Waving goodbye

I've always tried, with my daughters, to follow the example my own Dad set. Nothing was too much trouble for him. He'd always be there with the offer of a helping hand, or a lift to take me wherever I needed to go. So there I was, at 2.30am, knocking on Natalie's door telling her it was time to get up and go to the airport to catch the first leg of her three-flight journey to this year's field trip in Belize.

Belize? Flippin' 'eck! The most exotic educational trip I declined as a student (I never went on any school trips) was to northern France. Mind you, she has been through the mill a bit these past few months what with Hep-C, rabies and typhoid injections and anti-malaria pills she's felt pretty sick a lot of the time, so I hope the trip is worth it. I'm sure it will be. Trip of a lifetime, probably, but before the excitement comes many hours of flying. 6am flight to Amsterdam, then the 10.45 transatlantic leg to Houston (10 hours flying) and a final 90-minute flight to Belize. They're on Central Standard Time there, 7 hours behind the UK, so when she lands at 4.45pm local time her body will think it's 11.45pm, and she'll have been awake for 22 hours. I have no idea how much more journeying there is at the tropical end between the airport and the resort.

Check-in for the Amsterdam flight didn't open until 4am but the trip organiser had insisted everyone be at the airport by 3am. I know. What can you do? At least, when we walked into the departures hall at 3.05, a small group of her mates had already gathered near the desk. So we hugged, I waved goodbye, and left her in St. Christopher's (and KLM's) capable hands.

First song is in the bag!

Well, it's been a long time coming but at last, after an absence of more than three years, I once again find myself in Annie's bedroom.

Oo-err missus! No! Not like that. I was there to SING.

Yes, we've finally started recording for the second album. The songwriting process, interrupted as it has been by house moves, creative dry spells, changing jobs, other projects, and all the minutiae that life throws in the path of the struggling, part-time artist, has stretched from November 2005 - when we wrote the last of the songs for our first album - to now, when we decided it was about time to put voice to microphone and lay down some of the twelve new tracks we've been writing during those three-and-a-half years.

I had only the vaguest realisation somewhere in the back of my mind that it had been so long, but looking at the dates on some of the music and lyric files brought it home to me. The one we recorded tonight - Flight of the Raven - was written in April 2006!

And boy, am I rusty. It's been at least a year since I did any serious singing, so the first hour of tonight's recording session was spent trying to blow the cobwebs off my pipes and get back in the groove. But we got there in the end, and without THAT much help from Annie's clever pitch-correction software. I think she only needed to get that out of the kitbag once, although we did struggle to come up with a decent harmony line for the chorus.

The sense of achievement though, after two-and-a-half hours, when I sang the last line and we both nodded at each other in recognition of a good "take," was every bit as powerful as that first time back in 2005 when we recorded Broken Rules. We'll be doing this every Thursday for the next few weeks. I'll be impressed if we can maintain a rate of one song per night - we chose a relatively easy one to start with - but whatever the rate of progress, we've made a start. And as we all know, the journey of a thousand songs begins with a single note. Or something.

English as she is spoked

As you might expect, with being a writer, I love the English language. Not just the wealth of vocabulary or the beauty of a well-crafted sentence, but its fluidity. It's ability to change and grow, adopting new words from other cultures and adapting existing ones to meet new needs.

Sometimes, the invention of new words, which can sometimes appear to be a full-time job for the tabloids, works really well. One of the best examples that springs to mind is "squarial" - a type of satellite dish introduced by British Satellite Broadcasting in the late eighties which was, you guessed it, both square and an aerial. As with most things these days, there's a Wikipedia page on it if you're interested, but the point of mentioning it is that it was a newly-coined word that, for me, worked really well because it correctly and succinctly described exactly what it was. Sadly the word, like the thing it described, became defunct in 1990 with the demise of BSB.

And also sadly, the phrase "works really well" can't be applied to all new words. Especially words like the one I heard on the radio today: nanobreak.

Intended to mean a short break (holiday) - one shorter than a weekend break, i.e. one night - it fails at the most basic level. The level of naive use of a term that has a specific, scientific meaning. "Nano" is an SI prefix meaning one billionth of something, as in: nanometre - one billionth of a metre. It also has widespread usage in relation to things on a nanometre scale, such as nanoengineering, nanotechnology, etc, but unfortunately it is also entering the popular consciousness as a "cool" way of saying "very small."

But, see, the problem I have with it, and the thing that made me roll my eyes in exasperation at the kind of marketroid thinking that does this to English, is that a nanobreak would be WAY shorter than a one-night stay somewhere. A nanobreak would be a billionth of a break. So assuming the measure "break" relates to what most people take as their annual holiday - two weeks (in which case, incidentally, a one-week break could be referred to as a semi- or demi-break) - then taking a nanobreak would involve going on holiday for 0.0012096 seconds.

Mind you, a lot of my holidays feel as though they've been that short, on the day I go back to work.

Comestible confusion

As usual on my way to pick Nikki up from work today I was listening to Radio 4. The pundits were discussing research into links between diet and prostate cancer and when I joined the programme one guy was going on about how he has recognised that dairy foods carry an increased risk and that he's eliminated them from his diet completely.

Now I'm as worried about prostate cancer as the next man. Well, actually, it's probably the examination to check me out for prostate cancer that me and the next man are worried about, but anyway... a life without dairy? No butter? No ice-cream? No CHEESE? No thank you.

As the programme continued, the alternative viewpoint came from a lady researcher, who shot the guy's argument down in flames. That's my spin on her arguments anyway. "Dairy hater obliterated by gorgeous cream-loving temptress." Or something. Her counter-argument was beautifully executed as a pincer movement. From the North came the revelation that this "increased risk" to dairy-eating prostate owners was only 10%. So if 1 person in every 1,000 is at risk on average, among the dairy eaters the risk will be 1.1 people in 1,000. Or, to put it another way, 1 person in 900. (Presumably. Stats was never my strong point.) Wow. I'm so scared. But she wasn't done. Remember the pincer movement. From the South came marching the second offensive. That dairy foods have positive effects too. In particular their calcium-related compounds have been proven to reduce the chances of suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

So there we have it. In stark, tabloid terms: go mad and keep your man gland, or stay sane but lose the juice.

But of course it's not as simple as that. These things never are. Foods are remarkably complicated chemical and biological agents, which often have beneficial AND deleterious effects in combination. And as if that weren't hard enough to get your head around, those effects can be reduced or exacerbated by your individual susceptibilities, whether genetic, environmental, or behavioural. Research continues into the complex interplay of all these factors, but increasingly I find myself asking: what's the point?

I don't want to live in a world where I have to eat exactly this much of this and not more than that much of that, not more than once a week and certainly not after consuming the other. Where I'm instructed to have five-a-day, exercise three times a day for twenty minutes at something that elevates my heart rate by 50%, avoid dairy, saturated fat, barbecued food, strong alcohol, sugar, cholesterol, and on, and on, and on. Jeez I'd be so stressed with worrying whether I was doing the right thing at the right time, the very act of trying to stay healthy would make me ill!

No, the research is all very interesting an' all, but I'll carry on doing what I like, when I like, and avoiding what I don't like, when I don't like it. If that approach has consequences then that's no different from any other approach. There's more to life than how long it is. It may be an overused phrase in these days of multi-forwarded emails, but it's still true that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

We're baffled

As I mentioned yesterday, on our trip to the garden centre we had intended to buy a fat snax holder. These little balls of goodness come in their own nylon mesh bags, but with a warning that small birds' claws can become trapped. They shouldn't really be hung up in these bags, but rather in a specially-designed holder. Perhaps more frustrating for us was the constant attention of the squirrels, who found the bags altogether too easy to lift off their hooks. The sight of several fat snax balls being dragged away across the lawn had made up our minds that we needed to protect them behind a strong wire cage.

