Observations from a Hill

  Here we go again: now it's large energy companies bemoaning their lot in this oh-so-difficult world. E-ON have been sounding off about how their website and call centres have been down because of the unprecedented traffic apparently caused by Martin Lewis in a tweet about meter readings and the impending price-hike in energy costs. Not content with unprecedented forecast profits - aided and abetted by this shameful hands-off Government and its now woeful Chancellor refusing to impose a windfall tax on these companies - they moan and whinge that their 'customer service systems' can't cope with the traffic. As if any modern 'customer service system' can cope with even moderate normal use by customers. Their systems don't function because they're outsourced at the lowest possible cost to the companies concerned, to firms running such tight margins that they employ people at bare minimum wage on crap 'contracts' and use systems woefully under-spe...

Doris Pooh the Younger is currently in front of the Liaison Committee, squirming on his customary brand of strangled semantics and facing questions over Partygate, even stooping to seeming unawareness of the by now matter of record issuance of the twenty fixed penalty notices by the Metropolitan Police. Carefully tiptoeing the fine line between ignorance and mendacity, neither of which is defensible, he opts instead to continue his stonewalling technique of hiding behind 'the ongoing investigation' by the Met to avoid answering a single direct question on the matter, several months down the line. Moving on to Ukraine, a basic question he should surely have had himself briefed on properly - how much of the £400M humanitarian aid pledged by his government has actually reached its intended recipients? - the bear could not answer, having no figures to reach for, despite his having been asked for them weeks ago by letter, and to which he hadn't bothered to reply. It's all we...

Pictured is the old Eko guitar that I've had for over half a century now: battered and worn, but still the best guitar I own, despite its humble pedigree. I shamefully admit that I still owe my mother the twenty-eight pounds purchase price, despite her having passed fifteen years ago: maybe in another sphere - who knows? The bit of copper pipe resting on the bridge of the guitar is a piece of 3/4" copper pipe which I cut two or three years before I had the guitar, as a bottleneck to play slide with. This featured on an old reel-to-reel tape recording that the late, and much missed Johnny G, and I made at school back in the sixties, one Saturday afternoon. We'd been given dispensation to use the school hall to rehearse in, and though we didn't have a bass player, we nevertheless made a noise that sounded good at the time to us: John on drums and myself on guitar. Unfortunately, the tape of that session has been mouldering in our derelict garage for nigh-on twenty  years...

Rats, ships: the moneyed under threat are seeking solace and financial protection within the sanctuary fold of a nation state where money is deified and all else subservient to it. It looks like the sanctioned Russian oligarchs have turned to the same people for help that our ridiculous government has, for different but inextricably related reasons, attempted to turn to. Oligarchs are welcomed with open arms to bury their money in UAE property, and Boris is knocked back in attempting to negotiate an oil deal with the UAE et al., a need precipitated by the very sanctions his government has levied on those same oligarchs. Says something about the moral compass of the UAE, don't it? At some point, the human race really has to start addressing the fundamental, functional flaw of amoral greed that is at the heart of most of its self-created problems. Not likely to happen, but one can only hope, eh?

What is one's tribe? Wherefore nationality? It's an interesting question, given that we all inhabit an isolated world of one, where all external input, stimulus or effect is mediated through our own, solitary and most definitely, individual perceptual apparatus. We can only experience our own experience - no-one else's perception can be the same: our experience is, de facto, unique to us. Yet we share commonalities of experience between us: agreed by intellect or base emotion to be shared amongst us in some way. The foundations of societies, religions and politics are based on these assumed social experiences, becoming the tenets by which we collectively associate with each other. Or not. Given the tenuous grip on 'reality' that our isolated, individual consciousness has, it would seem that assumptions of any shared reality are hopeful at best, and yet, over time, we've managed occasionally in our collective history, to transcend the boundaries of the individua...

