Trouble under the sink

Düsseldorf, November 2017

Notable events over the last week or so have been scarce. There was a bank holiday weekend, when I journeyed south for dad's 85th birthday celebration - we pay so little attention to birthdays that one of the guests didn't actually know it was a birthday celebration at all. Briefly, there were candles.

I went to a gig, which was good. I watched some DVDs on my huge screen, including a Blu-Ray DVD, but I'm not sure that I could tell the difference between this and an ordinary DVD. I went to the dentist, where they sweetly complimented me on my efficient brushing while despairing of my continuing decrepitude. I reassured them that on the whole I'm in pretty good nick, but if they want a culprit they can blame my genetic heritage.

On Saturday I started considering the tiling situation for the kitchen, and spent more than three hours in two shops (although about half an hour of that was on the phone to Lola II). The best advice of the whole day was that rather than looking at the traditional glass splashback behind the hob for somewhere between £150 and £250, I could just buy a single 60x60 cm tile costing a tenner. A lovely tiler visited and has sent me a quote.

I have reconnoitred a local car boot sale on the advice of a badminton-playing friend who regularly sells his plants there. It takes place every Sunday between May and September, and cars start queueing for the best spots from 6 a.m. Alongside the big house clearance vans there are people sitting at single tables with just the sort of thing I'd like to get rid of. It costs £10 for a place as a seller and most of the junk isn't worth more than 50p or a pound, so I'll have to gather absolutely everything and hope to make my money back in one hit because there's no way I'm going to do it more than once.

In badminton news, I was invited to go to a session on Sunday to try out with the Warwickshire County Veterans, which sounds more impressive than it actually was. There wasn't any element of selection because they seemed desperate for players (although I'm sure if I'd been awful it would have been different), but the standard was a bit higher than mine and I had to work hard. I'm not sure I want to make the commitment - all the matches will be on Sundays and there's usually a good deal of travel seeing as it's a county league. I did meet a lovely lady whom I hadn't seen for six years since I left the club where she plays, but I also met one of the people who were the reason I left that club.

So it was on Sunday afternoon after all this effort that I noticed the skirting board in the utility room was stained. Pulling the plinth board away from under the sink, I found A LOT of water and a significant drip from a pipe in the most inaccessible place in the whole house (i.e where the stopcock is inside the stupid narrow cupboard). Shutting down the stopcock didn't stop the drip and I contacted the plumber who'd installed the whole affair just a few months ago. Given that it was clear this had been going on for some time I decided not to treat it as an emergency, but the plumber did turn up on Monday and diagnose the problem as a failure of the fancy valve that was supposed to mean I don't have to reach the stopcock itself to turn off the water. We'll have to wait for it to dry out a bit before putting it all back together again.

A long and tedious post about modern audiovisual technology

October 2017

Since the visit from Mr and Mrs MXF and the Revelation of what technology is capable of, I am now experiencing it in real life.

Before The Revelation

Broadband brings the internet to Lola Towers along wires as far as the router, and from there onwards we have wifi, which nowadays forms the backbone linking everything together. Some of my gadgets were already making use of the wifi - the laptop I'm typing on, the tablet I mainly used to play my chosen radio programmes on BBC iPlayer, and my phone.

In contrast, my old iPod has to hook up to the laptop to suck up all my music, podcasts and audiobooks through a wire. I can listen to the iPod through earphones, but I also have a speaker for it in the kitchen. I love the iPod because its battery lasts for ever, and it fits in my pocket, and as well as listening on the kitchen speaker I can plug it into the car stereo and listen to my music and podcasts and audiobooks, and it remembers what I've listened to and starts up exactly where I stopped, and it holds every single CD and audiobook I've ever bought and is still very much less than half full. But neither the iPod nor its speaker is wifi enabled, and neither was the television, and neither is my ancient hifi system in the living room which can play records, CDs, analogue radio and cassettes (except I found out last week it can't play cassettes any more).

Then the television expired, and it was time to think about what the modern world can offer. I'm not actually interested in broadcast TV - the few programmes that interest me might be available via the Internet, and I don't care if they aren't. What I wanted in the kitchen and living room was the option to play audio directly from the Internet as well as all the stuff I've bought over the years, and I wanted a new television in my future 'Screening Room' where I hope to stage the Gulloebl Film Festival (Midlands franchise).

