Good News From All Over

Once in a while, you hear some good news.
This is particularly pleasing when it comes along against the background of general misery and drabness that seems the default setting for a lot of people at present.

I'm very happy to pass on a couple of bits of news that are, for me at least, cause for celebration.

Oddly enough, I received the second good news bulletin via the bearer of the first bit of good news.
Pretty much on the same day that "Rage Against The Lymphoma" blogged that she has had the final dose of chemotherapy in what has been several months of extreme unpleasantness, she gleefully announced the birth of her sister's baby boy, who just happens to be my newest great-nephew.

So congratulations to Mr and Mrs Realmenwritelongcopy, "Hello" to Jonah William and thanks Rage' for spreading all the good news.
 

Not a stereotypical stork

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Jonah weighed 8lb 10oz.

Another close call

It's been an unusually fruitful week for "Good News" stories.

The dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners after ten weeks trapped half a mile underground was as impressive as it was unexpected.

I've lost count of the number of times the news has featured stories of groups of miners, from China to Canada, who have perished following some underground catastrophe. Even when the stranded workers have been detected and are known to be alive, launching any kind of rescue or even establishing an emergency supply of food and water simply takes too long. The signs of life dwindle and the silence grows until all hope fades, the inevitable press statement is delivered and the pit-head crowds disperse.

This time it was different. The men, who I was sure wouldn't survive, confounded expectations and all came back from the darkness.

Somewhat closer to home, I've just found out that my nephew Dan had a rather close call last November.
He's a medic in the Royal Army Medical Corp and has been serving in Afghanistan. While on patrol in Helmand Province, his group were ambushed by insurgents and took some casualties.
I can barely imagine what it must have been like, but in spite of sustained enemy fire, Dan and another of his team were carrying out an emergency tracheotomy on a wounded comrade, attempting to restore his airway. During the course of this technically demanding surgical procedure, Dan's helmet was hit by enemy gunfire.
A bullet punched through the front of his helmet and out through the back. Astonishingly, the bullet passed close enough to the side of his head to scorch a furrow through his hair without breaking the skin.
In spite of this, he carried on with the operation until they were able to get the wounded man airlifted out of the combat zone.

You can read the newspaper article on the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph website

For his courage whilst carrying out emergency surgery under such extraordinarily perilous conditions, Dan has been awarded  the Military Cross.
This honour is granted in recognition of  "an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land".

There is a sad post-script to this story.
In spite of all Dan's efforts, the injured soldier subsequently died of his wounds.
Sometimes it seems there's just not enough good luck to go round.

Woodwork

When I was a kid, my parents had  just one wardrobe. I don't suppose it was particularly large, as wardrobes go, but to me it seemed enormous.
It was a great, looming wooden thing and although it wasn't terribly wide, the single door at the front made it appear somewhat taller than it was.

The wardrobe was covered in a pale, wood veneer and there were some carved bits of decoration framing the door. But the most intriguing thing about this piece of furniture was the curious pattern adorning the slightly curved face of the door. Worked into the veneer was a pale abstract pattern similar to an oak leaf. It was just the sort of pattern that could start to look like anything if you stared at it for long enough; a bird, a face, a monster...

As I grew up, I never really gave a lot of thought to the work that had gone into that pattern, although at some point I must have realized that it hadn't been an original feature and that it must have been something that my Dad had done. The glorious smoothness of the finish was typical of the care that he lavished on any of the wood-work that he produced.
Certainly your eye could be snared by the strangely ragged outline of this pale feature, but your fingertips would never detect any irregularity in the silky surface texture.
So it was clearly his handiwork, but the mystery remained as to why he'd created such an odd pattern.

The truth was that my Dad didn't actually choose the shape that was incised into what should have been an unblemished panel.

In 1940, my parents hadn't been married for very long and they were living in the East End of London. When The Blitz began in September of that year, they were just another couple of Londoners trying to survive the remorseless, nightly bombardments.
When the air-raid sirens sounded they retreated in the darkness to an Anderson Shelter and hoped for the best, as the bombs fell and the fires burned.
They were lucky. The house that they were living in wasn't destroyed, but during one particular night, the blast from a nearby explosion sent a shock wave through the house that toppled that mighty wardrobe onto the rail at the foot of their bed, gouging a huge hole in the pristine surface of its door.

As wartime newlyweds, my parents didn't have lot. That wardrobe was one of the few items of furniture that they owned and there was certainly no way that they could afford to replace it.

