When I was a lad

I promised myself I would never use that phrase.

Trouble is the world moves on so fast these days, and a Neoluddite like myself barely has chance to smash the Spinning Jenny, burn the rolling Rosalind or Destroy the going up and down a bit and then moving along Gertrude, a raft of new inventions and things has come along.

I am not actually a technophobe, in fact quite the opposite. In keeping with my contradictory nature whilst I am trying to simplify and minimise my reliance on electricity and gadgetry, I love my computer and the knowledge available through it and I won't give up my home cinema for love nor money. However there is a balance.

I don't need a special electric device that reseals plastic food bags, or a toothbrush that needs batteries.

But this week I had a wake up to call to the steady march of technology. The old idiot box got me thinking again. If you have recently parted with some hard earned to buy yourself a new LCD telly chances are it cost you a few hundred pounds and at 1080 might look quite nice too. Trouble is it is outdated technology. The new films are being made a 4000 and that makes your telly particularly low res. The advent of 3D technologies as well threatens your state of the art box, and the race is on to launch smart TV. Keep an eye on Apple, this is their next biggy.

But this wasn't the wake up call. 

I was reading an article and it contained the phrase 'e-baby'.

Now this isn't the latest kids telly channel or the on line site to buy a foreign kid. No this is something much more decimating.

This year the first generation of children will enter adulthood (ie 18) that we born in a world that always had the world wide web.

Yep, in 1994 CERN decided that the WWW should really be WW and free. By 1996 the web was being used commercially and gaining speed, even with the old HTML 1.0.

18 years, I have been using the Internet for 16 of those. These things shouldn't surprise me, I have a 10 year old daughter. But it seems I age in decades. I bumble along being the same age for years, never considering things and then suddenly one of these soundbites comes along and drops a metaphorical piano on my youthfulness.

Whereas undoubtedly the www and the Internet will prove to have been the most significant invention of my lifetime, there have been so many other things that have happened in the 37.5 years I have graced this planet.

I feel this one deserves a soundtrack so fire it up and read on.

I was born in a world that still had a cold war, we had 2.5 TV channels and 2 Germany's. Windows were for looking out of, in fact Windows was 11 years away in 1974. Cd's were called records and were anything but portable. Apples were for eating, the other only came along in 1984, and 28 years later you've gotta wonder if there is an Orwellian synchronicity at play there given how ubiquitous Apple products are. You could walk around without being caught on camera. We didn't have a telephone, and only had one TV, the remote control was the youngest child or the person nearest to it. 

The eighties finally gave us computers that could be used at home, not the ZX 81 but a PC. However the early ones had to boot up from a floppy disk each time you used them. Speaking of floppy disks, they came along in the early 70's but many years ago a game called elite put the entire universe on one floppy disk, these days an average word document would not go on one. 

Nobody knew what a Google was, now it is a verb. We didn't yet have videos, now they are obsolete. In fact I am not even sure my daughter knows what they are. Their replacement, the DVD has already been usurped by BluRay and in turn streaming video gives this a very short life span. We have ipods, ipads, iphones and a host of clone devices that mean we are never out of contact. Back then a mobile phone was a ten pence piece and you had to chance it. When mobiles came along in the 80's the Yuppies used them to spread the word of Corporate Greed which also came along about the same time. They were like briefcases and signal was a very great problem. 

Digital photography was first invented by Kodak in the mid seventies but it would be fully 25 years before they became commercially interesting, and then phones had to have them. Modern mobiles have cameras of up to 10mega pixels. This pushes the low end of the digital SLRs that professionals use and the camera phone has made the digital camera near obsolete as well as the photojournalist.

Only birds Tweeted and only lights Flickered. YouTube was unimaginable, now here you sit listening along to it.

Television was 2.5 channels, BBC1 ITV and BBC2 which turned off for a bit. None of them ran 24 hours, they all closed down about 11.30 with the national anthem. Channel 4 tuned in for the first time in 1982 but didn't broadcast all day, in fact it used to turn on at 4.45 each day with Countdown.