After The Revelation:

1. Spotify - brilliant
2. Chromecast Audio - not a success so far
3. What you can do with a television these days - amazing
4. Sound bar - magic
5. Wifi extender - does what it says on the tin
6. What's next?

1. Spotify

Spotify is an Internet repository for all the music in the world. Actually, as I have delved deeper I have discovered some of the more obscure music that I have acquired over the years is not to be found in Spotify, but 99.9% of all the music in the world is there. Using the phone app or the web player I can play individual tracks and albums, and create playlists of my own or listen to those compiled by other people. If I want, Spotify will play me music that it thinks I will like based on my previous choices, and so far it has been broadly correct in its assumptions. And all of this can be sucked off the Internet to my wifi-enabled speaker of choice, for free if I'm prepared to listen to a 30-second advert every half an hour or for a monthly subscription if not. I don't have to own any of the music to listen to it as long as my speakers can hook up to the Internet via wifi. I may never have to buy music ever again. I hope the artists get a cut from Spotify or we will have no more musicians able to make a living.

2. Chromecast Audio

I bought a gadget from Google whose function is 'Chromecast Audio'. When plugged into the old kitchen speaker and configured via a website it connected the speaker to my wifi, so I could play anything from Spotify on my kitchen speaker. Unfortunately the ancient living room hifi didn't have a spare line-in socket, although now I plan to investigate whether I can make use of the line-in socket so recently vacated by the cassette player. Then (see below) I installed a wifi extender and the kitchen speaker option disappeared. Then I switched broadband supplier and eventually I bullied it into appearing on the network but I can't use it as a speaker. To be honest I almost lost the will to live with the Chromecast Audio and ended up actually shouting at it and then I broke the tablet by hitting it in frustration. So I'll save that problem for later.

3. Television

Television used to be delivered by a broadcaster via an analogue aerial plugged into the back of a large cathode ray tube that allowed you to watch what they chose to broadcast at the time they chose to broadcast it. Then the number of channels increased dramatically, satellite and cable transmission options were introduced, everything went digital, and now you can watch all sorts of things any time you like within certain constraints. Despite all this flexibility, or perhaps because of it, I stopped watching television programmes some time ago. But I carried on using my old cathode ray tube to watch DVDs until it died.

Mr MXF helped me choose a suitable TV which arrived a couple of weeks ago. It is enormous, but weighs less than the set that it replaces. The most interesting thing I have realised is that the fundamental function of a television in the 'olden days' (to watch television programmes as they are broadcast) is the only function that I can no longer use it for, because it isn't connected to an aerial, satellite dish or cable. My new 65-inch television screen is, in reality, a huge but stupid computer screen without a keyboard. It connects to my wifi and will play music from Spotify as well as television programmes and other stuff streamed from the Internet, most of the time. There are still a few things I haven't managed to stream, such as BBC radio.

Many people don't even use a DVD player any more because they watch films streamed or downloaded from the Internet, but I am still using the DVD subscription service because they have the films I want and Netflix and Amazon don't. But this new television will play Blu-Ray and Ultra High Definition movies, which Mr MXF wholeheartedly endorses. My DVD player can cope with Blu-Ray, but I'd need a new one for UHD. Due to 'heritage' issues I haven't yet watched a Blu-Ray film, but one should arrive pretty soon.

4. Sound bar

This is a bit of kit that hooks up to the TV and/or wifi to produce directional sound, i.e. makes your ears think there is sound coming from all around. It comes with a nice sub-woofer for super bass noise too. I got it for films really, and it will sit in front of the TV most of the time, but I've also tried it out separately in the living room for streamed music (e.g. Spotify) and it works OK as long as the music is actually being picked up by the TV and sent to the sound bar via an HDMI cable or wifi. It's just a bit of a nuisance having to carry the bar and speaker from room to room.

