Nick and I had a really good afternoon playing cricket today.
Nick is a much better batsman than I am of course, but we asked that we could open the innings for our team – that is to go in as the first two batsmen.
From my point of view it worked well
Nick and I scored 51 between us, in pursuit of the oppositions score of 78. So far, so good. At that point I had only scored 2, and Nick 45, but we seemed to be going well. For me this is excellent. I can hold one end whilst Nick gets on with what he’s good at: scoring runs. The bowling was good, but clearly not that good – we were more than 15 overs in at this point.
Then Nick was out: he cut behind square, a full-blooded meat-of-the-bat shot, but it went straight to a fielder and he was caught out. I was out two overs later, unfortunately, and my team was all out for 73 !!!
So we lost. Not what you would have expected at the point where we were 0-51. I think we are a good opening pair – it would be much better if I scored like Nick can do, but then we would be playing in a higher grade anyway. I get to have a very good view of Nick’s batting and I can tell you it’s a pleasure to watch. If we had just scored half-a-dozen more …. That’s cricket, at anyway that’s what it is in Ninth Grade!
We are in Adelaide at the moment, for Sue to attend a conference. I (David) have come along as an “accompanying person” – which is excellent. I don’t really have any commitments, although I did bring some work to do. Adelaide was the first “free” settlement by Europeans – meaning that convicts were not part of the settlement. Perhaps as a consequence, it is quite different in several respects, to Sydney or Melbourne.
For instance, in the main courts building there is this beautiful library, where Sue’s nephrology meeting held their conference dinner. Just like something from a grand university in the UK, I thought. The city itself is planned (on a square pattern) and there are many lovely old buildings. In Sydney and Melbourne the initial buildings were never grand (except a few private residences) and so Adelaide, counterintuitively, has better buildings from the times of early European settlement.
Sue and I also spent some time going into the countryside around Adelaide, which mostly is devoted either to good food, or good wine. This is the “Bird in Hand” winery, in the Adelaide Hill district.
This was taken in Lyndoch. Actually taken on our last day in South Australia, when Sue and I went up to the Barossa Valley, where much of Australia’s best-known red wines are made, this area was like going through a (wealthy) area of the country in England – beautiful little villages with lovely farming land in-between. The only difference being the frequent characteristic vineyards. Apparently, though, we saw it at its best – green after recent rain, sunshine of early springtime – and later in the year it will be yellow and brown.
That was red wine country, this is white wine country – the Eden Vale. Just outside Adelaide itself.
This ‘blog may be updated as I build the wagon, but to start off with …
In gauge 3 I have found at least three companies make model wagons largely from wood. This is good, rather than using largely plastic, and I approve for all sorts of practical reasons, as well as ideological ones.
So this is my latest model, made by Woodbury wagons. It represents a Midland Railway “5-plank” open wagon, meaning that the sides were five planks high.
One of the peculiar things about the larger scale compared to 7mm/foot, is that some of the parts are smaller! If you look carefully at the second piece down from the top, on the centre of the side-piece of the wagon it a little pile of 1/32 inch rivets. These are used to model the rivets on the real wagon, and each one has to be inserted into a hole through the simulated “strapping” parts on the sides and ends of the wagon, as you can see in the picture – the model strapping is made from this strips of acrylic, with holes bored (actually laser-cut) where the rivets are to go.
The is a somewhat laborious task – each wagon will have over two hundred of the tiny pieces to put in place. It will look good in the end, I have no doubt.
Laser-cutting of the pieces has made this not just possible, but remarkably accurate and so easier- the holes in the strapping and the holes underneath in the plywood match up exactly. Very impressive. It takes an awful long time to do, however.
NEXT ENTRY
After laminating the sides together (each side and each end has two flat parts to laminate), the time comes to start putting it all together.
It looked good at first, but then I realised that one end had a minor mis-match with a 1mm step between the side and the end. One of the little-known virtues of Araldite is that it is somewhat heat-labile: by dipping the corner into boiling water the hardened glue softens and can be pulled apart. In stages the whole construction could be dismantled.
