Flink Knapping at Rodmorton

Went to Rodmorton Manor yesterday for the Craft Alive event, where I was under the impression I would be partaking in a flint knapping course, but it turned out to be a talk by Phil Harding, who is an accomplished knapper, rather than a participatory event.

He makes an appearance in my video toward the end.

It's almost impossible to believe Rodmorton Manor was built in the early 1900s - it looks as it it has been there since the 1600s and has a distinct Elizabethan look to it. It was built by the Biddulph family on the proceeds of banking and they still live there, but only in one wing. The family bank was absorbed into what eventually became Barclay's Bank.

Photographing inside is not allowed, so there are no shots of the gorgeous interior, which is in the Arts and Crafts style. The gardens are stunning. The house was filled with craftspeople selling their wares.

I was particularly impressed by the glassware made by Beryl Morgans and intend to buy some of her vases.

Biodegradable Plastic Conundrum

Do people actually look at the plastics they received goods in, or do they just chuck anything that looks like plastic straight into the plastics recycling? I suspect they do the latter, if they recycle at all.

Some plastics are biodegradable, but aren't good for being recycled in your plastics recycling - precisely because they degrade and would render recycled plastics useless if used in large enough quantities. They should be composted or chucked in your normal waste bin. The biodegradable plastics are mainly junk mail wrappers - soft plastics.

I often wonder what will happen when oil runs out and we have the last supertanker filled with crude oil. Will it be used to make medicines, solvents, greases, or will the petrolheads just want to squander it by burning it in an internal combustion engine.

Table Update

Last weekend we went to our favourite campsite outside Winchester (Folly Farm), using it as a base for attending the Goodwood Revival near Chichester on Saturday.

We'd ordered a base for my ash table top the last time we were there - there's a woodworking barn next to the campsite that specialises in wooden dining tables and we were rather taken with their work. It's called Steven Baker Furniture.

As it transpired, the chap who runs the woodwork workshop spotted us on the Friday and informed us that our table base would be ready on Sunday and we could collect it. Here's photos of it in the barn workshop.

We thought the base could be deconstructed so we could fit it in the motorhome, but it was a complete base and there was no way it would fit in, although I dare say we could have achieved it with a bit of effort.

At 6am on Sunday I raced home in Hay's Hyundai i10 (which we'd brought along to get around), swapped it for the Galaxy and raced back to the campsite, getting there at 8.45am..

The base still needs oiling to bring it to the same honey shade as the table top. I'm not going to screw the base into the slab, as it's heavy enough to remain in place by itself, plus it needs shims to balance out any wobbles. Leaving it placed under its own weight will make moving it a lot easier too.

At least it will be ready for Christmas - now to search for more suitable chairs than the ones we have.

New Rebuild Project

The rebuild of the GT6 will take some time, but it won't keep me occupied throughout retirement, so I have to give thought as to what the next project would likely be.

There is a school of thought that says you should start a project on the basis of parts you already have.

Given that chrome object above the AirB&B door is the rocker cover from a Spitfire Griffon engine and has been there for the last 5 years or more, I wonder whether the next project shouldn't be to rebuild a Supermarine Spitfire?

Or, on the basis of the ship's porthole in the door, perhaps I can rebuild a Titanic in the garage.

Answers on a postcard.

I forgot to order the gutter channels for the GT6. I was convinced I'd ordered them but, according to my bank account, I hadn't. Anyway, I ordered and received them.

Looking at their simplicity, I should have made them myself; however, £17 ain't a fortune. The left hand one needs a little bit of grinding and the other fits perfectly. Still not sure whether to pop-rivet if just use two-pack Araldite (professional stuff that comes with a gun that mixes it - sets rock hard in seconds). Given I'll ensure rust won't penetrate behind them, Aralditing them will probably be best from an aesthetic perspective.

Musk's Democratic Mandate

Following on from yesterday's post on Elon Musk; he's coming under a lot of fire for not allowing Ukraine the use of the Starlink network to facilitate a Ukrainian attack on Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Whatever you think of his myopic support for peace, which is not possible with an aggressor such as Putin (it would only ever be a hiatus), we need to look at whether he has a democratic mandate to facilitate an attack on Russia. 

The American government certainly does, as does any democratically elected government, but can an individual risk a potential escalation of hostilities on behalf of his or her country?

Let's pose a thought experiment. Say Boris Johnson, who is no longer a democratically elected politician, was fantastically rich and had managed to invent a very destructive thermonuclear device. 

Should he be allowed to hand that over to the Ukrainians, for whom the war is an existential crisis? The Ukrainians couldn't care less whether its use leads to a Russian attack on Britain - in fact they'd welcome it as a prelude to NATO piling in on their side. I'm not so sure, however, that either Britain or NATO would welcome it - but given Putin's desire for a confrontation with the West, he would most certainly welcome it.

Actually, I wouldn't put it past Boris to hand such a weapon over to the Ukrainians, regardless of the risk or the consequences for Britain - that's the way he is. 

The question is should private individuals, especially fantastically wealthy ones with the GDP of a small country, be allowed to take actions which could drag their country into a war when having no democratic mandate to do so.

I have no evidence to support this, but I believe that while a majority would support sending Ukraine weapons, only a minority would support getting into a full-scale war with Russia - and all that entails. So, while Musk may arguably have done the right thing, it's for the wrong reasons.

