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GhostOfClayton

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  1. GhostOfClayton
    Picture caption: This stuff about dressing up at Halloween? It's for the kids, isn't it?
     
    DocOfLove's recent blog entry got me thinking about Halloween, and just how much it has changed over the past dozen years or so (in the UK, at least). When I was a kid, my parents used to say, "it's Halloween tonight," make a silly ghost noise, and that was about all the notice anyone took. Then, a Charlie Brown cartoon was aired showing Charlie and the gang dressing up in diabolic costumes, and knocking on all the neighbourhood doors asking for sweets (actually, they asked for 'candy', but let's not split linguistic hairs). For the next, I don't know, dozen or so years, we were aware of what Trick or Treat meant, but it never happened here.
     
    I suppose it was about 15 years ago that the first knock on the OfClayton front door was answered to a street urchin dressed in what could imaginatively be described as a Halloween costume, demanding appeasement with menaces . . . and then it all went mad. Huge gangs of kids would roam the area with sacks, ready to egg the unwary householder who dared to question the 'tradition', or offer nothing more substantial than a Nuttal's Mintoe. There were even organised gangs who would fill a transit van full of teenagers with cheap masks, and drop them off at the end of a street, so they could go from door to door demanding cash. Now, I'm not saying these operations were run by gypsies . . . . but they were!
     
    Moving forward in time a very few years, and the party industry caught on. People love an excuse for fancy dress and partying, and if this was the alternative to staying in and not knowing how to react when a small vampire or zombie knocks at your door for the nth time, then you can see why people lapped it up. And if someone, somewhere is making a few extra quid selling costumes, you can bet your last mintoe that the supermarkets will want to put a stop to that by mass-marketing and undercutting any entrepreneurial little-guy right out of the ball park.
     
     
     
    And once the Supermarkets want you to buy something, it's as good as law that you do it. And so, once 'back to school' is safely out of the way, the supermarket shelves turn orange (who decided orange was the colour of Halloween?) with chocolate shaped like pumpkins and witches hats, for the next six weeks.
     
    Then comes the yet-to-be-fully-commercialised-but-you-can-bet-the-supermarkets-are-having-meetings-about-it Bonfire Night. Bonfire Night used to be the 5th November. As a kid, we used to trudge along to the local 'organised display', which consisted of a fire in the corner of a farmer's field, a few fireworks, mostly ground based, a jacket potato, a piece of parkin, and a big 'ooooo', when the final crescendo (a single rocket) was fired. This took place on the evening of the 5th of November, whatever the day of the week, and whatever the weather. Now, you'll find people burning Catholic effigies during not only the week of the 5th November, but also the Friday and Saturday nights of the weekends at either side.
     
    Do I sound like I don't like this state of affairs? Let me tell you that I do like it. Let me explain why. For the last half century or so, Christmas has been creeping insidiously further and further upwards through the calendar like rising damp. Like a weed, little tentacles of Christmas have been worming their way through December, and November, and were encroaching their way into October in the form of Christmas stuff appearing in shops here and there, a day or so earlier than the previous year. Then the next year, a few more shops surrender to the scarlet tendrils, in order to stay competitive. I remember my Dad saying one year, "Christmas cards! It's not even bloody December yet." But then, the polytheists came to the rescue. A sort of pagan barrier was erected at the bottom of October against which the inching Yuletide incursion could only struggle in vain, buoyed up as it was by the anti-Catholic Bonfire Night. The supermarkets only have room on their shelves for one or the other, and remember, they dictate your life for you, whether or not you naively believe the contrary.
     
    So, the Monotheist Christmas Holiday is locked in mortal combat with the Polytheist Halloween. Who will win? Tesco, that�s who.
     
     
    �Eyup mi duck
     
    As a header for this section of my blog, I�ve used a traditional greeting most often used in Nottinghamshire, and sometimes south Yorkshire. To explain. �Eyup is used more widely in the north of England as �Hello�. �Mi� is �my�, and �duck� is a term of endearment used towards children and ladies by men, towards children and men by ladies, and less so towards adults of the same sex.
     
    Education out of the way. Here�s why: There�s been another first at OfClayton Towers. Tom and Barbara who�s small-holding backs on to the east range at OfClayton Towers, keep (along with many other edible animals), some ducks. When the ducklings first arrived, in conversation with Tom & Barbara it emerged that neither Mrs ofClayton, nor myself, had ever eaten a duck egg. �Righto,� said Tom, �you can have the first ones . . . though they take a while before they start laying.�
     
    I have blogged in the past about Tom & Barbara�s neighbour The-Man-Who-Lives-At-The-End-Of-My-Garden (now, sadly, deceased), and about his encyclopaedic knowledge of country ways. His wise counsel concerning whether or not a duck is ready to lay, goes as follows: �If you can only get one finger up it, it isn�t ready to lay. If you can get two fingers up it, it is ready to lay.� Sage words, I�m sure you�ll agree. So, when one of the ducks was tested and found ready to lay, it heralded quite some excitement. Sure enough, yesterday morning, for the first time ever, I had a duck egg with toasted soldiers for my breakfast. I�m easily pleased.
  2. GhostOfClayton

    Slo-Mo

    By GhostOfClayton,

    Heard of Movember? Here�s a quick explanation, but if you�d like more detail, have a look at www.movember.com. Movember is a charitable organisation that hopes to encourage as many men as possible to grow a moustache (or Mo, for short) during the month of November. Mo-vember, geddit? The idea is so that funds can be raised, and awareness made for Men�s Health Issues (or, as a less reputable colleague referred to them, "Bloke cancer, rather than chick cancer"). His misogynism is factually, if not politically- correct. Now, I wholeheartedly support this cause, though I have to admit, I�m not sure what the exact mechanism by which me growing a big, bushy tash fills the coffers. To mitigate this, I bunged them a fiver. Feel free to do the same, if you�d like. Awareness, however is a whole different matter. I�m a successful and prolific blogger with a multitude of signed up followers, so surely I can use this very medium to spread the good word about Men�s Health Issues.
     
    Here goes:-
     
    I�m not a medical man, so the technical detail eludes me, but my advice to all you blokes out there is two-fold:
     
    Step 1 �
    Grow a Mo during November, and tell everyone why you�re doing it.
     
    Step 2 �
    (a) Have a good feel around in your 'Gentleman�s Area' on a regular basis, and
    ( tell your doctor if anything changes.
     
    Step 2(a) really isn�t an issue for men, in fact there would be a significant problem if it were something men were being encouraged to stop doing. 2( , however, is something we�re notoriously bad at, most especially when it involves showing your privates to another man. Throw in the (quite real) possibility that the same man will end up handling our precious trouser-cargo, and it�s a wonder anyone with a 'Y' chromosome ever goes near their local surgery. My advice? Man up! Be bold. Hold your head high, march into that office and, (having first told the Doctor confidently about your concerns � that bit�s important), get it all out, and slap it down in front of him with a hearty "There�s the lunch-box, Doc. Whadaya think?"
     
    Right, with both fundraising and awareness behind us, we can move on with the story. I decided at the end of the 2012 tourist season (late September for me) to grow a Mo for Movember, however I had a nagging concern. Whiskers have never graced the OfClayton cheeks for longer than a couple of days, say when travelling, and shaving is inconvenient, or some such. Other than that, I�ve been clean shaven since I first looked in the mirror and saw Shaggy from Scooby Doo looking back at me. So, growing a Mo was a worry. How fast would it grow? If I started in November (like you�re supposed to), I may not have anything you could call a Mo until February. I have a friend who has been moustachioed for many years, but no-one has noticed. What if mine was like his. If I was going to do it, I wanted something akin to those sported by the Thompson Twins in Tin-Tin. So I admit, I cheated. You�re supposed to start 1st November clean shaven, but I stopped shaving at the beginning of October (much to the chagrin of Mrs ofClayton).
     
    I admit, that after 14 days, it still looked like something that would disappear if I washed my face, but I needn�t have worried. Here I am, 28 days later, and I am now the proud owner of a moustache. Would you like to see it? here it is.
     

     
    The little thing below my bottom lip is supposed to be there. For those taking notes, according to that standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, Wikipedia, it's either called a 'Smig' (Irish word for a chin), 'Mouche' (French word for a fly), or a Soul Patch. I'd like to refer to mine as a Soul Patch, but to be honest, it feels more like a Smig.
     
    There you go, I've both educated you, and reduced your chances of dying from bloke cancer. Surely that's enough for this week?
  3. GhostOfClayton
    Welcome One and All to the GhostOfClayton extremely occasional blog. Are you all sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.
     
    I know that, looking at me, you wouldn�t think it, but I�m not a drinker. Not absolutely tee total, but only drink socially and very occasionally. So, on Saturday night, after a very small amount of beer, I found myself quite tipsy. Myself and Mrs OfClayton had been invited round by the brother and sister out-law to watch the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. Did you see it, dear reader? I�m sorry, but I can�t really describe it in detail in these pages, so I shall write as if you did.
     
    I saw the sheep on Glastonbury Tor, and got as far as recognising the man in the stovepipe hat as Isembard Kingdom Brunnel, before a combination of the alcohol in my bloodstream and the fact that I�m a ham-fisted, clumsy oaf, caused me to spill my beer all over their settee, blinds, carpet, furniture, many children, etc. There was a sort of time-stood-still moment whilst I tried desperately to stop myself shouting �Ger-Granville . . .Fer-fetch a cloth�, before the panicked reaction of all present moving stuff that had yet to be dripped on, away from beneath things that had already been dripped on, fer-fetching cloths and kitchen rolls, (and indeed anything deemed absorbent and washable/disposable) and generally trying to help. It�s amazing how far you can spread half a pint of Old Peculiar, and bewildering how many tiny nooks and crannies are owned by the OfClayton Out-Laws. And just how cubic centimetres of beer can settle into a nook/crannie that is physically too small to accept the edge of a sheet of kitchen roll.
     
