“Don’t touch my button!”
I have received many tactile related instructions, directions and orders from my good wife including, inter alia, “Don’t touch my tummy” and “Don’t touch my leg”; but “Don’t touch my button” must surely be the most bizarre and the only one positively crying out for a witty riposte. You see, she has, at last, been fitted with a heart monitor after a seven month wait, and a small thin electronic device – about two inches square – is now mounted on her upper chest, with sensor pads stuck underneath and to one side. The aim is routinely to record her heart rhythm over the course of a week, but in the centre of the device there is a button, to be pressed if ever she gets a repeat of the uneven, palpable heart beats first reported in Blog 59. It was to this button that Jane was referring when I gave her one of my habitual morale-boosting embraces, forcing me to jump away from her as if she were positively charged with 440 volts. I am fascinated by this Panic Button: will she collapse in a jumble of bones if I press it, like one of those androids in the film iRobot? Or will the button engage turbo overdrive in Jane’s already over-endowed metabolism? Who can tell, for it is unlikely that the button will be pressed in earnest during the course of one week, as she only seems to get one of her “episodes” about once every three months. I am not too sure if the heart monitor will tell the doctors anything, but at least they are trying, of sorts, and it has given Jane something else to fret about, namely, how to take a shower while wired up like a logic circuit board.
That talk of iRobot reminds me to provide an update on the new robot vacuum cleaner, which we have named Marvin. We have had robot vacuum cleaners of one sort or another for about fifteen years, our first one, a Roomba, arcing its final spark just before last Christmas. People have asked me if the machine actually worked and I always replied that it did, though with, perhaps, 80% efficiency: a quick whip round with a conventional upright vacuum cleaner was still – ideally – needed about once a month to mop up any leftovers. However, our new robot vacuum cleaner that arrived in February is another Roomba, a 980 model, and it is much better than its predecessor; I would give it an efficiency of 95% and I have never had to follow up its operation with a conventional vacuum cleaner. Not only is it more efficient and quieter, it is controllable by an iPhone app or by voice control using Amazon Alexa. Of course, it also cleans under beds and furniture: the bits that a conventional vacuum cleaner cannot reach. You can set up a schedule and label the rooms that the machine has mapped out digitally too, so that you can tell it to target, say, one room if you wish. As I write, I have just asked it to come and clean the kitchen: a little chirrup heralded its activation from its lair in the dining room and it then trundled its way to the kitchen before starting to beat, sweep and clean. The only snag that I have found with the beast is that it is so efficient (or our house is so dirty) that I have to empty its dirt bin after every operation, such requirement being passed on to me by voice and a text. I do wonder, sometimes, who is the master and who is the slave here. So there you are: robot vacuum cleaners do work, though you have to choose your model carefully using an impartial review agency such as the Consumer Association’s magazine, Which? The very best machines, scoring 80% on the Which? scale, are the Dyson 360 Heurist and the Roomba s9+, a snip at £1,199 and £2,083 respectively; but my Roomba 980, scoring 80% on the Which? scale, cost nothing like that amount, though the current price is £699. Curiously, the worst scorer was the Miele Scout RX1 on 35% and £349; a very paradoxical result as Miele is generally one of the best manufacturers of electrical goods in the market. So these things are not cheap, but then it depends on how much you like gadgets, how much you value your time and how much you enjoy vacuuming; personally, I think it is money well spent.
Deaths attributable to Covid in the UK dropped to unity one day last weekend and, overall, are dropping at 39% weekly. Hospital admissions related to Covid are dropping at 16% weekly. The vaccination programme is still rattling along and about 39 million people in the UK have received their first jab; 17 million have received their first and second. This last statistic includes yours truly and the memsahib, who rose at oh-crack-sparrow last Saturday morning to be ‘done’ for the second time at the racecourse of the Big City at 0800. It was almost as cold up there on 1 May as it had been three months earlier, when I received my first vaccination. We compensated for the early start and cold weather by indulging in a Fat Boy’s Breakfast on return to the happy homestead (there have to be some perks). Oh, and by the way, this time I received A Badge after my vaccination, or – at least – a little round sticker saying, “I’ve Had the Covid Vaccination”. I displayed this proudly on my Barbour gilet, much to Jane’s exasperation, but then lost it somewhere sometime after arriving home. I suspect sabotage.
With Covid restrictions set to ease in the forthcoming weeks, much interest has been revived in taking foreign holidays, though I cannot think why: to me, in terms of sheer pleasure, the pre-departure tests, the wearing of face masks on arrival abroad, and the hullaballoo after return to the UK all put it on par with a week spent day-running in a frigate from Portland. The government has helpfully labelled various countries using a traffic light system so that holidaymakers can make a sensible choice when it comes to destination, those labelled “green” involving minimum travel fuss and those labelled “red'” requiring expensive quarantine on return. In this list I was delighted to see that South Georgia, an almost uninhabited frozen rock in the South Atlantic, and the Faroe Islands, in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland, are included in the “green” category. As I have said many times before, we all get our pleasures in different ways. Personally, I have always found that a week spent in the bracing winds and refreshing waters of Marsden Bay, South Shields to be perfectly adequate for reviving the spirit and setting up the constitution.
