Yesterday we received a letter from the police looking for information about a burglary in our area. It's worrying that there are burglaries taking place in our area, but it is clear that these villains were highly motivated specialists: "It is at this time believed that the persons responsible for the crime used a wheel barrow to remove a stolen fish tank and transport it along ?????? Road towards the main A??? ?????? Road."
Are our goldfish safe?
In a conversation with <3 the subject of Christmas presents came up and what we both wanted. To be honest, I've really not been thinking about Christmas this year, and the best present I can think of is a happy and healthy wife and baby. But, just for the sake of greed, I'll point out my running wish list which has some ideas on. It's getting more music (and specifically harmonica) centred these days, but what can you do?
That was quite some weekend... Friday after work <3 and I drove to Heathrow to pick up F., then zapped over to Blackwood to crash with I. & E., who welcomed us with a log fire and a big bowl of chicken soup. Saturday morning we set off in convoy to Little Haven, a Pembrokeshire village, nestled in a tiny valley on the coast near Haverfordwest, where we were attending this year's banquet.
This year was set in the Byzantine Empire and presented more-or-less Roman style, with a series of tables carried in, each laden with food and placed amongst a group of reclining banqueters. Food was plentiful and included the now legendary beef-cooked-like-bear, baby octopi, quail, stuffed squashes, venison, cheese, baklava, and more other stuff than I can remember. Drink flowed freely, and due to problems related to everyone eating from the cushion-strewn floor, occasionally flowed across said floor, which got a bit sticky from mead and ale in places. Songs were sung (I'm pleased to say that we managed to find the words to "Old MacDonald" and other songs in Latin) and much silliness occurred.
The next day we had to leave fairly early in order to get F. back for her flight from Heathrow, but managed to do this in good time, introducing her to almost the entire length of the M4 and (including the trip down) no less than five service stations (note: we even got free steamed milk for <3 at the Swansea West services, which shocked and pleased us in equal measure). A great weekend, though I still need a couple of days to relax.
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| Milling and chatting before things got started. Thanks to F. for the pic. |
It has been in the pipeline for some time now, but the Open University has now launched OpenLearn, a website which makes OU course materials freely available and provides "state-of-the-art learning support and collaboration tools" to boot. The selection of materials available at the moment is modest, and appears to be suffering from some teething problems (some courses have been noticed appearing and disappearing) but provides an interesting sample of the breadth of OU courses and looks like it could become a valuable site. I still have a year to go until I finish my degree, but afterwards I wouldn't be surprised if I look to this site for the odd extracurricular learning experience, as it were.
More broadly, I think this is great. Our tax pounds go to support the university system, including the OU (maybe not supporting it as much as it could, but that's a whole other story) and this has the obvious benefit of helping to educate the nation, but with the free distribution of these materials, I feel we are getting even more value for money. Sure, I still need to pay if I want to follow a course properly and get a qualification, but now I have the option of looking over the shoulders of the "real" students and get some benefit from well written study materials. I believe some other universities are also publishing course notes. Long may it continue.
Poor little Forzie, it's not easy being a chicken with four legs, even in New Zealand. He lasted not much more than a month before he "got glugged up" due to complications involving what is usually found between and behind a pair of legs. The picture on the page at the other end of that link is dead cute.
The last weekend was a good opportunity to unwind and smell the coffee a bit. An old friend of ours came visiting, ostensibly to drop in on Friday's pub session where he wanted to listen to the music and hopefully pick up a tune or two to play on his flute.
<3 was too tired to come out with us (less than 2 months until the due date, so no surprise really), so G. and I want to the pub and listened, chatted, and even managed to join in a bit. This month's session had a rather more eclectic selection of instruments than last time; alongside the usual fiddles, mandolins and squeezeboxes we had a hammered dulcimer and a didgeridoo. Some magic moments, including a rousing rendition of John Ryan's Polka, which the group plays as something of a game with musicians "tagged" in to play a few bars (almost) solo. Lots of Fun. G. then spent some time the next day learning the tune.
