Spoons

I’ve developed a new hobby… carving spoons. Its really therapeutic. I got the idea as I was pondering something different we could teach the scouts on camp, and I happened across the idea of spoon carving.

I did what most people do these days and looked on amazon, where I discovered that hook knives (that you need to carve out the ‘bowl’) are too expensive to buy 15 of them for a camp. So then I looked at eBay, and discovered that you cant buy knives on ebay. So then I looked at AliExpress, the cheaper, dodgier, Chineseier version of Amazon and bought a load of them for £2.50 each! Woo.

Anyway I had to get a bit of practice in before I taught a load of kids how to do it, so after too many hours on YouTube these are the result, my spoons.

From left to right…

First attempt, using a bit of old pine bed slat
A walnut spoon, much better.
A (bed slat pine) Welsh love spoon, an additional (late) valentines present to Sarah.
My favourite spoon so far, I’ve no idea what the wood was but it finished up lovely.
Roughed out spoon from this weekend’s camping, made from freshly cut silver birch (tree had blown over in a storm) needs to dry out before I can finish it nicely.
The tools. (Not the cheap AliExpress ones though. Once I made the first spoon and enjoyed it I bought myself some nice MoraKniv ones)

So there you are. Spoons.

The best home owner job

We talk a lot about what it’s like owning a house. Kev has been renovating and expanding his vast property empire for many years now, of course, while I have been steadily improving our premises with the aid of a toolbox large enough to use as a double garage. Now that Ian has joined the home owner club we have been doing our best to gently and constructively guide him in his new duties.

But I sometimes think that all too often we discuss the downsides: the amount of maintenance work, the unexpected costs, the speed with which nature will reclaim your carefully tended garden as wilderness. So I thought it might be nice to talk about the good bits of owning a house, because some of the things an Englishman has to do to look after his castle are actually very satisfying.

I will open the bidding with pressure washing.

Pressure washing is brilliant.

I love my pressure washer, but for whatever reason I hadn’t taken it out for a spin for about 18 months. Then, the other day, we’d had a drain unblocked and the drainage gully running through the paving down the side of the house needed clearing of all the crap that had built up, so I got the Kärcher out of the garage and fired it up. And once it was out, that was me set for the afternoon. Everything got jet washed.

The best part was discovering that the paving stones around the front and side of the house actually have a colour, as pictured above. I spent a very happy hour effectively colouring them in.

Mortgage statement

Massive Bankers Plc

Mortgage Centre
High Interest House
Cashola Park
Nottingham
NG1 8JU

Dear Mr. Marshall

ANNUAL MORTGAGE STATEMENT

Product	Absolute Swizz Bankers Rate Fix v9
Mortgage Number	1563786454
Property Address	Force It Up Your Richard Hampshire Near France

OVERVIEW OF YOUR MORTGAGE FOR THE PERIOD 23 JANUARY 2024 TO 23 JANUARY 2025

Opening balance	£205,466.54
Repayment 23 January 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 February 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 March 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 April 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 May 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 June 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 July 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 August 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 September 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 October 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 November 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Repayment 23 December 2024 – thank you	–£1325.63
Interest charged	£7208.44
On Time Repayment Fee	£2101.03
BOE Interest Rate Above 3% Penalty	£883.97
Monthly Direct Debit Fee	£1783.88
Non-Dollar Transaction Surcharge	£1326.10
Window Tax	£604.14
Massive Bankers Plc Christmas Bonus	£2000.00
Remaining balance	£205,466.53

If you require help with your mortgage or making repayments, log in to our online banking portal using your customer number, account number, unique password, three letters of your passphrase and a weird plastic calculator thing. Our AI bots are waiting to help you but will never pass you on to a human being.

Yours sincerely,

Ava Pricey-Holme
Chief UK Mortgage Account Executive Officer

Cracking the code

In the last few years, whenever there are renovations to some part of the building where I work, there have been some common design elements. They’re always more colourful for a start, which is nice because the building’s original colour scheme was mainly shades of grey. They also involve little holes or indents in otherwise blank panels that spell things in morse code.

In reception, for example, there are large dark coloured panels with a repeating pattern in morse code that’s lit from behind, which spells out the name of the building over and over again. It’s like a little interior design Easter egg.