5. Wifi extender

While Mr and Mrs MXF were here it became clearer that the kitchen is a bit far from the router and the wifi signal was quite weak. The gadget to fix this plugs into an ordinary power socket and boosts the signal, and should be as straightforward as that, but it seemed to disrupt the connection to the Chromecast Audio gadget until the new broadband came into play, and maybe it doesn't now. More investigation is needed. But the kitchen wifi signal is now excellent.

6. What's next?

So now I have a super huge high definition screen, great sound from DVDs or streamed from the Internet on the TV in the Screening Room, or in the living room if I physically move the sound bar and sub-woofer (which aren't intended to be portable), and the old hi-fi in the living room to listen to CDs (and analogue radio and vinyl but not digital radio or cassettes). I'm still able to use the iPod for music, podcasts and audiobooks but only on the kitchen speaker. It would be nice to be able to listen to all those things through the sound bar, but it looks as though I need one more item to connect my laptop to the TV (an HDMI to DVI cable). Then I could think about either trying to link the old hifi to the Chromecast Audio gadget so I can play digital sounds through my old amp, or I could get new wifi speakers.

But first, I really ought to finish the kitchen. Just the tiling left to do.

What I've been reading

Greenbanks
by Dorothy Whipple

"Ambrose went on talking, but she did not listen. He gave her, more and more frequently, the same flat exhausted feeling she had when she tried to carry a mattress downstairs unaided."

I was given this book by Sister D when I mentioned that I find modern books to be a bit disappointing. It was written in 1932 and I really enjoyed it, despite many of the characters being unpleasant types - all of the men were horrible, and all but two of the women. This isn't Sister D's favourite book by this author but it was one she was happy to give to me, so I'll seek out a few of her other recommendations.

The Far Pavilions
by M. M. Kaye

narrated by Vikas Adam

"A story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is about an English man brought up as a Hindu, and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It's a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west."

What a marathon saga - more than 48 hours of audio narration, some truly dodgy Scots and Irish accents, but on the whole a thumping tale of India under the Raj with an excursion into Afghanistan at the end. The final battle took hours; I could have managed with a little less detail before the hero and his love rode off into the sunset.

Buddhist weekend

Doorway inside museum, Ronda, November 2016

It's been ages since I returned from my time away with dad. Since then I've taken a trip north, played three badminton matches (2 draws, 1 win), my huge television and sound bar were delivered, I have had dinner with an old friend, spent a day engaged in the pastime of Quilling alongside Lola II and some other friends, switched broadband supplier, and I've been away on a Buddhist retreat.

Buddhist retreats usually take place in a residential centre in a rural location, and take you well outside your normal routine to allow full immersion (or some would say confinement) into the spirit as well as the text of the retreat topic. I've been on a couple of single study days already, but I recently tried out a weekend retreat. It wasn't the usual rural immersion type because during the day we were in the Buddhist Centre in Shrewsbury, and bed and breakfast was provided by some of the local community - in my case, the old friend who got me involved in Buddhism in the first place. We'll call him VP.

The retreat leader was a chap who has written quite a few books exploring different aspects of Buddhism, the next of which will focus on Time, so this was our topic for the weekend. There were about 50 people there, about half being locals, but VP was the only person I knew beforehand. There was lots of waffle, some pleasant chatting, and I came away with a few nuggets that seem worth pondering. Discussion drew upon Buddhist teachings rather than neurological research, for example about the way that time seems elastic and sometimes appears to drag or fly by depending on whether you're waiting for a late train or enjoying a pleasant or engaging activity.

There was an interesting discussion about what exactly is 'Now', or the present moment, and I drew a comparison between the mind constructing sound from waves interacting with the ear drum, the mind constructing colour from light interacting with the retina, and the mind constructing the sensation of 'Now' from 'existence' or 'reality' or 'matter' interacting with consciousness. Our perception of time ceases when we are asleep or unconscious, and almost disappears when we are so absorbed that our consciousness narrows to a point of focus. I can work along with all the spiritual guff when it isn't at odds with my scientific viewpoint. None of it is of any practical use, except we are told that exercising the brain can stave off dementia, and also a change is as good as a rest.

Outside the formal sessions it was very easy to talk to people in the breaks, and after our vegan curry on Saturday night I found myself sitting next to someone who teaches creative writing. I have been thinking about this ever since reading my old school books, and even made a little sortie onto the Internet to look for local courses. It felt a lot like when my kitchen designer was the first person I met on my first Meetup walk. Sadly, most of the Meetup walks happen during the week now - I think the organisers are now retired so they don't have to limit themselves to weekends.

