Rathbone's Ramblin'

[Epykat]

Here's my wee bit beech hedge, R :



I cut mine just the other week too.

You can also see the bit of turf I put down where a rose bed used to be it's doing very well since this photo was taken.

Not sure if we should be congratulating you or commisterating with poor Beachbabe (who has been VERY quiet lately - did you have to sell her laptop to fund the new house? )

That little patch of grass looks a bit suspicious to me!!!
Why did the rose bed get dug up????
And where is beachbabe????
Very mysterious!! mmmmmmm
_________________

And WHY is he taking so long to answer when he's on here every minute of the day????

[Porty]

I saw her the other day and she was still alive.

[Dadaist]

I saw her the other day and she was still alive.

She just brought me a nice cup of coffee actually.

[Epykat]

I saw her the other day and she was still alive.

She just brought me a nice cup of coffee actually.

Those two quotes put me in mind of Nat Fraser.........

[gilo]

I'm not concerned, I'm sure he would have used the back garden, the front is far too risky.

[rathbone]

I’m not sure what Dada has buried under his lawn. In our case it’s hamsters.

We’ve had three hamsters over the years and still bear the scars.

One of them was the proverbial escape artist. Even the most careful surveillance could never identify how she did it, but every morning the cage was empty and she was running about all over the house. Things came to a head when she disappeared up the chimney for a week. It must have been a traumatic excursion because she died a few weeks later, presumably from smoke inhalation. The second one was vicious. If you went anywhere near it it bit your fingers off and it hissed. So much for cuddly little balls of fur. The last one lived in its wheel and ate the curtains.

Needless to say the Rathbonettes loved all three and they were each awarded a state funeral in the verdant pasture which pretends to be our back garden.

There seems to be a growing trend for back garden burials. You can get a booklet on how to do it from the National Death Centre.

In fact, provided you own the land, it is easier to bury a relative in your garden than to extend your garage or undertake any other building work.

There are no laws to prevent people being buried in their own garden, though you do have to fill in an authorisation form from the Environment Agency. (This is to prevent any ground water contamination by the decomposing deceased.) You also need to use an undertaker who is licensed :A body comes within the definition of "clinical waste" and as such cannot be disposed of except under the provisions of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 and the Environment Protection Act 1990. A licensed operator is usually needed but a local authority may waive the requirement in special circumstances. Remember it is a criminal offence to dispose of "controlled waste" otherwise than in accordance with the Acts.

You don't even need planning permission to dig a grave, although erecting a gravestone might stir the interest of the local council.


You need to be practical when deciding where you want your grave. Sandy soils are dangerous to dig in to any depth, and rock will obviously limit how far down you can dig.

If you are digging a grave yourself, you need to be careful and have help. If you are fit and enthusiastic, it should take about three hours work to dig a four foot deep grave. Try and shore up the first two feet of the grave so that it is supported when the mourners stand around it, and work steadily so that you don't strain yourself. You might want to take a bucket to stand on so that you can get out of the grave at the end of a tiring day!

You have a duty to inform any future buyers of the property. It’s also a good idea to inform your neighbours (The site of the grave will not be officially recorded, and its accidental discovery in the future might involve a police investigation.) Don’t be surprised if they are offended by the idea: though they cannot legally object, it might not be conducive to good relationships. Potential problems include a fall in a house’s value of up to 20 per cent.

There may also be problems in gaining access to the grave if the house is sold. Though in that case, you can take it with you if you go. All you need is an exhumation licence from the Secretary of State at the Home Office.

Personally, I think we’ll be leaving the hamsters where they are.

[Epykat]

I don't think I'd be that bothered about having somebody's granny in my back garden - as long as she was far enough down. It would be good for the brassicas.

Just had a thought for a new thread.........

[Dadaist]

the bit of turf I put down where a rose bed used to be

[Epykat]

the bit of turf I put down where a rose bed used to be

I fear he protesteth too much........

