Observations from a Hill

This is not some fanciful rendering of a Japanese landscape, but rather the view from our house in Rachub the other night at around nine-thirty in the evening, at the setting of the sun over Ynys Môn. Or is it?  I must say that the camera/software on my iPhone is truly astounding: to get anything like an image such as this on film would have been practically, though not totally, impossible, in the days of film or nowt photography. Of course, this manner of imaging the world about us begs some questions, which frankly are not always obvious and probably lie more within the ambit of philosophy or psychology than any particular photographic practice per se. Are we depicting exactly what's out there or is it a confection mediated through many layers of software abstraction and rendered likewise via many layers of hardware? Both, of course; and here's the thing. This process of abstraction is exactly parallel to that human process that translates the 'real' onto the flatten...

Well I have to say I feel properly wrung out by the [Gentle]men's final that ended this year's Wimbledon, and I was only couched out and drinking beer watching on TV. Close to being one of the best finals I've seen yet, Yannik Sinner came out of it as a worthy winner after four often brutally athletic and very hard-serving sets: I guess that singles tennis is as close to gladiatorial combat as we get these days, especially at the elite level. Centre Court kind of resembles a genteel amphitheatre, where egos and aspirations are put to the sword to the [usually] polite baying of the mob -  sorry -  spectators. Top stuff and all very entertaining in any case. Which leaves me with a bit of a vacuum where my nightly post should be. It's been another hot day today, although a large chunk of the hottest part of the afternoon was obviously spent in the semi-dark watching the final. Although the temperature outside is cooling nicely with a gentle fresh breeze to help things alon...

Just as an aside, my weather app is telling me that the ambient outside temperature here is 22˚C, when in fact, it is 25˚C  and relatively cool here in my semi-dark dining room/office, and 29˚C outside in the shade on the patio. I wish I could figure out where the BBC and Apple apps get their meteorological data for around here from. Anyway, to heck with that: suffice to say it's hot enough for up here in Rachub whichever way you look at it... We had our - usually monthly, but of late more occasional than truly regular - lunch club today, over at the Sea Shanty in Trearddur Bay. We were ten today, a good even number for a change, and our son's very oldest friend [toddler to his baby] was up from London to break the usual odd number of attendees at table. Notice that I use the phrase 'up from London'. This is a quite deliberate, personal inversion of the more usual turn of phrase, which to my mind is so unfortunately culturally loaded and oh, so metro-centric. Anyhow, th...

Whilst assembling my usual additions to a bog-standard Pizza Express American [Pepperoni] pizza tonight - anchovies, chilli flakes and extra oregano - I got caught up in reflection on times past, as this particular pizza topping combination harks back over forty years to my days working at Birmingham University; and reminds me of the possible life paths left behind in favour of the one I chose and where I find myself at this moment. As I've said before, I had a secure job and career path ahead of me at the University: I was looking at getting my own department and the the Senior Photographic Technician's post in Civil Engineering, and had also secured the teaching of a night class in photography, locally: all effectively by the hand of my boss, Arthur Burgess - lovely man - who oiled the wheels on both counts. The lunchtime pizzas I ate in abundance in those days were as far from the real deal as are the Pizza Express excuses for the estimable Italian fare of legend are today. ...

  Time for another gratuitous food post. Pictured, kebabs in process this evening on yet another jury-rigged temporary barbecue hearth: those redundant storage heater bricks really do make a good barbie as they help to create a fierce  and long-lasting heat. I'm currently using charcoal made in local woodlands at a place called Parc Y Moch, from the eponymously titled company - run by some local lads - that produces it. Fine stuff it is too, if somewhat more expensive than your usual filling station commercial stuff: but it is a by-product of actual woodland management, so win-win. I've yet to get around to starting a more permanent build: a garden pizza oven would be a good project, but I'd need to consider where to site it carefully as it would be quite an obtrusive structure. We've loads of space here, but not much is actually on the flat, so we'll see. I suppose there is something to be said for temporary structures after all, as it's easy to tailor an oven ...

