pumpkinstrokemarrow

I see in yesterday's DT that a group of polar bears landed in the sea, 50 miles from the nearest land and 500 miles from home, when the floe they were living was melted by excess concentrations of carbon dioxind in the ambient environment. They have elected to swim for home rather than for land. I would have thought that this was rather too far for a bear to swim so I expect to read in the DT soon that the World Wildlife Fund has dispatched its MV P Bear to the the rescue. I imagine that apart from being wet, the bears are also rather hungry, stocks on their floe having given out some time ago. Did they resort to cannabilism? These thoughts prompted by an extravagent use of time and effort on a stray dolphin the other week.

Nearer to home, passed the second dead badger on the way to Cheam yesterday. So as well as having to contend with urban foxes it may be that we are going to have urban badgers. Presumably there is a colony of them in Nonsuch Park - but how did they get there?

After the badger incident, off to town for the penultimate day of the 'Lure of the East' exhibition at the proper Tate. Good value as it turned out as we got a tw0-for-one deal on the strength of our train tickets and the book of the show for £10 instead of £25 on the the strength of it being the penultimate day. We also saw two lady luvvies in full costume and war paint, one famous and middle aged, one older but unknown. One lady who carried an open laptop all around the exhibition but without appearing to look at it or key anything into it. And at least two gents from Epsom, given away by their carrier bag from Lester Bowden.

Exhibition itself both educational and entertaining, with some good work by Holman Hunt and Lear. But slightly odd going to an exhibition which, in addition to showing us some pictures, was also trying to do a Guardian and make a statement about how awful Europeans are vis a vis our so much more civilised neighbours in the Near East. Some of the comments on some of the paintings were well worth a place in Pseuds' Corner.

There was also a rather naff audio visual thing. A huge screen used to display very small amounts of information. Entirely worthy of one of those soft documentaries swarming over the airwaves these days - 54% pictures, 54% mood music, 2% content. All wrapped up by a manic man with a regional accent and a beard (for which reason I call such programmes beards). Which also served to block the way to the second half of the exhibition, which, but for the vigilance of the BH, I would have missed. Although, as it happened, most of the better pictures were in the first half.

All of which, following on from the note on obscene of 14 February above, prompted me to wonder about the meaning and value of the word pornographic - which one or two of the paintings in the exhibition were said to be. According to the first edition of the OED, that being the only one to hand, pornography is writing of or about (graphy) harlots (porno). From the Greek. By extension, writing about things which are obscene, that is to say about things which should not be seen (vide supra). There was also something called a pornocracy, the domination of the government of 10th century Rome by prostitutes. With two references to learned tomes from the second half of the nineteenth century, so I doubt if the compilers of the OED are pulling our legs. All in all, I think, a rather tricky area. There is clearly some pornography which we would do better without. I dare say there is a fair bit of pornography which depicts activities which are legal, the depiction of which would be difficult to ban, but which one does not want on television or on a hoarding in the street. Something to be consumed furtively by interested parties. But there are also some quite decent paintings - decent in both senses of the word - which, amongst other things, are titillating (not to use a grander word), and which might also be called pornography. Who knows? Clearly time for a bit of fresh air, the sun now having come out after a very wet and dull first half of the day.

Having moaned previously about highly paid ladies playing the sex discrimination card when they lose their grip on the greasy pole, we now have the equally unedifying spectacle of highly paid people of colour doing the same thing. What on earth does the senior policeman think he is going to achieve? What on earth is his gripe? I dare say there is a fair bit of uninstitutionalised prejudice (as opposed to the institutionalised sort. Which word presumably means with the collusion of the organisation at large, including its management. And if I am right about what this much bandied about word is supposed to mean, I very much doubt whether it exists in any large organisation in this country) about, but I don't think this particular sort of protest is going to help. Just p**s the rest of us off. And maybe we will go the extra mile to avoid employing such people so that we do not get into pickles of this sort. Much easier these days not to employ someone than to get rid of them afterwards.

On the other hand, all this may be a wrong nail in the coffin of his boss, whom I think should have been made to walk the plank over the Stockwell incident. I gather there is still hope on that front with an inquest lurking. No idea why it should have been lurking for so long - although for the late Diana lurked for even longer.

Reminded this morning of the changing quality of life by a large and handsome wardrobe in FIL's possession. Oaken, large and handsome and by today's standards fairly useless. Its weight to capacity ratio is very high compared with that of a peice of modern furniture. My point being, that despite our apparent wealth, we have no room for the large and useless in our houses. We have to work every cubic foot far too hard for that. And if we have to work too hard we are not really wealthy. It's all an illusion. Thoughts clearly brought on by last night's unhealthy combination of Newcastle Brown (my bottle of choice) and Red Stripe (my tinny of choice).

One of my personal protests in favour of the useless and harmless, is a large clear glass jar in the garden shed. About a foot high, four or five inches across with a narrow neck. The sort of jar that one used to keep liquid chemicals in. Last year it contained an interesting red object - which looked rather like paper. Just sat their doing nothing, beyong being an interesting shape in a very attractive shade of red. This year, thinking to gee things up a bit, dropped in a bit of duckweed (the weed which spreads everywhere and an individual of which consists of a round green leaf, about a millimetre in diameter, floating on the surface of the water with a single white root, maybe a bit more than a centimetre, below). This is now spreading. The water contains a variety of very small animals whizzing about. The paper, or whatever it was, has dissolved and is now a dull grey-white sludge at the bottom of the jar. So after a year what has precipitated the paperine collapse? Maybe the duckweed really is noxious.