Imagine our delight then, while perusing the various fat snax holders on offer, along with other garden-bird-feeding equipment, to discover the existence of a specially-designed Squirrel Baffle. For only a fiver, this clear plastic dome is attached to the feeding station pole, preventing Tufty from ascending to the banquet above. A bargain! They've already cost us more than that in stolen fat snax!

The baffle, even easier to assemble than the incinerator, was in place in minutes, and so far today each of us - Nikki, Natalie and myself - has witnessed its efficacy in foiling Tufty's attempts at purloining our avian comestibles.

The squirrels still climb the pole. They can see the food, hanging temptingly, through the baffle. On reaching the underneath of the baffle they adopt a confused look, glance right and left hoping to find a way through, or past, or over. Finding none they slide dejectedly back down the pole and slink off across the garden in search of alternative aliment. Result!

Incinerate!

With several things on our garden-related shopping list today and Mr Weatherman promising heavy rain later, we made an early start and took breakfast at the garden centre this morning. The bacon baps and toasted teacakes were excellent, so this may become a semi-regular thing (constrained only by the slight ache in the wallet caused by paying £5.25 for a bacon bap).

No visit to Woodford is complete without a full tour of the grounds, so along with the planned purchases of an incinerator, a fat snax holder for the bird feeder, and some rooting compound, we ended up with a trolley full of goodies including this rather attractive dianthus which now graces the deck, and a compact patio clematis (down there on the right) whose colour might have been especially bred to match the tub vacated by our dogwood, which we planted out in the border the weekend before last.

I left all the planting and arranging to Nikki. My attention was focused on man things. Assembling the incinerator (a rather grand title for the simple task of screwing its three feet on) and getting started with the burning.

I've had a lifelong fascination with fire, almost to the point of pyromania. It explains the large, strangely shaped scar on my right hand, and manifested itself when I was a child in hours spent in the woods collecting fallen branches, building bonfires and watching them burn. And then returning to the embers the following Saturday to rake them back into life and begin the whole process over again.

Using a garden incinerator isn't quite as satisfying as that - having to wait until the wood has burned down before adding more slows the whole process down too much - but it comes a close second. In the end the promised rain didn't arrive and I was able to keep the fire going from noon until late afternoon, reducing the stack of oily floorboards by about a third and seeing off the various lengths of pruned tree completely.

In the intervals between loading wood into the bin, and picking up the odd smoking remnant that fell out, I busied myself collecting bricks from the site and stacking them by the wall, along with sorting the multitude of detritus that litters the area into piles of keepers and chuckers.

After four hours the air holes in our shiny new incinerator were totally blocked with ash, which had built up to more than half fill the bin. This slowed down the rate of burn considerably. It wasn't shiny any more either. The galvanising, or whatever had given it that shiny appearance, had all burned off within the first five minutes. I waited until the fuel level dropped below the rim, slotted the chimneyed lid into place, and left the rest of the burning for another day.

Floor found to be fire fodder

Weather forecast was good for today; not so good for tomorrow, so I was determined to make a start on lifting the garage floor.

Expecting at least some of it to be salvageable, I spent the first hour or so moving our collection of dried logs and tree stumps (which would be ideal for log fires, if we ever lit one in the dining room any more) from the shed to the wood store. Funny how a pile of wood looks fairly small until you try to move it. I adopted my usual mental approach to tasks of this kind: "each piece moved is one piece less to move" and sure enough when I surfaced from that self-imposed mental idle, the job was done and the shed looked considerably more capacious.

Nikki retrieved my crowbar and hammer from the study, and I set to lifting the boards, starting at the door end and working towards the house.

It soon became clear that not a single piece of floor could be rescued. Those two planks that had looked so promising were both too thin to support a man's weight (well, THIS man anyway) and too rotten underneath to be used for anything else. Indeed all the boards, including the ones that looked OK from above, hid a total mess underneath. Whether they'd been chewed up by the hundreds of woodlice living in the sub-floor space, or rotted with the damp, or been turned into dust by woodworm and mould, they were all only good for one thing: burning.

The main reason? None of the floor had been protected from damp. I don't know who built that garage, or when, but they had a pretty strange idea of construction technique. The boards were carried on joists that rested on... earth. Yep, directly on the soil. In many cases these joists had rotted away to nothing - as you can see from the photo. When I tried to pick them up, they would fall apart leaving a trail of dust in the soil. Or they'd split in half, leaving the rotten half behind and me holding the chewed-up top half of damp, spongy timber.

These central joists had transferred their moisture to the floorboards, which were also in various stages of rot. Only at the edges, where the joists rested on a couple of courses of brick, made level with small pieces of slate, had the wood remained dry, but this had only stopped the rot - not the ravages of worm, beetle, and louse.

The patched section, as predicted, had suffered years of oil damage and had in fact given way, the boards beneath split and crumbled. Putting a positive spin on all this - at least the job went quickly. Only the first five or six boards had been nailed down, the rest simply laid loosely on their joists. With the boards neatly stacked against the wall, and having uncovered a couple of 2x2 flagstones, we're all set to have a cracking good fire so we'll be off to the garden centre tomorrow to buy an incinerator. Those oil-soaked boards should burn a treat!

Flawed floor

We dodged the showers yesterday to take a quick peek at that mysterious garage floor. It's built more like a floor you'd find in a house rather than a garage. Every garage I've ever seen has a huge slab of concrete for a floor, not floorboards.

Most of it, I should say, is made of boards. In one small area - which looks in the right position to have been beneath the old MGC's sump for most of the time - the boards have been reinforced with additional timbers laid perpendicular to the run and screwed into place. Presumably the wood beneath had softened under the influence of countless oil drips. It certainly feels spongy to the tread.

Closer to where the door was, the boards give way to more substantial planking - pieces of timber stretching the whole width of the building but more than an inch thick and a good six inches wide or more. If these are in good condition when I lift them, they can supplant the rather too large and heavy planks which I originally bought for decorating. Even closer to the door the whole mess dissolves into small offcuts, bits of pine and whatnot which would make good kindling should we ever again have a fire in the dining room.

About three-quarters of the way across the floor, one of the boards is loose and gives a hint of What Lies Beneath: eight or so 2x4 joists supporting the boards and which themselves are resting on what looks like a mishmash of brick, concrete, and old tarmac. I don't think I can be entirely certain what it is until I start digging it up. At the moment it's covered in a film of white dust. I'll be ignoring discomfort and my long-time hatred of the damn things, and wearing a mask when I tackle this. There is a chance this dust is years of slough from the cement asbestos walls and I don't fancy keeling over with mesothelioma in twenty years.

This is turning into yet another example of how one job leads to another. The demolition was just the start!

BBQ 2009

Last year we missed the good barbecuing weather by a day. This year we missed it by an entire week. Yes last Saturday, as my UK-based readers will fondly recall, was a blisteringly hot and sunny 27° - perfect weather for a BBQ, garden games and sitting under the shade of a gazebo sipping Pimms, or your tipple of choice. Yesterday the only outdoor tippling was provided by the iron-grey clouds blanketing the city, which proceeded to dump their load on us from early morning until mid-afternoon.

Hardly the stuff to inspire thoughts of garden gallivanting, or to enthuse the weary salad-maker (me) as he chops his parsley and soaks his bulgur wheat for the tabouleh, or empties tins of assorted beans into a large stainless-steel bowl for the three-bean salad, especially when he'd been up since 5.30am to boil the potatoes and eggs for a classic potato salad.

Still, the late afternoon forecast was for the weather to dry up between 2-3pm and remain dry for the rest of the evening, so at least the day wasn't set to be a complete wash-out even if it didn't match the gloriousness of the previous weekend. Having sussed the weather, it was with some dismay we learned via neighbourhood runner that the BBQ - its early stages anyway - had been forcibly decamped to the local club for the hours of 3-6pm.

Our forlorn troop of salads wended its way down the road and around the corner shortly after 3pm to join the other cold food on a series of low tables, to be picked over while the kids were entertained with various games of musical chairs, bumps and egg & spoon races (Health-and-Safety-mandated plastic eggs, naturally).