I caught an advert for Range Rover just now which made me reflect on how much the design of current cars - particularly the blocky SUVs and Chinese EVs - takes from the extreme styling cues of the 'out there' design magazines of the late 1960s, when impossibly large alloy wheels and ultra-wide, ultra low-profile tyres were simply that: impossible to realise in the real world given the then current technology and manufacturing techniques. These, and most other design cues then, came from the fever dreams of sci-fi, and were signifiers of the inevitable future of the automobile. It may have taken sixty-odd years to get to it, but the future as imagined when I was a schoolboy - so far adrift from any kind of reality back then - appears to be now, in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.  The irony is that it just looks normal and rather prosaic now...

It's 21:15 in the evening, and I've just woken up from an hour's dozing in front of the tennis after dinner. I still have no particular thoughts in mind for a topic for this post, which is annoying. I started earlier to pen something about the awful Farage creature, who is now stooping to new depths to justify his mis-use of valuable oxygen and to maintain his spurious position in UK political life. He is obviously of the opinion that his voters that are too pig thick to notice his new and mind-bogglingly facile ploy: resigning as an MP to force a by-election and then standing for another parliamentary seat in said contest, all the while continuing to whine about injustice and how hard done-by he is. You really couldn't make this one up. The saddest thing is that taking his fans as complete idiots might well be a winning ploy, despite the insanity of the idea. Even more worrying is that two  all of his potential opposing parties have said that they won't field a can...

Graduation Day at Bangor University today: pictured, our son-in-law Leo, who has just graduated with a first-class honours degree in data science; his second [first] degree from Bangor University, his first [first] degree having been in psychology, some years ago. We're all [I think understandably and justifiably so] proud of his achievements: and he ain't done yet: there's more to come with a research Masters next year and hopefully his Doctorate to follow soon after. Given his drive and hard work, I don't see much in the way of his achieving both with ease. A top day for us all as a family, and also another feather in the cap of a great institution that three of our family have attended...

It's Sunday and gratuitous food post time! Being much exercised by Wimbledon at the moment, and what with Leo's graduation tomorrow and guests arriving throughout the next ten days, I feel at least some way justified in this rather meagre and mundane offering tonight. Pictured is a kind of mongrel Sunday roast, involving sumac roasted poussin, olive oil roasted potatoes, boiled tender-stem broccoli and a fairly standard gravy. I thought there might be a taste clash between the Middle-Eastern and British flavours, but I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked pretty harmoniously as a piece. There you go. Back to the tennis and my wine...

A question that seems often to be asked, no matter the context, is where is the next big idea coming from? It's such a commonplace question that no-one actually questions the question itself. What exactly is a big idea, anyway? The history of the financial markets is littered with the debris of failed 'big ideas', from the South Sea Bubble to the dot.com boom and bust, and one presumes onward to the inevitable collapse of the hyperventilating AI scrimmage currently taxing the tiny minds of market traders worldwide. No, these are not only not big ideas, they are not really ideas at all; merely fashions posing as ideas: trends from which to make a fast buck before getting out and onto the the next gravy train. Snake oil, no more, no less. The true reality is that really big and significant ideas emanate from small but incisive insights, often in the unguarded moments of unfocussed thought that we usually characterise as daydreaming: these days much-derided as un-productive t...

Pictured: today's further progress in taming and shaping [which I started a few weeks ago] of the smaller holly tree that stands guard at the bottom right corner of our bottom garden. The intention was to denude the thing of its lower branches and their foliage and to leave a tall, sculptural 'lollipop' that will still provide a singing platform for blackbirds [blog posts passim] whilst allowing us to see at least some of the view out west towards the boy's home on the horizon on Ynys Môn. So far, so good, and the work hasn't been too difficult, as holly is easily thinned out from near ground level: my ladders having been only really used as steps for the most part. I've just got to take out the last of the lower straggly bits and finish taking the fresh sprouts of new foliage from the lower trunks before they get established. Holly really is one of the great survivors of the plant world: it's practically indestructible and returns from even the most brutal ...

My interest was piqued this afternoon by a post on Medium regarding the number nine. Now the content on Medium varies from the rigorous to the fantastical, depending on how the algorithm interprets the direction in which you want to go based on your reading habits. The stuff I get back I try and filter before actually reading a post, to at least partially game the system as much in my favour as possible, and avoiding the more hysterical crap that can appear in your inbox if you're not careful. What interested me was not the old arithmetical party game of multiplying any number by nine and adding the digits of the product together sequentially until the number is reduced to a single digit and - ta-da! - revealing the number nine; intriguing though that particular numerical phenomenon happens to be. Rather, the author of the post relates that her birth year similarly reduced by addition of individual digits similarly results in a result of nine, both in the Gregorian calendar we use ...

