Rayburn and she's happy

Some of our colonial friends won't know what a rayburn is so,  for them.

A rayburn is about 250 kg of cast iron and fire brick that can be used to heat your house, heat your water and heat your food. Ours only heats the kitchen and serves as a cooker.

the idea is that you use a small amount of fuel, the heat goes into the heavy casting and fire brick and takes a long time to cool.

We acquired ours off a free website about 2 years ago and  with a great deal of swearing it was installed in the kitchen

So anyway, couple of days ago we lit the rayburn and made use of one of it's properties, the one about staying warm for a long time.  A big joint of beef went in and was cooked very slowly over about 8 hours. The result was a near perfect joint, you really cannot beat a Rayburn oven. Cooking that involved about a bucket of fire wood, you really cannot go wrong. 

The Rayburn has been getting to stay on rather more this last week, i think the late summer is giving way to a winter blast. Rain and wind have hammered the window in my bedroom, there is something rather nice about wind and rain. So long as you are sat in a room that is at about 23 C with a big log stove blazing away in the fireplace.    

Maybe winter is not so bad after all.

R

The life exotic

Living out here in the wilds is often interesting and sometimes exhilarating and sometimes a downright pane in the glass.

We do of course have weather; when it's a bit sunny in town, out here it's glorious. When it's a bit breezy in town, out here it's biblical.

So a good few weeks ago when it was a bit thundery in town it was nuclear war level electromagnetic pulse out here. The phone system got blown to bits.

Modem, line filter, even the wire from the socket all got it. \

Also the underground cable on top of the mountain got fried.

This was our cue to log out electronically.

The BT Engineers were really good, it was the work of moments to work out that something was wrong.

Several days passed and an engineer came down the drive, he had been draughted in from away, we quickly established that I knew more about the local hardware than he did.

More than that, I was able to pinpoint where the fault was located. We have had so many faults at that point over the years it was a bit of a no brainer really.

Now,  lets do some history, over the last few years connectivity has been a bit of an issue. The underground link here was put in some time in the early 60's. This in turn meant that between ploughing and fencing and digging of slurry pits it had more joints than a Bob Marley concert.

A few years back BT caved in and agreed to renew the whole run, great news, they would of course do it in fibre so we would have super fast broadband. No, it does not work like that.

So anyway the cable was new so there would not be much to do. Except the fault was underground and this engineer had not done the how to use a shovel course so he could not dig.

I wondered how such a new cable was proving so faulty. He said no, the cable to the distribution box on the mountain had obviously been changed but the run from there, 10 M or so till it was running overground was the original stuff.

So BT had run new cable till the point where it split to serve lots of other households. Then not bothered to renew the last few metres as it only served 3 phone numbers.

At this point I might chuck into the mix some young people.

People have told me there is nothing worse than a room full of young people all absorbed in their electronic devices. There is a point there, and they have totally missed it.

Hell is a bunch of young people clattering away to devices that tell them; no internet

Day one is a bit hard.

By the end of the week they distraught, they were even contemplating talking to each other...

DVD's had to be watched, they even played chess a few times, this was crisis.

On top of this, it was showtime in university, i was delivering a new module for the first time and none of the notes could go on the students web page, problem all round then.

It was a long time before BT turned up with it's shovel by which time half the house was stir crazy.

Now, of course, we have half term. Fortunately it's half term with internet, the other possibility does not bear thinking about... 

  

               


 

Whose work is valued

It's been a long few months with a lot going on.

But we have arrived at a dark place really, the chief exec of Pembrokeshire has presided over a series of disasters, he has dealt with most of them by pretending they were nothing to do with him.

Now either he knew about them, so he should be sacked. Or it all went on under his nose and he did nothing about it so, well, he should be sacked.

Sacked means to me, up the road with a minimum of pay. Not a tearful goodbye with nearly 2 years pay in your bin plus your pension intact.

Especially when it's known you have already had a job created for you somewhere else.

For myself, 20 years as a foster carer and probably 10 years before that as a residential worker entitles me to the state pension with a bit chucked on top because it's likely I will be poor, is what I get as a reward for fighting the sorts who should be making sure services deliver but who spend their lives finding excuses for why they don't.

There is a logic in there somewhere - sadly i don't get it.

R  

Happy holidays...

Every so often we go off on manoeuvres to our little house in Brittany. In previous years these would have been an extended month long jaunt with the whole tribe, now with childer working and such like we haven't spend an extended time out there in many years. It's not that we could not have gone, the kids were quite happy for us to leave them in the house here for a month - yeah right as if.....

So anyway off to Plymouth we raced in the VW van, on to the ferry end ended a grueling 10 am till midnight traveling day. Next morning bright and early it was time to set about the task in hand. Said talks being rendering the place suitable for friends to visit in the next week or so. Significant strimming and mowing went on till we got to mid afternoon by which time temperatures were uncomfortably into the mid 30's, not mowing weather then.

Plan A had been a hard working day on the house then three days off. So anyway 3 days later.......

We had a broadly lovely time but the hard work and heat left us exhausted, the super powerful shower was getting used lots and lots of times. Often two showers a day per person.

We decided, one evening, it was time to have a moment and, later next month when G goes off on manoeuvres for a week, so we are off for a week where the two of us will do nothing. I can really see that happening too..