So I did that, however leaving the end pieces in place but removing and then repositioning the side, at the correct level. This is all made so much easier by the precise dimensions cut by laser, I suspect. So far, a very impressive kit indeed.
NEXT ENTRY
Now I can show the not-quite-complete body of the wagon. It has been a title bit of a struggle, but it has turned out almost perfectly square without too much trouble really.
NEXT ENTRY
I decided that next I should make the fasteners which keep the side-doors closed – a pin held in place with a loop of metal. Clearly these are prominent features but quite small, and not provided in the kit. So I decided to make them from 7mm-scale hand-rail pins and loops of brass wire made by wrapping a length of 0.5mm wire around a 2mm drill, then cutting the resulting spiral longitudinally to make a lot of loops (albeit with gaps in each loop).
Some fine soldering work and adding small lengths of straight wire produced the necessary fasteners:
Adding a small length of copper chain specially purchased
I think the end result looks good, and very realistic – which is the main idea, of course.
After the success of our previous walks we are off on another …
This time it was similar to the previous ones, in that we simply took the train from Glenbrook Station, six minutes walk from our front door, up four stops to Faulconbridge Station, then down into the bushland.
In this area of Australia the walks start at the top of the hill, and go down into the valleys. So we went down from Faulconbridge into Sassafrass Gully, a descent of about 260m.
We then walked along the valley, visiting Clarinda Falls before walking up the Wiggins Track to Springwood (200m ascent). Opposite the Station there’s a very nice teashop to spend a little while waiting for the train back to Glenbrook.
To give you an idea of what Springwood is like, this is the shop next to the cafe where we had coffee.
Over the last few weekends we have done a couple of local walks which have been something of a revelation – because they are so close and easy to get to!
The first one is from the Nepean Lookout in the Blue Mountains National Park, the Glenbrook entrance to which is only a few hundred metres from our house. Admittedly the Nepean Lookout is half-an-house cycle ride into the Park (I’ve done it before, of course. We drove this time.)
Click to enlarge
We walked from the Nepean Lookout down to Erskine Creek. This is a tributary of the main river, and a beautiful spot. According to the signs, yabbies (small freshwater crayfish) and even platypus can be seen there [very occasionally, I suspect]. It was a truly lovely walk.
Then two weekends ago we did this walk. This was even easier to get to: we simply caught the train two stops up the mountain from Glenbrook Station (200m from our front door!). So we caught the train up to Winmalee Station and walked into the bush from there. We walked down the Florabella Pass for a couple of hours, through some lovely bushland, and ended up in Blaxland.
The walk involved a bit of up and down, but overall descent: the guidebook says the walk involves 330m descent and 280m climbing. It’s a little steep in parts, but really not too bad, and could be done in almost any conditions – it has been very dry recently, but even if we had a lot of rain, Florabella Creek is unlikely to make the walk impassable.
In many ways it’s the best ideologically sound day out – train two stops (to give you an idea, it is about as far as two stops on the London Underground). Then a simple route through a truly lovely valley, and end up at home!
There were some very interesting features to be seen on the walk, and see beautiful areas, like this pool in the forest.
There were also some examples of what I think are Bloodwood Trees
I went over to England to go to the British Cardiac Society meeting. There are multiple reasons for this, but primariIy it is a good general cardiac education meeting to keep me up to date, and it is held in Manchester, which is both easily accessible, and in the north of England. This was to be a very short visit to the UK, for tedious reasons to do with hospital administration, but managed to have many of my core group of friends come to see me at the house in Cark owned by Mark and John.
It is safe to say that we had an excellent extended weekend in the Lake District. John and I drove up to Cark from Manchester. The first person to arrive after us was Dave Thomas, my longest-standing friend, as we have known each other since schooldays. Our first day walking was a relatively easy walk up Tom Gill to Tarn Hows.
The next day [Friday] we decided to do a walk which I have never done, despite it being a walk “local” to my old stamping ground – we walked from the Walna Scar Road up Brown Pike and Buck Pike to Dow Crag, then over to The Old Man of Coniston. Heaven knows how many times I have stood on the top of the Old Man, but I had never been up Dow Crag before, and never walked this path before.