After this brief exile we marched the remaining salads, quiches and trifles back down the road to their rightful home, alongside the soon-to-be grilled burgers, sausages, toasties, kebabs and an assortment of breads. At the urging of several neighbours I once again performed my erection in the garden - an impressive affair that can easily shelter 20 people - while other assorted male partners looked on with envy from their more traditional positions manning the barbecues.

It wasn't long before I'd put myself on the outside of three hot dogs, a burger, two toasties and two portions of tiramisu, at which point I realised I was almost incapable of sitting down so I'd better stop. Luckily it was time for the quiz, a marginally easier version of last year's organised into 26 questions whose answers began with successive letters of the alphabet. Our team - named Royal Jerseys in honour of the potato salad and other potato-related delights - won with 17/26. It would have been 18 if I'd been able to remember the Nikkei in time. Why is it when you need Nikkei all you can think of is Hang Seng?

All this tongue-in-cheek hilarity belies the fact that I was totally not in the mood for a social event yesterday. In fact all of us agreed we'd far rather be sat cosily in front of a good film than trying to find the other person in the room going "oink" (the Animal Game) or trying to pick up a rapidly-diminishing cereal carton using only our teeth, and without touching the floor with any part of our bodies other than feet (the Box Game). Looking on the bright side, we did manage to avoid any hint of Choo-Choo.

So for the second year running, we didn't stay until 3am. We didn't even stay until midnight. We left as soon as the Box Game had run its course (with five limber contortionists attempting to pick up a flat piece of cardboard from the floor), thereby relieving the remaining party-goers of our bah humbugnesses.

Garage Sale

Not so much a "sale", to be fair, more a giveaway.

Looking more like a Second World War Nissen hut, our "garage" has blighted the bottom of our garden since before it was our garden. Since the very first day we came to view, and sat at the picnic table enjoying a cup of tea with the previous owners.

I can't remember if we decided then and there it had to go, but if not it wasn't long after. Barely wide enough to accommodate the smallest car (it used to house an MGC GT) and accessible only down a lane that is itself barely wide enough for a car to pass (our neighbour used to drive a Reliant Robin, which was OK, but anything larger? Dicey.) it was a garage in name only as far as we were concerned.

Various options were discussed and discarded over the years. Its cement asbestos construction allegedly meant that extreme care had to be taken in any demolition. Panels were not to be broken, and afterward had supposedly to be wrapped in heavy-duty polythene sheet and taken to the councip tip, which required 24-hours notice. Although not mandatory, it was also recommended to wear protective clothing - a mask at least and preferably a disposable cover-all.

Imagine my surprise then, when our two-man demolition crew arrived in shorts/jeans and t-shirts and proceeded to take the erection apart piece by piece, apparently unconcerned as they broke panels in half and barrowed them out to the road (the lane having proven to be too narrow for their Transit tipper).

I had intended to take "progress" shots on-site, but having witnessed their method from the study window I decided it would be more prudent to remain out of range of the dustclouds surrounding them. Progress, unhampered by protective suits, masks, or the desire not to disturb the integrity of the panels, was impressively rapid. The crew arrived at 9am and within an hour had removed the asbestos sheet, membrane and wooden boards comprising the roof structure, completely exposing the trusses.

Half an hour later the entire roof had disappeared.

After a further half-hour the lane-side wall and door end were down, and the garden side wall can be seen here leaning drunkenly inwards. By noon, the final wall - the gable end nearest the house - had fallen and the garage was, effectively, no more. The men had been on-site less than three hours.

After a quick tea break and the first trip to the tip to dispose of all the timber, they returned to bag up the cement panels and sweep up.

Taken from the same position as the first photo above, this is how the garden looks now. A little less like a 1950's throwback and a little more like the 21st century suburban haven we want it to be. Admittedly the flowering currant stuck apparently haphazardly in the middle of the plot gives it a slightly bizarre aspect, but the plan is to take back-up cuttings from this before trying to transplant the mature tree to a more sensible location.

We have been left with one final interesting task. The disposal of the garage floor.

Not, as for modern constructs, a concrete float, but instead what appears to be a suspended wood floor made up of various gash pieces of timber, off-cuts of floorboard and whatnot, all resting on a low course of bricks. Some of this flooring timber can, I hope, be rescued and used to repair some of the more chewed-up boards inside the house (although they will need sanding and treating). The rest will have to be burned. Probably the first use of the new space, once we've purchased a traditional garden incinerator.

Back in the groove

What with one thing and another, the replaced tiling around the new shower tray wasn't grouted up until Saturday, which meant New Plumber had to call back yesterday to seal the tray and the door, which in turn meant we had to wait until today to try it out. But you can bet there was a queue for that bathroom once the sealant had dried.

Since the whole problem was caused by the tray being set too low and with insufficient support, I expected to have to step up into the new tray. As it turned out the extra couple of centimetres makes hardly any difference to the "entering experience" which has definitely got my subconscious confused. My "exiting experience" came with an in-built assumption of a step down with the result that I stubbed my foot on the bathroom floor. Kind of like when you're walking downstairs and there's one less step than you expected. I'm sure I'll get over it.

Sadly I must admit to being not entirely happy with the result. Compared with the old tray, this one doesn't have much of a fall, so the water runs away much more slowly and also pools in the tray and around the edges rather than disappearing completely. It's also significantly shallower, so we'll have to be ultra-diligent about keeping the trap clear or else we'll be flooding the bathroom floor. At its highest point, opposite the trap, the tray is less than one centimetre deep.

Still, if I was to accentuate the positive I'd have to say that after three consecutive showers (Nat's been staying with us on study leave for a few weeks) there's no sign of a leak, and as that was the whole point of the exercise I think we can tick that box.

Last day

Last day of May, and the last day of our holiday sadly. We spent another few hours in the garden clearing the border, which is now looking pretty darn good and makes the garden appear much wider. There's a couple of metres of clearance still to do - probably another day's work - at which point the whole of the left-hand side will be done.

Since this represents our entire plan for the garden this year I think it's safe to say we're ahead of schedule and we might start thinking about clearing the bottom border, building a raised bed, or even planting some rhododendrons (all in the plan for Year 2), and the discovery that New Plumber knows someone who can demolish cement asbestos garages, introduced the possibility of bringing that item forward from Year 3!

Still not quite Capability Brown standard but for two non-gardeners we've surprised ourselves with how much fun it's been.

With the hottest part of the day approaching we decamped to our nice cool lounge to watch the last five episodes of The Wire (Season 2). Even better than the first, and it's now easy to see why this is such a cult programme. Season 3 starts on BBC Two on June 15 and we can't wait.

Shower shenanigans part 2

New Plumber returned yesterday to prepare to fit our new shower tray, which was allegedly going to be shipped directly here. Sure enough it turned up mid-morning, and once he'd levelled the floor beneath and added some support in the shape of a slab of marine ply, we took a tentative stroll across the tray and marvelled at its stability and lack of flex.

Since the trap on the new tray is in the front right corner rather than the rear, some rejigging of drains was required (revealing another dubious practice of Previous Plumber: the use of push-fit joints in areas that would become inaccessible. New Plumber - very sensibly in my opinion - prefers to use bonded/sealed drain fittings in underfloor voids, thus assuring that slight movements will not cause joints to fail) and then it was time to cut the new tiles and fit everything together.

After several hours running up and down stairs (he cut the tiles in the front garden to prevent clouds of ceramic dust flying all over the house) and without a single wasted tile, the job was done. Sadly he ran out time to grout up, which can't be done until the tile cement has gone off, but he returned today to finish that part of the job. This introduced a further delay - silicone sealer can't be applied to wet grout - so we'll have to wait until Monday for that, and then a further 24-hours for the sealer to go off before we can shower.

