My monthly round up of other shit ; stuff that’s on my mind and isn’t worth a complete post.
Tinder,Knife & Steel.
I thought to begin episode two of my thread that uses the Bushcraft practitioner’s possible bag with a sideways look at some of the things that ought to be in there. In days past it was custom and practice for a bushcraft instructor to carry a well sharpened fixed blade and full tang knife ; it’s slightly frowned upon now as the plod can only see knives in the context of knife crime – which I have to admit is on the increase in places like Londinium city. Today I carry an EDC (Every Day Carry) folding knife in the pocket of my work apron as I use or need to use a knife on most days that I work.
I remember one time, many years ago, when I was working on my little Hunter Liberty, which i’d overwintered at a small boatyard in nearby Topsham. That morning I was using the excellent blade and useful pliers in my sailors EDC ; my Leatherman Supertool which usually lived in it’s pouch on my belt. That morning was unusual as I was near enough the harbor wall to watch the antics of police trainees and their instructors from Exeter police training school. Some of the instructors were acting out the role of argumentative drunks/baddies ; the idea seemingly to get the trainees to the point where they thought they had to apprehend the wrongdoer.
As it happens I had to take a walk up to the grocery store to fetch fresh milk for my next mug of coffee so off I went – up the gangway to the boatyard’s front gate and the harbor wall. One of the obvious trainees and his erstwhile instructor both good morning sir’d me as I crossed into the high street. I realized that the instructor had clocked that I had a pouch possibly carrying a bladed object and I wondered if I was about to be the next obvious subject for the trainee to have to deal with. As it happens I turned around and walked back to the boat where I took my expensive multitool out of it’s pouch and dropped it in the cockpit : on walking back up the gangway the police instructor kinda/sorta gave me a knowing nod.
New Tools ; Good And Bad.
So, this week I moved into a new workshop apron, having enthused about the one that professional maker Adam Savage made for himself and now sells as a pattern or the real thing made by a local canvas worker that now makes stuff likes bags and totes to sell commercially. The problem with the Savage model is the price given that Californian sales tax and then shipping all have to be added ; even then our luvverly chancellorette seems to want some VAT added. In the end I found a locally made one of the same pattern and moved into that – except that the only way to cope with the heat in the workshop has been to work sans culotte’s (naked). My great but rather stiff new apron now has a spiffing new EDC knife as I treated myself to a new folding knife to work as such.
It’s been an odd week for finding new tools that are great and actually do what it says on the tin but equally buying new tools that are utter garbage. This week’s best buy was a simple glue gun which is super effective when i’m having to make patterns for each plywood panel at the last side of the workshop ; that has to be finished so that the very excellent Sparks can move in and do his stuff. In contrast this month’s very bad buy was a battery powered trim/circular saw that I thought was DeWalt and definitely isn’t. It neither cuts straight or clean but wanders even when I cut using a fence and the blade moves enough that it tears my plywood a new one every time I used it.
Main Construction/Side Projects.
This month the roof is on (workshop) which means that I get to move in and start lining the walls and roof with plywood and insulation. As of time of writing iv’e done the three easy walls and the last one has really slowed me down ; the last wall is not only sloped but also has the angled purlins to work around plus it’s the side with one door and one small window. I’m having to treat this part of the job like building the inside of a boat except that not very much is curved. This weekend i’m down to making one panel every few days as i’m having to make plywood patterns first.
It’s also the week where I have a good idea what the finished floor will comprise of – it’s likely to be sheets of plywood floating on a layer of insulation boards and those over a DPM over the concrete. This week I also found the base of the thing that I would like as the workshop’s center piece ; essentially a long work table and there’s one on Ebay locally. There is also a long dresser base for sale which I might be able to convert into a kitchen unit. Our existing kitchen sink/drainer unit is based on an old sideboard that I got for not very much at the local reclamation yard – it’s long past time to renew that one as it started off shabby in the first place and is now somewhere left of scruffy and beat up – a bit like it’s owner.
The League Of Very Excellent Tradesmen.
As our very excellent builder (Steve) moves out and on to yet another building job, one of his mates (Sparky Mark) moves in to, you guessed it, redo all of the electrics, He wired the place several years ago but with the almost total rebuild of the workshop I had to rip all of the existing wiring out. For the very last part of that I had to get Mark in to ‘safe’ and remove the consumer unit as my limited knowledge of electrics tells me that that’s the part that i’m not allowed to do. At the end it was even regularly tripping the whole house out as many of the sockets and strip lights had suffered water ingress when the old steel roof ‘sweated’ in the winter – the workshop was always damp due to rain ingress and condensation.
Those two often collaborate on jobs and one big reason that I like both of them as much as I do is that they both respect the others work. This is a huge difference between them and a near neighbor who disparages anyone that actually works for a living and doesn’t, for example, live on anything and everything that the state provides. I was thinking today that if I was a teenager today I wouldn’t look to going to university and getting an ineffective degree and a huge student debt : I would instead be trying to get an apprenticeship, becoming a valued and skilled tradesman and one day having my own business.
New Things To Panic Over.
If my repeating meme ‘studies show‘ becomes a regular feature of this thread then the next meme ‘New Things To Panic Over’ will be it’s lifetime companion. I was listening to the car radio this morning – Jackie was driving us into town – only this morning a new character came along to entertain us. Today it was the turn of lifeboat Karen who not only regaled us with the week’s tally of sailors and swimmers getting into trouble but also gave us rather motherly advice about not going in the sea at that this time of year unless we were practiced cold water swimmers.
