19 February 2023
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Smart replacement

I discovered another plus point for forScore, the app I am using to manage sheet music on my iPad. I’m playing bass for this morning’s service and, at the rehearsal, we spotted a couple of errors in the music pack the worship leader had put together. I scribbled in various notes about those things as well as other jottings, for example intros and links. Subsequently, the leader has sent out an updated pack. All the errors are corrected but it doesn’t have all my personal notes in it.

I decided to take the plunge and update the file, fully expecting to spend the next few minutes writing in the bits I needed from memory. It turns out that overwriting the source file doesn’t affect the overlay file and all my notes are preserved in the right place. What really boggles my mind is that it managed this even though the new file is missing a song that we had decided to drop. The notes for songs before and after are still in the right place so it has obviously used a bit more intelligence than I expected, skipping that one.

It isn’t just that it is recognising identical pages either. One of the first songs changed key and that is still properly in place, now in the corrected key and with my scribbled note ‘F’ sitting redundantly at the top of the page. That truly would have been scary, if it had been able to recognise the change, read my handwriting and replace the note with a little tick to show it had been done!

Nonetheless, it has proved both clever and useful.

18 February 2023
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Free, but…

I got a nice load of free firewood today… if you count several hours labour as free. That’s not a problem but just an observation. Today Jane and I joined a group working in Donington le Heath doing some hazel coppicing. We worked from about 10:30 – 2:30pm with a couple of breaks sawing down hazel trees to near the ground, piling up what was removed to form ‘brash’ (piles of wood that can shelter invertebrates and larger animals while they slowly decompose). Not all the wood went into brash though – each volunteer had the opportunity to come away with a decent load of wood.

That isn’t really free. We had to pay for the car journey there and back (petrol and a contribution towards wear and tear). We spend several hours working, which would be a fair chunk even at minimum wage levels. And, before we actually stick it in the log burner, we’ve got more work to do using our own tools and storage to get it cut, split and dried out.

“Free” might not be strictly accurate although I suppose you could also figure in the benefits of exploring a new area, making some new contacts and getting a (not inconsiderable) level of exercise in the fresh air. Let’s mark that one down not as free but certainly as worthwhile.

17 February 2023
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One Small Drawback

I’ve generally been very happy with the solar powered light I bought from Screwfix last year. It was easy to put up and it does a decent job of providing illumination outside the front door when someone approaches. It is still working well… except for the obvious problem of solar energy in the UK.

Unfortunately, it struggles during the winter. Short and often overcast days mean that it often isn’t too many hours past the onset of darkness that it has used up the power it has managed to generate during the day. There is still a bit of street lighting although Loughborough has moved towards low powered lighting that switches off before midnight – good for eco and light pollution but not fantastic illumination. Fortunately I don’t tend to have many evening visitors and haven’t normally struggled to find my own front door!

I’ve had much better success with the doorbell, with a ringer that plugs into the mains inside and a switch which generates enough signal to activate it by virtue of the kinetic energy of being pushed. I wonder if it is possible to get a light that is powered by the weight of people walking on the short path to the front door? That would be ideal. It does look like there are systems (promising up to 30s of light from a low-power LED per step) but I wonder if there is anything that is set up for easy domestic DIY application yet?

16 February 2023
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More on Chainsawing

I’ve now done a few sessions with the chainsaw I got a couple of weeks ago and I am now very content that it was a good purchase. It does take some time to set up and maintain and goes through the chainsaw oil at a faster rate than I had expected (no qualms at all about the fact the chain is kept very well oiled!). In return though, it dramatically speeds up my ability to process uneven logs into easy splittable sections.

It does mean that I’m soon going to have to build yet more storage shelves. I’ve processed approaching a cubic metre of wood since I got it and, if I finish everything I’ve got waiting, I don’t think I’ll have space to put it. That’s a better problem to have though than running out of firewood or, worse yet, having the raw materials but being so behind on processing it that it isn’t usable.

The two batteries I’ve got are also working out well so far. They don’t have a massive charge capacity but, if I burn through both of them and then split up all the sections, that’s a good working session. A larger battery would tempt me to go on longer and, wielding tools like chainsaws and axes, tiredness is not a sensible condition to invite.

Perhaps I should have bought one much sooner but, as it is, I’m pleased I have this tool going forward.

15 February 2023
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Vegetable Stocks

Something I have been experimenting with recently is creating vegetable stocks. For years I’ve often made meat stocks from things like the bones from chicken thighs or even what is left off I’ve picked the usable meat off the bones of a cooked dish. Stick that in the slow cooker with plenty of water and perhaps a bay leaf or two and you can get an excellent stock.

You can also make stocks from vegetables and it struck me that a lot of goodness is often in the bits that get discarded. What I’ve been experimenting with is taking things like onion skins, carrot peelings and the green bits at the end of leeks, giving them a wash to get rid of any dirt and putting that in the slow cooker.

