Snowtastic

We recently has some extreme snow. Extreme in the sense that I can’t remember experiencing so much of it nor the length of the prolonged heavy snow showers. Local and national news (for it hogged the headlines for days and affected many parts of the UK but in particular, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Scotland and anywhere on the East Coast) reported that this was the worst snowfall for over 20 years in Derbyshire.

It was fab.

I got to work from home for 4 days in a row. The trains were severely affected and for 2 days there were no trains running through Chesterfield, and unfortunately I rely on the trains to get to and from work.
At its deepest the snow came up to Maisie’s waist. On a couple of days I struggled to find fresh milk in the Chesterfield shops I could get to (and were actually open for business). Also, for a day or two bread got a bit scarce.

It ruined many of the gutterings on our road. The weight of a foot and half of snow weighing down on flimsy gutterings was too much for several roofs (or is it rooves? or is that just for ‘hoofs’ and ‘hooves’? I dunno).
The snow did pose logistical problems though, like how to get 2 children to nursery without the use of a buggy and since the road was difficult for even an adult to get down. Also, the cars on the road were snowed in for days.

On the Saturday morning (the snow had been around since Tuesday) a group of hardy neighbours got out on the road with shovels and picks to loosen and move the ice and snow which was holding our road hostage. We started as a 3 and by then end we had reached the end of the road (3 hours later) we were 10 strong. We managed to carve our one tyre track only though.

Incredulously, one ungrateful and grumpy man who lives about half way down the street passed our merry band of workers on returning from a shopping trip with his (presumably long-suffering and meek) wife. Rather than congratulating us all on spending all that time and effort clearing the road for all residents, started shouting at us sarcastically and angrily saying that we had done a great of blocking everyone’s cars in and how (“the hell”) would people get out.

Unbelievable! And rude! One of the more volatile members of our group started walking towards him with shovel in hand shouting back. I was happy for him to speak on our behalf. The language rapidly went downhill. The peacemaker of the road quickly stepped in and calmed the situation.

8 days and some milder temperatures later, there are still small piles of stubborn, icy slush lingering around, refusing to melt completely.

There is a second wave of snow to come starting tomorrow night according to the weather reports. Surely it can’t be as severe as last time. Or can it? :)

Bloody Students

Long time no blog? Well, fasten your seatbelts folks, for two things have irked me.

The first is less serious and merely in relation to the thoroughly inappropriate clothing some are wearing currently. Whilst the nation lies under a layer of snow and ice the severity of which has not seen by most parts for over twenty years, gormless students continue to wander about the campus in footwear resembling thin slippers. Some of them even seem to think this is the right weather for pulling on a pair of shorts. Honestly. This brainlessness was particularly evident when our building had a fire drill (sorry, that was the toaster in our kitchen’s fault although I wasn’t using it at the time I might add) the other day. Sensible staff congregated outside the building in the designated area (far enough away from the potentially incendiary building) in an orderly fashion wrapped in coats, scarves, hats and gloves, waddling like penguins whilst those wearing bright yellow tabards decided on whether or not it was to return inside. The students on the other hand flocked around, smoking, chatting (shouting) in disrespectfully blue tongues and reminiscing about ‘last night’ in their assorted items of flimsy beachwear. Flip flops? In November?? I felt immensely righteous trotting back in through the main doors as staff were (eventually) recalled to enter the building. Righteous because we were prioritised to return back inside over the students. Felt like saying “excuse me, important staff member coming through”. I shouldn’t really moan. They pay our wages so we’d be stuffed without them, but come on, isn’t it time some of those wardrobes were re-evaluated?

The second thing is seeing these bunches of idiots ‘trashing London’ in what was supposed to be a string of peaceful demonstrations. Student fees were always going to rise and these so-called demonstrations were never going to change a thing (in my mind anyway). The Lib Dems have no backbone. That much is now official. I do wonder if those young individuals pictured on the news shoving things in the faces of police officers really ARE students themselves or just there for the rumble? I pity the officers drafted in to supervise these protests. And whilst I am pretty indifferent about our Royal Family and am amongst those who question their modern relevance (other than bringing in a bit of tourism) I really don’t think they need to be exposed to anarchic mobs as happened to Prince Charles and ‘Camill’ last night. Shameful. How do we ever prevent these VIPs from being assassinated I wonder if they can be driven like lambs to the slaughter straight into a street full of volatile protestors? Wonder never cease.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant there. Don’t worry. I’m already over it :)

It’s ‘texted’ if in the past tense, period.

Working at University means you are inevitably exposed to the rambling, excitable though often inane conversations between students. This is ok though and I am often entertained by some of the grammar and slang I hear. Things like “OMG” or “my bad” are endearing I find.

However, this is not always the case and I have come to take particular exception to one verb misuse and sadly it has become prevalent. I am of course referring to conversation such as this:

Student 1: So anyways, I text her right, and she text me straight back

Student: Yeah, she text me as well

I’M SORRY! IT’S “TEXTED”. It’s the past tense and therefore it is texted. Or even better, it’s “she sent me a text message”.

This has made me realise something. Language is always evolving. That’s something we cannot (nor should we) stop. And besides, it’s a good thing. Languages which do not evolve tend to die out. And technology is one of many areas which help to shape the changes. However, I think there are certain grammatical ground rules which should not be interfered with and verb tenses are one of them. Messing with these is tantamount to messing with the space-time continuum. However will be ever know whether we are referring to something which happened, is happening or will happen? The world might well go a bit Salvador Dali.

new ‘Rabid dog on the loose’ game

Yes, we have a new game. It’s called ‘rabid dog on the loose’. It’s quite simply but highly entertaining. I crawl about on my hands and knees panting, sniffing and barking. Maisie and Lois think it is a bit hilarious although their participation (patting me like a dog and jumping on top) is hindered by a small amount of fear and mistrust. Maisie feels the need to keep reminding me that I’m not really a dog. I think those words may be for her own reassurance more than anything else. Anyway it’s fun and judging my his face, it certainly gives Louis one or two things to think about.