It was a long walk, and an excellent test of my balance (still not quite back to normal after my bike accident) and my stamina (definitely not so good after two months “rest”).
That evening most of the remaining party arrived: Steve and Christine drove over from Sheffield, David and Amaryllis caught the train over from Leeds (they had been visiting their daughter Isobel, an “old” friend of ours – about contemporary with Nick and Andrew).
The next day [Saturday] was another “new” walk for me: almost unbelievably I had never climbed Pike of Blisco, which is a peak right in the middle of the Lakes – at the end of Crinkle Crags, up from Great Langdale.
I am not sure why we/I had never climbed Pike of Blisco before, because it is a really good walk to do, with great views from the top. A great walk, but we were very tired by the end
L->R: Amaryllis, Steve, Christine, David
Charlotte and Andrew arrived that evening, and the party of ten was complete (fortunately Steve and Christine had arranged to sleep in a nearby cottage – Mark and John’s house has a maximum of two double beds and three singles, although in every other way it was perfect for the big group).
The following day [Sunday] we were restricted to flat walking by a number of factors, not least being my left knee, which becomes painful after repeated impacts, such as descending Pike of Blisco (!) so we did a couple of relatively gentle and local walks.
The first was around the coastal margin of the Cartmel Peninsula, and then after lunch we walked up Ellerside to gain a lovely view over the whole peninsula [View over the Cartmel Peninsula 2 small.jpg copy]. The evening meal, cooked by Charlotte and myself was a meal reminiscent of the original Woodgate Weekends – entirely vegetarian, a little see-what-works, but delicious in the end. A vegetable roast, and what started off to be a vegetable-and goat’s cheese pasta meal, but ended up as pasta without pasta, because I had prepared too many potatoes. There you go.
I am
pleased, in a way, to say that on occasions we were restricted in what we could
do by lack of motor transport. Several
people made use of the fact that Mark and John’s house is 50m from Cark and
Cartmel railway station. So the next day
[Monday] we caught the train from Cark to Silverdale station for our walk, which
started off going through the bird reserve at Leighton Moss, then through
Leighton Hall grounds.
The next
day [Tuesday] was slightly sad in
that people had to leave eventually and by today everyone bar the Coulshed
brothers had gone.
I have always wanted to live in a house which has a library. Perhaps it is the love of books, perhaps it is the size of house that can accommodate a library. Perhaps it is simply that I love reading.
Anyway, our new house has a library. I have designed shelves to run along one entire wall, as seems appropriate. Unlike previous times when I have made shelves, this time I did not spend days just cutting wood to the correct length – instead we bought the wood, sent it to a machine shop, and then brought the wood here. It has been beautifully cut to length, and the grooves (rebates) have been cut to size and depth, exactly
The design goes right back to one made for my parents when they first had their own house. A friend of theirs (known to us as “Uncle Ted”) was a highly-skilful woodwork craftsman. I think he taught woodwork at a school, and amongst other things he had made my parents Dad a truly wonderful coffee table out of English oak. He made the shelves also out of oak, with an elegant design of uprights with rebated meticulously cut to fit the shelves themselves, and strips down the front of each upright to mask the rebates. When I came to make the shelves for my office in 33 Blackbutt Circle I tried to copy this construction method exactly. They have now been re-erected at 47 Park Street, half of the shelves being in the room above the garage here, which I am now designating “The Library”.
On the opposite wall I have designed a 7-metre long set of shelves in one-metre lengths, four shelves high. A major undertaking, which was made possible with the help of a friend, who found the Tasmanian Oak with which to make the shelves, an helped me to arrange for all the wood to be machined to size, and with all the rebates and cut-outs made exactly to specification.
Nick, Andrew and I finished erecting this set of shelves last weekend.
I am very proud of what we have done.
The shelves are self-supporting. Partly, I am sure, due to being cut precisely in the machine-shop, the whole construction sits directly on the floor of the Library, and does not need to be fixed to the wall behind. The 3-mtre and 4-metre top pieces are screwed in place, but otherwise the shelves and uprights simply hold each other in place.