[Dadaist]

I would like to invite anyone to come round to Dada Towers and dig under the turf - on the condition that you start digging from somewhere not directly underneath the turf.

Essentially, I would like to verify to youse that there is no corpse but without disturbing the wee bit turf what I have loved and watered this past while.

You can dig down from where the car is then along - and as long as you don't dig up underneath the turf to a depth of the longest extent of turf grass root - and properly shore up your workings so that the turf does not sink - I give general permission for these works.

[Porty]

Personally, I think we’ll be leaving the hamsters where they are.

Our last pet was a guinea pig, I can't recall its name. It died about 2 1/2 years ago. We were having house renovations done so we just threw it in the skip, still in its cage. One of the neighbours came along, having learned of the demise and asked if she could have the unused cage. We said sure just help yourself, its in the skip with the pig still inside it.

[Dadaist]

When the aliens land and they turn out to be giant Guinea Pigs, you're going to be trembling.

[rathbone]

Running can be unsettling. I’ve got a marathon coming up next week and have been building up my training on the country lanes around the town, and that’s where the unsettling bit comes in.

Since the beginning of March I have been heading out along the old railway line which runs to the west of the town and then striking off across the farm tracks for a few miles and looping back.

I became aware of the man in the mac about six weeks ago. That’s not to say that he wasn’t around before that, but when it’s raining you don’t tend to pay attention to people in raincoats. It’s only when they are wearing them in bright sunshine that they look a little strange.

Having said that, it’s not just the mac that makes him strange. He’s about six foot two with the kind of hair style where the hair has crept back about three inches from his forehead, making him look just a wee bit like Boris Karloff in the Frankenstein movies. He wears tan coloured hush puppies and black, slightly flared trousers and this long dirty brown raincoat which is buttoned up to the neck, so you can’t tell if he’s wearing a shirt or jumper or whatever underneath. And then there are the eyes staring out from under Noel Gallagher eyebrows..... (or maybe that’s just me getting paranoid).

So, six weeks ago, there I was on my Sunday run, in the middle of nowhere on this farm track, when I saw him walking towards me. I say walking, actually he was striding in a quite determined fashion, staring straight ahead. When we passed, he didn’t acknowledge me, just kept staring fixedly ahead and marching on. Peculiar, I thought, but then got back into my rhythm and carried on.

The following week, there he was again, at about the same spot at about the same time. Whereas the previous week it had been overcast and there might have been an excuse for the raincoat, this time it was warm and sunny but he was still buttoned up to the neck. Same determined stride, same passing me as if I wasn’t there.

And again the following week, this time on the old railway line.

By the fourth week I was almost looking for him as I ran along and it helped to pass the time wondering why society has an inbuilt aversion to solitary men in macs.

If you google men in dirty macs, you get 5,580,000 pages. (even allowing for the fact that a number of those are puffs for Steve Jobs, that’s quite a lot.) Most of them operate on the premise that dirty mac equals perv. There are even sites dedicated to dirty old man cartoons.

Some of it, I suppose, is the paedophile connection, though I believe that most of us have now realised that the dirty mac image was counter productive, concealing the fact that most child abusers are people other than old men in raincoats. The newspapers still regularly give the impression that most paedophiles and murderers are to be found amongst the unemployed or persons of "no fixed abode". They portray paedophiles as dirty old men prowling around the streets and childrens playgrounds looking for naive and trusting children; dirty old men in raincoats with pockets full of sweets. However, the reality is that the majority of the cases of abuse originate within the homes of the middle class.

Similarly, for years pornography was equated with the Dirty Mac Brigade, but now, if you take out some of the worst photographs, throw in some football, lifestyle and men's health pieces written by Cambridge graduates and rebrand it “lads' magsâ€

[rathbone]

Doesn’t the hot weather make people do funny things?

For a start, yesterday Mrs. R. said that she’d come and support me on my race. Now, given that over the thirty two years that we’ve been together she’s never bothered before, I could only put it down to the heat. To be fair, she did change her mind and decide that it would be a more productive use of her time to do a washing instead.