I referenced my dad [yet again] in last night's post, and something turned up today that made think of the old man with psychological reference to myself. Anyone who knows me knows that I ain't the tidiest person when it comes to most things, despite my reverence for, for instance, library catalogues and the Dewey Decimal System, to name but one small area of interest to me. When it comes to my own personal spaces; my desks, workshop, etc., I tend to accumulate stuff until it becomes uncomfortable to work in the space: at which time I will clear up, re-organise and move on, probably to frustratingly lose track of some momentarily important thing or another. With other things, though, I am somewhat OCD. Anyway, I drove up to the Stretton Fox to pick Jane up today on return from her visiting family in Carnforth; a trip I do many times a year at the moment. The Fox is conveniently halfway for a rendezvous and is a pleasant watering hole for an hour's break and a welcome pint o...

  When I was growing up, dad used to spend occasional time perusing his rather old - even then - Chamber's Etymological Dictionary, originally his sister Margaret's; and which I inherited after he died in 2012. I've since passed the book to my son, as seems appropriate, given that he, like his grandfather and me, is himself a wordsmith fascinated by the eccentricities of language, given to twisting words and sentences at will. I remember fondly my father's love of wordplay for comic effect; a characteristic affectation of his, like so many other, that I have absorbed, along with a growing physical resemblance to the old man, into my being. As a teenager, I started to take on board the desire for and acquisition of books: marshalling words, concepts and ideas into serried rows of paperbacks and the occasional hardback on shelf after shelf, in house after house. None are fancy tomes worthy of bibliophile attention, but all are collected for their content: the true purpose...

A lazy food post tonight, as I'm rather chuffed with the results of my culinary efforts this evening. Pictured, my lamb shish kebab gyros. I'll admit the presentation verges somewhat on the chaotic, but the flatbread simply wouldn't play ball and split neatly: not really an issue as it did its job of holding the filling from the first until the last mouthful. To sum up, I bought a pack of Lidl's kebabs this afternoon with the intention of lighting the barbecue and just eating them with bread and salad; but as the weather was gloomily overcast, it seemed appropriate to cook indoors instead, so a decision was made to air-fry the little buggers instead. I'd already got the makings of a salad in the fridge, so I duly made one of gem lettuce, tomato, spring onion, feta and chorizo, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, salt and black pepper. I flavoured some Greek yoghurt with sumac and spread that on the inside of the flatbread, before adding the sliced kebab and sala...

The cost of our tech will be rising, that much is for sure: stuff gets more expensive with time. But this year's rises may be disproportionately higher and the trend will probably continue as we move forward. The reason? Chips. And more specifically, memory and data storage chips. Ironically, aside from the geopolitical factors currently mashing up the markets with trade wars, actual wars and the inevitable knock-ons in the stock market, the principal factor is the thirst of big tech itself, specifically, A.I., which requires not only huge amounts of processing and co-processing power; it also consumes vast amounts of memory in the process of doing what it does. This 'ever-upwards' trend is not unique in the history of computer and communications device development, but the scale and rate of growth at which it's happening is. Cost inflation is being driven by configuration inflation, and dear old Moore's Law and the manufacturing base that supports the industry are ...

  Just a very brief note tonight as I'm just about to watch the England v Panama game. Pictured was tonight's repast of a do-it-yourself pizza based on the featured Crosta Mollica pizza base [less than four quid from Waitrose]. I bought a mozzarella for the cheese, but didn't realise until I got it home that it was reduced fat, which I consider to be a cardinal sin where cheese is concerned - should have taken my reading glasses into the store me, but there you go. The only things I added to what was essentially became a classic Margherita was home-grown basil, seasoning and olive oil. Not bad, really, and a good deal less faff than cooking one from absolute scratch, although there ain't no substitute for the real deal, and I do have a vague plan for building an outdoor, wood-fired pizza oven, ticking over in the back of my mind. As to the football; as anyone who knows me knows well, I'm not these days given to any particular enthusiasm for the game; but in one or t...

