bish blog

See, you never know how the day is going to go…  As Chairman of the Parish Council and local Tree Warden too, when I was faced with a parishioners complaint about a gorgeous but ponderously large Weeping Willow, I sought advice from the county Tree Officer.  We met under the fronds of the Willow, which is already the subject of a TPO (tree preservation order) and discussed they ways we might address the concerns of the resident while protecting the best interests of the tree – which in fairness could use another pollarding.

Pollarding is a process whereby the upper limbs of a tree are removed, either to control the size of the tree or for obtaining wood for fuel.  Compare this with coppicing where the limbs are cut at the base, creating vigorous growth due to the disproportionately large root ball. Pollarding generally extends the life of the tree as it remains smaller and lighter, and less liable to wind damage.  The Willow in question was last pollarded in 2005, and will now be done again once the paperwork has gone through (you can’t even prune a TPO’d tree, without the permission of the county council).

After we’d sorted out the Willow, I suggested we look at an old Oak I had discovered on farmland nearby – old and hollowed, and at some time set alight on the inside…

I wasn’t aware, but you can’t simply slap a TPO onto any tree, no matter how ‘valuable’  it’s deemed to be, unless it’s under threat. This one isn’t, although development is not so very far away… The Tree Officer was very taken with my find, which is an English Oak and not merely Ancient but Veteran, and had been pollarded for wood over centuries.  What things this tree had witnessed, and will witness yet… And then he was taken with the Ancient Oak a hundred yards away, and the one at the end of the field… lol

We started talking about how these trees should be ‘known about’ by parish and county councils, so that they might be protected should development come to their locale.  That then is the first new project – to identify by GPS the precise location of each major tree and file this along with a photgraph of the tree, building up a database of our local stock.  But wait, there are so many great trees here… we should make people aware too.  And there’s project number two. In the spring, I will be organising a Tree Walk around the village, along with a few experts, to show people what they already see but seldom actually notice.  And I expect we’ll end up at a pub.  So if you’re in the area around next May Day…

So the Prius has got 58,905 miles on the clock and has to go back at 60,000. What to do, what to do…?

I was recently asked by someone on Facebook if I could recommend the Prius as a company car. So many Facebook folk had simply laughed and poured scorn on the idea, but then they had never owned on. Most had never sat in one. At least I could offer some real-world insight (oops, nod to the cmpetition from Honda). So, brief summation, good and bad.

Firstly, I didn’t get the super high mileage that was advertised – 65mpg – but then I never have got the rated economy on any car I’ve run. I fear I’m an anorak and spreadsheet my fuel use, so I can tell you with utter conviction that rather than 65mpg I’ve got over fifty miles per gallon on average since day one, and my last ten fills average 54mpg. I do a lot of motoway miles, by the way. Mostly with cruise control at 77mph. Now, folk will crow and tell you that they get fifty from their [insert your preferred wagon here], but when asked no-one can prove it beyond the awful inaccuracy of the trip computer. They are all diesels too, and this is petrol, and have you noticed the pump prices are drifting apart again right now? The new third-gen Prius is advertised as capable of 72mpg and a work colleague is getting mid-sixties.

This Prius is not gutless, but if you are any sort of a petrol-head you’d disagree. Pushed, 0-60 is the same as my old 2.0 diesel 307SW at about ten seconds. Running, even on motorways, is reasonably quiet but if you accelerate hard the engine goes straight to sewing machine mode as it chooses the most effective rpm. On the other hand, at slow speeds it is curiously silent and of course is likewise silent at the traffic lights – to the point you can listen to other cars stereos and even passenger conversations as they speak over their own engine noise! The third-gen Prius up’s the engine from 1500cc to 1.8 litre, which apparently makes motorway work more economical.

Folk whitter on about the small boot size, assuming for some reason that the boot is where the batteries are – they’re under the rear seats. The boot in fact comes in several layers – under the tonneau cover is a large enough boot for three good sized suitcases. Beneath that is a plastic boot big enough to take my three laptops with ease, as well as the toolkit, red triangle and fire extinguisher etc. And finally, under all that is the space-saver wheel. Now admittedly, this does make it hard if you get a puncture when fully loaded, but that has seldom happened to me.

Others have commented on the recent Toyota recalls, but if you look to the actual government recall lists you’ll find every manufacturer on there. Toyota was noticeable only by having so few recalls to date.

The killer is of course the company car tavable benfit, which is miserly. While the government maintains the tax advantage on low emission vehicles (89g/km… and this is a five seater able to fit adults into every seat remember) then the car is about a third cheaper to me than any other comparable vehicle (I’m not at liberty to run my own vehicle for work and have to lease a car on the three-year-or-60,000-miles system).

Finally, over the thirty months and 60,000 miles I’ve not had one failure of the car aside from punctures. It’s been wonderfully relaxing driving an automatic – if a tad boring. When it snowed earlier this year and all the BMW drivers phoned in car-sick the Prius sailed through. In fact I tried on a private road to make it go daft in the snow and it simply wouldn’t. I even did an emergency brake manouver in the snow while cornering at speed, and it just slowed to a stop in very good order. Only once did I make it beep at me!

So yes, I’m getting rid of the Prius… I’ve ordered another Prius.

We’ve got feathers now, and an intimidating stare…! Still not sure (haven’t looked) if we’re a boy chook or a girl chook, and unsure what the future holds if we decide to grow some.