So it was baths all round again today. Not ideal in this hot weather but at least the end of this tedious saga is in sight. Ironically, but predictably, the revamped shower looks almost indistinguishable from the leaky version, which is irritating in its own way. When you've forked out around a grand it would be nice to have something to show for it beyond the absence of a wet ceiling. I took a small crumb of comfort from the fact that, when we were trying to trace the details of the original fittings, we discovered that Previous Plumber no longer deals with Original Supplier, so we can only hope the incompetent fools have gone out of business.

Book Review: The Full Montezuma

This is less of a book review and more of a warning. I can't really review it properly as I didn't get past the fifth chapter, so I'll just say: steer clear.

Peter Moore is a humorous travel writer in the mould of Bill Bryson. Whether his other books match Bryson's I'll never know, because on the evidence of this one I don't even want to bother trying. In fact I hesitated to put the two names in the same sentence. In this book Moore sets off to travel across Mexico with his current girlfriend, whom he's only known for six weeks and to whom he constantly refers as the "girl next door" or, more often, simply "the GND."

I don't want to waste too much of my time or yours on this dreck so briefly: it's sloppily written, cliché-ridden, doesn't tell you much about the places they visit, displays an almost total lack of editing and is completely unfunny.

Moore's website makes occasional reference to his critics, assuming them to be frustrated authors. Well I'm happy to bolster his preconceptions in that one regard. Because this is yet another book that makes you think "Christ, I can write WAY better than this," and yet there his books sit, on the bookstore shelves, having managed somehow to be published, while mine continues to bounce back from agencies as if it's on elastic.

Scan fail

When discussing the merits of Aunt Bessie's cooking instructions a few days ago, I did intend giving you the pleasure of a pictorial representation of said pie, which looks every bit as delicious on the box as it did in real life. Sadly a quick reccie of the AB website turned up only a tiny thumbnail, so reluctantly I decided there was nothing for it but to scan the box.

We are the proud owners of a wireless Lexmark printer. The X4580.

A sexy looking beast, I think you'll agree, and it comes with an impressive list of features. Printer, fax, copier and scanner. I don't *quite* believe its stated speed of 18ppm full colour, but to be fair that claim is caveated by the all-important words "up to." Personally I've never known it print a page with any appreciable amount of colour in anything less than 20 seconds, but for our purposes that's fine, and its great benefit is, naturally, that it can sit over there atop the filing cabinet without any physical LAN connection. With just its little wireless indicator glowing a happy green.

True, it does tend to drop the odd packet while printing, at which point both printer and driver are prone to getting totally and utterly confused, requiring a complete reboot of either the printer, or the PC, or occasionally both. But this is a relatively rare occurrence and is nowhere near as annoying as its rather idiosyncratic behaviour when scanning. Which is the point of this tale. I know, I know, you were beginning to wonder whether I'd ever get there.

So there I was with my empty cherry pie box sitting on the glass, and the Lexmark printer - sorry, Multifunction Device - set to 'Scan'. At this point the device offers a list of PCs that it knows about and invites you to select the one you'd like to scan to. So far, so sensible. But then it goes into "Downloading Application List" mode. Yes, it interrogates the chosen PC to find out what apps are installed, so that it can scan your object and launch the right app. You can scan to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Paintshop Pro, PDF, JPEG, or basically anything you have installed that can cope with an image file.

But, see, my problem is, it downloads this application list EVERY TIME.

Now I don't know about you, but once I've got my PC set up it very rarely changes in terms of installed apps. When I can do my documents, websites, email and so on, I'm not one for constantly downloading new apps. But this damned thing will interrogate my PC for each individual scan. It can't even remember the application list DURING a scanning session. But the worst thing of all - and the point of this post (and the reason for the lack of a picture on my cherry pie cooking instructions post) - is that on around 50% of its attempts, it will FAIL to download the list. And guess what? Failure then requires a complete reboot of either the printer, or the PC, or occasionally both.

So in the end, I couldn't be arsed.

Hey, Lexmark? Are you listening? Memory is cheap, in case you hadn't noticed. Download the frigging list ONCE and SAVE it. And then offer an option to refresh the list as and when necessary. Then maybe I'll stand a better chance of decorating my blog, and keep my blood pressure down at the same time.

Biting the bullet

After more than two years of problems with our shower, and the recent failure of the structural underpinning idea, today we bit the bitter bullet and welcomed a new plumber into the house to rip out the shower tray and refit it properly.

It's quite alarming how quickly a relatively normal looking bathroom can be reduced to a building site. Within a couple of hours, the shower screen was off, the tiles had been removed from around the tray and the tray was out. We'd already sourced another box of 9 tiles from the original supplier - pretty lucky two years on! - which when added to the 5 we had left over, we calculated would be enough.

With the tray out, New Plumber was left scratching his head. Unlike every tray he'd ever seen, where they're designed to be fitted onto a level surface and the fall to the drain is moulded into the tray, THIS one required a fall to be created in the fitting surface (which explained in part why the original fitters had taken chunks out of the joists - but not why they had not given the tray enough support to prevent it from flexing).

We debated whether the tray had been supplied with a fitting kit that would have made the job easier, but at a distance of two years it was long gone, if it ever existed. There was only one sensible solution: a new tray. Which introduced its own problem: how to marry the new trap with the existing pipework for the drain, minimising the amount of disturbance to the network of hot, cold, and central heating pipework already criss-crossing the space below.

With at least a day's delay while the new tray was ordered, shipped and delivered, we resigned ourselves to being showerless until Saturday at the earliest.

The sense you were born with

We had cherry pie for dessert yesterday, and very nice it was too. Morello cherry, to be precise. Aunt Bessie rarely disappoints. Having neither the time nor the inclination for home-made puds, finding a source of mass-produced grub that approximates to home-made is no mean feat, and in that department the Aunt Bessie brand is a front runner in our house.

I had to laugh, though, at the cooking instructions. I mean, it's bad enough that pie packaging and the like have to carry the legend "serving suggestion" these days, just in case customers are stupid enough to believe that the box includes, you know, a jug of custard, a bowl, a spoon and - who knows? - probably even the person holding the spoon.

But that, apparently, doesn't even scratch the surface of customers' stupidity. And I quote:
"To oven cook: Pre-heat oven and remove outer packaging. Glaze with a little egg and/or milk and sprinkle with sugar. Place product on a baking tray and bake in the centre of the oven for 45-50 minutes, until pastry is golden brown. Half way through baking, turn the foil (round not upside down) to ensure even browning. Ensure product is piping hot before serving."

The italics are mine. You can imagine the phone call:
"Aunt Bessie support line. How can I help?"
"Allo. Is that Aunt Bessie?"
"It's the Aunt Bessie support line, yes."
"I want to speak to Aunt Bessie."
"Er... well she's not here right now. My name's Janet. Can I help?"
"I got pie all over the oven."
"Oh dear."
"Yeah. I followed your instructions, an' now there's pie everywhere."
"I don't think there's anything in our cooking instructions..."
"An' 'ow am I meant to serve it up, anyway, when it's upside dahn?"
"Upside down?"
"Yeah, like it sez in the instructions."

You couldn't make it up. Well, I just did, but I'm assuming the amendment to the cooking instructions came after just such an incident. The alternative is that someone in the Aunt Bessie packaging design department actually believes the public are stupid enough to misinterpret the line "halfway through baking, turn the foil to ensure even browning." Which, in a way, is even more frightening.

Puffin and blowin'

Almost exactly four weeks ago, Nikki discovered the RSPB's Puffin and Gannet cruise. Today, we drove over to Bridlington to board the Yorkshire Belle and take the three-hour trip up the coast to Flamborough Head to enjoy some of the most spectacular views imaginable of the hugely successful sea-bird sanctuary.

The journey to Bridlington took around two-and-a-half hours and, being Bank Holiday weekend, parking was at a premium by the time we arrived. The cruise sets sail at 4pm, so we had a couple of hours to walk along the sea-front absorbing the holiday atmosphere. The weather was not as bad as we expected - during the week the more worrying forecasts of heavy rain and wind had abated in favour of low cloud and showers, but in the event we did enjoy one or two breaks in the cloud that made the views even more breathtaking as shafts of sunlight illuminated the limestone cliffs.

