Bouncers at the barn door!

There's been a conversation happening on our local section of Streetlife that brought a smile to my face, and made Anne laugh, all about free range eggs. It began innocently enough with someone posting a perfectly reasonable request for any information about where they might be able to buy free range eggs locally. There was mention of a farm that once was known to sell eggs, and there was even assurances made that hens do indeed continue to lay eggs during the winter, but not as many as during the summer apparently.

And then it happened.

Someone had the audacity to mention that they got their fresh eggs from the supermarket. This they considered much safer because these eggs were stamped, unlike the local produce. That elicited the following response:

Big fresh eggs does not mean that they are free range. A lot of commercially raised "free range" eggs are in reality barn eggs with openings onto a yard. These openings are usually guarded  by chickens high up on the pecking order. Other chickens are not allowed out. If you value the welfare of these birds, you will look for small producers.

Now I must say I've never seen an egg with an opening onto a yard, but the scarier image is that of the chicken bouncers controlling access to and from the yard! I can see them now in their black, somewhat tight and ill-fitting suits and their sunglasses blocking the path of helpless hens just wanting to pop outside for a roan around the farmyard! "Sorry miss, but you can't go out there, is far too dangerous for the likes of you. Better stay inside where it's safe."

Nearly time for the Aviva Premiership Final!

I know that not everyone is a rugby fan, or even a sports fan, and I know many a football fan probably wonders what the point is of a team finishing top of the Aviva Premiership if they can go on to lose the title in a play-off. Just ask Gloucester who finished top a number of times but failed to win the championship title. Even rugby enthusiasts wondered about the plan when the system was first introduced.

But when you realise that Rugby Union has an international tournament every year (The 6 Nations), and a series of high-profile international fixtures in the Autumn, you will understand why it turns out to be a good way of settling the outcome of the season's endeavours. Top teams can lose a lot of players to the international fixtures. The play-off system gives smaller clubs the opportunity to make headway in the league competition and we don't get the club or country debate that other sports seem to suffer from. It opens the whole thing up.

This year we're off to the final at Twickenham again at the end of May. It is a great day out and last year's final was certainly an exciting affair with the winning points scored with the final move of the match. It wasn't even that clear whether the decisive try had actually been scored and it took the TMO (third match official) a little while to sort it out.

Northampton won the title and are in with a good chance of retaining it this year having finished at the top for the first time as far as I recall. What makes it all exciting is that there are three team looking to get into the last two play-off places and all the games are important. Leicester, Exeter and Saracens are all in the mix.

Sarries are almost certain to beat London Welsh with a bonus point win. The promoted exiles haven't won a game and have only one losing bonus point all season. That would put Saracens in front of Exeter for fourth place even if they beat Sale unless they too get a bonus point win. But possibly the biggest game of all will be Leicester against Northampton. A Leicester win is a must if they want to be in the play-offs. If they lose then everything depends on the Exeter-Sale result. It is actually possible that Leicester, Saracens and Exeter could all finish with the same number of points!

The final round of matches take place this weekend and they all kick-off at the same time. A good old-fashioned final day of the season! No team will have the advantage of knowing the result of another match.

I wonder if the football premiership would look any different if it tried a new system. With 38 matches to play in a season compared to Rugby's 22 it's hard to imagine that there would be much appetite for such a play-off style deciding end to the season. Reducing the number of teams would cause an outcry no doubt and the very idea of introducing bonus points for scoring 3 or more goals or a losing bonus point for losing by only a one goal margin might seem ridiculous. But what if it meant a more meaningful international fixture list with more competitive international football to develop the national team without that club or country debate? Would fans buy into that? Probably not.

I could start rambling on about the use of technology and the the TMO and speculate how that could be used in football too. No one seems to worry about referrals slowing down a rugby game. The clock stops, the decision is reviewed, everyone gets on with the game. Imagine if the referee could ask a TMO to check for off-side or for a dive, review a possible handball or tackle before deciding on a yellow card. We can only wonder!

Soap and shaving!