    Anyway, to cut a long story short, by the time normality had been restored, the industrial revolution had been and gone, and Bevan was just about to launch the National Health Service. So. What did you all think to the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony? I can see that much of it would go over the heads of non-Brits. Why on earth would a significant portion of the ceremony be devoted our National Health Service? Did the Nation�s Sovereign really appear in a comedy sketch? The answer to the second is simply �Yes� (surely we�ve seen it all, now!). The answer to the first is more complex, and highlights the strange relationship we have with our primary care provider. Most see it as a sort of errant sibling. We argue amongst ourselves about its shortcomings, belittle it, tell each other how hopeless it is, etc., etc. But woe betide any outsider who tries to do the same. It�s our NHS, and as far as Johnny Foreigner is concerned, it�s the best in the world, and we�re justifiably proud to have it. Either that, or it was because Danny Boyle�s a bit of a leftie.
     
    But for most Brits I�ve talked to, it was a triumph. True, although it had spectacle aplenty, it didn�t have as much as Beijing. Mr Boyle would have been mad to pit himself against the weight of the People�s Republic in that respect, and Mr Cameron would have been mad (and extremely unlikely) to fund the attempt. It was never going to happen. But what it lacked in spectacle (not much in my, and many others�, humble opinion), it more than made up for in sheer exuberance and bare-faced quirkiness. Not only with the acting debut of our dear Queen, whose popularity rating must surely have sky-rocketed as a result, but Rowan Atkinson re-imagining the beach race scene from Chariots of Fire. And did Mr Boyle hand the ultimate accolade of the evening to one of our national sporting heroes? No, he made you think it would be Sir Steve Redgrave lighting the Olympic flame, but the honour went jointly to seven young, and hitherto unknown athletes on whose shoulders our country is pinning its future medal hopes. What a coup.
     
     
    Anyway, I'm off to the Netherlands for a while now, by way of escaping the olympic blanket coverage.
     
    Ciao for now.
  4. GhostOfClayton

    Rest In Peace

    By GhostOfClayton,

    Getting on the internet has been very problematic recently, but hopefully I�ll manage to get this blog up posted, just to prove to you all that I�m still alive.�
     
    RIP The-Man-Who-Lived-At-The-End-Of-My-Garden
    I rushed home last Thursday to attend the funeral of the man who lives at the end of our garden (he wasn�t a hermit who�d moved in near my blackberry bush � it�s more accurate to say his garden can be accessed via the end of my garden.)� Anyway, I know that no-one who reads this blog knew him, but I felt I couldn�t let his passing go without marking it in some way, and this is the only outlet I have, so I�m afraid this is where I shall be doing it.
    I first heard about The-Man-Who-Lived-At-The-End-Of-My-Garden from a neighbour a couple of days after moving to the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans.� They told me a large bird had found its way down their chimney, and had sadly broken its wing in the process.� It was obviously in some distress, and they had felt that merely releasing it back into the wild would leave it vulnerable to a horrific death at the hands (claws?) of a local cat, or other unsavoury predator.� The kindest thing to do, they decided, was to despatch it quickly and humanely.� However, neither of them felt they had it in them, so they called for The-Man-Who-Lived-At-The-End-Of-My-Garden.� Like many generations before him, The-Man-Who had been born in the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans, and had been brought up working on the local farms.� He lived and breathed the countryside, and the local flora and fauna were very much woven into the fabric of his life.� He therefore was happy to perform this kindest of acts on the poor bird, with neither a flinch nor hesitation.
    I met him in person a few days later, and we hit it off immediately.� His knowledge of The Great Outdoors was, frankly, gob-smacking, and I lapped it up.� Many�s the hour we spent silhouetted against the dying twilight, with him imparting to me the ways of the countryside, telling me all about his love for the Animal Kingdom (and, more specifically, how to shoot at, kill and cook bits of it.)� I�ll miss those chats very much.� A big hole has been left behind him � RIP The-Man-Who.
    �
    RIP iPod
    It�s said that it�s every nerd�s dream to own an iPhone without giving any money to the Apple Corporation.� Thanks to an unfortunate event in a French Hotel, I�m now halfway to that dream.
    I had been listening to the truly excellent �A History of Rome� podcast on my trusty (and much beloved) old iPod Touch, when the time came to brush my teeth.� Unable to drag myself away from this gripping retelling of the story of Rome�s long history, I plugged in the headphones, placed the iPod on the side of the washbasin, and commenced my ablutions.� However, during the rinsing process, my hand caught in the headphone cable, and the poor iPod was knocked towards the adjacent toilet.� As it reached the length of the cord, there was a millisecond of hope that I�d saved the thing, but it only paused slightly in its descent, before the plug and socket parted company, and the iPod was left to its inevitable fate.� Splash!� Despite several nights on the radiator, it never recovered.� A big hole has been left behind it � RIP My iPod.
    �
    RIP A Big Pile of Cash
    Moving the story on, the above event coincided with my old mobile phone starting to play up.� Nothing too much to worry about (it only cost me about a tenner when it was new), but now I needed both a new iPod, and a new phone.� The solution was simple � combine the two devices, and buy an iPhone.� Which I did.� And I love it.� A lot!� And the device itself was around the same price as an iPod Touch (much of that the money went to the Apple Corporation, so only half of the dream was realised).� Yes, I�m having to pay twice the amount in a month that I used to pay in a quarter, but I�ll just have to tighten my belt elsewhere, I suppose.� I should have listened more carefully to The-Man-Who, when he told me how to pluck, skin and gut a pheasant.
    �
  5. GhostOfClayton
    Prof Brian 'All the guys want to be him, all the girls want to be with him' Cox
     
    I mentioned in my last blog that the excellent Stargazing Live program started on the BBC on Monday night. It was a treat for us all. For the comedy fans, there was both the towering genius that is Dara O�Briain, and the much underrated Andy Nyman. For pretty much everyone, there was Prof Brian �All the guys want to be him, all the girls want to be with him� Cox. For fans of people who have 'the right stuff', present via comm-link was the chiselled and craggy all-American hero Capt Eugene Cernan, veteran of several Apollo missions, and the last man to set foot on the Moon (that we know about, eh, conspiracy theorists?)
     

    Capt Gene 'Right Stuff' Cernan
     
    Rounding off the team was Liz Bonnin (who surely must adorn the bedroom walls of many pre-pubescent nerdy-boy) reporting on the SALT telescope in South Africa.
     

    Liz "Nerdy-boys'-dream” Bonnin
     
    They were joined on the couch by the handsome Dr 'Boy-Next-Door' Kevin Fong, and the very easy-on-the-eye Dr Lucy Green. Are all astronomers good looking, or do the BBC just choose beautiful people to appear on our screens? I remember having quite a crush on Heather Couper when I was a pre-pubescent nerdy-boy, so maybe they are. If I ever get to own a telescope, will I become good-looking?
     

    Dr Lucy 'Easy-on-the-eye' Green
     
    As an aside, Prof Brian Cox is also beautifully, refreshingly and relentlessly intolerant of woolly thinking. I would love to be that intolerant of woolly thinking, but out of politeness and professionalism, I often have to tolerate it, and it pains me to do so.
     

    Dr kevin 'Boy-next-door' Fong
     
    I digress. I heard on the radio yesterday afternoon that live stargazing events were to be held around the country, and there was one only twenty minutes� drive from Aquis-of-the-Romans. I had to go. So myself and Mrs OfClayton headed out to the Visitor Centre at the foot of the mighty Pons Abus. We were not the only ones. The place was heaving . . and very, very dark. After briefly pausing to watch the weather being presented by the North of England�s premier comedy weatherman, giving a rare outside broadcast, we hit the sea of telescopes that had been set up on the grass beside the centre, all pointing at a different bit of the firmament, gloriously cloud free and twinkling with infinite majesty on this particular evening. I immediately joined the queue to look at Jupiter through a Dobsonian reflector (see, I know the lingo!) the size of a dustbin. Perfect view! The bands across the planet were clearly visible, as were the four principle Jovian satellites (Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa). I briefly looked up to see a BBC film crew bearing down on the telescope�s owner.
    �What are we looking at here?� asked the reporter.
    �Jupiter�s moons�, replied the astronomer.
    �OK. Could you two stage a conversation?� he indicated me. �Ask what you�re looking at, that kind of thing.�
    �Righto!�, I said. My whole life is an act. I could do this. They started filming, and I looked into the eyepiece. After a considered pause, I said, �Wow! Is that Jupiter?�, with a degree of enacted naivety.
    �Yes,� the (strangely not as good looking as a TV astronomer) telescope�s owner said. �You should be able to see the dark bands across its surface.�
    �I can,� I replied. �And there are some bright points of light either side of it. What are those?� That�s when it hit me. I was playing the part of the casual visitor beautifully, but people I know would be watching. They would be nudging each other saying, �That�s thickee OfClayton. He doesn�t even know about Jupiter�s moons. Ha, ha!�
    The thought comes too late to stop myself saying something to the effect of, �Jupiter has moons?� Oh, God! Horrid realisation that this may be more than a local BBC fiim crew, they may be national. This may go out on Stargazing Live. It may be going out as we speak. Is it also on BBC America? The BBC World Service? I could already be a global laughing stock. �EXTRA, EXTRA, the Chicago news vendor would shout across the city. �THIS JUST IN. GHOSTOFCLAYON THICK AS SHIT�.
    Anyway, to cut a long story short, I watched the local news later. I was on, but only as part of a sweeping shot that got the back of my head looking into a telescope. They did, however, show a vox-pop interview with the woman who had been behind me in that queue. She was far better looking than me!
  6. GhostOfClayton

    Quantum jump

    By GhostOfClayton,

    I�ll start with a seemingly random series of stuff that�s happened (or is going to happen) to me, and then explain their relevance.
     
    Number 1. I spent much of December sitting behind a desk. The downside is apparent to anyone who has to sit behind a desk. The upside is that I got paid for it, and so am now the proud owner of some money.
     
    Number 2. Every Christmas, Kindle have an event called The 12 Days of Kindle. This involves reducing the price of many great titles to (usually) 99p. A title called �How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog� caught my eye, and I�ve been reading it with interest. It taught me one thing: There are two types of people, those who don�t know what quantum physics does, and don�t understand how it does it, and those who DO know what quantum physics does, and don�t understand how it does it. Thanks to the book, I�m moving from the former camp to the latter. I will hasten to point out that I�m not some scientific genius (though I did get a Physics A-level). The concepts are not beyond any reasonably scholarly person. Read it � you�ll see what I mean.
     
    Number 3 � The Radio Times hit the doormat of OfClayton Towers yesterday. On the cover was a big picture of Professor Brian �all the men want to be him, all the women want to be with him� Cox, advertising the upcoming �Stargazing Live� TV event. They did this a while back. Very good telly. Very interesting. Made me want to get involved.
     
