Local

They’ll not be happy . . .

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Opposite our house is a small parking area. Beyond that there is a medium sized (whatever that means) field. there is a sort of path that runs along the edge of the field, but I have been informed that it is not an official footpath. however it seems to a haven for the local dog owners. Dog ownership in the village seems to have increased over the past few months, which is probably due to the pandemic.

Last year the farmer grew nothing in the field, which happens every few years. About three weeks ago we noticed that the field was being sprayed with something. This usually happens before the farmer starts planting. The very same day saw at least 3 dog walkers in the field. Now I don’t know what the spray was, but I certainly would not walk my beloved pet anywhere that has been sprayed with anything.

Today, I noticed some people in the field with a commercial digger. They appeared to be picking up some of the rocks that lay scattered around the field. In the past half hour, I watched as the small ‘entrance’ to the field was blocked with soil an some of the rocks. I’m now of the opinion, that the farmer is going to graze sheep on the field, as the ‘entrance’ was blocked a few years ago when sheep were grazed. What now for the dog walkers. They will have to use the proper public paths to walk their animals.

They’ll not be happy . . .

Is there a ghost?

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Firstly, at the risk of advertising my age, I am no David Bailey when it comes to photograpy.

Now that’s out of the way, I took this picture some time ago. It was captured in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Bramham. It was quite a bright sunny day, so the original looked quite bland and boring, even in monochrome. Before anyone says ‘Photoshop’ it was edited in Google Picasa. It was taken with a Panasonic Lumix camera, but I won’t bore anyone with any more camera specifics. As I say, it started life as a black and white, or monochrome image. It was then edited to make it sepia and look aged. Still not looking great I applied a few special effects. First one was to enhance the highlights of the image, which made the central headstone a lot brighter. I then used a soft focus filter to soften the edges added a bit of film grain effect and there we have it. Spooky!

This my first real attempt at using a photograph to stimulate or inspire me to write a post and I think, at this early stage that it works up to a point. It’s a photo and I’ve written something, so job done. Now I need to decide whether I write about the image/photo or just use it as a reference for the rest of the words I write. I’m still not sure which would be the best way to go, if in fact I carry one with this. I’ll stop now, as I may be on the point of rambling.

Almost a major disaster …..

/ Tony / Leave a comment

You may be forgiven for thinking that some terrible had almost happened. Well for us, it probably was something terrible. For other, not so terrible. It all started at around in the very early hours of this morning. For some bizarre reason, and I’ll come to the bizarre bit later, I awoke and realised that electric radio/alarm was not working. The usual reason for this a regional power cut. Mrs H said I should set the alarm on my phone, so off I trotted downstairs to set it. It was only when I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realised that I had switched the stair light on and it worked. After a few moments of intense head scratching, it dawned on me that something (probably the alarm/radio) had blown a fuse and the circuit breaker had tripped. This was just about 4:35am.

I went to the garage, and had a look at the ‘fuse’ box, saw which one had tripped and tried to reset it. Nightmare !!!! It would not reset. Time after time I tried, but nothing. In the end I gave up and went back to bed, told Mrs H we would have to get an electrician to have a look, as I did not have a clue. We got up around 8:30 and I tried again. Still no success. Googled the problem and most of the responses came back as ‘call an electrician’ or find out which is the problem appliance. However, the disaster was approaching ….. R*** was starting to stir. His computer had shut down when the battery got to 5% and his TV and video was not working. For any other 21 year old, this would not be a problem and they would understand. But for a 21 year old Autistic lad, whose life revolves around his computer and video, it is a huge and potentially violent issue.

Mrs H quickly scanned the parish magazine and found the number of the electrician that literally lives around the corner. I explained the problem and cleverly, he asked me to send him a photo of the fuse box so he could see for himself what our set up was. He very quickly came back with the instructions of what I was to do. This involved unplugging everything on the circuit and trying the reset again. I did this and the problem still existed. He told me that if it did not work, he would come round, but it would be late afternoon

By this time R*** had awoke and was asking for his computer …. things were starting to get a little tense. It was then I realised, that the small fridge freezer appeared to be off. So I unplugged this and tried the reset …… hurrah it worked. However, as soon as I plugged the fridge freezer in it tripped again. We have it plugged into a 4 way trailing socket, I do not know what made me think of it, but I removed the 4 way and tried again. This time there was no reset. I went back into the house and began gingerly plugging everything back in. We were now up and running, the disaster had been averted and the 4 way trailing socket was safely in the bin. I rang the electrician back and told the outcome. Thanked him profusely and asked how much I owed. He told me I owed him nothing, and added, that if we ever needed any electrical jobs doing, just to give a call.

When you look at it, something really positive came out of all this. We now know an electrician that we feel we can use, confident that he is not going to rip us off. That is worth a lot and I think this guy knows that. For the price of a ten minute phone call, he has gained a prospective customer and to me that is very good business sense.

Now to come to the bizarre bit that I mentioned earlier. We discovered that the heating and hot water system utilises the same circuit, as that had stopped also. As I busy switching things off I noticed that the times clock had stopped at about 04:30. This was around the same time that I had originally woken up. It was almost as if, the power tripping had disturbed my sleep. Most unusual ….. bizarre in fact. Anyone care to explain?

Is a lie, a deterrent ?

/ Tony / Leave a comment

     A strange question you may ask, but bear with me. At the end of the village, there are two bottle banks. The City Council is responsible for emptying them and I would say they do a satisfactory job for most of the time. The problem arises when the banks get full. People want to ‘do their bit’ but are not prepared to come back another day, if the banks are full. They just leave them at the side of the banks, in the vain hope that when they get emptied, the contractor will put their bottles in for them. At best, they just get smashed by kids, as behind the bottle bank, is an area that some kids tend to use as a den. It is about three metre square and has a hedge, backing onto a field, which is how the kids get in. It is an ideal place for them to drink their cheap cider and smoke whatever they are smoking these days. Basically get involved in anti-social behaviour.

     Now, how does the Council overcome this. Do they make sure the kids cannot get to the back of the bottle banks? Do they ask the Police to patrol more in that area? Do they write to the parents, telling them what some kids are getting up to. None of those, and this is where my post title comes in. The Council has put a sign up advising everyone that CCTV is in operation !! Well, you might say, that would be a deterrent. It would, if there was a CCTV camera in place. As it is, there is nowhere to put a camera. What would it show? All it would show, is people putting bottles into a bottle bank. As the kids get into their ‘den’ from the field behind, it would not pick them up. So, is a lie a deterrent ? Not in my book is isn’t.