So my Dad repaired it.
He patched the hole with wood filler, sanded it smooth and revarnished the door until the whole thing was better than new.

As it's the Seventieth Anniversary of the start of The Blitz, there's quite a lot of stuff in the media commemorating the events that took place and how they shaped our world.
There are countless stories of heroism or folly, of dreadful loss or extraordinary good fortune, and yet to me, the image of my Dad repairing that wardrobe represents the quiet determination of so many of the people who lived through the Second World War.

The family curse

Yes. I can reveal that our family is beset by a dreadful curse.

We seem powerless to resist the siren call of the bass guitar.

OK, it can't compete with the Hound of the Baskervilles, but there is something vaguely unsettling about the way it follows us.
It shows no respect for either age or gender and it can strike without warning at any time.

The first victim was the elder of my two brothers. He played bass in a group in Worcestershire around the end of the 1960s. As far as I can remember, they stuck together for a couple of years playing functions and some local clubs, although I never saw them play. I do remember the guitar he had though, a rather pleasing Hofner Blonde semi-acoustic.

It was several years after my brother had stopped playing that I fell under the spell. A friend of mine decided that a smart way to supplement our meagre wages would be to form a dance band. As we were living near Torquay at the time, he reckoned it would be a doddle to get some gigs during the tourist season. I had played acoustic guitar in folk clubs for several years, but I'd never considered playing in a band before, so I was quite surprised when he suggested that I join him. I probably could have resisted if he hadn't said the one thing guaranteed to sucker me in.
"You'd look great playing bass", he said, and I fell for it.

At the end of that summer, the band broke up and we went our separate ways. I moved to Cheshire and although I kept the Fender Jazz copy that had served me so well, it was exiled to the loft.
It seemed that I had shaken off the curse.

Then another member of the family was ensnared. This time it was the daughter of my other brother. The curse had somehow skipped a generation, missing him but catching my niece instead.
To make matters worse, at around this time I was lured out of retirement by a work-mate who was learning to play the guitar and needed someone to play with. I retrieved my bass from the loft and discovered how much I'd missed playing it. I began practicing again. I bought a Rickenbacker 4003. I was invited to join a band. We played a few gigs. We split up. I joined another band...

...and we're still gigging.

A few of days ago, it was my eldest brother's birthday, so I 'phoned him for a bit of a chat.
It turns out that he's just got hold of another bass guitar and has started playing again.
After all these years of lying dormant, the curse has re-awakened and caught up with him.
He's just turned sixty-nine.

Happy Birthday mate!

The view from my window

I was talking to one of my brothers the other evening, on the 'phone, and he asked me,
"Just how high off the ground are you in the telescope control room?"
When I told him that the Control Room is in a building at ground level, and not actually on the telescope itself, he seemed quite disappointed.
If he'd been the first person to ask this question, I might have been tempted to give him a hard time, but it's not uncommon for people to think that we drive the telescope from a control cabin, perched high up on the structure like the operator of a building-site tower crane.

The working environment is a lot less spartan than that and although the view from the Control Room windows is dominated by the dish, we are a couple of hundred metres away from it.

In the Google-map view below, you can see the Control Building down and to the right of the Lovell Telescope, at the end of the straight path.


View Larger Map

For any astronomers out there, the position of the dish in the Google image would be typical for pulsar observations; generally South and close to the horizon.

Here's a good tip... Ow!!

"Oooh, I don't think you wanted to do that..."
If there's a statement of the (literally) bleeding obvious, that must be it.

Without dwelling on the full, gory details, yesterday I made a fundamental mistake while using a Stanley knife to cut a sheet of cardboard; I failed to ensure that the tip of my fore-finger was behind the steel ruler that I was using as a straight-edge for cutting.
It bled very convincingly and even now, twenty-four hours later, it still stings like an utter bastard.

I haven't done something quite so gormless for a long while, but I suppose that it's one of those things that has to happen every so often to remind us that if we don't take care, inanimate objects will bite. Learning how to use tools safely is something that can be achieved without actual injury, as successful chain-saw operatives will confirm, but there's really nothing like pain for ensuring the lesson is properly reinforced.

