For years I fought a losing battle against the persistent and pernicious weeds which invaded the back my garden from the railway embankment. I decided that if I built a pond, then they would have no place to take root.
My father built a concrete pond and it seemed to give him a great deal of pleasure maintaining and developing it.
I went to the library and read up on it. Basically, you dig a big hole, line it with thick fabric and place a pond liner over that, anchor it with some crazy paving and fill it with water.
In practise, it's rather more complicated than that. I marked out the optimum minimum area for a viable pond, 6 square metres, and excavated about a ton of earth, piled up at the back, creating a hole roughly similar to a mirror dinghy. Then I got the linings and paving and filled it with water. There was a shelf around most of the edge for plants in aquatic containers and a sloping 'beach' at one end for wildlife to use and a sharp drop the other end for a waterfall. All this effort gave me an abdominal hernia, which required an operation.
I bought two preformed cascades and installed them, along with a pump and filter, which also involved installing outdoor electricity. Both pump and filter turned out to be inadequate, to I had to invest in bigger stuff.
I populated the pond with marginal and oxygenating plants and bought some fish to eat mosquito larvae.
All seemed well until I was about to go away to house sit for my sister. The pump broke down and had to be replaced. While I was away, my neighbou,r who was charged with keeping an eye on it, sent me a message to say that all was not well. I cut short my holiday and returned to find the pond half empty and the fish gasping for breath. The filter had clogged up and water was not flowing. Just 10 days of hot rainless weather had evapourated half of the water!
I had to install an outside tap and run a hose to a ball valve to keep the pond automatically topped up.
Then came the heron. It seemed that all the fish had been eaten. I restocked the pond with fish and installed all sorts of seemingly clever devices to deter this menace, to no avail. This old heron had seen them all before and was not to be deterred.
Then one day there was a truly remarkable encounter. I had surrounded the pond with fishing line, installed a decoy plastic male heron, placed a net over the pond, supported by wooden laths and a passive infrared sensor which sprayed a jet of water at anything warm blooded which moved before it. The heron arrived, cautiously. It stepped over the fishing line, kicked over the fake heron and approached the sensor, very slowly. It responded but the bird merely got splashed on the beak. There is an 8 second pause before it fires again, giving the bird time to move directly in front of it. It only responds to movement across its range. The heron casually walked along the wooden lath to the centre of the pond and peered down. There was plenty of duckweed under which the wary fish could hide and a net to trap the heron's beak if it made a stab. After a while, it turned its head towards me. It knew I had been watching it. The message was, 'Ok, you you've got me buggered here!'
It never returned, but the scared fish came out of cover, so I had too many of them, and they were breeding too. This played havoc with the filter, so I had to get a really big one.
I had misinterpreted the heron's message. What it was trying to say was that it was here to keep the fish population under control and get a meal in return for my services, you idiot!
I didn't need the fish to control the mosquito lavae. Damselfly larvae would take care of that, given the chance.
Nonetheless the pond has rid the area of brambles, thistles and suchlike and is a pleasant place to sit and listen to test match special and grow watercress. Furthermore, now that there is a hosepipe ban in place, I am exempt, on account of having a pond with fish!
Wednesday 11 April 2012
Friends, and how to live without them
Although essentially somewhat a loner, I have always appreciated friends, especially when younger. A friendless childhood is painfully lonely and probably stunts development. I wasn't a joiner. If it was a gang, then I set up my own for others to join, until the novelty wore off. I didn't join the photographic society, I took it over and helped create and run the film society.
Friends are supportive, interesting and lots of fun. Usually neighbours, school friends and even cousins. You come together through proximity and regular contact. You share common interests, like bicycles, TV, games, music and problems.
I was fortunate enough to have the right skills to do well in the 11 plus exams and was told I could choose any secondary school I wanted, but the one I chose was the one that most of my friends were going to, which, fortunately for me, was a grammar school. I had plenty of other friends, but I never saw them again, apart from one who I met at a party some years later. I started talking to him, pleased to see him, but he only replied, 'You talk different. Posh, like.' And that was that!It was a revalatory moment. It wasn't that I had lost my working class South London accent. My language had changed. I was being groomed for university and 'secondary modern' schools, predating comprehensive education, set less academic goals, expecting most to leave at the earliest opportunity to seek work.
