Author: Ffiftypluses

Human being.

Of Course

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Lockdown was a strange (and wonderful) experience. I know that we were quite content not to have to be around people we didn’t want to see. We were sad not to see friends though. After a while…you get bored. I started taking courses online. In particular Domestika. Art courses. 🎨

I’m not claiming this is a new career. It’s fun. At school I did Latin. Art was for wasters according to my parents…both of whom have had creative careers (mum wrote a newspaper column. Dad was a house painter and still makes art). I’ve always written and I’ve always drawn but not consistently. I take photos too. What I’ve learned is to relax. It’s for fun. Lots of my friend are doing this too. And I enjoy sharing (@ushiedraws on Instagram if you’re nosey)

It has made me look at things more closely. I use my phone less as a distraction. I’m not as bad as I thought might be, in fact I have a style. Faces are hard. Feet are not.

My right foot

Be thankful this is not a video of my ukelele playing.

How to be a great guest

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I’m sure a lot if you will have gone “Air b’n’b” at some point. Not sponsored. If not do try it it’s great fun. (Yes, I am aware of the arguments about it ruining the housing market for first time buyers).We prefer to have place to come back to where you can cook and have privacy unlike a youth hostel though we have used those too. (I should say many hostels now have smaller private rooms not all dorms). Being able to slob out in your pants (underwear for my US chums) and not worry about housekeeping or dorm mates is a plus but mostly being able to cook and eat at random times and for less than a meal out is where the joy is for us.

We’ve been to a few places all over the world. Usually we communicate in English but it’s polite to try whatever language even if it’s via Google translate and with apologies. That’s a good start to endearing yourself to the host. Now I’m sure people are aware that guests rank the host when they leave and getting a ‘superhost’ rank pretty much ensures that you’re booked up so most will try hard to please. Were you aware that hosts can and do rank guests too? You definitely want to get on the 5 star guest list as it helps you grab those difficult to book spaces. Our hosts tend to remember us for all the right reasons. Put it this way, it’s our wedding anniversary and a previous host has especially invited us back to celebrate!

Rule one. Read the reviews. There’s often detail in there that you might miss. For example a host may have pets and you may have allergies even if the pet is not allowed in the rental space. Do your research about the area as well. One time, in Paris, a perfectly lovey flat was marred by having to climb over drunks asleep in the doorway on the way in every night.

Rule two. Be polite. It costs nothing. Be up front if you gave particular needs or requests. Will you be arriving late at night or need to dropbags off early before the space is cleaned? We always check for gay friendliness.

Rule three. Remember this is someone’s home and their business. If the rule is shoes off at the door and everyone sits to pee (this is a real place and we loved it) then so be it. Their house their rules.

Rule four. Be considerate. If you’re sharing  space with the host then keep the noise down and keep hallways tidy for example.

Rule five. Clear up before you leave. Dry the dishes, put things away, strip the bed, take out the rubbish. If necessary throw away perishable food stuffs. Tne room may not be used for some time and your stinky sour milk will not be appreciated. On the other hand tinned or dried foods left for other guests can be an act of kindness (and lightens your luggage).

Rule six. Leave a thank you note. We do this as a matter of course. It means you can point out any minor issues (if there are any) without putting them in your review. One host had a guest point out an issue before we arrived one morning and greeted us to explain the he would give us his home for the night while the tiny tiny issue was fixed. What service. To be honest if there is an issue it’s best to contact the host straight away.

We always take a gift. Usually a couple of food items made very locally to our home if we are allowedtobring them across any border or another typical item from home. Sometimes we give this as we arrive. If we can we invite out host for a home cooked meal or drink but this is not always practical. *I would not do this if traveling alone for example.

We’ve stayed in a tiny crazy attic flat, a smelly basement (that was an early one), a converted garage, and a “tree house with a pool” (that one’s in Australia). Air b’nb have always been really helpful….like that time someone tried to rent their student room in halls as a ‘studio flat’ … look, it’s an adventure. Be respectful and kind, you’ll be treated well.

The ‘Charity’ Bag

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We have a plastic bag by the front door. It sits silently in the porch. Every time there is a thing either of us sees that neither of us wants or needs it goes in the bag (if it will fit). This, when full, gets walked (usually) to a charity shop (goodwill if you’re in the USA). Its a simple thing and its surprisingly easy to fill such a bag. There have been heaps (literally) of clothes and bric-a-brac that have gone forever from our home through this simple action.

