23 June 2024
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A Change of Season

Outside, it is still June; summer or even flaming summer in this week’s weather. Not all seasons are meteorological though. Today saw my last service as worship pastor at ASTAD after the best part of five years service in that post. Over the last year or more I have sensed my season in that role coming to an end and it is time to put my coracle back on the open water and see where the Holy Spirit leads me. That’s how I came to this place at the end of the summer in 2019 so perhaps it is fitting that is also how I move on.

I don’t know exactly what comes next. Ideal for me would be a part time job within easy reach of home, still with plenty of time for music, gardening and walking on a journey of Christian maturity that brings others along too. I’m not planning to uproot and move elsewhere. There is the freedom that could happen but also the blessed freedom that I don’t need to rush into a hasty decision but give thanks for each day as it comes.

At a time like this, it is easier to be aware of the liminality of our relationship to the world around us and that is not something to be taken for granted.

22 June 2024
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Music Through the Decades

The Charnwood Symphonic Wind Orchestra (CSWO) is back out tonight for a gig at All Saints Church Thorpe Acre with Dishley. We’ve been working on the set for most of the last two terms, bar a few breaks for other events and to delve deeper into the band pad, and we’re looking forward to unveiling our Music Through the Decades evening.

After a short prelude, our time-travelling tour starts in the 1940s and works its way forward to the present with a couple of songs from each decade. It should be both entertaining (plenty of songs to sing along with) but also a show case for the band’s versatility.

I’ve done my practise on the music… now time to go and revise doing up my bow tie!

Doors open 7pm for a 7:30pm start and entrance is £10 on the door, including refreshments.

22 June 2024
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Getting past the beans

This week I’ve taken out the last of two out of three of my broad bean varieties from the allotment. Once I’ve podded, blanched and frozen most of the ‘Red Epicure’ ones I picked today (about 3.5kg!) I’ve just got one more patch to go. More importantly though, I’ve cleared space into which I’ve planted the kale and winter squash plants that have been raring to go for weeks now, hopefully not too held back by being overlong in their pots.

20 June 2024
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Cruft

Cruft is a term widely used in programming circles to indicate code that has gradually become cluttered with redundant or confusing material. It’s the kind of thing that happens when code passes through a succession of maintainers, each with their own particular view on the right way to do things and perhaps sometimes supplementing that with material copied and pasted from other coders. For a time it can work but eventually it makes fixing and adjusting things hard or impossible.

I’m working on an inherited website at the moment that shows some of those features. It is partly based on Bootstrap, a collection of CSS and Javascript that greatly speeds up many web design tasks. However, it was using an old version of the Bootstrap material, items drawn from a range of other sources and a lot of extra things bolted on. For example, many of the CSS classes (meant to apply to multiple elements over multiple pages) were only found bolted onto one element on one page, or even no elements anywhere across the site. I thought I’d got it tidied up enough to accomplish the visual update requested and then discovered that the menus stopped working when the screen was below a certain size.

Today’s task has been to rebuild the content on the most recent version of Bootstrap with very minimal customisations and no extra third-party content. I started by refreshing my Bootstrap skills and creating a template and then I’ve worked that across the pages of the site. Tomorrow, I think I can publish to a hidden directory, test online and make live… and hopefully the site will continue for a while longer in its rejuvenated, cruft-free shininess.

19 June 2024
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The Haiku of John and Yoko

I’m continuing to enjoy Brian Bilston’s Days Like These. I’m gaining on the present day and will soon overtake it. Meanwhile, here is a short haiku from 25th March. It doesn’t quite meet the classic definition of the form but I’ll let it off as it is perhaps a little cleverer and funnier than it first appears:

Peace talks from a bed
as the world's press gathers round.
Blanket coverage.

17 June 2024
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New / Old Lawnmower

For years, I’ve had the vague idea that I’d like to pick up a hand-powered lawnmower. We’ve never gone much for large lawns and, although our Flymo still works, it seems half the time is spent getting it plugged in and managing the cable run. The trouble is that they aren’t widely made any more and so it has sat on the backburner for a long while.