By then, most of my old schoolfriends had faded from view and new relationships developed in a way never to be repeated after we finally left school altogether and all together. Diaspora. I went to Spain, some went to university, others gained employment. One died in a plane crash. But the bonds between us were strong and forming new relationships of that quality proved difficult, so we somehow kept together, until women, and then children broke us apart.
In a classic move, I was seduced by the girlfiend of one. Things were never the same after that. The final divide was children. I simply could not carry on for long with my friends who did not have children, all but one of them, but I had plenty of time for people who did and lived locally. But these were utilitarian relationships. An 'adult' world of sharing the trials of child rearing, in which we had no training or preparation, child minding arrangements so we could escape the burden for a quick meal out round the corner and a supply of playmates for our bored kids.
But it was all rather thin. When it became obvious that my marriage was breaking up, they all fell away. No longer a member of the happy families club!
I had good friends at various jobs, but few persisted when I moved on.
Perhaps a good measure of friendship is those who make the effort to support you in a crisis. I found myself in hospital with severe facial injuries. Who came to visit me? My eldest daughter, my son, my partner (girlfriend is a term she won't accept, which is fair enough, as we are both divorcees with children) and 2 friends, who were former work colleagues. One of these has since moved away and the other refuses to return my calls since I cancelled a meeting at a pub due to tiredness caused by the after effects of anaesthetics.
When I was self employed, I discovered the joy of business relationships. They are so clear cut. You solve a problem for them and they give you money. If they like what you do and what you charge, you have a regular customer. When they don't need you anymore, that's it. A clean cut.
The longest friendship I ever maintained ended badly. I met this guy when we were 16 and we had mopeds. Actually he had a moped and I had a Honda 50, which had no pedals and went faster. This was a fundamental aspect of the friendship which was to last 35 years. Eventually his work took him to live in Italy, with his wife, daughter and dog. We kept in touch by phone and I proposed to come and visit him. He kept deferring the date, on the grounds of having lots of visitors, but in the end I insisted a date in the autumn and booked the ferry. Before I left, I left him a mobile phone message to say that I would be on my way by car within 48 hours and would see him in a few days time.
I got no reply, assumed all was well and set off on the long road to Italy. On the third day, I rang him to say that I would be with him that day and was told there was a problem. I had planned to stay for a week, but he had to go to England on business. That was an obvious lie. He clearly didn't want me there at all, but lacked the guts to tell me, and the reason. I stayed just 2 days, all was well and convivial and I returned to England, when my mobile phone kicked in again. There was a belated message about this 'problem' sent after I had crossed to Europe. I exploded in anger.
For the next 10 years I was unable to contact him. Why would a close fiend of 35 years act like that? I rang his mother, who said that he had moved to Portugal, but it was clear that she had been instructed not to give out contact details.
Then one day, in a car park, a woman approached me asking for directions. It was his wife. I was overjoyed to see her and she seemed pleased to see me too, although she did not immediately recognise me, as I had grown a beard. We talked a bit and she said thet had returned to England to look after his mother. I asked why he had cut off contact and she said she had no idea. She gave me her email address.
Months passed and eventually I sent her a message, asking her to get her husband to explain. I got a reply.
'You specifically said, in front of my Jewish wife and daughter, that all Jews should be taken out and shot. That is why I cut you out of my life.'
I was astounded. I had no recollection of saying that. My father was Jewish, on account of his mother being Jewish, although my mother wasn't, so technically I am not, but I had lots of Jewish friends and was invited to a ba'mitsfa. They used to say that the best anti-semitic jokes were invented by Jews. My father was a prisoner of war in Germany and they didn't know he was Jewish, but if they had, I would not exist. This was not a satisfactory explanation at all. It was insane. There had never been any indication of hostility from his wife, far from it. Are, there it is. Chercher la Femme!
It is said that men like the the sound of the female voice, but they trust a man's voice.
So, virtually friendless, I progress down the vale of years. Friends? Sod the buggers!
