No Drills

No, not a post about losing a drill from my toolbox, but about sustainable and more efficient ways of farming.

I was listening to a farmer on Radio 4 interviewing other arable farmers who have taken experimental approaches to their production.

One farmer he spoke to had moved to no drill agricultural production whereby, rather than ploughing an entire field prior to sowing seed, he used a slicer to cut very narrow channels into his field, into which the seed is laid and the turf folded back into position. Using this methodology, the field remains looking natural with a covering that looks like a hay field ready for cutting.

The farmer maintained he had much similar results overall, but substantially increased his profitability as he wasn't spending vast sums on ploughing, fertilising and weeding. He said yield was for vanity and profitability was for sanity. Additionally, rather than his contribution to nature being limited to the hedgerows, his entire field was a nature reserve.

Not only that, but he was always told to use a certain insecticide on his crop due to the prevalence of aphids, but leaving the field au naturel attracted beetles which predated on the aphids, so he saved on insecticide too.

He said that the internet allows experimental farmers to share their experiences, whether bad or good, for the benefit of all, rather than experimentation being restricted and filtered through normal channels, such as the Royal Agricultural College, which has only finite resources.

Apparently, some 40% of the world's crop goes to waste, 15% of that being before ever getting off the farm, which is an incredible amount.

Last Few Jobs

Got just 4 more jobs to do on the static caravan (2 small and 2 larger) before it's stress tested by Hay's sister and her husband this coming Tuesday for 3 nights, prior to being available for paying guests.

The two small ones are connecting the remaining TV aerial wires; secondly and installing the sound bar for the main TV; the larger ones are mounting the silver wings I got from Facebook Market over the master bed headboard and installing the surfboard seat(the Clearwater decal has arrived), but I fear the latter is going to have to wait, as the weather isn't conducive to large scale spraying, although I may get a mate in the trade to do it in a proper drying kiln. Installing the surfboard seat isn't really imperative till Spring.

The silver wings were a bit of a pain. They had some hideous glitter on the feather ends, which I had to sand off without damaging them. They were additionally designed to be hung vertically, whereas I want to hang them horizontally over the bed in the master bedroom. Doing this with two wings requires two new fixings per wing and ensuring they are both level would have been a nightmare, so I solved that issue by using a batten across the back to link them together in a near-rigid manner, meaning a spirit level would be all that will be needed to hang them by the joining batten, across the 40cm spaced vertical battens of the caravan bedroom.

Before taking them to the caravan on Sunday, I may reinforce the brace with a patch of fibreglass and resin on the back.

To finish them off I'd like to add a circular, silver and black mirror over the join between the wings. That would certainly set them off and give the bedroom a bit of over-the-top wow factor, but watch this space.

Mandation vs Guidance

The government is being criticised for mixed messaging on social gatherings - nothing new there - but why are they so reluctant to mandate, rather than merely issue guidance?

Could it be because that if government guidance were to become mandatory, venues would be forced to give customers who cancel a refund. Under guidance, they needn't, thus aiding the economy.

Some are also railing against the profits being made by Big Pharma vaccines. Anyone, however, is welcome to develop their own vaccine and invest the huge sums involved in research and testing. It's a bit off to criticise companies that engage in such work. 

Before Covid, ROI on research and development was 1.8%, down from between 8 or 10%. Who would invest for such returns? However, that's likely to increase with the Covid vaccine, and can you blame them - they're not altruists. Big Pharma don't develop new drugs in isolation; they're developed is association with university research groups funded by Big Pharma and, in the case of the UK, with the NHS, who have the patients for trials.

That said, with warnings that future viruses could be far more devastating than Covid, is there now an argument for nationalising medical research, as it is fast becoming critical infrastructure? The problem there is that it's in the hands of Big Pharma precisely because such companies are far more efficient at developing new drugs than government and take risks which, under government control, would result in finding cuts in the event of failure, which is commonplace in drug development.

Spray Day

Spent Saturday fixing the Ford Galaxy's handbrake handle and spraying the replacement passenger wing mirror cover with primer, a topcoat of Ford Tango and some lacquer.

Bugger me, if on the car's first outing on Sunday, some idiot in the Tesco car park didn't clip my wing mirror. Luckily there was no damage.

Also managed to give the surfboard a couple of full coats of primer - it's looking good now.

It's been in the engine room curing for a couple of days. I have a 1m vinyl logo on order with the word "Clearwater" in Magneto font - cost about £15. That will go over the colour coat and underneath the lacquer coat. Given the grey primer is the same colour as the caravan decking, I may just use that as a topcoat, although a shimmery, metallic grey would be nicer.