It's the end of another gorgeous day here in Fairview Heights: a bucolic day of tree-cutting, garden tidying and dog-sitting. Oh, that it were the same everywhere, but alas, no. The world continues apace on what sometimes seems to be an ever-downward trajectory, where the only currency is, well, currency, and everything else would appear to be subservient to Mammon. A large - city -large - chunk of the Conger ice-shelf in Antarctica has parted company with the continent, Russian bombardment has now reached Lviv - fractionally outside NATO territory - and the world's economy is on the slide into another Great Depression. Which kind of takes the edge off today's little bubble of positivity, but hey-ho, as my old, now sadly deceased, Russian friend, Sacha used to say when asked how he was: "I'm alive!"

  As much as there is deeply unpleasant shit going down at the moment, just for a while, here in Fairview Heights, there is a little slice of paradise this afternoon. Sitting in the Wintergarten as the sun goes down, reading and listening to Nic Jones' album 'Penguin Eggs' with a cold beer; there is no better place to be. Unfortunately, not so for the inhabitants of Ukraine...

The rule of law only seems to bite in favour of the hoi polloi in certain, select circumstances, as when the 'proles' stand up and get counted in the case of the P&O scandal. There's no Batman to avenge injustice here. It's good, therefore, to see that P&O got carpeted [remarkably] sharpish and were prompted into admitting they took a decision to deliberately break the law in firing and re-hiring its staff recently. The subsequent official hearing made for some butt-clenching viewing, seeing their chief principles squirming on the spit, admitting their duplicity. Due process at least seemingly survives and functions if suitably prodded into action. 'Tis a pity [for him, ultimately] that Doris Pooh the Younger sought - yet again - to try and offset the issue as a Labour Party/Starmer failing [as usual...* yawn *] by lying - yet again - to the House over the particulars of legislation changes pertinent to the issue at hand as being an EU thing. Once again, eit...

  What on earth are we to make of it all? A stupidly-rich Tory Chancellor throwing scraps at the hoi polloi, when inflation is at its worst for three decades ain't going to help in any real, practical sense, the vast majority of people in the UK who, frankly, are already struggling, and will struggle further as the recession kicks in with a vengeance over the next few months, possibly years. A recession that has been caused by the failure of governments worldwide to exercise control over that which it is their job and sworn duty to control: the economy, and the underlying politics that mould that economy. All of this could have been avoided, given good governance, diplomacy and statesmanship - oh, and some measure of international, legislative restraint over out-of-control global capitalism, monopolies and oligarchies, which have been given free rein to accumulate and hide a significant proportion of the world's wealth from the niceties of taxation and social responsibility - a...

Sorting through more of the house-clearance stuff [blog posts passim], I came across more Rolls-Royce Merlin-related things. The drawing in the picture is an old-school photostat of part of a service manual for the engine, and the photograph is of the port pair of Merlins running in a Lancaster. From a conversation I had with an old friend of Mac's [cf. blog posts passim], it would appear that Mac was pretty much the go-to guy regarding the Merlin, with Rolls-Royce contacting him regularly, post his retirement, for his expertise and knowledge on the subject of the iconic power plant. The more I discover about the bloke, the more I admire him and count myself lucky that I knew him and had some pretty wonderful conversations over the years. I fully intend to write up the story of 'his' Mosquito - G-ASKH -  from its resurrection from the scrapyard to it's untimely demise some thirty-three years later.  

Pictured is a bodhran I rescued during the ever-ongoing house clearance (blog posts passim). It had a large gash in the skin which initially looked like it was either a bin job or a faff to replace the pigskin. On closer examination, I decided to repair the damage, using carpet scrim, scrap cloth and Copydex adhesive. The repair has worked out pretty well, so all that remains is to replace the missing tension/holding bars in the back of the drum, and to make a beater to play the thing with. Keep you posted...

  Oh dear, oh dear; what a sorry excuse for a Prime Minister. Doris has gone and done it again: both feet firmly rammed in his mouth whilst standing at a lectern with yet another fatuous Tory slogan plastered over it. Two things: comparing a bloody and unjust war to Brexit is just plain stupid, never mind that it's an insult to just about everyone else bar him; and secondly, the slogan: Getting On With The Job; something that this NonGovernment™ manifestly fails, consistently, so to do. Whilst he might be getting away with just about anything at the moment - let's face it, any criticism of him by the Opposition at the moment is in danger of being characterized as mere carping - I believe that enough bad will is being salted away for him to meet a similar fate to Churchill after the Second World War ended. Unfortunately for Johnson, history won't look kindly in the slightest on his past, and I doubt many hagiographies (except maybe some self-penned encomium) will be writte...

