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It seems that, despite my having chosen

Who can comment = anyone
Comment moderation = never

...in the bowels of Blogger's settings, those comments which people have actually made on this blog have mostly been lost somewhere in the anonymity of the dark web, only surfacing occasionally in an email account that I don't ever look at.

So I'm sorry about that, and I apologise for my apparent rudeness in not replying to those kind people who have engaged enough to spend their time responding to these little verbal frolics.

Please feel free to have another go.  As far as I can see, it's all working now, and comments go straight onto the page.  If you have trouble (I have heard mention of a password, which is complete news to me), please let me know and I'll try to sort it out.

Having got that out of the way, I need to make this post a bit more fun.  The best I can come up with is a couple of random things I've come across, so that you don't have to spend hours idly surfing the web in order to find them.  You're welcome!

1. Someone other than me ranting on about free will.  In this case, it's Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote "Sapiens" and "Homo Deus".  Here's an article about the new dark art of taking advantage of people's mistaken belief in their own agency.
   Yuval Noah Harari: the myth of freedom
   
2. On the topic of Blade Runner:
1. Why the 1982 original is actually the best, and why Deckart isn't a replicant
   
2. Typography and ridiculous attention to detail  (I really enjoyed this one.  If you're reading my blog, you have to give it a try.  It is a bit nerdy, it's true, but the reconstructed picture enhancement video is truly spectacular)

And of course no post would be complete without a picture or two, so here are some.  Personally, I think that life is an art form, and that it's is all about balance.  A corollary is that every apparent positive can become a negative if you take it too far.  Americans (some of them, at least) seem to disagree, and think that once you've discovered an axis of something you like, it's just a case of doing more of it.  Thus, I offer these examples of automotive creativity for your judgement.  What do you think?

I just hope these aren't the same Americans who control most of the world's munitions.

Yes!

Coo er, gosh, it's actually happening!  I refer to the nascent house move, of course.  And what a rare and delightful opportunity it is to use the word "nascent".  Anyway, the chain is complete; everybody is very excited (instead of trying desperately to keep in mind that it might all fall through) and money has changed hands, in the form of a cheque (yes really - isn't it quaint!) from us to our firm of solicitors.  It turns out that these solicitors aren't actually providing us with a solicitor, but a conveyancer. She still charges out at £185 per hour though, so I hope she's good at it.  I imagine the up-side might be that as a specialist, she doesn't consider conveyancing to be a bit beneath her, as I'm sure actual solicitors do.  So far so good; she seems to be on the case and responding to emails.

One feature of house buying nowadays is that the legal fees involved pale into insignificance next to the stamp duty imposed by our ever-inventive government du jour.  They have to do this, so that they can let some people off it, who couldn't possibly afford to buy a house otherwise.  If that sort of natural market force were allowed to prevail, the price of houses would come down, which would of course be bad for morale, because we'd all feel poor and insecure.  So to keep prices artificially high, and trick house owners and first-time buyers into feeling more wealthy that they otherwise would do, the innocent house-buying public have to shell out.  Really the only winners are estate agents, who charge a percentage of the sale price (regardless of what the thing is actually worth, and whether they do anything positive to help sell it).

Anyway, I expect you're all wondering what this fabled mansion, of such rare qualities that 34 viewings were needed to find it, is like.  Or maybe not.  All I can say at this stage is:

• It's at 50.681868,-3.492276 for the google maps enthusiasts amongst you.  No street view camera has made it that far yet though! If you're wondering what's happening next door, and what the big hole in the ground beyond that is, I've no idea yet, except to say that it doesn't look like this when you go there!
• It's only four years old, and it's on a small development of extremely similar looking houses. It remains to be seen whether they are, in fact, all made out of ticky-tacky.
  (Pete Seeger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_FB9bwyp6M )
• It requires a small extension to make it into the house we actually want, so we have all the fun of that still to come.
• It recycles its own rainwater and uses it for the garden hose, and flushing the downstairs loo!
• It comes with a trampoline in the garden.  It's good one too - definitely adult size, with a big safety net for the avoidance of the more obvious catastrophic operational mistakes. I made it a condition of our offer:  the trampoline stays.  They said OK.
• It has a double garage.