The height of gaming technology was a small incomplete yellow circle.

We didn't have teleportation, artificial hearts or contact lenses, all of these things now exist in various states. Robot workers became the modern printing press and put hundreds out of work particularly in car plants. 

We had the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. We didn't have the Channel Tunnel or the Euro, although the later may not be around much longer because of that lovely Corporate Greed the Yuppies gave us.

You could drive down the M1 and be the only car on it, in fact you could stop and have a picnic if you wanted to. we didn't have four cars on every drive in a city with excellent transport links.

I was born in a world that didn't have 'merchandising' (but only just), now shops are filled with tat that is the next must have thing. 

My mum and my Gran both darned, this is now a skill akin to sorcery in terms of trying to learn it!

We still had an industry, although there is still a great deal of manufacturing in this country it is increasingly specialised. We rely on our 'neighbours' in the far east for nearly everything. 

Genetic engineering was done the hard way, in 1973 the first bacteria was produced, so just before me but it would still be some time before commercial uptake. Sheep looked alike because that was how nature intended them, not because they were cloned.

The space shuttle launched and has been mothballed in my lifetime, also hundreds of satellites spitting communications data across the heavens.

The population reached 5 billion, and then reached 6 billion. And now approaches 7 billion. Although latest data indicates the birth rate is slowing somewhat as people are waiting longer in the developed world to have children. Of course we are looking to the 'Undeveloped' world now to furnish us with consumers.

That's how much I can remember changing. I've looked up a few dates but I remember all these sort of things. There are still some things I'm waiting for. The hover car hasn't appeared yet but it is only a matter of time.

My point is so many things are changing, not all of them bad it has to be said. But do you really need a telly that is watching you and making sure it targets what it wants you to see? Does a kettle really need to tell you the water temperature? From science I reckon it should be between 0 degrees or 100 degrees depending on what you are wanting it for. That doesn't require an LCD.

Of course over the same span we have LEDs which will be the future of lighting efficiency. Solar Technology has moved on in light years quite literally and there are other exciting developments in the

energy field but this is definitely a Damocles number if you ask me.

I don't fear change, I don't have issues with it at all. I just don't think it is always necessary, but people 

generally don't seem to think like this. We are told we need something and like those sheep we flock to buy it. 

Corny as this has been, and much as you might hate it, stop and come up with your own list of things. Then think about what they have done to the world. Would it be any worse if they hadn't come along?

In most cases I reckon not.

So why the delay then?

Well as mentioned in me previous posting, there's been some organising to do. What with impending nuptials coming up and trying to make the Good Life both Good and a Life which isn't as easy as it seems.

There is major upheaval in the garden at the moment which in finest tradition I haven't thought to photograph so I will take a few in progress shots and blog about that later.

But to the wedding. I know my readership is largely female which may or may not say something about me (it's the beard, chicks dig the beard!) so I am sure this will be a period of interest for you all.

We are trying to have our wedding as cheap as humanly possible whilst still maintaining a level of acceptability. I am divorced, my previous wedding cost about £150 as we disappeared of to Gretna. This did not meet with a lot of approval it has to be said so something greater is needed.

Also I have to think about m'Lady. Whereas I would happily do the same again she would like something a bit more weddingy.

I have a few issues though as after having a baby, getting married is probably the singularly most wasteful thing people will do in there life. I am not talking about something bad here, just the amount of money/materials that are wasted. Seriously, how many mums do you know who shop in charity shops or put their kids in hand me downs? I know people who got new Silver Cross prams for each child they had. In contrast my daughter was the sixth member of our family to use the same highchair, one I managed to fall out of when I was young.

Given the amounts of money I have seen thrown at weddings it does make me a bit apprehensive of the whole process.

But m'Lady is amazing and thoroughly on my wavelength which is probably why we are getting hitched.

Neither of us want something lavish, in fact we are trying to do something as low key and traditional as possible. More details will follow on this but lets get to the important bit. 

