Observations from a Hill

I guess it should be no surprise to me, or anyone of my age and background, that for the most part, governments across the world are frog-marching humanity towards climatic and economic armageddon in double time. Everywhere you look or listen, the voices of honest and sensible dissent are there to lend the lie to the outright dishonesty and blatant duplicitousness of our ruling elites. Take the half-truths of our Autumn Statement this week, for example. In the service of their desperate struggle to cling onto power at all costs, the Tories - as usual characterising the Labour Party as the party of tax, borrow & spend, whilst simultaneously being in thrall to the cabal of 'Union Bosses' that they [the Tories] see as actually being in charge of Labour Party thinking and policy - are tarting around with so-called 'tax cuts' that, in real terms are anything but. But of course, if you read The Daily Telegraph, The Sun or The Daily Mail, you've been presented today wi...

  I decided on reflection to take the executive decision to actually trim the side track to the depth of the table, as I realised I often stand at that corner or to that side of the table for safety's sake on certain types of cut: being impaled by a kicked-back piece of timber travelling at 120mph is not my idea of fun. Also, the slider  has zero horizontal rotational slop, even when a third of it is backed out of the slot, so the extra track achieves not a lot, anyhow. In the middle of the table is the sandwich of melamine-faced particle board, glued up ready for trimming and lightening, which will be the body of the sled. As is usual, I'm upcycling old kitchen furniture and fittings where I can, rather than buying new stuff. It costs me nowt, is better for the environment, and anyway the fun is in working out how to repurpose otherwise junk material into something useful for future use. I'll keep you posted on further progress...

  Pictured, the current state of play with my latest mini-project - bear in mind this one is but one element of a causal chain of mini-projects all heading towards actually getting stuff made; not least of which is the speaker test mule. But first things first, and I've added a length of angle-iron - I do love a bit of angle-iron, especially when it's free, up-cycle-able junk - to the tee-track runner, to take what I intend to be a multi-function, completely adjustable, combination crosscut sled and mitre thing. I'll be using the same principle as the table-saw fence I built a couple of years ago: triangulation.  It means that, yes, there's another length of tee-track hanging off the table, potentially to cause injury to innocent passersby or indeed to your humble narrator himself. Not to fret on that front, as the whole kit and kaboodle will be moved to another location, where the errant lump of alloy will be adjacent to a wall. I'm going to soften up this HSE nigh...

  OK - pictured is my latest - it won't be the last - modification to my table-saw. But first, I must comment on the curry I've just eaten. It was the frozen remainder of one I made and posted about back in May. We've been clearing one of the freezers out, and it turned out to be lurking at the bottom of a pile of stuff, frozen in a bag. The only reason it stood out was because I'd marked it up with the date of freezing, and the appellation "Bostin' Chicken Curry". Looking back through this year's posts, I see that I'd dedicated the recipe to my late, great friend, Johnny Kyte, God rest him, a curry aficionado if ever there was one. I'd like to think he would have approved. However, the table-saw thingy is something I've been chewing over for ages, since I bought the track slider - the thing in the track shown - from Rutlands, earlier in the year. I had no particular idea for its use at the time, other than vague notions of projects it coul...

Just a diary post tonight, as the weather's been foul for most of the day, and I didn't venture forth until at least 13:30 this afternoon, when I decided to do the upgrade to our conservatory-based intermediate woodpile. Experience has shown that, as Autumn descends and the general level of damp goes through the roof, so to speak - often literally in the case of our conservatory - the logs at the bottom of this final staging pile in direct contact with the tiled floor get, well, damp.  I've had some old Ikea shelves lying around the studio for a while, minus the original uprights and bracing, so I pressed a couple of these into service as a ventilated base to hold the small woodpile that stores the wood that will be used next in the rotation between the main cord-store, wood shed and house. Project Pew [blog posts passim] can be seen acting as the main support for the thick end of the pile, and the modified end of one of the shelves on the right acting as a stop for the tai...

Orthodox refers to the prevailing, dominant political, philosophical or religious value-system accepted as the norm within a given context. Heterodox is the inverse of orthodox, referring to views, opinions and values that run counter to the prevailing, dominant value-system accepted as the norm within any given context. A paradox is a statement, viewpoint or logical construct which appears, sometimes superficially, to be internally logically inconsistent; a thing of confusion, a puzzle or an enigma. Our current government, or at least the party running it, is indeed a paradox. Traditionally standing for the views and traditions of 'British' orthodoxy: ethically, fiscally and culturally conservative by nature; not upsetting the equilibrium of middle England's shires, hundreds and parishes; its 'natural' hierarchies and squirearchies; God, King and Country. But the problem with this government, and a large swathe of the Tory Party, is that they are anything but ortho...

  Further to my post last night, I've made some progress on my Welsh line of descendance, today. I have a tree of the Staffordshire, male line going back to the early seventeenth century - a bit sketchy admittedly, but a foundation to build upon, nevertheless - but I've always hit the buffers with my Great-Great-Great-Grandmother's antecedents. She was one Sarah Parry of Ruabon in Denbighshire, as I've mentioned before [blog posts passim]. Until today I knew nothing of her parents: then I stumbled upon the above document: her record of baptism from 1784. It lists her parents as John Parry and Elizabeth Jane Young. I've found my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandparents on the Welsh line at last. Only another mystery or twenty to tilt at next! Keep you posted...