    Number 4 � I�ve been watching a few episodes of the wonderfully funny Frasier. Classic comedy. US TV at its best.
     
    Number 5 - I live in the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans, which is inconveniently located at the arse end of nowhere!
     
    So, how are these all connected? Well, seeing Frasier (who has a nice refractor telescope, seemingly only ever used to observe people in neighbouring apartment blocks), made me realise how much I�ve always wanted a telescope. And now Stargazing Live is due on our TV screens just at the time when I have some money in my pocket. Bad timing! I should seriously consider using that money to buy food, water, a roof over my head, brake pads for the GhostMobile, etc. etc. However, I still find myself pricing up telescopes, and looking up at the un-light-polluted night sky above Aquis-of-the-Romans wondering about the bejewelled firmament that could be just a couple of lenses and a mirror away.
     
    What has that to do with Quantum Physics? I hear you ask. Well, in order to explain, I�ll have to teach you something about quantum physics. This is why I mentioned I had an A-level in Physics earlier. It wasn�t to blow my own trumpet, far from it. It was to highlight the fact that I�m in no position to teach even classical physics, let alone quantum physics. But I will, anyway (what a rebel!) One of the enigmas in quantum physics is that particles like photons, electrons, etc, behave like a wave and as a particle. These are mutually exclusive, but they happen. Go figure! The upshot of this is that, if you take, say, a photon and send it somewhere, it can take any number of different routes to get there. It doesn�t just take one of them, it takes them all, though some of them are more probable than others, and plotting just how probable creates something that behaves like a wave. I didn�t state that very well, and any respectable physicist would sneer, but it will do for the purposes of this blog.
     
    Because of this, and other incongruous aspects of quantum physics, there have been many attempts to interpret why there is this seemingly so counter-intuitive behaviour at the microscopic level. One such interpretation is known as the Many Worlds interpretation. We�ve all seen the Star Trek episode where Evil Spock arrives from a parallel universe (you can tell he�s evil, because he has a goatee beard!) The physics underpinning parallel universes is this Many Worlds Interpretation. We�ve said that our photon could take any number of possible routes � countless quadrillions of them. In the MWI, the photon takes all of them, but each one seeds a new future (or parallel universe, if you will). Now imagine how many photons there have been in the whole universe since the dawn of time. How many times they have branched into these countless quadrillions of new universes, and each of those new universes instantly branching into countless quadrillions of new universes. Yikes!
     
    Anyway, I reflected on this, and found myself thinking thus. In the multiverse (the term coined for the collected whole of all these universes), there must be incalculable numbers of GhostOfClaytons, who think �sod it!�, and blow all their money on a telescope they can ill afford. Given just how many of them there are (countless quadrillions), surely I would be forgiven for taking the plunge, wouldn�t I?
  7. GhostOfClayton

    "Oi, Fatso!"

    By GhostOfClayton,

    Chunky, yet hunky!
     
    I am hugely, vastly, monstrously, obesely, humongously overweight! My arse is becoming increasingly more magnificent by the month, and I reluctantly have to admit that my paunch has 'death in service' written all over it (metaphorically, not in the form of a tattoo; that would be odd. I seriously need to do something about this, and the time I need to do something about it is now. I can no longer keep saying Future OfClayton should go on a diet, the fat git! Past OfClayton spent too many years eating, drinking and making merry, and now is the time to pay the piper.
     
    Of course, I've been on diets before. But like most folk with a bit of excess flab, it was a short term thing, and the man boobs soon returned. In fact, I spent most of 2011 on a diet (very difficult considering the number of nights spent in hotels). At least I told Mrs OfClayton I was on a diet. The jury's still out on whether I told myself as well. One way or the other, my weight at the start of 2011 pretty much matched my weight at the start of 2012 . . . so no matter who told who what, I wasn't on a diet!
     
    Now, however, I really feel I'm in the right place (mentally speaking) to go for it during 2012, and become the man I once was . . . and stand a chance of enjoying retirement. I know that retirement age is being pushed further and further into the future, and if you hear me use the word 'pension' , I would probably be referring to a French B&B, rather than any money I may have when I'm old. It'd be nice to have no-one to boss me around (apart from Mrs OfClayton) for a few years, though. Wish me luck! I'll report back as I progress towards the body beautiful.
     
     
    Dragging on
     
    I went to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at the pictures last night. Oooh, it's a good film! I'd never read the book, and didn't really know anything about the plot in advance. I went along with a friend I've known from school age and, though we usually enjoy the same films, he hated it.
     
    It is a dark, edgy film. Quite grim. Bleak scenery. Clipped dialogue. Some moderately disturbing scenes. Gripping drama. However, you really have to keep your mind on what's going on, who's related to who, etc., etc. It's a sort of murder mystery, and you have to be on your metal to work out why the detective (actually a journalist) finds stuff out. You can't miss a second (out of the whole three hours) of it. And that's why I think my friend didn't like it, and I did. You see, he has a problem with his waterworks. He won't admit it, but he has. Every time I've been to a play/film/gig with him in the pat year, he's had to go to the loo at least once during the performance. Let's face it, we're in our late 40s, and we're going to start hearing the word 'prostate' used more and more often. I can only conclude his ostrich-like denial is due to a fear of a doctor shoving a finger up his bum. I share that fear (especially after witnessing one of the scenes in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), but I'm determined that, should my waterworks start to play up, I won't hesitate. I'll grit my teeth and make no fuss whatsoever as the doctor pops on his marigolds and uses me as his own personal Sooty. Worryingly, when I was young, the term 'all-nighter' meant staying up all night drinking. Now it means going a full night without getting up to use the loo. Hmmm. . . .
  8. GhostOfClayton
    It has been an interesting and busy week:
     
    Green Lantern
    The previous Thurday night � I went to a friend�s house and watched the recent Green Lantern film on DVD. Now, I�m far from a superhero/comic book geek, and most of these type of films interest me only in as much as any mildly entertaining action adventure film might. However, I found Green Lantern to be a wonderful film, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Don�t be put off if these sort of things aren�t your usual cup of tea.
     
    Dee � Eye � Ess � See � Oh
    A disappointing evening on the following Friday. The Residents Association of the sleepy little village of Aquis-Of-The-Romans had put on a disco for all residents, complete with buffet. Only about twenty folk turned up, and they were the �usual suspects�. What a miserable lot the rest of the parishioners are!
     
    Conference Call
    That weekend saw me packing my bags and heading off to one of the hallowed Cambridge Colleges . Am I to be the token comprehensive school student in the otherwise Public School intake, ready for the cr�me de la cr�me of an education? No. Periodically, HikingHolidays-R-Us use the college as a facility for a conference of all their guides/leaders. So, along with 208 of my 300 colleagues, we got a glimpse of how the elite get educated, and whilst we were served duck, rather than swan, in the great dining hall, I still felt the weight of history and tradition pressing down upon me.
    And what did I take away from this wonderful conference. Firstly, it�s a great opportunity to meet with your fellows. We�re quite an isolated bunch, and working almost exclusively in the field as we do, we rarely get the opportunity to meet up, exchange stories and advice, share experiences and tips, and shake hands with people you haven�t met since last time. You know, all that sort of thing. It�s also the time we get issued with new gear. This year�s fleece is bright red, which doesn�t suit me one iota, and the T-Shirt shows my paunch! There was also a strange object consisting of a small strap connecting a carabiner at one end (always useful) to a soft rubber object at the other. The soft rubber object resembled a toilet seat for an Action Man. No one knew what it was for. It turns out you force the neck of a bottle up through the toilet seat, and attach it to your belt/rucksack with the carabiner. QED.
     
    Step aside Clooney and Laurie
    I returned home on Monday night, and found that there really is no rest for the wicked. Tuesday found me on my annual First Aid refresher. It taught me what I pretty much knew anyway:
     
    1 � People who have a cardiac arrest this year are more likely to be saved by using fast, deep chest compressions during CPR, and no breaths. They differ from last year�s cardiac arrest victims, who needed a different combination of thrusts/breaths, and they (in turn) differ from the cardiac arrests of the year before. They change it every year to make it simpler to remember! They have no sense of irony.
    2 � No matter how many compressions/breaths you do, your patient is likely to stay dead anyway, unless they get a defibrillator to them in less than two minutes. The whole dog and pony show of bouncing on their chests and blowing into their mouths seems to exist principally to keep you occupied while you wait for the paramedics to remove the cadaver. Does that worry you at all? Eat more fruit and veg!
     
    The Wild Boys (of which I am one) are calling on their way back from the fire
    At last, the time arrived. Some months ago (4th of June, in fact), my much anticipated attendance at a Duran Duran gig was foiled by Simon LeBon�s throat infection. Come December, his larynx is now good as new, and that night he belted out the classics at Sheffield Arena with aplomb. What a night!
    LeBon was on fine voice. I sang myself hoarse. I even managed to sway slightly in the tiny space allotted to me by Sheffield Arena. The only downside was that, having been ushered to some very nice seats by arena staff, we were turfed out by the real owners of those seats at the end of the support act�s bit. Close examination of our tickets revealed that the usher needed glasses. Our real seats were so high, the air was quite thin once we'd roped up and climbed to them.
     
    Let�s go Dutch
    I think I mentioned before that 2012 will see a departure for me. HikingHolidays-R-Us, ever the innovators, are launching a gaggle of Cycling holidays this year. One of these will be based in Holland, and I (showing the rash and impulsive side to my nature) agreed to give it a go. I did used to cycle in Holland, so on the face of it, not so rash. The downside is that, not only is it nearly 20 years since I cycled there, it must be over 10 years since I did any serious cycling. I predict the first 7 months of 2012 will see me quite saddle-sore while I get back into the swing of it!
    Another admission is that this will be the first time I�ve lead in a country where I don�t speak the lingo. Not a problem in Holland, everyone keeps telling me. The Dutch all speak excellent English. This is without doubt true. However, one of the things our clients state quite categorically is that they want their guides and leaders to be speak the local patois. So, I need to learn at least enough Dutch to be seen by them to use it occasionally. I�ve just started, and I can report that it�s a tough one. Daag!
  10. GhostOfClayton
    I had a great weekend, but to tell you why, I will have to tell you a little local history. There is an entertainment venue in the north of England called Scunthorpe Baths. It gained notoriety in the mid 70s following
    by Jasper Carrott OBE, a renowned comedian that we never seem to hear of anymore, sadly. Watch the link - you won't regret it. 
    Basically, Scunthorpe had an old, ornate Baths Hall dating from 1931. Lovely place to swim. The council cleverly realised that on Saturday nights, no-one was swimming, so they constructed a system of covering the pool over and creating a dance floor. Some great acts appeared there - The Kinks, Status Quo, Ocean Colour Scene, The Damned, etc. Flushed with the success of the idea, and having new swimming and leisure pools in the area, the council closed the baths, and opened it full time as an entertainment venue. It had its ups and downs, but gained a good reputation because it wasn�t too big to lose intimacy, and yet was big enough to bring in the crowds. It had a very good atmosphere, a bar in the hall itself (how many largish venues can boast that?), and a history that made everyone love the place.
     
