Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 6)

Another walk today, in better weather, although in the last hour of daylight, as the sun sank towards the horizon, it turned very chilly indeed. But we reached our goal, the lake in the northwestern corner of Tottenham Cemetery, and having bought some bread along the way did not disappoint the ducks and geese -- who clearly expect to be fed by visitors, since their response to the appearance of humans is to come straight over to them. Almost all of them, anyway; the tufted ducks didn't seem to be interested, and nor did some smaller, more elusive waterfowl which Judith theorised from our copy of Jonathan Elphick's The Birdwatcher's Handbook might be teal.

Other species sighted were Canada geese (which, like the Canada geese in Lordship Rec, come right up to you and peck in the direction of your fingers), mallard, coots (which also came over for some bread), and moorhens (which didn't). There were also what we think might be a couple of hybrid species: three examples of a cross between mallard and some sort of domestic duck, which had grey heads, a white collar, brown chests and mostly white wings and bodies (although one of them had some black stripes on the wings); and one goose which might have been a cross between a Canada goose (same size and colour of body) and a white or a greylag goose (white head on a shorter and thicker neck, which was also white), with a beak more like that of a duck's and pronounced pinkish-orange feet. One of the photographs here shows that goose alongside the Canada geese, for the purposes of comparison.

The other photographs show Judith casting bread upon the waters; a scrum of mallard ducks fighting for a piece of bread (this photograph also shows two of the hybrid ducks referred to earlier): and a Canada goose which appears to be blind in its left eye, or so we deduced from the fact that it didn't seem to respond to anything happening on its left-hand side and the curious manner in which it kept twisting its neck to keep things in view. Ordinarily, a bird with such a deformity would not long survive in the wild; the fact that this one is living in Tottenham Cemetery and receives food from visitors as well as whatever it can find for itself is presumably what keeps it alive.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 5)

We went for a "post-prandial" walk today, aiming to do a grand circuit of Downhills Park -- Lordship Rec -- Tower Gardens Estate -- Tottenham Cemetery -- Bruce Castle Park, but the weather was against us. The day had begun bright and clear, but as we breakfasted clouds began rolling in from the northwest, and by the time we set out a chill wind was picking up. In the open spaces of Lordship Rec, it was a disincentive to continue -- so after donating all the bread we'd taken with us to the geese and ducks on the small lake in the Rec (instead of saving some up for the coots and moorhens on the Cemetery lake), we returned home.

(A couple of hours later, of course, the sky cleared again and the wind died away. Bloody typical.)

We'd also taken some peanuts for the squirrels in Downhills Park. Despite being notionally wild creatures, the Downhills Park squirrels are so habituated to park users that they practically come up and mug you for food -- and will happily take it straight from your hand, as the first two pictures here show. (The bare hand is mine; the gloved hand is Judith's.) Come to that, the geese at Lordship Rec will take bread straight from your hands as well....but then they're much bigger than the squirrels, and probably routinely beat up dogs and toddlers who get in their way. So here's a photograph of one of them taking bread from my (gloved) hand.

Back home again, we have now completed the second jigsaw and embarked on the third. For dinner this evening: a leg of pork, roasted, with a similar range of vegetables to that on Christmas Day.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 4)

We completed the Hadrian's Wall jigsaw earlier today -- and, after a brief pause to admire our handiwork (the images on many of the pieces were so formless that for parts of it we had to resort to the "brute force" method of trying every remaining piece in turn to get a fit for the slot we wanted to fill) broke it up to make the space to start another one. This second jigsaw -- shown in the second of these photographs -- is one of a batch of five I picked up outside a house at the top of our street, where they had obviously been put out in the hope that someone would freecycle them rather than seeing them thrown away. As you might be able to see from the picture, we got a head start on this jigsaw because it hadn't been completely broken up after last being made, so that whole sections could be lifted from the box. Yes, that's definitely cheating....but on the other hand, only two of the five jigsaws I freecycled came in their original boxes; the other three were in an old shoe box, sorted into three plastic bags with no accompanying images to show what they might be. Weeks of fun, I'm sure!

We might not get around to making those three jigsaws this holiday. So instead here's a picture of the 1960s retro-chic lava lamp that Judith bought me; pulsating close-ups of hot wax action! And to finish, a picture of Judith about to commence our Christmas dinner yesterday evening: roast duck with our own potatoes, parsnips and jerusalem artichokes, plus bought-in carrots and brussels sprouts (our own plants failed to produce this year), with home-made gravy, cranberry sauce and sage-and-onion stuffing. And plenty of red wine to accompany it all. Yum!

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 3)

Some more photographs of our activities -- Judith working on the jigsaw; Judith with her new Barbie doll (a 50th anniversary Barbie edition,which is apparently slightly different in shape from the original -- smaller breasts, wider hips, longer legs -- and therefore won't fit the wardrobe of her existing, original Barbie doll); and our Christmas cake, with faux Christmas scene. Yes, that is a plastic donkey!