I got back from our break in Llŷn a bit earlier than anticipated this morning. The explorations I'd got planned for the journey home were cancelled due to a reprise of yesterday's temperature and humidity: I just didn't fancy leaving the aircon of my car behind just to potter about - it was just too hot. Pictured is the thermometer we keep in the shade by our front door, reading 28˚C when I got back around ten this morning in bright sunshine. The weather apps on my phone both told me the temperature was no more than 23˚and that it was cloudy. The problem with the 'local' weather readings is that the data is derived mainly from the weather station at Capel Curig, which is at some altitude and attracts the mountain weather to boot. Maybe we should push for a genuinely local to Bethesda weather station, as the predictions of the apps are generally way out of kilter with our actual reality. Still, tonight, a cooler breeze has gotten up, the temperature has dropped close...

Pictured, lunchtime today at Gwesty Tŷ Newydd, Aberdaron, out on the sun-deck in the back. It was hotter here today than Corfu, Santorini and Lisbon, and we're not even in the red weather warning zone up here. It is now nearly five o'clock in the afternoon and it is still as hot and bloody humid to boot: it feels more like forty celsius than thirty. I just had a jangle with an old workmate of mine, now also retired, who farms down here in Llŷn; trundling up the field adjacent to our cottage on his old open-top tractor. When asked if it was too hot for him, he commented that 'No, I've got air-conditioning up here...' Tough as old boots... Anyhow it's heading home time tomorrow. I'll be taking the scenic route to catch a few more places before I call it quits and make for Rachub...

Pictured, The Sun at Llanengan as it is these days after its minor refurb to bring it into line with the current Robinson's corporate image a while back. However, mercifully, the pub itself has not been messed around with, and retains pretty much the same interior and old-school atmosphere that it always did from the very first days of our own patronage, some forty-four years ago. My parents had come down for a holiday with us and were staying at our then first proper, owned-by-us-home in Gerlan. Dad had just taken delivery of a new car and we headed down Pen Llŷn for a day by the sea. Having stopped at various places down the coast en route, we fetched up at the beach at Porth Ceiriad; always popular with surfers, these days. Much as it has been today, the weather was scorching - it was high summer then, rather than June, though - and by the time we made our way back to the village of Llanengan we were frankly frazzled and in dire need of a drink, so we hied forthwith to The Sun;...

  A pretty hot day here today again, but as always, the sea breeze mitigates the ferocity of Old Sol with a cunning deceit. We went down for our usual pilgrimage to Aberdaron today; i.e park up, go for coffee, read the paper, and then go for a couple of pints at the inestimable summer beering location of the rear terrace of Y Gwesty Tŷ Newydd; basking in Mediterranean-esque light and the gentle cooling zephyr under the shade of the clever retractible roof there. This pub has one of the best views out to sea on the planet, and serves a good selection of beers and ales, two of which are local and excellent. We haven't yet ventured a meal there but the food we saw being served looked the ticket, so we might just venture a bite there later in the week. Pictured, the grave of the poet R.S Thomas and Elsi, his wife, at the tiny but lovely church of St. Maelrhys, which we visited as is now our custom when we are down here. I bought yet another book of Thomas' poems from the church in ...

Pictured, the view down the strand at Criccieth from the top of the castle, before the thin cloud lifted and the sun came out. The temperature was already a humid 25˚C before noon, and by the time we made it back to the car somewhat frazzled and sunburnt an hour later, the mercury had briefly hit 30˚C before notching back a couple of degrees. Heading back into Abersoch, we were forced to seek refuge in a shady bar for cold beers and a read of the paper. The haze over the bay has returned this afternoon, taking some of the ferocity out of the sun, but I think a cold can of something might still be required sooner rather than later...

Well, the summer solstice arrived this morning, along with Fathers' Day. The boys came down from Ynys Môn to Llŷn to see us, bearing flowers and a card. We went over to Plas Yn Rhiw across Cardigan Bay, along the long, elegant strand of Porth Neigwl nestling under Mynydd Rhiw; the early C17th manor house and gardens that was the erstwhile home of the Keating sisters. The gardens were at their best: a long but surprisingly shallow horizontal plot to the front of the house; its lack of depth to the front disguised by clever landscaping and planting to convey an impression of a much larger garden. It's always a joy to behold, especially at this time of year, and an entirely organically managed affair. The house is currently closed until next spring for structural repairs, so we were guided to the small cottage down the hill, Sarn Rhiw, which was the tiny retirement home of the Welsh poet R.S Thomas and his wife, the painter Mildred Eldridge [Elsi], the glorious view from the garde...

