The new paper

This is the result, with a pattern that reminds us of the flowering quince (Chaenomeles x superba ‘Crimson and Gold’) we have in our back garden.

The seam is not quite invisible but doesn’t stand out except on close inspection; the bold overall pattern takes precedence. It was a job and half though even though we only used this paper on a couple of walls. It is relatively flimsy compared to the paper we used in the room we decorated last month (and used on the other walls in this room, contrasting plain with texture against flat with pattern). Still, we got it up without any disasters, our calculations gave us enough paper for the job and the quince pattern twists properly across the edges of each individual drop of paper.

Now we just need to get the curtain rail back up and can then start putting furniture back in its proper position, returning the upstairs of our house to a semblance of normality!

It was a new word to me when I came across it recently and suspect it will be so for most readers of my blog (although doubtless not all).

This is of course a little frustrating but perhaps these relatively short series with long gaps (along with a very high standard of writing) is part of the secret of how the BBC has kept the programme rolling forward for so long and, since the 21st century revival, going from strength to strength.

The Blogger’s Survival Guide

I am a blogger and, if you care to look back, you will see that I have managed to pursue my blogging endeavour for over a decade. Therefore, I felt that I could approach The Blogger’s Survival Guide with a certain measure of expertise.

Perhaps that also makes me a difficult customer and I spotted several omissions and errors. For example, despite a whole chapter on “The Legal Stuff” and plenty of room devoted to the value of making your blog look suitably pretty, I could not find a single mention of seeking out photos under a Creative Commons licence. Also, a surprising amount of space seemed devoted to illustrated guides to how to get blogging with Blogger or WordPress but this has the problem of fixing the advice at a point in time; another missing discussion was whether blogging is likely to continue in its present form or mutate out of all recognition over the next few years.

I think a more honest title would have been “how to try to make some money or at least gain some kudos by blogging” but, not only is that less catchy, it would be problematic when money-spinning technique number one is probably to try and persuade others to buy your musings on how to blog (which I suspect results in a very low level pyramid of reward). The wealth I have gained from my blog is in its contribution to relationships with a range of diverse and wonderful people; I would love some more of them to pick up and persist with the blogging habit but I don’t think this is a book I would be likely to direct them too.

A pretty wide range of information but, from my perspective, it appears to have some gaps and certainly isn’t focused on the kind of blogging I am most interested in. 3/5.

One of the first things I like to do on a new computing device is the simple customisation of “changing the wallpaper”. This is a much easier task than wallpapering a room but it took me a while to find the instructions I needed. I found an online guide that also provided a downloadable template and this helped me find the way in. I took one of my fiery series of wallpaper images and resized it to the suggested 1600×1280 dimensions. I then transferred it to my tablet via Dropbox (one of the tools that I wasn’t able to fit on my phone) and dropped it into the DCIM folder (where, on my phone, the camera stores the images it takes). I am not sure if that location is essential but the Gallery app located the picture instantly which meant it could be used as wallpaper.

It turns out that part of the process is using a resizable window to determine what shows on the screen, so perhaps the template and resizing is not essential but it did mean I had an image which easily fitted the requirements and now, when I open the case, the Nexus appears in colours that are uniquely mine.

Chirk Castle

This morning I have published my photos from our visit to Chirk Castle (where we enjoyed a ramble-and-a-half last month). More to come from other outings on our recent holiday over the next few weeks.

This morning’s planned programme was slightly disrupted at home by the discover of a furry small, unexpected problem. Jane called me downstairs and said she had seen a rat. I thought she meant in the garden but then she pointed me to the front room!

After I’d armed myself with a stick and poked round for a few minutes looking for something rat-sized, she explained that she meant a mouse. Not quite as scary but definitely not a welcome guest to our house. I didn’t find it but I did find a pile of seed husks under one of the arm chairs so we knew something was hiding in there.

We have been keeping a couple of mousetraps in the polytunnel since some of our early plantings of beans and sunflowers were stolen away. A trap sounds cruel but I am not convinced that alternatives, like poison or “humanely” catching rodents and rehoming them (ie. abandoning in a hostile, unfamiliar environment, exposed to nature’s red tooth and claw) is any better for dealing with the problem. They hadn’t caught anything in the polytunnel although we also hadn’t had a repeat of that problem. We brought them in and, before I set off for work, this is what I found:

Snap!

I wonder if we will catch any more?

I was leading the service, which presented certain challenges, particularly what you sing as a small congregation when you are going to be listening to such amazing (recorded) choirs. Most of the time though, my contribution was playing DJ at the sound desk, cueing up and playing tracks from the CDs Bruce had brought along as he led us through a number of examples of choral music written for liturgical use, Kyries, Magnicats and the like.

I was listening to Radio 1 a few days ago and it struck me that there is a certain similarity with a lot of the modern music that was being played, in that the songs often consisted of just a word or a sentence repeated round and round. Music from the choral tradition might not have such a pronounced beat but, in the comparison, clearly stands out as a much more sublime approach. Timeless rather than, frankly, throwaway.

Weathervane at Snowshill Manor (click for set)

The story of Snowshill and the National Trust is that Wade gave it to the Trust a few years before he died, preserving his collections for future generations. Every other Trust property also has a story. For example, Sunnycroft near Telford, which we visited last month, was notable for not having been redecorated since the 1920′s when it was handed over in the 1990′s, making it an invaluable house-sized time capsule.

I wonder what examples of early 21st century life, dwellings and possessions will be handed down to delight visitors in the future. We look back and imagine we are capturing the mood of a past age; what could we bequeath from our present time?