Wulf's Webden

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9 November 2026
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Three String Bass?

Unsurprisingly, I often get information about music gear popping up in my YouTube feed. One of the things that caught my eye in the past week was a collaboration between Loog Guitars and Fender to put out some 3 string basses and guitars with nods to classic Fender instruments (like this one). Fender are still in my bad books but I’m also not sure about whether a three stringed bass is a good choice for a child.

Loog suggest it is an easy way into playing guitar – better, in their estimation, than a ukulele. I’m a lot less sure. I do agree that someone learning an instrument needs more than an instrument shaped toy although, honestly, a lot of kids really just want an instrument shaped toy to bash around as they play. It is also true that playing a ukulele is not quite the same as playing a guitar. However, the skills are directly transferable and it is also true that a three stringed bass is not a regular bass. There’s nothing wrong with three stringed instruments but the range of notes and strings available is a fundamental characteristic of chordophonic instruments.

In particular, I think there are two significant obstacles placed in the way of those who want to learn rather than just to use a prop to support their imagination and play. Firstly, if you diligently learn scales, riffs and chords, you will have to relearn when switching up. I’ve been playing six string basses for more than half my playing lifetime and I’ve also spent a long time on alternative tunings but I’d say that I am most confident finding notes on the EADG bass fretboard I first learned on. I reckon that someone who makes a serious start on a three string bass is going to take a while not to favour those three strings when they get a regular bass. Secondly, a lot of available learning material assumes four strings so there will be plenty of stuff – including all sorts of classic songs – that will be difficult or impossible when you haven’t got that range under your fingers.

I won’t be adding a Loog guitar to my collection and I would be inclined to advise others against them for this reason. I’d be much happier if they presented themselves as a different type of instrument rather than pretending to be a learning tool to work towards actual guitars or basses.

8 November 2026
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Remembrance Sunday 2026

Poppies and Chamomile

I was asked to say something in this morning’s service at Hathern Baptist Church to mark Remembrance Sunday. I used the picture above (actually taken on my allotment just after I started work on it but it could have been on Flanders Field) and the following words:

Across the UK and beyond, many will take time to mark Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day on 11 November. That is why our worship team is a little smaller today, because some of them are with their cadet squad for the town event in Loughborough. The so-called “Great War”, which ended with the Armistice of 1918, left deep scars on many nations and it was appropriate that an annual act of remembrance was instituted. Sadly, it was a mere 21 years before the “Second World War” began. There have been many conflicts since which we and our allies have been involved with, sometimes for excellent reasons and sometimes on less defensible grounds. Let us stand if we are able and take two minutes in silence before the Lord to remember the brave and the fallen, to pray for wisdom for those who wield military power and for mercy and shelter for those who suffer unjustly because of international conflict.

7 November 2026
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Not Ahead on Fashion

This afternoon I walked round Loughborough town centre looking for a hat. I’ve got a fedora I picked up in Oxford years ago but it has seen better days so I’m after something similar. If I’d wanted a beanie or a flat cap, I’d have been fine but the nearest I could get were some felt homburgs, which didn’t look durable enough.

It is the kind of thing I’d prefer to buy in person rather than online so I’ll just have to keep my eyes open… and my head up.

6 November 2026
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Weather Apps

I listened to an interesting episode of Sliced Bread on BBC Sounds this evening, all about weather apps. They didn’t come up with a definitive “best” app, partly because all of them are based on modelling of the inherently chaotic weather system. Short term predictions are getting fairly reliable, as long as you interpret some of the phrases like “50% chance of rain” properly, but once you get a few days out, they all become less reliable, particularly in unsettled general conditions.

The meteorological expert on the programme said he tended to use the Met Office app. I still refer to that on my phone although I tend to refer to the Apple service on my iPad and actually find the Microsoft offering quite helpful on my Windows box and perhaps the most likely to tell me the same thing as I see looking out of the window!

One of his other comments was that he liked maps and though people were missing out by preferring location-based summaries. I would concur with that. One of my favourite features in the Microsoft one is the map that shows where it is detecting rain clouds. You can see what is going on now and also how they have shifted recently, helping make a better guess to the all important question of “if I pop out now, am I likely to get soaked before I come back?”

5 November 2026
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Food Waste Collections

It seems like a long time ago now that the local council told us that food waste collections were coming and at least a month since the new bins arrived. There’s a small one for indoors and a larger one to put out for collection. Finally we got to this week when we were able to start putting the larger bin out alongside the other regular collections (refuse this week, recycling next week).

We did actually manage to scrape together a few bits to go out. Vegetable peelings and trimmings and other things continue to be directed towards home composting and we try to minimise the waste of actual food but there are a few things that don’t fall under either heading, like bones or teabags. That isn’t the contents of the teabags, which are excellent for composting, but the bags themselves which take a long time to break down in a home compost heap. I imagine that they will go down quicker in whatever kind of commercial scale operation takes all the collected food waste.

