Tuesday 23 December 2014

Lets get ready for Xmas

Things are quite civilised here at Penole, Xmas is coming and eBay has come to our aid as a flurry of sales boosted my pay pal account which the management was able to find various ways of emptying. All in all though we are ready for Xmas.

One last thing remained Television, now, this house has been TV free for quite a few years. We gave up on it a little while back. Reception out here has always been poor, we ended up putting in a satellite, obviously not a subscription to SKY Mr Murdoch can clear off, we had the channels that were free.

When the dish broke, we simply did not bother. We can watch anything we want online and in fact, when laptop is combined with projector we can have a whole wall of TV for anything important (like international rugby).

But of course mine is not to reason why and if truth were told recent watchathons have been eating into our broadband allowance, so, one day, the management announced we were going to have telly for Xmas.

This was, of course not going to be simple The old dish being long gone we had to get a new one, over to eBay, then a sat box, from a mate, then some cards - we were in business.

First of all put up a post serious amounts of digging by  myself and the management and we had a hole, dug in the biting cold wind.

Next the post, that was simple, we had a bit of telegraph pole which could be fine in the hole with a concrete plug. Taliesin and I worked away batching concrete and soon despite the rain the pole as in.

A quick session with the chainsaw created a flat surface to which the mounting bracket was bolted, I was surprised at how quickly I managed to  get the bracket attached the dish mounted and cable run into the living room. The cable supplied was exactly the right length - how good was that!!!

So this afternoon,  began the serious technical stuff. Equipped with an Ipad and an app we soon worked out where the satellite was located. Connected up the meter and  the box - nothing.

Several hours of increasing frustration  and rain, oh yes did I mention the rain.  A steady cold drizzling precipitation Made even worse by the signal meters reluctance to recognise anything. No matter how many twists turns or other things were tried.

When, eventually, hypothermia called a halt to proceedings, Branwen and I staggered back inside in a soaking sogg of wet clothes

I should have said that the main beneficiary of this project would have been big D who is a great fan of television and live sport. So of course he felt now would be a good time to contribute to the project. He came out of his room to see if it was working, saw it wasn't then went back in again.

 Could not have done it without  him. 

R


  
     
       

Monday 1 December 2014

Da man and the dog

From the point of view of this blog, da man has not been around too much recently, then again, neither have I. Live has been a bit full on.

Da man though has stopped being a kitten and he is now an fully adult master of his human hutch. We have sort of tried to make allowances for his missing leg which is a hell of a lot more than he has, being seen up trees and on one memorable occasion hunting cows in the field next door.

There has however been a fly in the ointment in the form of a new addition to the house called Kennie. Now Kennie is a rescue dog about 2 years old a bundle of energy a collie and labrador cross - a colliedoor.

None of the cats have taken to Kennie, da man in particular. Da man is probably about a fifth of his size. The first time they met Da Man didn't like the look of him so he was very still hoping he would not be seen. Kennie didn't go for that and ran at him barking and snarling. Da Man decided this was an "out of here" moment and legged it out of the kitchen into the living room. Sadly the door at the end of the living room was closed and Da Man was cornered. "Dinner"  thought Kennie "Really? You think so?" thought Da Man.

I had been upstairs for the few moments this took to happen so by the time I got downstairs, the dog was running round  into the kitchen closely pursued by a black and white three legged ball of evil and fury. I think what was really annoying Da Man was the fact that this dog had started a fight and then refused to have one.

You have to admire him a bit.