The House Husband

Most of today was spent doing some research for Mirinda. For her work. I enjoyed it but it took up a lot of my day! The rest of the day was spent doing housework and walking in the park.

Being Australia Day, my blip was quite Oz specific so it was with a bit of sadness that I spotted a whole load of little coloured flags strung up between the trees near the castle. Had I only known. Or had I waited to blip. Still, I have a blog for that sort of stuff so…this is the bunting from a distance:

Bunting between the trees

When I reached the first tree, I realised that the flags had something printed on them. The same thing on each one. None of it was in English and there was a picture of what looked like a mythical horse creature in the centre. The writing looks like Hindi to me but I could be wrong.

A close up of one of the flags

There was nothing to indicate what they meant or who’d put them there. I’ve just had a look at religious festivals over the last few days but the only non-British one isn’t until January 28 (Vasant Panchami – a festival celebrating the first day of Spring). Maybe they were hung by some Hindu Australians to mark Hindu Australia Day. I may never know.

Still, they made for some lovely photographs as they fluttered gaily in the breeze, sometimes the sun beaming through them.

My favourite shot from beneath the flags

Other than that, it was all pretty much a day for reading the computer screen, every now and then looking at something green to readjust my vision.

Looking across the Queen's Bottom

As I left Mirinda at the office after lunch (a delicious scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast) she asked if I was going to a museum. I said no, explaining that I just wanted to go home. Little did I know I would spot this:

The Southbank does death

It’s not the biggest exhibition but it’s an odd little surprise as you walk by. Not content with that, I also walked in.

There is an exhibition of six strange coffins, all seemingly ready for occupation. Some are the work of a Ghanaian called Paa Joe who has continued a practice that was started in the 1950s by his uncle, Kane Kwai. They construct coffins to order. The process of buildings them can take up to three months and, given the fact that the customer is generally already dead, the new tenants are kept on ice while they wait. Literally.

A high status coffin

The Ga people from Ghana have a strong tradition of carved coffins. They are also strong believers in reincarnation. How these two facts relate, I’m not sure since the theory is that you are reincarnated into a baby at birth (or a cockroach, etc) which maybe anywhere in the world. The chances of being close to where you are buried would seem astronomical. Quite apart from the fact that the coffin would have probably rotted away by the time you were old enough to see it…which you wouldn’t because it would be buried in the ground. Anyway, the relatives of the dead decided long ago to honour their dead by creating these strange coffins.

I'd quite like to be buried in a banana, please

Here’s a quote from Jack Bell, who owns the gallery that commissioned the coffins in the exhibition:

Paa Joe once told me that he’d been commissioned to create a coffin for the queen of a neighbouring tribe. It took rival factions of the tribe two years to decide on a theme for the great woman. In the end, she was given a piece that was half a fish and half a chicken – a conclusion that satisfied both parties.

I’m not going to comment on that except to say if I saw such a creature I’d call it a ‘ficken’.

I quite like this video of a salesman at Paa Joe’s workshop, explaining how they sell and make coffins:

My favourite coffin though was not one of Paa Joe’s. It is called the corkscrew and was made by a company called Crazy Coffins in Nottingham – they have a great website. It features a cork (where the body goes) and the stem and handle of the top of the corkscrew protruding from the top. It looks remarkably real.

Special scented, indeed!

Anyway, it was a brief but enjoyable and delightfully unexpected way to break my short walk to Waterloo.

Apart from talking to my mother for an hour and a half, today has been full of working out finances. Seriously dull which goes with the weather. It’s been a long day of rain and cold and grey skies. In fact, on Breakfast this morning, the weather map showed the whole of Great Britain completely covered with rain. Feels like February.

So, nothing really happened to me today. For that reason, I thought I’d post a few photographs I took of birds yesterday. Some I’m quite happy with.

