Political Penguin

For someone who’s spent many an hour on his hands and knees scrapping between patio paving I’d often wondered if there might be a slightly more efficient method than using a hand tool than looks like a mini-pickaxe to do the job.

I like DIY stores in general but after going around a few in Germany I’ve come to the conclusion that B&Q and Homebase are a bit light on choice. I’m not sure if it’s anything to do with the German mentality for doing things right but there seems to be something for everything so while in Britain I’d probably pick something up to do the job fairly well or bash about a bit till it can solve the problem, here it seems there’s a specific little jobbie designed to fulfil the task at hand. Still haven’t found a downpipe water diverter yet, but it appears they do that particular job differently here, more on that probably later.

I did however find this which seems an interesting idea.

I’m torn between thinking it’s a novel idea or that it wouldn’t work in practice. On the outset it seems good, no more stooping down, a nice long handle but how long would it last? I’m quite brutal with tools at times. I expect a lot in terms of endurance and I have found with alarming regularity (hating to sound rather too much like my father) but they don’t seem to make them like they used to.

I in general don’t go in for nostalgic views of the past. When people bang on about how you could leave your door unlocked at night or that the kids were better off in their day I feel at pains to do a bit of a reality check. There is, contrary to popular belief no army of burglars that come out when the sun sets to try on every front door in the town just on the off-chance that someone left it unlocked. I’m sure that I could happily get away with leaving my front-door unlocked at night and be at no more risk of being robbed than anyone else, it is simply a question of luck or not as the case may be that my house or anyone else’s gets targeted.

What it does say is not that the risks are specifically higher but our fears of the risks are higher, however that’s a topic for another post one day. Quick note on it being better for children in the olden days. Well as far as I can tell, if you’re a child these days, your chances of dying in the first few years in modern Britain are next to nothing. Mark this against infant mortality rates of 20% less than a century ago (my own mother lost two siblings rather less than a century ago) combined with the safety of knowing that you’re not going to be sent off down a pit at the age of 14 or even younger in some cases then I think the kids today get quite a good deal.

However, back to the subject in hand, the quality of tools. I know people who’ve picked up various garden tools from the likes of B&Q and broken them within a few weeks of work, in particular forks. Personally myself, I happen to be the proud owner of a garden fork which was my fathers. I have no idea of it’s age but easily more than forty years seems reasonable. It’s made of forged steel, none of that shiny stainless weak stuff and it was wholly built in England. I think the wooden stay is either oak or ash but it’s as strong as steel and shows no sign of giving up anywhere in the near future despite all the demands that have been put on it.

Returning to this patio cleaner. It is essentially a wire brush that is fixed to a pole. The brush can be loosened presumably to turn it around when it’s either bent or worn down. I’d be tempted to give it a try if it would fit in my suitcase, after all it’s not expensive but sadly it won’t fit, nor can I find one where you can just buy the head of the tool, I must hunt further.

[Timestamp altered]

The Penguin’s are off on migration for a bit. Might pick up a broadband connection but you never know, there’s something positive about being away from technology for a while.

Anyway, before the off, a bit of fun. I’m glad this lot aren’t my mobile phone operator.

(Comment moderation goes to full for the time-being)

Couldn’t resist using that title as time seems to have slipped by so fast that a week has passed (almost) since I last posted something.

There is of course a very good excuse for my dereliction of duty where my blog is concerned, I’ve been horribly busy so I thought it best to do a bit of a round-up of things.

Last Friday I did a radio show o Wolverhampton Community Radio. It was the first in a series run by Matthew Revell who also appears to be very busy as he hasn’t blogged in nearly a week either but I can understand with all the radio show thing. Matthew’s a Tory but he doesn’t seem that bad apart from a strange propensity to get digs in about the BBC whenever he can. I have no idea why but we’ll see if anything drops into Friday night’s show. (Only kidding to Matthew).

The show went well apart from a few hiccups and lost bits and bobs but hey, it was the first ever show so you’re always going to expect a few of those. Turned out quite well humoured and certainly none of the yar-boo discourse that one gets at PMQ’s. Personally I like quite in-depth discussion but we managed to get round a fair number of issues in the hour we had and apart from having to get rather cosy with Paul Uppal due to there only being one microphone working at the start I quite enjoyed it.

On to why I haven’t been blogging ala Saturday onwards. Well, it’s the weather. I think it’s fair to say that this Summer, whatever one might call it has been abysmal. I am trying to remember a period of three days going by without it raining but simply can’t for the last few months and not even contemplating that any break in the rain has been sunny.

This has posed a real problem for me as I’ve had a number of jobs/projects lined up for this year of which only one has been completed (painting the door to the passageway). Renovating the windows hasn’t been completed, digging that big hole in the back garden hasn’t been completed, painting the house hasn’t been completed or any of the other stuff that requires a good few days of sunshine for things to dry out.

So without hesitation I’ve been taking advantage of the almost uninterrupted sun since Saturday (yes, it did rain a little early Sunday morning) but apart from that I’ve actually managed to at least start on a few things with the hope it stays dry or at least dryer for a while so I can complete them. I have no illusions that all the jobs I’d planned will be completed this year because they won’t, save for a very late ‘Summer’ extending into October but you never know.

I’m going to go off on a few little tangents so bear with me.

David Cameron. I’m not going to say anything about the problems he’s been having lately, there’s enough coverage of that and I don’t have anything insightful to add to the discourse but what has happened to tabloid headline writers these days? Come on, “It never rains but it pours for Cameron” was just begging to be pulled out but nope, didn’t spot it anywhere. (happy to be proven wrong).

Does anyone know where I can get a downpipe diverter? There’s plenty online but I’d like to have a look at one first. For information, these are connectors that can be fitted to a downpipe that can divert rainfall away to a separate source. I’ve also noticed that most seem to divert to a pipe about the same diameter as a hosepipe and I wanted one a bit more substantial but might have to compromise if I can’t find one.

I’ve been working on a lot of techie relating things as well in the evenings when I’m not in the garden. I mentioned before that the old Laptop PIII, 128Mb RAM was struggling with Windows and I wanted to put Linux on it. More specifically Xubuntu which is a stripped down version of Ubuntu running the X desktop for lets say, more senior citizen computers. I could never get it to boot with the disc which annoyed me considerably. However on a whim I installed DSL (Damn Small Linux) which I’ve known about for ages but never seemed to get round to experimenting with. It is great for older machines. After I’d installed the system, as opposed to running it from a LiveCD it was faster than the other two, considerably better spec computers in the house. A bit fiddly at times to get things working but on the whole a nice distribution in particular the ability to put it on a USB memory stick and with newer machines being able to boot from USB, giving you the possibility of carrying around your whole operating system on a keyring.

I did however feel like having one last go at Xubuntu and for some strange reason, since I stripped Windows XP off the machine it booted fine and installed with no problems at all so the little lappy now has Xubuntu on, which keeps Mrs Penguin happy as it’s easier to use than DSL.

I think that pretty much brings things up-to-date. Obviously the Summer recess period has struck, politics in general has shifted to downtime and I’ll probably be doing likewise so unless something really interesting pops up between now and September I’ll probably be doing a few more personal/light-hearted postings.