Friends are supportive, interesting and lots of fun. Usually neighbours, school friends and even cousins. You come together through proximity and regular contact. You share common interests, like bicycles, TV, games, music and problems.
I was fortunate enough to have the right skills to do well in the 11 plus exams and was told I could choose any secondary school I wanted, but the one I chose was the one that most of my friends were going to, which, fortunately for me, was a grammar school. I had plenty of other friends, but I never saw them again, apart from one who I met at a party some years later. I started talking to him, pleased to see him, but he only replied, 'You talk different. Posh, like.' And that was that!It was a revalatory moment. It wasn't that I had lost my working class South London accent. My language had changed. I was being groomed for university and 'secondary modern' schools, predating comprehensive education, set less academic goals, expecting most to leave at the earliest opportunity to seek work.
By then, most of my old schoolfriends had faded from view and new relationships developed in a way never to be repeated after we finally left school altogether and all together. Diaspora. I went to Spain, some went to university, others gained employment. One died in a plane crash. But the bonds between us were strong and forming new relationships of that quality proved difficult, so we somehow kept together, until women, and then children broke us apart.
In a classic move, I was seduced by the girlfiend of one. Things were never the same after that. The final divide was children. I simply could not carry on for long with my friends who did not have children, all but one of them, but I had plenty of time for people who did and lived locally. But these were utilitarian relationships. An 'adult' world of sharing the trials of child rearing, in which we had no training or preparation, child minding arrangements so we could escape the burden for a quick meal out round the corner and a supply of playmates for our bored kids.
But it was all rather thin. When it became obvious that my marriage was breaking up, they all fell away. No longer a member of the happy families club!
I had good friends at various jobs, but few persisted when I moved on.
Perhaps a good measure of friendship is those who make the effort to support you in a crisis. I found myself in hospital with severe facial injuries. Who came to visit me? My eldest daughter, my son, my partner (girlfriend is a term she won't accept, which is fair enough, as we are both divorcees with children) and 2 friends, who were former work colleagues. One of these has since moved away and the other refuses to return my calls since I cancelled a meeting at a pub due to tiredness caused by the after effects of anaesthetics.
When I was self employed, I discovered the joy of business relationships. They are so clear cut. You solve a problem for them and they give you money. If they like what you do and what you charge, you have a regular customer. When they don't need you anymore, that's it. A clean cut.
The longest friendship I ever maintained ended badly. I met this guy when we were 16 and we had mopeds. Actually he had a moped and I had a Honda 50, which had no pedals and went faster. This was a fundamental aspect of the friendship which was to last 35 years. Eventually his work took him to live in Italy, with his wife, daughter and dog. We kept in touch by phone and I proposed to come and visit him. He kept deferring the date, on the grounds of having lots of visitors, but in the end I insisted a date in the autumn and booked the ferry. Before I left, I left him a mobile phone message to say that I would be on my way by car within 48 hours and would see him in a few days time.
I got no reply, assumed all was well and set off on the long road to Italy. On the third day, I rang him to say that I would be with him that day and was told there was a problem. I had planned to stay for a week, but he had to go to England on business. That was an obvious lie. He clearly didn't want me there at all, but lacked the guts to tell me, and the reason. I stayed just 2 days, all was well and convivial and I returned to England, when my mobile phone kicked in again. There was a belated message about this 'problem' sent after I had crossed to Europe. I exploded in anger.
For the next 10 years I was unable to contact him. Why would a close fiend of 35 years act like that? I rang his mother, who said that he had moved to Portugal, but it was clear that she had been instructed not to give out contact details.
Then one day, in a car park, a woman approached me asking for directions. It was his wife. I was overjoyed to see her and she seemed pleased to see me too, although she did not immediately recognise me, as I had grown a beard. We talked a bit and she said thet had returned to England to look after his mother. I asked why he had cut off contact and she said she had no idea. She gave me her email address.
Months passed and eventually I sent her a message, asking her to get her husband to explain. I got a reply.
'You specifically said, in front of my Jewish wife and daughter, that all Jews should be taken out and shot. That is why I cut you out of my life.'