The result is a brownish liquor (almost blood red with the red onion and carrot combination I did yesterday!) that can be condensed down with a bit of further boiling and used in further dishes. For example, I’m doing quite a few soups at the moment and the trimmings from one day’s soup can become the base for the next day’s edition. It’s frugal but also very tasty.

14 February 2023
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Sardine Songs

One of my worship team has a website that allows full-text searching of Songs of Fellowship and Sing Glory, which have been important songbook resources for our church in the past. That allows me to say with confidence that there aren’t any worship songs in those books which mention sardines, the creature we are looking at in tomorrow’s Toddlers’ church session. The story will be about Jesus asking fishermen to cast their nets out on the other side of the boat, even though they had been fishing all night without catching a thing.

I don’t know what song we will use but I have offered up this little ditty (words copyright me, ten minutes ago), sung to the traditional tune ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently on the lake
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
But you haven’t caught a hake!

Cast, cast, cast your nets
Where the saviour deems
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
You’ll be flooded with sardines!

Praise, praise, praise the Lord
On both sea and shore
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
With all wonder and with awe!

I’m not sure how it would float in a regular church service but it has the silly sounds and simple tune of many songs for young children with just a little bit of bible story and theology worked in there.

13 February 2023
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That Common Mistake

I saw an online cartoon today which seemed unseasonal but got me thinking. It came up in my Facebook feed when I was browsing via my iPad and I can’t track it down but I can describe it.

The introductory slide was someone (a teacher) introducing a nativity play performed by children with illustrations they had produced themselves. They spoke about three wise men bringing gifts and then held up illustrations of the gifts – gold, myrrh and Frankenstein! In the next panel, the audience are laughing and the teacher helpfully steps forward to explain that it is not Frankenstein… but Frankenstein’s monster. Ah, it’s a Mary Shelly joke, not a Christmas joke.

I wonder if the artist was aware not just of that detail about the flat-skulled, neck-bolted creature that many erroneously call Frankenstein but also that the Bible only speaks of magi from the east (‘wise men’ is a reasonable alternative but kings is probably not) who bore three gifts. There could have been two of them or twenty. Although it is not quite the season (mark that one against Facebooks chrono-agnostic timeline algorithm) it is a reminder that there are lots of things we think we know which bear closer examination.

12 February 2023
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Those I’ve Stood Alongside

Yesterday’s worship conference wasn’t just an opportunity for me to play tuba. It was also to present inspiration for becoming a more consciously polyglottal church in our gathering together. It was suggested that this makes church members from other cultural backgrounds feel more welcomed and affirmed and also potentially draws in others from the wider community.

For me, the particular thing that struck me as I participated was the reminder of those I’ve had the privilege of standing alongside over the years. We started with a song in Farsi, sung to Jesus the pādeshāh (worthy king). I got some intellectual satisfaction from spotting that ‘shah’ means king (the Shah was deposed in the late 1970’s, leading to the Islamic regime that is in power today) but what moved me was remembering the many Iranians we got to know and worship alongside in Oxford. When we had a simple song in Yoruba, one of the tribal groups from Nigeria, my heart went back to the years we spent in Lewisham and the many Yoruba speakers and other West Africans from our church who were so hospitable in their welcome and overflowing in their worship.

I don’t know if everyone will have had the privilege of such opportunities to meet with various tribes and tongues in their church experiences but even small churches in places that remain strongly monocultural have it as part of their heritage. I’m very keen to find ways to build on this in my church. We’ve got a small starting point although, as I think about it more, wider than I initially thought. Plenty to go on.

11 February 2023
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And on tuba…

Today was my debut on tuba in a church setting. I took it down to a day on intercultural worship at St Paul’s, Oadby, hosted by Songs2Serve. There were several guitarists and keyboard players, along with various strings and other instruments, as well as lots of singers but, as I expected, I was the only brass representation. Nothing I played was stellar but it was a useful step in stretching my skills and, perhaps the most appropriate choice for me on a day about stepping into what is unknown and listening to other tongues and voices.

10 February 2023
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Angels in the Sock Gallery

The current exhibition of artwork in Loughborough’s Sock Gallery is The Angel Project, featuring a range of paintings and drawings by artist John Rattigan. I’ve been meaning to get there for a while but the last few times I’ve been in town I have either been too busy or I’ve missed the closing time (3pm). If you do want to catch it, you have until 25 February.

Rattigan has a distinctive style, semi-figurative but with strong nods to various modern art movements including cubism. It isn’t as abstract as those movements sometimes become but he makes use of bold colours and geometric shapes while often not being content to depict his subjects from a single point of perspective. His subjects, as the name suggests, are angels (some fallen) and the mood is gently humorous.

I would love to know more about why he picked the subject, what he has drawn on as his sources and more. You are left to figure out and guess at what is behind them apart from a brief paragraph of background from the artist. Worth a visit for art lovers although, with these angels, their message remains rather unclear.

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