Reading the dots

During recent weeks there has been a serious outbreak of music in my family. I don’t know how it started but my daughter, Jennie, is now practising her tenor saxophone regularly and reverts to the trumpet now and then just for a change. Coincidentally, The Jobbing Doctor has ambitions involving the tenor sax and it will be interesting to read how he gets on with it. My older grandson (named Handsome in our blogs) now has a violin (his choice) and has made a good start with a half-size instrument. Meanwhile his younger brother, Cheeky, looks as if he is going to be a guitar man, his current instrument being a small version - though we noticed that he paid a lot of attention to a rather nice mandolin on a recent visit to our local music shop. Since then he has discovered electric guitars and, being an ambitious five-year-old, he wants one.
As for me, well, some time ago I bought a secondhand clarinet with no very clear idea whether I would have enough “puff” to get a sound out of it. As it turned out I had, but only up to “open G” above which I couldn’t get as much as a squeak. So I sought the advice of Jennie’s friend, Maria, who had played a clarinet in her teens and had even survived the music education system up to a high grade. Maria correctly identified the lower joint of the clarinet as the general area wherein lay the source of the problem but the exact cause could not be found. I  set about looking for a local repairer and was very lucky indeed to find a lovely old gentleman just a few miles from my home whose woodwind repairirng activities were little more than a hobby these days as he was in his eighties (though certainly didn’t look it). He was clearly very knowledgeable.  On my first visit we chatted for an hour while he examined the clarinet and carried out various checks and made small adjustments. I learnt a great deal about clarinets in that hour but eventually it was clear that the specific problem in my instrument would remain a mystery until some systematic dismantling was done. So I agreed to leave the clarinet with him and go home to await his call when it was ready in perhaps a couple of weeks time. Then, without any prompting at all from me, and to my great surprise, he handed me another clarinet and suggested that I use it to practise while he was fixing mine. I was delighted. That was what I call service and there is not much of it about these days but the story didn’t end there.

My Selmer Bundy was fixed and ready for collection the very next day. The damage to a small pad on the lower joint had been invisible prior to dismantling and a second, slightly damaged pad was also changed as a precaution. The cost of the repair was small and, in my opinion) didn’t even cover the time spent checking and adjusting on the previous day. Meanwhile, I had been trying out the borrowed clarinet. My Selmer is made of Resonite (a hard plastic-like material) but the borrowed Corton was made of wood and wasI (I suspect) a bit older because it was made in Czechoslovakia – I think that later models were made in the USA and if anyone has any information about this I would be interested to hear from them. The Corton was fairly easy to play, despite my lack of experience, and it had a lovely tone. So I bought it.

At about this time I heard from Jennie that Maria had always wanted to play the violin but had been diverted to the clarinet after starting, like so many of us, with the recorder. Recently she has been given a new violin as an early birthday present. So we struck a deal whereby she would give me some instruction on the clarinet while I would give her some basic guidance regarding the violin.
I have always thought it much more fun to learn and to play a musical instrument in the company of others  than to struggle along alone. I can see great potential for duets, trios and even larger combinations a few months hence.

Another domestic project almost finished.

I have been quite busy lately though mainly with the sort of domestic activities that must be of minimal interest to anyone else, like mowing the lawn, putting up shelves and renovating the interior of our tiny garden shed plus, of course, my quota of the routine daily chores. It is amazing how fast a lawn grows when the weather is hot and interspersed with showers.
A better arrangement of shelves was needed in the garden shed and I decided to go further and repaint the interior while I was at it, thus brightening it up for the Head Gardener. She hadn’t said anything but I sensed that she was not as enthusiastic about her shed as I might have expected – and it wasn’t hard to see why. The ceiling in the shed comprised three roughly cut plywood panels nailed to the roof  joists.  Long stretches of the edges of these panels touched neither each other nor the walls. Thus, instead of isolating the main body of the shed from the roof space, the ceiling simply provided a nice dark shelter for a great variety of spiders and other multi-legged critters from which they could and did invade and colonise the shed itself. Though the shed roof is weatherproof it is not dustproof. What with the dust and the webs and the rest it was not an environment in which one would wish to sit for long.
So I emptied the shed, ripped out the old shelves and took a bit of time removing the old ceiling so as to preserve the main panels to be used again.  I have now reached the stage at which the new ceiling is in and sealed, and the ceiling and walls have had two coats of paint with one more to go. A couple of tubes of decorators filler have taken care of the larger holes and crevices in and between the  concrete blocks in the walls and a long gap between the window ledge and the wall beneath has been filled with mortar.  Eventually, all the shelves will be finished in brilliant white gloss paint.