I was astounded. I had no recollection of saying that. My father was Jewish, on account of his mother being Jewish, although my mother wasn't, so technically I am not, but I had lots of Jewish friends and was invited to a ba'mitsfa. They used to say that the best anti-semitic jokes were invented by Jews. My father was a prisoner of war in Germany and they didn't know he was Jewish, but if they had, I would not exist. This was not a satisfactory explanation at all. It was insane. There had never been any indication of hostility from his wife, far from it. Are, there it is. Chercher la Femme!
It is said that men like the the sound of the female voice, but they trust a man's voice.
So, virtually friendless, I progress down the vale of years. Friends? Sod the buggers!
Friday 6 April 2012
Ring Necked Parakeets
There are plenty of these exotic birds in the south east of England. They derive from a panic release of pets some years ago by owners believing they were at risk of psiticosis from them. They not only survived the mild winter, but started breeding on an island on the Thames near me and have spread as far as Kent, so may well have invaded France.
They regularly fly over my house, but a pair have just taken an interest in my cherry blossom. They are lighter, and more agile than wood pigeons, so I hope they don't take an interest in my grapes!
They regularly fly over my house, but a pair have just taken an interest in my cherry blossom. They are lighter, and more agile than wood pigeons, so I hope they don't take an interest in my grapes!
The Cherry Tree
About 15 years ago a sapling appeared at the side of my garden. A self-seeded cherry tree. It grew quite rapidly so I cut off the top. It produced two new top branches and carried on growing. Within a few years it was as tall as the house and produced a mass of blossom but not many cherries, which were black, small, intensely sweet and mostly impossible to reach, except for the wood pigeons, and they had to perform ungainly acrobatics.
It's branches spread right across the garden, only 4 metres wide and made it quite dark in the summer. To make matters worse, ivy appeared and started to climb the trunk, spreading out in a dense, dark mass as it rose. With some difficulty, I thinned out some thinner branches and removed some lower large branches, plus loads of ivy, which lightened up the garden quite significantly.
The leaves turn a delightful colour in Autumn, but a lot of work when they fall, so I got a leaf 'suck and shred' machine, which gave me backache in a short space of time, but made an instant mulch for the flowerbeds.
Then one year I got a massive crop of cherries, much of which I harvested with the aid of a long lopping pole. I got about 6 kilos, which in cash terms, is quite a lot. It made a very rich wine. The woman next door enjoyed collecting them and eating them too.
Inevitably, the following year, the crop was down to the usual handful of windfalls and the tree was to become an issue.
I live in a row of terraced houses which have shared side and rear access, so rarely used, that it was mostly impenetrable. Access from the road was via an old wooden door with no lock, occasionally used by the water authority to unblock the shared main drain. I once used it, with the aid of a machete, to take a motorcycle into my back garden to rebuild it and one of my neighbours used it to bring in building materials for his house extention. No one has any responsibilty to maintain it.
It became a liability. Burglars used it to gain access to my back door and rob me and some bad tenants who had been evicted used it to break into an adjacent rented house to reclaim their stuff. So a new lockable metal door was installed by the owners of the adjacent houses, who kept the keys.
One day, after years of total disinterest, the owners of the rented out house next door decided to erect a proper fence between us, to replace the hedge I had developed over the years, consisting of various flowering shrubs. They wanted to bring the materials via the shared rear access, rather than through the front door, for which they needed a key. This was refused by my other neighbour, who regarded this as a violation of her security. The ructions which ensued are too tedious to relate, but relations with this neighbour soured significantly with the other householders who had rights of access, including myself.
I had always had cordial, if somewhat boring, relations with her, but now she refused to speak to me and deferred communications with me her daughter. This fat slag had always been trouble, and this was her opportunity to throw her considerable weight in my direction. She demanded that I pay £10 for the gate key and cut down the cherry tree. I agreed to to pay £4 for the key and to organise tree surgery.