DT gets off to a good start yesterday with the information that St Michael's Mount is under threat by rising sea levels. Page 3 lead. I found this quite alarming as Epsom is only a hundred feet or so above current sea levels. Calmed down when the small print explained that what they actually meant was that the causeway to the Mount may no longer be passable, even at low tide. Further in, there was a large picture of a tiger in a pond with duckweed, said to be desperate. Not at all clear why. Maybe their correspondant could smell the fear on the tiger - although this seems a bit unlikely as presumably the picture was lifted from some wire service to fill a bit of dead page. And then, a couple of days ago, we were told that the entire Best Western customer database had fallen into the hands of a hacker, with the clear implication that it was for onward sale to Al Quaeda. Today I get an email from Best Western (as someone who has patronised one of their establishments in the recent past. I rather like them) explaining that there was a security lapse (virus infestation) in one of their hotels in Germany, permitting access to details of ten people who had recently stayed at that establishment. They are working hard with the relevant regional, national and international authorities. And then a few days before that, the story of the old lady who was funding a rest home for her friends out of the proceeds of a thriller that she had just published at the age of 90 or something. Always wanted to be a writer. It turns out that the enterprising lady made use of the services of a vanity publisher, which is to say that she pays them rather than the other way around. It seems that several papers picked the thing up before the TLS blew the whistle, the TLS properly being more learned in the arcana of publishing than the DT.

Back to decorating yesterday. With the first coat of crushed apricot on two of the four extension walls. For some reason I could not get the name Cloudsey Shovell out of my mind while I was doing this. Checking afterwards in Chambers (a good source. And being published in 1956, entirely independant of Mr Google and other internentiles), I find that Sir Clowdisley Shovell was a notable naval warrior in the War of the Spanish Succession, drowned along with 2,000 odd others, off the Isles of Scilly when returning to base for R&R in 1707. I must have come across him in my recently acquired book about the Household Cavalry by Barney White-Spunner (vide supra). But quite failed to make this, or any other connection, while actually painting. The vapours from the crushed apricots must have got to me. Maybe I could get into business selling them as an illegal psychoactive substance?

Or maybe it was the cabbage soup. The day before the BH had firmly declined any further lentil soup. But circumstances conspired against her and I was allowed to make cabbage soup. Simmer six ounces of pearl barley with thin crosswise sliced celery for an hour or so. While this is going on cut half a pound of roast Polish bacon (vide supra) into centimetre cubes. Wash a goodly quantity of crinkly cabbage leaves. Cut each one down the middle of the tough central rib, then slice thin crosswise. Add cabbage and bacon to the pearl barley about ten minutes before the off. Add mushrooms about five minutes before the off. Unusual flavour but good. We did the whole lot, maybe half a gallon, in one sitting.

By way of conclusion I should correct the impression that I may have given that pies are rare in Devon, on the basis of recent experience in Exeter. There are pots of them in Dawlish. Provided you go before 1700 on Sunday (when lots of eateries seem to shut), no problem at all.

On closer inspection not too sure about putting gold sovs under the bed. All looks a bit too volatile for a decent suburban type to bet his shirt on, let alone his sovs. Are they riding for a fall just presently? Another helpful website - http://swanlowpark.co.uk/rpiannual.jsp - tells me that retail prices in this country increased ten fold in the thirty year period 1970-2000. So in very rough and ready terms, gold held its real value over the same period, the end of which was a thirty year low. And has done very well since. But then, the graphs provided at http://goldprice.org/30-year-gold-price-history.html say it all depends on what currency one looks at the price of gold in. They vary a lot more than I would have expected. All far too complicated. And getting the two lots of data onto one spreadsheet - short of typing it in by hand - defeated me.

I also learn that Excel 2003 charts are quite tricky. I could not even manage to use one column to provide the X-axis labels and another column to provide the Y-axis values. Is it me or is it the product? Do I have to move onto the dreaded pivot tables?

At a more mundane level, been trying to renew my insurance with Ford Insure. Quite happy with the quote, but not at all happy with their customer service line. It appears that they have been experiencing a high level of calls (does this equate to post bank holiday absenteeism?) all morning and I cannot get beyond very loud and tiresome music interspersed with announcements about what spiffing companies Ford Insure and Norwich Union are - when all they are doing is transferring some of their costs in providing an insurance renewal service to me. I would happily pay an extra £5 a year to get their phones answered - provided, that is, that that is all that it took. Must see if I can crank it up to five legitmate thats.

I wonder what an enhanced phone which enabled me to get on with something more interesting than listening to their idea of music and which beeped when they deigned to answer to phone would cost? Are such devices available? How much would BT charge me to connect such an exotic device to their copper?

At the road level, was pleasantly surprised by the rarity of speed cameras in rural Devon. On the other hand, the road marking people have been trying to make up, with a particularly innovative road marking scheme on one of the roads between Exminster and Dawlish. Take one narrow road and paint interesting white and yellow lines down both sides of it. Plant clumps of white posts at the side of the road from time to time. One got the impression that all this is something to do with the road being narrow, but not clear what the value add is, apart from keeping the road marking contractors in employment.

Those who work for whoever maintains the roads between Morden and Epsom has been doing quite well too. Strange red lines at the side of the road. Some single, some double. Interspersed with dotted red line enclosures of various sizes, also at the side of the road. One got the impression that all this is something to do with red bus routes, but not clear what. Maybe someone should write a code of practise for the road marking industry which includes the rule that any road marking must be intelligible to a tired motorist with poor eyesight in poor light without having to have recourse to explanatory signs at the side of the road, the highway code or Mr Google. And a rule that the average total length of road marking per metre of road should not exceed one centimetre in any one kilometre stretch of road. And another that at no point in the road should there be more than one road marking. And then, having done with code of practise, one could move onto service delivery performance indicators. Road markings deleted per carriageway kilometre. Maximum number of colours in any one carriageway kilometre. Percentage of carriageway which is road marking free. The whole to be policed by the road marking inspectorate, possibly transferred from the wheelie bin inspectorate.