Then comes the fixing of the surfboard to the two logs that will form the base of the surfboard seat, but  permanently, in such a manner that the seat can't be nicked by the odd tealeaf. I'll probably glue it and add a couple of recessed bolts glued into the logs that will make it a 3 or 4 man job to move it, but I'll do that on site at the caravan.

Hisense Hi-Jinx

Some 6 weeks ago, Hay ordered what was meant to be a new, 40 inch, Hisense SMART TV for the static caravan. A week went by, and then another week, and still no TV delivery. 

Using the tracking number, she discovered it had been delivered to an address somewhere in Surrey. The seller wasn't responding to email and the Post Office seemed capable of intervening and having it delivered to our house, as it had been delivered to the address on the package, which the seller had gotten wrong, so she raised a dispute with e-Bay in the hope of getting a refund.

Refunds on e-Bay take a while, as there has to be a waiting period for the seller to respond. A week went by, and possibly more, and the refund finally came through.

She then looked at what Argos had to offer and found a 40 inch Bush TV. Now I haven't seen a Bush TV since they were black and white, were sat in a walnut cabinet, had no more than 2 channels and came from Radio Rentals. However, it was her decision and she ordered it. She received an email to say it would be available for collection sometime between the Saturday and the following Saturday, but she'd receive a text message with a PIN first. No PIN was forthcoming. 

It was now getting very close to the day the photographer was to come to the caravan to take the official advert photos, so we bit the bullet and she took our TV to the caravan on Friday, leaving us with no TV. 

She called Argos on Friday, who said there had obviously been some glitch in the system and that it would be available the next day, which was Saturday which finished the week it would allegedly be there for collection. I duly went into Argos on Saturday morning and, you guessed it, the TV still wasn't there.

The lady I spoke to said there was yet another glitch in the system, but she could let me have a 40 inch Hisense or a 32 inch Samsung at the same price, which was a Black Friday deal. Alternatively, she could register a home delivery of the Bush between 7pm and 10pm that evening. I opted for the home delivery.

At 7pm the Bush TV duly arrived. I then spent the next hour attaching the legs, plugging all the cables in and trying to get it to work. There were problems I couldn't quite fathom out - while I could get it to connect to the SkyBox and to the internet, there were no Apps for Netflix and the like. I looked at the TV box and, bugger me, it wasn't a SMART TV. Yet another night without TV, but we crowded around my laptop again to watch BBC iPlayer.

I now had a couple of choices; return the TV to Argos the next day and buy a seller refurbished SMART TV on e-Bay (seller refurbished meaning nothing other than it was a shop return and still came with a 12 months warranty), meaning I'd have to rush to South Cerney and repatriate our Samsung, so we had a TV till the seller refurbished one arrived, or see if Argos would exchange the Bush for the Hisense I knew they had and had offered me the day before. I wasn't holding out much hope for the latter.

Luckily the same lady was in the shop, so I didn't have to wade through the story again, and she happily exchanged the Bush for a Hisense SMART TV, which was a dream to install at home (although the sound is garbage, as it is on all flat screen TVs). She also told me that they sold a lot of Hisense TVs and she hadn't had a single return, which was good news, as I'd never heard of the brand before.

I blame Hay for not ordering a SMART TV in the first place, but there again she isn't conversant with the latest technology, so she has an entirely valid excuse. But what a palaver!

Chips With Everything

All cats will have to be chipped, according to new legislation. Failure to chip a cat could lead to a £500 fine.

The problem is, how is this going to be policed? Even someone taking their cat to the vet for some work could claim it's not their cat and they acted purely out of altruism. There again, the vet could say you have to pay for the chipping, else he or she doesn't go back home with you and goes straight to a cats' home, not that this is the kindest act.

Take Railway, the feral cat we feed; there's no way in hell we could get him into a cage to take him to a vet for chipping, except if he were incapacitated by illness. He's certainly not our cat - he's feral.

Given the legislation kicks in at 20 weeks, chipping can't be verified at kitten inoculation, which occurs at 9 weeks and 12 weeks. It could be picked up at annual booster vaccinations, but not everyone gives their cats annual boosters.

It's rather difficult to prove a cat belongs to someone, unless it has a collar with an address tag, and very few cats will put up with one of those. A cat chooses you; you don't choose a cat - if it doesn't like you, your environment or what you're feeding it, it will pretty quickly bugger off and seek someone else to sponge off, and that's usually us.