Jobs of this sort can be very tedious but I have a great tool for overcoming that problem. It is the Sony MP4 player shown in the picture above. I don’t spend much time watching TV or listening to the radio, there is far too much rubbish being broadcast and I cannot be bothered to dredge through the Radio Times or other guides in search of the few gems that are worth seeing and/or hearing (though some of those gems are finding me now via Twitter but that is another story).  Instead, when free to choose I prefer to divide my time between glorious silence and listening to the sort of music that I mentioned a while ago in another post. My MP4 player has a memory of 8Gb of which about half is now occupied by my favourite music. The sound quality is remarkably good through the standard earphones and battery life is excellent. Though the Walkman/Ipod idea is far from new, it is amazing to me still that so much music can be stored and played in such a small player and is thus available just about anywhere – including when there is boring work to be done in the garden shed.
The musical activity has become even more varied recently – but more about that in the next post.

Malta

We have returned recently from a short holiday in Malta.  “We” being Granny Anne and myself and our daughter Jennie  and her family (known on her blog as husband GG and the two boys Handsome and Cheeky, who are aged eight and five respectively). We flew from Heathrow both ways by Air Malta in an Airbus A320 and both flights were fairly free of turbulence and actually quite enjoyable, including the on-board food.  I am grateful to Mr Adrian Pingstone of Bristol for the fine picture above (which he generously placed in the public domain) showing an Airbus A320 approaching Heathrow Airport.
 

 This was part of the view from our third floor apartment overlooking Valletta across the broad stretch of water where Sliema Creek joins Marsamxett Harbour with Manoel Island just outside the right edge of the picture.  A feature of Maltese architecture is that most buildings have balconies and I gained the impression that in built-up areas these are likely to be the only private outdoor space. 

 This was the bus that took us to Marsaxlokk on the Sunday for the open-air market. The driver, who seemed to be in his 60’s, had a picture of The Virgin Mary mounted in his cab area together with a set of rosary beads and it was soon apparent that these were essential accessories in the absence of any evidence of the existence of a highway code. Our driver liked driving his bus, flat out. As a fairly old vehicle, of which there were many in Malta, it must have been quite well maintained to have lasted so long – though the mainly dry climate must have helped. However, undaunted by the squeaks and rattles and bangs that reminded me vivedly of school buses in the 1950s, our driver worked on the principle that as the acceleration was a bit dated it was essential to get the bus up to its maximum speed and then keep it there, come what may.

 

The Sunday Market at Marsaxlokk was interesting but not as varied in local goods and crafts as we had expected. However, the stalls ran for some distance around the edge of the harbour and there were plenty of the chracteristic Maltese boats to be seen as shown in the two pictures above.  This style of boat, called a luzzu, very tall and pointed at bow and stern, is said to date back at least to the Phoenicians, around 4,000 years.

 
I believe that this smaller version of the luzzu is a water taxi. What a great way to travel!

This is the ferry that spends its days crossing back and forth between Sliema and Valletta. Granny Anne and I went to Vallette by bus one day and returned on  the ferry. The reason for doing it this way was that from the ferry to the centre of Valletta there is no avoiding a long, steep hill, so steep that the pavements are stepped. So rather than tiring ourselves at the beginning of what proved to be a very enjoyable day in Valletta, we chose to walk DOWN the hill at the end of the day instead. I had to photograph the cycle racks and the sign at the Sliema end of the ferry ride.  

