Day 229 - Down the Hatch

raging torrent

We had a deluge of rainfall this afternoon across the Midlands, and as it was still raining when I got home, I thought I'd check how the new drainage system was holding up.

The old system here took both foul waste and storm water to the septic tank, but apparently this is not the usual arrangement...so the plan was that the new system would deal specifically with foul waste, whilst the old system would continue to carry off storm water.

I'd raised several concerns regarding the old system, as it seems likely that they've dug through pipes here and there; they've only vaguely connected the downpipes to it in the loosest of senses; and they've filled in one inspection chamber, thereby (presumably) blocking off the system beyond that.

Whereas the estate agents are desperately trying to see the positive side, those of us closer to the action are highly sceptical over whether the storm water system will work at all.  

As it hasn't rained for a while, we just don't know.

Yesterday the owner and the estate agent came for a look at the work that had been done, and to assess the extent of required remedial work.  

It quickly became clear that whether or not the storm water system works isn't the only thing we don't know.  It seems that nobody really knows what's been routed where, which pipes are still intact, and which ones are theoretically still in use.

The plan is for the agents to contact the contractors and get some detailed schematics for what's been put in place.  

Again, to those of us observing the work as it happened, this is a laughable notion.  They only had the vaguest of plans, which was incomplete, and which they didn't even vaguely follow.  To all intents and purposes, they were just making it up as they went along. 

So there's no way the contractor's manager is going to have any idea what his men did.  The only guy who could probably say is the eastern European guy, who seems to barely speak English, and in fact barely talks to anyone at all.  He completely blanked his manager when I saw him being given some instructions (which he took little or no notice of).

Anyway it had yacked it down ('scuse the jargon) here this afternoon, and was still raining early evening, so I pulled up the inspection hatch in the lawn to see what the flow was like, as I'd promised the agent I would. 

As you can see, there is no flow!

The pipe coming from the bottom centre leads back directly to the now filled in next chamber along, so there's no real surprise that there's only the faintest trickle from that direction. 

Slightly worrying, as it should be carrying storm water for 75% of the roofing of the 2 cottages.

The smaller pipe coming from the right covers the West facing half of our house...and is completely dry.

There must have been some storm water fed into the system from the rooftops, but where it's all gone is a mystery!

At this point, I'm pretty much expecting our house to up and float away during the next heavy rainfall season. 

Anyway, the good news is that there was a busy little ants nest in the top of the inspection chamber, teeming with activity.

free range eggs

You can barely see any ants in this photo, but the little white grains of rice are tiny eggs, attended to by an army of scurrying carers...

I'm still claiming it as another animal for my blog photo collection.

I know I've had ants before, but they were a different species.  I'm not sure what this one is, but the eggs are much paler and smaller, and of course it's a couple of months later in the year, yet they're at more or less the same stage.

Anyway, sorry to have disturbed you, little colony...at least you have a nice dry home in all this rain!

;-)

Day 228 - Tai Chi Yang Style

that's a big beachball

I took a sort of duvet day from work today...I'm owed over 30 hours so I felt it was reasonable to take a day for myself.  

I spent the day at home, tidying up and finishing off those videos (see Day 228b), dozing with a cat on my lap, and practising a little Tai Chi Yang style.

Really, I have no idea what I'm doing...I learnt a little from an Xbox fitness game that uses the Kinect to tell you when you're doing it correctly, and some of it has stayed with me.  I find it really helps with balance and control.

Since mentioning it in a blog post the other day, it's been on my mind again, and I thought I might try to take it up a little more seriously.

I enjoy the peaceful, meditative aspect of it, as well as the balance and control.  It's supposed to be very good for your health, and it's surprisingly tiring, despite the apparent lack of activity. 

Also, it looks really cool...when done properly!

reasonable form

And I'm really not suggesting that I'm doing it at all properly - I'm an absolute beginner with no real experience.

So I found an instructional video on Youtube, and spent half an hour learning the first few moves.  They're really hard to remember, as well as being hard to do (or hard to do well, at least)!   