When I was about 19 years old I decided to grow a beard. The reasoning was very simple. It was around the summer at the end of my first year at University. It wasn't just a student thing, but a response to seeing a photograph that made it look like I hadn't shaved for a day when I'd shaved a few hours earlier!

It seemed pointless going to all that effort to scrape the hair from my face if it didn't really show, so I let it grow instead. Over the years it got neater as I moved from scissors and a comb to a proper beard trimmer! Occasionally the beard disappeared, but never for long. Shaving was just too much effort.

Then, about 6 years ago I decided to try a variation and drop the full beard in favour of a goatee style. A new era of shaving began. Now, given that it had been over 30 years since I'd dragged a sharp blade across my skin, it was almost an all-new experience trying to figure out what to buy and where to get it. The opportunity of the internet presented me with a flurry of new possibilities for reducing my sensitive epidermis to a raw but smooth finish. I even bought a book!

I opted for a wet shave solution because I find the process somewhat therapeutic and relaxing, as long as it's not a last minute thing. So I set about buying a nice soap, a nice brush and most importantly a nice razor. This is where the advertising starts and stops! Meet The Shaving Shack.

It's the internet equivalent of some old-fashioned high street shop where you can browse, albeit electronically, through some amazing shaving tackle and accessories. Who knew you could buy a drip-stand for your brush in a variety of styles and colours, or that there were so many soaps and creams, lotions and potions to try.

Dragging a sharp blade across tender skin in a half-asleep state everyday is a necessity rather than a joy, so why not try and add a little refinement with something called Colonel Conk in a variety of flavours from lime to almond, whipped into a rich lather in a hand-turned beech shaving bowl! My preference is a will fat soap that produces a rich lather when the water is nice and hot.

Or you could try a nice cut-throat razor, but remember to stock up on styptic to stem the blood loss!

If you're only approach to shaving products is to grab the 5-bladed, head-swivelling, celebrity endorsed products on offer in your local supermarket then why not take a moment to check out the website and treat yourself. Or drop less than subtle hints given that Father's Day is looming in a couple of months time. You might find you begin to enjoy the experience of shaving rather than simply enduring it.

As for me, well I'm fortunate that I don't have to shave everyday to do what I do. Perhaps if I did I might have gone back to a full beard by now!!

More rain!

I managed to escape the worst of the rain on Saturday and on Sunday too for that matter. But it's falling again this morning and I'm wondering if my tennis match at lunchtime will be possible. It's on a hard court, so provided it's not flooded we might just make it. 

We got our steps in over the weekend. A good walk around the village and then doing my pitch-side stuff at the rugby covered Saturday and tun on Sunday we had a walk through Purfleet for the RSPB place at Rainham Marshes. Apparently the marshes were the site of an ordinance store that was made to look like a lake to confuse enemy bombers. Or so I've ben told. It's now a wildlife centre that attracts birdwatchers and people like us who just like to walk by the river. 

I've no idea how wide the river is at this point, but it's certainly wide enough to make even some rather large ships look quite average. Purfleet has quite a military heritage. In the 18th century the Royal Magazine was established there. Not a glossy journal, but a storage facility for gunpowder. A garrison was also located in Purfeet to protect the magazine. There's a small museum that we've yet to visit. It's also the home to the Royal Opera House's High House Production Centre where the community chorus performed Verdi's Requiem back in July. Significant because Anne was in the chorus!

Back at the visitor's centre we had hot chocolate before setting off to visit friends for the late afternoon. The centre gives you a great view of the marshes, surrounded as they are by the industrial sights and sounds of the area. In the not too far distance the high speed gains into Kent and the Eurostar rush by along with the more sedate suburban railway. Looking eastward there's the QE2 bridge and the west, on a good day, the buildings of Canary Wharf and beyond into the city are clearly visible. If you want to, you can walk to Rainham station along the riverside. There's even a short path that takes you over the edge of the reclaimed landfill site! We've hill-walked and Fell-walked but until recently we had never landfill hill crossed!