4 November 2026
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Small boiler

Having had our new gas boiler replaced this week, we’ve now had to replace another kind of boiler. Our electric kettle, bought from Lidl in July on what I termed “gadget day“, stopped working. Jane checked the fuse with no joy, so I’m pretty sure the microcontroller inside the machine has gone (the bit that would detect power, water temperature and button presses, return a temperature reading to the display and turn on an appropriate LED light based on that reading).

I’ve spent a while looking online at various options. Variable temperature kettles aren’t uncommon but the reviews of the cheaper ones often mention problems like randomly breaking after a short time while the expensive ones are simply very expensive for what ought to be a fairly simple set of operations.

I’d almost settled on a Bosch one from Argos at about £65 but, meanwhile, popped back to Lidl to return the faulty one. Since it isn’t just that I’ve decided I don’t want it but the device is faulty, it was a no-quibble return and refund. However, on wandering round afterwards to pick up a few essential groceries, I found another Silvercrest kettle in the middle aisle.

This one was about £25 and less fancy than the one I took back but it covers all the essentials. The controls are in the base rather than directly on the kettle but they do have proper buttons rather than a smooth surface that didn’t always seem to register finger presses. It only offers 70, 80, 90 and 100°C settings rather than 5°C from 40-100°C but, even with the great range of options, I only seemed to use 70, 90 and 100°C so this will be more efficient. The lights and the live temperature read out were nice-to-haves but I can live without those.

Now I’m just hoping that this one lasts somewhat longer than four months.

3 November 2026
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Heating… on

The boiler is installed and working! It has left me feeling somewhat lighter in the bank account but I think it will be worth it. We are certainly having to run far less water to get the hot taps to live up to their name. I’m also impressed with the new thermostat. It looked a bit plasticky in the photos but turns out to be impressively weighty and pretty easy to program. A good job to have done now that winter continues to draw on.

2 November 2026
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Heating… off

We’ve never been entirely satisfied with the gas boiler in our house since we moved in and, although it has been regularly serviced, it seems to more often need the pressure topping up for heating and for lots of water to be run to get it hot. After we had it serviced at the start of September we decided it was time to have it replaced. Of course, early autumn is a busy time for boiler folk, so we’re just having it fitted this week.

We’ve reached the point where the new boiler is installed, plumbed in and the gas is back on. However, our installer will have to return tomorrow to do the flush and fill that lead to its final commissioning. Fortunately we’re out for dinner with friends tonight, we’ve got an electric shower in the bathroom and a kettle downstairs. I suspect our trusty oil-filled electric heater will also get a little service to take the edge off the morning chill.

We can survive that although I’m looking forward to enjoying some improvements to heating and hot water once the process is complete by about lunchtime tomorrow. Maybe it would have been better to get it done back in the summer but, then again, would we have been able to test the heating when the ambient temperature already felt like the inside of an oven?

1 November 2026
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Toasted Cheese Sandwich

I’m not sure if the air fryer is the ideal way to make a toasted cheese sandwich. It is a small, hot oven but it has the disadvantages of a powerful fan and deep-sided drawers. It probably took about 15 minutes all told in my effort tonight and I’m not sure it was quicker or any better than toasting a couple of slices of bread, making a cheese sandwich with them and then microwaving the result to finish off the cheese.

Better still is to use a frying pan. The bread can be buttered and lightly fried, sandwiched around cheese and then returned for finishing off. The lower sides of the pan make it easy to get in with a spatula or slice for flipping and I’ve got a “burger press” which can add the compression that helps the melting cheese glue the two halves together.

There are plenty of things the air fryer excels at but, in my experience, the toasted cheese sandwich is not one of them.

31 October 2026
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Sing Around Songs – 31 October 2026

It’s been a few weeks since I made it to one of the local sing around sessions but I got down there today with my resonator guitar. I had to leave early but I managed to contribute two songs.

I started with Wayfarin’ Stranger, which I’ve done several times on various instruments. On 21 November I’m gigging with the Charnwood Training Band and have an opportunity to do a solo song in the middle. Early on, we’ll be playing a medley called the Southern Folk Rhapsody, which is a beautiful orchestration of several traditional gospel tunes from the “Deep South” of the USA and starts with this tune so I thought it would work to do a version with the lyrics later on. It worked well and suits my voice although I might need to play with a plectrum to get the sound projection from the guitar (which is the kind of thing I wanted to find out by playing it today).

For that tune, I dropped the top and bottom strings of the guitar down to D, since I was playing in D minor. However, I was due to help someone else out with another tune later on that would take all my jazz chords so, during the break I reverted to standard EADGBE tuning. In turn, that meant that rather than the other pieces I’d been considering, I made a snap decision to break out my version of 20th Century Boy by T-Rex. What makes it “my” version is that I’ve added a couple of additional chords to the chorus – I think the original just plays A B A B but I’ve tweaked it to A B C D, giving a little more musical interest without disrupting the raucous rock character too much.

I also got to support a version of the jazz tune All of Me in the key of Ab and including an improvised guitar solo. Jazz guitar is not my forte but being back in standard tuning at least allowed me to make a decent go of it.