My son, who had some experience, was employed to do the tree work. I had an electric chainsaw, but the blade was blunt, so I bought a new, petrol one, which was utter rubbish. I got a refund and got a better one for less money. My son was only available for a short time as he was going back to New Zealand, but we removed the half of the tree which overhanged their garden, cleaned up the mess and removed all the wood. I got no acknowledgement, let alone thank,s for the time effort and expense involved, just complaints that I hadn't cut down the whole tree.
Some people...
It's branches spread right across the garden, only 4 metres wide and made it quite dark in the summer. To make matters worse, ivy appeared and started to climb the trunk, spreading out in a dense, dark mass as it rose. With some difficulty, I thinned out some thinner branches and removed some lower large branches, plus loads of ivy, which lightened up the garden quite significantly.
The leaves turn a delightful colour in Autumn, but a lot of work when they fall, so I got a leaf 'suck and shred' machine, which gave me backache in a short space of time, but made an instant mulch for the flowerbeds.
Then one year I got a massive crop of cherries, much of which I harvested with the aid of a long lopping pole. I got about 6 kilos, which in cash terms, is quite a lot. It made a very rich wine. The woman next door enjoyed collecting them and eating them too.
Inevitably, the following year, the crop was down to the usual handful of windfalls and the tree was to become an issue.
I live in a row of terraced houses which have shared side and rear access, so rarely used, that it was mostly impenetrable. Access from the road was via an old wooden door with no lock, occasionally used by the water authority to unblock the shared main drain. I once used it, with the aid of a machete, to take a motorcycle into my back garden to rebuild it and one of my neighbours used it to bring in building materials for his house extention. No one has any responsibilty to maintain it.
It became a liability. Burglars used it to gain access to my back door and rob me and some bad tenants who had been evicted used it to break into an adjacent rented house to reclaim their stuff. So a new lockable metal door was installed by the owners of the adjacent houses, who kept the keys.
One day, after years of total disinterest, the owners of the rented out house next door decided to erect a proper fence between us, to replace the hedge I had developed over the years, consisting of various flowering shrubs. They wanted to bring the materials via the shared rear access, rather than through the front door, for which they needed a key. This was refused by my other neighbour, who regarded this as a violation of her security. The ructions which ensued are too tedious to relate, but relations with this neighbour soured significantly with the other householders who had rights of access, including myself.
I had always had cordial, if somewhat boring, relations with her, but now she refused to speak to me and deferred communications with me her daughter. This fat slag had always been trouble, and this was her opportunity to throw her considerable weight in my direction. She demanded that I pay £10 for the gate key and cut down the cherry tree. I agreed to to pay £4 for the key and to organise tree surgery.
My son, who had some experience, was employed to do the tree work. I had an electric chainsaw, but the blade was blunt, so I bought a new, petrol one, which was utter rubbish. I got a refund and got a better one for less money. My son was only available for a short time as he was going back to New Zealand, but we removed the half of the tree which overhanged their garden, cleaned up the mess and removed all the wood. I got no acknowledgement, let alone thank,s for the time effort and expense involved, just complaints that I hadn't cut down the whole tree.
Some people...
Wednesday 4 April 2012
TV Turnaround
In 1945 my Dad was 'demobbed' from the army and got a job with a new company called Visionhire. He was, in fact, their first employee. He had to drive around in a van, erect aerials and install TV set for the majority of people, like himself, who could not afford to buy them. As a result, born in 1950, I have had a lifetime of TV, starting with Watch with Mother, and early access to the changes in the technology as it occurred: bigger sets, 625 lines, colour,remote control, extra channels, VHS recording and widescreen, (I still have Dad's 24 inch which works most of the time).
When I moved into this part of London, some 24 years ago, I found that TV reception was very poor, so only used the set for watching hired videos. When asked to pay for a TV licence, I refused and no more was said until they changes the rules, so that mere posession of a set capable of receiving transmission required a fee, by law.
So when cable TV came down my street, I signed up, so that I could actually watch what I was paying to see, and phone line worked reliably too.
But when Freeview came along and Film 4 was free, I upgraded my aerial, fitted a signal booster and digital box, which paid off handsomely, as I now no longer needed the cable subscription, as I got perfect reception on most of the 50 channels available, even if most of them had crap content. I could even watch TV in bed too.
