Nuclear winter comes to Seaford

The woolly hats and scarves have been retrieved from their box on top of the wardrobe. The coal scuttle has been filled and the kindling wood carefully chopped. The hatches have been battened down and additional oil filled radiators bought. And why all the preparation for an apparent trip to the arctic? Sadly, I have to report that the central heating boiler is dead.

To have no central heating is to be plunged back into the middle ages. There's something truly medieval about waking to a freezing house; to go out into the cold streets to run whatever errand, and know you're returning to a fridge. It also puts me in mind of my childhood. Back in the 50s and 60s, no-one except the very wealthy had central heating, and we didn't think it that odd to be able to see our breath condensing indoors, or scrape ice off the inside of our old, wooden-framed, single-glazed windows. Back then the only warm place was under the bedcovers, and somehow we seemed to survive it all. But now we appear to be less able to cope with feeling cold. Modern life is all about control, so we think we should be able to control the temperature of our houses. Not being able to do so makes us feel terribly insecure.

But Christmas is just around the corner. In fact, it seems to have been just round the corner for months now. You can usually tell it's Christmas when the annual John Lewis TV ad appears. This year it features a snowman making a long and difficult trek across a snowy country landscape to a town, and returning with a hat, gloves and scarf for what I assume is supposed to be his snow-wife. The whole thing was shot in New Zealand and apparently cost millions. But I have some problems with it. If I leave aside the obvious issues (ie the fact that a snowman is made of snow and has no functioning body parts or organs that would permit locomotion), how does he manage to negotiate the inside of a department store, and then both choose and purchase a set of accessories? Are we to believe that, in his local town, there are shops that specialise in selling things to snowmen? How are negotiations conducted? How is payment made? Is there a Snow Dollar or Snow Pound somewhere in the economy?

And another thing. Is the bonfemme de neige meant to be his wife? Their facial expressions (if they can be thus termed) certainly seem to suggest it. But what if they were fashioned from snow from the same drift? Would that not mean that they were, if fact, blood (or water) relatives; more brother and sister than husband and wife? Y'see? A simple TV ad about a couple of anthropomorphic snowballs opens up a whole can of worms. Frozen ones.

I write this on Monday evening. A log is blazing cheerfully in the grate. There are two as yet unopened sacks of coal outside. The central heating engineer can't come until Wednesday. For the first time this week, for some reason, I'm not overly concerned...

Twelve months of giving. Give me strength...

It's Movember. And no, that isn't a spelling error. Movember is a registered charity, dedicated to raising awareness of male cancers (testicular and the like). Participants are expected to start the month of November clean shaven, and then spend the entire month growing and grooming a moustache. No beards or goatees allowed! The 'Mo' (for that is the correct nomenclature of the putative moustache grower) collects sponsorship money from willing donors, all of which helps to support research into testicular and prostate cancer. And a very worthy cause it is, too.

But perhaps November shouldn't be the only month to be renamed in support of a charity. Another eleven months are going begging, just gagging for a suitable group to adopt them. Now, let me see...

Jamuary - when the Women's Institute encourages the making and selling of preserves as a means of fundraising.

Phlebruary - the month for giving blood.

Marchpain - in aid of depressed dyslexics who are apt to confuse marzipan with diazepam.

Aperil - dress as a monkey to raise cash for animal charities.

Maybe - a time when the terminally indecisive think about charitable giving. Or perhaps not.

Jooon! - in aid of those damaged by excessive watching of sitcoms starring Terry Scott.

Julycanthropy - to support people who think they might be werewolves.

Smorgast - providing cold snacks for those poor unfortunates that live nowhere near an Ikea store.

Syruptember - wearing a badly made bright red wig (with a chin strap) to highlight the plight of those who cannot afford a decent hairpiece.

Socktober - reuniting socks separated at birth with their siblings.

Distemper - funding the whitewashing of dogs. For some reason best known to the organisers of the charity concerned.

Perhaps I should mention that there is a premium rate phoneline for those affected by this blog post. Oh, and a translation service for our American cousins who haven't the faintest idea who Terry Scott is. Or what a Syrup might be.