Alcohol.*

I envisage a few beverages being drunk that day and this comes with quite an impact to the environment. A lot of wine is transported in bottles which is hugely weighty and fuel heavy. Stuff that comes from outside Europe is often bulk transported in huge tanks then dispensed into bottles here but that comes with a few problems. Firstly it is outside Europe so lots of drink miles. There is often a huge plastic tank to dispose of as some are shipped in plastic containers, more oil consumption. Air is the enemy of wine. Decanting is a delicate process, otherwise the wine can go stale or vinegary. To compensate chemicals are often added often with their own carbon/fule footprint.

So I want something a bit better. Well for some wine, we have enlisted the help of a few CSA members down at Swillington who are keen home brewers. So lots of local hedgerow wines then. For something a little more regular, we are lucky enough in Leeds to have the most northerly vineyard within the city boundary! They are a little pricey but the are about half a mile from the venue, how much more local can you get.

As I keen Home Brewer I am making a lot of stuff myself. I intend to make a decent amount of beer but before that we had september. 

September is typically cider month. English apples are readily available and I had access to plenty this year.

Now for good solid instructions go read Murphyfish makes cider as his instructions are great and he is very thorough.

I am less so it has to be said. I see too much cleaning as a waste of water and unnecessary chemicals. Keep in mind we discovered alcohol as a means of sterilising...

So I made a batch for home, well I aren't letting all the Mad Apple Juice leave the house after all, I am quite fond of a bottle. This turned out to be around 8.5 % abv.

You may have seen this before and wondered what it means. It is literally Alcohol By Volume and is the percentage of alcohol in the liquid in the bottle. Simple. Calculating it is a different matter! But it is relatively straight forward if you know the gravity readings, but I'll come to that as it gets important later on.

So first thing give everything a quick wash down. Then it's a matter of chopping up everything and putting it through a masterchef to chop it into little iddy biddy apple chunks. These are then put through a press and the juice is squeezed out and collected. The process is very simple and straight forward but very time consuming and labour intensive without a scratter and a large press.

So after three 5 hour nights, we had pressed all out apples and set them fermenting, waited a bit bottled it up and it's in the cupboard of alcoholly goodness upstairs again.

Then I went and got more apples and started making some more. It was at this point a friend mentioned I might not want to be serving 8.5% cider to my family and friends as he put, "We can drink it, can they?"

Not knowing the answer to this and not wanting to risk an apple induced riot, I decided making it weaker might be a handy thing. This is not easy, again we will come to this.

So the process begins again, mash apples down into little bits however you can. Too small and you can end up with pulp in your juice, too big and you can't get enough juice out of them, so there is a bit of playing around here. Some people take the cores out of the apples, I don't, the juice gets strained as it leaves the press and everything is fine. Some people put  their chopped apples into water with a small amount of lemon juice in them, this stops them going brown. I don't.

Having got everything mashed and juiced, I put 18 litres of juice in a tub. At this point I add some pectolase and a campden tablet or two. Pectolase is the enzyme that breaks down pectin. Adding this stops the cider turning too brown. The campden tablet kills any natural yeast that might be present. Any yeast will start fermenting, even bakers yeast. However the quality and result vary wildly so it is better to stop unwanted fermentation and use a known factor like proper brewers yeast. Again some people choose a specific yeast for Cider, I don't. Ordinary brewers stuff is fine so long as it is strong enough to survive at higher alcohol strengths.

So leave it a day or two after adding the campden tablets for them to do their work and disperse, then add the yeast. If you do this straight after the tablets, then they kill this yeast as well see?

Just before the yeast goes in I draw off a small amount of liquid and using a device called a hydrometer I take a gravity reading. A hydrometer is nothing more than a glass bubble that floats in the liquid. It has a calibrated scale on it and will float at different levels depending on the density of the liquid. 