Like most humans, trapped in our own space during the pandemic, I started to notice stuff. More realistically, stuffed. The living room, stuffed, the bedroom, stuffed and especially the garage, stuffed. Now I know a lotta people did the same because our local charity shops had a booking system for drop off!

As a student I lived in the charity shop. There was a place, in a basement, in Manchester that had stalls full of second hand clothing dropped in by hotels and cruise companies (old livery, heavily customised was very ‘in’ in the late punk/early New Romantic era). That place became Aflecks Palace, now a Mancunian legend. You could still get seriously good quality shirts with the button on collars still available, not that we wore those. Shirt tails hanging out over skinny, often stripy (fluorescent yellow and black) jeans…ah, those were the days. I usually teams this with a tail coat. I still own two tail coats though my jeans are less skinny!

For a long time I forgot the charity shop. A little cash in your pocket and you go for new. Sad really. I always donated though. A thing I liked to do when running youth groups was a clothes swap. The kids would bring items that were still wearable but that they were tired of. You brought six things you got six tickets. Each ticket was worth one item. Any unspent could be kept for the next swap but they were usually lost. Unused clothing went to the next attic sale stall we ran to raise funds for the club.

It was always a recycling thing but I never really thought about it that way. I’m an Environmental Science graduate so should have known better. I have some amazing shirts (I like a loud shirt) gleaned from the racks at Cancer Research or the British Heart Foundation. I am very lucky to have more than I need. Yes, there are times I’ll check if there’s a trade in to be had on a book or game. Yes, I know there are apps to sell if you need the money. We took a pile of board games to our local swap shop yesterday. They couldn’t use them so there was no money to be had. (I’m not a saint) but rather than bring them home we sauntered up to the next available charity shop and dropped them off. Someone out there gets a good quality board game and we have a little more space.

These days there’s always a bag or a box by the door. It gets full more often than I care to think about.

Wireless for Sound

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So I started the process of getting my radio ham beginners license. I’m enrolled in an online course. The calculations are going to mess with my brain for a while but practice, practice. Next stage is to book an exam but I’m going to leave that until I’m through the programme. I told you this blog would be eccentric.

The little Chinese walkie talkie arrived today. A Baofeng. It’s cheap and hopefully cheerful. I’m not allowed to PTT (push to talk) until I pass my exam and have a call sign and license from HM Government. I can, however, listen and I am told that it may be possible to hear the ISS (International Space Station) as it passes overhead. I can also get Radio 2 from the BBC no doubt!

Today’s adventures in amateur radio seem to have included a lot of information about electrical circuits and radio frequencies which is to be expected I suppose. I’m thankful that there’s not currently a practical requirement for the first level due to Covid 19. No doubt that will come. In the meantime I’ll sign off.

Grinding

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Some weeks are a grind. Sometimes its more than a week. Take this week for example. It’s the school holidays. This means that I’m not being woken by slamming car doors as the offspring are ferried to the school at the bottom of the road. (Yes, I am sometimes still in bed at 9am get over it) I don’t have a child but we borrowed my niece for the day and took her to a local wildlife reserve. She loves coming to visit as we usually take her out to some place like this (although the dead bodies in the Egyptian exhibit at the museum appear to have been a favourite to date…which is worrying on some levels). Those clever folks at the park had put on an Easter break treasure hunt of sorts so we spent three hours (with a 7 year old) searching for the hidden objects and all for the prize of a chocolate bar.

To be fair what amused us most was that she had lost a tooth the night before. An essential part of the ‘auntie visit’ is the sleepover. The tooth fairy had visited and, apparently, had left an ‘away from home’ bonus. The losing the tooth was not the funny part but the fact that she paid for the treasure hunt with one of the pound coins she had been left …. it was made clear that we were expected to reimburse her having failed to bring change to the nature reserve to pay for the treasure hunt. She held us to it too.

In other news our Prime Minister us is a convicted criminal along with his wife and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. All of which added to the current war in Ukraine and a lack of oil and gas etc. meant that when a well known camping and outdoor retailer offered a tiny gas stove and refills for sale at a stupidly low price I had to go out to get one. Not wanting to waste fuel I called in en route to the swimming pool for dive training. Its a nice stove. My parents have had one for a while along with a generator. Their electricity goes off regularly (they’re in their 80s) and it allows them to make tea. This is the UK in the year 2022.

Next stop a water butt.