Been pondering about where to keep the proceeds from the late allotment. Maybe this is the place?

Googlemail chucked it in the spam bucket. But please feel free to enter into dialogue direct. No need for me to act as a channel.

The acorns on the adolescent oak tree in our back garden appears to be afflicted with some sort of growth, which makes the acorn look like a green version of pop-corn. Or a strange green shelled walnut. Or a very small brussels sprout, just opening up (well past being eatable that is), over which someone has poured a thick sugar solution. Sticky with some black bits. Although it is not like pop-corn in the sense that as far as one can make out, the growth is on the surface of a small acorn, rather than being the acorn turned inside out. The growth ends up by more or less completely covering the acorn, although one can still see the base of the acorn where the stalk enters the sticky bundle. Presumably the acorn no longer works, so a badly afflicted tree will not reproduce. On the common, later the same day, we found that most of the oaks there have the same problem.

Back at the ranch, try asking the Internet what it is. The obvious horticultural sites - that is RHS and Kew - don't help - but do seem rather keen that you sign up for some paying advisory service. The MAFF site (I forget what they are called these days) is full of some unpleasant oak disease recently arrived from the US and causing sudden death (in tree terms that is), but is silent on the subject of exploding acorns. So we remain puzzled. Is it a fungus? Is it some kind of vegetable cancer? Do plants get cancer? Is it dangerous to plant or animal? The animal bit arising from the fact that one oak disease makes touching the oak unpleasant it not dangerous. A matter of the disease producing some noxious substance.

Wikipedia helpfully provided a long list of butterflies and moths the larvae of which feed on various parts of oak trees, but the list not being much more than a list, I was not much further ahead.

Yesterday was the day of the skate, the man from Hastings having run out of cod by the time I got to him. Simmered in water by the BH in our fish kettle, then touched up with some flavoured, melted butter. Served with potatoes and courgettes, both cooked entire. Good gear and very filling. I managed my entire wing, BH only managed about half of hers. So I had the balance of the potatoes and skate chopped up and fried in a little butter for breakfast. More good gear, if not exactly chlorestorol reducing.

The day before off to an exhibition of paintings by one Wilhelm Hammershoi (with a crossed 'O'), a Dane who was active about a hundred years ago and of whom I had not heard before he appeared in the TLS. The upstairs gallery at the Royal Academy a little crowded, but the pictures, like the skate, were good gear. A painter with private means who restricted himself to interiors of his own flat to which he added a few street scenes and landscapes for variety. About the only person appearing in any of this was his wife, usually from the back. He used a restricted palette, with a lot of white, grey, blue and black. A sort of monochrome, and rather mannered, version of Vermeer. But both restful and rewarding to see a lot of paintings by one painter in one style at one time. One does not get quite so punch-drunk as one can get, wandering from room to room, in the National Gallery.

And by an odd chance, it seems that one of his principal patrons and supporters was a Copenhagen dentist.

Following the excursion to Devon, diet back on course with the first round of Epsom lentil soup. Made more exciting by the use of a lump of roast bacon from Sokolow from a Polish shop in Taunton, rather than the usual smoked streaky from Cheam. A lump about 2.5 inches square and 6 inches long weighing in at 1lb for £4. Pink and fatty on the sliced sides; same sort of gear as our streaky. Did a very good job diced. On the other hand the kabanos from the same shop were not too good at all. A bit fatty - and not as good as the mini kabanos sold by Mr S everywhere. No need to go to Taunton at all.

Then off to the National Gallery to inspect the Italians in the Sainsbury wing. While a lot of the stuff was not really my sort of thing, interesting just the same. The way it moved from altar peices which reminded one of icons and mosaics, to decorations for the houses of the rich in a hundred years or so. The exuberant inclusion of all sorts of mundane titbits along with the religious main course - odd animals and acitivities - rather in the way of some cathedral sculpture - for example, that at Ely. For example, the mother of John the Baptist being presented with what looked like a roast swan, to pick her up after his birth. (Servants being charged with washing the new born so as to leave her hands free for the swan). The inclusion of self conscious features as the pictures moved from naive to realistic. The inclusion of pictures, sculptures, windows and mirrors in pictures. Pictures of people in mirrors.

Although they were far from being first past the post in this. I remembered having seen a picture of a Greek pot with a frieze of little men around the rim, with one of the little men jumping down out of the frieze into the main action. From 540BC, so nearly 2,000 years before the Florentines. For those interested, the pot in question is exhibit number 1989.281.62 at the Metropolitan Museun in New York.

The transition from naive to realistic also seemed to result in the loss of piety. The pictures, even when still ostensibly of religious subjects did not convey piety. But one thing did not change: nearly all the pictures appeared to be designed, inter alia, to tell one how rich the person who commissioned it was. Overall, one was reminded why us dour north europeans had thought that the south europeans had lost touch with native simplicity of faith and that reform was necessary.

Having found a junk shop affiliated to the Exeter waste transfer station, FIL was delighted to acquire a computer table for £5 knocked down to £2.50 because they were having a sale. One of those tubular steel contraptions with several wooden shelves - around £25 new from Argos or wherever. Sturdy thing, well up to the weight of his antique monitor (which has seen good service at Nottingham University), but rather too small to work at in comfort for any length of time. And the printer shelf two centimetres too narrow for the shiny new printer. But this last could not dent the delight from a bargain.