Why I prefer rugby

There are lots of things that commend rugby over "football" in my world, but I accept that some have yet to see the light! On the other hand this clip makes two things really clear. First , the respect the players have for the referee, and second the authority of the referee. Listen carefully and you will hear Nigel Owens tell the No.9 that he will get penalised if he carries on with his behaviour.

Notice too that neither player nor captain say a word!

This most definitely is not soccer!!

Why I have't switched energy companies or bank accounts.

A number of months ago there was a lot of talk about investigating energy companies and their rather predictable response that power cuts are imminent as a result. It's all wrapped up in the issue of prices and the apparent reluctance of consumers to switch suppliers. The same argument comes around about banking and current accounts. apparently we're reluctant to do that too.

In all of this the basic assumption is that somehow the consumer is either apathetic or confused about how simple it is to switch. But there's one question they seem never to ask, Is the consumer happy with what they have? You see I haven't switched either my bank account or my energy supplier for the simple reason that I'm actually quite happy as I am. Perhaps I could save a little money, perhaps the benefits of another a bank would better suit my current needs, but I don't care because I'm happy as I am. I like the service I've had from my bank over the last nearly 40 years so why should I change?

Quite honestly, I get rather annoyed that regulators and financial whizz kids or consumer champions suggest that I'm too apathetic or uninformed to change. It's more likely that I'm a little too cynical, particularly when it comes to energy suppliers. If they could all save me the money they say they can, they'd be paying me to use their gas or electricity!

When it comes to energy supply, I find myself wondering whether privatisation was ever in the interests of the consumer. We were told, back in the day of selling off those assets, that energy prices would drop as competition drove the market. Call me cynical, but I don't remember being told about the need to satisfy the demands of shareholders, or the implications of our energy supply being owned by overseas companies, or anything about what the likely scenario would be when our natural gas and oil resources began to run out. It was imply assumed that a privatised industry would lower consumer prices whilst maintaining investment and research. It didn't.

The old nationalised energy industries might have been somewhat cumbersome, but private industry is rarely any better run. Senior executives still get paid over the odds for the job they do and they don't necessarily seem to do it any better just because there are shareholders to whom they are accountable. I know we can't go backwards, and we can't assume that things would have been better or worse under a nationalised system. So I'm just wondering out loud really about in whose best interest are these private companies run and how will breaking them up even further help refocus them on the needs of the consumer? If privatisation was about consumer choice, how come most of the big companies want you to get both your gas and electricity from them and while you're at it buy your insurance, telephone, internet and banking through them at the same time.

And the banks, well their reputation couldn't get any more tarnished. Fixing interest rates, mis-selling insurance, the list goes on. I suspect that the debates and arguments about current accounts will go and on. They will continue to threaten to charge for account services, but I guess things will pretty much stay the same. Stay in credit and it will be free. This is possibly unique to the UK. Friends from America certainly find it amazing that we generally are able to access free banking on private current accounts.

I have checked the comparison websites, and the savings or benefits are marginal at best insignificant most of the time. So I haven't changed and I probably won't. If they have been for you then that's great.

What I really don't like is someone on the TV or radio telling me that because I haven't switched that I'm somehow responsible for the low levels of switching and that this in turn is somehow keeping prices up. It would be nice to hear someone suggest that companies and banks failing to recognise and reward loyalty is the reason they maintain higher prices and not because consumers don't switch supplier every year or so.

Fixing clocks

Fast on the heels of my success with the printer, I turned my attention to our non-working clock. It's a small brass carriage clock that was given to us when we got married 34 years ago. The only value it has is sentimental, and to be honest we're not that sentimental, so replacing wouldn't be an issue. However, every so often I get interested in why something has stopped working and how I might be able to fix it.

Maybe a year ago the clock started to have problems. A battery had failed and the negative battery connection had become corroded. I cleaned it up with a bit of emery paper and the clock worked again with a new battery. But the problem with corrosion is that it takes a lot of effort to clean up and once it's set in it doesn't easily go away. Eventually the clock failed again and I assumed that that was it. For over a month now it's been sitting in the lounge declaring the time to be 11:55, causing confusion and occasional panic!