Last night, late, the youngest rathbonette phoned up to say that it was too hot to come home, so she would be staying at Ryan’s. (Oh yeah?) and this morning the elder rathbonette said she had decided to take the day off work to go to Alton Towers with her mates. (Shame .. it’s supposed to be thundery there today.)

There was a piece in New Scientist a little while ago on the mating perferences of flies. A mere change in temperature is all it takes for the male flies to switch from being heterosexual to suddenly courting other males. The mutation is temperature sensitive, meaning neurons carrying the mutation suddenly become inactive above 30°C. At the normal 19°C, males are heterosexual. But ramp up the heat above the critical temperature and in about two minutes their behaviour changes. When put in a chamber with females, the males become largely disinterested. Add them instead to a vial with other males and they pursue them vigorously. Flip the temperature back to normal and the flies become heterosexual again.

I have to say that this does not appear to be true of humans... or at least I have not been propositioned by another man so far this summer.

Obviously our bodies are designed to work within a fairly narrow temperature range and find it hard to cope with extremes, but they are also responsive to changes in pressure. The higher the atmospheric pressure goes, the crankier we become. Hot, humid days are apparantly the worst possible combination as they cause sleeplessness, decreased activity, poor reaction times, irritability and lethargy.

Despite that, it’s also true that most of us tend to feel better when the sun is shining.For weather to improve mood, people need to spend at least 30 minutes outside in warm, sunny weather. Researchers have found that spending time indoors when the weather outside is pleasant actually depress your mood. They suspect this is perhaps because people resent being cooped-up indoors or perhaps because improved weather can make normal indoor activities feel boring or irritating.

Lots of research over the years, both in Europe and the USA, has also shown that violent crime increases with temperature. However, this is not to say that scorching weather causes all types of crime to occur more often. There was little or no correlation found between heat and occurrences of rape, robbery, or property crime. Since violence is (typically) not the primary goal of these crimes, the weather had little effect on them. Of course, this is just a hypothesis. It could hardly be used in a court of law as a defense - "I swear, I did not mean to kill him! It was 110 degrees that day!"

Still, the implications are scary, especially with so many reports on global warming being released. It's bad enough that my ice cream will not last as long outside; now I'll have to deal with people trying to hurt me when I don't share it.

[rathbone]

So it was off to the wedding of Sunnyporty’s daughter.

Logistically, our journey north had to take place on Thursday afternoon, when England were playing Trinidad and Tobago. The match sounded really boring on the radio, and presumably was really boring to watch on the television as well.

We decided to stop at Charnock Richards services on the M6. It was a looter’s paradise. When you walked in all of the counters were deserted. No-one on the sweets, no-one on the papers and mags. No-one on the food. Everyone was in the restaurant, watching the match. Not only were they showing it on a big screen, but the commentary was being relayed around the whole complex on loudspeakers.

I went to the gents. Every urinal was taken. There were two Rooneys, a Lampard, a Crouch, an Owen and a Beckham with a wonky ‘B’. Just as I came in England scored their first goal and to a man the ersatz team leapt in the air. Pee went everywhere.

The wedding itself could not have been better. The rain on Friday morning cleared and the sun came out in time for the bride’s arrival. The flower girls behaved themselves. The babies didn’t cry during the service and no-one’s mobile phone went off.

The reception was in a really nice country hotel. The food was excellent, the speeches were funny, the music was fine and no-one got into a fight.

The younger Rathbonette discovered relatives that she never knew she had and her elders’ vowed to stay in touch and stop relying on weddings and funerals as a method of communication.

As the evening wore on Epykitten entertained everyone by demonstrating that he had nothing on under his kilt and Epykat entertained them all over again with her motherly reaction.

The following afternoon there was a barbeque hosted by the best man. Priorities were suitably established when care was taken to ensure that the showing of the wedding video was over before the start of Doctor Who.

