What a contrast in the weather this week. Last week was warm & clear; this week it is decidedly chilly and mainly overcast. We had the hottest day of the year on Sunday – 23 degrees! That’s 72 degrees in old money. (I have to confess, I did not see 23 anywhere but I am reliably informed by Ms Playchute that that was the temperature on Sunday afternoon). Monday we had a high of 12 (53)! I guess that was Spring and Summer all in the space of a week.
Our microwave went “phutt” the other day. Penelope switched it on to zap something and it made that fizzing, snapping sound which is a sure-fire indication that it has fried itself. So, on our way home from somewhere we called in at the local appliance emporium and purchased a replacement. And, very nice it is too apart from needing a Doctorate in Microwaveology in order to understand even the most basic of instructions, i.e., how do I zap this cup of coffee?
I’m sure we will manage to decipher the instructions we need to understand in order to carry out the basic tasks for which we want it. However, it did get me thinking about our first microwave which we bought when we were still living in Radway. We certainly weren’t the first of our circle of acquaintances to acquire a microwave – they’d been around for a little while before we took the plunge – but we were amongst the relatively early-adopters, I suppose. I remember not long after we had purchased it, one of our neighbours rang to ask if she could bring something over to defrost. You will remember this was one of their big selling points at the time – if you’re an idiot and forget to get something out of the freezer for dinner you could pop it in the microwave and defrost it in a fraction of the time it would ordinarily take. Of course Pen said, “Yes” and the neighbour duly arrived a few moments later with a joint of pork the size of a small car.
She and Pen deciphered the instructions, popped the meat into the microwave and set it off on the Defrost setting for five minutes. Not surprisingly, after five minutes it was still a lump of concrete so it got five minutes more. And five minutes more, etc. Clearly none of us knew that the microwave would eventually defrost this joint of meat but it certainly wasn’t the five or ten minute job our collective imaginations had supposed. I think the neighbour eventually left after about an hour with a partially thawed joint of pork which was no where near ready to plonk in the oven. She probably went away shaking her head and thinking that microwave technology was utterly useless while we learned a valuable lesson about how long it does take to thaw a twenty pound lump of concrete.
We had the pleasure of entertaining Ms Annabelle overnight on Monday. It’s the Easter Break from school and Nick was working and Lucy had tasks to complete which would be more easily achieved without having to look after a five-year old. Naturally, we were delighted to be of assistance and, as always, she was good as gold. On Tuesday we decided to skip down the motorway to Beaconsfield which is the site of the Bekonscot Model Village which I have wanted to visit for some time. Bubble had enjoyed a visit we made a few years ago to the model village at Bourton-on-the-Water so we hoped that she would enjoy this as well. Thankfully, she did!
Bekonscot is, apparently, the world’s oldest and original model village, opening for the first time in 1929. As well as immaculately manicured gardens and finely detailed model buildings depicting life in the 1930s, it has a huge model railway. There is so much to see in the “village” that it requires several laps to catch half the detail. Not surprisingly, though, one lap was enough for Bubble and she spent much of her time in the playground climbing the rock-climbing wall and shooshing down the helter-skelter.
A great day out.
The Brexit farce gets increasingly surreal by the day. Like the idiots they are, the Tories launched a PR film about how wonderfully marvellous life is going to be in the post-Brexit paradise. Unfortunately, no one spotted that one of the locations used to promote their sunshine vision was the port of Aberdeen which has received millions in EU infrastructure investment, our access to which will be cut off.
It speaks for itself that the Tories are using a successful example of EU infrastructure investment in Britain in a video promoting their policy to cut off our access to it.
And, in other related Brexit news, Private Eye had an article about the crisis we face in staffing the NHS as we stagger towards the EU exit door. The NHS has a chronic staffing shortage – at the moment there are 24,000 unfilled nursing posts in England alone. A significant proportion of nursing posts are filled by Europeans and those from further afield – the NHS could not cope without them. However, now that the racist Brexiteers have won the day, foreign staff are leaving in droves – 5,500 European nursing staff have left since the referendum result and 42% of foreign staff, in a recent survey, said they were thinking about returning home. At the same time a whopping 96 European nurses registered to work in the UK in December compared with 1,300 last July.
Hey! This post-Brexit desolation is going to be great!
I had another great bike ride on Sunday during the best of our Spring/Summer. Just a simple/leisurely 10 mile circuit up the road to Canons Ashby, along to Preston Capes, Little Preston and then back home again.
And here’s that photo of the oil seed rape I took enroute.
Love to you all,
Greg