Hooptedoodle #424 - Yet Another Mystery Object

 Something I found when I was clearing my mother's house. I had no idea what it was, but it looked sort of interesting, so I hung on to it. I still have no idea what it is, so would welcome some suggestions.

The size is given by the librarian's glove (which is just present to stop the thing rolling about). It is obviously a glass measuring device of some sort - the narrowness of the internal tube suggests that the units may be smaller than millilitres, but it could be ml, I guess. There is a small glass funnel at the top, with a pouring lip, and the tip is tapered; looks to me as though it is intended to add small amounts of something to a mixture - that sort of thing. 

The scale is on one side only, as you see, and the device lives in a cardboard tube. The writing on the end label may be a shelf code or similar, but it looks like a price - 58 pence. If that is true, then:

(1) it was never very valuable

(2) it was purchased after decimalisation (1971)...

(3)  ...but soon enough after decimalisation for the UK still to be working in accurate conversions from Old Money.

There was no obvious context given by where it was stored - it wasn't in the bathroom cabinet, it was in a cupboard in the boxroom, with odd drawing tools and spare lightbulbs. As far as I know, my father wasn't into drugs or tricky medication, and he wasn't a chemist. He was a photographer, however (of a sort), and for some years he was an enthusiastic (though disastrous) amateur wine-maker (Sprout Port, anyone?). The clues run out at this point, though of course I'm happy to answer any questions you may have!

Hooptedoodle #423 - A Salute to Old Ben

 This is probably going to seem a little weird. Though he has been dead for nearly 14 years now, today I plan to spend a little time commemorating the 100th anniversary of my father's birth.

No particular agenda - for years now, I've occasionally been reminded that my father, if he had lived, would be x years old on that day. Each time, I laughed a little and shrugged it off - not a significant event. What I am tracking, I guess, is personal landmarks in the history of my immediate family - in other words, my own mortality.

Anyway, whatever the underlying sentiment, old Ben would have been 100 today. I intend to visit his grave, and I have purchased a very small birthday cake. After tea, I also plan to drink the last of the last bottle (of two) of De Montal 1965 which he bought me for my 50th birthday; I had previously bought him two bottles for his 70th, so it was not unlike a very slow and ponderous game of ping-pong. I can't think what else I might save it for.

 

You can just make out the "new" cemetery at the South-East end of North Berwick - very handy for Tesco. My sister is buried here too, and there is a space reserved for my mother, who is now 96 and in residential care in the little town. I have no plans to join them.

My thoughts today will be mostly of unsentimental stuff: how peaceful my life has been since he passed away, how angry and bewildered he would have been if he had survived to see 2022, and some measure of gratitude that he spent his last days very comfortably in a low-stress environment, though (like the swan's legs beneath the surface) I was one of the privileged few who had to race around fixing things for him, making sure he didn't get upset and didn't upset anyone else.

All the best, then, Ben - happy birthday - thanks for everything. I guess I won't have to think about this any more.

Hooptedoodle #422 - Vernon-Smith Readies the Gunboat

 As part of my new, more relaxed approach to observing world news, I have stopped hanging onto every latest theory from someone-or-other's political Cub Reporter. I've seen it all before. On occasions I may be slightly afraid, but in general I am going to calm right down in the anger department. There are some things about the current state of our (my) nation which are so preposterously stupid that I can only assume that they cannot last very long. I'll settle for that. I didn't vote for any of these bastards, so I am only circumstantially interested in their self-promotion adventures.

One thing which did chime a faint chord was Mr Johnson's recent visit to Poland, to give assurance that Britain would be right behind them if they were on the receiving end of any aggression. Apart from those Poles who might ask, "Who?", I am confident that they will take a great deal of comfort from this, especially those of them who have a good feel for history.

