Greetings. My apologies for the lack of a recent update. I am afraid that I have been working 6 days per week most weeks lately and have NO energy.
As have to use up my annual leave by the end of the year (use it or lose it, baby), I have booked a few days off work and am sitting around reading and trying not to think about the piles of work that will await me when I return.
Today I had the annual boiler service. Unfortunately the system is very gunked up and one of the radiators is rather corroded so later this month I will be having a new radiator fitted and having the system flushed out. This is known as a "power flush and booster" and costs the princely sum of 600 (the radiator is free because it is covered by insurance but the insurance does not include flushing out the system). Apparently the system is very old and has a build up of magnetite. It needs to be flushed out using a special magnetic device to remove any magnetite from the radiators, pipes etc. Once the system has been de-gunked, a "booster" will be fitted to the system which is supposed to grab any gunk that happens to be floating around the system. Apparently this is an all day job and the booster alone costs a few hundred smackeroons. Hence, the rather splendid price!!! Once a "power flush" has been performed and a "booster" fitted, the system will be covered by some kind of lifetime guarantee. Hence it is worth the money in the long run.
A couple of weekends ago, my step-dad and I went on on a fungal foray by Tarr Steps in Exmoor.
Exmoor is a national park / nature reserve and the rangers (or whatever the people who look after Exmoor are called) organise walks at different times of year so that people can appreciate the range of plant, fungal etc life to be found there.
Sadly we didn't find very many species of fungi this time. There were just a handful of species growing but the area was largely devoid of mushrooms and toadstools. This was probably because of the fairly small area we were covering. The walk was restricted to the valley around the river Barle.
At the start of the walk, the ranger showed us some mushrooms and toadstools which he had collected in other areas round Exmoor the day before and he had quite a selection with him. This suggests that there were plenty of fungi around Exmoor. Hence, the paucity of specimens found during our walk was probably due to the choice of location (maybe mushroom spores dont get blown down into river valleys very often).
Tarr Steps is a stone bridge across the river Barle. It is made from long flat slabs of stone laid over stone stacks and is not very high (it is situated at point in the river which is shallow enough at times to walk across or drive a car across suggesting that the area was used as a crossing point long before the bridge was built.
Many people think that Tarr Steps is a prehistoric structure but this theory has recently been challenged. The problem is that from time to time the river floods and when it does so, it washes away the stones from the bridge. Because of this some people have questioned how a structure which is washed away every few decades could have lasted for three thousand years. One theory is that Tarr Steps is a recent structure built in Victorian times by people working for a nearby hotel.
WTF?! Built by hotel you might ask. However, this is not as crazy as it sounds.
Fake 'ancient' monuments and ruins were quite trendy in the 1800s and a number of fake grottoes, quarries, etc exist. You may have heard of The White Horse. There is an well-known ancient chalk hillside carving of a horse in Wiltshire but there are also several that are more recent dating only to the 1800s. Other structures in the vicinity of Tarr Steps, such as a 'leat' in the hillside above the river (a channel carved into the hillside which carries water, a kind of aqueduct) which was used to carry water to an artificial waterfall suggest that the Victorian hotel management had landscaped parts of the surrounding area to create a pleasure garden for their guests.
Meanwhile, its time for some music...
"I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses from way back in 1980...
Also, here we have "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine performed by what appears to be a school band using mainly brass instruments. Believe it or not it actually sounds quite cool once it gets going!!!
Finally, today's book recommendation is "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
As have to use up my annual leave by the end of the year (use it or lose it, baby), I have booked a few days off work and am sitting around reading and trying not to think about the piles of work that will await me when I return.
Today I had the annual boiler service. Unfortunately the system is very gunked up and one of the radiators is rather corroded so later this month I will be having a new radiator fitted and having the system flushed out. This is known as a "power flush and booster" and costs the princely sum of 600 (the radiator is free because it is covered by insurance but the insurance does not include flushing out the system). Apparently the system is very old and has a build up of magnetite. It needs to be flushed out using a special magnetic device to remove any magnetite from the radiators, pipes etc. Once the system has been de-gunked, a "booster" will be fitted to the system which is supposed to grab any gunk that happens to be floating around the system. Apparently this is an all day job and the booster alone costs a few hundred smackeroons. Hence, the rather splendid price!!! Once a "power flush" has been performed and a "booster" fitted, the system will be covered by some kind of lifetime guarantee. Hence it is worth the money in the long run.
A couple of weekends ago, my step-dad and I went on on a fungal foray by Tarr Steps in Exmoor.
Exmoor is a national park / nature reserve and the rangers (or whatever the people who look after Exmoor are called) organise walks at different times of year so that people can appreciate the range of plant, fungal etc life to be found there.
Sadly we didn't find very many species of fungi this time. There were just a handful of species growing but the area was largely devoid of mushrooms and toadstools. This was probably because of the fairly small area we were covering. The walk was restricted to the valley around the river Barle.
At the start of the walk, the ranger showed us some mushrooms and toadstools which he had collected in other areas round Exmoor the day before and he had quite a selection with him. This suggests that there were plenty of fungi around Exmoor. Hence, the paucity of specimens found during our walk was probably due to the choice of location (maybe mushroom spores dont get blown down into river valleys very often).
Tarr Steps is a stone bridge across the river Barle. It is made from long flat slabs of stone laid over stone stacks and is not very high (it is situated at point in the river which is shallow enough at times to walk across or drive a car across suggesting that the area was used as a crossing point long before the bridge was built.
Many people think that Tarr Steps is a prehistoric structure but this theory has recently been challenged. The problem is that from time to time the river floods and when it does so, it washes away the stones from the bridge. Because of this some people have questioned how a structure which is washed away every few decades could have lasted for three thousand years. One theory is that Tarr Steps is a recent structure built in Victorian times by people working for a nearby hotel.
WTF?! Built by hotel you might ask. However, this is not as crazy as it sounds.
Fake 'ancient' monuments and ruins were quite trendy in the 1800s and a number of fake grottoes, quarries, etc exist. You may have heard of The White Horse. There is an well-known ancient chalk hillside carving of a horse in Wiltshire but there are also several that are more recent dating only to the 1800s. Other structures in the vicinity of Tarr Steps, such as a 'leat' in the hillside above the river (a channel carved into the hillside which carries water, a kind of aqueduct) which was used to carry water to an artificial waterfall suggest that the Victorian hotel management had landscaped parts of the surrounding area to create a pleasure garden for their guests.
Meanwhile, its time for some music...
"I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses from way back in 1980...
Also, here we have "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine performed by what appears to be a school band using mainly brass instruments. Believe it or not it actually sounds quite cool once it gets going!!!
Finally, today's book recommendation is "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
thefuckoffkid:
Thanks for the birthday wishes, my good sir.
krito:
thanxxx 