Had two occasions to use my Diamond Travel Card when we were away over the weekend (my knees weren't up to walking back to Babbacombe from Cockington) and wondered whether it was possible to load it into my Google Wallet, so I didn't have to carry it around with me, but it would appear that this is not possible. That is, unless someone else has found out how to do it. It would certainly be useful.
To get to Cockington we had to walk through Torquay. It's advertised as the English Riviera. I can think of many places I've visited in England that would deserve that appellation, but Torquay ain't one of them.
Cockington Country Park, however, is a quaint village with a large, country house, just outside Torquay, being locked in a thatched time-warp.
The Big House hosts a number of craft studios. One of these studios is a glassblowing operation, but they've had to shut off their furnace as the cost for gas has risen from £2k a month to £16k.
Another studio hosts a bloke who makes very nice lights. I nicked an idea from him for my new workshop - how to make a workbench light using LED strip and a length of water pipe. Surprisingly, he doesn't make these for sale, but he should. It's a brilliant idea.
The bent water pipe allows the light to be spread from all angles in to your workspace.
I've found some more robust mains water pipe and have drilled the holes in my workbench to take the ends. I'm now waiting for a 2m length of LED strip from eBay (£7.48) that I can stick to the underside of the pipe - no need to slit the pipe open, as blokey did, as it weakens it.
I can use a heat gun to make slight adjustments to the fore and aft angle.
The problem crafty people (for want of a better word) have is that they had a bonanza before the financial crisis, as people had become used to not going out for meals and thereby had money to spare; however, craft products have a high price and now, with the cost-of-living crisis, disposable income has been decimated, and these people are feeling the pinch.
Tomorrow I'll do a post on the hotel we stayed at - in a beach hut.
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