 

Not Churchill

 

Not Churchill either

Naturally, as a mere provincial, I do not expect to understand such things, but I am gradually joining the citizens' army of people who suspect that Mr J's fondness for casting himself in the role of Winston Churchill may be more than a little wide of the truth. There are other, more apt possibilities. No matter. In any case, this fades into the shadows compared with the recent idea of Ms Truss going away to give the Russians a piece of her mind over the Ukrainian Question.

Also in the interests of keeping down the blood pressure and the adrenalin levels, I am making an effort to cut down on the coffee - this one crazy trick is the one that Big Pharma don't want you to know about...

Hooptedoodle #421 - More Rubbish News

 The delayed collection service for our recyclable waste from our new tubs has now started. 

There is a slight problem - apparently the contractors don't have the right sort of vehicle available, so they are using the wrong sort of vehicle.

Here's a picture of what they are using at the moment.

It is a bit unusual, isn't it? It looks rather like the sort of thing that might be parked in a supermarket car park, so that the enthusiastic public may place their own recycling into the labelled hatches. The hatches, of course, are of small size so the public cannot place their old sofa in the waste paper compartment. Or perhaps local schoolchildren could make a trip to look at it at the County Fair, as part of their Save the Planet project?

Considering that we only have 3 types of waste to go in it, there are a surprising number of hatches - I haven't got close enough to read it yet, but something definitely not right. Miscast.

I've seen it in action a couple of times - around 8am one Monday, a man in a fluorescent pink overall appeared, running alongside the truck, and I watched him put the contents of our Recyclable Paper tub into the rearmost hatch. Because he was rather a short man, he was unable to reach high enough to up-end our paper tub inside the hatch, so he took out the paper and cardboard in handfuls, holding the tub in his other hand, and shoved it in the hatch. From where I was watching I couldn't see what happened to the plastics-and-metals tub, but after they were gone I did observe that they had dropped a fair amount of paper and plastic litter (mostly small items) on the grass verge, which of course I had to clear up. They had also left a quantity of small items in the bottom of each tub - till receipts, the little pop-tops off yogurt drink cartons, stuff like that - if they have to empty the tubs by hand rather than gravity, that's sort of what I would expect.

Not great; I would hesitate to challenge the guys on the job, since I would bet they are not enjoying it much. Never mind, perhaps they'll get the right sort of truck soon, and things will improve.

I tell you what this truck really reminds me of, it's the scene from "Dad's Army" when they converted Jonesy's butcher's van so they could shoot out of the sides. Now that puts a more cheerful aspect on the thing altogether, but I am getting a little fed up with cleaning up after they've gone.   

I couldn't find a video clip of Jonesy's van in action, but here's a song from my youth, all about food waste and garbage collection. What could be wrong with that?

Hooptedoodle #420 - Whence the Pars?

 The other day I went out for lunch with my good friend Jack the Hat, and, inevitably, we got into our interminable old men's discussion about the history of football, who was the greatest player we ever saw, what was the exact team line-up for the Scottish Cup Final of 1975, and other varied and interesting stuff.

Well, it's maybe a bit specialised, but we get a lot of value out of it. One of our regular subtopics is the history of the Scottish teams. We got into the subject of club nicknames the other day. Let's not dwell too much on details, but we agreed that there is something particularly odd about the nickname of Dunfermline Athletic FC, who are known to their fans as "the Pars", and have been for a very long time.

Dunfermline are not one of the great teams of Scottish football, but they have been around for a very long time, and numerous generations of their supporters have doubtless gone to their graves with the club's badge engraved on their hearts, so they deserve to be treated with all due respect.

They are currently in the Scottish Championship, which is one level below the top league (The Scottish Premiership), and, though they have won the second-level league title numerous times, the only major trophies on record are two wins in the Scottish Cup, which they won in 1960-61 and again in 1967-68. They have had a good number of distinguished players, including internationals, but the most famous of these are individuals who went on to become successful managers in England, notably Owen Coyle, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes.

