Scales

file under: wtf

This year I am resurrecting my favourite sporting competition: Who can put on (or lose) the most (or least) weight over the Christmas period.

Have you ever been to one of those weddings or funerals with a full-day agenda, and at every turn somebody is offering you a glass of champagne, an aperitif, or a cold bottle of beer? It can be a real challenge not to get completely ruined. December has a similar feel to it: it becomes increasingly difficult not to consume huge quantities of mince pies, fruitcake, nuts, fruit, chocolate, turkey, cheese, steamed pudding, champagne, beer, wine, sherry, brandy, eggnog, sickly liqueurs, picked onions, crisps and a partridge in a pear tree.

This year I will embrace them all. In the interests of sportsmanship, in the run up to December I will re-enforce my "no cakes on Wednesday" rule, won't use up the surplus cream on my breakfast cereal, will try to smoke a little more, and will do a couple of 24 hour fasts. After the weigh in I'm stopping smoking and fasting and will eat everything that I'm offered without guilt or hesitation.

Richard "game on" B

Track Day

file under: engineering boasting

In the 70s imported motorcycles were invariably fitted with very hard, very cheap, very long-lasting tyres made by Chang Shin. If he valued his life the first thing that the owner would do was to put on a proper set of Avon or Dunlop tyres. I don't know if it's common parlance, but among my brothers "Chang Shin Suicide Tyre" is code for any hard and slippery rubber.

This weekend I was taken on a track day at Castle Combe by my friend in his Mazda RX8. Castle Combe is a difficult and dangerous circuit, 30% of all UK motorsport accidents happen on one particular corner there. It rained hard all day, and unbeknown to us, his car was fitted with chang-shin-suicide-tyres. It was good fun and very instructive and I think we were close to the ragged edge much more of the time than all the people who turned up with really fast cars and good tyres. The only things that we went past were the MGB, the Morris Minor, the Subaru that lost its exhaust pipe, the Clio that popped its oil cooler, the BMW that smashed into the tyre wall and oddly the Noble (probably being operated at that moment by the owner's granny).

The trick to circuit driving seems to be to do everything at a leisurely pace. Don't brake too early, don't turn in too early, don't apex too early, don't put all the power down too early, and when you're going sideways, don't panic too early.

Richard "Avon Roadrunner" B

Slowly Slowly.

file under: impotent whining

There's a geological phenomenon called "lift and creep". Imagine a single piece of dust half way up a hillside. When the sun warms the hill it expands and pushes the speck of dust outwards (away from the centre of the hill). If, when the hill shrinks back, the dust were to lose its grip and fall it would end up fractionally below where it started. Even in the absence of wind and running water, over geological timescales, sediment and soil flows slowly downhill.

That's the speed that the traffic moves on the East side of Plymouth now that they're knocking down the Haye Road bridge and have traffic lights at the Deep Lane junction.

Richard "Chaddlewood to Deep Lane via Sparkwell, Venton, Lee Mill, and Smithaleigh" B

New Shoes

file under: impotent whining

This weekend I have been more impressed by insects than the employees of a shoe shop. I looked at what my mason bees have produced and they've been brilliant. The original 24 cocoons have produced 75 new cocoons and some excellent defence measures. Every tube that they laid eggs in had a fake, unprovisioned cell at the end to deter intruders. In the few instances where a cell had been parasitised they bees had detected it and had left a large empty space and walled the maggots inside.

Feckless-youth-number-1 at Jones Bootmaker sold me a mismatched "pair" of boots. When I got home I realised that the box contained a left size 9 and a right size 10. I rang them and it took them an hour to find the pair to my left boot. I was a 15 mile round trip away and without my motorbike, the store manager had to ring the area manager before he could agree to pay for my parking and diesel when I came in to swap right boots. (they refused to deliver it). When I got back to the shop the manager wasn't present and feckless-youth-number-2 took an age to find my other boot. He then didn't know anything about my refund and said he would get in to trouble if he took money out of the till. When I told him that I would write him a receipt, and that he'd be in considerably more trouble if he didn't get my money the story changed to his not being able to open the till. Nearly-competent-youth-number-3 attempted to take my refund out of his own pocket, but didn't have enough change.

Richard "9.5 F on Loake last 026" B

That'll do.

file under: uncategorized

I've always rather liked sheepdogs and once spent a great day at an amateur sheepdog trials (in some cases both the dogs and the handlers were amateurish and one unfortunate pair accidentally chased the sheep into the car park ).

One works day out we were lent the use of a sheepdog and a flock of ducks. We learned that the three basic commands are "lie down" "come by"(clockwise) and "away now"(anticlockwise). It was hard for me to issue these commands because the dog had been trained by a man with a gruff Yorkshire accent.

This week I saw a very Plymouthian man training a border collie (as a pet rather than a working dog). I despair that he ever lends the dog to someone, because one of the commands will be impossible to guess. He was using "Sit" "Lie Down" "Fetch" and "Come over'ere mate"

Richard "one man and his blog" B

Vintage Food

file under: embarrassing social situations

This weekend I visited my sister and a couple of things in her kitchen were a little out of date. I'm glad to say though, that she had thrown away the old packet of suet.

I lived with her for a year in the early 90s when I was a student. I remember a conversation about the graphic design of a packet of Sainsbury's beef suet. It was done in cream and blue, and the Sainsbury's typeface looked "old-timey". To start with we thought that it was a special design to compliment the old-ladyish nature of cooking with suet. On closer examination it turned out that it had gone out of date in 1978 and had been sculling around in her kitchen for at least 13 years.

Richard "when I accidentally poisoned her husband the culprit pickle was only two years out of date" B