It seems that it's important to be in full control and awareness of all four limbs, your core, your centre of gravity, and the orientation of various body parts (knees, feet, hands, elbows, head, torso)...then add constant planes of motion and the interactions between all of the above, and it becomes quite the multitasking challenge!

Consequently, I think there's a fairly steep learning curve.

go away

I took a short video of myself so that I could check my form, and sure enough I can see a whole number of things I'm doing wrong...although overall, I'm reasonably happy for a first try... 

And it did give me the opportunity to snip these stills, giving me some interesting and different (if poor quality) photo's for the day.

you dancin'?

I'm going to try to be diligent and practise for a few minutes daily...you should feel free to regularly ask me how I'm getting on with it!

I think it will help me to remain spiritually, psychologically and emotionally centred, balanced and grounded, which is my preferred mode of existence...

More simply put, it helps me to retain my inner peace, no matter how crazy and chaotic the world around me might become...(tho' it doesn't, most of the time, to be fair)...

I guess you can be the judge of that, dear readers...you can decide whether my life appears chaotic or stressful, and how calm I seem in relation to it...if I can persist with the Tai Chi, then it will be interesting to discover what impact, if any, it has on my blogging. 

But no, you're not seeing the video at this point!

It's feasible that the stills are giving the lie to the level of form I have attained...so we'll keep that video firmly locked away, thanks...

;-)

Day 228b - Fun Times

We had a busy and adventurous weekend, as you will have seen from previous blogposts.

On both days we took quite a few videos, which I bunged up onto Youtube, and then had a play with the simple video editing facilities.   It's not a perfect system by a long stretch, but at least it's possible to rapidly edit a few clips into one, and put some backing music on it. 

The video above took literally 10 minutes to edit the four short clips together, add some music and a bit of video post-processing, to end up with a nice little memento of our 'boarding fun.   

The clip ends somewhat abruptly (there's no fade feature!), but for 10 minutes work, I'm really happy with it.



This next video took an hour or two, but turned out equally well.   With climbing video's it's imperative that you edit out all the pre-climb faffing about, and cut really tightly to the climbing.  And of the course the addition of text, some short clips, many more transitions and several music tracks all added to the editing time. 

But in both cases, the finished clips capture something of the essence of the days adventures.

Fun Times!

B-)

Day 227 - Summer Harvest

in need of tlc

Well, I remembered, even if none of you did (despite me specifically asking you to)...

It's late July, and so time for Part Three of my four part Hole in the Hedgerow series.

Part One was taken in late January, on a lovely crisp morning, and it was one of the earliest photo's that I was really pleased with.

That directly inspired the Spring edition in Part Two, late April, which again I found full of life and vibrancy.

This time, we've turned from the verdant green of spring, to the duller, dustier green of Summer.   The plants are almost starting to wilt a little in the dry heat, and the wheat in the field has faded from green to a pale yellowy-brown, and is ready to harvest.

In fact, they've just started harvesting today - every 15 minutes or so another huge tractor, towing a humongous trailer filled with grain, goes hurrying past in a roar of diesel and dust. 

They'll be back and forth to the grain store for all of the evening and much of the night. 

It's the busiest it ever gets down our quiet lane, which goes pretty much nowhere...just to one farmhouse, and a few hundred acres of arable and pasture land. 

I'd better not go 'boarding tonight then!

B-)

Day 226 - Make It So (Please)

nice cat, though...

Those of you who are paying close attention will have realised that over the last few weeks, our lovely summer garden has been essentially destroyed by a team of inept and careless drainage contractors.

I haven't talked about it much because it's been fairly painful, but they've "finished" (and I use that word in its loosest possible sense) and gone now, so I'll just give you a brief update.

For context, you should know that the house we've rented for the last 8 years or so, is a small, semi-detached farm cottage in the corner of a wheat field in a small hamlet in South Warwickshire.

It's very plain, with no mod cons, but is a beautiful place to live, especially in the better months of the year.  

Two significant mod cons that it hasn't got would be a connection to the gas supply, and a connection to the sewage or drain systems.