 

The lads of Dunfermline Athletic posing with the Scottish Cup in 1961

 

Anyway, back to the point. Why the Pars? Well, there are a number of theories, some of them remarkably stupid, but the most likely is because of the club's playing strip. In the early days, Dunfermline played at various times in blue or maroon, but since 1909 they have worn black and white vertical stripes. The nickname is most likely to have come from the Parr, a juvenile form of the salmon (a very important fish in Scotland), which is similarly decked out in black and white stripes.

So there you have it - a piece of information which is unlikely to come in useful in your local pub's quiz night, but there is a wider context which I find interesting. Anyone got any more stories about the nicknames of sporting clubs, any sport, no matter how minor, never mind how disputed or convoluted the history of the name? I'm interested in this stuff, for reasons which have more to do with social history than sport, to be honest. I'm also horrified how little sense of the past modern sports fans have, but that's another issue.

All printable suggestions welcome!     

Hooptedoodle #419 - Herbert Tudor Vernon-Smith is Very Sorry

 Yes - you read it here. The Bounder of the Remove has apologised publicly - one of his chums described his demeanour as "abject", praise indeed, so the coaching must have worked. Personally I am unmoved. I am interested to see how his new friends and comrades in the unfamiliar North react to his adventures, but I find the whole thing extremely tedious.

So much weight has now been attached to the forthcoming independent report (by Sue Gray) that I would not be awfully surprised if the report were already working to a script, viz:

(1) the report will be delayed a long time, so that the media can calm down and the Electorate, being idiots, will forget

(2) whitewash will be applied universally - nothing to see here

I refuse to get drawn again into the sewer of political debate - I made myself rather unwell over the US Election, so no more of that. I will, however, quote my legendary Preston Grannie, who told me, when I was a lad:

 

If there's someone you can't trust, have nothing to do with them. Doesn't matter if they are friend or family - have nothing to do with them. Shop somewhere else. Life is too short to have to work out what someone really means

Hooptedoodle #418 - New Year Trip to Kelso

 Since Saturday (New Year's Day) was bright and not too cold, and as I had no possibility of a hangover, I went for a drive to the town of Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. The place is around 50 miles from here, but it's a town I haven't visited for years, and I always liked it.

The Borders region has some very attractive towns, and I used to visit there quite often; my first wife's family came from St Boswell's and from Coldstream. It's a sparsely populated area, very agricultural, but there is a lot of history around those parts. Most of the towns are on the main modern routes into England - the A68 (to Jedburgh and Carter Bar), the A7 (to Hawick and Carlisle) or the A1 (to Berwick and Newcastle), but, although it always had an important strategic position on the mighty River Tweed, people don't normally visit Kelso unless they are going to - erm - Kelso.

My first father-in-law took me to see the sheep sales there, on a Saturday morning long ago, and subsequently I was a guest at various family functions in the town over the years, mostly at the Ednam House hotel (I think there were family connections!).

One effect of the pandemic has been that I have become even more of a recluse than I was before, and I've been nurturing an unreasonable urge to visit some of these old Borders haunts, if only to prove that they still exist!

On Saturday, then, I made a brief but enjoyable visit to Kelso, which was once the county town of Roxburghshire, by the way. Not much traffic, and I didn't get breathalyzed once (I was quite looking forward to it...). I took only a few photos, since the visit itself was the main objective, but I thought they might have some appeal in my blog. When we can travel about again, I recommend the Scottish Border  country as a place worth a visit. From Kelso it's only a few miles to Melrose, site of another great abbey and also Sir Walter Scott's military collection at Abbotsford...

 

New Year's Day in the main square - never seen it so quiet - it was certainly busier back in the days of the sheep sales. The Cross Keys hotel is something of a local institution. The town, as you see, was shut.

