Safely home

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

A great weekend. Weather kind, although beautiful cloudless starry nights were very cold. Our duvet sandwich kept up toasty warm, sending others out to buy more duvets! Relied on friends to drive us everywhere offsite, not quite trusting the car, but when it came to driving home, we did make it all the way back without needing to summon the AA. Days took us to the Sandringham house itself, to Hunstanton and to see Norfolk Lavender. Tea-rooms aplenty. BBQ, booze and chocolate all round.

Nick of time

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

Arrive at travel tavern just in time: thermometer needle on car edging into the red. Engine gurgling as we got out. This shouldn’t still be happening – I just had a new radiator put in. Will have to refill in the morning and hope it gets us the rest of the way there. We’ll have to come back in stages. Bah!

Even if you don’t care for bellringers and their foibles, please go and have a look at this link, and click the MP3 for the sample of ringing on the minor 10, half-muffled, at Worcester Cathedral.

It’s a haunting sound.  The striking isn’t perfect (but then most of you won’t know what means) but the sound is… unique. Amazing.  Addictive.  I have to keep playing it.  I might hack it about and have it as my e-mail notification beep, or my SMS tone.

The accompanying blurb says the semitone bells installed to create the minor peal of 10 are unique.  They’re rung for “Armistice, New Year’s Day and other solemn occasions,” including last year’s War Requiem in the Three Choirs.

Well.

Sandringham’s long-range forecast is looking great now.

Just yesterday, it still had for Friday, which didn’t seem good for putting up tents. But that’s all gone. Of course, as veterans of Shell Island‘s microclimate, we don’t trust the long-rage WHATSOEVER. Our tent still shows the damage Force 8 winds can do.

We’ve decided to leave late on Thursday night, put up at the Linton Travel Tavern, have breakfast on a Big Plate before sauntering into Sandringham as soon as the camp site opens. Save ourselves having to drive so much during B. Hol traffic.

I’ve been to do the stocking up on camping food for this year. I’ve bought forty-quidsworth of various canned meats, coronation chicken, tinned veggies, tinned fruit, cereal variety packs, fruit juice and long life milk bricks. We probably won’t eat very much of it in Sandringham, as the whole gang of us (three couples, two tents and a caravan) seem to be planning on eating in pubs, supermarkets and barbecues over the weekend. Pubs? Supermarkets? Over a bank holiday weekend? It’ll all end in tears, hence the survival pack of tinned protein.

Whatever we don’t eat in Sandringham will last for the next camping trips over the summer. We’re currently planning one or two big gay trips to Shell Island, and a week in Normandy to celebrate some cix friends of mine opening a vegan gite at Cerisy La Foret only a handful of miles from my friends in Calvados.

Note to self – don’t forget tin opener. And don’t forget the booze.  Sleeping is going to be hard enough!

I’ve just been distracted from watching The IT Crowd (not the one with the fire but close) by some large heavy vehicle struggling to get past the cars parked outside our house.

“What lorry is trying to get up here at 3.20am?” I thought to myself and peered through the curtains.

A fire engine.

Fair enough.

I found myself putting on my coat and going to take some things to the postbox, and, you know, just incidentally rubbernecking a tiny bit as well.  Going down the hill, couldn’t see much.  Coming back up, saw a huge great plume of smoke between the houses.  There’s clearly a nasty fire going on.  Two tenders and an ambulance in attendance.  The crackle of radios.  No sirens, not in the middle of the night, but engine noises as they pump water, and louder than that, but still unintelligible, the sound of the radio. Not actually crackling, but an urgent conversation between a woman and a man.

I could see about 8 firemen in full gear including breathing apparatus storming the house.  Huge amounts of white smoke billowing out of an open window.

The detail that really surprised me was the water streaming down the hill.

Hope everyone’s OK.

And maybe I’ll take P’s worries about smoke alarms a bit more seriously.

I’m rather tickled to see there’s an edition of the Swiss Family Robinson in words of One Syllable in Project Gutenberg.

Presumbly, the author permitted herself polysyllabic words like the ones in the title.  Or character names.

Today it has been, by turns, hot, cold, windy, rainy, and hailing.

This is not a good thing.  Only a week from now we are down to be under canvass in Sandringham.

I’ve never been camping so early as Easter before, even though Easter is late this year.  Brr.  Keeping an anxious eye on the long range weather forecast. Although it’s cold this weekend,  night temperatures are up 9 degrees to, er 9 degrees by Wednesday.  Let’s hope that’s an upward trend rather than a mid-week spike.

After this month’s various unreliabilities, I’m starting to think seriously about replacing my old car.

Where do you start when it comes to buying a car?  I have some vague ideas what I want — smaller, definitely, and with an engine that makes it cheap to insure and tax.  There have been times when having a huge great estate car has been handy, but not many.  And I’m not moving house again! Three doors, hatchback is probably enough. A convertible like my brother’s might be nice, but I don’t want to pay the premium to insure it.  It needs to be nippy on the motorway, but doesn’t need to so dangerously oomphy as the 1.9L Vauxhall hire car was.

I really don’t care what make or model it is so long as it works, and is comfortable.

And ideally,

• is green
• has a decent radio / MP3-CD player, and the luxury of more than one working speaker
• has a handy thermometer to tell me the outside temperature

My parents have a Yaris each.  I was impressed by a co-councillor’s Peugeot two-oh-something.  R’s new Micra is quite nice.  I like the shape of the new Polo (which has really come on since Mum had one in the early 90s) although my nearest VW dealer doesn’t have any second hand green ones. The new Fiesta is much nicer than the old one.

Decisions, decisions.  Back burner.

Will has a rather nifty meme to take Wikipedia‘s ‘On this Day’ function and find out things about your birthday.

Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.

Birthday:  August 3rd

Events

• 1914 – First World War: Germany declares war against France.
• 1923 – Calvin Coolidge is inaugurated as the 30th President of the United States.  (August is a weird time for presidential inaugurations.  Coolidge was Warren Harding’s VP and succeeded when Harding became the 6th President to die in office)
• 1990 – The highest temperature recorded in the UK until 10 August 2003 – 37.1°C at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire.

Birthdays
I’m not going to count Terry Wogan because I already knew about him.  And I want to give three not two:

• 1867 – Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1947)
• 1887 – Rupert Brooke, English poet (d. 1915)
• 1940 – Martin Sheen, American actor

Deaths

And three deaths, too.

• 1181 – Pope Alexander III (c. 1105)
• 1460 – King James II of Scotland (b. 1430)
• 2004 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (b. 1908)

“Do you mind driving to Stockport?”

Hmmm.  Suspicious mind.  What do you want me to do when I get there?  Delivering leaflets? Canvassing?  Something strenuous and uncomfortable?

“Pick up urgent stationery and drive home.”

Oh, cool.  Yesterday was a gorgeous bright warm day, so I had no problem with a jaunt in the countryside.

So, where’s Stockport, then?

I remembered once they started to explain — I went through there to get to Cheadle. It’s a gorgeous route.  Up high over the hills and through the National Park.  Spectacular views.

So, top down (*), sunnies on, Fountains of Wayne on the CD player,  spend afternoon on the road.  Grab a sandwich in Romily, turn round, come home.
Perfick.

(*) Sunroof on MAX is about as close as I can get