The following night, with <3 away elsewhere (I'm giving the impression that she wasn't around all weekend, which wasn't the case at all), G. and I sat chatting and playing cards well into the night, something I haven't done for far too long. It's the little things like this that make life worthwhile.
I don't want to lose track of this concise analysis of new US anti-terror legislation. The code looks sensible enough at first glance, but if you know programming in C you may well spot the logical error...
if (person = terrorist) {
punish_severely();
} else {
exit(-1);
}
So I've just submitted another order for plantage from Ashridge Trees. Most of last year's trees that I planted in our proto-hedge have done fairly well, so this order is largely to fill in a few gaps and also run along the bottom of the garden, where there is a bank of pretty much unsupported earth, so a new hedge should help keep our garden from escaping as well as improving our boundaries.
This order includes a new apple tree (Spartan, to go alongside our existing James Grieve and Bramley) and a heap of roses, some of which are wild roses to go into the hedge, and some being for loading into beds to make the garden prettier. OK, it all means more work, but it'll be worth it in the long term.
It'll be at least a month before we receive these goodies, so we just have to hope their arrival doesn't coincide with Asbo.
New toys! A couple of days ago I received my first ever harmonica microphone and amplifier, the much vaunted (and alarmingly cheap for what it is) Bottle O Blues mic along with a dinky little Smokey Amp. The amp is so called because they originally came built into cigarette packs — you can still get them like that, but the one I have is plastic cased, although about the same size, which should give an idea of scale in the picture.
Now, I've never played amplified harp before, and I'm very much a novice harp player anyway, but plugging it all together and blowing a few simple blues licks was fantastic. It may not sound exactly like Little Walter, but there's this really thick, grungy blues sound in there, which made me (to my ears, though <3 may argue) sound better than I could possibly expect. I guess it's like playing electric guitar and getting your first effects pedal — it doesn't make you a better player, but it's great fun mucking about with those new noises you can suddenly make.
Now, of course, I need to practice, practice, practice. Lately I've been concentrating on playing folk music (that's what I get to play with other people) but the new toys may well bet me back onto working on the blues. (Though it's great fun playing a reel or jig through the mic!)
<3 and I have now been to our first Friday session at the Abingdon Arms. Great fun. The first half of the evening there wasn't much music that I knew, although I was encouraged to start The Butterfly, which didn't go as well as it did when I played it the previous Sunday, but was OK, and <3 even got to join in with her new low D whistle, which has a lovely sound to it.
Later on though, as people drifted off and the (tiny) pub started feeling less crowded, we had more familiar (to me) tunes, and I ended up managing to play almost my whole repetoir. This isn't particularly impressive at the moment, as I can count the number of tunes I know on my fingers, with some left over, but that is slowly improving.
The next day we headed off to the Valleys to meet up with friends who introduced us to the delights of crunchy cheesy mealworms and cream cheese and onion flavoured crickets. Yup, real bug snacks. I feel I have stepped over another hurdle as regards experiencing stuff. So what were they like? After getting over the fact that the crickets seemed to be looking at me, they were pleasantly crispy, but otherwise disappointingly boring. I don't really know what I was expecting, but these weren't nasty and weren't a fab taste sensation. They were just... something I ate, really. However, having got over the initial aversion to eating invertebrates (somewhat irrational as I have always been happy eating prawns and shellfish), I'd be happy to try something similar in the future.
Next up was going into Cardiff for a slap up meal at the Caribbean restaurant in the bay, followed by a trip to the rock club, Bogiez, in honour of the recent birthdays of three friends. The meal was awesome, having not eaten Caribbean food before, so I am now happy to say that I enjoyed a bowl of ackee and saltfish plus accompanying goodies. The club was weird, having hardly been to any clubs over the last ten years. Happily though, the air guitar skills have not all gone (though they are a bit rusty), and I also got to see some old buddies from past lives.
On Sunday we visited some other Valleys-resident friends and their six-month-old daughter, who was being a complete charmer. There is something immensely rewarding about finding how to keep a baby laughing and burbling away happily. I can't wait to be able to do that with my own kid. It won't be long. Eventually we went back home with a car load of stuff for a young baby that our friends no longer needed. Our pile of baby stuff is steadily growing now.
