not so special delivery

There was a knock on the door and when I got there I found this bloke had opened it and was a slouching silhouette in the doorway filling in his electronic delivery book. Without looking up he said, “Come along young man”. My inclination was to say “Give me the package and Fuck off” But it occurred to me he might well be one of the hoards from ‘off’ seeping into the area like raw sewage in which event I didn’t really want to engage in a prolonged feud. So I said nothing at all. I took the package with the faintest hint of a snatch, signed his electronic book in an almost contemptuous manner and silently closed the door on him just fractionally too fast for good manners. I am not sure he got the message

Horses for courses

Peter the Painter’s heart is really in showbiz. For his latest pre Christmas production, ‘Country Christmas’ at Talgarth he needed a donkey in the nativity scene. Local children in traditional nativity garb would sing the song ‘Little Donkey’. Peter set off to find one and came up with ‘Gentle’. Showbiz was not in her blood and despite pulling, pushing and persuasion with carrots she refused to enter the building. The small crowd that gathered was amused especially some idle builders who offered advice in the traditional manner – but nothing worked.
The show must go on and Peter came up with a replacement that was a little easier to handle. So it came to pass that the nativity part of the show began and Mary & Joseph entered leading the noble beast and the children began the ‘Little Donkey’ song. The Shetland pony was a magnificent actor.

I discover a Pulsar…….sort of

Regularly, every so often, Sky television would splutter a little burst of sound interference.
I tried turning off the central heating, the computer, the cooker , mobile phones and every other electrical appliance I could find but it made no difference. Suspicion turned to the neighbours as mine invariably does. But first I timed the regularity of the pulses of interference and found them to be 40 seconds. I searched the internet using terms like Sky, interference, 40 seconds etc but again came up with nothing.
Then I had an idea. We have a little weather station powered by 6 AA batteries which receives data from sensors in the garden and the garage. I looked up the manual on the web and found that it communicates this data every 40 seconds. Mystery solved.
The reason I am so pleased with this outcome is that my normal methods are not so subtle and if ever I do have any success with technology its usually because I switched it off and when it came on again it was cured.

unfamous last words

Here are some beautiful obituaries Polk County Georgia Obituaries . I cant quite work out why they should not be possible today but that they are not is a matter of regret.
I could not even bring myself to laugh at the sherrif who accidentally shot himself in the head so movingly was it written. (Mr. John Hutchings if you cant read through them all)

What has he done?

For some strange reason I have suddenly had a spate of Googlers looking for Ulick Murphy one of the odd names I have collected. I wonder what he might have done to bring about this sudden attention; when I bagged him he was working for an insurance company as was my personal favorite and the star of my collection
'Dashita Dave'.

Feynman again