Another Six Nations gone and France get the Slam! Italy deserved their victory against us, no question. The right team won and the future looks bright for the tournament - please no more talk of some stupid relegation rule - the round-robin works: just leave it alone... That's all for now, folks!

  The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Once and originally, a British shipping company founded in 1837: I used to have a silk flag that came as a cigarette packet giveaway in the 1950s, and as a kid always loved that rather exotic-looking  emblem and all it seemed to represent to my childish perception. All of that now seems so remote and naive, given what has just transpired: the eight hundred 'redundancies' forced by the company on a large slice of its staff at the whim of the company's owners, the UAE-based, union-hating DP World. Two things: a redundancy can only occur when a person's role no longer exists within their company: these poor sods are being instantly replaced by lower-paid alternatives: it's a sacking, pure and simple - they've got good grounds for a class action for unfair dismissal. Secondly, it appears that the UK government knew this was about to happen the day before. Was Doris tipped off about all of this whilst he was in ...

The small collection of [very] analogue objects above - imperial micrometer, fountain pen and journal, slide rule; represent that nexus between the then and the now. My working journal is open at a couple of pages detailing census data for my great-great aunt and uncle and their immediate family: the Clun [White Horse] connection mentioned previously, blog posts passim. The fountain pen and the micrometer are both Mac's, part of the rescue of his stuff during the clearance of Lou's house - still ongoing. The pen is in regular use now, the micrometer yet to be wielded in anger, and the slide rule is a recent eBay acquisition: a Faber Castell Electro 1/98 from 50-60 years ago; a specialist calculator for electrical engineers and a mighty fine objet d'Art in its own right. The nexus between this tiny analogue enclave and, shall we say, the modern world, is in our manner of gathering data about the present and the past alike. Like most people, I rely on the ease of use of the d...

In 1974, the last edition of 'The Last Whole Earth Catalog' was printed and sold. Its strap line and sign-off was "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish...", quoted over a quarter of a century later by Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech. Jobs - I confess to being an original Apple fanboy - did have an extraordinary impact on the world in many ways, but his motivations and personality ultimately were completely at odds with the motivation behind 'The Last Whole Earth Catalog'. On the one hand, Jobs always wanted his tech to be 'white goods': closed, easy to use but let's face it, unserviceable, especially now, with the adoption of the new Apple Silicon: computers joining iPhones etc., in the realm of the 'unfixable' and now firmly non-upgradeable: what you buy is what you get, end of... On the other hand, the source of Job's quote, which has been much referenced and often wrongly attributed to him, was anything but an argument for c...

The teardown begins. On the left you can see the guts of the thing on the back of the front panel and on the right, the removed battery-box and its sorry-looking contents: two 4.5V cycle batteries and a 1.5V D-Cell (U2 to the older amongst us). As both types are readily available, I'll try replacing them like for like. Considering how long these have been in the meter, the amount of damage is minimal and confined to corrosion of the brass contacts in the battery box, as by some miracle, the batteries themselves have not leaked. The clue as to just how long these batteries have been in situ is the name on the D-Cell: 'Tandy', a company which was dissolved in 2000 and replaced by Radio Shack; at a guess, making them a quarter of a century old. As to the last time the AVO was serviced, I think the pencil inscription on the meter backplate in the left-hand picture gives us a good clue: the date 9/12/58, when I was only four years old. I'll clean up the verdigris on the cont...

Pictured is another rescued item from Mac's small workshop: his Model 40 AVO meter, manufactured in May 1947 and in his possession for most of his life. As can be seen from the picture, it's in a bit of a grubby state, but generally it seems to be in quite good nick. However, some very old batteries lurk in the battery compartment: the two 4.5V cycle batteries seriously swollen and which will need extricating by some devious means, and the replacement 1.5V cell will need to be unsoldered and replaced - the two bike batteries can be swapped out for a 9V PP3 - so I'm going to have to dismantle the thing and remove the battery box. Hopefully the batteries won't have leaked too badly and the internal damage minimal. A nice little project, and these days I can just calibrate the meter against a modern digital unit when it's all cleaned up. Keep you posted!