We went down into Abersoch today for a wander about the little town. As Jane remembers her mother saying; a few decades ago, this was just a very sleepy little fishing village at the very western edge of North Wales that had just one tiny general store with counter service only, and men in cow-gowns serving the mostly Welsh-speaking public. These days the place fills up in late June with tourists mostly interested in sea and strand, and sporting and boating activities. Many, many of these tourists are wealthy by any normal standards, and the wealthier among them often own boltholes of their own in the area, used only for a couple of weeks in the summer and which remain shuttered but maintained for the rest of the year.  Today you couldn't move but for exotic and stupidly expensive automobiles, the most ridiculous of which was similar to the one pictured, an Aston Martin SUV in British Racing Green. A more ludicrous concept I cannot imagine, given that AM Lagonda is synonymous with...

Back down here in our regular bolt-hole rental in Pen Llŷn for a few days. We drove down via Tremadoc under leaden skies and through intermittent rain to be welcomed by a brief spell of bright sunshine and blue skies, which rapidly gave way to the above scene. Still, the forecast for the next week looks set to be for some hot and sunny weather, so here's hoping: we've hedged our bets on the clothing front so we don't get caught out too badly; and anyhow, the point of the break is really just for the change of scenery: Pen Llŷn really is that different to where we live in the mountains, just shy of an hour away from here. We plan on doing plenty of exploring tomorrow while there's just the two of us here, anyway, so lounging around in the sun is really not on the cards anyway. When the others join us in their various teams [I exaggerate: couples]: first for Fathers' Day on Sunday, and then on Monday, we'll tailor our activities to suit. Whatever, I'll keep yo...

It's interesting that China should feature at least three times in today's Financial Times: in the editorial, an op-ed byline, and a piece on higher education. The op-ed was written by one Ray Dalio, a longstanding visitor to the country and Sinophile and hedge fund founder of Bridgewater Associates. He, more than most Western commentators I've read in recent years, has an understanding of both Chinese history and philosophy, and the country and its people's current place within the world's economic system; even quoting Sun Tzu: '...to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill...'. Not to seek an empire through imperialist expansionism, but to accrete influence through trade. Making your nation indispensable to the world's economy is infinitely wiser than waging territorial war for gain, as pretty much every imperialist nation on earth has learned to its cost over time. There is much to learn from this. Instead of carping on about China'...

It's curious how one's internal demeanour can go from a state of tranquil, in the moment repose, sitting in the late afternoon sun in the garden, mindful of nothing but being; to absolute outraged turmoil, simply by picking up the day's paper. Pictured, the place of mindful no mind that is our garden, where time can simply evaporate into just being. Then I make the mistake of reading the newspaper, and find a piece by Zing Tsjeng about the rise of some pretty weird far right [so-called Christian] doctrinaire thinking on the other side of the pond. There has always been Christian fundamentalism in the US, which matches [ironically] pretty much the kind of Islamic fundamentalism prevalent in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, to name but three examples. The home of the brave and the land of the free would seem, from the perspective of this moderately sane and lofty place of sanctuary at any rate, to be attempting to actually become a theocracy itself; mirroring those very ...

Just an observation on the currently fashionable proposition that nuclear power will be the saviour of us all in the energy/climate stakes. Simply put: no it won't; and for a number of fairly common sense reasons. First off, you have to ask yourself 'Is this source of energy cleaner than coal, gas or oil?' In terms of immediate emissions, one would have to say yes. But as far as long-term pollution issues? Definitely not. Traditional nuclear technology by default produces large quantities of enormously damaging radioactive waste as a matter of course, which will be a significant issue, going forward many thousands of years into human history. Even the Small Modular [nuclear] Reactors that are now de rigeur in the thinking of politicians and governments pose just the same long term problems. And this is discounting the damaging effects of nuclear accidents: whilst still small in number, events such as these have far-reaching effects: even today, there is still an environment...

