This varnish I got for the patio doors’ step claims to be:

a) Super tough
b) Completely waterproof

I can now confirm that these claims are entirely valid. There’s still a load stuck to my arm despite a good night out and a long hot soapy shower this morning.

Before you start, the night out was last night not this morning. Only the shower was this morning.

I was listening to Radio 2 this morning on the short drive to work. I don’t normally, but Terry Wogan’s inane ramblings are preferable to Chris Moyles’ arrogant inane ramblings. Anyway, a piece of music came on and I listened with interest… sounds very much like Enya… didn’t realise she’s still around.

But as the singing came in, it wasn’t Enya. It was definitely a man. Must be Jon Anderson. He’s clearly managed to find his way home (see what I did there?). I was noting with interest how similar the music is between Jon Anderson and Enya, the same sorts of backing vocals and ethereal sound, but this one - another clue - had Mr. Anderson’s trademark bells in it, like on Olias of Sunhillow.

And then Mr. Wogan came on and said “Enya, there”.

So either Enya is turning into a man, or Mr. Anderson and Ms. Bhraonáin have merged in some strange progressive/new-age science accident.

I’m sure I had a point when I started this, but I think I’ve lost it somewhere along the way.

I bought some goods from Sainsbury’s. One of the items had a note on it:

WARNING! This product contains a security tag which is not microwaveable!

It’s a good job they warned me. I shall be sure to find and remove the tag before I microwave my new DVD.

Next time I bet five pints of beer on something, I think I’ll make sure I have some chance of being right.

The stupid thing is that it was I who raised the bet from a single pint.

Oh well, I’ve been allowed to pay it at a rate of one pint per week.

Sorry. Geek alert.

We found this…

void log(string message)
{
   try
   {
      blah blah blah
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      this.log("An exception occurred in logging : {0}" + ex.Message);
   }
}

We woke up yesterday not really knowing what we were going to do with our day. I phoned mum to see if she’d be around for a cup of tea and to tell us all about Iceland. She wouldn’t be. So H said “How about a couple of county tops?”

We’ve been eyeing up Rutland and Peterborough for a while. They’re not too far apart, and separated by Rutland Water. It promised to be a nice little trip out.

The highest point of Rutland is actually on private land, belonging to a hunt pony club, but there are public footpaths very nearby. We parked the car in a convenient location at the side of the track and walked along the footpath, regarding Rutland Water far off to our left and looking for a trig point to our right. There was a pony meeting of some sort on, with cars coming and going across the adjacent field. When we spotted the trig point, it was in the adjacent field.

Hmm… what to do? It was clearly just a field of grass - no crop to destroy. There were clearly cars coming and going, so despite being private land, it had access to the main event. We made our decision upon finding a gate that was held shut with nothing more than a loop thrown over the post - classic accessible gate closing. We crossed the field towards the trig point, and it’s then that we spotted the fences around us…

Oh no! The horses will surely come thundering through any moment and we could nearly die.

Luckily they didn’t, and the top was bagged without unneccesary drama.

Peterborough’s top was on Racecourse Road, a moderately impossible-to-find place not helped by one end of it being closed. A great 2km section of dead straight, level road though…

Despite setting out late, there was still plenty of time to enjoy ourselves, so it was then on to somewhere I’d only read about a week or so ago, and just happened to be pretty close (ie. within 50 miles) of where we were… the Lowest Point of Britain.

Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire lies around nine metres below sea level. The surrounding land is around one metre above, but the ground in the Fen consists of peat which has been shrinking as the area was drained. In fact, in 1852 the shrinkage was already apparant and a post was sunk into the peat into the clay below until its top was flush with the ground. The post is still standing…

The ground has shrunk A LOT. But it’s still strangely spongey underfoot. In fact, it’s an altogether very funny bit of the world. Well worth a visit. On the way out, we had to drive over what felt like a small mountain just to cross the ‘level’ crossing of the mainline railway.

A quick potter to Ely for a look at the magnificent cathedral, and then into Norfolk for the old Bedford River - where the Bedford Level Experiment was carried out in 1838 thereby proving beyond all doubt that the earth is, indeed, flat.

On the way back, as darkness fell, we passed within a couple of miles of the highpoint of Leicester City, and it would certainly have been rude not to visit.

And that is how we visited three tops, a bottom and a flat earth.