Purchase of printer from Staples not very therapeutic. The neat little HP printer just the ticket at £40. But then, having gone back to the shop later that day (they were expecting a delivery of the things), we find that it includes very little ink and only one of the two cables you need to connect the thing up. Putting this right takes the total price from £40 to £90. Which on closer inspection of the printers in the store had become about the same price as other entry level offerings. Observing my irritation, the well-mannered young Pole serving us throws in a packet of paper (value, say, £1). Not too impressed, either with Staples' pricing arrangements or with my slowness. The other trick that they pulled, which I thought was dishonest rather than testing, was to sell things in three parts. So you had a headline price for something of £30. Then you read the small print on the ticket and find that this is for box 1 of 3. The other two boxes also being £30, so the actual price of the thing is £90. At least we managed to work this out before buying the thing (and moving onto the junk shop where we did the deed for £2.50, as recounted above).

The junk shop also sold us a fine sixties pedestal ashtray. Handsome thing, made out of beech - the real thing, not that fibreboard with a beech photograph stuck onto it used for worktops. Good heavy circular base, maybe 6 inches across and 2 inches thick. Tapered column maybe 18 inches high, topped by a circular bowl to hold the ashtray proper, which was missing. Obvious candidate for a table lamp. Circular bowl just the place for a light fitting.

At which point, hands up. I confess to having modified a domestic electrical appliance without having consulted a qualifier electrical engineer. Is this a felony? Or perhaps an offence worthy of a fixed penalty notice? Would I need to declare my dereliction should I ever come to fill in an information pack for our house?

Reminded along the way of how awkward some electrical fittings are, this one being a torpedo switch. Very proper thing will two pole cutoff and an earth by-pass, but very awkward. Real fiddle to get the bared flex into the relevant holes. Whole job took me about an hour. So if an electrician were to take around half an hour, plus house call, plus visit to shop to get parts, plus filling out relevant documentation, you might be looking at more than £100 for a routine repair of a commonplace appliance. Could an old lady afford to have her heritage table lamp mended on this basis?

Postscript: just heard that I have bagged my third mouse in three trap settings in the compost heap. Will they keep on coming?

This is what comes of being disturbed by macabre dreams about bizarre mass cremations and the ceremonial mixing of the ashes therefrom. Went to find out about Australian population to clear the brain.

Dodgy phone call yesterday, from yet another sub-continental call centre. The first operator, who speaks English OK, but with a very thick accent, wants to give me free telephone calls of all varieties over my BT Broadband connection. While he does not actually claim to be calling from BT, he manages to give the impression that he is. He knows my name, telephone number, address and postcode. And that I am indeed a BT Broadband customer. He spends a lot of time, repeating himself a fair bit, explaining the wonders of this new entirely free service which will be supported by a gadget which will be dispatched within three working days to be plugged into my phone socket and my router (the model number of which he claims to know but which I do not recognise). I give him my email address so that he can send me instructions on how to do this. I start to get a bit fed up with all this, but a free service is a free service and it is not the first operator's fault that he has been badly trained.

At his point, he finds it necessary to transfer me to his supervisor, the second operator, whom he assures he is a very honest gentleman. This rather odd stroke I put down to odd sub-continental idiom. Their use of heritage slang and so forth. The second operator, who speaks with very little accent, in contrast to the first operator, starts to go through the whole business again. I start to manifest irritation. He moves onto what might be the nub of the matter, which is that while the new service is entirely free, part of my direct debit to BT is to be replaced by some other, smaller, payment. And what about sir's credit card. What sort will he be using? At this point I terminate the call.

He rings back and BH sees him off. Does 1471 to capture the number - which has not been withheld. Tries to ring him back and gets told that the number does not work, in four languages.

I manage to find an elderly bill from BT (all these things online now, along with their operators) and phone the number. After clicking through 4 'key x if you want y' options, I actually get through to Sharon from Birmingham (or someone of the sort. Not from the sub continent at all). Without having to key in the 24 digit reference number from the bottom left hand corner of my last but one bill. Or, even, my telephone number. She explains that the number captured is certainly nothing whatsoever to do with BT (wrong area code) but is everything to do with the subcontinent. But she is not terribly interested. Maybe this sort of thing goes on all the time. I suppose it might have been a genuine offer of service - but given that I do not have an email from these people, now withdrawn due to customer rudeness.

Let's hope that Googlemail is reasonably secure from these peoples' attentions - should they be that way inclined, which I doubt. That was not their game.

And I thought that our Stonehenge was a unique world heritage artefact. Someone else has been at it. Courtesy of http://jogagain.blogspot.com/.

Despite rising food prices and other eco-catastrophes, it seems that farming in Devon is not paying very well, with one in Exminster diversifying into a golf club. Which then diversifies (after the manner of garden centres) into a restaurant. Presumably the step from farm to golf club is planning permitted and the addition of a restaurant - an essential feature of any decent golf club - is planning exempt. But building a restaurant in the middle of a field would not be exempt. Which illustrates the pain involved in making sensible planning laws.

But in this case, the result was a bright, light restaurant with huge windows offering splendid views over the Exe estuary. The sort of thing one associates with restaurants on the continent rather than at home. Certainly much better views than those offered by the two pubs down in the village. And the beer - Tribute from St Austell - was good. But the food, while paying lip-service to the temple of drizzle, was not really up to much. Maybe the farmer retained the careful habits of his youth when it came to hiring a chef. £30,000 a year for someone to whack out a few egg butties for perspiring golfers? Not on your nelly. Forgetting, at this point, the master plan to build the finest restaurant in the village.