It's beginning to look a lot like...rubbish

Today's good news: the breakfast room is finished. The hundred and five year old cupboard doors have been dipped, stripped, undercoated and glossed. The rotten old skirting boards have been chucked out and replaced with shiny new ones. And the walls have been plastered, sized and papered to within an inch of their lives. Needless to say, Mrs H (chief paster of wallpaper) is quite pleased with Mr H (paper-hanger-in-chief). Tomorrow the pictures go back up, then that's the lot for this year. We wind down (or possibly up) towards Christmas.

Those of you who have (sort of) followed this blog for a while will have noticed the less than subtle changes that have overcome it as time has rolled on. The first Director General of the BBC, Lord Reith, famously stated that the purpose of the organization was to educate, inform and entertain. Whilst not seeking to make any kind of comparison between a part time council employee cum morris dancer and the First Baron Reith, I started blogging around four years ago in the (I now realise) mistaken belief that I could, perhaps, aspire to some of those lofty Reithian precepts. How dare I presume attempt to educate you, my dear, but admittedly very small, audience! You, who, I am sure, already knew the recipe for recreating Roman fish sauce. You, who have probably written more poems in emulation of Sir John Betjeman than I have had hot dinners. You, who have been made far sicker than I by far worse repasts than a tub of jellied eels.

But at least, at the outset, the blog had a sense of purpose. Over the intervening months and years, I have to say, sadly, that this sense of purpose has fallen away, to be replaced by what I can only describe as stream of consciousness drivel. It is the equivalent of an inebriated tramp, weighed down by supermarket shopping bags filled with old newspapers, muttering softly to himself as he shuffles along a poorly lit alleyway in a corner of a sink estate in south east London. In the rain. And I'm not going to do it any more. Well, not much.

 Perhaps, now I have some extra time on my hands, I should find something useful to do. Like learning Anglo Saxon. Or drinking wine. Or perhaps doing both together. Perhaps I could finish my partially completed sitcom, 'Pardon my Jaguar', or even 'Postman Pat's Bloody Day', a post-apocalyptic (geddit?) view of a Royal Mail employee in Cumbria...

 

From Bumhole to Banana in seven paragraphs

Today I've been picking over the carcase of this old blog of mine. And I've found any number of metaphorical bones, bleaching in the sun, that are the remains of blog posts started but never finished. Things that seemed A Good Idea At The Time. This is one of them...

A few years ago someone coined the word 'NIMBY'. The term is generally used in a critical way to denote those people who oppose the building of houses, industrial units, airports, etc. in their area, and means 'Not In My Back Yard'. And there certainly seems to be a fair amount of nimbyism around at the moment. Like it or not, the UK government has signed up to us producing x per cent of 'green' energy by the year two thousand and something. And so, rather like Arthur Dent's Bypass in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, the infrastructure for renewables has Got To Be Built, and it's Going To Be Built. So, we're looking at wind turbines, some of which are around 400 feet tall, and additional pylons to carry all that lovely green energy. But every time a new wind farm is announced, or set of pylons planned, a Pressure Group springs into action.

Pressure groups are curious animals. In the UK they generally consist of what used to be called 'the middle classes'; doctors, solicitors and the like, who live in picturesque villages or pleasant, leafy suburbs. And they are ever ready to spring into action when notification is received that a wind farm or power station is scheduled to be built in their particular back yard. So, they form their committees, hire halls for meetings, and spend just about all of their spare time getting up petitions, badgering Councils and chatting to the media about the terrible injustice of whatever it is that is planned for Sleepy Leafyville. And the One Thing that pressure groups will always point out is that this particular development is in The Wrong Place.

The Wrong Place. Let's have a look at this for a moment in the context of wind turbines. Wind turbines produce electricity, but to do so, they need something called wind. Large numbers of pressure group people live in the country, where winds blow freely over hills and through valleys. So on the face of it, windy country places would seem to be quite good places for wind turbines. Oh, and I should perhaps mention that these same pressure group people live in houses that are connected, as far as one can ascertain, to the National Grid, which supplies them with electricity, and they are quite happy to avail themselves of its use. Could it be that, when they tell us the proposed development is in the wrong place, they are really saying that it should be built near poor people? After all, most poor people live in council houses, don't they? With old cars and mattresses in the front garden? And the fact that they spend most of their spare time in the betting shop or pub means that they are unlikely to be bothered if a bunch of wind turbines are parked close to their Sink Estate?