The further North we sailed, the closer we got to the nesting sites and the more numerous the birds became. Herring gulls, kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, gannets and fulmars were present in abundance, and we saw quite a few puffins (usually moving too fast to photograph unfortunately) and even the odd shag. Many of the birds don't make "proper" nests. They simply roost on the cliffs, each of them seeming to know exactly which few square centimetres of the precarious perch belongs to them amidst their thousands of neighbours.

The gannetry at Bempton Cliffs is one of the most successful bird sanctuaries in Europe and has grown its bird population over the last 20 years from a few thousand to over 80,000 pairs. When the boat stops by the cliffs it's hard to know where to point the camera first, as the floating razorbills take off away from the boat, flapping their short stubby wings and leaving a trail of splashes behind them, while white-faced puffins swoop low over the water at high speed.

Looking directly overhead the sky is peppered with soaring, gliding, diving birds, either leaving for an evening fishing trip or returning to roost for the night. In the end, with my battery flashing red after having taken almost 200 stills and several minutes of video footage, I let the camera dangle and just absorbed the atmosphere, the constant cry of the seabirds, the smell of the water and the gentle swaying of the boat.

All too soon it was time to set off on the return leg to port, which seemed to pass much more quickly than the outward leg. One of the most enjoyable days out I've ever experienced, and nicely rounded off with a fish supper at a coastal chippy.

The aged P

Took a day off work to visit Mum today. Our social calendar (at weekends, at least) has been, and is going to be, pretty hectic of late and it was the only way we could squeeze a visit in. I'd been feeling guilty at the amount of time that's elapsed since our last visit (first weekend of March) but I needn't have worried. Her memory is so bad now that I honestly don't think she knew how long it had been.

Example: I call to tell her we're coming for a visit on Friday and by the time she's walked from phone to calendar she's forgotten what I said, and writes it up as Saturday. So she wasn't expecting us until tomorrow.

It's frustrating, because for once we had a heap of news, but while I was telling her all about what we'd been doing and where we'd been going, you could almost see the words entering one ear and exiting the other. With a glazed expression in between, exhibiting no interest at all in what I was saying.

And it reminded me of a thought I've had a lot recently, regarding our sphere of influence and how it resembles a normal distribution curve. Babies and very young children know nothing of the world outside their immediate environment, and to a large extent the world outside their immediate environment knows nothing of them. As they grow and start to attend school, make friends and go out into the world, they take a greater interest and are in turn more well known and recognised by their peers. At the height of their career, in a small number of cases, they might influence and be known by a large percentage of the world's population, but even "regular" people follow world news and are known to maybe a couple of thousand others.

When you start down the other side of the curve, heading for old age, the reverse happens until, in most cases, you end up like my Mum: knowing or caring very little about what happens outside your four walls, and vice versa. Hope I die before I get old, sang The Who famously, and on the evidence before me today I have to say, they were bang on.

Snouts in the trough

Politicians, eh? My dear old Dad always used to call it a dirty business, and by God he was right. Even if you accept for one minute the old chestnut trotted out on every news bulletin in the past few weeks - that people go into it in the hope they'll be able to make a difference - it's clear there's a whole bucketload of truth in the adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Among the miles of column inches and video footage that's poured from the media since this story broke, there are some who claim there are more important stories that should be grabbing our attention in these credit crunchy times, that the sums of money involved are relatively small (in government terms, if not in average people's salary terms) and that maybe not everyone at Westminster is to blame. A lot of this, for me, misses the point. The point is: integrity. The expectation of it, the lack of it, and its apparent replacement by hubris.

I can't say I'm happy to pay taxes. Is anyone? When I look at my pay slip each month and work out how much is taken away before I see any of it, I scratch my head and sigh. When I was younger I naively consoled myself with the thought that those responsible for spending the money we all grudgingly hand over were at least using it for the general good, to improve the lot of the community and to support the less fortunate. Years of watching them blow billions of pounds on fatuous schemes, illegal wars and town twinning put paid to that notion, leaving behind a much less attractive reality - that successive governments exhibit greater or lesser degrees of incompetence but in the end they are, all of them, incompetent to some degree.

But at least, I told (fooled) myself, they weren't benefiting personally. Were they? Well yes, of course they were. Where there's power and influence, there's money. And where there's money, there's the chance to pocket some of it. And where there's a chance, for most people, there's a temptation, a shrug, and a quiet trousering of the wad.

Credibility, my old boss used to say, is like virginity: one cock-up and it's gone forever. And throughout this sorry tale, there's been much more than one, as credibility and integrity have been shredded. Some random thoughts:

• The expenses fiddling had been going on for years. There's no evidence that anything would have changed if there'd been no leak, despite there being gross, obvious and ongoing breaches of rules, lack of correct monitoring and a general approach of grabbing whatever they could
• When it began to occur to them that we might find out, they continued to do everything possible to cover it up. Parliamentary Ombudsmen who got too close to the truth were sacked, or prevented from doing their job. Motions were passed to try to prevent the application of the FoI Act to MPs. The general impression, far from being one of gravitas and integrity, was more like the behaviour of ants when their nest is uncovered. Scrabbling around trying to hide the treasure
• Once the truth was out, suddenly everyone was a "victim of the system." I've done nothing wrong, I obeyed the rules, why didn't someone tell me I couldn't claim for decorating, moat cleaning, 17th-century mahogany hand-carved furniture, etc, etc. For people who supposedly have the intelligence and leadership qualities necessary to run a country, this was at least disingenuous. I've seen better behaviour from schoolchildren.
• It soon became clear that claiming to only have followed rules wasn't going to wash with the public, who not surprisingly expected more from their leaders. So did they come clean? No. They started looking for a scapegoat, of course. Step forward Speaker Michael Martin, who was required to fall on his sword as the man in charge of the fees office, which presumably was staffed exclusively by people who couldn't tell the difference between a legitimate expense and a fiddle. Today's Matt cartoon in the Telegraph was spot on. Two MPs are standing in the shadow of the House of Commons and one says to the other: "As soon as I saw what I'd been up to, I knew the Speaker had to go"
• Even though the solution to the problem should be very simple - it is one, after all, that every major company in the country solves on a daily basis - the arch complicator Gordon Brown as usual managed to make it sound like a problem so complex that it challenged the brightest minds in government. (*cough*) It was going to take weeks, maybe months to come up with a solution. Remember this: it takes a really intelligent, innovative and astute person to analyse a situation and come up with a simple solution. Just about anyone can think of a way of solving a problem that is long-winded, complicated, and difficult to manage.
• Finally, we had a bit of a backlash from the smarting MPs who didn't like the thought of their gravy train being derailed. One overblown ego even went so far as to claim that the whole expenses debacle was driven by jealousy, just because "I've got a very big house." I don't know about you, but I don't want the country to be run by people like that. People who think the country owes them whatever they choose to take, that privileges are theirs by right and the rest of us should keep our noses out of their business because we're clearly too thick, or too jealous, or too insignificant. Politicians serve the people, not the other way round, and servitude exhibits humility, integrity, compassion and hard work.
  

So what's the answer?

One of the things that has many people scratching their heads is the entire question of having two homes, where one of them is effectively paid for on expenses. What is that all about? There are countless thousands of people who have to work in the City, and live elsewhere. They commute. They work just as long - or longer - hours than politicians, often for much less money. If they don't commute daily, they stay in hotels and claim the cost of that on expenses. Works perfectly well for them, why not for MPs?

If there's a question of security, or for some unfathomable reason London hotels are not suitable for politicians despite being just fine for every other businessman and woman in the capital, then build somewhere, or compulsorily purchase somewhere, and fit it out for the purpose. Either way it's got to be cheaper than the current scheme. And they don't need flock wallpaper and 17th-century desks. They're supposed to be working people. Regular furniture from IKEA is good enough for us, so it's good enough for them. There's only 600-odd of the buggers, and they don't all need another London pad anyway.

