whanging up and down like a whangy thing.  Methinks Q152 may be a bit under-specified.

Q152 is an A1015GR, which cost about £0.001 each if you buy a few thousand, 2p each if you only want 50, 1p each if you want 10 (all from China) or a spectacular £3.50 for 5 from Germany.  I went for the latter and got them within a few days.  I suspect that I would still be waiting for my delivery of 10 units for 99p (free postage) from Shenzen (but I dare say they would arrive eventually).

Anyway, I stuck one in, and lo - it works perfectly.  All done with no reference to circuit diagrams, and with precious little understanding of anything really.  Hoorah!