Initially the density of the liquid is high, due to the sugar content, my original reading was 1056 which will finish up somewhere above 8% when fermentation has finished. To calculate ABV you take a final gravity reading when fermentation has completed and use the following calculation to figure it out.

(original gravity-final gravity)/7.46 = ABV

I know once fermented the FG will be around 1000 and all the sugar will have gone. 

This is where problems occur, to achieve a weaker cider I can take regular gravity readings and kill the yeast at the reading that would calculate out to my desired alcohol level. But this leaves a lot of sugar behind which can occasionally start fermenting again over time (it's really hard to make sure no yeast is present when you are transferring things, it's one of the most common organisms on the planet, is on nearly everything including you and is even occasionally present in the air) which we don't want.

You can if you don't have enough room, brew this down to 8% and then dilute the strong cider however this is prone to issues caused be oxygen. These can be over come but it is tricky to do, involves boiling water first and then cooling it quickly and adding it carefully to the cider. Too risky, I need these bottles to be drinkable in a years time. Cider will keep up to about 18 months to two years. You can buy vintage ciders, some people reckon you should drink the last of last years cider as you make this years. This to me means a period of no cider which isn't a pleasing thought, although in truth ours didn't last to see this tradition this year! Om nom nom is all I am saying...

Back to track anyway, my best option was to figure out the dilution ration before hand. That is dilute the raw apple juice enough to lower the density and therefore Original Gravity to a level that will give me a more palatable strength. 

I decided on around 4.5% as a decent brew that won't blow everyone away.

So here is the clever bit..

Original Gravity X Original Fluid Volume = Desired Orignal Gravity x New Volume

To find the desired original gravity I simply transpose the calculation to figure out an abv of 4.5 and bob this in to the above.

So...

(OG x OFV)/DOG= New Volume.

The difference between the new volume and the original volume is how much cold water I need to add at this point to give me the desired outcome. Robert is as they say your mother's sister's husband.

That all looks a little bit brain hurty and it can take some getting your head round but it works.

My numbers came up with add 10 litres. So then add the water and bung in some yeast. Leave it somewhere warm and preferably dark and don't interfere with it too much. You can give it the odd gentle stir to keep the yeast dispersed in the fluid, I don't. I've found the bubbling of the yeast leads to it self stirring and thats enough for me. After a week or so it should have finished fermenting. This is variable depending on many factors, the way I tell is to watch the little airlock I attached to the barrel and see if it is bubbling. If it doesn't I will take my gravity reading, anything above 1010 would concern me. Mine was down at 1000 exactly on target.

At this point I sterilise another barrel and put half a teaspoon (proper measuring one) of sugar in the bottom for each half litre. This is for priming the bottles. This sugar will start a secondary fermentation in the bottles that will lead to the production of CO2 and some more alcohol. You don't have to prime but if you don't you won't get fizz unless you use some carbonation method. If you do prime, you need to add 0.5% to you abv for good measure. I had already accounted for this in my 4.5% because I am a clever bugger.

Some people prime each  bottle individually but having tried this I found it tricky, time consuming and the results were hit an miss. One bottle would fizz everywhere and the next wouldn't fizz at all!

So I batch prime as above, half a teaspoon or 6 grammes of sugar per half litre of cider. I also added some non fermenting sugars to the barrel at this point to bring the sweetness up again. My cider is very tart. It makes your lips recede in a way Canute would never manage and you walk around looking like Esther Rantzen for the rest of the day. This is not everyone's taste so I sweetened it a little bit to take the edge off it. Using a non fermenting sugar means this will not turn into extra alcohol and gas.

Then syphon the cider into this barrel, you can pour it in, or scoop a jug out at a time into this barrel but again this can all cause unwanted oxygen to get in. I syphon and the flow conveniently stirs everything up for me as well. Once all the liquid is transfered off the yeasty sludge in the bottom of the original barrel, I give it a gentle stir to make sure everything is mixed and then syphon it into bottles and cap it. It's important to use bottles that are designed to take pressure. Lager bottles are ideal but tend to be a little small. If you have bottles that have contained cider already these are also fine. I prefer Grolsh bottles as the top is reusable so long as it is cleaned. Failing that I have plenty of real ale bottles. These tend to be around a pint and are generally bottle conditioned therefore strong enough for the process. Some ale bottles are not thick enough to take the secondary fermentation process and will explode under pressure.