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 2)

Later this evening, after a drinks party at a neighbour's, we'll be doing what we usually do every Christmas, and breaking out a jigsaw. In this case, it's one I bought in the National Trust shop at Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall in May, showing Milecastle 39 with Greenlee Lough beyond it. For comparison, here's a photograph of the jigsaw's box lid with a panorama I took of very much the same view while walking the wall from Steel Rigg to Housesteads. (Housesteads Fort itself is just behind the clump of trees in the far background.) On the right of the photograph, the leading members of the group we were with are descending the hill towards the milecastle; Judith is second from the left.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 1)

We went to the allotment earlier this afternoon, to dig up some parnsips and jerusalem artichokes to go with the duck we'll be having for dinner tomorrow. (This was of course after I'd been to the consumeroid horror that is the local Tesco to stock up on wine -- red to accompany the duck, white for other times -- and beer. And various assortments of nuts -- nuts are so a Christmas thing in the UK.) Although the temperatures are back above freezing, there's still plenty of ice and frozen snow on the ground, not to mention great thick caps of ice on the water tanks and the pond. (The surface of the pond could at first sight almost be mistaken for a sheet of glass: an illusion attributable to the top centimetre or so of the ice having melted and the light being reflected from the ice layer it covers. We hope that any frogs hibernating in there will survive the freeze.)

A photograph of the reflecting pond is one of the images displayed here. The second is of an ice sculpture formed partly (we theorise) by freezing water sloshing out of some plastic basins as they toppled from where they'd been stacked, and partly by a leak from the tap attached to the water tank, where a nut that perhaps needs another quarter-turn to tighten it fully is allowing a thin spray of water to jet out.

The other two photographs are of the real actual wonky-shaped parsnips that we get from our allotment. This wonkiness is due to the stoniness of the soil, which prevents them producing the nice straight thin cones preferred by supermarkets. We could, if we felt so inclined, sieve the soil minutely to remove the stones, like one of our fellow allotmenteers does for his parsnips; but (a) crop rotation means that we never grow parsnips in the same bed every year and would therefore have to minutely sieve them all, and (b) sieving of that minuteness bespeaks a level of tidiness of which not even I am capable. Well, actually, I probably am capable of it....had I nothing else to do at the allotment but sieve stones.

Deep and Crisp and Even

You may have heard that it's been snowing in parts of the UK (in northern Europe generally, in fact), causing immense disruption to the transport system. Luckily, we haven't had to travel anywhere (except for a visit to my parents in Lyme Regis this weekend just past), so haven't been majorly affected.

(All those travellers moaning and complaining about the interruptions to their rail and air services should have lived through the winter of 1962-63 (I think it was -- that or 1963-64), when the snow fell in December and stayed until March. We were then living in the village of Porton, outside Salisbury, and for several days at a time couldn't get out of the village at all; the roads were that impassable. Modern yoof of today -- don't know they're born, stuffing themselves with junk food, surfing for naughty pictures on the internet, etc. etc.. Hanging's too good for them -- string 'em up anyway -- where was I?)

Snow doesn't tend to stay very long when it falls in London, because the "heat island" effect means that the temperatures very rarely fall below freezing. But below freezing temperatures are what we have now, because the conditions are almost totally windless, meaning that the air mass which has moved down across the North Sea from Scandinavia has not been shifted out again by the westerlies which normally determine our weather. The snow which has fallen has therefore stayed; where it has melted at all, it has turned to ice (visible and invisible), making the roads and pavements very slippery. It is therefore possible that we will be having a white Christmas here in London, and the bookmakers who take bets on this sort of thing every year will be paying out big time. (Ho ho. Or ho ho ho, as Father Christmas might say.)

These photographs were taken yesterday evening, at around 6.00pm, a few minutes after the snow had ceased falling. (It began as cold rain about 3.00pm and then turned to sleet before falling as snow at around 4.00pm.) They show the views from our windows, and from the streets outside, as we headed off for a drinks party at a neighbour's. The images look brighter than the conditions actually were, because I was using the camera's "night landscape" setting with a long exposure time; that accounts for some of the blurring.

Adventures with plumbing (to be continued)

Adventures with plumbing

1) Kitchen floor all awash, like a lake, when JN padded down in still-dark on Tuesday morning. Anguished yells! Panic! Water dripping from the ceiling light -- though not causing it to short out. Must be coming from the bathroom above, though no leaking visible there. Central heating pipes running between the joists seemed an alarmingly probably suspect. So I call the number pinned on kitchen notice board for a friendly local plumber, who is immediately on his way, while JN sets bucket to catch the dripping and mops up the lake from the lino. Dave the plumber's first step is to drain off the central heating. Then checking upstairs, he finds in the bathroom that its a little silvery hose that runs between toilet cistern and bowl has sprung a leak, with the water soaking down through the rubber-backed carpet until, presumably, it followed the electricity wiring down through the ceiling below.

Dave has replacement little silvery hose in his van, and in a trice the leak is fixed. Two days later, though, we still have the bathroom carpet peeled back and draped over a couple of wastepaper bins so the floorboards and the carpet itself can dry out. They've lost all their sopping wet spots, but still definitely damp. We also have two of Dave's spanners, which he left behind, to be collected...