So on day the last there we were all loaded up, everything looking good for the early morning trip home when into the house came the Gwion. Best go and look at the van he suggested, a quick trip outside and the side door was hanging off. Just what we needed for the M5 on the way home. This was clearly a very technical re hanging job so I set about it armed with a block of wood and a a 10 lb sledge hammer!!

The trip home was uneventful but killing, 6 am start and rolled up the drive here at 8 pm. The trip leaving me wishing I really had got round to fitting that sunroof I promised myself a  good while back.  I have also become a bit of a fan of aircon, that would be a proper plus on the comfort front.

So anyway we are at home and catapulted into a new series of dramas around the mess big D is intent on making of his life. There is only so much you can do, when someone is determined not to help themselves it gets quite difficult. Because he has not returned the paperwork and forms, all his benefits have been suspended. He has no money to pay his rent but still expects to stay here and live here, it's like he expects everyone else to work so he does not have to.

The leaving care team are champing at the bit to pull his placement and drag him back to Daycastle and stick him in a hostel. He seems to think that if he pretends it's not happening then it won't.

R









  



   
 

What a day today was

Today was quite a day, donning a suit, an come on now,  how often have I been seen in a suit??

Then it was off up the coast to a university, where a Bruce was getting her degree.

Of course this was after her morning teaching, newly graduated, she has been chosen to be course moderator on a unit in the summer school. The other units have two moderators, usually PHd students, hers has one - the Bruce. It's a school aimed at showing young people in danger of not doing well at school, that they have the potential to succeed, many of them in care. You can sort of see why people in care might not see university is for them after the couple of days we have had this week and Bruce is the very person to work with them.

She turned up to teach this morning in her academic gown did the session then off this afternoon to graduate.

Being a parent is quite something, I'm pretty proud of all my children but today was something else. I was unprepared for the emotional maelstrom sitting there and watching your daughter graduate unleashes in you.

I was thrown back through all of her childhood, all the little things, the times the places that lead to this place.

I was awash with delight.

I was soo proud as her name was called out and she walked on to the stage with self assurance to graduate.

Then as your Brain does my mind cast forward to another place  a place where G walked on to the stage and she collected her degree.

Except her "parents" the ones who took her into care for her own good, do not have that hope, that expectation, that aspiration for her.

If they get to 4.30 and nothing has gone too pear shaped, that's a productive day.

So what has she benefited from being in care?  

The anger inside me went up like a rocket.

I went from being proud and happy to being totally enraged in an instant.

That was the emotion of the moment.

 G might well not chose the life course that leads to a degree, but at least we will do everything we can to make sure that's her choice.

And do feel free to stand in the way......

And finally, how many of the students who graduated today, graduated in wellington boots?

She does make me proud - sort of..
  

R





 
              

100 years ago

In some town no one had any idea about this Archduke who did not count for much got his head blown off by a guy who got lucky - pure fluke.

A few months later the whole world was at war.

Actually it wasn't, the whole world some self important states were having a bit of a competition about how gullible their populations were. In terms of exposing themselves to being massacred, and massacred they were marching bravely into the machine guns of mechanised death. .

Today it went off in Ukraine

It's going off in Iraq

It's going off in Syria

There's genocide in Gaza with some Zionists  saying that people who oppose their illegal actions are the problem - not their illegal actions.

It's funny how for the last 100 years the causes of each major war can be located in the incomplete resolution of issues at the end of the last one. 




It's 1914 again we will be at war within the year.

R

Things can only get better......

There is an old song - things can only get better, sadly, just after that was an anthem we had Tony Blair leading us into Genocide...

I digress though, today things managed to get worse.

Now, G gawd bless her summed the situation up well.

"I got there it looked like a school, it smelled like a school and it was built like a school. It has classrooms with desks like a school and a whiteboard like a school. It had a cwtch like a little kids school.  That makes it a school, if I could cope with a school I would be going to one."  

Lovely summing up of the situation. She then went on to say she wanted to continue with her current educational arrangement. She said she would try to go to school but was not sure she could.

Soo back to the possibilities there has been significant vagueness over what she would be doing at this new facility.

A couple of days ago the position was, she was doing GCSE's in English Lang & Litt, she was being entered with 2 others to do GCSE Maths in November this year.

As of this moment we have been told of GCSE's she might be doing.  No guarantees.

From the best I can work out

English language is taught by someone with an impressive academic CV, who is not a teacher.

Here in Wales, unlike Goveland we have these quaint ideas, to work  as a doctor you actually have to be a registered and qualified doctor. To be a teacher you need to be a registered and qualified teacher, and this person is not.

English Literature might be taught by her current tutor, but it might not .

She might also get GCSE Science, would be a plus, taught by a qualified primary school teacher.

Who is going to be teaching maths is a great mystery, her current maths tutor has been told he is not allowed to enter his three students for the November exam.  Whether he gets to work in the unit is not clear. We were told yesterday he might be too busy.  Maybe the caretaker is at a lose end for a couple of hours a day.

To be fair, they did pick up on her interest in horses and they promised she would get her some work in a famed local stable - but actually they didn't, what they really did was say they knew about the stables.

G - good on her spotted that one too.

We do have a plan though  - it will be a suprise - and we all like suprises don't we.

R