And finally, and probably most surprising to the general public, is this whole business of the incompetence or downright fraudulent behaviour in the fees office. Anyone who has worked for a UK company will have had to submit expenses for travel, accommodation, or small purchases needed in the course of doing their job. The Chief Executive of McDonalds, Steve Easterbrook, made exactly this point on Question Time last week. Why is it so hard? He, or any UK business leader, could solve this broken process in a week, given chance and the will to solve it. But maybe that's just the problem? They don't really want it solved. Not by "an outsider." They want another arcane, secretive, self-monitored scheme so they can carry on with their snouts in the trough while giving the impression of reform.

Carry on Camping

The day dawned misty, and since breakfast wasn't served before nine, we were up, showered, dressed and out just as soon as the cleaner had unlocked the front door. A field of tents looks deceptively attractive in the early morning light but I remain unfooled. A feeling reinforced by Annie's later report that she'd spent a very uncomfortable night, having forgotten to bring all her bedding supplies, and was *definitely* planning a trip to Buxton later that morning to stock up on pillows, a duvet and possibly even a hot water bottle.

After wading through the first of Graham's enormous breakfasts (I think he may have invented the phrase "full" English) we set off for Poole's Cavern. An attractive underground jaunt for the totally unfit, as it involves only 26 steps to reach the furthest navigable point which ends up being 30 metres underground. Educational too, as our guide pointed out several broken stalactites. Apparently the Victorians thought they'd be able to sell the sparkling stalactites, and threw rocks at them until they broke off. Once the rocks were brought out into daylight, where they looked just like... er... white rocks, the cavers realised they were worthless and threw them away. Who knew the Victorians were such vandals?

After that we wandered into Buxton hoping to visit the antiques fair, but as they were expecting a £5 entry fee - each! - we skipped that and wandered aimlessly around the shops for a bit, dodging the rain. We bumped into a small party of campers in town and stuck with them for half-an-hour or so, until we heard the call of the coffee and ducked into a café for a drink and a sticky bun.

The weather brightened up slightly after lunch so, having "done" Buxton we headed off to one of Nikki's favourite villages - Ashford in the Water - and spent some time watching the ducks on, and the trout in, The Water (the River Wye). Around 3pm we decided it would be a good idea to return to the campsite and see if anyone else had arrived. Sure enough, Jamie & Lise had pitched up - literally - and with crystal blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead, we relaxed in the field in a small enclave of camping chairs and enjoyed a swift bevvy.

It was not to last.

A rather angry, low-flying, brown cloud approached rapidly from the West forcing us to seek refuge in Andy & Lara's canvas mansion. Which is where we remained, all conversation drowned by the spatter of rain on the polythene windows, until the rest of the group returned from Buxton. The rain passed over just long enough for four of us to assemble Annie's new portable barbecue (Focus DIY; £39.99) and once the charcoal was fired up, Nikki and I took the opportunity to return pubwards and sample another of Graham's delicious evening meals.

As we were awaiting the serving wench, the sound of hail hitting the pub windows once again briefly drowned conversation in the bar. And then, as if by magic, most of the campers ran in, trying to escape not only the hail but the flying hot charcoal released from the barbecues as they had blown over. Yes, for the second year running the Birthday Barbecue was wrecked by the weather. Better planning called for next year, we all agreed.

Camping it up

Let's get one thing straight. We don't do canvas. So when Annie announced that there would be another Buxton camping trip to celebrate her birthday, we decided to opt for the kind of camping that involves a coal fire, home-cooked food and beer from a pump rather than a bottle.

Yes, that's right. We stayed in the pub next door. Next door to the camping field, that is. We had every intention of sitting around the campfire at some stage, and quaffing brewskis from bottles and plastic cups, but for sleeping purposes a hand-carved late-17th-century mahogany bed and a nice firm mattress are so much more suitable for aging bones than lumpy damp grass and anything you have to inflate, and with our shower currently out of commission, the opportunity for a room with en-suite shower was too good to miss.

So we arrived at the pub/camp site around 6pm, and being the first there settled into the... er... settle to await further arrivals and sample the beer. And, later, the food, which was excellent. Nikki and I both chose one of Graham's pies - me the steak & ale; her the steak & stilton - and we both marvelled at how much meat he can get into a single pie. These are large pies - probably a good 12" diameter - so you "only" get a wedge, but wow! a wedge is all you could manage. The pies are a good inch-and-a-half deep (3-4cm in new money) and with pastry being not much more than a millimetre thick on top and bottom, most of that depth is solid meat. Delicious. Served with a vegetable medley (crunchy broccolli, zingy carrots and peas that tasted as though they'd only just been podded) and some of the most excellent chips ever tasted. I nearly didn't have room for pudding! But only nearly.

The Friday nighters were a small but select bunch and we enjoyed more beer, more chatting and more coal on the fire until the campers retired to their camp, and we climbed the creaky 15th century stairs to bed.

Movie Review: Star Trek

First off, I should say that I think J.J. Abrams has a blimmin' cheek calling his film "Star Trek" as if it is the first one ever. OK, he - or more accurately writers Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman - pulls off a clever trick that means, in some respects, it could be considered to be the first one ever, but that's not the point. Neither do I agree with those who argue the franchise needed "rebooting" - whatever that means. OK Star Trek 10 (Nemesis) was a turkey, but there have been turkeys before. It made its money back. It needn't have ended there, even if none of the cast were up for another, and starting the story again at the beginning doesn't necessarily qualify as a reboot. A retelling, maybe, but even so I think it would have been more respectful to have a marginally longer title.

But I seem to have started off on a negative note which belies the enjoyment I derived from this movie, and its many good points. That aforementioned trick IS clever. It allows Abrams unprecedented freedom from canon, which for a 40+ year franchise is no bad thing. Having to bear in mind every little nuance that went before, from five TV series and ten movies, even if those events are all in the future and all you have to do is avoid doing anything which precludes them from happening, must be like wearing a creative straitjacket for the writers. Even with this freedom, the writers do a remarkable job of staying within the known Star Trek universe, and maintaining the characters as essentially the same people we grew to love all those years ago in TOS. And on top of that, they layer on credible new slants, excitement by the bucketload, and some memorable chunks of dialogue that will stay with me for many years (e.g Captain Pike to Kirk: "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's. And yours. I dare you to do better."). The only thing they don't do, and for which the film suffers to some degree, is come up with a basic story that is anything near interesting. For once though, that lack does not wreck the film, which is saved by the humour, the action, the effects and the cast.

Yes, apart from a small handful of misses, the cast are uniformly good, and some are outstanding. Special mention has to go to Karl Urban as Doctor "Bones" McCoy, who for much of the movie acted as though he was channelling DeForest Kelly, so accurate was his mimicry of Bones' famous verbal ticks and body language. "My GOD man!", "Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a physicist," and "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" tripped off his tongue as if he'd been saying them all his life, which of course Bones would have been. Nice touches with the origination of his nickname, and his early befriending of Kirk too. The other stand-out for me, and much has already been written about this so I won't dwell on it, was Zachary Quinto as Spock. Uncanny facial resemblance coupled with excellent writing, a more complete backstory than we've ever had before, and a compelling insight into his early life as a total genius made his probably the most powerful character in the entire movie.

Chris Pine has received much praise for his rendition of Kirk, and although it took me a while to warm to him in the role, and I wouldn't go so high and wide with the praise as some, he certainly did manage to bring something new to the role and make it more than a Shatner clone. The only one that didn't really work for me was Simon Pegg as Scotty. Comic relief is great, but I don't remember Scotty being *quite* so much of a loon, and I don't think it sat well. He can certainly say "I'm giving her all she's got, captain," well enough though.