I hadn’t anticipated the barbie, so I felt a little out of place in a stripy top and jeans facing two Rooneys, a Lampard, a Crouch, an Owen and a Beckham with a wonky ‘B’.

[Epykat]

As the evening wore on Epykitten entertained everyone by demonstrating that he had nothing on under his kilt and Epykat entertained them all over again with her motherly reaction.

I'm glad you were amused . Wouldn't mind so much if his perfectly good boxer shorts hadn't disappeared altogether - he doesn't know what he did with them

[rathbone]

Adrian, Christie and I are working on a Carbon Pledge.

What we want to do is to get everyone in the District to sign up to reducing their carbon use over the next decade. Fat chance. Of course we won’t get everybody to do that, but if we even get 10% prepared to have a go then we will have made some sort of impact.

There can be few people ,now, who are not aware of Global warming, and who don’t know that if we want to contain it we need to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.

However, despite brave words, at the moment the UK is increasing emissions every year - we are going in the wrong direction!

It is important to understand why we not progressing on climate change initiatives. There are two main reasons:

Firstly: Denial.
There are intelligent, educated people who tell us that climate change is an exaggerated threat. This opinion is promoted in the media by individuals and corporations who stand to lose financially if energy consumption is reduced. Crucially the US Government refuses to accept the evidence and its implications.

Secondly: Evasion of Responsibility.
Why is it always the responsibility of someone else to do something about it? It isn’t all down to Local Authorities, Government and Big Business. The log jam needs to be broken. Working together everyone can make a difference and this is where we are starting from:

Through the Community Council Environmental Forum we want people to build awareness and action around the following pledge:

“Over the coming years I will take individual responsibility, empower my neighbours and enable this area to become a Low-Carbon district. Accordingly I pledge to
* Calculate my own carbon dioxide emissions
* Reduce these by at least 5% per year
* Influence others to take similar action.â€

[rathbone]

Saturday was the annual fete. It’s always on the first Saturday in July and there was no way that Fifa could persuade us to change the date.

Along with other members of the Community Council I was off bright and early to supervise the lads from the Young Offenders’ hostel who were helping to put of the marquee and then spent another couple of hours folding the leaflets on out of school activities. (Inevitably they hadn’t arrived from the printers until the night before and we always get them unfolded because it knocks a third off the price.)

By the time I’d done that I was suffering from repetitive strain injury to the fingers and bottled out of helping set up the bring and buy stalls. Given that the temperature was 31deg., I thought that it was a bit optimistic of the WRI who were hoping to sell ‘winter warmers’ and set out their display of cosy hats, scarves and mittens on the second table in... but by the end of the day they had all gone!

The bouncy castle arrived about ten o’clock and I was charged with keeping the kids off it until their parents had coughed up fifty pence. Then it was into the stocks to have wet sponges thrown at me for half an hour. The Mayor was greeted at twelve noon by a rather soggy environment convenor.

A quick lunch of sandwiches and coke and then it was helping the magician to keep the under fives in order while the disco was being set up.

M.C. Mike from St. Mary Magdalene was just getting into full swing when the crowd mysteriously disappeared, all gone within five minutes. I looked accusingly at the magician. He just shrugged and pointed to the clock. Three p.m. En masse they had rushed off to watch the match.

By half past three the marquee was down, the sponges back in the bucket and the bring and buy stalls tucked under the community hall stage for another year.

The town was remarkably quiet.

I got home in time for Rooney’s sending off.

By the penalties Mrs. R. was getting quite agitated: “He’s taking the flags inâ€

[Dadaist]

That was very, very funny!

[Epykat]

...I looked round from the television and indeed the guy across the road at No. 36 was hauling in the two large flags he had draped out of the upstairs windows three weeks ago. By the end of Doctor Who there wasn’t a single flag on display in the whole street. .......