Just before I went home, VP just happened to mention that it would be good if I could put together something about nutrition for people who are thinking about becoming vegan. Of course I haven't got any time for this at the moment, but VP knows me too well and I've been thinking about it ever since. The idea has found its way into my Book of Lists, so it may happen at some point.

Another short story

Self portrait, 1970

This is from the same treasure trove of school reports and toddler artwork as the previous story, but was written a few years earlier, when I was 6 or 7. Again I am copying verbatim - spelling and punctuation left entirely unchanged, although I have substituted my blog name for my real name.

If a magician gave me one wish I would say "I will save it untill I went to have a holiday and I would try to be famous and I would ask for a pair of wings that will never never break and I would fly over the town and everybody would look up at me and say "look who is that up in the clouds. and I would shout It is me [Lola Blogger] with wings to fly with. Oh it is lovely up here. "I wish we were up there." the people will say.

I suppose I'm still trying to be famous, although in my world 'famous' means appearing on Radio 4 rather than being recognised in the street. And, of course, I still want to be able to fly.

Short story

Still life, 1971

While I was being Nurse Rosenberg I took all sorts of things from home to occupy myself, and one of these was a plastic bag full of my history - music exam certificates, school reports, some of my childhood art, a letter I wrote to my American cousins. A treasure trove.

Here is something I wrote for an English lesson when I was 12, in 1976 or 77. I have copied it verbatim without changing so much as a comma.

My Visit to the Past

It is now 1960. The weather is very gloomy and everyone around me is running. There is a shrill noise.

Everyone had gone by. A solitary woman was left, coming out of a shop door.

"That was better than usual," she remarked.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You got caught in the rush hour," she said. "You ought to know by now to head for the nearest doorway."

"Oh."

I carried on my way. The streets were now deserted, apart from a few early morning shoppers. I looked into a shop. It was a stationers. I wondered if the goods would tell me what time of year it was. Nothing. Not a firework. No Christmas cards. No Valentine cards. Not an Easter bunny in sight. This wasn't getting me very far.

A lady was standing admiring some notepaper. I asked her for the date. June 6th.

I started down a sideroad. Everything around me seemed much quieter. There were no babies crying out of 3rd floor flat windows. Then I realised what was really nagging me. The difference in our clothes. They were wearing two piece garments, at least, the men were. The women were sometimes in one piece dresses or dresses in two pieces. I wondered how they managed to get them on. Now, I was wearing the normal amount of jewelry, with all my rings, and a 5-piece suit, and it looked very advanced beside the primitive clothing of these people.

I heard another shrill whistle. Expecting another mad rush of people, I pressed back into a doorway, but I could only see one man coming towards me, dressed all in blue, with a tall hat, and brandishing what appeared to be a large metal or wooden stick. In his mouth was a little silver thing that was making the noise. He looked extremely fierce, and I just turned and ran, right back to my machine. Seconds later, I was safe again, back in my own time.

It's very strange to read your own composition more than 40 years later, but I find this so interesting. The story isn't much in itself, but the first four paragraphs hook the reader, make you want to know what's next. The rhythm of the writing - sentences, phrases, paragraphs, even the direct speech - I thought it was really cool that it was written by my 12 year old self.

What I've been reading

Death in Holy Orders
by P. D. James

"At St. Anselm's - an embattled, isolated theological college on England's windswept East Anglian coast - when the body of seminarian Ronald Treeves is literally unearthed from a suffocating pile of sand, a coroner's jury turns in a verdict of accidental death. Arms manufacturer Sir Alred Treeves, Ronald's adoptive father, questions the verdict and arranges to have Dalgliesh reinvestigate the boy's death."

Pretty good holiday reading. A short review today.

Clarity for Lawyers
by Mark Adler and Daphne Perry

"This unique book debunks the myth that legalese is precise. Using many before-and-after examples, this book explains how you can increase your efficiency, profits and client approval while making your documents more readable and reliable."