Graceland

I was listening to Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ album on the train the other day. Well, I was listening to the mp3s which I’d ripped from a time back when I used to own the CD. I have since sold ALL my CDs after deciding that I didn’t need them. I had them all digitised and backed up on a hard drive. The CD cases were really just taking up space and besides, we love to de-clutter these days, oh yes. Anyway, it is still a very listenable album, beautifully produced, a rare mix of instrumentation, some pretty virtuosic performances (that bass riff in the middle of ‘You can call me Al’ never loses its appeal) and some really clever lyrics and vocal choruses etc.

However, I was aware whilst listening to it that I must have ripped it with some stingy compression settings. The quality could be better. The volume is lower than most of the other music on my ipod (and I hate that I am a slave to Apple these days).

So I thought that maybe I could buy the CD again so I could re-rip. I looked on amazon and discovered there was actually a remastered version of the album too. Cool! Unfortunately and to my amazement both the original CD and the remastered version are now very hard to get hold of and people are selling them for silly money used on amazon marketplace. Wow.

I now wish I hadn’t sold my original copy because it was potentially worth as much as the entire collection went for on ebay. In fact I’m wondering whether selling the entire collection was such a wise move after all. Oh well. I’m lying in the musical bed which I made.

Chatsworth & Us = New Best Friends

After retuning to live in Chesterfield we signed up to be friends of Chatsworth which essentially means we give them a chunk of money and they let us wander around their gardens, farm and adventure playground for a year. We’ve already had our money’s worth so it’s a bargain really.

It’s one of Maisie’s favourite places to go on a nice day, not least because she likes the Guinea Pig petting hour. Kids are allowed in and given a towel to put over their legs before being randomly assigned a guinea pig to sit on their lap and be stroked. Maisie keeps being given a black one which she has called ‘Maisie’. She grown quite attached to it and was slightly disappointed when we went last time and she was given a brown one.

I’d rather have a bowl of coco-pops, Mummy

That’s right, Maisie and Lois have discovered Coco Pops. It took me a bit longer to acheive that, no wait, they didn’t invent them until the 80s I think. Hmmmm. Not sure. Anyway, they lurve em and fair play to them – the chocolately milk which occurs is very slurpable. Unfortunately, coco pops make a bit of a mess. Lois likes to get chocolate milk in the folds of her neck which dry and form dark brown dirt lines for the rest of the day.

Garlics and Leeks

Lisa is growing garlic and leeks. I’ve never done this before. They seem to be coming along quite nicely. I’m a lazy summer gardener. I like things that just grow themselves really and assumed both of these would take some maintenance.

Halloween

Maisie came back from nursery on friday having won their fancy dress competition. She was nominated as best-dressed person (the award title was more glamorous than that). Couldn’t help but feel a little pride on hearing this news. And that’s it – the bar has been set pretty high now – I’m expecting awesome A-level results.

Sludge comes to our road

Last week I  left the house to walk to the train station to find that in the darkness I could see what looked like large amounts of sludge creeping down our road. They’ve been doing some roadworks the last few months (it was only meant to last 6 weeks but they keep messing things up and having to fix their mistakes) and the roads around our house are not looking in good shape. Anyway I texted Lisa who later replied “Oh, it looks like the road’s exploded again’ in a matter-of-fact way that amused me. The road has indeed on more than one occasion been raised due to burst water pipes or something. It looks very much like something from Ghostbusters. This time however mountains of sand have been added into the equation. We are considering writing a letter of complain as we are starting to walk the sludge into the house but we’re not really the complaining types. But maybe we should be? I dunno.

Video game based wild west shennanigans

I’m playing a new video game – Red Dead Redemption. It was purchased purely on the strength of reviews. So far, I’m loving it. It is set in the Wild West and you can roam freely about on foot or on your horse (or even on a wagon!). The scenery is pretty breathtaking and the continual soundtrack is very authentic – just like watching a Cowboys film. Not seen any Indians yet although I have jumped onto a moving train and walked along its roof which was a nice experience.

You are supposed to go around doing good, favours for people etc. However, you can be a bad boy and go around shooting random people and animals (chickens, dogs, deer, racoons etc.) which is fun for a while but you get a bounty on your head and people come and try and hunt you down. This is also fun and you can see how long you can do bad deeds before getting brought down. I holed myself up in a house to test this out very much like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.

Another thing which is good about this game is Maisie can watch (providing I resist the temptation to shoot stuff) and marvel at the horses, cattle and general wildlife. Lisa also seems to be quite tolerant of this one as it doesn’t involve ‘incessant shooting noises and explosions’. The game features some very fine voice acting, although I think the main dude sounds very much like Bill Clinton, which actually adds to my enjoyment. It’s like a parallel Universe. What if Bill had taken a different path in life? No politics. No sign of Monica Lewinsky out in the desert so far. Just a regular guy doing nice stuff for folk with a little bloodthirsty vengeance thrown in for good measure.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the game is having horse-mounted gun battles out in the wilderness. Taking a foe down off of his horse mid gallop with a well placed shotgun or rifle shot is satisfying as hell. Then circling back, getting off your stead and rummaging through his pockets – priceless.

Some of the quests I have been involved in so far have required me to herd pesky cattle, rescue a man tied up and being held hostage at a campsite, picking some flowers,  protecting some crops from being eaten my rabbits overnight and mounting an offensive out in a gully against a band of vagabonds.

Great fun! I feel this a title you could get completely lost in. And probably will...