 

 

Another hotel - this is the Ednam House, where I've attended numerous weddings, wakes, 21st birthdays and Christmas dinners, back in another century. My first wife's uncle was once captain of Kelso's rugby team, and a Scottish international (traditionally the area is famous for rugby, in addition to wars and sheep-stealing), so the family were local celebrities! 

 

 

Kelso has a famous abbey - I'm afraid this is a very poor photo of it. A great area this for ecclesiastical buildings - Dryburgh Abbey is just a few miles away - where I think Earl Haig is buried.

 
 

 

The town has a very fine bridge over the River Tweed, which is not the border with England at this point, though it will become so not far downstream. 

 

 

Apologies for this one - it amuses me to think that this may be a must-see site for visiting Beytles fans. I am, as ever, easily pleased by such silliness. I don't know what a Royd was, but Kelso Abbey obviously had one

***** Late Edit *****

Since I was asked about the matter, I did some reading and now realise that the Kelso Ram Sales are still going strong - here's an aerial shot of a recent one [used without permission, of course]. The Events Centre is on the other side of the river from the town - you can see the bridge and the Abbey in the background, and you can see a few modern suburbs in the right backround, south of the Tweed. Maxwellheugh has an industrial park - my first wife's family owned the sawmill in Spylaw Road, south of the river - long gone.

*********************

Hooptedoodle #417 - The Year Comes to an End

 

Funny time of the year, this. Today is very dark and very wet - nothing much happening apart from the occasional tractor fighting through the mud, on its way to prepare the fields for next year. Now there's an act of faith - worth thinking about.

This morning I've been listening to Jan Garbarek, which captured something in my mood and the general vibe of the season. If you have a few minutes for a listen, click here for something very ancient and very northern; something watching from afar to see how we are getting on with our after-Christmas sales, and our pandemic.

Hooptedoodle #416 - Another Mystery Object

 Not so exotic, in fact, but I'd never seen one before. It seems we have one in our house, though I didn't know. If you've seen these, you will know immediately what it is, otherwise you may be as puzzled as I was!

The item is made of leather, with a metal buckle - as you see, it is constructed like a belt or strap. The bulbous part is perforated on one side, and stuffed (I believe) with horsehair. This would be regarded as rather an old-fashioned item to have in the house, though I am told that they have been in some demand during the lockdown period.

Like to have a go? I'll keep unpublished any comments which include guesses or are otherwise spoilers - I'll publish and reveal what it is in a day or two. The coin in the last photo is a British 2p piece, for scale.

***** Late Edit *****

I'm very pleased with the responses - thank you all very much, so I've decided to add the dénouement a little earlier than planned.

Rob has got it - it's a Knitting Belt - as used by Shetland knitters (and others). You fasten it around your waist and, as Rob explains, one needle may be anchored by sticking it through one of the apertures, and I understand it is a major help if you are using 3 needles! Here is a lady using a knitting belt...

I'm pleased with all the suggestions, and will make sure we hang onto ours (which my wife bought at a craft fair in another century); it obviously has a great many other uses which will come in very handy.

It remains only for me to wish everyone a peaceful and relaxing Christmas. I'll see you on the other side!

*********************

Hooptedoodle #415 - Muted Celebrations

 This completely pointless post follows from a telephone conversation I had with Older Son No.3 on Saturday. I rang him up to see how he is doing - he has had some problems with his physical health recently, and is working from home, so I phone him up from time to time to see how he is coping. We had a fairly downbeat discussion about what his solitary Christmas is likely to be like, and from there we got onto the general topic of celebrations that fall flat, and I have to say that we finished up having one of the best laughs I can remember for a while!

He recalls that on his actual 21st birthday he was studying for exams, and he had recently been forced to move his accommodation to a different hall of residence, since there had been a fire at his previous one. He now shared a landing with 4 students from Sri Lanka (this was in Glasgow - he still lives in Glasgow). He says they were nice enough lads, but they kept to themselves, and communication had been limited.