Later that day, down to the Turf Hotel at the end of the ship canal, where we had the benefit of a spectacular sunset, with the relevant part of the sky containing spectacular clouds, some a deep crimson, some black and some (looking rather like giant trees on the horizon) grey. The water in the canal and in the estuary proper was very still - apart from odd gurglings from what looked to be large fish - and so the sky was reflected, very clearly, in the water. All in all rather effective, expecially with the aid of a little red otter from across the water. The deep crimson clouds were especially memorable. Don't recall seeing clouds that colour before - although I have seen the colour in a couple of paintings which I believe were taken from a jigsaw. I shall now treat the one surviving painting with more respect.

On the way back to the village, the golf club came into view again. In the form of the arc-lights lighting up its driving range. Luckily, they were directed and so were only a nusiance for a short portion of the walk.

Have recently acquired some educational DVDs. The first cost £2 from a charity shop and was supposed to guide one through one's body. From the Dorking Kindersly stable. Looked like a snip until we found some small print which said Windows 95 only. And it resolutely refused to load in Windows XP - which I thought odd. My theory being that one can usually move up on the platform software but not usually down. We did manage to browse around the DVD and found various pictures and video clips of body parts - the standard of which, although moving and in colour, did not seem to be an advance on a tatty old nurse training paperback which happened to be at hand. So lots of gloss but not so much content. We also found 30 audio clips containing an enthusiastic male voice from the US congratulating one on getting a score from 1 to 30 in the quiz. In fact, the whole system seemed to be very fragmented, with lots and lots of files containing small bit maps of small bits of screen - presumably all to be assembled by the program which we could not run.

The second was rather dearer at £9.99 from a shop in Exeter called 'The Works'. Brain Training on three DVDs: starter edition, advanced edition and deluxe edition. Now these did work on Windows XP - although not out of the box. Loading up the CD resulted in a message about some component being missing. We then inspected the CD and found a readme file which said that one could load the missing component - the .NET framework - by hand, without being connected to the Internet. Which we then proceeded to do. But how many people would bother with that? I thought educational DVDs were supposed to be plug and play. And, in this case, the intended audience would not have had a clue. I was also reminded of my concern that it is getting harder for the amateur to run a PC which is not connected to the Internet. So much of the out of the box stuff assumes that one is. At worst things do not work and at best one gets irritating messages which one does not know how to disable.

Despite the full glory of the .NET framework, the product itself was surprisingly un-glossy. Quite backward looking really, often falling through to raw Windows message boxes. Very little attention paid to fonts and dialog box design (something that Microsoft, to their credit, take a good deal of trouble with). And, to my annoyance, find that BH has more brain power than myself - at least as measured by one of the ten or so tests offered. The three editions all looked much the same so it was hard to see where the value in buying all three was (if they didn't come as a collection, as our's did) - the only differance I could spot being the glossiness of the Soduku offered. This last having the advantage that one could turn the difficuly up and down so that one could feel good doing a puzzle a good deal easier than the moderate one on the back page of the DT. There is also the advantage that I can now abandon the stray thoughts I have had over the months of knocking up a Soduku game on Excel myself. Game support seemed manageable - if tedious to code - but, irritatingly, I had not managed to think up a way of generating puzzles.

The Works also offered a splendid book - down to £6.99 or so from £30 - about the horse guards by the appropriately named Barney White-Spunner. A very heavy book for its size with lots of good pictures and lots of odd factlets. So, for example, there was a passing fashion in the early 18th century to have black Life Guard trumpeters in yellow uniforms and mounted on grey horses. And that the Princess Royal was the second colonel of the guard to be portrayed in woman's dress. The first was some transvestite colonel, also from the early 18th century.

And then we find another shop in the same chain at Taunton, where I am able to pick up a recently published modern history of India, also, I think, favourably reviewed in the TLS, for £3.99 for getting on for three inches of book. As it happens, both books come from Macmillan - so where is the connection with the works? Or are Macmillan in trouble?

Talking of enthusiastic male voices, why is it that British television documentaries have to be delivered by bearded gentlemen from the north of Britain, manically shouting at the camera in some regional accent? Why is it thought inappropriate to talk in a more natural way? Why do we need such heavily accented mood music? Presumably the producers of these things know what they are doing, but as far as this viewer is concerned, the shouting is a complete turn off. I never watch the things.

Strange green crop found between Exminster and the field containing 3 alpacas. From a distance looks like wheat, but close to quite differant. And the only botanical books available were about flowers rather than things to eat. Anyone know what it is?

The idea was that the scan would stop at the dots at the corner. And that failing, failed to persuade Paint to trim the image - although I'm sure it can be used for that sort of thing. Failed the geek test again.

This from the fine Internet cafe in Exter City Library. Just had rather a bad moment, in that despite the number of people with unfashionable clothes, the number of large people and the number of people smoking, it was hard to find somewhere to buy a pie. A proper pie that is, the sort of thing you get in fish and chip shops. Not a pie with lots of meat and Guinness in it. However, while there were lots of wraps, ciabattas (?), organic and vegetarian options, there was not a pie in sight. Then BH pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we find a small bakery with seats outside that can manage pies. And a tuna baguette for herself. Now, two pies later, all calmed down.

This excitement was preceeded by a visit to Exeter cathedral. Lots of carving and lots of painting in a large bright space. Lots of chapels and elaborate tombs, some seriously old. But somehow not very pious. More a monument to the piety and pride of the 13th century (or whenever it was) which fuelled what, by the standards of the day, were massive buildings and which must have sucked a massive amount of wealth out of the surrounding countryside. Lots of elaborate bosses, recently painted, some of which did not work. That is to say, rather than highlighting the boss as the intersection of a pair of stone ribs, they looked rather like a golden fungus creeping over said intersection. Perhaps a golden, upsidedown aubresia. But the vaulting of the nave was good, really looking like it was holding up the roof and being attractive. With a neat bit of design taking the ribs into the columns of the clerestory windows which left the vaulting standing slightly apart from said columns.