By my calendar it’s part way through June and I know that we don’t get maximum sea temperatures until September but in my book it’s still possible for a beginner to take a swim in the sea. Karen though told us all about cold water shock and the gasp reflex that can come from jumping into very cold water : that’s what probably killed many of the Titanic passengers that died one night in the iceberg zone of the north Atlantic. Maybe be should have seriously advised us to check for icebergs off Weymouth beach where iv’e encountered the very PC and self righteous RNLI beach patrol in their posh new RIB.
Silly Season Stupid Mode Engaged.
Icebergs notwithstanding it is silly season at the seaside and full pants on head stupid mode on the roads around here. At the seaside it’s the time of year when families and/or children float out to sea on inflatable giant bananas and such like : perhaps they’re just trying to go in the opposite direction to the thousands of military age migrants, I haven’t seen a single female or genuine child reported yet although many bleeding heart liberals claim that they exist, and in the hope of getting a warm reception from the Societe Nationalde Sauvetage en Mer (the French RNLI basically). Otherwise it’s the season when tombstoning becomes quite a useful source of donor organs,
When we were out driving last week is was obviously day out for some of the zoo animals as the local Harley Davidson riders were out with their hogs going quite slowly around corners as, oh boy, do those things not like going around corners – we have lots of those in this part of Kernow. In a way I get the leather clad Harley riders because any serious bikers will be in hot and sticky leathers whatever the time of year.
The really stupid bikers/moped muppetts are the ones zipping around here in shorts, tee shirts and flip flops. Some of the nastiest cases of skin and deep tissue loss that I ever saw in the A&E department were kids that slid down the road on their sad sorry flayed arses. Apparently it’s a real problem among holidaymakers around the Greek islands as many of them have very limited if any riding experience.
I have to admit that I fell off bikes a lot when I was a teenager, possibly because the roads around Peterborough were actually slick and kinda greasy from the airborne pollution from the sugar beet works and whichever truck or car hadn’t fastened their diesel tank lid. Whatever – I got through, literally through, several pairs of jeans and one good leather jacket and I like to think that whatever it was greasing the road that made the passage en butte a lot less skin shredding.
Maybe i’m turning into biker mom/Karen ?
Studies Show.
Did you know that studies show that 7500 steps per day is the sweet spot for cardiac health. It’s actually true if iv’e been reading the right medical papers on the subject as it’s highly unlikely to be a result that was in any way supported by the pharmaceutical industry. If the study had been funded by Big Pharma the headline is more likely to be that ; Studies have shown that drug X (the one that we market) is more effective than walking 7500 steps per day. I’m just waiting for that to be an actual headline although as for now there’s no money in promoting walking for health as good medicine so your average GP won’t be encouraging you to take up walking as a more effective treatment for metabolic health/ weight/mental health, muscle strength and so on. Right now your GP is paid according to how many of their patients they can get onto Statins and not how many that they can persuade to take up genuinely effective non medical strategies for their health.
Just saying…..
Ebay and Youtube : cut, paste and repeat.
This month we got to go on holiday and we did so knowing that very little was likely to happen with the things I had for sale on Ebay and other sites : One old canvas tent. One almost unused outboard motor and one high end recumbent trike. So there we were at end of auction time one day when we saw that the trike had suddenly sold after weeks of repeated stupid questions and me reducing the price to giving away level ; the trike was basically unused and hugely in my way when I was working – I was working flat out. It seemed unfair on us to pack up and head home as the buyer had made a successful bid, everything was together in one place and all that needed to happen was for the buyer to be shown where it was, load it up and get driving.
But no : that’s what we thought would happen but the buyer then announced that he was coming to inspect the trike before taking it away ; remember that he had already seen lots of photographs and read an accurate description (used and 3 known faults). According to my decent neighbor the guy turned up and spent hours going over the trike in painful detail, at one point he even tried taking it for a ride with the handbrake on and later had the gall to claim that the brakes were seized. To cut a long and painful story short he then phoned me and tried to chisel some more money on the deal. I of course was having none of it and he left with a flea in his ear. Negotiation about price and offers I feel, should all be done before paying and collecting an item. In my view this was a would be sharp/fraudulent buyer that had always intended to act that way and his final dig was a cheap ad hominem personal insult. Trikes don’t usually hurt their owners – they are remarkably safe in bicycle terms – but I hope mine spits him out anytime soon !
Youtube this month has been copy, cut, paste and repeat ad nauseam. As many readers will be aware i’m on a mission to lose lots of weight and reduce my medical risks prior to surgery later this year. As I write i’m 6 months in, around 13 Kg’s down and sitting on a daily walking practice of some 10.000 steps per day 6 days a week. You can imagine that having written about that several times in this blog that Youtube suddenly starts giving me recommendations for people doing 10.000, 20.000 steps all the way up to total nutters trying to do 100.000 steps in a single day.
\What gets really false and tedious are the before and after shots of someone who caws about his great achievement of doing 10.000 steps a day for 30 days and ‘look at me people’. It would be just about bearable if it was just one video but Youtube is crowded with copy and paste video’s and what I can only say are highly improbable photographs. If you had known me before I started and saw me now, 6 months in, I doubt you would see much change and I severely doubt the claims being made about weight loss in a single month and a dad+ bod turning into a gym bro bod with a 6 pack.
And then there are the decluttering videos………..
Have fun people but remember that real lifestyle changes take more than a bullshit challenge month.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 