With only electricity as a power source, we at least have the benefit of open fires all winter, which we really love, so we've learned to live with that one. 

For drainage, our house and the one we're attached to are on a discrete system, with all of our storm water and foul waste feeding into a large, brick built septic tank underneath our car parking area. 

There have been minor issues with this system for years (rodding blocked sewer pipes is not funny, believe me), and the landlord has now decided to replace it entirely.   That is, a new, large, modern septic tank, and new pipework to both houses.

So far, so good...

But then as it turns out, that's as far as the good went - from that point on it has been a painful descent into what has now become kind of a hilarious purgatory.

The photo above shows our lawn where we socialise the most, and the little patio area where we (used to) barbecue.  As you can see, the lawn is pretty much ruined, stones all over it, dead patches, nothing cleaned up - they didn't even brush the mud they got all over the decking off...

at least it's sunny

...here's another section of the garden, which really doesn't do justice to the ridges, holes, dips and lumps that cover it all...

mud path

...this is our main route in, the path from car park to house...the slabs are all broken or missing, and the ruination of the lawn continues throughout...

why, exactly?

...this is where Anna parks her car - or where she used to park her car, when all of these slabs were intact...

That's just a few random samples - and I can tell you it looks much worse in real life...I could easily take another 20 or 30 shots of additional examples of the damage and destruction...

But it doesn't stop there...check out the ridiculously amateurish joining of the old system (the green downpipe) and the new...

seriously?!

The whole job has been done to this shockingly laughable standard, supposedly at a cost running into five figures...

And these shots are how they left the job, when their remit was to leave it as it was, to make good the usual upset of laying some pipes.

As a reminder, the photo on this page gives a hint of how the garden felt before...watch the video with sound for the full effect of how lovely, peaceful and pretty it was here just a couple of short months ago...

Anyway I won't dwell on it, what's done is done.  I'll hopefully have some more positive photos of whatever remedial work we can squeeze out of the landlord, before we give up and think about moving on.

Maybe we'll get a new lawn out of it...and a gate, and the car park resurfaced?!

It could happen!  

I'll take that image forward with me, I think...if I expect it all to get sorted, and act and behave as though that will happen, it can only help to nudge the universe towards making it so...

It's going to be really nice when the carpark is mud free for the first time ever, and the lawn is smooth and easy to mow!

Can't wait!

;-)

Day 225 - Those About To Rock

we salute you

As we weren't tired and aching enough from yesterdays skateboarding, today we went up to the Peak District to do some Fontainebleau preparation. 

Anna, Jezz and I are going to spend a week in Font in September, so it's time to start getting mentally and physically prepared. 

pad hogs

Set in the southern end of the Burbage Valley, amongst the bracken (head height in parts, at this time of year) you will find a scattering of large, coarse gritstone boulders strewn across the hillside below Burbage South Edge.

There are lots of easy (and I use that word with a single, slightly raised eyebrow) problems here, and in many ways it's like spending a day in Font. 

We spent most of the day padding up friction slabs...

trust your feet

This involves standing on vague bumps and pea-sized pebbles, and trying to believe that your foot won't slip off, should you pluck up the nerve to attempt to stand on it!

faith in friction

On one particular climb, for no apparent or agreed reason, we all decided to do animal impersonations...

stork

Jezz going for the classic left hand and foot close together - right hand and foot far, far apart Stork Pose (I think it might be a yoga thing)...

gecko

...whilst Anna uses opposing hands and feet as she performs The Gecko...

crab

...nobody can explain whatever it is I'm doing...and Jezz had to bomb, natch...

bomber

But despite all of that, it was a successful day of climbing easy (there's that word again) problems, ripping our skin up, catching the sun, and generally having a good time out in the bright, warm breeze.  

We hope it will be the start of a period of progress and improvement in the 6 or 7 weeks until we go to Fontainebleau.

We'll be looking for gains in strength, stamina, flexibility (in my case) and finger skin resilience (Jezz and Anna)...and good losses in body fat (Jezz and I)!

into battle

This large boulder is known as The Tank, for fairly obvious reasons...this afternoon, we couldn't resist the opportunity to climb aboard before we left, and get some photos as we urged the great battleship forward.