In celebration of the last point, here's a picture of the garage:

Ahhh!  I think you can see the appeal now.  I'm feeling more relaxed already. Cheers!

No, no, no, no, no. no, possibly....

It's been a long time since I wrote a blog post, hasn't it?  It's not that nothing has been happening, it's just that it's all been extremely dull and frustrating, because we've been trying to buy a new house.

Buying a new house sounds like a good idea until you actually try to do it.  You set out all the things you simply must have, as well as the things you'd like to have (in addition to all the things you already have, which somehow get taken for granted) and away you go.  Looking at houses.  First you look on on the very wonderful Rightmove site, which now shows floorplans at last, and has lots of lovely pictures, and is really good all round, filling you with a dangerous sense of optimism that your dreams may come true.  And then you do viewings, which is where it all comes crashing down.

Firstly, there's the problem that nothing's perfect, and there are always new and unexpected ways to compromise what seemed like a good candidate.  That's the "it's up a dirt track next to a chicken farm" syndrome, which somehow they always fail to mention in the description.  Sometimes these factors can be weeded out by a drive-by, but sometimes you have to waste a lot of time meeting estate agents to find out something that you aren't going to overlook when you find out about it.  Access limitations (which are the bane of camper van owners) are never mentioned on the details.

Then, there's the problem of wide-angle lenses completely changing the appearance of spaces.  Sometimes you get a clue - like a single internal door that appears to be 6ft wide - but sometimes not.  And slopes!  For some reason, it seems to be impossible to correctly detect sloping drives from an estate agent's photograph.  And they always slope, at least in or around Exeter.  Sometimes precipitously.

Precipitous

All together, the chance of viewing a house and being NOT being disappointed within the first few minutes is extremely low.  I think we have seen about three which didn't dash our well-intentioned optimism immediately - sometimes before even opening the door.  Out of 34 viewings.  So far.

And obviously, every single one you go to see is either no good, or you can't buy it for some reason - right up until the until the last one, which is where you stop.

You might think that you could say "OK, we've given it our best shot, and there just isn't anywhere within our budget which fits the bill.  We'll just stay where we are, have a G&T and admire our lovely view some more" but actually the process gradually becomes utterly addictive - it's so easy to look on line (even without Rightmove's text alert system) that after a while you can't stop looking. After all, the next one you see might just be the one, might it not?

There have been a few slightly amusing incidents along the way. In one 1930's house, seemingly still occupied by the couple who bought it new, and decorated from top to bottom in deeply textured wallpaper covered in many layers of worn gloss paint, a slightly desperate estate agent encouragingly pointed out several times that the decor was "quite neutral".  We didn't make an offer.

There is a whole class of newer houses which are just like normal houses, but with everything scaled down in size. Presumably fewer and fewer people actually swing their cats nowadays.  I suppose if one harboured aspirations to feel like Gandalf, this design idea might actually work in one's favour.  We didn't make an offer.

Another (very expensive) house had a lovely view of the Exe river valley from the living room - almost completely obscured by the blank gable end of the house in front, about 20ft away.  Didn't mention that in the details, did you?  We didn't make an offer.

The last but one house we saw was "a truly outstanding property" featuring five bedrooms, four bathrooms (plus downstairs cloakroom) and a dining room whose extraordinary dimensions (3.4m x 2.95m, including the floor space used up by the double doors) could accommodate as many as four of the occupants eating simultaneously.  Or even more, if they all agreed to eat standing up.  We didn't make an offer.