I am now starting to put the books into the categories. Alphabetically arranged of course, fiction and non-fiction sections, and even a “Young Adults” section (Andrew’s and Nick’s books).
This is a Gauge 3 locomotive to run in the garden, if I can get it going.
It is actually not a model of any particular locomotive, but it’s main merit is that it is a “live steam” and coal-fired model.
The problem, from my point of view, is that I don’t know how to run it: I cannot light a fire in its firebox, I don’t know how to keep the boiler full of water, I don’t know how to keep it going at all. Even more alarming, I don’t even know that it will work at all!
From what I can tell, this model was probably built in the 1930s or 1049s, but I don’t know by whom. I bought it from “Station Road Steam” in Lincolnshire, and as far as I know there is no history coming with it. It looks well-made, and looks as though it should work OK. It is apparently built to a high standard (according to Station Road Steam), but they didn’t test it and offer no guarantees. Having looked around for a while, though, it looked as good a prospect as any that I have seen advertised for sale recently. From appearances, it has never actually run on a track, although it looks as though it has had a fire in the firebox. Perhaps whoever built it just lost interest once he had proved that he could do it (build a live steam model). Sadly I don’t suppose that I will ever find out its history.
I just hope that I don’t cause an explosion the first time I try to fire up the boiler.
I look upon it as being an impressionist model of an LMS Stanier Mogul, and if I can get it going, I will then paint it accordingly.
In our move from Mount Riverview I was afraid that birdlife would be less of a feature (and amusement – see previous entries about the lyrebird and Sue). I needn’t have worried.
At 33BBC the major avian annoyance (as far as Sue was concerned) was the Lyrebird. We have not been visited by a lyrebird since the move, but fortunately (or not) the Sulphur-crested Cockatoos have been able to fill the gap. I have posted pictures of these birds before. They gather in flocks of many birds and are notorious (in Australia) for ripping wood apart on verandahs, and doing all sorts of other mischievous things. Sue didn’t like them at 33 BBC because they would wantonly rip the flowers off orchids if they were not supplied with food, and when I supplied the food I was “just encouraging them”. Sometimes you cannot win ….
Australian King Parrot having lunch
Cockatoo gathering ammunition
Anyway, when we first moved to 47 Park Street all seemed well. Sure the Australian King Parrots ate our tomatoes, but they are beautiful birds and the tomatoes were tempting.
Then the “Liquid Amber” tree over our from driveway started producing seeds. These seeds are about 3-4cm in diameter and covered in sharp spikes. Nevertheless they are clearly irresistible to a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. So the cockatoos congregate in the late afternoon and proceed to drop a few seeds on the driveway, just as provocation, in advance of Sue arriving home. When she does arrive, they start to throw the seeds at her (I am reliably informed), with malice clearly aforethought.
It is difficult to know what to do: express scepticism, sympathise, express doubts as to the cockatoos motivation, or buy a shotgun. The Liquid Amber tree has been threatened with cutbacks worthy of Margaret Thatcher, but it grows on our neighbours land, so that it difficult. I offered to buy a catapult to fire the seeds back at the cockatoos, but Sue seemed to think that was more fun for me than an effective deterrent. Fortunately there can only be a limited supply of the seeds, so this problem should have a limited lifespan.
Bowerbird eating tomato
I think the King Parrots must have a different Karma, or something, because although they eat the tomatoes, this is regarded as an acceptable price to pay for their providing entertainment. Earlier in the year the bowerbird was given tacit permission to eat the tomato crop also.
We have also been visited by Koels. I have to admit that even though liking Koel(s) is not trendy in these days of climate change, they are rather beautiful birds – like blackbirds on steroids (they are about the size of a pigeon). Koel-black but with a red ring around their eye. In edition to all this we have the usual common birds: Australian Mynas, Rainbow Lorikeets (rats on wings, in my opinion), crimson rosellas, feral blackbirds, bower birds, etc. So it’s not too bad, really.
After laminating the sides together (each side and each end has two flat parts to laminate), the time comes to start putting it all together.
Click to enlarge