Statistics

Total: 137
Done: 36
Todo: 101
Completed: 26%

First date: 09/05/2007
Last date: 05/10/2008
Days elapsed: 515
Days per visit: 14
Projected finish: 15/02/2014

You forgot to mention what happened if you sounded the (roof mounted) air horns with the sunroof open!

Sweavo’s comment on yesterday’s blog reminded me, strangely enough, about what happened if you sounded the (roof mounted) air horns with the sunroof open.

The sunroof was a tilt-and-remove one. It would be tilt-and-slide, but being in a pickup, there was nowhere to slide to. So if you wanted a full open roof, you’d open it, click the quick release and the whole panel came out.

I already mentioned the small sliding windows - they weren’t great for ventilation, and there were no fresh-air vents due to, like fuel gauges and so on, those being considered a luxury item on a commercial vehicle of that era. So basically, I ran with the sunroof tilted open for most of the time.

I have made a virtual reality artists impression of the scene to help you picture it…

Now lets look at a few axioms and postulates. (I don’t know what that means, but I think it sounds good).

1. Sound reflects from hard object.

2. Glass is hard. Especially the toughened glass used in making sunroofs.

3. Therefore sound reflects from sunroofs.

4. The angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence from a plane perpendicular to the reflecting surface.

5. The sunroof’s angle is such that any sound entering from directly behind will be reflected directly downwards.

6. The airhorns are directly behind the sunroof.

7. The driver and passenger of a car are directly below the sun roof.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I shall present the results in just that manner…

This advert has started popping up around the new shopping centre in town…

Quite good. Eye catching, gets the message across. You are in no doubt as to whether you can get a full meal including side dish, dessert and wine for £10.

However, every time I see it, I hear Alan Sugar…

“I don’ know where to buy dhis staff from. You forgo’ to put dhe bladdy campany name on it, you dolts. You’re FIRED!”

“How long does jelly take to set?”, I asked H.
“Quite a long time”, came the reply… “why? Did you fancy jelly?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we can always put it in the freezer to quick-set it.”

So we made a blackcurrant jelly (still making our way through the supply donated by Lorry and Kronky - thanks guys!) and put it in the freezer (without spilling any of it on the peas) and went out to buy lots of things to make pizza and then made pizza, but the bases were a bit soggy - I must work on my bases - and then we were stuffed so we went out for a walk round the block and then went to bed.

This morning, H asked… “Did you take the jelly out of the freezer?”
“Er… no”, I replied.
“Er… oops”, she exclaimed.

Did you know that frozen jelly has at least two interesting properties?

1) On freezing, I have to assume the edges freeze first, then the middle has nowhere to expand to as it freezes, and so you end up with a dome of frozen jelly.

2) If you attempt to defrost your jelly by leaving it out for a morning with a tea-towel over the bowl, the jelly will hardly defrost at all, but the moisture in the air will freeze on the bowl, thereby coating it in a moderately thick layer of ice.

So, I bought an iPhone. Yeah, I know. I have been very rude about them in the past, and I take back some of that.

Anyway… it does everything I want and more. It’s actually a wonderful bit of kit which has replaced my phone and my now rather aged Palm Tungsten C.

It does its job.

It has a nice feature-rich alarm clock - you can set which days you want it to go off… so we have a 7:20 alarm on weekdays, and none at the weekend. You can set your own ringtone, so we’re woken by the dulcet tones of some Japanese ladies just like we were with the old phone.

So why the ‘unforgivable’ title?

Well, this morning, on the 7th day of using it as an alarm clock, Tuesday of the second week, it failed to go off.

Just failed. Didn’t work. Didn’t go off.

Luckily, I still had my old phone set to go off at 7:31 as a backup so we were still up on time, but missed out on our ten-minute morning cuddle join the queue on the left for a sick-bag.

Looking around forums on the intermaweb, it seems many other people are suffering the same problems. They, on the other hand, didn’t have a backup and missed flights, job interviews and meetings.

The problem is related to other phone events taking priority. If, for example, a calendar entry goes off, or an SMS arrives while you are sleeping, the alarm doesn’t sound. How bad is that? Very very bad.

I note also that the volume buttons on the side of the phone alter the ring and alarm volumes, so it’s entirely possible to lower the alarm volume to an inaudible whisper without going into the settings screen.

Come on, Apple… I would like to be on your side, but if you make an alarm clock that doesn’t go off, it’s actually, I think, worse than not having included an alarm clock at all.

So… back to the old reliable Nokia for the alarm clock. The iPhone can keep doing my other stuff for me, though.