I sometimes wonder what it must be like for parents. Just how can they bear to watch their children learn that fire, broken glass and all those other everyday hazards cause blood, pain and tears when they are not treated with the respect that they deserve.
I can't remember my Dad ever preventing me from using any of the tools in his workshop, but he must have had nerves of steel to allow me to use the electric drill when I was less than ten years old. I guess he must have shown me how to use it safely, but I was never aware of "being taught"; I just watched him do stuff and then he would go away and leave me to it.
When Reallyfatbloke acquired his table saw a few months ago, I asked him when he was going to teach his kids how to use it, because the fascination of the spinning teeth of a circular saw has a hypnotic attraction to the enquiring mind.
He went a bit quiet

So, to return to my lapse of concentration.
Blight-of-my-life was surprisingly sympathetic,
"Oh, that's really painful isn't it."
Unfortunately, she then went and spoilt it by saying it was my own fault for messing about with model railway stuff. (Yes, that's what I was cutting cardboard for. The model railway layout is back on course... Oh do stop sniggering and making 'anorak' jokes.)

I wonder if she'd have been a bit less callous if I'd done it whilst cutting a mount for one of her photographs...

What we did on our holidays

Blimey! Where did that go?

I've just had two weeks off and it's back to work tomorrow. I've never been terribly good at holidays. I forget to arrange time off work and then when I realize that I'm in danger of losing my holiday allocation and book a couple of weeks off, unless I've got a clearly defined activity mapped out, I'll just tend to loaf about all day until suddenly I notice that it's time to go back to work.

Blight-of-my-life has always been much better at holidays as she has spent virtually her entire working life as a school-teacher. She has never had to decide when to have a holiday; they just crop up at regular intervals whether you like it or not.

This year, I opted for a fortnight break right at the start of the school summer holiday.

As is the custom here at "Cyber Mansions", after several days of me showing no signs of organising anything like a proper holiday, Blight couldn't stand it any longer and asked,

"Well, are we actually going to go anywhere this year?"

"Err, yeah, I suppose so..."

After a longish pause, she said,

"Have you had any thoughts about where you might like to go?"

"Umm, not really. How about you? Any ideas?"

"I was hoping that you'd think of something for a change."

"Uh-oh", I thought, "This is probably going to be our traditional argument about why I never organise the holiday and how it would be nice if I came up with a suggestion once in a while."

I was right.

Fortunately, once we'd got that particular bit of unpleasantness out of the way, we plumped for a few days in Oxfordshire.

A few highlights:-

• Guided walk around Oxford:Without a guide you could wander around the centre of Oxford for hours and have no idea of the splendid stuff that's lurking behind the closed doors of the colleges. You'd just think it was another conglomeration of the usual shops but with some interesting architecture at roof level (Yeah, that'll be the dreaming spires). The official guide has access to some of the colleges, however, so you get to see some of the beautifully kept courtyards, wood-panelled dining halls and chapels, as well as learning about some of the history and traditions of the place.
• Probably the finest fish pie I've ever eaten:This was at "The Fox Inn", Boars Hill. I don't normally get wildly excited by food, but this was a bit special. The rhubarb crumble was pretty good too.
  
• Fire Fly: No, not "Firefly" the Sci-Fi TV series. This "Fire Fly" is a reconstruction of a broad gauge steam railway locomotive from the 19th century, which is kept at the Didcot Railway Centre. We were lucky enough to visit on a "steam day", when they have locomotives working, so we got the full experience and trundled up and down the short stretch of preserved line, breathing in coal smoke and nostalgia.
• Bike ride: We took a chance that the rain, forecast for late on Tuesday, would hold off and did a (mostly) leisurely 20 miles exploring the bridleways, cycle trails and back roads around Thame. For once, we didn't end up slogging across fields, following bridleways that have been subtly concealed by brambles, farm buildings and quagmires, although to ensure that the ride didn't deviate too far from the norm, Blight did manage to fall off when her front wheel found a cunningly concealed pot-hole.
• Fleur de Lys, Dorchester on Thames: This is an excellent B&B and one of the friendliest pubs I've stayed at. While we were having a swift half in the bar after we'd signed in, we got into a conversation with one of the locals about Madonna, of all people. Throughout the evening, everyone seemed to be treated in the same friendly manner, to the extent that it was quite difficult to distinguish between the regulars and the visitors. We had several more swift halves. Not a surprise, I guess.
• New boy: The day after we dropped in to see one of my nephews and his wife, we got a text to say that their second baby had been born. Apparently, their first son was born the day after some relatives had been visiting, so maybe there's some kind of "family catalyst effect" at work. Be that as it may, it's great news and Danny, his Mum, Dad and big brother are all happy and well.

All in all, a very good holiday.