Tuning in again

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I noticed an article on my social media feed this morning (yes, I’m a tea in bed scroller) stating that some folks are able to upgrade lovely old ipods. Now I adore my old beast and music uninterrupted and off grid so, obviously, this struck me as an excellent idea. I fired up the web browser in search of a local ‘modder’ and found one who definitely recommended backing up the music library before having a new disc and battery set in place. Hmmmm… This, of course, meant either firing up the ancient mac or finding a way to put the library onto the windows machine. Given that the mac is buried in the kitchen under a pile of hobby projects I found my way to the ‘store’ where I was delighted to find that it is now possible to log in to my apple account from the laptop after downloading the appropriate software. That was over 5 hours ago.

I mean I understand that the disc on the ipod needs to be formatted to windows and that doing so blanks the memory. It now seems that in order to access the said tunes I need to download the lot, album by album, to the laptop. Hence 5 plus hours…. If this doesn’t work I’m going to be a bit cross. … and I’ll have to dig out the old mac.

Actually one of the joys of watching each song as it slips into my library is that I’ve had a joyous (if unproductive) afternoon listening to half forgotten tracks from way longer ago than I care to remember. I do have most of my music in physical form. Call me ancient but I can still play those tracks deleted from the store on tape (yes, I have a cassette player. 80s style and huge), vinyl or even on CD. There’s been a box of 7″ singles (ask your grandparents) sitting in the living room begging to be played for some time now with all their crackle and hiss.

It could be nostalgia. All the get rich gurus tell me that owning stuff is so last century and I’m sure that piles or dusty old albums are cluttering up my karma somehow but I make no apologies for my love of the physical, hold it in your hands, pleasure of setting a disc or cassette into the appropriate player and sitting back to listen to a whole album, not or shuffle or anything. Very meditative … well, depending on your choice of genre but to each their own.

Its up to R now in my downloads. Next trick will be to upload the new CDs through the external disc drive I bought for the laptop. They don’t have them anymore since no one wants them apparently. I mine for retro gaming with actual games not an emulator. Even after the apocalypse given a solar panel and a battery to store the power I will still have my tunes. Failing that the world will have to suffer my harmonica playing.

Prepper…moi?

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I’ve been away for a couple of days somewhere near Macclesfield and visited a National Trust stately home whilst I was there. I’ve also been pottering in the garden. The seeds we planted have started to push through the earth into the sunlight. Also the new shed arrived. Apparently its a summerhouse not a shed. Because it has glazed double doors. We found an old length of carpet in the attic and that is relaxing in the summerhouse with a view to making it seem less… shed like.

As the whole country is caught up in a panic over energy bills and fuel shortages we are building a retreat in our own garden. Yes, I know its not everyone who has a garden. I’m also investigating a ham radio license. I can remember listening to the police bands on an old transistor radio hanging off the gate of my grandads farm yard. (No, there was not ‘lashings of ginger beer’.) … ( non British readers or those not of a certain age this is an oblique reference to a once popular but now discredited UK children’s writer called Enid Blyton and her books about feral children roaming the English countryside). It was always best if you could work out whether the police car was going to drive past where we were standing. Anyhow, ham radio. No real clue but that is the current project. Perhaps someone can advise me?

A cold weekend with warmer water meant dive rescue training on the surface waist deep. Not the warmest of occupations and I escaped after 40 minutes to warm my aching bones. How is it possible to ache from little finger tip to elbow on either hand? Club night Monday was a Hungarian themed quiz with Hungarian themed snacks. I’d never thought of putting cottage cheese with chocolate before.

Thus evening promises cold. Hail showers even. We may need to frost wrap the outdoor plants again.

Spring has sprung

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First really warm day of the year. I can just about stand to be out without a jacket and the washing (laundry) is on the line outside. It is spud chitting time. The Maris Pipers have been sitting on the window sill in an upturned egg carton for about 5 days now and possibly tomorrow they will be going into the grow boxes. The cats are, of course, rolling all over the warm, planted areas of the raised beds but regardless I can see radish begin to sprout.

Potatoes chitting

On the warmest window sill the mange tout and peas are showing green shoots but no-show yet from the broad beans.

Pea shoots

Even after a late night, at a long anticipated concert, the sunshine has lured the family, cats and all, outside. Walking down tne Street people are smiling. There’s a sourdough loaf being manufactured and brownies ready to gift to a sick friend. Its one of those ‘Famous Five’ Enid Blyton kind of days (historic children’s adventures from my youth. Those of a certain age will know what I mean). Lashings of ginger beer.