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!

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.