The jet stream has shifted, yet again, and is currently wizzing west to east somewhere south of the British Isles. This has encouraged a depression in the North Atlantic and we are revelling (?) in what the UK Meteorological Office is pleased to call, “unsettled weather” ie it is, and will remain for the next seven days, wet and windy. So just guess where we are going next week? Right first time: we are off back to the boat in Dartmouth, gluttons for punishment. Whether we get away to sea or, for that matter, away from our berth remains to be seen, but I shall be reporting our adventures as usual in due course. It is interesting to note that the sale of boats – like that of houses – is going through the roof in the UK. I am not sure why, but I hope the new owners at least use the craft that they buy. I have been a boat owner now for 19 years and have berthed in nine boatyards or marinas in that time. Every marina has had one common factor: 95% of the boats therein never moved from their berth. This has always baffled me: quite apart from the depreciation, boats are very expensive to buy, expensive to moor and expensive to maintain, yet most owners seem content to let their boats just sit there, resting on their beer cans and gathering green mould. In one marina I was in there was a beautiful steel motor cruiser that I would have loved to have owned; in two years I only ever saw the owners onboard once, and that was to sit on the quarterdeck in the sunshine quaffing gin and tonic while the boat remained alongside. Some owners to whom I have spoken have admitted to lacking confidence in handling their boat, hence their permanent attachment to the jetty. Their reserve is sensible, but there are many courses available that can be taken under the banner of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) to solve the problem. The cost of a course is but a fraction of the cost of the boat that has been purchased, and so would be good value for money. It is all very odd. Incidentally, there is no requirement in the UK to be qualified or have a licence to own or cox a boat: anyone can take a boat away from these shores (provided it is their property).
The task was an important one: to make a wooden bowl for a very good friend of ours, who was about to celebrate her birthday. I do wood turning for a hobby so the task was not an onerous one, rather it was a pleasure to make something for a friend and it gave me a sense of purpose. I had a nice chunk of steamed pear in my stock and I reasoned that it could be carved into a decent eight-inch bowl. I duly mounted the raw material in the lathe and began the six-hour process of converting a piece of tree into a useful household artefact. First it was turned into a fat cylinder, then I started the curves. But there then emerged a snag: there was a crack through the wood. So I turned the wood a bit more to cut out the crack and stopped to check: it was still there. Round and round went the lathe, higher and higher grew the pile of wood shavings, and smaller and smaller grew the cylinder. It started to dawn on me that I was in danger of converting a nine inch hunk of tree into a matchstick and enough bedding to house 101 hamsters. A rethink was required. The diameter of the eight inch “bowl” was now down to four inches, but I reasoned that if I cut the cylinder in half, it would remove the cracked section. I could then proceed to recover my losses and manufacture a bowl three inches in diameter and one inch high. This I did.
Arguably the most important part of bowl-making is the polished finish; certainly it is the hardest part and I was determined to make an especially good effort this time. My friend is very keen on the all things Green and on the environment, so I set out to use only natural products. Painstakingly, I sanded the almost-finished product with the requisite seven grades of increasing fineness glass paper; I finished the wood with fine wire wool; I burnished it with a handful of wood shavings; finally, I polished the bowl to a high gloss shine using two coats of beeswax from genuine Barsetshire bees and a woollen cloth from fleece sheared from a Welsh sheep. I removed the finished, though somewhat diminished, product from the lathe and examined it: yes, the damage limitation exercise had worked well and – though I thought it myself – the finish was perfect. I took the bowl into the house for a rewarding cup of tea and my usual Two-Minute Praising from Jane. Now, Jane is used to my bowls, indeed, the house is full of them: large bowls, small bowls, ornaments, candle holders, and all things round. Yet every time I make a new one, Jane receives it with a radiant smile, boundless enthusiasm and fulsome praise before carefully placing the item on a shelf somewhere, like mummy thanking her child for that fourteenth jewellery box he made in infant school from an empty carton of Kraft Cheese Slices. This time I entered the kitchen with my finished product wrapped in my apron, and revealed it with a modest flourish.
“Oh”, said Jane, peering at it under her spectacles as if it were some microscopic specimen from a murky pool, “It’s a bit small isn’t it?”
“Well, yes”, I said, somewhat surprised by the lukewarm reception. “I had to cut it down because of a crack. But I’ve managed to recover the situation and look at the finish”.
“Yes, yes…”, she said distantly. ”And this was for Harriet on her birthday was it?”
“Yes. Smell the beeswax. You can almost see your face in it. She should like it I think”.
I eased it under her nose while noting, with some concern, her use of the past tense, first and third person singular word, “was”.
“Yes…”, she said again, “You don’t think…well…you don’t think, maybe, it looks a bit like…an ashtray?”.
“An ashtray!”.
I confess, I was more bemused than upset.
“Yes”. She then burst into a fit of giggles. “It’s just the right size”.
“But look at the finish! The layers of beeswax. The shine…”
“Yes dear, it’s very nice; beautifully made. But I’m afraid it does rather look like an ashtray. We can’t give Harriet that. We’ll have to give her something else”.
And she took the little bowl that now apparently doubled as an ashtray, and placed it on a shelf somewhere to join the others.
“It’s a jolly good bowl dear. Well done.”
And she burst into giggles again.
I sighed and my shoulders sagged. Oh well, back to the workshop then: I think I have a nice piece of Black American Walnut somewhere that I can turn off. As I left the house I could hear Jane giggling again.
I don’t suppose you know anyone who would like a beautifully hand-crafted and very highly-polished ashtray made from steamed pear, do you?
8 May 2021
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 