In the Chapter House a valiant attempt to introduce modern statuary and sculpture into the dozen or so large niches, the orginals (if they ever existed) presumably stripped out at the time of the reformation. Large, dark grey constructions, possibly a metallic resin, some standing well proud of their niches. Not altogether convinced that it worked, but good to see the church people try to do more than do the heritage thing. (Always a bit tricky restoring a big old building to some mythic past. The things have always been in a flux. The minders of Stonehenge have this problem in spades). But then why good? As an atheist why should I care that the minders of Exeter Cathedral try to keep the building alive? Oddly, I do. Perhaps I am mindful of all those dead stately homes which now have no other function than that of visitor attraction and are poorer in consequence.

In between times, wondering why there are few foxes, grey squirrels or magpies in this part of the country. Real country too, with farms. Plenty of open land, some of it in the form of an RSPB nature preserve called Exminster Marshes - which do contain plenty of rabbits. Never seen so many in one field for a long time. Plenty of small and pretty birds. Swallows, finches and such like. After dusk, plenty of bats in the lanes. But what about the other stuff? What is it about Devon which foxes, grey squirrels and magpies don't like? Watch this space.

After something of a gap, back to the fore rib. Ten pounds or so, cooked for 3.5 hours at 180C. Maybe 15 minutes too long. Perfectly fine and moist, but no hint of pink. I like a hint if not a flush. Six of us did more or less the whole lot in one sitting. Accompanied by the finest offering in the wine department from an East London Aldis. That is to say, several bottles of something called St Emilion Grand Cru from the Chateau Grand-Pey-Lescours at £7.50 a pop or so. Not bad stuff at all, although a bit lost among the other offerings. The thing is, why were they knocking it out so cheap?

Yesterday to the Estrella in Vauxhall, where we had some truly excellent chicken soup. Flavoured with some herb or spice which I could not put a name to without a hint of the monosodium which pervades packet chicken soup. Followed by some truly excellent, albeit a little salty, bean and pork stew. Maybe two or three pints of the stuff between two, served in our own personal saucepan. A good blow-out - and just the right stuff to be eating outside on a wet and windy summer evening. Just like Portugal apparently. But that is the price one has to pay for one's nicco fix these days. Bring on Rumanian rules!

On the way home, some good skyscapes as the rain came and went. And the best rainbow I have seen for ages. Around Merton Mills one was getting a full bright horseshoe and BH claimed there was an outer one although I couldn't see it. Odd that she was driving and I was not.

There was a fatality on the railway at Surbiton yesterday afternoon. This seemed to result in the whole Southwest Trains network being up the spout until late evening. One passer-by alleged that the excuse was that the scene of the incident would be crawled over for hours for clues and bits of body. Assuming that it was clear that there was nothing wrong with the train or the track, is this really a good use of all our time? That apart, the announcement system was completely overwhelmed. While stuck at Motspur Park, there was a continuous stream of near identical announcements telling one that this or that train had been cancelled or delayed. Later in the evening, at Earlsfield, they had managed to put the lid on that but there was still very little information about what was happening. One might have thought in this age of centralised computerised signalling and announcements, they would be able to find a human being who could tell each station the order and timing of the arrival of trains. One might have thought that near empty semi-fast trains could have been stopped at intermediate stations to pick up some long suffering passengers. The trains were clearly not going anywhere in a hurry. All in all not terribly impressed, although it must have been a good evening for the taxis.

But it did bring out the blitz spirit. Passengers were actually talking to each other.

Earlier in the day managed to find a use for a bit more of the small timber which has been cluttering up the garage against a rainy day for quite some years now, and I am now the possessor of a fine new old oak bench hook. Two of the three parts were taken from furniture from a house in Crouch End. The third part used to be the leg of an aspidistra stand which used to grace the hall of my parents' house in Cambridge. This stand was, I think, originally made by my father, then improved by myself. No idea where the screws came from, but I very much doubt if they were bought new. Maybe a mixed lot from some car boot sale.

The idea of the bench hook is that it will help me to cut things up while in the field, rather than balancing things on chairs with all the attendant risks of cuts and worse. I had such a thing as a child, when I seem to remember that it was a standard part of the bench carpenter's equipment, but have not seen or had one since. Will this fine new one ever get used? Even if not, the activity did displace painting for half a day, so not a complete waste.

Earlier in the week, my first ever visit to a dental hygienist, this despite my father (this second mention clearly making it a fathers' day) being in the forefront of the agitation for the creation of same so many years ago. Along the way I acquire two dental factlets. First, that there is pressure to make the two year full time dental hygienist course into a four year degree course. Will our passion for degrees never abate? Will it be hairdressers next? Second, that the water cannon used to clean one's teeth is fully capable of taking a crown off its perch. Presumably the water cannon is a lot better at getting into awkward corners than a scraper - or whatever they call the thin scraping tool used previously. And no doubt much more fun; livens up an otherwise rather dull activity. Certainly much more expensive, so the dental equipment people will certainly be rooting for it.

Started the day by tasting the delights of the Lambeth residents' parking scheme whereby residents can buy books of tickets to enable their guests to park somewhere near their houses. Perfectly sensible scheme but a pain that one needs such things. We have less sophisticated versions in Epsom but fortunately they have not crept out as far as us yet. I can still park outside my house! Must be worth a few thou.