Mdina, The Silent City, previously the capital of Malta until 1571 but now with only around 200 residents who are the only people allowed to have permits to take cars into the city.  Our quick impression of this city, of tall stone buildings and narrow streets and the occasional horse-drawn transport for the tourists, was favourable. Granny Anne and I visted Mdina as part of the North Island bus tour from Sliema on which the buses run on a circular route every hour. You can stay on the bus until you complete the tour, or get off at your choice of locations and catch the next bus, an hour later, to continue. We hoped to see some of Mdina and find a quick lunch. However, we wasted a lot of time at the first restaurant that we found because the service was so slow. In the end, worried about missing our bus, we left without even ordering.
There is a lot to see in Mdina, given the time and the guidebook, and we would like to go again – but not to the same restaurant.
 

 The Mosta Church and Dome has, arguably, as beautiful an interior is you could wish for in any church worldwide. In addition to the high altar there are six side chapels around the perimeter of the interior and the decoration throughout is simply magnificent and yet without feeling at all ostentatious or excessive. The Mosta Dome is famous for (among other things) being penetrated by a German bomb during World War Two. Apparently the bomb fell among the congregation but failed to explode and no-one was hurt.  Two other bombs were deflected by the dome and failed to penetrate.
There was something strangely compelling about this church, something that transcended the sheer beauty of the interior and was in no way diminished by the work of the two or three people who were cleaning or rearranging things as I sat and tried to take it all in. 
It was a great week in Malta and the weather was very hot throughout our stay by UK standards. We hope to go again – though avoiding July and August when even the Maltese think it is hot.  Apart from revisiting Valletta, Mdine and Mosta there is a lot more of the main island to be seen and the smaller island of Gozo deserves a visit as well. Next March or April perhaps? We shall see.

Raleigh/Ikea folding bike manual

I have just received a reply to my email of a week ago to Raleigh, asking whether they could supply either a hard copy or a digital copy of the owner’s manual that was supplied with the Ikea folding bike. They say that they have neither this nor any other manual in either format.
The particular reason for my request was to find out exactly how the bike was supposed to be folded to fit the bag that was supplied with it. So I am no wiser and, though one or two owners of this bike have commented from time to time, none has volunteered this information. However, if they bought their bikes secondhand they might not have acquired a manual or even a bag with it.
So please will a kind owner of an Ikea bike supply this vital information?

The Gurkha Justice Campaign

After a short holiday I have returned to good news and am delighted to include here the following email from Joanna Lumley on behalf of the Gurkha Justice Campaign:

“At midday today, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made the announcement to the House of Commons that the Gurkha Justice Campaign have been fighting for for years. All ex-Gurkhas who have served more than 4 years in the British Army will have the right to settle in the UK if they wish.

“After such a long fight, with huge ups and downs, this is a superb announcement.

“We simply would not have won this fight without the massive, overwhelming support of all those who have supported our campaign. To the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed Gurkha Justice petitions, lobbied their MP, campaigned, attended rallies and marches – thank you so much to you all. This is your victory. It would not have happened without you.

“The Government has now responded to that campaign after court cases, votes in Parliament, a huge media campaign and, most importantly, massive public support. I am delighted, and humbled, at what has been achieved by our remarkable team.

“The whole campaign has been based on the belief that those who have fought and been prepared to die for our country should have the the right to live in our country. We owe them a debt of honour – a debt that will now be paid.

“With warmest good wishes,

“Joanna
www.gurkhajustice.org.uk“

There was also an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website and The Government has published the following response to that petition:

“We received a petition asking:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to give all Ex Gurkha soldiers and their families who have served our country British citizenship on leaving the service.”

“The Government’s response

“For many years, the Brigade of Gurkhas have shown bravery, commitment and dedication in serving this country, and continue to do so on operations today.

“This Government has done more for Gurkhas than any other. It was the first Government to grant settlement to Gurkhas and the first to equalise pay and pensions, with over 6,000 former Gurkhas and their families already given the right to live in the UK.  In April we took steps to increase the number of Gurkhas eligible to come to this country by 4,000 or, including families, 10,000 people.