    However, one of its downs coincided with a Conservative Council, and plans were drawn up to sell off the land for housing. This didn�t go down to well with the townsfolk, many of whom saw it as a part of their childhood (as both a courting couple and newlyweds, Mrs OfClayton and myself were no strangers to the place), and the subsequent Labour Council had saving the Baths as a manifesto item.
     
    True to their word, the Labour Council rebuilt and reopened the Baths Hall, with the opening night being last Friday. . . and that�s where I found myself. For the opener, the Baths had booked none other than Bill Bailey � the quirky musical comedian who dipped out of his regular spot on panel game �Never Mind The Buzzcocks� just when everyone should have. I�ve seen him twice before, once in Scunthorpe�s other venue, The Plowright, and once in Hull City Hall. Both times he was pant-wettingly funny, but this time he excelled. I never stopped laughing from start to finish. My sides and jaws ached to the point where the interval was a welcome break from the sheer exertion of all that hilarity. If you get a chance to see him on his current �Dandelion Mind� tour, do it. And the all-new venue? Well, no-one would knock it. It�s shiny, new, clean, well thought out, flexible, practical, etc. and the people of Scunthorpe (I�m sure) have good reason to be proud of it. But it lacks that rough and ready atmosphere that lent it such charm. Purpose-built can never seem to match cobbled-together or evolved. I wish it well, and hope the next generation of that town grow up with the same fond and warm memories.
     

     
    But Scunthorpe Baths� influence on my weekend didn�t end there. Saturday night was the Rock Open. A wonderful annual event in which upcoming local bands strut their stuff to be judged by seen-it-all-before-long-in-the-tooth local musicians. This is truly the event for which the old Baths was perfect. You could come in, have a few drinks, wander around, see friends, have a dance without the need to feel self-conscious, not expect too much of the music, etc, etc. all until the wee small hours. I was quite looking forward to it, but unfortunately Mrs OfClayton had volunteered us to babysit for the larger of the OfClayton niece/nephew tribes, and had told me about it at a time when I was only pretending to listen � which is tantamount to keeping it a secret, eh chaps? So, sadly I missed out on this annual festival of adequate music. Oh well, there�s always 2012.
  11. GhostOfClayton
    So, it�s that time of year where most of the population of England get together in order to burn an effigy of a Catholic. This has caused me quite a bit of bother this year, all due to a chain of events that can be traced unbroken back to the sad passing of OfClayton Snr. a few months ago.
     
    Those of you who, like me, are now effectively orphaned will know that the first big task, once the funeral is behind you, is clearing your parents� house of a lifetime�s worth of accumulated clutter. When we did this following the death of Mrs OfClayton�s mum, every single artefact had to be examined nostalgically, cried over, and very, VERY, reluctantly, discarded. It took forever. Although I am not half so sentimental as my other half, and was happy to bin all my old baby clothes/teddy bears/school books, etc. from the loft, the sheer volume of it all meant that it was still a pretty long job.
     
    To make things easier, I brushed the dust off my old trailer, hacked it free of last year�s undergrowth, and filled it up. It survived the first trip to the skip, but on returning to OfClayton Snr.�s bungalow, I found that the ancient tyres had perished to the point where a second trip was inadvisable. New tyres required!
     
    So I tried to remove the wheels, resulting in the sheering off of one of the bits-that-you-screw-the-wheelnuts-onto (you can guess that I�m no great shakes with mechanical jiggery-pokery). After careful consideration, I decided that three out of four wheelnuts would proably do the job, so took the wheels to the tyre centre to have the tyres replaced. After much sucking of teeth, and sharp intakes of breath, they decided that it was a specialist size, and replacing the tyre would cost more than a new trailer. This, combined with the wheelnut-thing-sheering-off incident, and the age of the trailer, made me reluctantly accept that I needed a new trailer.
     
    �OK�, I said to a colleague the next day. �I�m going into town to see if I can find a trailer.�
    �My Dad�s selling a trailer�, says he. So we went to have a look. What a magnificent trailer it was! I drooled. It was huge! And best of all, the owner was happy to swap for some of OfClayton Snr�s golf equipment (no good to me). One problem � it was too wide to fit in between the Main House and the Garage Block at OfClayton Towers. I didn�t want to leave it at the front where it could fall victim to any waif/stray that happened through the sleepy little village of Aquis of the Romans. It would have to be housed within the Garage Block. But what about when the winter comes, and I need to put the GhostMobile in the Garage Block? Hmm . . . problem. Luckily for me, I know someone who will deal with this � Future OfClayton. What a guy Future OfClayton is. I pass so many of my problems on to him to deal with, which means I don�t have to worry about them.
     
    Anyway, the months wore on. I used the trailer to clear OfClayton Snr�s bungalow, and many, many other jobs, and the Catholic burning weekend approached. �I know,� said the man who lives at the end of my garden, �let�s have a bonfire party � we can use OfClayton Towers.� Very good of him to nominate my grounds for his party, but we were invited, so not too bad. Another resident of the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans approached me. �If you bring your trailer, I�ve got a load of old wood for the fire.� So now I have a problem � a trailer load of wood, and no way to get it to the bonfire. What on earth possessed Past OfClayton to buy this huge trailer? What an idiot that boy is!
    My Saturday was spent removing two fence panels and digging out a concreted-in fencepost, just to create a gap wide enough for Past OfClayton�s stupid sodding trailer!
    Past OfClayton, you will be the death of me!
     
    And my Sunday was spent concreting in a new fence post, and replacing the fence panels. The GhostMobile is in the garage, and the trailer is stored away in the back garden. How am I going to get the trailer back out of the garden? That sounds like a job for Future OfClayton! I�m sure he�ll think of something.
  12. GhostOfClayton
    Warning: The following blog contains strong language, and scenes of a sexual nature.
     
    But first up, more from the iPod:
     
    2-4-6-8 Motorway � Tom Robinson
    Woo Hoo � The 5-6-7-8�s (Weird coincidence, given the previous track?)
    Up the Junction � Squeeze
    This Town Ain�t Big Enough � Sparks
    Summer (the First Time) � Bobby Goldsboro
     
    I love "Summer (The First Time)", maybe because it's every man's fantasy first time, eh lads? Mrs Robinson, and all that . . . YOU know what I mean. Whereas, the reality . . . .
     
    Maybe I should compare and contrast Bobby Goldsboro's 'First Time' to my own experience.
     
    Oh! NOW you're listening, are you? Last blog, I recounted the dramatic demise of two WWII bobber crews; heroes who died whilst bravely defending our skies against tyranny. Not one single comment was posted in response to that, but I offer to spill the beans about one of my most intimate secrets, and suddenly your ears are pricking up! Shame on you!
     
    Where was I? Oh yes. If Mr Goldsboro were to sing about yours truly breaking his duck, the first verse would be about an (ultimately futile) battle between a youth and a bra clasp. Not a bra like the black and lacy, well-filled bras that had previously wobbled their way through my adolescent fantasies. Oh no, none of that. This light-grey veteran of many a hot wash was going nowhere, no matter how desperate my inexpert fumbles. (Nowadays, of course, I can undo a bra with a mere flick of the fingers and twist of the wrist! Honestly!)
     
    Moving on. You would've thought that, with Mother Nature's most beautiful of unions, having been perfected and evolved over eons, hitting the target would be a mere formality. Far from it. On this occasion success could only be had with much manhandling (and tutting).
     
    The line about seeing the sun set as a boy and watching it rise again as a man is very powerful and beautiful, and leaves a lasting impression of the significance of the previous night in Bobby Goldboro�s young life. In my particular case, I neither saw the sun set, nor rise again. The line would have to go, "the sun set over a pub in which a boy was drinking bitter, and rose again over a semi-detached house in which a man was hungover". Not that catchy, is it? And could I really call myself a man? A man would have spent the day reflecting on the joyous beauty of the act of love he had just experienced with a woman he honoured and respected with all his soul. The boy that was GhostOfClayton actually spent the day in childish, self-congratulatory "yes"es, and finding all his mates so he could brag about his conquest. What a twat!
     
    Lastly, so you know that I don't think of my 'partner in crime' as just a sort of sex object or maybe just someone that was prepared to let me 'do it' to them, I shall put your mind at rest. I'm not going to introduce you to her personally � she may be reading this blog. It's not very likely, but if she is, there are two things I'd like to say to her. Firstly, it really did mean something to me, despite all the stuff I've just said (I did blog about it 30 years later, didn't I?) Secondly, I hope that in the intervening time, you have treated yourself to a better bra.
     
    So . . . there you have it. Was your first time any better? And, yes. That question is by way of laying down the gauntlet to other bloggers.
  13. GhostOfClayton

    Crowded skies

    By GhostOfClayton,

    This morning I found myself in a very strange meeting. In order to tell you why, I'm going to have to give you a little history lesson, so get comfortable . . . there may even be a test later!
     
    The quiet little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans was not always so quiet. During the war, there was much activity in the skies above it, and the drone of low-flying heavy bomber engines would be a regular event. The reason was that the village lies on the top of a steep escarpment overlooking an area of flat land known as Aquis Flats. This topography was ideal to use as a test bombing range � place two range-finding stations on the escarpment top, and a big chalk marker on the Flats themselves, and "Hey, Presto!", you have yourself a bombing range.
     