However, somehow they were aware that this particular day was his 21st, and at about 6:30pm his doorbell rang and there were his 4 neighbours, looking very embarrassed. One of them said "happy birthday", and handed him a pack of 6 cans of beer. Suitable encouraging gestures were made, so he drank one of the cans, standing at his door, while they applauded politely, and then they shook his hand and went away, leaving him to his exam revision. That was the full glory of his 21st birthday.

Like me, he tends to see life as a series of clips from potential sitcoms - very low-budget sitcoms, at that.

I remembered my actual 21st birthday too, so I shared that with him. Another TV script, I'm afraid, and I still laugh [nervously] at it now. I was on study-leave from university, so had gone home to Liverpool - leaving my girlfriend and most of my normal social circle many miles away - so that I could get my laundry done and eat some healthy food and possibly even get in some serious cramming. My actual birthday was on a Saturday, so my mum was very keen that we should have some little family party - at our house - to grace the occasion.

My dad was very much opposed to the whole idea - at the time he was on very prickly terms with his siblings, largely as a result of my grandmother having had a fatal stroke the first time we took a turn at having her stay at our house, a couple of years before. Just a bad break, I guess.

Anyway, after much argument, family members were invited to our house on the Saturday afternoon. I had the interesting challenge of finding something half-decent to wear. It was all very stilted; a few invitees called off for plausible reasons, I received some presents, made appropriate small talk with relatives - some of whom I couldn't really remember - and we had vol-aux-vents and Ritz crackers with cottage cheese and shrimps on them - the sort of food I later associated with team meetings at work. Well intentioned, but grim.

My dad got fed up with this very quickly, and at about 4:30pm he brought one of the kitchen chairs through to the sitting room, turned on the TV, and sat in the middle of the party, staring fixedly at the horse racing until everyone picked up on the awkwardness and remembered that they really did need to be somewhere else. By 5:30 everyone had left. My parents didn't speak to each other for a week or more, and we had vol-aux-vents from the fridge for tea until they were finished. Vol-aux-vents still make me laugh.

I didn't visit my parents again for some years, so there was an upside to the story, at least.

Anyway, son Peter and I laughed long and loud at the recollection of our birthdays, all those years ago. The point of trotting out this nonsense is simply that I suspect there may be a wealth of stories of failed celebrations out there. My own stag-party ended with me, as the only one left standing, having to take about half-a-dozen of my mates home safely, since they, at least, had had a roaring time.

The only other epic I can think of from my own history was a registry-office wedding I attended in Edinburgh when I was a young chap. I was the Best Man for the event - in the circumstances, I think I may have been Chief Witness, but it's the same sort of deal. The groom was a good friend of mine, and his intended was the daughter of some actual, genuine, titled nobility (I think they were Lord and Lady Dick-Lauder, though don't quote me on this), who were hostile and graceless throughout, and seemed to have come along to the event mostly to pour scorn on the assembled commoners. I had sweated blood over a speech and everything, but the celebration was stopped in its tracks when the bride didn't show up. Very embarrassing all round, but another great TV show in the making.

So...

Anyone got any good-going personal tales of embarrassment, misunderstandings and/or physical violence from celebrations that went disastrously wrong? I'm sure there must be plenty - in fact if there are I'll feel better about the whole subject!

Hooptedoodle #414 - All Change in the World of Rubbish

 Back in 2015, I did a post on the new waste collection and recycling regs here and, perhaps predictably, I was rather less than wholehearted in my enthusiasm.

The new regime at that time involved 5 separate waste bins for each household: a small grey one for food waste, which was collected every Thursday; a fullsize wheelie with a red top for plastics, glass and metal, collected every 2nd Thursday; another wheelie with a blue top for paper and cardboard, also collected every 2nd Thursday; a green wheelie for general (landfill) waste, collected every 2nd Friday, and a brown wheelie for garden waste, which I think was supposed to be collected once a month, but in fact collection was so irregular that we usually missed it, and I can't remember what the official regime was [garden waste here mostly goes to my personal dump in the woods behind my house].

