28 April 2024
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Plug Plants

Although I’ve now got quite a large collection of young plants to look after, grown from seed, I couldn’t resist ordering just a few more in a clearance sale from Suttons earlier this week. The Lemon Verbena arrived on Friday and the Globe Artichokes on Saturday and I got both batches (three tiny plants each) potted up immediately. Generally, they seem to be in pretty good condition. One of the artichokes was a bit smaller than the others and had a couple of broken leaves but I’ll give it a day or two and see if it gets established.

The artichokes will grow quite large so those are destined for the allotment. They are short-lived perennial plants – propagation by division every five years or so is recommended but they will be permanent residents of the plot. The advice is to snip off any flower buds that form this year (so all the energy goes into the roots) and to protect them over winter but should pay for themselves in the second year.

The Lemon Verbena, meanwhile, will find a home somewhere in the back garden. The main use for it is to make a delicious infusion using the leaves so I want it within easy reach of the kettle! I’ll probably split them between direct planting (plants typically grow best with their roots in the ground) and pots (easier to protect over winter). We did have a plant a few years ago in Oxford but it didn’t survive it’s first season. I’m hoping that the smaller starting point will lead to a healthier survival rate.

27 April 2024
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A Successful Gig

The Charnwood Concert Band did well in tonight’s gig at St Mary’s in East Leake. There were some shaky moments in the first as we had to get used to a more elongated seating arrangement than we are used to but, when we came back for part two, we seemed to have overcome that. Even trickier pieces like Birdland turned out well and I think it was our finest run through yet of another of my favourite ones, a medley of tunes from the Blues Brothers Revue.

See us next on the afternoon of 26 May in Humberstone Park in Leicester.

26 April 2024
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More wood to process

Jane was walking past a friend’s house this morning and spotted that they had tree surgeons round… so later on we were able to pop back and pick up another useful haul of wood. I think the tree was some kind of sycamore so it will want a fairly good amount of drying time and the sooner I get it cut and split, the better.

Of course, that means dealing with wood we’ve got in previously. I only managed to get the new stuff to the far end of the garden but at least I got some of the older, cut stuff shuffled along in the system and some of the existing pending material cut or at least moved to make room.

25 April 2024
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Replace the Character Under the Cursor (vim)

At church, we’re between regular computers for the projection system (OpenSong) we use for liturgy, song lyrics and other things we want to put up on the screen. The computer we used to use had a terminal hard drive failure a few weeks ago (a clicking sound when you try to boot is never a good sign) and the replacement we have coming will be another week or two (a donated machine so we have to wait for it to be cleared down and made ready). Meanwhile, we’ve been using the old machine designated as “worship pastor’s laptop” and I’ve been discovering a few things that will be useful in future. For example, it is quicker to create a “set” at home and transfer changed files than to start from scratch in situ at the church on a smaller, slower computer, or that it looks very likely that my idea of storing using an online synchronisation service to store all the data will make it easier still to minimise machine-based issues in future.

When the original drive went down, I fortunately had a fairly recent manual backup but one thing that didn’t make it across was our collection of Bibles. I’ve got the indexes but I wonder if the source files were stored in some non-standard location and so escaped my copying? I’ll figure out how to get new ones when the new machine is in place but, for now, I’m manually copying and pasting the passages we use each week. That has flagged up its own issue though. When I copy the short excerpts from BibleGateway, they include fancy characters for things like quotation marks which don’t display well when pasted into OpenSong.

I had been manually stripping them out but, with Sunday’s readings having an above-average amount of dialogue, I decided it was time to remind myself of how to do that task more quickly. I always go via the graphical interface of the vim editor, which is a brilliant text processing tool and I’ve already got methods for things like stripping out the verse numbers. For special characters, it turns out that I can copy them by positioning the cursor and typing vy in command mode. I can then run a search and replace and access what I have just put in the copy register by pressing <CTRL-r>” (ie. <CTRL-r><SHIFT-2> on a Windows box). I can then type in a suitable plain-text replacement and vim will do its thing.

If I was going to be doing a lot more of this, I could find more efficient ways of doing it, such as a macro (short helper program) to do all of my editing tricks in order. Since it shouldn’t be long before we get the regular tool to insert scriptures back (to help if someone other than me needs to set up a service) I don’t think I’ll bother but I’m jotting the trick down here for reference in the next couple of weeks and if I have a similar need for a different project further down the line.

24 April 2024
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Music to celebrate the lighter nights

‘Music to celebrate the lighter nights’ is the tag line on the poster for Charnwood Concert Band’s next outing at St Mary’s, East Leake on Saturday 27th April (tickets available online or on the door). It will probably be dark by the time we come out but certainly light as we (and the audience) arrive.