By this time, Telewest had become Virgin Media and I signed up to their fibre optic broadband, and got a discount for having all 3 services, so I was compromised. Nonetheless the total monthly bill was sometimes up to £60! When Sky came up with an offer to slash this to £20, the principle of not wishing to pay Rupert Murdoch was balanced against paying Richard Branson and Bill Gates even more money, so I signed up. The latest quad stream dish was installed along with an HD recording receiver for free. But it was all downhill from there. One of the sat cables was duff and the box of tricks broke down within 48 hours. They couldn't get an engineer out for 7 days. I would go back to the bad old BT line and preserving my phone number couldn't be guaranteed, nor my email address. So I cancelled. The duff box was taken away, but they left the dish. I went out and bought an HD Freesat recorder/receiver and got 200 free channels with perfect quality, so I contacted Virgin to cancel the TV subscription. Suddenly things changed. I could now have all 3 services call inclusive with upgraded broadband for £37! And without the TV which I neither needed or wanted? £27. When the billing all got sorted out, they had given me a £13 monthly loyalty discount too, even though I cancelled the TV subscription. Furthermore, they gave me a SIM only mobile phone contract for £5 a month with 300 minutes of voice calls and unlimited texts on a 1 month rolling contract!
By now, the only TV I was watching was stuff I had programmed to record up to a week in advance and no live TV at all. Everything was upscaled to HD by the Freesat box. Then Virgin, desperate to get me back on TV subscription, offered me a £6.50 deal on their basic package, including many HD channels, plus £3 for their latest HD, 3D capable 500 gb. recording box of tricks on a 1 month rolling contract, and no installation charge, so I went for it, as the Freesat box was starting to misbehave.
It has to be said that the quality of picture and sound via fibre optic is even better than satellite. It's just a shame that the content is mostly rubbish.
After all that, I no longer watch any TV. The only use I have for the 40 inch HD flatscreen TV is playing Skyrim on the xbox 360. Much more entertaining!
When I moved into this part of London, some 24 years ago, I found that TV reception was very poor, so only used the set for watching hired videos. When asked to pay for a TV licence, I refused and no more was said until they changes the rules, so that mere posession of a set capable of receiving transmission required a fee, by law.
So when cable TV came down my street, I signed up, so that I could actually watch what I was paying to see, and phone line worked reliably too.
But when Freeview came along and Film 4 was free, I upgraded my aerial, fitted a signal booster and digital box, which paid off handsomely, as I now no longer needed the cable subscription, as I got perfect reception on most of the 50 channels available, even if most of them had crap content. I could even watch TV in bed too.
By this time, Telewest had become Virgin Media and I signed up to their fibre optic broadband, and got a discount for having all 3 services, so I was compromised. Nonetheless the total monthly bill was sometimes up to £60! When Sky came up with an offer to slash this to £20, the principle of not wishing to pay Rupert Murdoch was balanced against paying Richard Branson and Bill Gates even more money, so I signed up. The latest quad stream dish was installed along with an HD recording receiver for free. But it was all downhill from there. One of the sat cables was duff and the box of tricks broke down within 48 hours. They couldn't get an engineer out for 7 days. I would go back to the bad old BT line and preserving my phone number couldn't be guaranteed, nor my email address. So I cancelled. The duff box was taken away, but they left the dish. I went out and bought an HD Freesat recorder/receiver and got 200 free channels with perfect quality, so I contacted Virgin to cancel the TV subscription. Suddenly things changed. I could now have all 3 services call inclusive with upgraded broadband for £37! And without the TV which I neither needed or wanted? £27. When the billing all got sorted out, they had given me a £13 monthly loyalty discount too, even though I cancelled the TV subscription. Furthermore, they gave me a SIM only mobile phone contract for £5 a month with 300 minutes of voice calls and unlimited texts on a 1 month rolling contract!
By now, the only TV I was watching was stuff I had programmed to record up to a week in advance and no live TV at all. Everything was upscaled to HD by the Freesat box. Then Virgin, desperate to get me back on TV subscription, offered me a £6.50 deal on their basic package, including many HD channels, plus £3 for their latest HD, 3D capable 500 gb. recording box of tricks on a 1 month rolling contract, and no installation charge, so I went for it, as the Freesat box was starting to misbehave.