It worked. As usual, of course, it worked because the council-tax-paying residents put in enough personal effort to make it work, but I have become comfortable with the system, being reconciled to the fact that all this industry is aimed at saving the planet (which I can't fault as an objective) and at reducing the proportion of Council employees who actually do the work, as opposed to managing things.

I was occasionally horrified by the speed with which we could fill the plastics bin, but this has a lot to do with Tesco's commitment to wrapping everything in several layers of clear plastic. [I've never understood this - if I buy a pack of dry pasta, I don't really need to see what macaroni looks like - I've seen it before.] It also had a lot to do with our son's fondness for microwavable curries, but, since he has now gone away to college, we might expect this to reduce a bit. Whatever, our waste collection system became a sequence of known activity days, and the size of the bins seemed fine.

I became aware that the bigger villages around here did not have the red and blue-topped wheelie bins - waste collection day in those places involved some rather silly little tubs with elasticated tops, which were liable to blow about on windy mornings. In fact a couple of friends of mine who live in such villages were interested to see that we had our bins, which they regarded as old-fashioned and a little quaint.

OK - this year we were told there would be a change out here in the sticks. We would come into line with the bigger villages, would lose our red and blue-topped bins, and would be issued with the tubs (black for glass, blue for paper and card) and a weighted white bag for plastics. There will be a single fortnightly collection of "Recycling" - the tubs and the white bag. This requires us to alter our definitions of what-goes-in-where, but seems fine. We will now have 6 bins, with a different timetable. I can handle that.

Not so fast.

(1) the new arrangements were supposed to start back in September or thereabout - the idea was that there would be a final collection of the old bins (which would be emptied for the last time by the special bin-tipping truck, and taken away by a separate wagon accompanying the collecting truck on this final round), and after that we would just have to get used to putting the glass in a new container, plus some other minor adjustments to the list of permissable rubbish items, and the new regime would be running.

(2) there is no way that I propose to keep outdoor bins anywhere in the house, so we have to have a set of indoor containers which map on to the outdoor ones - this is simple enough: we just need a new indoor tub for glass.

(3) the first bad news was that there was some unexplained delay in the issue of the new tubs, so we carried on with the blue and red-tops until we received the new kit. At this point the Council stopped issuing meaningful timetables - the guys with the recycling truck did a best-endeavours run whenever they could to clear up in these fringe areas. It worked better than you might expect, but my wife is an enthusiastic reader of the Council's website. The delay was apparently something to do with obtaining supplies of the new tubs - this may have been associated with Covid, or the involvement of Bastard Foreigners - possibly both.

 

The New Tubs have arrived

(4) whatever, our new tubs arrived a few days ago. There was, fleetingly, mention of a special final run on Sunday (the Sabbath!) this week, but it didn't happen, so we put our old bins out again for the Monday run, and that didn't happen either.

(5) hmmm.

(6) it now seems very likely that there is no plan for the old bins, that the Council has already disposed of the special bin-tipping truck, and we await instructions. Since life must continue in the meantime, I guess that we start putting out recycling according to the new regs as from next Monday (or possibly the one after).

 

Our Old Recycling Bins (which are full) are bravely making their Last Stand, though I believe the Real World could not care less

(7) alas, the old bins are full, and the new tubs have about one fifth of their capacity, and the definition of what is allowed has changed. I am confident that nothing will ever happen to cover the changeover - I will have to sort the contents of our old bins into plastic bags, removing glass and putting it in a separate bag. Then I will have to take it to the Council Dump, which has slightly different definitions, since it uses different contractors.

(8) when and if anyone ever collects the old bins, and whether they warn us when they are coming, depends very much on whether they still have any grown-ups involved at the Waste Disposal department. It remains to be seen.