However: he told us that the pressure release valve (PRV) tucked behind the back our central heating boiler was not installed properly -- it doesn't release the water (or steam if it were running) in a swift 'pffft' as it should but (the note he left us says) 'water escapes from between PRV and expansion pipe'. So we ought to get that fixed. British Gas disclaims responsibility for incorrect installation beyond the 1-year guarantee period -- and will charge either just under £100 + £22 month 'homecare' package or a one-off £200 for doing the repair. The former only saves money if you call them out about 3 times a year. So next step: check with Worcester, the manufacturer, and see what they say, though installation error doesn't come down to them... get back to Dave for his rate for the job...

Meanwhile...

2) Bathroom extractor fan went kaput. Again. It was installed last year, and is still under 3 year guarantee. The firm that initially recommended it and installed it now says the wonderfully elegant spaceship-round (Ikon) has proved so unreliable that they aren't doing them any more. We bought a model that boasted a humidstat control, set off by moisture level, which rapidly broke down. Okay, I said after the third call-out to replace it, we can manage on just the pull-cord and timer. We got it set up to operate independent of the light circuit -- so the fan wouldn't start up every time the light was switched on, and could be run without switching on the light. And it ran okay for just over a year, then something blew. First call, Jim the electrician was sent out with a normal square ugly replacement extractor fan -- which would need a new and different shaped hole bored through our newly insulated bathroom wall, and which did not have a pull-cord control but could only be set up to run off the light switch. So he took it away, and the firm promised to replace with a new Ikon, with pull-cord and timer but no humidistat, with new 3-year guarantee. But when he unpacked it from its box here yesterday, they'd sent a model without the pull-cord and timer module.

What we have now is at least a sort-of working set-up: with the old timer+pullcord module re-installed and connected up to the light circuit, the fan will only go when the light switch is on, when it starts vaguely spinning. Then the pull-cord sets it going properly until the timer cuts out (and it goes back to vaguely spinning), or switching off the light instantly switches it off. But at least we can de-steam the bathroom without having to open the window to the winter air and traumatise my windowsill maidenhair ferns and orchid.

Seasonal observances

Just had a very busy three days!

Yesterday: 'Big Wave' pre-Copenhagen climate march, for which we duly dressed in blue. Joseph carried the Tottenham & Wood Green Friends of the Earth banner, and one of our bods had made herself a very fetching polar bear costume and sign saying 'Has anyone seen my habitat?' The news sites today say just 20,000 marched in London -- which seems impossibly low. It took 2 hours after the scheduled start time for our bit of the march to actually get moving, the same sort of delay as the million strong anti-Iraq march, or the 100-250,000 strong anti-nuclear marches. The whole of Piccadilly was definitely filled up by the march -- seems like there's a '0' missing from the official count.

Yesterday evening: local Civic Society Xmas dinner, at our local traditional country pub, the Ferry Boat, which sits on an island in the river Lea. JN is secretary, about 30 people. We took over one wing of their dining area, spread out at little four-person tables. Good tucker, then a communal lift home in Wendy's mini-van.

Friday evening: Wards Corner 'Winter Warmer' social, at what used to be the local Royal British Legion building, which has been taken over as a community centre called Tottenham Chances. That very day, the news came through that the Save Wards Corner campaign has been granted leave to take their appeal against a judicial review decision supporting the Council to the High Court. Entertainment featured a ukelele band, a cayley band (with a very dictatorial caller), an excellent bellydance trio (who borrowed the belly dance belt I wore along, as they were one short!), then a good Motown style singer -- whose set went on rather long. Not as much get up and dance time as at previous WCC socials. They'd sold very few tickets in advance, so were quite worried about numbers -- but it was packed out with people who paid up the higher 'on the door' price, and made a nice £800 profit to support the struggle. JN ended the evening fairly spectacularly inebriated -- I had to send a chap (the Civic Society chairman) in to retrieve him from the Mens WC, with various other blokes emerging looking highly amused... So at the Civic Society dinner, we were greeted by 'So you did get him home safely...' comments...

Thursday: TWG FOE Xmas meal, at an Indian restaurant in Wood Green -- all of us at one big table this time, next to a fountain with goldfish. Food was fine, jolly sociability, lift home with deputy leader of the local Council who is partner of our FOE Co-ordinator, who'd left her car parked in the official space marked for 'Leader of the Council'.

Quite a lot of overlapping people among all these different events -- Sue P (with whom I run plant stalls during the summer) and her chap Nick were the only people at all of them. Today: do shopping, hope the current sunshine dries the ground out enough for us to get to the allotment and dig up potatoes. Next week: I have a retirement party on Weds, JN has organised a 'thrashette' with his various girlfriends from work on Friday eve', Saturday is Friends of Tottenham Marshes Xmas social down at Picketts Lock on the Lea during the afternoon. The following weekend, we head for JN's parents at Lyme Regis, for his birthday. Plans for Xmas itself: eat, make jigsaws: we bought a Hadrians Wall jigsaw when we were up there in May, and the other day JN found a couple of plastic bags containing two jigsaws in their boxes and three jigsaws in plastic bags which no picture to show what they are.

Seasonal cheerios, etc....