Of course, it doesn't help that our must-have list includes a double garage and somewhere to park the van, which two criteria narrow the field considerably around here.  And be within a 15min drive of the house of luuurve, for ease of grandparenting.

Despite all this, we think we might just have done it.  Our offer has been accepted on a house in Exminster, which we both liked immediately.  Perhaps one reason for that is that it never actually went on the market - "our" agent showed it to us before the details were complete, so it never made it to Rightmove, so we never saw any misleadingly over-attractive photographs or hyped-up description.  So we were't disappointed when we got there.

Of course we're not out of the woods yet; the various agents still have to get all the links of the (short) onward chain forged into some semblance of continuity, and it could all fall over at any time, so no celebrations yet.  But it could happen...

Not Moving House

Well, it turns out that our house really is as lovely as we always thought it was.  This discovery has had two consequences.  The first is that other people want to buy it, and as a result of that we are now "sold subject to contract", which sounds much more final than it really is, because we aren't going to contract anything until we have found somewhere we want to move to.  The second is that it's proving impossible (so far) to find somewhere we want to move to. Of course, we are constrained by the necessity of being close to Heavitree for high-efficiency grandparenting, and by the requirement that we can park our new camper van on the drive (which rules out any new developments, no matter how pleasant they may be otherwise).  And by the problem that our lovely house is - well, rather lovely, so the bar is set very high.  Thus, my feeble lifetime ambition to have a decent double garage is looking as far away as ever, and we are revisiting the idea of building up (and converting our current bedroom, which is adjacent to the garage, into the workshop).  Another massive building project eh?  What fun.

Meanwhile my running activities have been sadly curtailed by injury.  About three months ago I started to get a little bit of pain in my right ankle when I ran.  It had a peculiar pattern, which was that it hurt when I started running, got less painful while running, and then hurt again when I stopped.  It didn't seem too bad though, so I didn't pay much attention.

Some time after this I thought it was about time I bought some proper shoes to replace the ancient trainers I had been using, so I went to a proper running shop and trotted on their running machine while they took video of my gait to identify the correct shoe.  I accepted their diagnosis of overpronation, especially in my right foot, and happily shelled out £120 for a pair of Brooks Ravenna 8 "stability" shoes in a rather fetching bright blue colour.  I didn't buy any of the tights they had on offer at similar prices though.

Brooks Ravenna 8 high performance
"stability" specialised running shoe
in rather fetching bright blue

Ancient trainer

Despite all this, the pains got gently worse until I was more or less hobbling down the road for the first 50 yards of each run.  They also became more noticeable when I wasn't running.  I did some research and started resting my ankle by not running at all.  Six weeks later, nothing had improved very much, so I went to an osteopath credited with almost miraculous powers by the lovely Jackie.  Although he was a very amiable chap, his gentle ministrations didn't seem to make any difference at all.  He thought I might need two or three visits at two or three week intervals (at about £50 a pop) - somewhat cynically, I do wonder whether his strategy might be to be pleasantly soothing while waiting for it to heal itself.  Anyway, my next stop was a sports physiotherapist, who came highly recommended by the lovely Jackie's kick-boxing trainer.  (I know, that sounds much more interesting than my ankle, but this is my blog after all.  I also know you shouldn't put whole sentences, let alone whole paragraphs, in parentheses; but seems to me that it's the only way to represent what I mean, which is that this whole thing is a complete side-line to the main thrust of the piece.  Anyway, you don't mind, do you?)  The physio was a fine Scottish chap who poked and prodded a bit, and had me walk and run up and down and do squats and so on, and diagnosed probable anterior tibial tendonitis.  He gave me a few exercises which he thought might possibly help, and lightened my wallet by £58.  He also said that I should see a podiatrist about what to do next, and was so very kind as to recommend one.