On screen the film looks every penny of the $150m it cost (and which it virtually made back in the first two weekends at the box office, in the US alone). This will definitely be one to buy on Blu-ray. I don't have any time for those who ask why the technology looks so much more advance than it did in TOS. The answer is simple, and has a lot to do with why the final TV series - Enterprise - failed for me. Making a modern show with technology that looks faux-clunky doesn't work. We loved TOS with its clunky hardware because we knew it was the best they could do at the time. Now film makers can do better, so why wouldn't they?

All-in-all then, another Star Trek movie to love, without a doubt one for the collection, and now that it's proved a huge box office hit I'll be amazed if they don't make another. All I would ask is: please, please next time, give us a good story. Remember Wrath of Khan and make it so.

A-hedging we will go

Rain was forecast for lunchtime today, but we figured if we pulled out our collective fingers we'd be able to at least plant *some* of our nice new copper beech hedge plants - which arrived on Wednesday - before the shower started, and having achieved something in the garden I'd feel less guilty about taking time out to see the new Star Trek movie later.

The morning was deceptively sunny as we stepped out immediately after breakfast, and sized up the task. Starting at the furthest cleared point (where the pond used to be) and working back towards the house, the line of the hedge was pretty obvious to start with, demarked as it is by the large acer that sat behind the pond, and an old dead tree stump.

With three bags of well-rotted manure to give the plants a head start, mixed with the soil from the trench, we dug in (haha!) and got on with the task, which went surprisingly smoothly with me digging and planting, and Nikki fetching the trees, taking away the empty pots and making sure I had a ready supply of manure. We reached the acer in record time (trench one) and filled the gap between acer and stump inside the first hour (trench two).

We decided to press on, and strung some string between the tree stump and a random piece of breeze block beside the conservatory to give us the line to hedge to for the latter half of the job. Just as the string was tied and I'd dug trench three, a few spots of rain made their presence felt. Not wanting to leave a newly-dug trench to fill with water, we ignored the rain and carried on planting. A good move as it turned out, because the short shower had stopped by the time we reached the Camelia that marked the end of trench three.

So on we went with trench four - the final frontier - completing the whole job in a little over two hours, which greatly surprised me as I'd expected to have to do it over two days. Feeling very pleased with the end result, which looks for the time being like a thin row of plants but will hopefully grow into a hedge much quicker than the forlorn row of dead sticks that represent my previous experience of beech hedging, we set off for the afternoon showing of Star Trek.

Reinforcement fail

It didn't work. The shower still leaks. Bugger.

Stop Press: feeding the birds costs a lot more than tuppence a bag

After extensive online research into various hedging options, we decided to make the most of the Bank Holiday weather (supposedly at its best today) and take a tour of various local garden centres and hedge suppliers. Partly to check out the deals and partly to get a look at the hedge plants on offer. The last time I planted any copper beech it was bare root stock, mail order, and they arrived looking like a bunch of dead twigs.

Worse, a year after planting, around 25% of them remained looking like dead twigs. Mainly because they were dead twigs. The rest came slowly to life over a period of several years, but even after five years they still didn't resemble a hedge so much as a line of leafy sticks stretching the length of the garden.

Bugger that. I want it to look like a hedge from the off this time, so we'll be going for plants in pots. 2 litre pots at least.

It proved a productive trip as we discovered a fantastic garden centre in Woodford. Massive, it is, with an extensive range of... well... just about everything you'd imagine a garden centre should carry plus a substantial amount of stuff you wouldn't expect and quite a few things I didn't even know existed.

One of the things Nikki was keen to find was a bird feeder. Partly because she's always wanted one, and partly because Nat wants to study feeding habits of urban birds. As you'll no doubt realise in view of my comments above, this place had a fair selection of bird feeding equipment. About 500 square feet of it to be precise. We ummed and ahhed about exactly what we wanted, but as I always tend to the more esoteric and expensive end of the market, as soon as I saw a feeder marked "Deluxe" I knew that was the one for me. And then we needed the clever little pots to hang off it. And the grub to stuff the pots with. By the time we added it all up we'd spent about ninety quid. Looks nice though, dunnit? Nobody needs to mention the fact that it's crooked. I'd spotted that, thanks. After I'd assembled everything.

These things are supposed to be moved every two months, so I'll straighten it up then, OK?

Reinforcements

Our builder's been round today. He had an idea about the shower tray. The one that leaks because it wasn't put in properly. He reckons that if he reinforces it from underneath with some well-positioned lengths of two-by-four (or, for Harry Enfield fans, twobefourbetwobe), glued and screwed, then the previously unsupported tray will no longer flex and, in not flexing, won't break its seal and therefore won't leak.

Sounded good to us, especially as the solution can be executed through the hole in the kitchen ceiling rather than requiring a complete rip out and refit of the shower enclosure, AND we've ended up with a patch of new plaster where the hole was.

It was a blimmin' mess though, I can tell you. With the inter-joist muck falling down, additional bits of ceiling (to make the hole rectangular), wood being sawn and plaster being slapped around, we'll probably be cleaning up 'til this time tomorrow. And then there'll be painting I expect. There's always painting.

Pondlife

Where once sat a shallow, murky and slimy pond, which on the occasion of our housewarming party famously - and briefly - contained one of our more inebriated visitors, there is now nothing but soil. All trace of the outlandish seating area has been erased. Except from memory.

It took three separate attempts over three days to dig up the bamboo, which had no doubt started life as a single clump but which over the years infiltrated every inch of the pond's periphery and from there spread its spiny tendrils over almost a quarter of the garden. Deep and tenacious it often felt as though I was pulling my guts out rather than bamboo roots, and at one point I layed my palm open on a particularly spiky bit, which turned the air blue with a long and heartfelt string of creative expletives before I remembered that our neighbours' children were playing only a few yards away.

Finally, we have a permanent resting place for the Pieris which followed us in its pot from New Barns. Being an Ali-Baba-shaped pot, I had eventually to abandon any attempt to extract the Pieris and its root ball with the pot intact. Six years proved plenty long enough for it to wedge itself under the rim, requiring a firm application of a rubber mallet to smash the pot, revealing a predictably pot-shaped root structure, most of which had to be broken apart before planting.

It now sits very prettily beside the (previously pond-bordering) acer and has a few months' grace before it will be ruthlessly cut back in the manner I learned from my mother at the age of about six. We're now ready to hedge up the top half of the garden before planting any more colour in the border, but that will have to wait until we've scoured the entire Internet for a good deal.

ABBA results, and the positive spin

I collected the post from the front porch at lunchtime today it included a letter from the BBC.

My play made the top 67 (what they call the "long list"). That's the good news. The letter goes on... "There were over 400 entries to the Award. Unfortunately due to incredibly stiff competition this year, your play did not make the final shortlist." And that, as they say, is the bad news.

On the bright side I've been invited to the drinks reception where they announce the winners, so I think I'll go. It can't hurt to mix with the great and the good, and I might even meet someone who says "Oh yes, I read yours and thought it was really good," or something.

Making the long list also meant that my efforts were read by one of the judging panel, so a reader's report was included with the letter:

"Breakages Must Be Paid For:
With a deceptive lightness of touch this is a dark cautionary tale centred around the unlikely relationship which develops between a home owner and his burglar. The script is well plotted with unexpected reversals, the first of which is the revelation that the burglar Satish, is actually a teenage girl. And so the script continues with a series of unexpected twists and reversals which demonstrate the constant shifting of power between the two central characters. The relationship the characters develop lulls us into a false sense of security in order to reveal an unexpected ending. But, the impact of the ending is somewhat undermined by the fact that the relationship is somewhat lacking in believability. Satish quickly establishes a connection with Nick, she makes herself indispensable by decorating his home and confides the hideous story of abuse which resulted in her leaving home and ending up in a care home. However the speed and ease at which Nick takes her into his confidence raises questions. Doubts need to be seeded but her survival and desire to avoid a return to the streets, a plausible motive for keeping Nick onside, is underplayed. Consequently, the twist in the tale when all is revealed to have been a scam on her part is too easily anticipated.