It’s our first outing this year although several more are lined up over the summer and we’ve got an exciting programme lined up, with a fair amount of jazz pieces but plenty of other styles too. On the jazz side, I’m particularly looking forward to an arrangement of Joe Zawinul’s Birdland. I don’t quite have to live up to the standards of Jaco Pastorius (who played the original version of the track on Weather Report’s 1977 Heavy Weather album) as a bigger band has a lot more people to share the load but it is fast and energetic. Among the non-jazz pieces, we’ve got one that is new to us over the last term called Doctor Who: Through Time and Space (Murray Gold, arranged by Robert Buckley). For those who like tapping their feet as they listen, the last page has the challenge of lots of alternating bars of 4/4 and 3/4 at high tempo, but there are also some splendidly lyrical moments earlier in the medley and one of the classic theme tunes from the series.

All three of the related bands in the CCB cluster have been rehearsing hard since we got back in the New Year but this Saturday is the start of our 2024 concert season and I am looking forward to it.

23 April 2024
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Polytunnel – first harvests of 2024

My polytunnel is getting quite full of seedlings (all sorts) and plants that are in the beds on either side but will come into their own later in the year. However, it has also started to bear edible fruit. For example, here is my first harvest of spinach for the year:

And here is the radish I had as part of my breakfast this morning:

In theory, I should be able to have something in harvest every month of the year under it’s plastic layer of protection. Perhaps I’ll get there next season but, for now, I’m happy to be starting to enjoy its fruits.

22 April 2024
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Interesting times

The Charnwood Symphonic Wind Orchestra has a few weeks to go before the concert we were preparing for last term (Thorpe Acre Church on Saturday 22nd June) but the pieces are ready enough for now so we’re doing some weeks of playing through the pad to give the conductor some ideas on what she might want to include in other concerts and what new pieces might be worth adding in.

One of the scores we looked at last night was Barn Dance and Cowboy Hymn by Philip Sparke, an English composer who has produced a lot of music for concert and brass bands. He has a bit of reputation for pushing the boundaries a bit and this piece was no exception. It kicks off at 138bpm (fairly fast) and, in the first line on the bass part, alternates multiple times between 2/4, 3/8 and 3/4 time signatures. That is not easy to count or even follow the conducting on!

Generally, I’m finding that my reading is up to a decent standard now but pieces like this (which probably is going back to lurk at the bottom of the pad) at least serve the purpose of reminding me not to get complacent.

21 April 2024
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Faithful Thomas

I have long been of the opinion that is unfair to think of the apostle Thomas as “the doubter”. I got to speak on both his words about needing more evidence and aspects of his faith in our morning service at church, which you can watch here:

20 April 2024
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Singaround at Thorpe Acre church hall

With The Plough Inn being closed for the time being, the fortnightly singaround session had its first session in the church hall of All Saints Thorpe Acre with Dishley, which is just round the corner on Thorpe Acre Road. It should only be a temporary venue but it worked pretty well.

Numbers were down a little so we each got to lead about four songs. I took my ukulele and I was going to kick off with a 1920s medley that I used on Thursday afternoon. However, before we started, another person asked me to back him up later and passed me the chord sheet for a different medley that included two of the same songs. Consequently, I just used the third (Yes Sir, That’s My Baby) as my opening number. On my next go, I went for another song that I’d assumed was from the 1920s but turns out to have been first released in 1949: Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think). That had also been on my Thursday afternoon list.

One of the visitors to the session turned out to be a ukulele player who was just checking us out but, during the break, I persuaded him to join in using the “emergency uke” I keep in my office at the church. I picked the next song as one that would be easy for him to follow from my chord sheet – Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. That wasn’t on my Thursday list but the one I used for my fourth and final contribution was: This Little Light of Mine.

All in all, a good session in a new venue which served us well. I’m particularly grateful that I decided to take the ukulele this week and that I had a spare one on hand as both were factors enabling me to help extend a welcome to our guest and we hope we will see him again in future.

19 April 2024
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Beans, Broccoli and Squash

I managed to get a bit more planting done at the allotment yesterday – French beans, broccoli and a few squash plants have all gone in. Possibly it is a little on the early side but we’re getting to the stage where some things either need potting up again or the risk of going out and I’m trying to avoid becoming completely swamped with pots. Not least, there are some plants that definitely aren’t ready to plant out just yet, like my tomatoes, and there are other things that are still at very early stages or even still in the seed packet so I’ve got to keep some room.

Fingers crossed that we either avoid any late frosts or that I spot when they are coming and manage to get some protection installed in time.

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