Monday, February 14, 2011
Freecycle
I recently learned about an outfit called Freecycle - a sort of Ebay without the money bit - to be found at http://www.freecycle.org/. The idea is that rather than bothering with Ebay or taking the thing in question to the waste transfer station to be landfilled, you just post the thing on this site, then someone comes and takes it away and provides it with a good home. So in my case, with thoughts moving to a staider form of bicycle than the Trek I have now, I decided that my No. 2 bicycle, a good ride, but intended for someone younger or fitter than me, was surplus to requirements. Post the thing on Freecycle and within say half a day I had maybe ten expressions of interest. Gave the first email in my telephone number and he had taken it away for his son within the hour. Just the result I wanted. I shall use these people next time I have something somebody might want to dispose of. The only bit of pack drill was that I thought it proper to email all the people who emailed me to say how things stood. But this was knocked on the head by taking the advertisement down.
After which I settled down to digest two titbits from the DT. The first concerns a place called Castle Drogo, a sort of fake castle in the Teign valley in Devon, built for a successful grocer around the time of the First World War. Bad timing as, if the costume dramas are to believed, it started to be hard to staff up these kinds of places shortly after. Bad building as well, because although the grocer hired the world famous Sir Edwin Lutyens to design the thing, it seems that Lutyens was not very good at roofing. Perhaps he was out at lunch that day and gave it to the boy to do. Whatever, the roof is now leaking badly and the National Trust is calling for funds to mend the thing. Which all goes to confirm the building viewpoint of TB where architects and building inspectors are held in very low esteem. All book learning, rules, regulations & trouble making and no experience of actually building anything. Apt to forget that the main point of a building is that it should keep the wind and the rain out.
The second was about starlings. I have occasionally, but not recently, seen spectacular throbbing clouds of starlings. Last time that I recall being around the tower of Gloucester Cathedral at dusk. Which really was spectacular; but over the last couple of years I have only seen the odd tree top full of starlings, no throbbing clouds at all. But it seems that in some parts of the country there still are said throbbing clouds but the local farmers want to blast then out of the sky. It seems that one throbbing cloud can get through an awful lot of grub. Worse than locusts. Maybe the DT will keep us posted on whether they get their way. Perhaps RSPB or Greenpeace should be asked for a view? Sir Trevor McDonald OBE? I think that he has views on things now that he has retired from reading other peoples' on the telly..
# posted by Jim @ 6:51 AM 