I have to declare an interest - this edition was co-written by Sister D. Despite this, or more likely because of it, I thought it was excellent. Of course it would be a great disappointment if a book about clear language was not well written, but I learned a few things even though I'm not a lawyer and know hardly anything about the law. The things I learned include how astonishingly convoluted legal language can be even when it is written clearly, but also the five (five!) different meanings of the simple phrase 'Time flies like an arrow'. Highly recommended to all, although probably most interesting to lawyers and sisters.

The Honorary Consul
by Graham Greene

"In a provincial Argentinian town a group of revolutionaries kidnap the wrong man. Their victim - Charley Fortnum, the 'Honorary Consul' - is sixty-one years old, living on whisky and his disputed status as British consul."

He is very earnest, old Graham Greene. You can feel the pain of his conflict with the Catholic Church in this novel, and the penultimate chapter is very fine indeed. But I'm still giving myself worthy books to read and I really should go for something more entertaining for a change.

Love Among the Chickens
by P. G. Wodehouse

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"The irrepressible scrounger Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge and his jolly new wife Molly have identified Dorset as an ideal place to set up a chicken farm. They take with them the author Jeremy Garnet, who plans to swim and play golf alongside his writing, but finds life more complicated than he expected."

An early book in the author's career, but pretty successful as far as I'm concerned. I downloaded it in six weekly podcast instalments, and first it amused me that the American narrator pronounced 'Featherstonehaugh' as 'feather stone huff. Why on earth should he know about this ridiculous and archaic quirk of the English language? Then it amused me that by episode 6 he was correctly saying 'fan shaw'. How did he find out? Will he now go back and correct the early episodes too?

Writing for Pleasure and Profit
by Michael Legat

"Brimming with useful advice and tips, this guide to writing warns against common pitfalls and teaches you how to adopt a professional attitude towards your work."

Written in 1986, which is when I first thought about writing for a living. How times have changed! No need to pay a typist, or wait for a publisher's reply to come in the post, or hope that your bundle of paper will be returned so you don't have to type it again from the carbon in order to submit it to another publisher. No need to write to the BBC to ask for a copy of their guide 'Writing for the BBC' to be sent in the post. It would be interesting to discover how authors approach publishers and submit their work for scrutiny these days.

Nurse Rosenberg

Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain, November 2016

For the last few days Sister D and I have been standing in for mum at the parental manse, while she goes off to visit her brother in Seattle and then, of all places, Las Vegas. Lola II has gone with her, while Sister D and I have a full list of instructions that is seven pages long. So far, nobody has been murdered.

The campaign started when I arrived the night before the flight to find that mum needed help packing while dad reported a horrible dream about the plane being shot down by the King of Jordan and everyone dying in the resulting explosion. Over the next 12 hours the dream acquired the status of a premonition, and we all regularly had to withstand dad's heartfelt pleas for mum and Lola II to change their flight plans.

On the day of the flight I accompanied mum to the airport, which was not without its own stresses as we could find absolutely nowhere to park at the tube station and we were delayed by about 20 minutes while I drove about looking for a space. The train we boarded then changed its destination half way, but all's well that ends well and we got there in three hours. I returned by exactly the same route in less than two hours. Mum and Lola II were delayed three hours on the tarmac as someone on the plane was ill, but no mid-air explosions ensued. Since dad's premonition was been revealed to be false, he declared that he will no longer believe or tell us about any of his dreams. This resolution lasted less than 24 hours.

My responsibilities are few - I have to admit the carers in the morning and evening, admit the cleaner and do the laundry on Friday, supply meals and medications, and deal with any parental emergencies that arise. No emergencies have arisen, thank goodness, because I am supremely confident of my skills in opening the front door, the pill box and the fridge and working the cooker and microwave, but much less confident about dealing with emergencies. The main change I have instituted is to force dad to make his own breakfast, which he is perfectly able to do.

I also have a list of things mum would quite like done before she gets back, and a list of boring jobs that I would quite like to do before they get back (you know - insurance renewals, utility contracts, reviewing all the fancy multimedia hardware that Mr MHX specified last weekend) and altogether there isn't as much free time as I had anticipated. I have brought many toys, games, books and DVDs, and the fabric for the dress I promised Lola II about two years ago. When I spread it out on the table ready to go I discovered that and not enough had been supplied. I really should have checked at the time, but it's obviously much too late now to make a fuss. It will make a lovely top.