  Pictured, the recently-completed and now publicly open Pont Sarnau across Afon Ogwen between the rugby club and Tanysgafell. The old bridge had become a precarious affair and was closed down some time ago. All of the pathways heading up to the back road between Braichmelyn and the village of Tregarth have been similarly upgraded and the place is now a fine and pleasant place to walk again. It now forms part of Lôn Las Ogwen, a foot and cycle path that now stretches from Nant Ffrancon right down into Bangor and Penrhyn Quay. We're starting to feel the benefits of funds raised as a result of the slate valleys' recent elevation to a World Heritage Site [not before bloody time, either], and the new bridge and pathways are just one small part of a growing renewal in recognition of the historical importance of the area to the world. However, as always, something conspired to sour our circular walk to see the new structure today. We parked the car just behind our old house at Brynbe...

I am, to put it mildly, knackered tonight, after a day spent with Jane preparing and eating this evening's meal with the boys, over here from their fastness on Ynys Môn for a Sunday visit.  This morning, I attacked the smaller holly tree afresh with probably too much gusto, after having woken this morning from the kind of mad dreaming that always goes with having dropped back off to sleep after dawn: in this case three times in succession. This always leaves me feeling wiped out on rising, and usually the only way to shake the feeling off is to get outside and do something real. Nevertheless, the cumulative effects of the foregoing added to the pollen being very high up here today, have left me in a state of itchy torpor with few thoughts to my name and still less inclination to write about them. Anyhow, beneath all the clamour over the world's first trillionaire, huge data centres, Japanese nuclear reactors, tens of thousands of satellites cluttering up our near-earth orbit s...

The principal defining characteristic of the human race is natural language, and the diversity of its languages defines the manifest variety of human culture. Across time, however, and particularly during the last half of the twentieth century and into the present one, English has experienced somewhat of an explosion in currency across the globe, mostly through fast moving changes in geo-politics driven principally through global trade and networking via the internet. This is both good - more people can communicate through the common knowledge of one language than ever before - and bad, as minority language after minority language withers and dies along with their speakers, through lack of use and inherently limited dissemination. Most monoglot English speakers would simply say 'so what?'; these are dying languages anyway: why preserve the redundant?'. Which makes about as much sense as asking what's the point of art, literature and culture in general.  The thing that m...

Having so many visitors from all around the world here, one hears accented English of all types and flavours. I often mull over this question of accent, as I'm always reminded of a chap that I knew for a while some forty-some years ago, with whom I worked in the building trade locally. His name was Ian Dickson, and he was educated at a public-school, his parents being wealthy. He spoke in that approximation of an 'unaccented' Standard English commonly referred to as RP; 'Received Pronunciation': the universally and traditionally accepted lingua-phone of the privileged and educated classes. Except that neither linguistically nor sociologically does this make any real sense. Some of those that speak in RP might consider themselves to exist as part of a long and storied familial lineage spanning many decades or centuries, passed down to them ultimately, in many cases, by some divine right of succession. How strange that they choose to converse in a manner not passed do...

You might remember the film "The Flight of The Phoenix" from 1965 - it's been repeated many times on terrestrial TV and is readily available via streaming - and the story was retold in the 2004 remake, "Flight of The Phoenix". For those that don't know the story, its basic premise is that a cargo plane, carrying a small number of passengers from Jaghbub to Benghazi, in Libya, crash lands in the Sahara desert. Anyhow, the central plot line is the building of an aeroplane upon which to escape back to civilisation from the remaining viable pieces of their original, now severely damaged craft. The principal architect of this plan is a German aeronautical engineer,  who comes up with a scheme and plans for a bastardised aircraft based on the one remaining engine and various fragments of wing and airframe. Anyway, one of the dramatic swings of the plot is when the rest of those stranded realise that the German engineer was a model aircraft designer, at which poin...

The last signed and dated piece of artwork I made was in 1989, part of a series of pieces centred around the singer Hank Williams. Most of the pieces are lost, but the triptych of Hanks is still with me, alongside a number of screen prints that never got framed nor saw the light of day, let alone got hung. I did start painting again for a while around ten or so years ago, but the thread of inspiration dried up as quickly as it had arrived. I decided the other day that enough was enough: I'd start working again, and the above will be the genesis of some new series of paintings. As you can see, the base for this will be small: a six-by-six inch canvas [still in its shrink-wrap here], held by the miniature oak studio easel that my dad made many years ago to hold my parents' wedding album on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary. The canvas is one that Ray Keats left behind when she died a couple of years ago; I have several now to get me started. I've determined to ...