    So, quite regularly, bombers of 'Bomber Command - Number 1 Group' would take off from nearby RAF Elsham Wold, fly to Aquis Flats, and drop smoke bombs as near as they could to the chalk marker. The range-finding stations would take a bearing and, using triangulation, calculate the distance by which the ordnance missed its intended target.
     
    Let's wind the clocks forward to 2011, and one resident approaches the local Residents' Association (on which I sit) with a story of a Halifax Bomber crashing into the escarpment during the latter part of WWII, and would it be fitting to have a memorial to the bomber crew? This sort of thing is bread and butter to the Residents' Association. Assuming the majority are in favour, we find the funding, agree the design, ascertain the most appropriate location, get permission from all stakeholders, and off you go. No problems. Takes ages, but there's no rocket science involved. However, these things are rarely that simple. It turns out the Halifax bomber was nothing to do with the bombing range, but was Canadian or American � it was just a coincidence it crashed where it did. Then a chap from the local museum became interested and mentioned that there were, in fact, two Halifax bomber crashes on the Flats (neither involved in the bombing range), and did we want to commemorate both?
     
    Then, we involved the Warden on the Flats (it's now an RSPB Reserve), mainly to establish permission for the monument. She is an extremely helpful young lady who knows the right people to talk to, and before long, many more people were e-mailing with helpful and pertinent facts that continue to muddy the waters. One such was from the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Forum, inviting me to a meeting which commenced about an hour after the time I opened the e-mail. I got there just in time. Getting up this morning, I didn�t think for a minute I�d be part of an Aviation Heritage Forum. It's funny how some days pan out.
     
     
    Music the iPod played to me recently:
     
    Uptown Uptempo Woman by Randy Edelman (just like Mrs OfClayton, and, yes, I AM a downtown downbeat guy!)
    America - Razorlight
    Christee Lee - Billy Joel (from the 'An Innocent Man' LP)
    Scarborough Fair - Simon & Garfunkel
    Get the Balance Right - Depeche Mode
    Live & Let Die - Paul McCartney & Wings.
  14. GhostOfClayton
    'Probably me', would be the answer to that question. On Wednesday night I was driving past a wood just outside the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans. A movement just outside the field of my headlights caught my eye, and before I could react, a deer leaped out onto the road and in front of the car. Thud! . . and then a 'thud-thud' as it went under each of the right hand wheels. That gets the heart beating, let me tell you.
     
    What do you do after you've hit a deer? This is a different question from "what are you supposed to do after you've hit a deer?" What you're supposed to do is calmly pull to a halt where it is safe to do so. Ensure the carcass isn't causing a traffic hazard, and if it is, remove it to the side of the road. Then inspect your car for damage, only pulling away again when your car has been made up to a safe and drivable condition. What you actually do is to keep driving, wondering what you would do if you did stop and go back to the bloody corpse you have left behind. Consider how horrible it would be to have to touch said mass of fur and innards, let alone drag each individual bit (at this time, in your mind the deer is in at least two pieces, rent in twain by the wheels of your car). As you're thinking this, you're getting further and further away from the scene, and thus it's getting less and less likely you'll go back to encounter the horror that awaits.
     
    I did go back . . . eventually. I had to. My number plate was no longer attached to my car. I HAD to go back to firstly, save the cost of a new number plate, and secondly, hide the evidence that links the crime directly back to yours truly. Was it a crime? No. Deer are a wild animal, and as such you can pretty much do what you want to them. Deer, rats, etc. are all legally the same. Had it been a pheasant, then that would have been different. They share the same legal status as the local Lord of the Manor's favourite pet. If you run one down, you can't pop it in your boot and take it home for supper, (but, strangely, the guy in the car behind can do.)
     
    Back to the hapless Bambi. What did I find when I went back? Remarkably, nothing but my number plate! Somehow, despite the GhostMobile hitting, and then driving over it (at about 40mph), it still had enough life left in it to crawl away, presumably to expire peacefully in the woods.
     
    Damage to the GhostMobile? One quite large, fur covered, crack in the bumper, and removal of number plate.
     
    Damage to GhostOfClayton? Several long lacerations to my forearm while trying to re-attach the number plate (not as easy as you might think on a Honda Whateveritis).
     
    On the subject of cars
    Inspired by Ursus' last blog, I also would like to take this opportunity to drift nostalgically back to my late teens. As a newly qualified driver, I used to look at the Ford Capri with covetousness bordering on obsession. I passed one the other day � I haven't seen one in years � I'd still like to own one.
     

     
    If music be the food of love . . .
     
    Inspired by one of DocOfLove's previous blogs, where her taste in music was hinted at, I have decided to share my musical taste with you all.
     
    The way I usually listen to music is through my iPod. It's only an old 8GB device, but it still the vast majority of my music on there. My usual habit is to turn it on, hit 'shuffle', and see what comes along.
     
     
    If it's convenient, I'll make a note of the first half dozen or so tracks that appear in any given day. Who knows, someone may be introduced to some music they haven't heard, but do like. It's a bit like a dating agency, only I'll be introducing people and music that have never met before, but may eventually get married, have kids, and live happily ever after.
     
     
    Then again, they may decide that they're not for each other straight away, and agree not to date each other again. Who knows? Life's like that . . . it's a rollercoaster ride!
     
     
    So, here goes . . . is your safety bar in place? Yes? Anticipation is building as we ratchet steeply upwards for the first big drop . . .
     
     



    (a coincidence � Peter Gabriel was in DocOfLove�s list)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DLp-vE3AKg ' class='bbc_url' title='External link' rel='nofollow external'>The Calculation by Regina Spektor
     
     
    More next week (or the week after if I'm away).
  15. GhostOfClayton
    I just can't understand why wind turbines cause such controversy. OfClayton Towers is located right on the southern edge of the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans. It's next to a field, on an escarpment top facing over the Vale of York (an almost totally flat area stretching to the west as far as the eye can see), so although it�s unlikely to be the site of wind turbines, it wouldn�t be completely out of the question.
     
    If I were to make a list of all the things I wouldn't want placed in that field, a relatively benign structure like a wind turbine would be quite a long way down it. So why is it that, at the first sight of a man with a trundle-wheel, whole villages rise up as one, and act as if the local council have just granted planning permission for the slaughter of their first born?
     
    We know that village folk don't like change. Threaten any kind of change to a rural community, and their default position will be to oppose it. Cut the number of buses, and there'll be a meeting in the village hall about Edna from Fosdyke Lane who can no longer get her corns done. The fact that only seven people used the bus in the past two years, and that two of those have now passed away, will be irrelevant. Threaten to increase the number of buses, and there will be a letter-writing campaign about the increase in pollution, the clogging up of the narrow lanes with all these buses, and the perceived additional burden on the Council Tax payer. We know they do this sort of thing, it's as much part of rural life as any other country pastime (incest, suicide, drunk driving, etc.).
     
    But even considering the undeniable truth of the previous paragraph, the venom and ire that Parishioners reserve solely for the wind turbine seems wholly out of proportion with the impact these structures have. Are they a blot on the landscape? That is subjective in the extreme. Outside of any area where some might be placed, there seems to be a 50:50 split. Some people don't like the look of them, and some people find them a joy to behold.
     
    Noise is another oft-cited objection. Now, I've walked through an 8-turbine wind farm, whilst all blades were turning at a reasonable pace. They do make a sound, and it can be described as a low frequency hum. It's a little like the hum you sometimes hear whilst walking past a small electricity pylon on a damp day, but not as loud � the track I was walking passed halfway between a small pylon and a turbine about 200m apart, and the loudest sound was from the pylon.
     
    Statistics are often thrown into the mix � how wind turbines are not actually as efficient as stated, with usage numbers for existing wind turbines cited. Now here, there may be something to seriously think about. Wherever you find one set of statistics supporting one view point, you will find an equal and opposite set of statistics opposing that view, yet surely the scientists must all be agreed that we're better off with them? Or did the government just offer huge financial incentives for green energy, and some companies realise they could make money by putting up wind turbines, irrespective of the environmental gain? The Lex Parsimoniae would make the latter an absolute truth. But surely that�s more of a national policy issue, rather than a sound reason for a local planning objection.
     
    My last theory is that they�re scared. I'm not really sure about what, but it may be all about house prices, which does seem to dominate the waking thoughts of many a Middle England Telegraph reader. However, I doubt anyone finding the right house would bother too much if there was a wind farm in the view. The right number of bedrooms, garages, garden square footage, off-road parking spaces, etc., and the presence in the village of a 'good school' would surely drive prices much more substantially. So I don�t know. I no doubt sounded confident and knowledgeable at the start of this rant, and you mistakenly thought I was going somewhere, driving towards a certain conclusion with which you could agree or argue. No, all I have found out in this process is that I am also a little scared. Not about having wind turbines near my house, but about what the alternative might be if no-one is prepared to accept and live with them.
  16. GhostOfClayton
    Over the August Bank Holiday, Wroxeter Roman City were holding a Gladiatorial Re-enactment event. Ever since the villa was built for the excellent �Rome Wasn�t Built in a Day�, I�ve been promising myself a re-visit, so Mrs. OfClayton and myself (recent English Heritage members) decided to take the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. How glad we were that we did!
     

     
    Despite a tiny bit of early drizzle, the weather cheered up leaving a dry afternoon for the fighting. I�d managed to squeeze in the audio tour in the morning, leaving the afternoon free to watch the games and visit the villa. A good crowd had built up by the time we reach the roped off area that was to act as the arena, and we found the best spot left was in that area of the onlookers that had been asked to support Londinium (in red) as opposed to the local boys from Viroconium (Wroxeter�s Roman name � playing in yellow).
     

     
    The head gladiator from Londinium took on the role as Master of Ceremonies. After a brief explanation of Gladiatorial Combat, and a word about his �troupe�, he taught the crowd how to appeal for clemency, and how to demand execution. He then introduced the Emperor Domitian and his party, the other gladiators, the Summa Rudis (referee), and finally the arena helpers (they had a Latin name, but it escapes me). However, just as the MC was about to announce the start of proceedings, there was a heckle from the crowd: �GET ON WITH IT�. The Gladiator was startled. Domitian�s Praetorian Guard rushed over. There was an angry exchange between him and the heckler; �ARE YOU AN ENGLISH HERITAGE MEMBER?� was heard, and �DO YOU WANNA MAKE SOMETHING OF IT?�. This resulted in the heckler climbing over the outer rope, and coming to the inner rope, eyeball-to-eyeball with the Praetorian Guard. We now saw he was a rough-looking youth, mouthing off at the Gladiator MC. The Praetorian finally snapped, dragged him over the inner rope, and to the floor, where him and MC Spartacus proceeded to give the youth a bloody good kicking, before dragging him over to Domitian to be �judged�.
     