Mr E also has flags wot go out the window when Scotland are playing an important match (for clarification - they're SCOTTISH flags) . Unfortunately they don't normally last as long as three weeks....

[Cleopas]

I hung my "Jolly Roger" flag out the window. Going to do it again on Friday ... just for Mr Depp's new movie!

[Epykat]

I hung my "Jolly Roger" flag

Glad you added flag there Cleopas. Horrible thoughts were entering my head for a minute.........

[rathbone]

I’ve not been myself this week. In fact I’ve been suffering from multiple personality disorder.

The end of term production this year is Oliver and Mrs. R. has been busy making costumes. As changes in the law mean that she can no longer keep pupils against their will in order to experiment on them in the privacy of our back room, that means that I have had to be both model and critic.

Monday night was quite straight forward. I was Mr. Bumble, which is okay if you like big hats and floppy coats with gold piping. And I got to bang on the dining room floor with the big stick thing.

Tuesday night was more of a problem. I was out at a meeting until after ten and really just wanted to settle down to Newsnight and then maybe slope off to bed. But no. It was to be a quiz evening. Could I tell which of these battered top hats was best for Bill Sikes and which one would suit Dodger? I said that I couldn’t, which was fatal. Half two in the morning and four top hats and a pile of black paper on the carpet later and we still hadn’t reached a decision. And there was still the chef’s hat for Food Glorious Food. Should it be an upright one, like Raymond Blanc’s or a floppy one, like the cooks wear in Maurice Sendak’s ‘In The Night Kitchen’?

Wednesday I was Fagin, half a dozen costermongers and Mr. Brownlow.

And then, on Thursday night I had the Walliams moment: Nancy at last. By this time Mrs. R. had taken to playing the soundtrack album as she worked, to give her inspiration. So there I was, prancing around the living room in my red frillies singing Omm Pah Pah.

Friday was the dress rehearsal, which by all accounts went well except for the plastic food, which everyone agreed looked... well, plastic really.

Guess who offered to make alternative nosh in time for tomorrow’s opening night?......... at the moment she’s trying to convert an old pair of tights into a string of link sausages.

It’s a fine life.

[rathbone]

I bumped into Jack and Sandra when I went for the sunday paper yesterday.

Let me rephrase that as I don't want to offend Sandra.... I met Jack and Sandra in the Town Centre when I went to buy the paper yesterday morning.

We exchanged pleasantries. I told Jack that the youngest Rathbonette had got her results back and could now legitimately put the letters B.A. (Hons) after her name, and he told me that he and Sandra were going off to Cornwall next week on their holidays. He'd like to go abroad but Sandra would just get confused with driving on the wrong side of the road, if, that is, they let her in in the first place. With a laugh he pulled at Sandra's harness. She stopped sniffing at my trouser leg and led him on his way up the hill.

The thought of Jack on holiday is an interesting one. How does he get around? I can understand how he manages to gad about the town here, because he has built up a mental image in his head and all of the guide dogs that he's had have presumably learned their way around.

But he and Sandra regularly go up to London on the train. (Jack likes jazz and goes to gigs at Ronnie Scotts and Pizza on the Park, among other venues.) He manages the train and the tube by counting the stations. But Cornwall is another issue altogether. I admire his courage and his ingenuity, but if I told him that he'd belt me one for being patronising.

Just on the topic of disabilities and the train... I got on the train last week to find that the compartment was full of school kids ( by which I mean every seat was taken by said pupils) The areas next to the doors were packed with adults who could not get a seat. The temperature was in the eighties ( or twenties if metric's your thing).

At the next stop a woman with two crutches and a stookie on her leg got on. She was obviously having difficulty standing up and trying to hold on to the overhead rail while balancing on her good leg. None of the kids moved.

After twice managing to catch her before she fell over, one of the men standing in our group between the doors suggested that one of the schoolkids should stand up to let her have a seat. In fact, to his credit, one of them made a move to get up, only for a loud command of "James, sit down". to eminate from the only seated adult in the whole coach.