So I have spray painted the copper pipes to the new boiler in the kitchen, gone for a run (the first for at least a year), met two different school friends for coffee and hosted Sunday lunch with Sister D and Cousin Y. I had a look at the fan heater that had stopped working, squeezed into the cupboard under the stairs to have check the fuse box and discovered it was the old type and entirely unlabelled. So I went back to the fan heater to turn it on so I could tell from the light whether the power was off, and it spontaneously came back to life. Result. Next day the carer said yes, it works intermittently, so no result after all.

Visitors

Spain, November 2016

Another step has been taken towards the finished kitchen - Ilf has done all the required paintwork of kitchen and utility room walls, ceilings, doors, sills and skirting, put up a shelf and added a doorstop. He even reproached me for a mark I'd accidentally made on one of the freshly-painted doors, and repainted it for me. Now there's only tiling left to do, and I've started measuring and photographing so I'll be more prepared when I go to the tile shops. I also need to clean the windows now that everything inside is so clean and fresh. It is beautiful, and the sun came out and the kitchen is the brightest room in the house.

Lola II and Mr M visited just before the final wall colour went on. Those who know Lola II will be aware that she is, how can I put this, not altogether comfortable in low temperatures. She tends to avoid Lola Towers between the months of November and February. But mid-March, that should be fine, shouldn't it? Unfortunately no, the Second Coming of the Beast from the East meant sub-zero temperatures and many duvets and hot water bottles. She managed, just.

Due to the demise of the television we went out to the cinema on Saturday night to see 'The Shape of Water', which I think I liked more than Lola II or Mr M did. We took hot water bottles with us. Other activities included visiting a wool and accessories shop to feed Lola II's current obsession with crochet, and playing a new game that we were shown at New Year called 'Codenames'. It was lovely to be able to play in comfort in the kitchen.

Mr and Mrs MXF have also visited. Mr MXF is my multimedia consultant (and friend), and was very patient and repeated all the information many times until I worked out what it all meant. As far as modern technology is concerned I am apparently living in the Stone Age, which doesn't surprise me because in order to stay up to date one needs to own a teenager or work in the TV and Movie Bizniss like Mr MXF does.

Mr and Mrs MXF are very keen on voice activation, which I am resisting at the moment. There was an amusing interlude at Currys when a poor employee who looked about 15 years old tried to tell us that the voice activation devices do not store the conversation that they hear, and was very much put right on that matter. I now have many options to equip my house with the modern audio and video systems I crave. Mrs MXF is in a similar position to myself not only vis-a-vis modern technology but also in the way that she loves the work she does but not the people with whom she does it.

There has been lots of badminton, and work provides unusable blog material from the usual clinics and education sessions that I can't write about. We are, however, expecting a visit from the Care Quality Commission, which is the body that oversees good practice in healthcare institutions. Our last inspection revealed some flaws so we are being brainwashed with messages about Values, Pride, Safeguards, the Mental Capacity Act and rather a lot of other issues that don't apply in the outpatient department where I work.

As part of this focus on quality there was a three-line whip for all dietitians to attend a very important meeting about an issue arising from the death of a patient and subsequent investigation where nutrition played a part. I couldn't get out of a prior commitment, which turned out to be lucky because while it is true that lessons could be learned from the investigation, they were not lessons that had any relevance at all to my role.

I do stuff and stuff gets done

Trois Vallees, France, March 2018

I've been away and then very much over-committed in the evenings. Work is mildly annoying, skiing was great, badminton is similarly great, and meditation is OK (we've had a change of group leader and I'm having to get used to a different style). Ilf has varnished and painted a whole lot of stuff, plus he kindly switched my fridge door round and did a few other small jobs. He's due to be back again next week to finish the painting, after which there will be tiling. I have visited a tile shop and had a very entertaining conversation with one of the employees who I hope will be guiding my tile choices - now I have to measure the kitchen, which perhaps with hindsight I should have done before going to the shop.

That's all for now. Life is hectic.