It has to be said that the quality of picture and sound via fibre optic is even better than satellite. It's just a shame that the content is mostly rubbish.
After all that, I no longer watch any TV. The only use I have for the 40 inch HD flatscreen TV is playing Skyrim on the xbox 360. Much more entertaining!
The Nest Box
Many years ago, I was given a nest box and every year, without fail, either blue tits or great tits would use it, successfully rear and fledge their young.
I spotted another one on special offer, equipped with video camera (with sound and night mode) and a long lead with a power supply and a scart plug. I couldn't resist the idea of making a video diary of the next brood.
I gave my old one to my neighbour and set up the new one, connected to a DVD recorder and the TV.
Not too surprisingly, the birds set up home in the old box and completely ignored the new one, so all I had to look at was the empty bottom of the box. The following year, a pair of blue tits took up residence and the project was under way. The recorder has a simple red button which you press to record and again to stop. Over the weeks I accumulated lots of short clips. The quality wasn't great, but much better than what you get on your average mobile phone. The progress was fascinating. Contrary to what I thought, the birds don't sit on the eggs all the time, so I was able to count them and the number rose to 10, 7 of which hatched out, while the other 3 disappeared. As the fledglings grew in size, their numbers went down, until only 2 reached full size and flew away. Whatever happened to the rest remains a mystery. I examined the box and it just contained the immaculate nest and nothing else.
I took out the disc, labelled it and put it in a case, with a view to editing it. To this day, I have not found where I put it. Never mind, they'll come back next year, I reassured myself. But they didn't. The old box always has tenants.
I spotted another one on special offer, equipped with video camera (with sound and night mode) and a long lead with a power supply and a scart plug. I couldn't resist the idea of making a video diary of the next brood.
I gave my old one to my neighbour and set up the new one, connected to a DVD recorder and the TV.
Not too surprisingly, the birds set up home in the old box and completely ignored the new one, so all I had to look at was the empty bottom of the box. The following year, a pair of blue tits took up residence and the project was under way. The recorder has a simple red button which you press to record and again to stop. Over the weeks I accumulated lots of short clips. The quality wasn't great, but much better than what you get on your average mobile phone. The progress was fascinating. Contrary to what I thought, the birds don't sit on the eggs all the time, so I was able to count them and the number rose to 10, 7 of which hatched out, while the other 3 disappeared. As the fledglings grew in size, their numbers went down, until only 2 reached full size and flew away. Whatever happened to the rest remains a mystery. I examined the box and it just contained the immaculate nest and nothing else.
I took out the disc, labelled it and put it in a case, with a view to editing it. To this day, I have not found where I put it. Never mind, they'll come back next year, I reassured myself. But they didn't. The old box always has tenants.
Barrels
I used to make beer and store it in a 5 gallon plastic pressure barrel but after some time, it developed an unpleasant taint, due the the brown pigment. No amount of washing would remove it, so it's now a rain butt. These barrels are now made of white plastic.
I normally store and dispense my wine using 20 litre polypins. These are essentially large re-usable wine boxes and serve the purpose very well.
2 years ago I bought a ten gallon wooden barrel at a boot fair for £10. I have a large grapevine which usually produced enough to make 5 gallons of white wine, but that year was exceptional and I got 10 gallons, so I decided to use the barrel.
It had no bung, no tap and no hole to put a tap in.One of the hoops was missing. It had been dry for some time and I had no idea what had been stored in it. I tracked down a cork bung of suitable size, a wooden tap and made a replacement hoop from a strip of mild steel. Drilling the hole for the tap proved quite difficult because it had to be perfectly round and smooth to avoid leaks. I also had to make a stand to support it laying on its side. This added £20 to the cost. I also bought a secondhand home made fruit press for £40, but it had missing parts, for which I had to pay extra. My free home made wine was getting a bit expensive!