So I decided it was time to explore, and I had a look at it. The terminal was indeed terminal. Corrosion had spread over the whole surface and there was little point attempting to clean it away in the ope of restarting the stopped clock. The question was: Did the mechanisms still work? Off the the man garage!

No doubt you've heard of the concept of the man-drawer, a place where men keep useless stuff that might come in useful one day. Well for some of a drawer is simply not enough space, we need a shed or even a garage! I have bits of things in boxes and crates. I have a large supply of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, hinges, plastic thingies form fitted kitchens and wardrobes stored away just in case a major incident occurs and one of the stability brackets from an Ikea bookcase is the ideal solution to the problem.

I dug around and found some flat town and earth cable from an old wiring project from years ago and stripped out a bit of copper wire. Using a fresh battery I bridged the connections and listened. The clock ticked. It was alive again! Next job was to remove the old negative terminal and come up with a solution. I twisted the copper wire into a spiral rather like the ones you see in the end of a torch or battery compartment and shaped the other end to make a connection with the circuit board. A bit of soldering and the job was done.

The clock is ticking, or at least it was when I left it half an hour ago. If it runs for a day I think I can declare it fixed. If it doesn't, it's still fixed, just not in a permanent fashion!

Remembering Maths!

I used to love maths at school. Solving equations and doing all sorts of algebra was really interesting. At least it was to me. I can't honestly remember doing a lot of maths when I was working, even though I was involved in research. I guess it was always there in the background. It must have been part of what I did because I was working out equations for curves and for computer models.


I mention this because the other day I wanted to work out an equation for the standard stopping distances given in the highway code. I was reading an article about speeding and wanted to calculate the stopping distance at a particular speed. According to the article, a driver had been caught doing 149mph on the M25 and another doing over 90mph in a 30mph zone.

Anyway, I took the data and worked out an equation. It's written down somewhere, but it was something like:

total stopping distance {in feet} = 0.05(speed{in mph} squared) + speed

Of course in reality it's more complicated, but these are "rule of thumb" numbers anyway. The point is that when you stick in 150mph, the stopping distance is over 1200ft. That's further than a pro golfer's best drive!

What I haven't tried yet is to calculate the deceleration of a standard car over the stopping distances. I'd need some more data and more time on my hands to play with the maths. At a guess I'd say the deceleration will be a curve rather than a straight line. I remember seeing a video of a car braking from 90mph. After 315ft, the standard stopping distance at 70, the car doing 90 had only slowed to 70mph. Scary!

Which brought me to the final bit of maths trivia for the day. A number of years ago I got asked by a nephew this question:

At what temperature is the temperature in Fahrenheit the same as the temperature in Celsius?

I happen the know the answer, but I wanted to remind myself of the maths behind it. Here's how I worked it out.

C = (F-32)*5/9

When C=F

F = (F-32)*5/9

9F = 5F -160

F = -40

Therefore C = F at -40 degrees on both scales.

It might not be very impressive, but at least it kept me amused for a little while the other afternoon. And it's nice to know that not everything I studied all those years ago has disappeared out of my brain!

Helpful instructions

We had quite a busy weekend that culminated in a small family lunch on Sunday. It was a great day, and as usual in such circumstances, we over-catered. Better to have too much than too little. Anyway. I was checking the sultana and cherry cake to see if we could or needed to freeze it, and came across these most helpful instructions:

Preparation guidelines: Remove packaging - Place the cake of a flat surface - holding the cake and with a long clean serrated sharp knife, cut the cake into slices using a sawing action - It is important to keep the knife clean.

So, that explains why balancing a cake on a ballon and cutting it with a blunt spoon doesn't work then! It just strikes me as odd to think that someone might buy cake and not know how to cut it. And why doesn't cheese come with similar instructions? Maybe it does, I'll have to check. I wonder if it deals with the hazards of cutting cheese when you stand in on it's narrow edge rather than its flatter surface? And coffee too. I don't drink it, but I occasionally make it for Anne, I wonder if the jar has details about how to stir and whether it should be clockwise or anti-clockwise. This could be a most interesting search through the cupboards later today!