Earlier this year, I spotted a push lawnmower in B&Q for about £45. I was tempted but the construction looked pretty flimsy and so I decided to leave it. However, it set a benchmark for price and, while on eBay the other day, I came across a classic mower for £15, which I picked up this evening.

It is a Folbate mower, probably a Folbate J2 although I’ll have to look for a definite model mark on the chassis. It is missing the grass collection box shown in the manual but although clearly old, seems in reasonable condition. Better yet, as I rolled it down to the shed, I spotted it was doing a fine job cutting some of the upstanding weeds and it turns out that, even before trying to sharpen it, it gave the grass a nice trim.

I’ll need to do a bit of work to figure out exactly which model I have and to establish a suitable maintenance routine but I think it is going to prove ideal for pulling out and doing a quick walk up and down the garden, keeping what lawn we have presentable and good for strolling over.

16 June 2024
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Chicken Dhansak

Today’s main meal was a Chicken Dhansak, based on the recipe from the Al’s Kitchen YouTube channel. It isn’t dissimilar to his other 30 minute curry recipes but adds red split lentils and pineapple as two ingredients I wouldn’t normally expect to use. I didn’t follow the recipe entirely carefully, relying to some extent on familiarity with Al’s overall technique and making use of the combination of ingredients I had available but it turned out well. I’ve often picked dhansak when I’ve eaten in curry houses but this is certainly one I’ll try again at home in future.

One unexpected pressure (and pleasure) was to have some friends from church round to join us. I didn’t quite get the cooking time down to 30 minutes despite having started preparations yesterday. As well as trying to follow the recipe without taking the time to rewatch the video, I also used other things from the fridge to cook up a side dish (potato, cabbage, broad beans and mushroom with a bit of turmeric) to bulk things out. One particular hold up was realising that, with some additional chicken one of our guests had brought round, I needed to transfer to a different cooking pot partway through!

All in all though, it worked well and, despite everyone being well-fed, we’ve still got some leftovers for tomorrow.

15 June 2024
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Not Singing in the Rain

Today’s sing-around session was due to take place outside, as part of the Dishley Resident’s Association fun day. However, with heavy rain from mid-morning, it ended up being called off. The fun day went ahead and the weather turned out to be decent for most of the time it would have been on (bar one more short downpour) but wet ground, some distance for instrument laden participants to trek and nowhere to put cases or shelter in the event of more rain mean it was probably the right decision.

I even had suitable songs lined up – Here’s That Rainy Day and, more optimistically, I Can See Clearly Now the Rain Has Gone. Nevermind… I’m sure I’ll get another chance.

14 June 2024
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Loughborough Degree Show 2024

Jane and I visited the University’s School of Design and Creative Arts degree show this afternoon. The exhibition runs until Sunday afternoon but this was the best slot in our diary to pop over for a look.

As with last year’s show, there were some fascinating pieces but often a lack of information to contextualise them. Was the student exploring a material, responding to a brief or desperately trying to finish something off the night before it was due? It sometimes felt hard to tell. More information is available online but I’m not convinced that is a triumph of displaying the pieces to their best effect.

As with last year, I think some of the most impressive works were in the textile area. If I had time, that would be the section I would want to visit again as well as tracking down some of the displays we didn’t get round to.

13 June 2024
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More Beans

I spent some time at the allotment today and, among other labours, harvested some more broad beans. I’d forgotten that I had two different varieties on the left hand side of my enclosed veg area until I was partway through harvesting and noticed the plant labels. Both ‘Red Epicure’ and ‘Bunyards Exhibition’ have a fairly similar growth habit. ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ (on the other side) is more distinct and, although slightly slower to get going was actually ready for harvesting earlier.

You can identify the two types once you start taking them out of the pods – ‘Red Epicure’ has reddish beans which cook to a purple colour rather than green ones that cook to a pale green. This evening I cooked the two varieties I ended up bringing back side by side. Both were tender although that might be because I haven’t waited until the pods were as large as possible to harvest. I think I’d give ‘Red Epicure’ a slight edge on flavour so, next year, I’ll probably look to grow that and a second variety. The second might be ‘Aquadulce’ (still need to do a side by side flavour test) or something else instead.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to clear enough space to get some of the other waiting plants in although that point is beginning to edge closer.

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