“The House of Commons has now expressed a clear view that all Gurkhas should be entitled to settle in the United Kingdom if that is what they wish.

“This Government respects the will of the House of Commons and recognises the strong feeling and public support for this cause.  Consequently, we have announced today that all former Gurkhas who served for longer than four years will be eligible to apply for settlement in the United Kingdom.  They will also be entitled to bring their spouses and dependent minor children.  There will be no time limit on applications. 

“This scheme recognises the unique nature of the service given to the UK by the Brigade of Gurkhas and is offered to them on an exceptional basis.

“We believe that in announcing the new policy today, we have met their concerns and those of Parliament.”

Dram’s story. Part 5

Dram was not destined to have a long life. He developed a small lump on his chest. It remained small for a long time and the vet said that it didn’t seem to be bothering him and if it wasn’t bothering us we could ignore it. In retrospect we concluded that this had been bad advice and that the lump should have been removed while it was small.  Eventually it began to grow. Basically the vets adopted a wait and see attitude and long after they could have sorted the problem they announced that its size and location made it too dangerous to operate – and there was no treatment.
In those final months Dram behaved perfectly normally almost to the very end. He had always approached life with enthusiasm, welcoming each new day energetically,  greeting us on our return from shopping trips etc. with boundless excitement and helping to cheer us when times were difficult. None of this changed and all I was concerned about was that, when the time came, his end would be swift and as painless as possible.
On a Sunday in December 1997 he ate only half of his breakfast and none of his evening meal. This was serious, even though in other respects he behaved normally, trotting across our front lawn at the end of his evening walk, tail up, as if without a care in the world. Later, though, he became restless and I stayed up with him all night, able to do little but keep him company and take him out when he seemed to need it.
By breakfast time the following day my duty to Dram was clear. To his credit the vet came very quickly and it was all over in no time.
Lots of dog owners will have had to make the same decision. It was awful and all the more so because it was December 9th, his ninth birthday.

Dram’s story. Part 4.

 

You couldn’t fool Dram, even when he was asleep. Judging by his expression here as he gazes towards the kitchen, my guess is that he was having a nap when someone opened “his” biscuit cupboard.  I  reckon he is about half a second away from galloping to the kitchen.
As he got older we allowed him more concessions. For example he was allowed to climb the step from the living room and view our eating habits from closer quarters in the breakfast room. He was always curious but also very careful. He seemed to have a golden rule of his own in that he never touched anything that was on a table or other piece of furniture but if an item of food was on the floor then that was his, no question. In fact it didn’t need to be on the floor; on the way to the floor was good enough for him - its chances of reaching the floor were almost negligible. Being curious though, meant that he would put the very ends of his paws on the edge of the table from time to time just to peer over the top and see what was there. This was not a problem as he only looked and never touched.
However, there was one very funny episode that got him into trouble with Jennie. We each had a small cake on a plate and my wife and I had taken ours to the living room. Jennie had left hers on the breakfast room table while she went into her bedroom for a moment. When she returned, the plate was in the same place but the cake had gone. By chance I witnessed what had happened. Dram had put his paws on the table for a closer look at the cake but had accidentally caught the edge of the plate with a claw. The plate tipped suddenly, propelling the cake into the air where it described a really neat arc about three feet above Dram’s head before falling behind him. As the plate settled back into place Dram turned like a flash and no part of that cake reached the carpet. He left no clues. It was the perfect crime.

 Dram could take any amount of fussing. If Granny Anne stopped tickling him under his chin he would simply nudge her arm to start again. If she was watching TV or reading a book, or otherwise ignoring him he would nudge her elbow until she paid attention. If this didn’t work he had other ways to atract her attention including launching into his party trick, which was to spin round suddenly in the middle of the floor, grab his tail in his mouth and take it to her, walking sideways but taking good care to look where he was going. Then he would bring it to me – and both of us would make a fuss and tell him how clever he was.