It seemed like a fitting cry as we head towards Font...

Onward!

B-)

Day 224 - 'Board Now

challenge complete

Today, I grabbed another significant tick from my 50th year challenge list...skateboarding!

Here I am celebrating with my main man Jezz (who is just setting out on his own long list of 40th year challenges).   He helpfully brought some skateboards (long boards, apparently) round to our house, and we set off down the lane to have a go. 

These things are so much better than when I was a kid!

And they're great fun...

getting the hang of it

First off we learnt to simply cruise on the boards.  They're quite long, wide and stable, and we had little difficulty getting going on them.

graceful as ever

Anna managed to get about half a mile on her first go without touching the ground!

Jezz, of course, was completely comfortable from the off...

nice socks

Anna bravely headed into the steepest section without hesitation, although we reached speeds where we certainly did not want to fall off!

she' s outta here...

Jezz took it casually, of course - he still can't resist posing at every opportunity...

40 going on 14

...but then I couldn't help posing a little myself!

50 going on 15

Jezz showed me a couple of tricks so we spent some time messing about trying not to break our ankles!

mid-flip

I managed a bit of tricking too, which I was pleased about!

mid-flip

I was quite pleased to do fairly well on the skateboards...I put it down to Tai Chi!

I learnt a little Tai Chi a couple of years ago, and one thing that really stayed with me was the Tai Chi Walk.  I've practised it now and then ever since, and it's taught me huge amounts about balance and controlled weight transfer. 

The improvements in my balance I took with me into climbing, where it's really helped...and further, I've now brought it into skateboarding, and it's enabled me to quickly feel relaxed and comfortable on the board.

We also tried some wheelies...

grabbing some air

I just need to do it when in motion!

bendy board

At the end of all that we were surprisingly hot and sweaty...turned out it was mostly easiest to walk back up the hill, which didn't help!

job done

All in all, I really enjoyed it...it's definitely something I'm going to have a bit of a play with! 

I have some videos which I will post in a bonus entry at some point soon!

For tonight, I'm really pleased to tick off another of my challenges...

Super-psyched, in fact!

B-)

Day 223 - No Frankie and Bunny

brave bunny

We went looking for Frankie this evening, but all we found was this young rabbit.

We'd heard a horse whinnying over that way a few days ago, so were a little hopeful that Frankie might have put in an appearance...so we wandered over there in the evening warmth, only to find a meadow full of long grass, inhabited only by a couple of sheep that had escaped when the flock was driven through there recently. 

No Frankie...

But we did spy this lovely little juvenile rabbit, and he sat very patiently whilst I rattled off a few shots. 

A little too patiently, to be honest...I'm worried that he'll be predated if he's so comfortable as to ignore humans clicking away 10 feet from him...

Still, he's an amenable fellow, and helpfully supplied some blog fodder, on an evening where I was tired and struggling to feel inspired.

Friday night, innit?!

Thanks, Bugs!

:-)

Day 222 - Raven Rocks

big black blob

No, the title of this post hasn't been used before...not quite! :-p

For some reason, I feel strangely wordless today, so this might be a short entry!

I suppose it had to happen eventually...I just wasn't expecting eventually to be Day 222...hadn't really crossed my mind when it might be, to be honest.

So anyway...

Walking down the lane this evening, I spied this big fellow across the field.  Well, given my slightly failing long distance eyesight, I could just see a big black blob on top of the gatepost, where there shouldn't be a big black blob. 

Even on full zoom I couldn't get a great photo, and unusually, I had difficulty holding the camera steady.  

So all the photo's turned out a bit blurry, although at least it's clear that he's a raven...look at the height of him, compared to the 3 bar wooden gate that he's perched next to.

big black bird

His tail is partially hidden too, making him look a little smaller than he actually is. 

Even Anna agrees that he's a raven - because that's just how big he is!

We also saw a sparrowhawk circling in around our hedgerow, dropping on some poor bird...by the sound of it, it was a successful kill.