Sorry. I think I'm getting a bit cynical in my old age. But pressure groups do seem to be a bit po-faced, don't they? I think they need to try and appeal to those difficult-to-reach individuals by being a bit creative. They could start with a snazzy acronym. Let's suppose you live in Petersfield and you want to prevent the incursion of wind turbines: hey presto! Petersfield Residents Against Turbines (PRATs). Or maybe you're part of a group of mums in the West Midlands who are trying to prevent the building of a new generating plant:  Birmingham United Mothers Heavily Opposed to Local Electricity Substation (BUMHOLES).

Some pressure groups manage to turn themselves into charities, the better to raise funds in order to fight their particular battle. And it seems that, in order to summon up a bit of cash from the general public, supporters are expected to undergo ever more difficult ordeals in the name of charity. Whatever happened to 'excuse me, I'm collecting for BUMHOLES. Can you give me some money, please?' Now it's 'hiya, I'm being tasered by my local police force to raise money for BUMHOLES. Will you give me a tenner to get zapped?' How would you respond to the latter? Would you say 'no, that's a terrible idea!' or 'your story has touched my heart. I'll give you twenty quid...but only if I can watch'.

So. If the government decides to build a giant set of wind chimes overlooking your conservatory, don't despair. Set up your own little pressure group, give it a catchy cognomen, have bits of yourself tattooed to fill the fighting fund, and tell anyone who will listen that it's in the wrong place. And when they accuse you of being a NIMBY, laugh in their face and tell them you belong to the BANANA bunch - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Strictly Come Loft Boarding

What an extraordinary length of time it is since we last spoke. And what amazing things have happened since then. Well...none, to be honest. But I am still around, still working, still dancing and still decorating. The latter task seems never ending. Wallpapering and painting our bedroom was straightforward enough, but the breakfast room...

The breakfast room had been smelling a bit musty, and I'd noticed a couple of dodgy floorboards. So, I took them up, only to be confronted by a set of floor joist bearers that were rotten and riddled with the result of over a hundred years' worth of woodworm. Over the next couple of weeks I spent a jolly time stripping out and replacing the bearers, treating them with anti-worm jollop and filling around twenty rubble bags with, erm, rubble. The stuff looked suspiciously like the leftovers of the bomb damage our house suffered in the last war, courtesy of the Luftwaffe. I also found that the skirting boards were rotten and knackered, and removing them dislodged huge amounts of wall plaster, which I had to pay a plasterer to fix. What had started as a bit of cosmetic work ended up as a mammoth (and expensive) task.

Then there was the laundry room. Stripped out, wallpapered, painted and fitted with new shelves, this at least was a reasonably quick fix. Mrs H was happy because she can, at last, set all the new sets of sheets and towels out. The sheets and towels we bought before we moved. Four years ago. And then it was time to move on to the next job; boarding out the loft. Not, as an American acquaintance thought, renting it out, but rather placing boards over the joists so I can use the area for storage. I will no doubt fill it with things that would be better taken to the rubbish dump. Why do I insist on keeping things that should be re-homed, or sent to landfill to fascinate a future generation of archaeologists when they eventually unearth them hundreds of years from now? Sometimes I wish I could live my life according to the code of the Buddhist monks. They manage with a razor, a needle, a begging bowl and a few other odds and sods. If you met a Buddhist monk in a supermarket you could bet your life you'd find him in the 'Five Items or Fewer' checkout queue.

There weren't many Buddhist monks in Willingdon church hall on Friday; just a bunch of morris dancers in mufti, attempting to get to grips with a dance called Bill Brewer, which is loosely based around the tune for Widecombe Fair. And quite a good dance it is, or will be once I've got the hang of it. Some morris dances demand a great deal of concentration and not a little technical skill; every bit as much as the contestants on Strictly Come Dancing have to deal with. I really do think that the BBC is missing a trick. I could see Strictly Come Morris Dancing working well as part of the Saturday evening schedule...