Then onto the congestion charge which I have not had occasion to tackle before. Not being very familiar with the congestion charge area, I managed to enter it around Blackfriars Bridge without knowing and to drive through the area without getting any wiser. If I had not proceeded to check later, what would have happened? Would I eventually got a letter inviting me to pay £50 or else? Perhaps the authorities answer would be that if I am so dozy that I did not see the 'you are now entering a controlled zone' signs that I have no business to be on the road at all.

Having, I was sufficiently on the ball to check and proceeded to the congestion charge web site. Don't know whether I can ask it whether I owe it any money, but it did know all about the make of my car when I finally got my number plate right. Which was a good thing in the sense that I was then confident that I had put the right number in; a bad thing in the sense that all this information about my car is flying around the ether. Then proceeded to give it some money, with the helpful HSBC pulling me through some rigmarole to tighten up the security on my card. Maybe I have now actually registered my date of birth, and when I phone up their friendly computer and spend 10 minutes keying in this and that, it will not now inform me that your card is not registered for this service and please wait while you are connected to an operator. And now, the following morning, I am in receipt of an emailed receipt. Nowhere near as quick as Amazon, with whom these things seem to turn up in seconds, but it is there.

I would give the computer system which collected my money good marks. Nice, uncluttered, simple to follow windows. But I remain of the view that the principal beneficiary of this scheme is the computer services company which built and operates the thing - although it may be that a few folk in Transport for London have been entertained in style or have acquired some discrete assets. This last perhaps unlikely. In my time in the public service, despite the motive being sometimes present, I never so much as had a whiff of such a thing.

Two factlets on the culinary front. First, BH tells me that the mixing charectaristics of Cheam bread when making bread pudding are quite differant from those obtained when using bread from Mr S. The former achieving the desired consistancy more quickly. I must ask my friendly neighbourhood bread technologist why this might be. Second, there is a dearth of leaf green tea in both Epsom and Cheam so, temporarily been pushed into the use of tea bags from Jackson. Taste fine, but overall experience degraded by not being able to inspect the tea leaves, by not having tea leaves stuck in the spout and what have you.

The fun of parking in Lambeth.

That is to say, according to this morning's DT, some Glaswegian judge has seen fit to punish an elderly wife strangler with a curfew, enforced by one of those bracelets around the ankle. I almost took fright and dived back under the bed clothes, which would almost certainly have resulted in my morning cuppa being distributed over me and said bed clothes. Reading a bit further, it seems that the chap concerned has dementia and strangled his wife when she refused to give him any money to go to the pub with, and, after the event, her relatives found it rather annoying that he was still using the same pub as they were. While, on what little we have been told, it seems entirely likely that prison will do the villain no good, it also seems entirely likely that the villain could still do some harm. What if his home help refuses to give him some money to go to the pub with? What will his fine new bracelet say about that? Would it be OK if he went to some other pub than that used by his late wife's relatives? Isn't that fact that he almost certainly smokes reason enough to bang him up for life? I think the good old DT has been rather economical with the truth again.

And then there was the peice (the page 9 lead if you please) about how the National Trusties are doing something really eco with one of their stately homes. It seems they are going to replace their oil fired boilers with wood pellet fired boilers. At Sudbury Hall this is going to save 137 tons of carbon dioxide emission out of 151. The first thing that occurred to me was that to generate any particular amount of heat, leaving aside the efficiency of combustion and whatnot, you are going to have to generate some particular amount of carbon dioxide. So where is all this saving coming from? Or do they mean that because the wood pellets have only fairly recently taken the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that doesn't really count? In which case, why are they not saving the whole 151 tons. Then there is the question of the energy cost of these fine new wood pellet burning boilers and of the collecting up of all this wood and turning it into pellets. I hope they have volunteers doing it in saw pits, thus saving both on fossil fuels and noise pollution. And then I wonder whether it really takes just a year for an oil fired boiler to pump out 151 tons of carbon dioxide. Maybe that is what you would get from around 151 tons of good quality coal. I recall as a child that our open fire in the living room got through maybe a ton a winter and that was just for decoration so maybe 151 tons in a year to actually heat a whole hall is not so far off the mark. Perhaps if the DT had devoted the whole page to this important issue, rather than giving over a large chunk of it to a musical version of 'Calendar Girls', we might have got to the bottom of it.

On a differant tack, I also learn that 2oo customers in a Streatham cinema were faced down by 20 children misbehaving at the back. Now in a more self confident - or perhaps more self reliant - era, maybe some tough guy would march down to the front and invite 49 volunteers from the 199 other customers to join him in giving the 20 children a bit of a slapping. Followed by chucking them out in the street, perhaps less shoes. Perhaps spray painted yellow (with bio-degradable, organic, smelly and edible paint) so that everyone knows what has happened. This would be far more effective than delegating the task of sorting it out to the cinema management. All they could do is call the police who, in darkest Streatham (I gather it is no longer the posh suburb of my youth), probably have far more important matters to attend to and in any event would have taken ages to turn up. But the first catch would be that there do not seem to be many articulate tough guys about. I don't qualify although I dare say I would fall in behind one. Perhaps the answer here would be for the cinema people to have such a person in the office, to be wheeled out as the occasion demanded. The second catch would be that one would probably end up in court for assaulting a minor. What a load of tosh. Badly behaved minors are like animals. They can smell fear and paralysis and behave accordingly. So long as we are not prepared to stand up for our rights and slap them down they will probably continue.

