Monthly Archives: September 2013

We’ve had enough cold calls

Posted on September 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

On Friday, we finally decided we’d had enough. Fridays seem to be the worst, but every day we’re pestered with unwanted telephone calls. It’s a common story, I know. But now we’ve got this …

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It’s a trueCall call screener, and it’s a class act. Programmable to block or accept all sorts of different calls, it’ll take messages and record calls. Best of all, it tells spammers, scammers, survey monkeys, and ambulance chasers, “We’re not interested in your call – please hang up now and don’t call us again!” That is, of course if their CRM software hasn’t already cut the call when it detected an answerphone. Deeply satisfying.

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Two generations of Ixworths

Posted on September 26, 2013 | 4 comments

It’s end of day one at the allotment for our new flock. They had a good run this morning, and a brief outing late this afternoon. The new birds are loving their outside time. They’d really worn their little patch of garden lawn to a frazzle, and now they’ve got lovely long grass once again.

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Chickens’ New Home

Posted on September 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’ve spent the last week or so reinforcing the second run at the allotment, which was broken into by a fox last year. Another layer of heavier duty weldmesh has been added to the bottom half.

Last night was the night that this year’s newly hatched chickens moved from the back garden, where they were getting a bit cramped, to the allotment. We moved them at dusk, putting them into the house and hoping they’d roost straight away, but they were having none of it, and came straight out into the run. I was a wee bit worried that the smell of the creosote that I’d used against red mite had put them off, but I needn’t have worried. When we checked on them after dark, they were roosting snugly.

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The Cake and Bake Show (2)

Posted on September 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

My previous post told the story of how much we enjoyed the demonstrations at the Cake and Bake Show, to which we’d won tickets via lovefood.com.

This post is more of a miscellany of things that caught our eye as we went round. Although we’re not skilled cakemakers, the really beautiful stands displayed the high skills of the cake decorating world.

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The Cake and Bake Show (1)

Posted on September 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

We won a pair of tickets to the Cake and Bake Show at Earls Court, courtesy of Andrew Webb, editor of the very wonderful lovefood.com.

We weren’t at all sure of what the show would be like. We’re enthusiastic breadmakers and I’m (perhaps too) fond of pies, but cakes aren’t our forte. We needn’t have worried. It was great. In fact, one day wasn’t nearly enough to see all that we wanted and to attend all of the demonstrations that we would have liked.

Plus, to add a dash of celebrity to the proceedings, the contestants from The Great British Bake Off were there.

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Caravan Course

Posted on September 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

To give our confidence a boost, we went on an introductory caravan driving course, organised by the Caravan Club. It was fantastic. There were a few lecture classes, but in all honesty we’d both read the book that had been sent out with the course papers, and the talks didn’t add much.

The glory of the course was the practical work, tackled in groups of three. We started with the simplest of all manoeuvres, driving forward, and allowing enough room around a slalom course.

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But soon we were adjusting mirrors before starting the dreaded reversing.

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We were shown how to put little telltales on the caravan to help with reversing and to avoid jack-knifing. Then plenty of practice, with one person driving, one person acting as banksman, and one person observing

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We were shown how to get out of trouble if you went too wide, or cut it too fine:

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We practised shuffling the van in order to move it a metre to the right or left. We reversed nearside to the curb, and offside to the curb.

We left on day two more than happy that we wouldn’t disgrace ourselves. Thank you Dave at Appletree Driving!

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Fruit and chickens

Posted on September 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Discovery apples signify late summer, but when the more mainstream varieties come on stream, we have to admit that it’s nearly autumn. The Discovery cordon on our new allotment has quite finished fruiting. It’s been given a quick summer pruning, but I’ll need to cut back all that top growth later:

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All mod cons in our little play-house

Posted on September 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

We can’t help laughing just a little at our new toy, and at ourselves. It’s like a child’s Wendy house, full of little gadgets to play with. We went over to explore it a bit more, and to find out where the electrical panel is, and to try out the gas fitting.

We were a bit put out that we’ve discovered that we’ll need to shop for a few more bits and pieces, even though when we asked the dealer whether there were any other things we needed he said no. Today we’ve discovered that although the package included fresh and waste water carriers, we have no fresh water pump nor waste water hose.

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But we do love the way the caravan is fitted out. It has a full size gas stove, with an oven and grill as well as a four burner hob.
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I wish I lived in a caravan …

Posted on September 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

I wish I lived in a caravan, With a horse to drive, like a peddler-man! Where he comes from nobody knows, Or where he goes to, but on he goes! (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Our wish has come true, and we have our caravan. We picked it up earlier today, and towed it with some trepidation to a secure park not too far away from where we live.

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It was mostly motorway miles, for which we set the cruise control to a modest 55mph, so it could hardly have been easier. But we felt absurdly proud to have made it to our destination. The only real embarrassment was that I couldn’t release the caravan from the towbar, and had to ask for help. Luckily a couple of good Samaritans came to our aid and offered all sorts of good advice, including the name and number of a recommended service engineer. He’s booked to give the caravan the once over next Monday, before we use it in anger.

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