Just about to take off

I’d set the camera up in front of one of our feeder poles. Mirinda told me that the wrens sometimes perched on the top and, because I’ve yet to photograph (or even see) a wren, I thought it would be a good place to start. I didn’t get a wren.

Coming in for a landing

There was an awful lot of gold finches (as usual), blue tits (as usual) and coal tits (even more so). I kept the ones showing them in or preparing for flight.

Fast out of the blocks for this little blue tit

As Mirinda says, it’s great to see them like this because they are so fast, it’s not something you normally see. Sadly they’re all a bit blurry (or not completely in frame) which spoils them but it gives you an idea about how graceful and beautiful they can be.

A coal tit, almost gone

I did manage a couple of nice gold finch shots (there’s one in blip) and a particularly pretty blue tit but they were motionless and, dare I say, a bit dull.

Barry looking rather dapper

One highlight was getting a shot of a gold finch with an id ring on one leg. I’ve never seen one of these before and thought it rather exciting. I do wonder how the person who did it managed to catch him though.

A bird with a history

Anyway, tomorrow I’m having lunch with Mirinda so, hopefully I’ll have a little more to post!

There’s a dog we sometimes see in the park who has something wrong with his back legs. I might have posted about him before. His owner’s have rigged up a wheelchair for him so he can still go for walks in the park. The poodles always leave him alone which is strangely empathic of them. Anyway, we saw him today and I managed to get a photograph.

Looking wistfully at the poodles as they frolic on four legs

He always seem very happy, trundling along behind his humans. They have another dog which has the use of all of it’s legs, which bounces around all over the place.

Speaking of bouncing…this little chap suddenly appeared out of no where and surprised the girls. He looks a wee bit manic if you ask me.

Come on! Take the ball! I dare ya!

After Day-z had run away, Carmen went over to say hello and they (sort of) did a bit of socialising, though Carmen is never too sure what to do.

I'll just check that you're a girl...

That was about it for today (apart from an agonisingly dull amount of time spent on the accounts) so I thought I might talk about the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks.

It all started in 1735 in (where else?) London. There’s a few thoughts about how it started but the one I’ve chosen to go with is this: This guy called John Rich was, more or less, too busy to go home to eat so he’d sit in his office in the Covent Garden Theatre. he had a simply little gridiron upon which he would sear his beefsteaks. A friend of his, George Lambert thought this a jolly sort of jape and wanted to join in. So they decided to make it a regular thing.

Very quickly word managed to move around those that listen to these sorts of things and soon they were entertaining quite a few publicans, actors, dancers, painters, etc. “Visitors ‘of the first consideration, both in rank and talents’ called on him, and were invited to share in his beef.” And they all decided to form themselves into a club. They made all sorts of rules but the mainstay of the Beefsteakers was simplicity of fare. This meant they just ate beef steaks when the society met.

Word soon spread even further and suddenly, the toffs wanted in. A new rule was created. Anyone with pretensions to grandeur must serve as butlers to those that did not. The toffs all thought this was great fun so, each meeting, they would remove their costly coats, top hats and gloves and hand out beef steaks to the smelly masses of theatre folk.

The society lasted for many, many years and had some very well known members – William Hogarth, John Wilkes, John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich. In fact it was probably Wilkes who came up with the motto “Beef and Liberty”. They even had special songs they’d sing at meetings, Roast Beef of Old England being their traditional hymn. This was superseded by The Song of the Day. Here’s some of the lyrics:

No more shall fame expand her wings
To sounds of heroes, states or kings
A nobler flight the goddess takes
To praise our British beef in steaks
A joyful theme for Britons free
Happy in beef and liberty
A joyful theme for Britons free
Happy in beef and liberty

And so it goes. If you want to hear a recording of it, there’s one here – just click the little play symbol when it appears.

There’s another three verses, all praising the joys of beef. And all of this is absolutely true.

When I read this sort of thing, firstly I’m so glad I’m English, secondly, I begin to wonder whether Monty Python’s Flying Circus was really comedy and thirdly, I really, really want to join!

