Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

10 May 2024
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Benched

This afternoon, Jane and I took a little drive out into the countryside although with a couple of shopping destinations in mind rather than scenic ones. The first stop was Brinvale Bird Foods (near Long Clawson) to pick up a few more supplies for our feathered friends. We’ve been there before and, although our purchase was enough to qualify for free delivery, popping in seemed a better choice than having to wait in.

Stop two was LeisureBench, which has a small shop on the site of David Musson Fencing, not too far from Melton Mowbray. We’ve driven past it a few times but never popped in but it came to mind when we decided that it was time to buy a garden bench. I had made a start on one using pallet wood but it is a challenge to get enough decent pieces to work with and we decided the hours of time it would take would put a question mark on whether a DIY one could truly be called free.

LeisureBench don’t have a massive stock in but have a representative sample from across their ranges. That meant we could see the fit and finish and try sitting on a few different models. I think they focus more on mail order and trade customers but there were no problems dealing with them as in-person, individual enquirers. In the end, we came away with a “Boston Comfy” bench, already on sale and, as the last one in stock, with an extra discount for taking the display model away. Hurrah for our estate car, which swallowed the bench up easily for transporting it home!

Now I can focus on building a pallet wood box to go under the bench for storage. That will still take some work but, without the need to stand up to people sitting on it, the stakes are a lot lower.

8 May 2024
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Steeleye Span

Steeleye Span are one of the institutions of British folk-rock. Formed in 1969, they are still going today and, tonight, I saw them for the first time live at Loughborough Town Hall. Granted, that isn’t a top flight venue but it is a decent sized one and it was pretty packed, even if I was still safely in the younger half (perhaps even younger quarter) of the audience.

The only original member is Maddy Prior. Unsurprisingly, she looks a little older than she did in her first decade with the band but she maintains her charisma and excellent, wide-ranging voice. All the other members are later replacements but that is why the band deserves the title “institution”; long may it continue, even when Maddy has decided at last to hang up her microphone.

There were plenty of songs I knew well, like Thomas the Rhymer and All Around My Hat, some newer material and some older ones that I probably would know if I was a true dyed-in-the-wool fan. In that latter category, Dogs and Ferrets and Low Flying (the latter actually on an album by Maddy and long-time Span bassist Rick Kemp) are ones that particularly stuck in my mind.

7 May 2024
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What was the weather like?

Most of the time when I look up weather information online, I’m after what the weather might be tomorrow or in a few days time. However, on days like today when I’ve just got back from a short holiday, I’m equally interested in the weather I missed. In particular, I’m trying to gauge what my plants might have been experiencing. It turns out there are sources of historical information. Looking at what it says about where I was for the last few days suggests it is reasonably accurate although not very precise.

Obviously, I can also look at the state of the ground and the plants themselves but it is useful to confirm that it has been fairly bright and we’ve only had a little rain. With ‘good’ weather looking set for the next few days, I think I will certainly want to fit in a trip to my allotment tomorrow and ensure some of the younger plants get a bit of watering.

5 May 2024
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Violet Oil Beetle

I’m fairly sure that this little creature, which we saw crossing our path at RHS Rosemoor yesterday, was a violet oil beetle (Meloe violaceus):

Violet Oil Beetle
Violet Oil Beetle

I couldn’t identify it from memory but, looking at the photos today, it struck me that I could try using the Seek app on my phone. This is a tool that has been developed by iNaturalist for Android and iOS devices and is generally very good at identifying flora and fauna of interest. One of the challenges when out in the wild is getting a good picture of a moving subject but, pointing the phone at my computer screen, it made short work of suggesting what type of bug it is. As I was at my computer, I did some further searchign and I think it is pretty likely to be accurate. There is a small chance it might be a black oil beetle instead but I wonder if some of the sites I visited have got their own photos mixed up and Seek’s opinion seems to concur with the majority.

I’m sure it is an oil beetle in any case and, whichever is the case, I’m glad I didn’t pick it up to move it off the path as apparently one of the characteristics of all oil beetles (who are part of a wider group of ‘blister beetles’) is to exude a poisonous liquid with unpleasant side effects that have led to the group name.

I will have to remember this trick for future use – if I can’t get a good ID in the wild, it might be worth taking a few photos (especially if I have a better camera than my phone one to hand) and trying again back at base.

4 May 2024
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East Midlands

I see Labour’s Claire Ward has been elected as the first East Midlands mayor. I live in the East Midlands and might well have voted for her but, last Thursday, a Police and Crime Commissioner was the only post I got to mark down a vote for on my ballot paper. What’s going on?

It turns out that the region of England in which I live (comprising Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland and most of Lincolnshire except the northern portions) is not the same as the mayoral East Midlands. The new mayor only represents Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and, although they are the largest two counties in the region they only contain about half the total population.

That doesn’t make sense to me and I haven’t yet turned a good answer. It strikes me as a sympton of the modern habit for appropriating words without due consideration for what they represent. I’m not necessarily against the idea of a new mayoral area but I wish a less confusing name had been chosen for it because Claire Ward is only representing a bit of the long-established (and still existing) region.