And so I went to see the podiatrist, who turned out to be a charming lady who did loads of prodding, poking, squats, running, walking, one-legged toe-stands and other esoteric stuff before concluding  that although I might have a tiny bit of anterior tibial tendonitis, essentially my feet are in almost tip top condition for running on, and that probably, those stability shoes were my only real problem.  I should definitely ditch them and buy some neutral shoes instead, because the whole concept of stability shoes is flawed non-science and isn't supported by any actual evidence.  Of course, I was thrilled get this news - and all for a bargain price of £80 for the session!

So, almost back to square one, after an outlay of £308, I begin to research running shoes again.  I turns out that:

• Brooks Ravenna 8's are only very slightly "stability" shoes anyway, so maybe they aren't really as much of a problem as the podiatrist thought.
• You can buy them on line for about £60.

Sigh.  I think I'll go back to my ancient trainers and see what happens.  Meanwhile, this running lark is definitely proving more expensive than I expected!

Moving house

Well, not quite yet.  But we are putting our house on the market, to see if we could actually get the £350,000 our most sensible estate agent (out of the classic three valuations) thinks it's worth.

This has necessitated some tarting up normal maintenance involving paint.  I don't get on very well with paint.  It always seems to be going so well, until you spot a bit that's sagging like a drunken eyelid or dribbling like a cracked plastic glass, and it's too late to fix because it's already too solid to brush out.  Also, despite my best efforts to prepare before hand, I always end up finding some new cobwebs, or sawdust, or dead beetles or something when I'm actually painting, so everything goes from smooth to gritty, and then there's no going back.

Fortunately tarting up normal maintenance doesn't require a high-precision finish.  If fact (I am assured) it's mostly about changing the appearance, rather than re-protecting the fabric of the estate.  Who knew? Anyway, this makes the job much quicker.  We refinished the front of the house (including the garage door in fashionable grey) in what we non-time-challenged folk like to call "no time at all", and even gave the back of the garage (which is also the view from the spare bedroom) a new coat of cheery yellow.  We also found time to fix all sorts of things which have somehow eluded my attention for the last year or more, like fixing the house back door lock so that it opens properly.  I could say more, but I'll leave it that I had a complete spare lock assembly in stock from when I changed the one at the house of luuurve for a slam-lock version. Hah!

Oh, and we borrowed a pressure washer.  I've never used one before.  They're jolly good, but they can be a bit fierce, and it's easy to get carried away and remove all the mortar between your paving slabs, or inadvertently dig up the drive.  Or remove a lot more paint from the garage door than you were intending to.

Pressure Washer 1;  Garage Door 0

Still, that's OK, as long as you have enough primer in stock.  A series of quick blasts with some aerosol cans on the door and a splosh of Sandtex on the concrete, and this is the result:

The pressure washer really is the tool of choice for cleaning the composite lower deck though (recycled plastic and hardwood, allegedly, although it's hard to spot any wood content), as shown here by the lovely Jackie, who is sporting a boiler suit by Dickies, worn in the contemporary "four sizes too big" fashion, and floral wellies "a là Glasto" (sunshade headband - model's own).

We had a go on the wooden deck to, but it proved to be very slow work and we had to give the pressure washer back, so that wasn't quite as good.  Bah!

Anyway, if anyone out there wants to buy our lovely house, check it out on Rightmove (very soon), but don't get your hopes up too much. We aren't going to sell until we have found somewhere better (double garage, at least), and so far we haven't been able find anything that fits the bill.

Knot two posts on the same day?

I recently had cause to tie a knot, and the knot I chose was the alpine butterfly.  This knot causes me great joy whenever I am reminded of it, because it's so perfect.  It creates a stable loop which won't tighten up. It is tied "on the bight", meaning you don't need any rope ends to tie it.  When completed, you can pull either end against the loop, or each other, or any combination, and it stays stable. And it doesn't "block"; meaning that you can always undo it, even when it's been under severe load.  And it's very simple and beautiful looking.  And once you know how, it's almost impossible to get it wrong. Of course, other knots have their place, but this one really is a doozy.