It’s not exactly what you’d describe as the most evenly matched battle but then it wasn’t a match suggested by the swans. I’m pretty sure it was all Carmen’s idea and even Day-z was along for the ride.

Carmen telling the swan how she intends to eat it

Clearly smarter than a poodle, the swan stayed in deeper water and just laughed. Actually it hissed and lifted up out of the water, menacingly.

Be off with you, silly black fluffy things

We yelled at the dogs to get out of the water but they just wanted to eat the swan. And then a second one turned up looking even tougher than the first. The poodles decided that retreat was the safer option.

In fact there was quite a lot of bird activity on Frensham Little Pond this afternoon. A huge flock of seagulls, two big swans, some moor hens (as opposed to some more hens) and a crow…which I managed to capture taking off, albeit away from me.

I'm out of here, buddy

There was also a lot of people there. Always the way – nice weather, Sunday, hordes of out-of-towners enjoying our ponds. To be fair, most of them were friendly (not the usual surly London brigade) and there weren’t any when we left the immediate environs surrounding the pond. In fact, Mirinda commented on how that’s one of the reasons she wants a house in the ‘country’ to come home to weekends – because we can go for a walk and not see another person for large sections of it.

For me, it just proves that city folk are scared of trees and the isolation a whole wood full can bring…ironically. For this reason, the tend to congregate around bodies of water with sand, both of which keep the nasty woody things back a bit.

City folk observing what real country people are like in the wild

Actually it wasn’t that bad today (though crowded) and, on the whole, people smiled, said hello and had dogs. That’s always a good sign. The dogs especially.

We left the house quite late so the light wasn’t all that good for most of our walk. I did manage to get this rather arty shot across the pond as the sun was sinking beyond the horizon. I haven’t manipulated the picture at all – this is exactly as it came out of the camera.

The sun sitting low in the sky over the reed beds at Frensham

And, basically, that was our Sunday. Glorious.

The all new, all dancing, remote

Our television has been slowly giving up the ghost. We bought it way back when flat screen TVs were the newest thing. It cost us way too much but was pretty good for a fair few years. Gradually, though, like a rusty old car that feels like your best friend, small things have been, metaphorically, falling off.

Like the sound. The right hand speaker ceased functioning a while ago. This wasn’t that bad except when a director decided it would be really arty to have actors speaking through individual speakers. You’d hear one person really loudly and the other not at all. Of course, it was just a matter of turning on the amplifier and this was sorted out.

Really dark scenes were impossible to see. The light/dark rendering was dying. Night time was simply a black, blank screen.

And then the bleed started. A faint hissy sound coming from the live channel while you were watching something else. It was driving Mirinda crazy. It was getting so bad that it was even getting to me.

We discussed it and decided to go and buy a TV. We were tempted to wait till tomorrow but then went out and bought one today. It’s a Panasonic, it’s 32 inch and it’s brilliant. And it has 3 HDMI connections so no more stupid, French SCART leads! The media centre also sounds brilliant now.

I spent a few hours setting it up, sorting out the rest of the stuff, figuring out why the TV wouldn’t work and then plugging the leads in the right way…generally the perfect afternoon. And tonight, after (and during) dinner we watched a movie. It was fabulous!

Not the movie (which was Zookeeper, which was OK but not something you’d really rave about) but the TV. Oh, how wonderful it was! Now I can’t wait for the next Nicktor Night to really test it!

Using the new media drive as it should be used...on the new TV

Because of the TV and Girls & Guitars last night, I completely forgot to talk about the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks. I’ll do that tomorrow…maybe.

Tonight we went to the Maltings for our monthly dose of a girl and her guitar. This month it was Karina Vismara, Argentinian born but grew up in England. Actually I thought she was Spanish…which is pretty close culturally but miles away geographically.