It is widely recognised by now that our canine friends have “powers”, for want of a better word, that we hardly understand. I am not thinking here so much about their ability to “read” our moods and feelings and behave accordingly, amazing though that is, but of something more mysterious. Dram gave us reason to think about these aspects a few times. For example, through much of his life I worked from home but went away to work once per fortnight. These trips involved being away from home for anything from 12 hours to around 60 hours, returning in the evening or early hours of the morning. There was no way of predicting exactly when I would arrive home. Despite this, 20 minutes before I arrived, Dram would move to the back door, even though his bed was only a couple of feet away,  and wait there for me. His accuracy was eerie. 
I am sure that Jennie and Granny Anne could tell you a lot more about Dram, but my version of his story is almost finished.

 

 

 

Dram’s story. Part 3.

Dram’s bed was near the back door so that it was nearby when he returned from a walk. The bed had a removable cover, plus a spare, and these were washed at regular intervals and he was always excited to be given a freshly washed bed cover.
The location of his bed also helped him to guard the door. On one occasion when I was away from home for a couple of days our neighbour called. On getting no response to her knocks she let herself  in, closed the door behind her and called for my wife who was at the other end of the house. Although our neighbour visited quite often and was known to Dram, he didn’t let her get any further, in my wife’s absence from the room. He was not at all threatening. He didn’t even bark. Instead, he leaned against her knees and held her against the door until my wife arrived.
Mind you, if anyone approached the house that he didn’t know, or didn’t like, the growl would start somewhere near his tail, a low resonant note gradually building in tone and volume as it worked its way forward, finally bursting forth as thunderous barking accompanied by a most intimidating display of large teeth. We knew that he probably wouldn’t harm anyone, other than to lick them to death but strangers didn’t know that.

Like any sensible dog Dram loved to be the centre of attention and of course I spoiled him. Who wouldn’t? When he was very small I would sit him on my knee as I sat on the sofa. A bit later he found that he could jump up on to my knee – so long as I caught him so that he didn’t fall down again. This became part of the routine and it never really stopped – even when he had grown to around 80 lb in weight!  Otherwise he never jumped on to furniture but eventually we allowed him one exception to this rule – he was allowed, for a short time each day, to occupy the righthand end of the sofa as you can see in the picture above.  It was a great place for a nap! It was also a great vantage point from which to see whether anything interesting was happening in the kitchen.

Dram’s story. Part 2.

In the picture above Dram is 18 weeks old, weighs 50 lb and can pull himself up and lean on the side of his pen quite easily. At this age he barked only in his sleep. It was at about this time that he learnt to escape from his pen by shaking the side of it until the catch fell open. However, in his entire life he did hardly any damage inside or outside the house and soon we were sufficiently confident in him to discard the pen and buy him a luxurious bed, which was very much to his liking.
From the large living/dining room in which Dram spent his early months there was a step up to the rest of the house. This was a sufficient obstacle in itself in the early days and when he showed signs of climbing that step we trained him not to do it. So, three times a day you would find him stretched out on the living room floor, with his chin on that step, noting every scrap of food that we consumed at our mealtimes. He was always fed first – a hangover from my farming days – but he would still stare at us as if he hadn’t been fed for a week!
Another of Dram’s traits, and one that surprised me, was his devotion to cleanliness. It was almost feline. He was brushed and combed regularly and loved all that attention but it was inevitable that he would get muddy from time to time. On coming back to the house he would go straight to his bed and stay there, happily preening himself, until clean and dry.