     
    For the twin crimes of incitement to riot, and letting his English Heritage membership lapse, the youth (who by now had had the epithet �Chavicus� bestowed upon him) was sentenced to fight in the arena as a Damnatio. He was dragged away, still mouthing abuse.
     

     
    Back to the action. which kicked off with various one-on-one Gladiatorial combat (for those keeping score, Londinium were two up at the end of these). This was followed by a couple of runaway slaves having a go at each other. All were masterfully choreographed (plenty of Spartacus-style shield jumping), with some suitably gory make up, and concluded with one of the combatants getting their throats cut (resulting in a good spray of blood). The climax of the one-on-one combats was the bout between the two Gladiatrixes (Gladiatrices?) who were predictably known as "Amazon" and "Achillia".
     

     
    This was followed by a reenactment of the Battle of Philippi (though it was really just a gladiatorial two-on-two). Following the victory of the reds (Mark Anthony and Octavian), they subsequently went mano-a-mano with each other (reenacting the Battle of Actium, apparently). The result went the way of the historical record, and the �Mark Anthony� ended up with his throat cut.
     

     
    To end with, joy of joys, who should be lead trembling into the arena, but Chavicus. All defiance gone, he now just looked like a pathetic, knock-kneed and gangly adolescent in a tunic. He was given a spear (spiculum?), and faced his gladiatorial adversary, a sturdy looking fighter in a leather cuirass. At this point, he promptly wet himself, a yellow stream running down from his tunic between his legs. The effects team were to be applauded. To cut a long story short, Chavicus didn�t put up much of a fight, before ending up on his back. The gladiator promptly gouged his eyes out with a sword, and paraded them before the baying crowd. Domitian indicated that his time was up, and the now blinded and whimpering Chavicus had his throat cut, blood sprayed, and the crowd laughed themselves hoarse. Let that stand as a warning to any others with lapsed English Heritage membership!
     

     
    And yes, like every man in the place, I did consider signing up for gladiatorial reenactment. The swords . . . the glory . . . what a life! Sadly, there is now a damp smell coming from the guest wing at OfClayton Towers, and I can�t locate the source, so my life and resources for the near future will probably be used up in getting that sorted out.
     
    �Plumbituri te salutant!�
     
     
    PS There are many more photos of the day on the gallery.
  17. GhostOfClayton
    Mrs OfClayton and myself would like to take this opportunity to announce to you all a happy event. Yes, there has been a joyous new arrival at OfClayton Towers. I'll tell you the story. . .
     
    In the UK, we're undergoing the big 'digital switchover'. One by one, the old analogue channels are stopping broadcasting, leaving us with only the digital channels. The telly at ofClayton Towers is very, very old, and unsurprisingly has no digital tuner in it. I have been waiting many years for it to break down, and it stubbornly refused. This left me with two options. (a) Spend anout �25 on a little box that you plug into the back of the existing antique telly and continue with business as usual, or ( spend all the money I've managed to squirrel away for the last God knows how long, on a big, new telly. Needless to say, I didn't mention option (a) to Mrs OfClayton, assuring her that without a 42" LED TV, the winter nights would be long and quiet as we listened to the clock tick away the hours at OfClayton Towers!
     
    So, last week, we took delivery of a Panasonic 106cm LED Smart TV. What a miracle of modern technology. It has an ethernet port to connect it to the World Wide Web. With this, it can play BBC iPlayer, stream movies, play YouTube, pause and rewind live TV, and there's even an app I can install on my iPod that will allow me to control it using that. And all this before they start broadcasting High Definition TV signals - I have HD to look forward to from next week. I could wax lyrical for pages and pages about it, but I won't! To cut a long story short I love as I would my own child! Probably more!
     

     
    So, the OfClayton family fortune has all but been wiped out, and now I find out that all I had to do was lob a Molotov cocktail at a local emporium, thus distracting the constabulary whist I helped myself from Dixons. So that would've been one big telly for the price of half a litre of unleaded and a match! C'est la vie!
     
    For the literal-minded who may read this, that was a joke. I'm not a light-fingered ne'er-do-well in real life. Though I did once pick up a catalogue in Marks & Spencers, only to get it home to find I should have paid a quid for it. The shame!
     
    Who's Anagram?
    Anyway, that bit was all very self indulgent, and of little interest to anyone outside of . . . well . . . me, really! I can see that we've had only very few comments on the blogs of late, so in order to spice things up a bit, I'm going to talk about something very dear to many of your hearts, and which is bound to be controversial: 'Torchwood: Miracle Day'.
     

    Caption Competition
     
    So, Captain Jack is back, and he's cut his finger a little bit! It's feeling a little sore! This may sound like trivia to the uninitiated, but those who have already grown to know and love Torchwood will know how serious this turn of events actually is. More newsworthy than the current storyline of no-one dying, no matter how horribly mutilated their bodies are (and believe me, some of them are sickeningly badly mutilated!), is the move of Torchwood from good old Auntie Beeb to good old Uncle Sam. Yes, the series is now funded by, and to some extent written by, the Americans - in the guise of the Starz network. So, it's good-bye to the Valleys, and hello to LA. But, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I've seen US reviewers bemoaning the loss of glamourous Cardiff locations for the mundane LA locations, and UK reviewers pretty much taking the opposite stance. Personnally, I think it's been a little slow in getting to the point. The action and story line is drip fed to the viewer, as if a punchy three episode plot has been stretched out to fill 10 hours of air time. It's only a few episodes in, so it's unfair of me to judge . . . but I will anyway. I still like it very much (and can't wait to watch it in HD!)
     
    But what do you think . . . come on . . let's have some healthy debate / vicious arguments. Get commenting.
  18. GhostOfClayton

    Any old iron?

    By GhostOfClayton,

    I have been away from the sleepy little village of Aquis-Of-The-Romans for a while, but I returned to find there had been shinanegans aplenty in my absence.
     
    It started one morning at about 3:00am, when many residents noticed a short ring from their phones. They awoke the following morning to find the phone lines dead. Investigation revealed that this was the case for every phone line in the village!
     
    One resident, (probably more than one) went through the lengthy and difficult procedure of reporting the fault to good old British Telecom, to be told that the fault would be fixed within 6 days. It came to light in the meantime that the fault was due to the audatious theft of the main 200-core copper phone cable that runs from the sleepy little village of Aquis-Of-The-Romans, to the exchange, several miles away. Copper is an increasingly expensive commodity these days.
     
    True to their word, Brtish Telecom replaced the cable and restored the service just in time to meet their 6 day deadline. The village had been telecommunicationally isolated for almost a week. Two days passed with no further interuption to the service. Unfortunately, upon waking up the morning after, the residents were to discover the newly laid cable had been stolen once again, and once again the village was plunged back into a pre-Alexander Graham Bell era. One resident had been vigilant this time. Fearing the rise of crime in the previously almost crime-free community, he had set up a video camera pointing down his drive. Knowing the time the crime occurred (some people had reported the mysterious single ring in the wee small hours), he trawld through the footage, and found two cars and a van travelling together, and passing in the direction of the incident about twenty minutes before. Suspicious, especially when the very small amount of traffic that uses the lane even during the day is considered. Like a good citizen, he contacted the police to offer them the footage. "Do you have any video of the crime actually being committed?" they asked. "No", he admitted. They were not interested.
     
    British Telecom were much quicker in replacing the cable this time. 3 days or thereabouts.
     
    Now the story just gets plain frustrating. Another 2 days passed, and we had a repeat performance! This time, the mysterious ring rang out at about 0300, and one lady, recognising it from the previous two times, immediately phoned the police on her mobile. Again, not interested.
     
    It would be easy to forgive the police and say, well, it's inconvenient to be without your phone, but it hardly rates as a high priority crime does it? No-one is getting beaten up or robbed at gunpoint, are they? True enough. But then, I found myself thinking back a few months to when OfClayton Snr. was living alone. A stroke had left him walking with difficulty, very unsteady, and mentally far from 100%. In order to give him some semblance of independence, we gave him a little wrist strap with a button that radioed a base station wired into his phone. If he got into difficulties, he could press the button, and an operator would (after trying to speak to him) call us out. In his latter stages in there, I was getting called out as much as every other day . . . and always for non-trivial reasons. he wasn't abusing the service, it was a genuine lifeline. I can't praise the service highly enough. And had some pikey ne'er-do-well relieved him of his phone line for an extended period, the consequences for him could have been very serious indeed. the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans has a considerable elderly population that also relies on this service. And could they phone 999? No. Frankly, it's a miracle that tragedy didn't strike.
     
    Touch wood, the service hasn't dropped since, though if I was a scummy low-life, I'd proably think that three times was pushing my luck a little bit. I would probably wait a few weeks/months for the fuss to die down before I did it again, but it would be too easy a job for me not to have it on my to-do list. All the residents of Aquis-of-the-Romans can do is pray for the price of copper to drop considerably in the meantime.
  19. GhostOfClayton
    Hello all, and welcome to the GhostOfClayton twice-fortnightly blog. Little warning: some of it may contain �adult themes�, but all in a proper, medical context.
     
    A letter arrived on the doormat here at OfClayton Towers last week, and I recognised it straight away. It had a cute little anthropomorphised blood drop (who I understand to be called Billy) on the back, and I have had one of these every three months for about the last five or six years. It was the notification that the time had arrived for me to do my bit for society, roll up my sleeves, and give blood.

    This all started due to the tragic death of a colleague. Not a close colleague � I didn't know him. I can't even remember his name, if I'm honest. However, I do remember he was quite young, and that he died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident. A huge quantity of blood was used by the medical team in an attempt to save his life, but sadly they were unsuccessful.
     
    Following his funeral, those colleagues that did know him better than myself decided it would be a fitting tribute to recruit as many new blood donors as possible. This sounded fitting to me as well, and so I put my name forward. Have you ever given blood? If not, here's how you go about it:
     
    The first step is to answer the many questions on the form, which includes such gems as "Have you had oral or anal sex with a man?" (only men need answer this one) or "Have you had sex with a man that has had anal or oral sex with another man" (no-one is exempt from answering this one!) They also ask about your movements abroad, and get quite specific about the countries/dates.
     