 

Our new timetable. Going back to September, there is a sequence of blue rectangles which did not apply to us, since we did not have the new tubs at these dates. As an aside, I am surprised that someone at the Council decided that a red pentangle was a good icon to represent a green dustbin. I confess I wouldn't have thought of that one

Not a serious matter, in the overall scale of things, but again I am left to wonder why as a society we are no longer able to organise anything. I mean anything. Too much communication, devoid of useful content; too many people at pains to avoid blame at all costs. Probably, also, too many entitled citizens (like me?) prepared to whinge about change, but it does feel as though I am running pretty hard on the spot to cover the cracks in the system.

I am warned that there is a pile of additional rules - we must have our bins out by 7am on collection day or we will miss the boat, and the green and brown bins must have the handles facing outwards, or else. For a crazy moment I wondered if someone might suggest that the emptied bins should be left somewhere other than the middle of the residents' gates, but I realised that this is unreasonable, and laughed at myself.

We are, of course, lucky to have rubbish at all - I understand this. Perhaps if Boris had fewer pals in the packaging industry things would be easier?

Hooptedoodle #413 - Storm Arwen, South East Scotland

 A Survivor's Tale

 

We were hit by the first named storm of the Winter last Friday night. My house hasn't been damaged, as far as I know, and we have no-one hurt here, but the farm has been badly affected - lots of trees down, a couple of buildings at the stables were blown over, and there are roofs off the big steading buildings along the lane at Auldhame. Electric power went off at 18:18, and came back on at about 21:30, but it appeared to have been restored only as an emergency service, on reduced voltage, which meant that we could boil a kettle very slowly, that traditional filament-type electric lights worked very dimly, modern energy-saving and LED bulbs didn't work at all, and that was about it. Microwave and most other things were not working, and our central heating was not interested at all at these voltages, so I lugged in some baskets of logs from the woodshed, to keep our stove going.

 

The phone service at Scottish Power, our electricity supplier, had been tweaked so that you could not speak to anyone (so you couldn't report anything, for example...) and gave pre-recorded messages which were heavy on heroism, and what a terrible time they were having, but said little that was useful or reliable.

 

Another thing which would not work at the low voltage was broadband, so the electricity company's advice to keep an eye on their website was especially irritating. Amazingly, I could get some kind of data service on my iPhone, but it came and went. By timing the boiling of a kettle, I estimated we must have been operating at something like 40% of the normal 240v.

 

We kept hearing in the recorded messages that Scottish Power's linesmen were making fantastic progress, and we were led to believe that everything would be restored by 8pm Saturday. The lads from the farm got the roads clear by Saturday night, so things were looking up. Then, Sunday morning, Tommy the Farmer appeared on my doorstep with a chainsaw (which was alarming) and announced that he had found a cable down "at the back of the Walled Garden", and if I was in touch with the supplier could I report it. I spent a few hours trying every known phone number, and just got the same recorded messages. However, one of the more obscure numbers gave the opportunity to leave a phone number of my own, so that someone could call me back. Eventually, about 2pm Sunday, a girl from Scottish Power's customer desk (which is in Birkenhead!) rang me, and I reported the break we'd found, of which they had no previous note. We were at least in the system now.

 

Monday morning some SP vans arrived and assessors looked at the damage, and promised that the linesmen would come to sort us out. I had to go into Edinburgh for an appointment that took up most of the day, and when I came home I found that the linesmen had, in fact, shown up, but for safety reasons had shut off the power completely, and would return as soon as possible to make a proper repair. Thus we were now completely in the dark, and even the kettle was no longer available. I understand about the need for safety, but this didn't really feel like progress.

 

About midday Tuesday the vans came back, and the boys got us reconnected at 16:10, disappearing immediately to get on with their backlog. I started going round the house, checking things, and everything seemed to be working except our central heating boiler, which is stubbornly showing a "C1" error code which suggests that, once again, the power cut has broken the fan. This happens occasionally - a problem of our set up here is that the service automatically attempts to reconnect in the event of a line fault, so that the electricity goes off in a series of flashes and stutters. It's the stuttering that does the damage.