When we started to remonstrate with her, this school teacher solemnly advised us that it was against Health and Safety legislation. A full risk assessment had been carried out by the school and all pupils had to remain seated during the entire journey. Before I could suggest that perhaps she could offer her seat to the woman with the stookie, the train had arrived at my stop. I hope someone else mentioned it. Forcefully.

I'm sure that Sandra won't put up with such nonsense on the trip down to Cornwall.

[rathbone]

It rained here last night.

If you don’t live where we live, then that might not have much significance, but for us that was the first rain since 23 May...... ten and a half weeks. Even the thunderstorms which everyone else seemed to experience last week passed us by. We could see them, about five miles to the west, and we could hear them, but not a drop came our way.

Given that the hose pipe ban has been in effect for six of those ten and a half weeks, the garden is now in a very sorry state and Mrs. R. and I have muscles the size of Vin Deisel’s carting buckets full of bath water from upstairs just to keep the Kilmarnock Willow alive.

Given the size of our garden and the size of the watering can, we have had to make heartbreaking decisions between what will live and what will die.

Apart from the geraniums on the patio, the willow, the acers, the camellias and the hydrangeas have received favourable treatment, and a major offensive was launched to rescue the christmas tree for another year.

(The christmas tree was an impulse buy from Marks and Sparks three years ago which has over- wintered quite successfully ever since.... another christmas and we will have fully recouped the investment in a rooted tree!)

Some of the plants are doing okay in the dry conditions, particularly the rosemary, which has gone rampant and the acanthus which is throwing up flower spikes and lush leaves all over the place.

Most of the poor dears, however, are candidates for horticultural Holby. The hebes have all copped it. The holly is dropping its leaves over what is left of the lawn and the ferns look like bracken after a forest fire.

On the fruit and veg side, the raspberries are doing surprisingly well, covered in fruit ... a month early, but the strawberries are little shrivelled stumps on the end of their runners and the red and white currants are indistinguishable from each other.

The potatoes have fallen right back and the leaves vanished in a puff of brown crispiness. If the ground wasn’t so hard I’d dig them up, but I suspect that all I’ll get is a handful of brown bools. The cabbages are nondescript and each cauliflower head is smaller than a broccoli floret. The onions have long since disappeared and the artichokes ( for which we are rightly famous in our part of the world) have collapsed in a heap.

The laugh is that last year I followed all the suggestions on gardeners world and put in mediterranean plants that are suited to dry conditions. All of them were killed off by the severe frosts that we had last winter.

According to the weather forcast, we should get another shower tomorrow. I can’t wait.

[Epykat]

We had a shower yesterday - but it wasn't enough to save the ceanothus . I can however, vouch for Mr E's caulis - we had a very large one today with cheese sauce and very nice it was too

[Epykat]

But not everything is dead!

[rathbone]

Just a quick note to say that having completed a delightful tour of Porty drinking establishments putting faces to avatars over the last week, normal ramblings and on the beach things will resume shortly. (Things have been curtailed due to the difficulties of finding enough elastic bands to keep Epykat's computer running.)

I really enjoyed meeting Ali and Jackson Priest. Our evening in the Ormalie was a delight and the discussion on the relative merits of Arthur Lee and Bryan Maclean led to an even livelier discussion the following afternoon up in Liberton ( but that's another story.) Jackson, I'm really getting into the Joe Meek CD and will get it back to you soon ( honest).

As has been posted elsewhere, the Barby on the Beach was really cool, to the extent of being arctic. Gilo, your entrance was like Amundsen coming out of a blizzard... unexpected but entirely appropriate. Good to catch up with Bob, Bellybabe, Sunnyporty, Wangi, Sandra and Bearcub. (Don't believe what he says --- the sausages may have been overcooked, but they were delicious.) Marya's late arrival was the signal to enter the Dalriada. I was running the following morning so I wasn't drinking ........ It's good fun watching other people slowly deliquesce before your eyes while you remain completely sober.