The incident took place about 7-8m from our lounge window - I saw him drop in from sitting in my chair at the desk where I am now!

Anna hissed a whisper telling me to grab the camera, but by the time I got there with it, he was out of sight around the back of the hedgerow, and all we caught was the awful noise of excited and distressed birds.

So that was pleasant...

Oh no, wait a minute...no, no it wasn't!

:-/

Day 221 - Catwalk

divas

Since losing Jazz, I've become aware that I'm as conditioned into the daily routines of dog-life as he was.

An obvious manifestation of this occurs around early evening each day, when I consistently experience a strong urge to go for a walk.

For 13 years I've been tied to the dogs (both figuratively, and literally at times)...it no longer felt like a chore, but I sometimes wondered what it would be like not to have to get home for 6pm every day...I thought there might be a sense of liberation, but there really hasn't been.

Well, there is an occasional realisation that I don't have to rush home, but it seems like something of a surreal notion, so I ignore it!

I feel institutionalised...like the man who's been in prison for 20 years, shut in a little cell...when he reaches the end of his sentence, the door is opened, and the guard pronounces that he's free to go...but the outside world seems big and scary, and it turns out he prefers to stay where he is, where he knows the routine and therefore feels safe. 

That's how I feel - I'm free of the commitment of having a dog...but I don't want to be!

Anyway, luckily the weather has been beautiful, so we had a lovely warm wander down the lane. 

As would often happen, Loz chose to follow us, so I got this lovely photo of Anna and Loz on their catwalk, in the hazy evening sun.

Entertainingly, a yellowhammer followed us up the lane, all the way stridently alarm calling about the presence of Loz...

disappointingly, no bananas

It really sounded as though it were actually saying, "Cat! Cat!!"...

Anyway, enough of all that, I must get off - it's time for my after dinner treat!

:-)

PS See below for a special bonus post on steep bouldering...you know you want to!

Day 221b - Baker Street

You used to think that it was so easy...you used to say that it was so easy, but you're trying, you're trying now...

This post really has nothing to do with Baker St, except the tenuous day number connection, and that scrap of lyric that I appropriated.

It's just that I'd had this topic lined up to do on Saturday night, when we got home from a birthday meal out...only to find Jazz had taken a sudden turn for the worse...and that was that.

Anyway, rather than rush, and being unable to resist the urge to go for a bonus post on day 221, I've hung onto them and figured I'd feel up to writing it up by then, hopefully. 

We'd been out climbing, and had gone indoors because of the forecast.   As the post about steep bouldering a couple of weeks ago had sparked some conversation, I thought I'd follow up and grab a couple of videos of steep indoor climbing whilst we were there.

Each of the bouldering problems (climbs) that I'm going to show in this post has the same basic rules.  The objective is to start from the marked starting holds for your hands, and follow the same coloured holds to the last one (usually at the top, more or less).  The problem is complete when you have both hands on the last hold in a controlled manner.

In this post I'm going to focus on steep climbs, of which there are always plenty, because...well, they're fun!

The climb above is fairly low grade, V1 or so I think, and had nicely juggy handholds...but it was steep - maybe 50deg compared with 35deg for the rock in Lancashire.

Observe how careful and controlled Anna's movements are...nicely efficient, and no wild swings.  Note that even when she lets her feet come off the wall at the end, it's done in a very deliberate. controlled manner.

Here's me making the same climb look a lot smaller...



Now on to the really steep stuff - ceiling climbs!

These are great fun, although very tiring.

Technique-wise, there are several fundamentals:

Straight Arms - bending your arms in these positions is very hard, and involves a lot of upper arm strength...keeping arms straight means the only muscles you really need to use are those keeping your fingers bent...science and logic aside, it's simply way easier to keep arms straight - it just takes a little trust and commitment...

Don't cut your feet (unless you have to) - that is, don't let your feet come off the wall leaving all of your weight on your arms and upper body...it tires you out quickly, and uses huge amounts of core muscle (and similarly huge amounts of energy) to get your feet back on...and every pound of weight you can push through a foot is a pound less that your hands are having to support...