Everyone laughed when Delia Smith was teaching people how to boil an egg, but that doesn't seem so daft now!

At the O2

Not the best photo in the world, but it wasn't easy to take pictures! This is the view at the O2. That's Andy Murray to the right, prowling around the court on his way to losing to David Ferrer this afternoon.

We saw a good game of doubles first up and then the singles. We had about five minutes between the two matches, so no real time to do much except stretch and sit down again.

After the Murray match there was a presentation to Roger Federer of the fair play award and the fan's favourite player award.

It was certainly a very good venue for tennis. I wouldn't have minded trying the court, it looked like a very nice surface to play on! Had to settle for the all-weather courts back home in the evening where I won my mens doubles match 6-2, 6-4!

Spare Parts

I've had cause to get a couple of spare parts for the washing machine and the tumble dryer recently and espares proved to be a fast an efficient website for getting what I needed.

I'm not a great one for DIY repairs, mainly because I know next to nothing about how these machines actually work, but fitting a new door catch and drum paddle are well within my capabilities. finding the parts on the website was easy enough and they arrived nice and promptly.

I'd recommend them, and what's more they just sent me an email with a promotional code promising a £5 voucher if anyone uses the code to order parts! So here's the code, just follow this link and I'll get my voucher. Whether you get anything I don't know, and my voucher might just be a discount on more parts, but it's worth looking if you need something!

Advert over.

On the size of the pitch

I know this will be worrying all of you...

The pitch at West Ham's stadium is 100.5m by 64m given an area of 6,432 square metres. Twickenham is 105m by 68m, which doesn't sound much longer or wider, about 4 metres in either direction. But do the maths and the area is 7,140 square metres! That's over 700 square metres more playing area to cover!

Interestingly the Wembley pitch is 105m by 69m. In case you were wondering!

Well it's about time I actually got on with something useful.

Merry Christmas

Well everybody else seems to be wishing the world a Merry Christmas, so I thought I'd join in!

My plan for the day is a simple one. We've got our Christmas Day celebration at church this morning, then the in-laws will arrive and we will do the present opening. It's all very civilised as we sit down and take it in turns to open presents. After that it's the ubiquitous Christmas lunch. I'll try and get out for a walk in the afternoon, but sometimes lunch can take so long to have and clear up afterwards that we run the risk of being out in the dark!

Hopefully after all this I'll get the chance to do a little reading. I'm currently reading both Crazy Love by Francis Chan and To be Told by Dan Allender. Both interesting books.

Boxing Day is a big day as we travel to see the wider family. It will be a longer journey this year because we've moved further away, adding an hour at least to the travelling time. That leaves little time to make sure everything is ready for Sunday, so I might even grab some time today to do a bit of work.

I know, I should have been more organised and got it all done earlier in the week, but I didn't and I enjoy the quiet of Christmas Day anyway. We don't have a house full of relatives with which to contend! So doing some work doesn't really interfere with the day.

Hope you all have good days too, the kind of Christmas Day you enjoy.

Three down, one to go!

This is the first year in ages that I've done any Christmas events beyond the typical carol service and all-age nativity. I've had two play group Christmas nativity plays (last week), a parent toddler event today and tomorrow I'm off to one of the local care homes.

The play group events were really good and we must have had over 100 adults in the audience on each occasion. I did the "What's in a name talk" that I'd prepared for that. The parent toddler event was a little more chaotic. You really can't expect such young children to sit still and be quiet, so it was a bit noisy but we had a good time. I had other things to attend to afterwards, so I couldn't stay around and chat which was a shame, but there we are. One can't be everywhere!

Tomorrow's event at the care home will be a challenge apparently. Again, I'll do something really simple and short. Maybe I'll rework the names talk, I haven't made a final decision yet.

After that it's all-age and Carols on Sunday, then Christmas Day and then we're at the last Sunday of 2009.