Here it is in its resplendent glory:

seen from one side...

...and the other

I think you'll agree it's a handsome piece of work.  And now, of course, I'm going to show you how to tie it.

First you get a bit of rope and twist it twice, as if winding a clock, with your right hand.  It should look like this:

Then you fold the top half down behind, so that it looks like this:

Then you wrap the lowest loop (as seen above) around the cross just above it and push it downwards through the hole in the middle of the pretzel.  If you got your fingers out of the way, it would look like this:

but if fact you push it through until you can pull it right through from the other side.  Congratulations, that's it.  You might like to manipulate the way the bits sit as you tighten it up, to make it into the thing of beauty which its geometry surely deserves, but it works as a knot even if you are so callous as to not bother.

What a knot, eh?

Happy anniversary!

It's May,  which makes it also the first anniversary of my retirement - wow.  I must say, it's been a blast.  I think I can truthfully say that I haven't had a bad day, which is pretty remarkable.

So on that basis I can thoroughly recommend retirement, if you can see you way clear to funding it somehow.  Of course, it helps a great deal if you have a definite end of retirement date in mind, which I do; I have a specific intention of retiring completely from the world not later than my 80th birthday.  This seems only sensible to me - the idea of going on and on though an inevitable loss of faculties, mobility, capability, and probably a lot of other things until the money runs out, and then trusting the government to look after you until their so-called "carers" can't keep you alive any more strikes me as a very undesirable scenario indeed.  Not to mention being a tremendous waste of resources.

So that means that I am now 1/20th of the way through my retirement, and some sort of review is in order.  Being a nerdy numerical sort of fellow, I will try guessing at how often I have done various classes of things in the last year:

Boring commutes	0
Dull motorbike rides	0
Woke up with a care in the world	0
National Trust sites visited	1
New camper vans bought*	1
Proper projects actually completed	1
Foreign holidays	2
Rescue missions for Lammie**	2
Fantastic motorbike rides	3
Musical offerings created	3
Loaves baked	a handful
Things mended	quite a few
Meals cooked	loads
Crosswords completed	dozens
Late nights	scores
Morning lie-ins	a plethora
Bottles of wine consumed	do we really have to do this?
Days spent looking after Layla***	25

* Actually to be quite precise, we haven't really bought it yet, but we have committed to buying it and we're going to finish the paperwork later today.  It's a proper coachbuilt motorhome (not a van conversion), it's insanely expensive, and it looks like this:

Still, the lovely Jackie says it's A GOOD THING so all will be well.  It fits up the road with a full 1.5in to spare on each side and has an electric drop-down bed, so I'm pleased.

** Lammie is a small cuddly sheep toy, which is essential to Layla's sense of wellbeing when those pesky adults try to convince her that it's time to sleep.  Sleeping without the comforting feel of Lammie's ears is practically impossible.  As a consequence, the discovery that Lammie has been left in the wrong place can require desperate measures, such as cross-town motorbike sorties at the dead of early evening.  Lammie was once left at nursery, whence he couldn't be recovered until the next day.  Somehow, we managed, and everyone is still alive to tell the tale. Phew.

*** This is probably right, since we now take Layla in for one day (and night) a week, to the gentle benefit of all concerned.  The house of luuurve gets a brief period of R&R, we get some quality Layla time, and Layla gets a more varied experience of life, not to mention a great deal of personal attention.  She seems to like it (most of the time), and between the two of us, the lovely Jackie and I can cope with the intensity for one day a week (just about).  Phew again.

Overall, this retirement lark is not panning out how I expected at all - but that's not a problem.  I suppose it might be looking a bit boring from the outside, but it certainly isn't from where I sit.  Meanwhile,  we've just put our house on the market, in an exploratory kind of way, with the intention of enhancing our garage/workshop capability (and getting more house for friends and family too) so we are definitely not finished yet.  Stay tuned...