Weight Transfer - Whenever you need to move a hand, get as much weight as possible settled and steady underneath the other hand...this means you won't swing when the one hand lets go, and you'll have time to make a controlled move, rather than the all too common lunge-and-grab.

With those ideas in mind, here's a video of me having a first attempt at a slightly harder route.  I fail to complete the problem, but you can see some of these techniques as I move across the ceiling... 



Note that I cut my feet 30 seconds or so in, having failed to realise that I could have actually walked my feet around keeping them high instead...then I have a few moments of bent arms on the next hold, before falling off because I've run out of energy. 

Here's Anna on the same climb...



Notice that Anna has to cut her feet at the start, as she couldn't possibly reach the next foothold otherwise...but thereafter her feet are on all the time.

Also notice that Anna moves her feet several times before each hand movement...getting her weight in the right place, and as much of it through her feet, before letting go with the other hand.

Here's me again, this time from the opposite side, on a second attempt at the same climb.



Notice that this time I don't cut my feet, and climb a lot faster as I'm more familiar and know that I can do it so far...and hence I get a bit further with the problem, whilst still not actually completing it.

Finally, here's a less steep, and somewhat easier climb, again utilising straight arms, keeping feet on as much as possible, and smoothly transferring weight before and through each move... 



This time I down-climb too, for the additional challenge and exercise.

At my age, it's also not a great idea to just drop off the top every time.  I'm really not flexible (check my landing in the second video above), and my joints would suffer from repeated hard landings.  Hence I usually down-climb all but the steepest climbs.

So there you have it, a little overview of some of the basics of steep climbing. 

If anyone wants to come and have a go sometime, just let me know, I'll happily take you...

:-)

Day 220 - Witches Brew

hide and sneak

Late last night, just after blogging, I found this little intruder, in full camouflage, storming the front door!

He seems to have red eyes, but I think that's an artefact of the camera flash...he is a Common Toad (Bufo bufo) and his eyes should be yellow to golden brown.

He's pictured here on the grotty, grimy concrete path that skirts the outside of our house...and isn't he well matched to it?!    I'm not sure if that's sand all over his head, but it's certainly enabled him to hide on the path very effectively...when I told Anna to come and look, she had no idea what I was gesticulating at, until I got in so close that he realised the game was up, and initiated a hasty retreat.

Little fat, warty thing...brilliant! 

I always used to have a toad living in the garden here, but I hadn't seen one for a few years now.  I'm really pleased that they're still here, although I'm concerned that he's been disturbed by The Cowboy Contractors, as they're now known.

I suppose the pedantic amongst you will be pointing out that these photo's are from last night, not today...well, yes, you're right. 

So continuing our Witches Brew Ingredients theme, here's another member of the creepy crawly genus for your viewing pleasure...

grade f9b+

I think he's just sitting there on this overhung arete (dodgy camera angles notwithstanding) in order to taunt me with his superior climbing skills. 

He's a Giant House Spider (Tegenaria duellica), and is nearly 3 inches from the tip of his highest leg to the tip of his lowest, in this photo. 

He lives in our lounge, normally behind a large wall hanging.  But lately he's built a little web down behind the floor light by the fireplace.  We're happy to have him here, in the hope that he'll take some of the annoying flies we've had in here lately.  

There is at least one beetle hiding away in here too, and sometimes when both the beetle and the spider are out patrolling in the evenings, they almost cross paths...and I find I have a strong sense of morbid curiosity about it...

Will they fight?  Are they competitors rather than predator and prey?  If they do fight, who would win?!   The beetle is chunkier and presumably heavier...but the house spider has good range, good speed and maybe a good bite?

What about Toad vs Spider vs Beetle?!

Hey, at least it's feasible that these creatures could meet up...unlike the usual Tiger vs Shark or Giant snake vs Dinosaur speculative match-ups...

Anyway, my money's on the toad...his weight advantage should outweigh his general blubberiness and lack of weapons.

Though I don't actually want to see them fight...

Why can't they all just get along?

Peace, little dudes!