    Anyway, assuming you haven�t had anal/oral sex with a man, or shared a needle with same in a drug den, then you can proceed to the next stage. You hand the form to the nurse, who confirms your name/address/date of birth, pricks your finger, and squeezes a drop of your blood into a test tube of liquid. Like a medieval test for witchcraft, if it sinks, you�re OK, otherwise you�re out on your ear.
     
    Next step, lay on your back to have your blood pressure taken (after confirming your name/address/date of birth once again!) If that's OK, they . . . I don�t know what to call it . . Hoover your arm with a wet plastic Hoover, before inserting a needle with the bore of a Volvo exhaust into your vein. Then you wait while your life force drains into a plastic bag, imagining what would happen if no-one took it out, and it just kept on draining and draining, slowly but surely emptying your body until you lost the fight with consciousness, knowing you'd never wake up again . . . . that's the kind of thing I think about, anyway.
     
    So far, it's been fine. A nurse has always been around to remove the drainpipe from my arm, and use industrial adhesive to stick some kind of dressing over the wound. There then follows a very carefully timed lie down, sit up, swing your legs over, and back to the waiting area for orange squash and a biscuit . . . and a little sticker to say what a brave boy I�ve been.
     
    So why do I do it. What makes the experience make me feel so good? Is it because I'm doing my 'bit' for society? Is it because the nurses there invariably have . . . well, let's just say they make the rockin' world go round, if you follow my meaning? No, none of that. It's just so I can feel smug and superior for the rest of the day. A lovely, lovely feeling.
  20. GhostOfClayton
    I'm not a racist, but . . . I am totally hung up with the thought that someone might think I am. It's almost like a mini-obsession. It would be the worst thing in my little world if anyone else (especially someone belonging to an ethnic minority) got an impression that I might be. And I think the majority of white English folk are just the same as me.
     
    It would be all well and good if this hang up didn't affect our behaviour, but it does. There's a bit of an urban legend that someone went into Starbucks (or similar) and was served by a black Barista. "Erm . . can I order a . . . white coffee . . but without milk?" the customer asked. "That would be a black coffee, then?", the Barista replied. This may or may not be true, but I suspect any English person would recognise the emotion going on in the customer. We are all (and by 'all', I mean 'me') so screwed up by Racism-guilt that there's a slight quickening of the pulse just when using the word 'black'. And when using the word 'black' to describe someone's ethnic origin, it's often spoken slightly under our breath with a little look round to see if there are any black people within earshot that will hear us utter this most heinous of racial slurs.
     
    The other, and more terrible thing I find myself doing in my desperation, is over compensating for whatever racist tendencies I fear live deep within my psyche. I'm overly friendly to the, regrettably few, blacks and Asians I come across in my daily life. Although this is done with the best of intentions, I'm hung up about it being a patronising attitude, and loath myself for it. I can�t win!
     
    So, what evidence do I have for projecting my own psychological dysfunction onto the majority of my own particular ethnic group (white and English)? It's this: I visited New York recently (did I mention that before?), and witnessed a whole different racial dynamic. The English, it seems to me, are so screwed up about racism, that they worry that even acknowledging racial differences may single them out as being racist. Their ideal is not to even see someone's colour, but to just see the person. Sounds good. Sounds like a world that John Lennon would have loved to live in. However, in New York, and especially in Harlem, I witnessed ethnic differences not only being openly acknowledged, but respected and even celebrated. I even saw black people being called black people . . . to their faces, and not even minding! The fact that I felt this to be worthy of comment shows just how screwed up I/we are.
     
    Take the Schomburg Centre in Harlem. This is an institution dedicated to research into black culture. It's not a museum, but a dynamic, working institution, vibrant and alive (and a must-visit if you find yourself in the area). It genuinely made me a little bit jealous of those who had this wonderful, proud heritage compared to my seemingly bland and banal heritage (yes, that is up for argument, but at that moment, in that building, that's how it seemed to me).
     
    Anyway, I think such an institute would not be possible in England, and that is truly our loss. I believe the New York way is right, and the John Lennon way is wrong. What do you think?
     
    After word: Of course the above is slightly idealised. A minority of white English are overtly racist, and a larger minority are casually racist because their peers are also casually racist, (and they're too ignorant to know any better). And I'm sure that a native New Yorker may raise their eyebrows at my description of racial harmony and think, "that bloke's a pillock! What does he know?"
     
    I readily accept that the blog uses sweeping generalisation to describe a complex and emotive subject. Hopefully readers will recognise that this is just to simplify the point, but I do apologise profusely . . . after all, I don't want to come across as some sort of racist!
  21. GhostOfClayton
    Hello fan(s) of the GhostOfClayton Twice Fortnightly Blog. The first bit is more of the usual, but the last part consists of me ranting like a Guardianista, so please feel to ignore it if you feel put off or offended by that kind of stuff.
     
    I shall taunt you a second time
    Some of you may remember that, a few blogs ago, it was announced at Mrs OfClayton's place of work that the overall personnel numbers in her office had to be reduced by 50%. After a bit of frantic work on complex excel spreadsheets to calculate the number of people affected, the figure was established as 1. So, we have had three months of worry whilst Mrs OfClayton went through the (frankly degrading) process of filling in an application, and being interviewed for her own job. We finally heard the other day that she was the successful candidate, and could keep her job. I thought that this would be a very joyous occasion, but to be honest it felt very hollow, mostly because it was set against her colleague losing her job. It's a strange feeling, and not pleasant. Are redundancies really necessary in any organisation? Could the aims not be met by natural staff turnover, voluntary redundancy, early retirement, and the positive encouragement of staff to go for jobs outside the organisation? Surely the saving in redundancy payments would help tip the balance. I think some bosses announce redundancies far too easily either to be seen to be making a tough decision, or because they just plain haven't thought it through. The human cost is never factored in!
     
    Anyway to 'celebrate' (I use the word reluctantly), we ventured across the engineering marvel that is the Pons Fluvius, to see Phil Jupitus as King Arthur in 'Spamalot'. Anyone who has yet to see this production is very much encouraged to do so, even if . . . . no, especially if . . you're not a Monty Python fan. Yes, it is based on Monty Python & The Holy Grail, but the style is not what you'd called Pythonesque. It has a style all its own, one which suits a theatre audience, but will still please die hard Python fans. And needless to say, it is very, very funny. The Frenchman taunting King Arthur from the tower had me crying with laughter, and I've seen the film more times than I can remember.
     
    Parking woes
    I visited OfClayton Snr in his new Care Home yesterday afternoon (he lives in it, rather than owns it). I normally park in some marked parking bays on the road outside it (if one is free), as it saves me pulling into the small car park, and having to reverse out onto a busy road. Yesterday was no different, with the exception that, when I came back to the GhostMobile, a parking ticket had been stuck to the windscreen. Apparently, there are only certain times I should be using these bays. There was a sign on a nearby lamp-post alluding to this fact, but it hadn't even occurred to me to look for it! �35 fine.
     
    And so it begins
    Having assured us all that they were a new and vibrant party for a modern Britain, and not just a repeat performance of the Thatcher Government with new faces and names, the Conservative part of the UK's coalition Government have now announced a total 'review' of employment law. OK, so this is a review, and we can't say what will come out of it. However, it would be naive of us to think it could be anything other than the systematic stripping out of any employee protection law that has been put in place since the departure of the Iron Lady in 1990 (and probably a few more for good measure). This is pretty annoying on its own, because if you're a responsible employer with respect for your 'Human Resources', none of this would affect you . . it would just ensure all the other employers were working to your standards. But what annoys me most is the weasel words used to describe those employee protection mechanisms by both the CBI and the Government. They call it 'Red Tape' and 'Bureaucracy'. What they really mean is that if it wasn't there, they would not be required to support employees at the times when they were most vulnerable: Being made redundant, being on a low wage, having your job outsourced, being discriminated against by an employer, etc. Now, call me a raving socialist if you like, but I believed that business exists to serve the human race, not the other way round. Obviously, the balance must be struck, or else business could not fulfil its role of serving the human race, but I believe losing these protections has tipped the balance too far in the wrong direction.
  22. GhostOfClayton
    Incidentally, the title of this blog refers not to some drunken adolescent, but the frittering away of one's formative years. It's a phrase often associated with the game of snooker, and is certainly true in my case. more on that later.
     
    A stroke of luck
    The day of the Royal Wedding found me staying just outside the oldest town in Britain (which is Colchester). Over breakfast, we'd had the telly on, and inevitably it was wall-to-wall coverage of the lead up to the big 'I do'. This seemed to whet Mrs ofClayton's appetite a little, and she subsequently decided she'd like stay in and watch the ceremony itself. Now, I can't stay in on a sunny day just to watch people get hitched, so I opted to go for a little stroll around the environs to find the nearest bus route into town, and set off along the road. Glancing casually to my left I noticed, set back from the road a few metres behind a sparse hedge, a notice on a kissing gate. Such things do interest me, as these signs usually relate to land with concessionary access, especially whn not accompanied by a right-of-way sign (which this one wasn't). Closer inspection revealed the legend "Gosbecks Archeaological Park. Dogs must be kept on a lead" along with a picture of someone metal-detecting behind a large red cross. Hmmm . . my curiosity is piqued, even though nothing revealed itself beyond the kissing gate other than a very large grassy field and some cows. No further information on the gate, either. What was the archaeology in question? Why was it so special that it rated its own park? How could I ignore that? So, through the kissing gate I went, and onwards following what looked like a slightly worn path in the grass. This lead to the other end of the (quite sizable) field where I found . . . . another big field! Not to be discouraged, I pressed on through this field. It was similarly lacking in anything that could be deemed archaeological. At the far end of this field, I reached a lane. Here, I got the first inkling that I may be onto something. Just across the lane was a small rough area of land that could, with a certain degree of optimism, be called a car park, and beside this car park was a display board showing map of 'Gosbecks Archaeological Park'. Two labels on this map drew my eye instantly: 'Site of Roman Theatre', and 'Site of Roman Temple'. Obviously, these would just be bits of field unidentifiable from any other bit of field, but I had to go and stand in those bits of field anyway. Following my mental memory of the map I pressed on into Gosbecks Archaeological Park and eventually hit the 'Site of Roman Theatre'. To my joy, this wasn't just another bit of field, but a large bit of field that had been carefully mown, and marked out with the outlines of a medium-sized Roman theatre. Not only that, but an interpretation board had been placed next to it with a picture of how the theatre may have looked, details of its construction, and all sorts of pertanant and well-presented archeological information. Not only that, but the same was true about the 'Site of Roman Temple', only this could more accurately be described as a 'Site of Roman Temple Complex', being much larger, and containing the outline not only of the temple, but also the surrounding porticus and ditches. And all I went out to find was a bus stop!
     