Little chook is a month old now, and has survived being left to its own devices. No special treatment, no special food. For the first couple of weeks she and her foster mother (a Welsummer, not the White Sussex in the background) stayed outside on straw beneath the coop. Eventually, the chick managed to climb, leap, wobble, collapse up the ladder into the coop and it’s been overnighting in there with the rest of the girls ever since.

In with the chickens this morning, I found a new visitor!

So Miss and miss came back from a week’s camping in Brittany, and I was going through their photographs (as you do) when I went ‘hmmm, that looks familiar…’

What is it about some places that causes one to pause and ponder, to take a picture? Whatever it is, this place has it. 2004 and 2010 versions!

Spot the difference? How many can you see? Click the pic for a larger version.

One of our Welsummers went broody a while ago. For a time we just kept moving her out of the coop into the run, hoping she’d forget the idea, but she insisted on returning and laying, superbly hot and shaped like a deflated football shaped non-flying saucer. In the end one of my parish council colleagues Toby, who is helping with the burial ground, gave me three fertilised – or possibly fertilised – eggs at the start of July, and we pushed them underneath…

This morning, when I went for the eggs, I found a surprise!

The ‘mum’ appears happy with her new responsibility, shielding it from the other girls – and from me! The chick is eating mash and crushed weetabix, and taking from the water drinker. Time will tell if it survives the heat, the other girls and the predators (no foxes (I think the Berkeley hunt took every one just before the ban) but sparrowhawks, magpies etc). There are two other eggs in the coop, now currently abandoned but presumably soon to be sat on again. I wonder, though, if this chook chick will make it back up the ladder into the coop tonight… guess I have a duty to perform as foster-father…

Thought I’d mention this. I noticed in our monthly Council circular: Digital versions of Ordnance Survey (OS) Maps have been made freely available to the public at http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendata. A while ago I was trying to get all the Rights of Way routes in our Parish made available on the Parish Council website, but fell slightly foul of the licensing agreements that existed at the time. Hopefully this will mean I can get them up online and augmented with photographs, making for photo-tours of the green trails around Charfield.

Well, the BUPA membership has sat in my list of salary benefits for many years, unused and doing little but accruing deductions for taxable benefit… until now. Feeling slightly un-British at the thought of queue jumping I got referred by my NHS doctor for sleep clinic. Some of you will know I can be a tad… noisy… during the night. Some might even accuse me of snoring…

Well the snoring has got so bad now that I’m suffering hearing loss, and waking myself up (according to Miss) every few minutes. Just enough to ruin sleep but not enough for me to actually be aware of waking, so that I wake up tired, irritable and deaf!

So, with a letter of referral from my doc, and my BUPA membership certificate in hand I make an appointment at Spire Hospital Bristol, musing that in my youth the site used to home Tiffany’s Nightclub, where I did my best to go deaf, headbanging to Rock on Tuesdays (but don’t wear boots because the bouncers would stamp on your feet, checking for steel toecaps…). The letter of appointment duly arrives (very fast), and I make a newbie courtesy call to BUPA to find out how the process works…

I’m not covered. Sleep deprivation, apnoea and consequent symptoms are not covered. Now, do I feel more British as I can now queue up for treatment under the good old NHS, or do I rant about bloody useless private health insurance? Ok, it’s both, thirded with a committment to opt out of the bloody useless nonsense as soon as possible. Hey ho, bring on the ear plugs.

I’m banging my head against the wall with my calendars at the moment. Google suggests I’m not alone…

I keep my diary in Outlook 2007, synchronising with my iTouch. To facilitate wireless synchronising I also have them talking to a MobileMe account. All has been well for ages, but recently what has started to happen is that diary events in one application will synchronise on another one day offest – but not all of them!!! It’s doing my nugget!

If I set an all day event in Outlook for Monday, it will come up on the iTouch as Sunday! If I set a timed event it will synchronise fine. But some all day events are synchronising fine too – they appear to be historic events such as repeating birthdays…

It’s got to be something that is related to time zones and GMT/BST shifts; it only became a noticeable issue after summer time popped up. I can’t find it though. My iTouch and my Outlook are both set to London time with BST changes effected. As far as I can tell so is MobileMe. However, since MobileMe isn’t a free service, and since I don’t tend to rely in wireless synchronising, I’ve deleted this aspect of life and the problem still exists…

I’ve restored my iTouch to no avail.

I’ve used and relied upon an electronic diary since my old Palm V and I’ve never had this. I’m stumped. I can’t rely on my diary! I may have to go back to a bloody paper diary for now, and hopefully someone will come up with an idea. Hopefully soon, because I can’t read my own handwriting scrawl!!! Hmm, but I suppose I can simply use the iTouch and not read the Outlook calendar… Oh help.

Test: create an all day event on the iTouch and synchronise… Create iTouch event test1 Sunday 2 May – synch to Outlook – Outlook event is 01:00 Sunday 2 May to 01:00 Monday 3 May. Event is time shifted one hour forward.

Test: create an all day event in Outlook and synchronise… Create Outlook event test2 Sunday 25 march – synch to iTouch – iTouch event is all day Saturday 24 March. Event is time shifted one day backwards.

But if the iTouch only relies on the start time and the all-day marker then it could be that it is time shifted back one hour, which makes it more consistent with the previous test… So we’re still looking (write lokiing first time, made oi laff. it’s his kind of prank) for a GMT/BST thing.