Well, it's that time of day again and I am totally bereft of ideas for a topic for this post: the news is generally too depressing to even contemplate; in particular the appalling behaviour of Donald Trump's henchmen in chief, Vance and Hegseth; two nastier individuals it would be very hard to find, as if the President himself wasn't bad enough already. However, my iTunes is set to shuffle and Country Pie from the album 'Five Bridges' by The Nice, released in 1970, has just surfaced from the digital soup of nascent music that resides on my laptop's hard drive. Which reminds me that the first time I actually met my wife Jane was that very summer, at a house party in Quinton when I was just fifteen. I'd just bought that album [I still have it and it's still in eminently playable condition]. At that point she was sixteen and we didn't know each other; in fact we didn't get together until over two years later, at the close of 1972. We seem to have go...

A slightly meta post tonight, as it's about the keyboard I'm typing it on: a 60% mechanical key job that I took delivery of this afternoon. It's a very solidly built little unit that stays reassuringly put on the desk surface. As with pretty much all general purpose keyboards these days though, the default modifier key layout is Windows biassed. I've remapped the key's functions, but now need some replacement Mac keycaps to satisfy my OCD and stop me cursing every time I look down at the bottom row of keys. This particular little beauty goes by the name of the Royal Kludge (!) R65: there must be a particularly heinous piece of software in use in China that generates the weirdest English names for products to sell in the West. Still, the sheer surreality of some of these monikers don't half keep one amused, don't y'know? Anyhow, even though it's always a bit strange to migrate back to a mechanical keyboard from the spongy MacBook chiclet affair, I thi...

  Well, here we are again at yet another lazy Sunday afternoon gratuitous food post. Pictured, our supper of pan-fried Welsh lamb cutlets, minted new potatoes and Greek salad. All very nice, I thank you: the lamb was lovely [and there's nowt but bone left on our post-prandial plates as evidence to the fact]; but O! how expensive has our national meat become. Thirty-four pounds a kilo! Each of these cutlets prices out at £3.12p apiece. I'll leave the older of you to ponder on this little factoid: when we did our first lamb spit roast down in Brynbella [I know it was thirty-odd years ago now], we bought a whole carcass for exactly that same amount of money: thirty-four quid. And as it was around thirty-five pounds in weight, that puts the per-kilo price then at around two quid. I'm not one to champion stupidly cheap, factory-farmed food or cost-cutting when it comes to farming, but it does act as a real wake-up call as to where our priorities lie in this world, with people be...

News in The Guardian today about the charity the British Heart Foundation, which is reported to be shedding 150 of its shops across the UK as its net profits crashed out from £18.8m to £3.6m in the 2024-25 financial year. They blame an increasingly hostile retail environment and competition from online retailing for the losses and will be shedding hundreds of staff and volunteers in the proposed reshuffle. Never mind the fact that its CEO, Charmaine Griffiths, was awarded a £35,000 pay rise , more than most workers in the UK actually earn in a year; taking her remuneration to £268,239 for this current financial year or the fact that the charity's wage and pension bill amounted to £136m last year, with 180 of its staff being paid £60,000 or more per year. This picture of highly paid senior executives is played out across the entire charity sector in the UK. If these people were as good at their jobs as their salaries would appear to indicate, surely they would have predicted both th...

There used to be an adage during the Cold War: ' ...if you hear the four-minute warning, put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye ...' On so many fronts at the moment we are hearing but not heeding four minute warnings every day of our lives. We've had a decade-plus of complete political inanity and insanity, with the Tories going full-tilt lemming over a cliff of their own making, and leaving the country in a post-Brexit swamp of rising prices and with a complete lack of our previously hard-earned freedom of movement between us and own nearest neighbours foisted upon us. Then they showed themselves to be the libertarian self-interested toss-pots we always knew them to be during the global disaster that was Covid, with so many of their number exploiting the gaping holes in the procurement process at our - great - expense; is it any wonder that the current Labour government is under siege at the moment, trying against all odds to mop up this mess? Unfortun...