  "Oh, what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive," as Sir Walter Scott phrased it in his poem "Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field" of 1808. Presently on the brink of being drawn into a World War by Russia's incursions into Ukraine, we have a Prime Minister who seemingly has indirect links to the Kremlin via his ennobled friend, Evgeny Lebedev, son of a KGB operative from the 'old days'. As someone observed on Twitter this morning, we're more used to connections such as this being levelled at the Left of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn in particular, before he had the Whip withdrawn. How terribly strange to be Tory, to paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel. Not only that, Doris Pooh the Younger is due to fly to Saudi this week, to attempt to negotiate a deal for Saudi oil to replace Russian gas as our sanctions eventually kick in. Turning from one despot - Putin - to another - MSB, just shows the kind of circles Pooh feels most at home in....

  Just a diary post today as I'm over-faced with all the crap going on in the world presently. Cooked a slow ragu bolognese with tagliatelle today, to Antonio Carluccio's beautifully basic - one could say radical - recipe. Just tomatoes, meat, onion and white wine (blog posts passim for the recipe). The photo above is just a gratuitous snap taken the other day, after cooking something completely different: I just thought it rather nice... Maybe some righteous indignation about the serious shit tomorrow: talk later...

  Repairs and polishing completed, the old tilt-top table has a new lease of life. As I said previously, I've left the scratches and water damage to the table-top in situ, as I feel it to be more honest to leave a century's worth of use just be. I've simply beeswaxed the whole thing and given it a good polish. It looks rather fine and is at least now usable for its original purpose, rather than the health and safety hazard it was formerly. More brown furniture restorations to follow - keep you posted...

2016: UK votes by the narrowest of margins to leave the EU... 2022: UK sticks to its "...taking back control of its borders..." and drags its feet in offering help to innocent people fleeing a war zone, insisting on their jumping through multiple visa and ID hoops whilst stuck in Europe... 2022: EU opens its doors to help innocent people fleeing a war zone... As a citizen of the UK, I feel somehow dirtied by all of this...

The spectre of nuclear war has yet again surfaced in the wake of the fortnight-old war in Ukraine, with talk of Putin's Russia potentially escalating the conflict from the conventional to the unthinkable. While we've just been told of a theatre-wide ceasefire to allow talks and the evacuation of refugees to those countries willing to shelter them from the war, this doesn't change the prevailing conditions by much at present. For anyone who argues that the nuclear weaponry likely to be deployed by Russia - should it go down that route - will be tactical, battlefield weapons, it's worth bearing in mind that each of these, whilst being more targeted and of much lower power and yield than strategic, intercontinental weapons, still possess the explosive power of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, killing nearly 75,000 civilians instantly; the eventual death toll from this single device in the region of 200,000. They're tactical in the loosest sense of the word only...

The Prime Minister and most of the Opposition gave appropriate, if ultimately empty, rhetorical responses to President Zelensky's impassioned speech via video link to Parliament this afternoon, which were brought quietly into stark contrast by the most telling response in the House this afternoon. The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party simply stated the obvious: that the UK will be judged not just by what it says or intends, but what it actually does for Ukraine. Johnson's government will need to step up their efforts by an order of magnitude or several if they are ever to be viewed even vaguely favourably by history. The problem is, this is not simply a question of image, either in the present or for posterity; there are real, pressing and urgent humanitarian issues that need to be dealt with now, not next week, next month or in the next financial quarter: Ukraine needs real physical, practical and military assistance, not cleverly-constructed oration. Rip up the Brexit p...

Spring is almost in the air today - glorious sunshine and blue skies have conspired to warm up the studio to a habitable temperature, so I've made a start on repairing the old tilt-top pedestal table pictured. At a guess, I'd say it was late Victorian or early Edwardian, and not of great quality, but its age and patina gives it a charm of its own. The top was severely wobbly when we rescued it: the animal glue on the spigot that secures the support/pivot had shrunk over time, and the top simply rocked back and forth. Taking the securing rail off the underside of the top revealed damage that had been crudely repaired some considerable time ago, so I've levelled off the heads of the poorly-driven screws that had been used and filled the remaining cracks with epoxy, loaded with dust from the wood itself. I didn't think it worth it to try and remove the screws, as the heads were well-chewed, and they appear to have been driven through and locked by the repairer's glue: ...