The initial idea of the victim turning vigilante was potentially interesting, but instead the twist is that the burglar becomes the magpie (sic) in the nest, unleashing a plan which results in her taking his home and it ultimately could have been tackled in a way that feels more fresh and original.

Whilst this is a thriller the script has a slightly unpleasant tone which creates distance from the characters as well as the fact that at times the dialogue is uncomfortably on the nose."

So there we have it. While initially it's hard to get past the disappointment of not winning, there are a number of positives to accentuate. The terms and conditions of the competition state: "The readers will select a longlist of up to 23 outstanding scripts submitted for the Award. These will then be read by judges from Radio Drama North, who will select from the scripts a final shortlist of up to 13 scripts." The size of the long list this year - at 67 entries almost three times longer than previous years - shows how tough the competition was. Also, assuming they stuck to a shortlist of 13, that means out of over 400 entries mine came somewhere between #14 and #67. Not a bad result for a first attempt.

The good things about the script stand out from the reader's notes, and the negatives could easily be addressed with a little work (and provide useful feedback as to what to avoid next time). The main messages for me are (a) that it was a story too large to tell properly in a 45-minute drama and (b) the Afternoon Play slot is even blander than I at first thought. That reference to dialogue being "uncomfortably on the nose" refers to the main character Nick's initial racist reaction to discovering his burglar is Pakistani. My intention was for Nick to move from knee-jerk unthinking racism to enlightened soul, but to do this in 45 minutes is a big ask and clearly renders some of the dialogue too harsh for tender Afternoon Play listeners' ears.

Next time? Something less contentious perhaps. Oh yes, and I must try to make it "more fresh and original." :-\

Perfect Sunday

Today played out along similar lines to yesterday. If anything it was a little warmer, and the work a little harder, but even more satisfying.

Having talked about sowing grass seed under the conservatory where the old plant bench used to sit, and then about cutting back the lawn to the same width pre-pond as it is post-pond, we ingeniously put the two together and decided to transplant the cut turf under the window instead.

After five hours of digging, treading, ripping out yards of bamboo, raspberry and ivy roots, and the transplanting of a clump of peonies and a broom, the result was a radical improvement on where we'd started yesterday morning.

Energy levels started to flag dangerously when there was still a couple of feet to go, but we'd set ourselves a target of reaching the old tree stump and with a bit of grit and determination we made it, although I expect to suffer for it tomorrow. The weather's expected to hold up for another few days, so we're planning another attack for tomorrow evening after work, and I'll probably cut both lawns (our neighbour is in hospital and his grass needs a trim even more than ours), but for now we're settling back in smug satisfaction and ready for a dollop of corned beef hash, homemade rice pudding and Alien Resurrection.

Perfect Saturday

Three hours in the garden. What a fabulous day. But one of those days where the job you intended to do can't really be started until you do another job, and that second job has a third job that needs clearing up first too.

So we cleared away a broken old bench that had collapsed over winter under the weight of a pile of raggedy old pots (and because it was made of chipboard - not the most weatherproof of materials); edged the grass (and as a consequence made a new path to the compost heap), moved the water barrel 4 inches to the left to accommodate the bench we were moving from under the conservatory, threw out all the dead potted plants, moved two other benches so we can start on the border tomorrow and prepared one of the under-bench areas to be sown with grass seed tomorrow.

Feel right satisfied with that. While we were gardening we noticed our neighbour-but-one was busy building a tree house for his new ready-made daughters who arrived a few months ago. What an impressive construction it is. Already, that is, and it's not much more than half finished. As we were chatting he pointed out a square "window" in the gable end which he'd asked his wife to make a stained glass window for. But she told him it's too much detailed work for a play house. Nikki and I had one of those gestalt moments: two minds with a single thought. Carolyn has already made a piece of stained glass that would be perfect for the job. It lived in our downstairs toilet window until the scallies chiselled it out last March. Since then it's been living in the conservatory waiting for us to decide what's best to do with it. And here was our answer.

Sadly I don't have a photo of it in situ that does it justice, so here it is shortly after the break-in, with SOCO's dab dust all over it. Well, would you believe it, the window is already an almost perfect fit for the tree house. With a small rebate and a bit of beading, it will sit beautifully in the gable and cast its glorious blue and orange light over the girls' play for years to come. And it was made by Mummy, so what better resting place for it?

Now we're both showered and rested, we're off to watch a movie. So far, perfect Saturday. It's mac and cheese for tea too, and Nikki's baking a cake. I tell ya, it don't get much better than this.

The 3-variable funny test

Here's one of those tests. You know. Found via a writing colleague's blog. While I might have an issue with the title for my sense of humour, the description is pretty accurate.

The Prankster

(33% dark, 31% spontaneous, 21% vulgar)
your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | LIGHT

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You're not pretentious, but you're not into what some would call 'low humor' either. You'll laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist.

You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor because it's smart without being mean-spirited.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O'Brian - Ashton Kutcher

You can take the test for yourself if you're interested.

Team work and The Wire

BBC Two recently (beginning of last week) began showing HBO's The Wire in its entirety, starting at season one, in a graveyard slot on weekday nights. 11.20pm to be precise.

Having heard a lot about this show in one way or another (from colleagues on TV Scoop, various Internet forums and reviews, and fanboy family members *vbg*) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but 11.20?? Old farts like me have usually been in bed an hour by then. So we did the only thing possible: set a weekday schedule on the PVR and sat back while the episodes were sucked in.

I tried to approach the show with no preconceptions, despite my natural inclination to dislike anything that "everyone else" likes. This is not to disrespect anyone's opinion, it's just that in my experience entertainment surrounded by steaming piles of hype usually resembles steaming piles of something else when you eventually get to see it. I should have detected a subtle difference in the hype associated with The Wire: it's generated by the people who actually watched the show, rather than the people who made it and WANT you to watch it so they can make more money.

Anyway, we caught the first five episodes back-to-back last weekend, and the first two of this week's last night. Seven hours in and we're enjoying it immensely. So far I wouldn't be as fulsome as many have been with my praise - I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' or that it's 'the best TV show ever, bar none' etc - but hey, it's still only the first season, and still only the first seven eps. It's certainly different, credible, realistic, interesting, involving and dramatic.

But this isn't strictly a post about The Wire (although so far it's doing a good impersonation of one, lol). It's about something that occurred to me while I was watching the show last night. There's a character in the cops' team called Prez. Roland Pryzbylewski, actually, which explains why they call him Prez. He's well known in the police department for being totally incompetent and inept. Despite being bounced around several units he never fits in anywhere, and he only ends up on the "wire" team because the Deputy Commissioner tells all his people to dump their useless jerks there.

But slowly, working in the team's basement office, something happens. Prez finds his niche and turns into the team's code-breaker, first with the gang's pager codes and later with other complex number and letter combinations. He makes a major contribution to the case.

This is classic team work. A team - a good team that is - comprises a group of people whose skills are complementary. A leader. An ideas man. Someone who pays attention to the details and doesn't miss the finer points. Someone who energises the whole team with enthusiasm. A problem solver. And so on. Occasionally, people perform more than one role, but all roles are essential and the team flies best when they're all done well.

But here's the thing. Each one, on their own, can't cut it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's why Prez is such a good example. Outside of the team he's a jerk. A square wheel. But he's like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle left out of the box. Once you slot him into place, the whole thing looks right.

And it came to me, finally, that this is why I used to love my job, and why I hate it now. I used to be part of - and ENJOY being part of - a team. We could fly. We could do anything. And we did. But now there are no teams; there are only individuals. Everyone is expected to do their own thing. To be able to pick up any piece of work and do it just as effectively as any other piece of work. I mean, it's all technical stuff, right? That's how the managers look at it. We're technical people, doing technical work, so we're all just as good at any of it as anyone else. Which, as I hope you can appreciate, is a crock of shit.

There is no teamwork any more, and it sucks.