I suppose a government could sanction an action by an individual using plausible deniability, the defence being that the perpetrator is not under government instruction and the government can't be held responsible.

As an aside, it's worth noting that the West is currently providing Ukraine with just enough weaponry to be a nuisance to Putin and push him back in parts, but not enough to be decisive in allowing Ukraine to win the war - depending on what your definition of winning is. What are the morals of this?

This leads me on to a weakness within the West's Military-Industrial Complex - that of ownership of the means of destruction. The government owns the troops, seamen, ships, airmen, aircraft and stock of weapons, but to replenish the materiel and the means of delivery the government relies on the free market to supply it. Within a dictatorship the government will commandeer the means of destruction, whether at peace or at war. Perhaps there's an argument for the national defence industries of the West to be be nationalised? The downside of nationalisation, however, is that it would be subject to cuts in times of economic stress. There again, cuts to defence spending necessarily mean cuts in armaments.

X Factor

Has Musk's rebranding of Twitter to X been a success? I'd say not - every reference to X is followed by 'formerly known as Twitter' so as to differentiate it from a porn film.

No-one sends an X - they send a Tweet. Abject bloody failure, if you ask me.

Even the website is still www.twitter.com, although you can get to it with x.com.

Earlier in the week I wondered who owned Google, one of the largest companies on the planet, and I couldn't name either Larry Page or Sergey Brin. I had to look their names up. They're almost invisible, unlike the other tech entrepreneurs, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, et al.

Goodwood Revival

Went with Hay to the Goodwood Revival on Saturday. We didn't dress up, as it was blisteringly hot - 30 degrees.

Here's my video of the classic cars in the classic car park, which are free to view.

The visit was a present to Hay on what was our wedding anniversary. I could see she was so excited when I collected her from a hedge under which she was sheltering under from the sun. Her tears of joy and sobs of appreciation were a sight to behold. I didn't see her while I was wandering around - she must have become entranced by a couple of classic cars.

I suspect many of the attendees had decided on their wardrobe months ahead, not allowing for the fact it would be bloody hot. Men in plus fours, tweed suits and cloth caps were sweating cobs and looked ever so uncomfortable.

It was very international - I heard Dutch, Belgian, French, Norwegian, Italian, etc. Last year I went on a Friday and there were far fewer people; next year I'll probably go on the Friday again - and take the motorhome as a refuge, a toilet and a food/drink prep area.

Trade Blocs

 I was having a conversation the other day, well, an argunment, about the UK leaving the EU. This bloke said that the UK could trade with other trade blocs and that the EU wasn't even the largest trade bloc.

For a start, the EU is the largest economy in the world. Although growth is projected to be slow, the EU remains the largest economy with a GDP per head of €25,000 for its 440 million consumers. The EU is the world’s largest trader of manufactured goods and services. The EU ranks first in both inbound and outbound international investments. The EU is the top trading partner for 80 countries. By comparison, the US is the top trading partner for a little over 20 countries. The EU is the most open to developing countries. Fuels excluded, the EU imports more from developing countries than the USA, Canada, Japan and China put together.

Secondly, as the map above shows, trade blocs are created by countries that are in close proximity, and the reason for this is that countries trade most with their neighbours - and a doubling of distance halves the trade between countries.

To suggest the UK would be better off trading with a bloc the other side of the planet, in preference to a trade bloc on its doorstep, demonstrates a complete ignorance of the driving forces behind trade blocs and basic trade theory. There are no trade blocs in existence which are not comprised of near neighbours, but scattered economies separated by vast distances.

I suppose the closest any trade bloc came to being widely separate was the Commonwealth, but very little trade took place within it after the Empire was released. There was one, primary beneficiary - the UK through the auspices of Empire.

However, when left with no choice because of an action of self-harm.... 

Restorative Nostalgia

I'm currently reading a book called 'This is Not Propaganda' by Peter Pomeravntsev, and a paragraph jumped out at me with a truth that's just so well put.

"..Svetlana Boym saw nostalgia as a way of escaping the strictures of rationally ordered time. She contrasted two types. One, which is healthy, she called 'reflective' nostalgia: it looks at individual, often ironic stories from the past, tries to tease out the difference between the past and the present to formulate the future. 

The other, harmful type she called 'restorative' nostalgia. This strives to rebuild lost homelands with 'paranoiac determination', thinks of itself as 'truth and tradition', obsesses over grand symbols and relinquishes critical thinking for emotional bonding. Unreflective nostalgia breeds monsters. Restorative nostalgia has taken hold from Moscow to Budapest to Washington DC. The last thing desired by those who purvey these phantom, fabricated pasts are facts."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Think Floyd

Some people have a totally irrational objection to tribute bands.

When you think about it, any orchestra that plays Bach, Mozart, Handel, etc., is a tribute orchestra, yet no-one bats an eyelid. In the world of classical music it doesn't seem to be such an issue.

However, that could be because we don't have any Hi-Fi recordings of the original artists, whereas we do when it comes to modern bands.

There again, one can sit at home and listen to Pink Floyd in relative comfort, but one misses the atmosphere of a live performance, and a live performance from Pink Floyd ain't going to happen.

I have a couple of tickets to see Think Floyd at the Grain and Cheese in Frome in October. Hay's not keen, as she's been to numerous Pink Floyd gigs when they were touring in the 80s. Anyone care to join me?