A dear friend of mine - of nearly sixty years - recently had a potentially fatal health scare. Thankfully this was dealt with swiftly by our wonderful health service, and he is now chipper and in good spirits; sanguine about his experience in true Brummie fashion: indeed, the comment made by another of the Lads [explanation, blog posts, passim] exemplifies that Brummie fortitude and black humour: "... you never know when you'll reach the red Rizla..." Old friends and old stuff - I value both greatly - represent continuity from the past to the present and onward to the future, generation to generation, a touchstone: heritage embodied in memory and object alike. Keep both safe while you are able, and pass them on as you yourself will pass, for the sake of your own and your family and friends' histories.

There's not a lot one can say about the last twenty-four hours' events in Ukraine, except that they have taken a sinister turn for the worse. Initially, we were told that a limited ceasefire would be put in place in order that Ukrainian citizens could escape the war via agreed routes, unimpeded. Then the Russians started bombarding the 'safe' routes, forcing those fleeing to turn back whence they came. Either this is evidence of a broken chain of command, or of a cynical and deadly attempt to murder civilians by luring them into a trap under the guise of humanitarian concern. If the former, it will be a sign that Putin is losing his grip on his own forces and ambitions. If the latter, this is a war crime, pure and simple. On top of the original illegal incursion, this must surely not go unpunished. The West appears to be sitting on its hands at the moment, whilst ordinary decent people are being killed or displaced by a paranoid tyrant whose motivation appears to be the...

There are many distressing, depressing and frankly frightening aspects of the war in Ukraine. Leaving aside the illegal invasion by a foreign power of an independent, sovereign country - itself the very definition of an act of war - the response of the West has simply been reticent, timid and over diplomatic in the face of this aggression, fearful that intervention by NATO troops in a situation involving a non-NATO member country will result in the deployment of nuclear weapons. Worse has been our Home Office's pathetically bureaucratic approach toward those seeking sanctuary in the UK, either to join family living here or simply to take shelter as lone refugees. If the boot was on the other foot, there would be howls of protest at the conduct of 'Johnny Foreigner' in dealing with Brits similarly afflicted. This war and its increasing humanitarian fallout needs to be addressed immediately. An illegal military act of aggression against a sovereign power is an illegal act, pe...

After a rather wet and gloomy day, we get this sunset out of nowhere: a magical herald of - hopefully - a good spring to come. By the way, the curious blob/mark just left and above centre frame is a helicopter! Anyway, nowt more tonight, as I'm recharging both my laptop and personal batteries! Nos da 'chi gyd...

  We do seem to be in the midst of a cloud of unknowing with regard to the war in Ukraine - and war it is: unprovoked, unbidden and unfathomable - I follow a large number of newsfeeds and channels, and don't rely on just the righteous or the right on, but the picture emerging from it all is nebulous at best. We have incursions on various fronts: Belarus, Russia itself, and from the annexed territory of Crimea, a pincer movement which aims, one would imagine, to surround the major cities of the country. The view though, from the informed commentariat is that we have a situation where the larger, better equipped aggressor is being held back by the target of their aggression: a result it would seem of a mismatch in morale between the sides and poor logistics on behalf of the Russian forces. One thing stands out loud and clear, though. Ukraine has a leader who is standing front and centre with his people and his troops, united in resistance. Putin, as ever, is operating remote from his...

Just a moment's diversion from the rapidly evolving debacle in Ukraine - normal service will be resumed shortly - these four unassuming little wheels actually represent some pretty impressive 1940s model engineering: they're the set of Rowell wheels I found in clearing my late aunt and uncle's house, that go with the Rowell 60 spark ignition engine similarly unearthed and posted about. If only I could get hold of a gearbox and chassis to go with them: that would really be the icing on the cake!