I placed it in the bath and filled it with a solution of very hot washing soda and left it overnight. Initially there were many leaks, but as the wood swelled, it leaked far less. When I drained it, the water came out a very murky brown. The next step was to fill it with a sulphite solution, further soaking and then a final rinse with water, the few remaining persistent leaks fixed using a standard sealant.
The whole point of storing wine in a wooden barrel is that it can gently breathe and pick up colour and flavour from the oak. Barrels smaller than 10 gallons are no good for white wines because they breathe too much, causing oxidisation, causing the wine to turn brown and spoil.
Having filled the barrel with my precious wine, I took regular samples from the tap. After just a week, I noticed the wine tasted ok but was turning decidedly more yellow, so I panicked and emptied the wine into whatever large liquid containers I had available, as I did not have the required 60 wine bottles. I turns out I need not have panicked. The wine was simply picking up colour from the wood, which is normal.
After a few years, the colour and flavour in the wood becomes exhausted and the barrels are replaced. Last autumn, I had another bumper harvest, and this time I was determined to age the wine in the barrel for 3 months. After the usual checks, there was no colour or flavour change, even after 2 months. The barrel was exhausted.
New oak barrels are expensive (£80-100) and hard to come by, so I hit upon the idea of putting toasted oak chips in the old one with the wine. All was going well, but as the weather started to warm up significantly and quickly, the barrel started to leak again, which is nigh impossible to fix when it is full of liquid. Very frustrating.
Meanwhile I had purchased a new 5 litre oak barrel for the purpose of ageing my apple brandy. However I only managed to make 5 bottles (well short of 5 litres) of the stuff before I ran out of cider.
Ho, hum!
I normally store and dispense my wine using 20 litre polypins. These are essentially large re-usable wine boxes and serve the purpose very well.
2 years ago I bought a ten gallon wooden barrel at a boot fair for £10. I have a large grapevine which usually produced enough to make 5 gallons of white wine, but that year was exceptional and I got 10 gallons, so I decided to use the barrel.
It had no bung, no tap and no hole to put a tap in.One of the hoops was missing. It had been dry for some time and I had no idea what had been stored in it. I tracked down a cork bung of suitable size, a wooden tap and made a replacement hoop from a strip of mild steel. Drilling the hole for the tap proved quite difficult because it had to be perfectly round and smooth to avoid leaks. I also had to make a stand to support it laying on its side. This added £20 to the cost. I also bought a secondhand home made fruit press for £40, but it had missing parts, for which I had to pay extra. My free home made wine was getting a bit expensive!
I placed it in the bath and filled it with a solution of very hot washing soda and left it overnight. Initially there were many leaks, but as the wood swelled, it leaked far less. When I drained it, the water came out a very murky brown. The next step was to fill it with a sulphite solution, further soaking and then a final rinse with water, the few remaining persistent leaks fixed using a standard sealant.
The whole point of storing wine in a wooden barrel is that it can gently breathe and pick up colour and flavour from the oak. Barrels smaller than 10 gallons are no good for white wines because they breathe too much, causing oxidisation, causing the wine to turn brown and spoil.
Having filled the barrel with my precious wine, I took regular samples from the tap. After just a week, I noticed the wine tasted ok but was turning decidedly more yellow, so I panicked and emptied the wine into whatever large liquid containers I had available, as I did not have the required 60 wine bottles. I turns out I need not have panicked. The wine was simply picking up colour from the wood, which is normal.
After a few years, the colour and flavour in the wood becomes exhausted and the barrels are replaced. Last autumn, I had another bumper harvest, and this time I was determined to age the wine in the barrel for 3 months. After the usual checks, there was no colour or flavour change, even after 2 months. The barrel was exhausted.
New oak barrels are expensive (£80-100) and hard to come by, so I hit upon the idea of putting toasted oak chips in the old one with the wine. All was going well, but as the weather started to warm up significantly and quickly, the barrel started to leak again, which is nigh impossible to fix when it is full of liquid. Very frustrating.
Meanwhile I had purchased a new 5 litre oak barrel for the purpose of ageing my apple brandy. However I only managed to make 5 bottles (well short of 5 litres) of the stuff before I ran out of cider.
Ho, hum!
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