3 May 2024
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Bigger Battery

Looking back at my blog, I realise I can’t have got round to doing any chainsawing since February. That is when I posted about buying a 4ah battery and wondered how much better it would do than the 2ah ones I had been using. I’ve done various log splitting and moving but had quite a few sticks which were more suitable for handsawing to get through. Today though, before the rain started, I took the opportunity to get through some of the bigger logs we’ve got recently and also older ones that I can now get to now that the branches are out of the way.

It turns out that a 4ah does the job very well. I think it lasted about twice as long before the rain started and still hadn’t quite got to the point where it was beginning to make hard work of the job. The smaller batteries can be kept for the multitool they came with or if I need to squeeze out just a few more cuts but I’ll stick with the bigger battery for general chainsaw use.

2 May 2024
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Myrtle in

Earlier this year, I ordered some myrtle (Myrtus communis) from a seller on eBay. It arrived promptly and in good condition, I potted it up without delay and there it has sat in the polytunnel, getting watered from time to time. Over the last couple of weeks it has started to put on new growth, so I figured it was time to get it planted out.

I’ve put a couple of the plants at the front of the house. It’s quite a sunny position, not dissimilar to the location we had it thriving in Oxford (yes, I regret not taking cuttings from those bushes!) and I hope they will enjoy it there. I’ve got one left over, which is probably going to end up at the allotment. I also popped a purple sage bush (Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’) out the front which has been growing along in a slightly larger pot for a year or two and is well overdue planting out. It wasn’t too root bound but I’m hoping that having its feet in the soil will give it a real boost.

Both plants have ornamental value but also produce edible items – berries from the myrtle, for cooking or steeping in gin and leaves from the sage, which make a better infusion than regular green sage. There probably won’t be a lot of harvesting from either this year but that’s what the slow game of gardening is like.

1 May 2024
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How Much Oomph?

I sometimes get asked for advice on bass amps for beginners and the answer can generally be summed up in two words: it depends. Despite a lot of advances since I was starting out, you still can’t get light, loud and affordable unless you have the budget to count hundreds of pounds as fitting that last option. That does narrow the options somewhat but not all the ones remaining are worth much.

Why does an amp have to be light? It isn’t a prerequisite but humping large, heavy ones around soon feels like a chore. In addition, many new players are young. They might cope with the weight better than some older ones but where to keep it and how to get it to rehearsals and gigs becomes a problem that has to be shared with the family or others.

Why loud? I’m not as obsessed about volume as some bassists and other musicians I know but you need the amp to be able to keep up with the places you use it. My first amp was a tiny and fairly cheap thing rated at about 10W. You could drown it out with an acoustic guitar and it didn’t sound that great even on its own, starting to produce flatulent sounds well before the dials got turned all the way up. I can’t even remember what happened to it but it isn’t on the list of gear I miss. I’d be inclined to suggest that, for bass, about 30W is a sensible minimum and more is better but that starts to push the price up again.

I wonder if one of the very small amps, like the Laney Mini Bass NX or the Blackstar Fly3 might do the job well enough for home practise. I played some modern small amps and they tend to do a better job of sounding okay at home. However, they aren’t going to cope in a band situation. I wonder if the best solution the present time would be a multiFX pedal, like the Zoom B1 Four? Like the tiny amps, you can use it with headphones and that might be the ideal volume level for home practise. However, you also get a wealth of other features including critical ones like a tuner, some handy ones, like a looper and drum patterns, and the chance to try out a range of special effects and even “amp models”.

How would you make a noise with one of those? In my experience, places like schools, churches, gig venues and rehearsal rooms often have a bass amp already in place. Therefore, I’d probably lean towards the multiFX idea as a way to get started and peg getting an actual amp for a little further down the line.

30 April 2024
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Conductivity

The conductor for the Training Band was unwell yesterday and didn’t think she’d be recovered enough for today so I volunteered to have a go. We got through although, gosh, it was a lot of mental energy, not to mention that my shoulders are likely to ache tomorrow!

I have conducted Christmas choirs before but the trick there is that I’m basically dancing to the organ and everyone is following that in practise. There is a bit more responsibility actually conducting a concert band. Hurrah for the member who gently piped up and encouraged me to make the downbeat more obvious, which helped everyone out.

I don’t think I did an amazing job and I want to stick with learning the tuba in that band for now but we got through and hopefully others also found it a useful learning experience.

29 April 2024
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With Voices

Last year I had the pleasure of playing double bass with a small jazz combo supporting Broom Leys Choral Society at what I think is an annual gig at Whitwick Methodist church and I’m back again this year (17th May). Our first rehearsal is tonight so hopefully the preparations I have made will stand me in good stead. A lot of the music is in choral arrangement with piano part form and, listening to some recordings, I can’t always just play the bottom part of the piano line. It is going to be a bit of reading, a bit of listening and lot of relying on experience to make the right notes appear at the right time!

And, of course, a recording so that I can listen back and learn all the bits I miss tonight.