“Me and my dog”. Jennie was about 10 years old here. Dram would walk miles and we devised a routine which included taking him out six times daily, mostly around our own large garden but also around the local country lanes.
His meals and their timing evolved as he grew. There were several wall cupboards in the kitchen which looked the same and (to us) sounded the same when their doors were opened and closed. One of them housed Dram’s biscuits. Even if he was 30 feet away in a different room it was simply not possible to open that particular cupboard without him noticing and arriving at your feet almost instantly. This happened only when “his” cupboard was opened, never with the others. When he had grown out of the puppy diet most of his meals consisted of mixer, topped with Pedigree Chum of one sort of another and followed by Shapes biscuits and a Bonio. At least once a week we would vary his diet by sharing our roast meal. The beef or chicken took the place of the Chum and he also enjoyed the roast potatoes, peas and gravy, all of which was topped off artistically with a Yorkshire pudding. Granny Anne made little round Yorkshire puddings, about three inches in diameter. There was always one for each of us including Dram. He would pick his off the top of the food in his dish and close his mouth aroumd it with both cheeks bulging. Then he would look at us as if to say “What do I do now?” If we had sausages, we cooked an extra one for Dram. If we opened those plastic yoghurt pots with the peel-off foil lids, Dram would lick the yoghurt off the underside of the lids for us. He was always obliging like that. “News at Ten” on the TV was the signal for Dram’s supper, just a light snack of three Shapes and a Bonio. Wherever he was in the house, as soon as the music started to introduce the news he would trot around, gazing at each one of us in turn to see whether anyone had noticed what time it was.

Dram’s story. Part 1.

This is the story of our dog, much abbreviated to make a series of five posts at 48-hour intervals.

Some time in the 1980s my daughter, Jennie, told me that she wanted a dog. At the time neither our environment nor our lifestyle was conducive to ownership of a dog, at least, not what I call a proper dog, so I told her that when we lived in a suitable place we would have a dog.
Well, we moved. From a conventional suburban semi-detached house and gardens we relocated to a large, single-storey rural property with more than an acre of garden adjacent to farmland. Now we could have a dog.
When I was about eight years old, I, too, wanted a dog. It was not to be. But I did have a rather nice book illustrating the best-known dog breeds and after due research the number one breed on my short list was the Golden Retriever.  It was the right sort of size. It was, and is still, in my eyes the most handsome of dogs and it had a reputation for its excellent temperament.  I had a feeling that any dog that was going to live with us would need both patience and a sense of humour. With a young daughter in the house the temperament mattered.
At the end of 1988 we made enquiries and discovered that a friend of a friend had a goldie that had presented her with a lively litter of eight pups on December 9th. Unbeknown to us, this date was to become even more significant. Arrangements were made to view the said litter. As we entered the owner’s kitchen the pups paid no attention at all to us for the very good reason that all eight of them were arranged around the perimeter of a very large dish and were tucking into their evening meal, heads down and tails wagging furiously.
Having cleaned the dish completely, they all set off in different directions to explore the kitchen and play and we didn’t choose any of them. Instead, we were chosen. He wasn’t that much bigger than some of the others but he was inquisitive and clearly a personality. According to the owner he was the King of the Litter and as if to say “Choose me!”, he nibbled my shoe. So we chose him and collected him when he was eight weeks old, in February 1997,  so that he was at home before Jennie arrived from school. 

Quite by chance we had acquired an aristocratic Golden Retriever whose not very distant ancestors included such renowned champions as Camrose Cabus Christopher and Stolford Happy Lad. We gave him a suitable name, following in the somewhat alcoholic tradition started by his mother and to this we added the name of our house making the whole thing look distinctly impressive in the Kennel Club’s records. For the purposes of this blog I will refer to him as Dram (another, albeit unofficial, alcoholic measure).
After a slightly nervous start Dram quickly proved to be happy with us. Our large living/dining room at that time had a parquet floor but we had not yet carpeted it, having been there for a fairly short time. In the picture above he is about 10 weeks old - a mischievous bundle of fur but trying hard to be good. To accomodate him safely, at those times when we couldn’t be in the room with him, I built a wooden pen from the remains of a cupboard that I had dismantled previously. Inside the pen the floor was covered with umpteen layers of newspaper and his food and water bowls were in there with him. I will not attempt to describe the state of the newspaper each morning for the first couple of weeks. Suffice it to say that I would scoop it all up and shove it into the solid fuel boiler (complete with the little white sterilised bones that he used to enjoy) and then start again with fresh paper and freshly washed bowls. By 11 weeks he was house trained. At 14 weeks he weighed 35 lb and liked nothing better than digging molehills while looking sad, yet enjoying himself hugely. By this age he would sit, stay, go to bed and do other things(!) more or less to order.