     
     
    Why not in America?
     
    Monday saw the conclusion of the World Snooker Championships 2011. Interested? Why not? If you're not interested in religion, they will call you an 'atheist'. They have a word for it! Why, then, is there no word for people who have no interest in snooker? Or telephony? Or oceanography? Or Roman Archaeology? . . . The list is endless. And yet they have a word for people who have no interest in religion. I'm sure some would say that a religious belief is such an all-encompassing belief, permeating the believer's life, thoughts and behaviours, such that in no way can it be compared to a mere hobby/sport/game. They may be right. Religious beliefs do tend to be written through a religious person's life like 'Scarborough' through a stick of rock. But to suggest that this level of passion can only be felt for a deity is to belittle the passion and fantaticism that can clearly be felt for (say) Manchester United in some individuals. As an independant and impartial outsider to both football and religion, I see no difference between those who forsake all else for their God, and those who forsake all else for their team.
     
    Anyway, I digress. I wanted to talk about snooker, rather than philosophise about systems of belief. So, 'abilliardists' need read no further. As I was saying, Monday was the final of the Snooker World Championships. Given half a chance, I could cheerfully let whole days of my life drift away watching snooker, so have made the decision that I would only watch the last day of the World Championships, and all other tournaments would (reluctantly) have to pass me by completely. A huge sacrifice, given that I was trading the game I love dearly (but not religiously) for a more constructive and worthwhile life. Anyway, something struck me while I was watching this very exciting final. Why is it that snooker has never taken off in the USA? They play an awful lot of pool, as have I in my time, and snooker is a sort of bigger, better version of pool. Not only played on a much bigger table, but a much more strategic game that can deliver some breathtaking twists and turns. Right up their street, I would've thought. So, if anyone from that side of the Atlantic can cast some light on this, please comment below . . I'd love to hear your thoughts.
  23. GhostOfClayton
    Back in the UK now.
     
    After a long and tiring day on Saturday spent on the French TGV, the EuroStar, and then the East Coast Main Line, I had one day's rest . . . which I spent doing laundry, shopping, ironing, cutting the grass, etc., etc.
     
    On Monday I found that I had agreed to do some voluntary work for one of the RSPB reserves that line the Humber Estuary. An interesting day. The reserve own a flock of Hebridean sheep
     

     
    which require regular maintenance, and today was the day they needed their feet seeing to. Sheep, you see, get foot rot. This is caused by a nasty, but quite wimpy bacterium, which dies on exposure to air. So a little (painless) trimming of the leathery covering of their feet, followed by an antibiotic spray, usually cures the problem within a few days (though sometimes the treatment needs to be repeated if they're still limping).
    So, the plan was as follows: I 'tip' the sheep - an operation that positions it on its bum with its feet sticking straight out - and the RSPB lady (Karen) trims and sprays the feet, and marks its head with a spot of blue paint. The problem is that, upon arrival, all the sheep are milling about in a field, free to run away when approached by, say, a big, ugly hiking guide.
     
    However, the reserve also own a nifty sheepdog, and with a few whistles and "come by"s from Karen, the sheep were soon penned in together in a milling and uncountable mass. To state an obvious truth: It's very hard to spot a limping sheep in a milling and uncountable mass. To state another obvious truth: Having spotted a limping sheep, it's very hard to keep track of it in a milling and uncountable mass. Imagine trying to keep track of one bee in a swarm! There is no easy tip or trick to counter these obstacles. You just have to dive in and grab the thing by the handles (or 'horns', as they're known when you're not trying to grab them.)
     
    So, now I have hold of my ovine victim by the 'handles', I need to 'tip' it. "The one thing you must remember," says Karen, "is that YOU are stronger than the sheep." OK. Seems another pretty obvious truth, thinks I. Not as obvious as you might think. A sheep is pretty much a ball of muscle with a very wilful temperament. Not at all as I was expecting. They never stop struggling for a second, and they are a LOT stronger than they look. In order to 'tip' the damn things, they need to be lifted sufficiently far off the ground so that their back legs can't make contact with it, and then turned over. This needs to be in mid air, because any slightest purchase their back legs get on mother Earth is going to cause you trouble.
     
    But eventually, I got baa-baa-black-sheep (or the 'big old whether' as Karen called it) on its bum, with its horns pressing painfully into my legs, holding onto one horn, and keeping it down with my other hand on its chest. . . and it does not stop struggling for a second. To do this single handed and shear the thing must be very hard, and to keep that up one sheep after the other all day. I have massive respect for sheep shearers.
     
    Anyway, Karen now expertly trims the feet, sprays the various cans of spray, and I can let it go. Now to repeat the process with the next one . . . and the next . . . and so on. It occurs to me why Karen felt the need to point out that I am stronger than a sheep. I was stronger than the first one, and the second, and the third, but by the time I had half a dozen under my belt, doubts were starting to set in, I can tell you!
    Still � all in all a very enjoyable and rewarding day out.
  24. GhostOfClayton
    . . . so stop reading now if you're likely to be offended or are under 18. I haven't been this cross since my "I'll stick to buying only one cake" blog entry. Here's the story:
     
    The Ghostmobile is due for its annual MOT test by the end of the month (for anyone not familiar, the MOT is a sort of safety inspection that all UK motor vehicles must undergo each year, otherwise, they�re not allowed to travel on the country�s road network). Most motor vehicle owners dread this time of the year, due to the sizable repair bills that are inevitably involved before a certificate is issued. Mrs OfClayton has just had to part company with �425 to get her car through!
     
    My dread was increased slightly by the fact that I knew the Ghostmobile would fail. The previous owner (some of the sharper blog readers may remember that the Ghostmobile�s previous owner was none other than OfClayton Senior) had neglected to fix the small (on the face of it) problem of the windscreen wiper blade slipping slightly down the mounting, leaving the extreme end of the wiper arm exposed. This metal end had scratched, and subsequently worn a groove into, the windscreen.
     
    Oh well � windscreen problems = insurance claim = �65 excess . . . you may think. Swiftcover.com would disagree. Why should they be responsible for poor vehicle maintenance? I grudgingly agree, but by this time, I had booked an appointment with their authorised glass repairer, Autoglass. So, I contacted Autoglass to let them know that I would be paying for the new windscreen myself. They quoted me . . . wait for it . . . �530!!! The young lady at the other end must�ve sensed me swallowing down the little bit of sick that I had done in my mouth, and was quick to point out that, if I booked the job on the spot, she would be happy to reduce that cost to �445. How joyously benevolent of her. She had done her company out of �85 in a matter of seconds! Still . . . �445 is well in excess of the (coincidentally) �85 I had managed to put aside throughout the year, purely to cover the cost of MOT repairs. By now, my mouth was quite dry, and although I�m sure noises were coming out of it, it would�ve been optimistic to call them words. So, bless her heart, she decided to help me further by offering to reduce the price to �390 if I booked and paid there and then. Wow! This is now �140 (remember that figure!) less than the original quote. I had no idea that Autoglass were a charity assisting struggling motorists. Surely they should have Princess Ann as their Patron.
     
    But, �390 is still �305 more than I had, so I had to reluctantly sob my goodbyes to the generous young lady, promising to myself that I would organise a beetle drive among the residents of the sleepy little village of Aquis-of-the-Romans, to raise funds for the work of this wonderful organisation. I bet this heart-warming tale has brought a tear to your eye, too! So, wondering if there were any other charitable organisations to help me, I got onto Google, and phoned round. I found a very helpful little company called �Screensaver UK� who offered to do the job for �140 + VAT.
     
    Allow me to summarise. Autoglass, a national windscreen company that is the preferred repairer for the vast, vast majority of UK motor insurers, with all the purchasing power that entails, would have been happy to fit my windscreen for �530, had I said "yes" at the time. Even if they had incurred the same costs as Screensaver UK, they would have made �362 more profit. They have no conscience! And yet if I have them all killed, I would be the criminal! What kind of crazy society do we live in? Why do we tolerate organisations that would anally rape their own grandmothers for the chance at getting an extra penny out of us?
     
    That�s why I�m quite cross!
  25. GhostOfClayton
    I need a little break from doing research, so here I am, blogging. If you read my last blog, you�d know that I shall be doing a �gig� in The Big Apple in May. Doing tours for the first time is always a frustrating experience. You can�t give �oh, it�s my first time� as an excuse to a group who have each parted with a significant wedge of cash. You need to arrive knowing the place like the back of your hand, as if you�d lived there all your life, having made friends of all the contacts long before touching down at JFK.
     
    . . . and it�s a big old place. That�s the first thing that struck me. How fortunate that I have Google Earth, and Google Streetview to help me. How truly wonderful these tools are to the man/woman who wants to blag a status as a native New Yorker. Having spent hours navigating my way along Lexington Avenue, crossing Brooklyn Bridge, and staring up in wonder at the Empire State Building, I�m now happy I can pop up from a subway station knowing where I am, and where I�m going. . . and all without leaving the house, or losing a single member of the group.
     
    Of course, the reality will be different. It will rain. Restaurants will lose reservations. Prices will unexpectedly rise above budgets. A wallet will disappear, only to be found in the wife�s handbag after the police report has been filed, the insurance company notified, and the British Consulate contacted. Someone will pipe up whilst ordering their first meal, �what do you recommend for a celiac vegan with a nut allergy and lactose intolerance, who doesn�t like tomatoes?� I have to feed you for 7 more days � I recommend you pass me your handkerchief for me to cry into, or hide behind when I can no longer hold my professional, caring smile. I also recommend you don�t ever go to Texas, or France. None of these things happen on Google Streetview.
     
    And keeping the group together in crowded city streets? It will be like herding cats!
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