I was,however, drinking during my session in the Forresters, which was probably why I had the courage to walk up to someone I'd never seen in my life before and say : "I believe you are Zargonian and you are spladooshed." Nice for taking it in good part mate, and thanks for pointing out Novastar (who was also spladooshed).

Finally, Gedge, yes that was me who was smiling at you at the bus-stop on the way to the Hibs match on Saturday. Sort of a silent spladoosh. Maybe next time we'll be able to talk.

[Zargonian]

Aye I got spladooshed well and truly by Rathbone.

Good to meet another Poller!

[Novastar]

Was nice to meet you and put a name to a face. Haven't been spladooshed before. The 4 people with us didn't have a clue what was going on - much explaining was needed very quickly.

I have locations now of several other people so I might be coming to find some people when I'm back from my hols.

[rathbone]

It’s been a year since I started posting these ramblings from Rathboneland and, looking back over the collected angst, I would have to say that the most significant event locally has been the road closure.

Since the houses at the end of the street started falling into the old mine workings, peace has reigned. Unfortunately, there was a small paragraph in the local paper last week to the effect that an Order has now been placed before Parliament under the terms of the Mine Works Act 18somethingother. So it looks like they are going to get around to backfilling the holes and shoring up the buildings at last..... which is good news for the fourteen families who have been out of their homes living in digs for the last nine months.... but bad news for the rest of us. It means that the school will re-open. All those bloody cars blocking up the street morning and afternoon. All those idiots thinking that they can take a short cut to avoid the speed bumps on the main road. That imbecilic tune on the ice-cream van. They will all be back.

On a personal level, it has been another year of battling with my feet. A case of mind over metatarsals. If it hasn’t been the achilles tendon it has been the knees. When it hasn’t been the knees, it’s been disappearing chiropractors. To add insult to injury I moved on to new shoes last month. Inevitably they rub in different places and I am now nursing a blister where blisters have never been before. Still, only two half marathons to go this season and then I can ease back until next March....

The creative highlight, of course, has been Radio Free Porty. Thanks a lot, Dada, I have enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks, too, to all the other D.J.s for making it harder to compile sets because they have already grabbed the fandabbydozy tracks. (You know who you are, Americana...OK?)

For your delectation in the coming months, October sees the thirtieth anniversary of Mrs R and I getting hitched, on which she will no doubt have some pearls of wisdom. In November I am going back to Kenya to supervise the building of a nursery for aids orphans at Kilifi. In December I have to make up my mind if I’m prepared to carry on as Environmental Convenor. In January I shall renew my vow to spend more time with my guitar and in February Jim Jam and I will realise that we have left it too late to do justice to the Bimbo preparations. March sees the start of the half marathon season again, and I’ll be back to metatarsals.

It’s a hard life.

[rathbone]

After its little jaunt up to Scotland the car usually goes off for a spot of rest and recuperation at the local service garage. I usually arrange it over the phone, but this year, flushed with on-line enthusiasm, I thought I’d do it via the internet.

Nice and easy, straightforward web-site and equally easy little form to fill in and send.

You could choose the day you wanted the service. Morning or afternoon. The time you would be dropping the car off. Whether you wanted them to contact you by telephone or e-mail. You could even leave a message about any particular aspects of the service that you wanted them to know about.

So I put in Friday 8 September. Morning. Drop the car off at 8:00 am. Please contact me by e-mail. And I told them that I was going on an arboricultural course on the day in question and would not be contactable as I would be sixty feet up a tree in the middle of a wood with ear protectors on, so could I come back for the car about three thirty?

Nice little message came up on the screen:

“We thank you for taking the time to find out about our Company from the comfort of your own home and look forward to an opportunity to meet you in person to offer you the 'Good Service' for which we have been known since 1896. We will contact you within 24 hours confirming details of your bookingâ€

[rathbone]

Joyce Coutts-Milne died on Friday. That probably doesn’t mean much to most people reading this but will mean a lot to the people she helped and inspired over the years.