On a more solemn note, have been reading another Simenon Maigret. In this story, more or less a short story, very spare, with only enough red herrings to give the thing a bit of colour, the commissaire (who can tell me about French police organisation and ranks?) more or less allows a man to murder another man who had previously murdered his (man number 1) auntie and her young charge (for the auntie's dosh) and who has had his wife for some months, unbeknown to him, along the way. The general idea seeming to be that the first man will never get any rest until he has done the deed. We are more or less invited to condone the action of the commissaire. Which I find a bit odd. While one has no sympathy for man number 2, justice may have been done on the cheap and a good job too, but man number 1 is going to go down for a while, an outcome which could have been avoided. Maybe escape the chop, but it hardly qualifies as a crime of passion. In a legal sense that is. The passion is there but I imagine for legal purposes one has to do the thing in hot blood. Revenge served cold is not a crime of passion, despite the amount of controlled passion needed to do the deed.

But perhaps I have got it all wrong, my French being a bit ropey. Maybe the story is just a portrayal of a tired policeman, near retirement, who makes an error of judgement, an error which will weigh on him for ever more.

Serious urban boozers will be pleased to hear that there are still proper facilities in Buckinghamshire - a posh county which one would not have taken for the last chance saloon. We found, on a very pretty village green at Wooburn, two establishments of interest. First a giant working mens' club, built around 1870. Purpose built but looking rather like a school of the same era. Sadly, having let my membership lapse in a fit of the means, not able to inspect the premises from the inside. But there was a second in the form of the 'Old Bull' or some such. Heavily beamed ancient pub which still appeared to be intended for boozing and in which food, if available, was very much a secondary concern. Fine pint of Green King IPA in the back garden which looked out on real fields and woods. And some rather odd country buildings.

Shortly after that, a tour of the Old Kent Road. As the cheapest property on the Monopoly board, one expects to find something interesting, but on my previous visit it seemed to consist mainly of tower blocks. Presumably whatever made it the cheapest property on the Monopoly board had been bombed out of existance. On this occasion started out at the obelisk erected in honour of George III, in the eleventh year of his reign, one mile from Old Palace Yard. In a place now called, oddly enough, St George's Circus. Then to the Charlie Chaplin which was shut, it being a little before 1100. Then off down the Old Kent Road which did indeed have lots of tower blocks but also had lots of giant retail. Staples, ASDA, Sofaland (or some such), Comet and all the rest of it. In one of these places impressed by their manners. Left umbrella at checkout. Left past a Big Issue seller from whom we declined to buy a Big Issue. Shortly afterwards he comes tearing down the road after us to return the abandoned umbrella. So the check-out girl could be bothered to get the Big Issue seller to do this and he appeared to bear no grudge that we hadn't bought a Big Issue. I didn't even think to do that - or even tip him - being so pleased to get my umbrella back. Odd how annoying it is to lose things of this sort, which have very little monetary value. Nothing in the way of pubs or cafes to ease the way back to Elephant & Castle, but fortunately the Charlie Chaplin was open by the time we got back there. Newcastle Brown very cheap (for a pub) at £2.40. Acceptable substitute for real beer. Oddly ancient floor for what looked like a sixties build pub; but will it survive the impending redevelopment of E&C? And rounded off by a very good plate of mixed sea food noodles at the neighbouring noodlearium. We might well have been the only WASP customers.

Talking of building pubs, why is it that Youngs, now more or less taken over by Wells, is the only brewer which seems to be going in for new build pubs in London? There seem to be quite a few scattered along the south bank of the Thames. Maybe Fullers are at it too but I can't remember coming across one.

Painting of the extension continues to move forward. We now have two coats of brilliant white rich matt dulux on the ceiling - learning on the way that the rich matt takes lots of paint second time around. All that mattness must increase the surface area significantly. Completed the patching of the hole left by the stove - almost getting into a pickle when fixing the replacement bit of skirting. Push drill into plaster. Large crater appears in what seems to be very soft (sixties) plaster. Drill bit makes no progress in whatever underlies the plaster. Then shoots off at an angle into a crack in the mortar or whatever. Much the same thing happens in the second hole. So cut some soft wooden plugs, dip then in Unibond and whack them into the holes. Break them off at the surface. Got a good fix with some long thin screws, but the angle of entry means that we may not achieve a fully flush finish. But it will do. Now moving onto the woodwork.

Now that our government has lost all credibility, it is not really in a proper position to launch any new initiatives to micro-manage the lives of its customers. There is serious danger of redundancy in the brigade of nannies.

But lo! Help is at hand. The DT tells us that the Thai authorities have detirmined that the burning of one joss stick in a temple (or, presumably, in a smack house or anywhere else) releases as many carcinogens into the environment as the burning of one cigarette. Assuming that the Thai government has more standing than ours, they could move forthwith into the banning the burning of joss sticks in public places.

So, as a goodwill gesture, we can send over the entire brigade of nannies to help the Thais plan and execute this important project. Project directors, project managers, parliamentary draftsmen, strategic advisors on public relations, strategic advisors on enforcement policy, trainers for the enforcement agents. Service directors and service managers for the enforcement operation. Crafters of performance targets for the enforcement operation. Writers of 'it is forbidden' signs to erect at the entrances to everything. Surveillance experts to keep a covert eye on potential burners of joss sticks. Rubbish experts to search domestic waste for evidence of illicit burning of joss sticks. Builders of new prisons to hold the new class of offenders. And all the rest of it.

If they do well, it seems likely that there will be other opportunities in the neighbourhood. The brigade may not be back for some time.

So while we are waiting, any nannies that get left behind can think about how we are going to pay for all those extra years of elderly life generated by the absence of smoke, taking into account the loss of smoke revenue.

And if they are really stuck for something to do, they can launch an investigation into whether the incense used by High Church types and Catholics is carcinogenic too. Then if Gordon, having got the sulks because he won't survive his good friend Tony for long, can get back at him by banning incense at home as well as joss sticks overseas.