An answer to my question about gold

A few weeks ago I posted one of my rambling questions that cross my mind. This one was about the advertising campaigns for those companies wanting to buy your unwanted gold. They all naturally tell you they will pay you the best price for your gold and that now is a great time to cash in on your own personal treasure trove hidden away in the jewelry box.

Well, surprise surprise, the best price is well below the real value.

The BBC has done a small survey and discovered what I guess most of us were probably thinking. They took £300 worth of gold, as valued by an independent jeweller, and sent it off to a few companies. The best offer was around £60 which rose to over £100 when the first offer was turned down. Hardly the best price.

So as ever, beware the smiling faces on the ads that promise much but in the end deliver much less. I know these companies will have overheads and processing costs, but just remember they are in it to make money. Quite how much they make from your old gold is up to you.

iPhone on Orange

I was hoping that the introduction of the iPhone on other networks might just spark a little competition, but so far no luck. I was just looking at the tariffs on O2 and Orange only to discover that they appear to exactly the same.

So once again the myth of competition working in favour of the consumer drifts into the ether. Maybe things will be different in March when my contract comes up for renewal!

What's up with gold?

If your business was based upon buying and selling gold, would you be trying to buy gold while it's at near all-time highs? This is what confuses me about the current of spate of ads encouraging us to turn our unwanted gold into cash. Companies are even offering to double other companies' offers in order to get their hands on your old jewelry.

They must know something we don't know or they are not telling us because I can't make sense of it all. Thankfully I don't have any old gold to convert into cash, so I need not have any sleepless night about it all.

The saga of a simple piece of office furniture

All I wanted was a simple three-drawer desk pedestal to go under my desk in my new study at home. My old desk, with a pedestal, is in my study at church because it's too big for the study at home, so I've gone back to the desk I bought when we first moved to Berkhamsted and we were living in rented accommodation.

You'd think it would be an easy thing to acquire, but not so. I searched and searched. Eventually I decided upon this one. It's simple, and reasonably priced, but not cheap by my reckoning.

So I ordered one and waited. That was on the 29th September and I soon got a call to say the item was out of stock. To be fair to the company concerned they gave me the choice to swap to a different model or wait. I chose to wait because I wasn't in a particular panic.

Eventually delivery was arranged for the 28th October and I organised myself to work at home that day. The bell rang. The box arrived. Excitement filled the air, quickly followed by disappointment as I discovered it was badly damaged.

Today, the 12th November, the replacement arrived. Now personally I think that is a long time. The problem is that the company from which I bought the item didn't have another way to deliver a replacement than to put it through the same process as a normal delivery.

In my frustration at waiting, I took the broken unit into the garage, dismantled it (it was put together with those pins and capstan things beloved of Ikea) and set about repairs. Only the back panel and the drawers had survived intact, but some careful gluing and a little wood filler fixed all the problems.

So now I have two, and I'm rather disinclined to start trying to return the repaired pedestal, wasting more of my time into the bargain. Perhaps two for one isn't a bad result. The question is where to put it?

Out for the ride

We decided to go for a drive this afternoon and we ended up in Southend, a sprawling urban coastal town. Mind you, when we got beyond the casino and games arcades, we had a nice stroll in the gathering darkness!

The picture was taken on my phone, which explains the rather grainy image, but it gives you an idea of the colours of the evening sky.

Finding my way around

So today's big adventure was to locate he nearest Staples store and buy some really useful boxes. If you don't know what a really useful box is, the you need to find out! Put simply they are really useful boxes in a variety of sizes from something that you keep business cards in to something that could house a small family (well maybe not but they do get pretty big). Anyway, I digress.

Using the internet I searched for my nearest store but unfortunately the postcode wasn't recognised by my navigation system and it took me three goes to find the place. Eventually I did and bought my boxes. I also discovered the roads that criss-cross the A127.

On the way home I came through Hornchurch, our neighbouring town, and saw a great sign in a shoe shop window:

Buy one get one free

Now forgive me for stating the obvious but isn't that the least you expect from a shoe shop? You don't go in to buy a single shoe normally, and you don't expect the matching shoe of the pair to cost extra!

They are strange folk with strange ways down here!