last evening...

 

My was last night a night.

Bethan has a standing invite to go and do a few numbers with a local band.

A bunch of old boys who have been in the industry for years and get together on a Sunday night for a not very serious thrash through some old numbers.

Bethan went on with a couple of other people and the temperature kept going up and up and up.

Did a couple of beatles numbers a bit of blues and finished with some Ella Fitzgerald.

Now, as her dad I am supposed to be biased but she really did sound great.

She allready has one booking, for a folk festival next year, I think she might gain a few more at this rate.

Of course it was home and then no possibility of sleep, she was on a pure adrenalin high.

SO eventually she did go to bed at silly o clock.

Then this morning of course decided she was far too tired to do school, all very well but I had an early start lecturing and how much fun was that?

Actually, it was pretty damn good and of course the money is excellant.

Thats me finished with teaching for the first years.

Now they want me to teach the second years instead.

R

Good morning...

Good morning, no really it is, it's a wonderful morning.

The management, awoke from slumber uttering not some statement of undying affection, but those dread words:

"chain saw"

She is denying this but she was half asleep and I was there

Then I looked out the window and saw that dreadful sight, precipitation.

Rain.

Rain in a "thou shalt not cut wood today" commandment sort of way.

Yes it's a GOOD morning....

All is well with the world.

R

Stoved in,....

As if doing the wood was not enough, this morning we turned our attention to the two log stoves.

They have been getting neglected of late so off came the doors out came the glass, out came the scraper, on went the glass cleaner, on went the paint, good as new.

New sealing cord for the door completed the deal, well it would if I had the right cord. We made good time into town to get the right stuff, we nearly caught the shop before it closed too....

I blame the paint, 10 more minutes in the kitchen in those fumes and I could have flown into town never mind driven the car.

I spose we could have gone into the big town but there we go you cannot win them all.

Still they sit there now, looking as good as new and no use to us at all....


R

Quiet weekends....

There is something about the weekend, a peaceful restful time for relaxing with errr the chainsaw actually.

I sit here shrouded in sawdust, the other day it was how we found the xantia in Tescos, it was the only car liberally coated in sawdust. My fingers are tingling my shoulders are aching. We cut the best part of a ton of oak and beech this afternoon, great in terms of things like fires that stay in overnight not so much fun when you need to saw it up and split it.

This is of course where a parent comes to rely on teenage children and rely on them we can.

They have spent all day in front of the television.

I knew we could rely on them to do that....

Not quite true; big D has been out with us on the wood and Taliesin has been out, not sure what he has been doing but he has been doing it.

Still have done all this work is a good excuse to open a beer in the afternoon.

Management has collected yet more french beans from the garden and you just cannot beat that.


Cold French Beer and raw beans, what a combination, luxury....


R

Telephones....

Yesterday was an achievement day.

Truly huge amounts of wood got cut so last night I was ready for a quiet one, sleeping.

This is where technology is there to hinder us all.

Now, if you have a business phone line there are people out there with the very thing you always needed but never realized it until now.

Regularly they are on the phone offering you color coded pencil sharpeners or company logo embossed loo roll.

There is no limit to the ideas these people come up with or the lengths their reps will go to to bend the ear of the person with their pen on the cheque book - that would be the multifunction pen, ironing board and barometer, last weeks special offer, of course.

You might think that going to bed would be a means of escaping the constant barrage but sometimes it isn't.

These are bright ingenious people and they have fax machines.

Before going home of an afternoon they will dial in a ream of victims, sorry potential clients, phone numbers and leave the electronic slave to lay siege to the lucky selected client overnight.

These are not real people who ring a couple of times then realise you don't have a fax connected to the phone, far from it, these are electronic zombies that think if the fax machine does not answer it's because you have run out of paper and are so blown away by the last special offer that you haven't replaced it yet and so they give you an hour to change the roll then call again, and again, and again.

So, last night the phone rang on the hour every hour and the answer phone duly recorded the fax machine beep beeping for a few minutes each time.

At 2 am I woke and in my half alert state thought it was the alarm going off. I was half way out of bed ready to put the kettle on and make coffee, luckily management intervened. Otherwise I might have been straight outside taking the chain saw to the telegraph pole.....

Now why can someone not phone and sell me something useful? A machine with auto fax back that sends 1000 pages of fax with "bugger off" written on it in 6 inch letters and phones back every hour on the hour to repeat the message (even if it got through the first time).

That's good technology that would be worth every penny....


R

Long work day

This morning the work kicked in.

Several chains saw loads of fuel got used processing the best part of a ton of wood.

Then we went on to sort the wood and stack it.

Shed loads of cutting and tomorrow we have Taliesin home.

Oh boy, I am looking forwards to that, more wood to do then.....

Mind you it's cool outside and inside - it isn't.

Both fires going on full chat, central heating - off.

R

Peace and quiet....

Management is off Playing amongst the trees, peace has descended all is well with the world.

Well of course we did have to drop the 806 of at le garage first.

No problem, over the mountain we went.

Me first in the plugeot with her dawdling in the xantia. Now there have been concerns about her driving of late. A neighbour was sufficiently worried to stop us in the street, was she well? he asked. It was just that he has grown used to driving into gateways, up hedges, between trees in regular efforts to avoid collision and she has just not been doing the mania of late, he was concerned about her health.

I was starting to think he had a point; the plugeot carries a lot more weight and gives away a fair amount of power to the xantia, yet I was comfortably ahead when I reached the garage.

Her excuse that she had run into the road works as the lights went red was at least credible and she did mention a van.

Now, white van men are like white van men everywhere and I remembered passing one on the narrowest bit of the track over the mountain and noting he was making brisk progress.

All is well, on the way back we passed him, he was parked by the side of the road, ashen faced, fists locked on the wheel, a fervent almost religious look on his face which was smeared with sweat - or was that tears? Seen that before I thought.

Her driving must be as normal....

But off she went to the woodland she went and peace reigned.

Gave the kitchen a bit of a clean and did the washing up.

Lit the fire and brought in a bit of fire wood.

Sharpened the chainsaw and managed to get the tools and saw out of the way just in time for her to get home and not think I had done it on the kitchen table.

She just gave a sniff and assumed I had lit the fire with petrol.

R