There again, chipping a cat doesn't cost an arm and a leg - somewhere between £9 and £20.

The biggest benefit of chips, in my opinion, is that they can selectively activate electronic cat flaps, barring unwanted interlopers from your house.

People often think that if a chipped pet becomes someone else's, the chip has to be reprogrammed, but the chip contains only a number. It's the registration database that contains the name and address associated with that number. What pet owners often forget to do is to have the database changed when they become the new owner of a cat, or move house.

Variations

Many, including a Sage scientist, are saying that the Omicron Covid variant is nothing to worry about, simply because it's less virulent and that banning flights is an overreaction. It is, however, far more infectious, having 30 odd mutations and 15 mutations on the spike protein alone, which increase the number of binding sites on human cells to give it an R number of 6 or 7, according to reports.

Given it is highly infectious, given reports suggest it can even infect double vaccinated individuals (albeit mildly), given it has a distinct possibility of becoming the dominant strain and given it has shown a capacity a for high mutation rate, letting it rip through the population exponentially increases the risk of a highly infectious virus mutating once more into something more lethal, while simultaneously being highly communicable and somewhat resistant to current vaccines. That doesn't come from an in-depth knowledge of virology, but simple logic and joining very visible dots.

It would be wrong to ascribe intelligence to a virus but, rather like water running downhill finds the path of least resistance, it proliferates when conditions, such as the human body, are right for replication. With each replication comes the chance of a mutation - that's simply the nature of organic replication. Mutations can possibly be self-destructive, leading to them being short lived, or they can be advantageous, like mutations to the spike protein, making it more infectious. Some can be deadly to humans. Certain combinations can be devastating on human hosts

Omicron itself may be no cause for concern; what is of concern is what Omicron could become, especially when it becomes dominant and has far more humans in which it has the opportunity to mutate. Reliance on early, weak information is foolish, just as relying 100% on a single scientific paper is foolish (such, however, is the staple of sensationalist tabloid journalism).

It's not a great strategy in warfare to lower your defences when you know little about the disposition of your enemy's forces or the strength of his weaponry. What is needed is vigilance and intelligence gathering. Better safe than sorry.

To quote General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff in WWI; "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end."

I would add a rider to that; "Unless the enemy is asleep and totally unprepared," as we were in January 2020 and several other instances since.

Apt Typos

Saw this on the i-News website yesterday:

They obviously mean Cold Weather Payment, but the typo is rather apt, as they're for pensioners. I got mine last month.

The Cowl

We've recently become addicted to latest PD James Dalgleish detective series. Bertie Carvel is a marvellous actor and you can't see a trace of the actor in the characters he plays.; he inhabits the roles he plays.

In the latest episode we watched, Dalgliesh was surprised from behind by a monk in a habit, scapular and cowl who had his cowl over his head. It struck me that a symbol of intense religiosity can simultaneously be seen as something extremely sinister. 

This is especially the case where the face is hidden by the cowl and the feeling overcomes cone that there's something evil or incorporeal hidden within it.

The Static

Well, the static, aka Clearwater, is nearly ready for habitation by paying customers - I was down there yesterday to put up a few ornamentations. Just a few more artworks are needed to complete the image we're trying to convey. Click on the images below to enlarge them.

A couple of things need changing, such as the electric fire, which I consider to be a particular fire hazard after the fan failed yesterday (although the elements heated up), and a lampshade or two, which Hay will be attending to on Friday. The TV for the lounge also needs to be installed, once we get it, which should be any day now. I want a couple of large, 80cm silver wings over the bed in the master bedroom, but Hay's not so sure, believing that if they fell off they'd kill the bed's occupants. The space is perfect for them.

I have yet to install the Hive system to control the central heating remotely and I also want a couple of outdoor electrical sockets, plus an outside tap for swilling down the decking. An external camera connected to the Hive system would be a good anti-theft precaution.

I showed my mate Mike's parents the van yesterday, as they had just bought a 2nd hand one and were taking delivery of it. Mike's father particularly liked the glass patio fencing facing the lake and called it an 'infinity patio', a term which I really liked and will get the company which is managing our rentals, Cotswold Retreats, to use.

The advert is already live and we're taking bookings from mid December, by which time we hope to have the patio doors, which were broken in a failed attempt at entry by a thief, replaced. The advert photos are temporary and a professional photographer is coming on Saturday.