Lately, a shared kitchen area near our room was refitted and gained new green cupboard doors. One of them just covers the equipment for the instant hot water tap. It has a pattern of holes that form a vent so the cupboard has some air circulation, and the holes are in morse code.

Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I looked up a morse code translator to see what the vent spells.

It says VENT VENT.

Why not indeed?

Well, let me tell you. What you’re really asking there is three questions. Firstly, why don’t I use trains more? Secondly, why didn’t you ask me sooner? Thirdly, what kind of lunch is the best lunch?

I only wish that I could use the train more because it provided fast and easy travel when I was mooching about in my 20s and 30s, especially when Reuben and I had the benefit of the family railcard. I’m currently trying to buy train tickets to London for a gig in November and they’re still not available when usually they’re released some months in advance. This doesn’t feel like they’re taking my mini-break very seriously and I for one will be sure to ram it up their junction should I get the chance!

You should have asked me sooner. I am always considering going to Leeds and very rarely get the chance to do so. Oh, you know what it’s like. Things get in the way and before you know it, there’s weeds to be plucked, cobwebs to be dusted or shopping to be done. Last night I insisted on putting time aside to press my trousers yet after doing the washing up, cleaning the kitchen and going out for a three mile run, it was after 11pm and there’s no chance of me using anything where there’s a risk of scalding myself when the light isn’t great and I have work in the morning. It’s just not happening.

The best kind of lunch is a hot lunch, one that’s dispensed from a lunch hatch with lots of meat and potatoes. They come in all different kinds these days. When I were a lad, you only got three kinds of meat: turkey (at Christmas), chicken (usually from the freezer, have you ever sucked a chicken?) and ham (full of water and slimy like a frog). All of this lamb ostrich alligator kangaroo burger nonsense is miles away from what I would consider to be a decent meal. If you can’t get a video… wait, that’s wrong. If you can’t get a hot lunch, a sandwich is a perfectly acceptable alternative providing you also have a bag of crisps and a drink to go along with it, and something sweet for afterwards. It seems as though most meal “deals” these days (if you can call them that) aren’t deals because for more money they give you less food and I’m not happy about that.

You meant Leeds Castle, right?

(Ian practising at being a rambling old codger).

23kHz

On the recent Beans outing to Dublin, I briefly mentioned the frequency profile of FM transmission and the reasons we have alarms connected to certain frequencies. Since this raised a small eyebrow of interest I thought it would be a good idea, from both an educational and bean-scoring viewpoint, to expand further on this subject.

Settle in, this one’s going to be wild.

Loyalty update

Many, many years ago I wrote a post here on the Beans about my porridge loyalty card. I seem to remember it was not deemed as impressive as I had hoped and nobody else really seemed very invested in the level of loyalty I was showing to a simple breakfast food.

Anyway, a lot of time has passed since then, so I thought it would be a good time to look through my wallet and take stock of all the loyalty cards I now possess. By doing so we will learn something about where my allegiences lie in 2024.

I found seven loyalty cards. Here they all are.

Twenty one years on

A year ago, when it was twenty years on from the founding of Zyurisizia, I wrote a post about the fledgling nation that Ian and I helped to birth, and we had a short conversation about what its flag looked like.

My contribution was only that I had “a feeling it involved triangles”. Ian dredged up slightly more detail, recalling “triangles and a red circle, a bit like the Chinese flag”, though in what way that resembled the flag of China, which has no triangles and no red circle, I don’t know. We then recalled that territory was claimed by fastening the flag to the longest pole we could find, and planting that in the ground in various places.

Luckily I have now found my Office Memorabilia CD, so after a year of impatient waiting, you’ll be pleased to know the answer is now with us.

The capital city, which was the Office, was claimed with a hand-drawn flag on a 30cm ruler.

We then moved on to claim the Wildlife Area a few days later, by which point we had a more professional flag on a metre ruler.

I haven’t visited the Scholars Gate housing development to check, but I assume the flag is still prominently flying there somewhere.

For your peace of mind, this is probably all the Zyurisizia nostalgia there is to be had, so next year you’re probably safe from a “twenty two years on” type post. Still, lots of fun was had by all concerned.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Thoroughly Dull