Sun, sanding and psychopathic sorting

The weather down here in Sussex was pretty good earlier in the week, with temperatures up in the eighties fahrenheit, in contrast to the cold and rain we had in April. We were out dancing last Friday night at a pleasant little pub in Alciston (pronounced 'Aston') called the Rose Cottage. And, as often happens early on in the dancing out season, we outnumbered the spectators. At one point (I kid you not) our appreciative audience consisted of three people and a Jack Russell/Spaniel cross. The dog seemed to enjoy it.

Curiously, this warmer weather has had a strange effect on Mrs H and on me; we have simultaneously developed awful summer colds. But, being the stalwarts that we are, we haven't allowed it to stop us from getting on with things. I spent a jolly day yesterday, sanding down skirting boards and filling holes in walls, whilst Mrs H pottered around the house doing various exciting chores. I had thought, when I moved to the coast just over three years ago, that I would spend my time in solitary walks along a windswept beach, composing poetry or thinking through the next chapter of my as yet incomplete book, The Middenshire Chronicles, but that's not how things turned out. Instead, I work five mornings a week, then come home to a pot of filler and a sheet of sandpaper. But, once all the work has been completed, there will (I hope) be time for the walking and composing.

My preoccupation with work and domestic refurbishment does not, however, prevent my being creative. Why, only the other day I invented an eye test chart for illiterate gardeners - instead of capital letters, I used vegetables. And I came up with a way of avoiding the expense of personalised car number plates - simply take the letters from your car's registration number and change your name by deed poll to match them. Probably best I copyright these ideas in case someone else tries to pass them off as theirs.

Nor does work and DIY stop me from getting out of the house now and then. The other day I thought I would take the old papers and magazines down to the small recycling area that lives in a corner of the car park at the end of our road. It was a quiet Sunday morning and there was no-one else around. As I approached the recycling bins, I saw a man leaning against one of them, reading a newspaper in what I can only describe as a furious manner. When he clocked my arrival, he stopped reading, opened up the bin he had been leaning on, and started sorting through the mixed collection of papers and magazines therein. He placed the magazines in a separate bin, and returned the newspapers to the first.

'Don't people realise?' he asked. 'Papers and magazines should be sorted.'

I muttered something like 'Oh, really?' as I absent-mindedly placed my own mixed load of papers and mags in the bin. He instantly fell upon them like a wolf on its prey and began to furiously sort them into categories.

'I don't know what's wrong with these people,' he said. 'Magazines in one bin, papers in another. How difficult is that?'

I was about to point out the sticky labels on the paper recyc bins that permitted both types of periodical in the same receptacle, but thought better of it.

'Violence. That's all these people understand,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Violence.'

So, there I was. In a deserted street with a furious man who wanted to tear amateur recyclers to pieces with his bare hands. I decided to leave Mr Furious to his one man crusade, and wandered off to buy some newspapers to replace the ones my potentially violent acquaintance was e'en now in the process of sorting.

Never a dull moment is Sussex.

A work in progress

I was to have been dancing today, at the Ram Inn at Firle and in the village of Alfriston. But it was not to be. Some typical Bank Holiday weather (rain and high winds) put paid to Long Man's planned programme. So, after a consolatory pint of Harveys bitter, I trundled off home to watch Midsomer Murders. And, in an idle moment, started writing a modern sea shanty. As you do.

Twas on a bonny morn me boys
We sailed upon the sea - oh
All for to catch the silv'ry fish
And have some for our tea - oh

Chorus

And it's heave ho me jolly lads
Let's start the outboard motor-oh!
Heave ho, we're homeward bound
'Cos we've passed our EU quota-oh!

Our skipper bold threw out the nets
Some seafood for to slay - oh
He caught some crabs and a couple of dabs
And threw the rest away - oh

Chorus

The skipper sighed and sadly said
'There'll be no pay today-oh
For those in Brussels have decreed
We throw good fish away-oh

Chorus

If anyone's interested in writing a few more verses, please feel free.