Karina starting her set

Her guitar playing and song writing skills are amazing. Mirinda says she is the best guitarist we’ve seen so far. The trouble was, the sound system was a bit muted. It was very difficult to hear her between tracks and her lyrics were a mystery. A real shame because I have listened to some of her tracks online and she sounds fine. It was clearly a problem with the (lack of a) sound engineer.

While there, we were joined by Laurie who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend of 23 years after she went walking in Pembrokeshire. He was at least 50, maybe older. He’s lived in Farnham for 35 years. Actually she lived in Newbury so maybe the long distance relationship just refused to work.

I’m being unnecessarily flip. He seemed quite sad so Mirinda chatted to him about houses we’d never seen in his street and he told us about the 200 pubs that used to be in Farnham, back when the hops were there for the picking and the Maltings brewed beer.

But, back to Karina…she not only played her guitar but also a strange Argentinian instrument that looked suspiciously like a ukulele only with 12 strings. It was, she said, a charango. It was originally an Andean instrument made from the back of an armidillo. Her’s was made of wood! It sounded just like a ukulele

Looking down the lens

If you’d like to listen to Karina, she has recorded an EP and uploaded it. You can hear three tracks on SoundCloud here.

Another Talking Newspaper today, so it was off early to pick up the papers and start my editing. Since I was there on my own for the first hour, I thought I’d get a photo of the studio.

Where I sometimes 'work'

I sit in the right front, where the smaller bit of paper is while the engineer sits to my right, in front of all the equipment. The engineer has two chairs and uses the far one as a table. The three readers sit the other side of the desk. It’s very cosy though today it was quite cold because I hadn’t turned the heaters on. But that wasn’t my only mistake.

When we make a mistake (a stumble or just plain stuff it up) we are supposed to say ‘sorry’ and then go back to the beginning of the sentence. This gives the engineer something to edit out which retains the smooth flow of the recording. We have to keep picking up some of the readers on it because they just stumble and repeat the word. For this reason, quite a few stumbles remain in the recording, which is a shame.

Having been an actor, I’m quite used to saying ‘sorry’ and going back to the beginning of the sentence, so I don’t usually have any problem with it. Also because I was once an actor, my language sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.

Each time I go into the studio I go through a mental check-list, the final point is not to swear. It’s a mantra: “I must not swear. I must not swear.” Apart from the average age of my fellow volunteers, I’m also acutely aware that most of them are active church goers who might not be used to a course Australian who grew up in Sydney’s western suburbs.

I also write my own sports report which I scribble out before going in to record. My handwriting, at the best of times, is pretty abysmal, but when I’m in a hurry, it looks a little like drunk Sanskrit seen through ink blots. Normally this is fine but today, for some reason, I kept stumbling. Three times I stumbled, each time saying ‘Sorry’ and going back to the start of the sentence like the good boy I am. At one stage I said “I can’t read my own writing!” which had the others chuckling.

The fourth time I stumbled was on the word ‘control’ which I thought said ‘coumjhuy’ or something like that. Of course, I stopped. I blame the frustration with my continual lack of coherent penmanship but I said “shit“! I then quickly said sorry about thirty times. Sue, the engineer, laughing incredulously, took note of the position of the recording and I continued, finishing without any more hiccoughs.

Afterwards, we all had a jolly good laugh at my stumbling and I once more apologised for swearing. Sue then asked if I’d like to keep it in the recording. The others thought this hilarious. Sue then explained herself, saying she meant the bit about my inability to read my own writing not me saying shit.

Rough as guts, Gaz, strikes again, I’m afraid. Still, Sue will edit my foul mouth out of the recording and just leave my observations on my own failings. So, hopefully, all will be well. As long as she does!

Anyway, after getting home, the sun was shining so we popped up to the park. While the sun didn’t last and we were eventually drizzled on by a sudden spring-like shower, we saw quite a few other dogs and their owners.