Joy (as she preferred to be known) was in the business of giving kids confidence, She worked with young people, mostly in Linlithgow and Bo’ness. In the sixties she identified a need to do something to address the ‘boredom’ that so many of the kids she met seemed to suffer. No-body she spoke to about it appeared to want to address the problem, so she took up the cudgels herself. She set up drama classes in church halls, schools and anywhere else she could get her hands on for free. It didn’t matter if the youngsters could act or not, she gave them things to do. The productions they took part in were successful and they learned to believe in themselves.

I first met Joy in a Pizza Express in Hampstead in 1974. Mrs. R. had dragged me off to meet this remarkable woman who had let her on to a stage for the first time, and showed her how to do things for her self. I could understand why Mrs. R. was making a fuss. Joy’s enthusiasm was infectious. We stayed in touch for the next thirty years.

When I put the ‘phone down on Friday night, it made me think of the other people that I know who are like Joy. Every community has them - the ones that won’t take no for an answer.

Bill Salmon for one. (Or Billy the Fish as the kids used to call him.) Bill had been motivated in the same way as Joy had. The kids in the village had nothing to do. He had a barn, so the barn became a part time youth club. It was popular. It was so popular that he had to stop using it as a barn and turn it over full time to youth activities. It wasn’t long before he and his wife Rose were letting parts of their house be used as well. Eventually they were spending almost all of their spare time on activities for the kids, organising day trips, adventure holidays, and running the christmas pantomime every year. In time they persuaded enough people to cough up enough money to convert one of the houses in the village into a proper youth centre. After Bill’s death the Council took it over, fitted it out properly and re-named it the Bill Salmon Centre.

And then there’s Bertie Everard. Forty years ago Bertie passed a young boy sleeping in a shop doorway. The next day, and the next again, the boy was still there when Bertie passed on his way to work. Bertie stopped to talk to him. He was sixteen, had had an argument with his dad and had been thrown out. There was no-where for him to stay. Even worse, he told Bertie that there were other people sleeping rough in the town as well. Bertie was shocked that he had never been aware of these homeless people before, and even more shocked when he discovered that no-one took responsibility for them. He took what money he had and rented a place where homeless young people could stay. Initially there were half a dozen kids staying in his flat. Bertie continued to campaign on their behalf and went round all the businesses in the town getting them to sponsor rooms in his ‘hostel’. When the local cottage hospital closed, he formed a trust to buy it. In the early 1990s an extension was built on the back. Bertie’s hostel now provides accommodation for 116 people. Bertie is now in his 80’s and currently in hospital There are, literally, thousands of people who have cause to wish him well.

I don’t know who the Joys, Bills and Berties of Portobello are, but you can bet they are out there. Treasure them.

[rathbone]

It was like trying to inflate a marquee with a hair dryer. In fact, it was just like a marquee: it was so big all fourteen of us could walk around inside it.



Mrs. R and I had bought the youngest Rathbonette a balloon ride for her birthday, and here we were in a field in deepest Hertfordshire helping to inflate the thing. It was good fun.

After about half an hour of blowing the excursionists clambered into the basket and were off off and away.



Unfortunately, while the day was bright and sunny, there wasn’t much wind, so they drifted very very slowly across the fields, which was fine by me because I had to follow them in the car.



Creeping along country lanes at five miles an hour allows you time to miss the pheasants crossing the road and to wind up the queue of traffic which builds up behind you. I now know the sense of power that tractor drivers have.

An hour or so later the balloon came down in another field, only about seven miles from where they took off, the pilot skilfully missing the power lines and the trees, but upsetting a learner driver who made an emergency stop when the basket began to appear in her rear-view mirror.



Despite the short distance they travelled, the Rathbonette was suitable impressed by the experience.

[Epykat]

It looks suspiciously like you're making a crop circle..........