 

Thinking we had maybe got off light, compared with the tales of disaster up and down the country, I phoned Worcester-Bosch and arranged for an engineer to come and sort us out on Thursday, and I was still speaking to their call centre when our electricity dropped out again!

 

I regret to say that I may have sworn when the place blacked out while I was still speaking to the very helpful young lady at WB, for which I apologised. She took it in good spirit - she said she spends her life speaking to people whose heating has broken down, so she isn't bothered!

 

Power was finally fixed permanently at 21:50 tonight, by which time I had gone to bed to listen to the Leeds game on my battery radio. OK - I got up, checked things were in order, proved that the boiler was still knackered, set the dishwasher going, tidied up a bit, etc etc... and I made myself a cup of coffee - first for a few days.

 

We just have to grit our teeth until Thursday. We can use electric radiators to keep the place habitable, the cooker works again, as does the microwave, we have light and TV and broadband. My wife plans to go to her gym each morning for a swim and to get a shower, and I'll use our electric shower upstairs, which is vastly inferior to the posh one downstairs but is good enough for me!

 

This afternoon I received a personal call from SP, asking were we all right and offering a £10 voucher for a hot meal. I'm proud to say I managed not to swear at that lady. I thanked her for the offer, in the spirit in which it is made, but pointed out that since we are going to have to write off some £150-worth of frozen and refrigerated food, and have had our lives put on hold for 4 days, the voucher is a little insulting if that's the extent of goodwill. I suggested that SP might put the £10 towards equipping a new telephone service which will allow customers to report problems.

 

I know there has been a lot of horrific damage elsewhere, and people have been injured and stranded, so it's important not to dramatise what's happened here. I am told that this is only the 6th time in recorded history that a red weather warning has been issued for East Lothian. They will have my full attention in future, I promise.

 

The farm has lost about 40 or 50 adult trees within about 200 yards of my house, some very big ones, and it will take a long while to get everything back to normal, but it could have been a lot worse. It is sobering that I didn't hear any trees coming down - couldn't hear anything for the noise of the wind. What infuriates me is that, if Tommy the Farmer had not found the broken cable on Sunday, then we would have continued to appear as a tick on some regional chart on SP's wall. As far as they were concerned, we were part of an area that had been sorted out, and they had fixed the phone system so that we were unable to contact them to correct that situation.

 

All the best to everyone affected by the bad weather.  Here are some photos - gratuitous violence:

 

 

At least we can get out - Saturday morning, the lads have cleared the lanes

 

Some of the damage at the Stables - the building right centre shifted about 20 feet and lost its roof, which blew into the hedge on the left

 

 

The cable which Tommy found - it is one of the 3 which bring the 3-phase supply to our hamlet - a spur from the main overhead feed. Behind you see the back wall of the "Walled Garden", which was built some time in the 1700s

 

 

It goes on to a transformer, and it was the power feeding back through this that gave us our accidental "reduced" service for a couple of days

 

An aerial photo of the area from a few years ago; on the left of the picture you can see the D-shaped Walled Garden, which once was a market garden with greenhouses, but is now pasture for the horses. This D-shaped field can be identified on Roy's military map of Scotland, 1747-55. The back wall is the one near us, close to the woods, and the cable is on this side of the wall. The tree which caused the extra damage is dark green, on the left edge of the photo. The place certainly doesn't look like this now, after the trees were flattened. The photo is facing almost due North

 

 

2 into 3 gives you about 100v, apparently...

 

Here's a view of the dark green tree from the aerial shot - not much of it left by Monday - Tommy has sawn up a lot of it to clear the gate

                                                                    Erm - sorry - not today it isn't...

 

More wrecked trees - all lined up, knocked down from the North East...