We met up with Leonard, the big white dog. The one the poodles demur to. Here he is with a woman who’s not his owner. He was actually quite interested in her four dogs. He’s generally pretty sedate but he was acting quite playful today. The girls, of course, ignored him.

Leonard, the big white dog

They didn’t ignore a little chocolate brown King Charles spaniel that stopped in front of them and laid down for them to have a good sniff. They were so intent on sniffing and picking on him that they failed to notice he had a mate who had been checking out the woods. The first they knew was when a streak of black and brown came pouncing onto them. It was hilarious. The spaniels’ owner and I burst out laughing as the poodles scattered under the now even numbers. They really are pathetic.

I saw (and heard) lots of birds but they were either too far away or I had to put the camera away because of the rain. I did manage to get the robin again, still yapping away.

I know you're watching me but I just don't care

My stupid cold has gone. After a night of two nightmares, a horrendous thirst and a bit of tossing and turning, I woke up feeling much better. As the day progressed I only improved. Except my voice, which is delightfully husky. Although the foul tasting strawberry Strepsils may have reduced it to its normal tones.

Today was our first lunch date for ages. Mirinda was working from the flat so we went for a wander around Mill Quay, dodging joggers and prams, spotting lots of birds to photograph before realising I had no memory card in my camera. It always takes me ages to realise it too. I hate that. And I took some brilliant photographs.

Anyway, on our walk, Mirinda outlined her super master plan to me which will revolutionise the world of education as we know it. It’s complex and simple at the same time. It is beautiful. The Official Secrets Act forbids my repeating any of it here.

For lunch we went to a Lebanese restaurant we’ve passed many times but never ventured in. it’s opposite the Lotus. It’s called the Byblos Harbour and is fabulous. We had one of the set lunch menus which features lots of different things. My favourite was the Kibbeh (ground lamb and onions filled in a meat and wheat jacket) which was absolutely divine. It’s sort of like a falafel but so much more. Dad would hate it but mum might like one.

After a lovely, long, leisurely lunch, we strolled back to the flat where I left Mirinda to work and wandered down to the ferry stop.

Generally I can’t get a seat outside, due to all the tourists, but today there was no-one there. Which meant I had a lovely trip back up the river and the chance to take some photographs that weren’t taken through glass. I tried for a few seagulls in flight (I blipped the best) and some interesting buildings. I also managed to find a seagull with a double chin.

I'd fly away if I wasn't so heavy

I’ve not noticed this building before, which is surprising given the huge sign on it. It was once a riverside warehouse but was converted into flats in 1970. It’s in Wapping and is grade II listed. You can pick up a nice three bedroom flat there for a mere £2,500,000.

On the Thames, at low tide

It was built in 1870 for George Oliver and was used, mostly, for tea. It was one of the first serious flat conversions along the Thames. I found a website for an American pub in Baltimore that claimed it was used to house pirates and ‘vagabonds’ in ‘Merrie olde England’, which only goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

And here’s the Mayflower, a pub I went to many, many moons ago. I was told it was where the Mayflower set off from. Apparently this is true. The Mayflower was moored nearby and did, in fact, leave from here in 1620. It was called the Shippe back then as it had been when it was built in 1550. It was then rebuilt in the 18th century and called the Spread Eagle and Crown. In the 1960s it was renamed the Mayflower because of the associations with the original ship. Oddly, it’s licensed to sell postage stamps.

A great pub for a beer

Finally, here’s Metropolitan Wharf. It is, like Oliver’s, grade II listed. It was purpose built as four warehouses between 1862 and 1898 and was still used in conjunction with the river up until the 1960s. It was refurbished in 2005 with the idea that it would house business space for ‘start-up’ companies. It also has restaurants, cafes, shops and other general meeting places for the daring young professionals who are busy starting up.

Great location for your first business venture

And that was about it for my day. I won’t bore my reader with the super dull train ride home (nothing happened) or the details of my dinner which wasn’t a patch on Byblos Harbour fare.