At a push you can use plastic pop bottles but be warned, plastic is much harder to sterilise well so more chemicals are needed. To me cider should be as natural as possible.

So for all my effort what to I have to show for it?

54 bottles of 4.5% cider all prepared for september next year. These are now safely put away with the other 60 bottles I made for us. They are of course clearly labelled by writing the ABV on top so I don't get them mixed up.

Like I said, clever bugger me.

So there you go, this accounted for around 3 weeks in total of the time I have been absent. This includes picking and processing the apples and the cleaning involved. Apologies for how long this one has been, and the presence of gratuitous maths. Right m'Lady has just removed cake from the oven so I am going to sign out and go and get some.

*Just joking m'Lady

Catching up...

Well it has been a while then hasn't it.

I really hadn't realised how long it has been until I sat down the other day and found a comment in my inbox.

There are a few reasons why it has been so long, much has been happening up at Broccoli acres (acres! I wish but Broccoli Square Feet just doesn't have that snap).

Summer was blighted with the ultimate failing of the old mac.  It was second hand, quite old and not very well. I had brought it back from the brink once with some cunningness on my part that was almost weasel like, but this one was beyond me. So that glorious fleabay came up trumps again with a cheap laptop until we can afford a grown up mac again. They do hold their value sadly.

Getting back on line there was a lot to sort out with one thing and another and also I wanted to get a couple of designs sorted out for the t shirt thing.

Then the was the recent addition to the collective and the promotion for m'Lady.

Now as a species we are particularly blinkered, we tend not to notice things. This isn't a criticism as it comes to us all. How many of you come here regularly? How many of you noticed a change a few months ago?

Anyone? If not go and have a look at the top of the page, I'll be here waiting for you...


...right welcome back.

So we got a kitten, and as soon as I can dig out a piccy of her I will pop it up for you. Her name is Willow which is a common name around these parts, wasn't copying Murphy honest! No her name comes from the tree which provides me with the raw material to weave things.

The thing I wove was quite special, did you notice the other bit? Is anyone sat there thinking what is he blathering on about? I wove an engagement ring so m'Lady is now the Fiancee. It was about time, the Daughter had been asking for months, and even a few friends were questioning me. As it happens I had also been thinking about it but trying to find the way to do it wasn't easy.

We had a pretty special first date, we met online got chatting, got on and arranged to meet. The day was capped off with a kiss on top of Lincoln Castle as a thunderstorm rumbled in from the north. Pretty special like I said.

The trouble I had is we aren't often apart. We aren't really go outy people, we tend to like sitting at home and watching a film or two. We also work at the same place so I couldn't easily slip away without being undetected. I also had a few ideas of what I wanted to do but orchestrating it wasn't going to be easy.

However then I got my chance unexpectedly, a friend of a friend had some kittens to give away. they had got rid of all but two of them, and then gave these two to my friend saying 'You'll know someone who will want one.' They kept one and the other was up for grabs. At the same time m'Lady was going up to Woolfest at the weekend (this puts us back in late June), which gave me an opening and ideas formed.

I just had to get a kitten home get all the necessary paraphernalia and sort a ring in less than 10 hours!

Easy.

In the evening, cuppa finished and mother in law to be cleared out, it was a simple matter of dropping the little fuzzball in m'Lady's lap with the ring tied round her neck and a simple note saying will you marry him. Had to clarify just in case she thought the kitten was proposing, you know how it is. Also I figured it would be really hard for her to say no if I made the kitten part of the deal! Clever I am see.

So that was the big bit. There has been a lot of planning after that, which throws me a problem. Weddings by their nature these days are hideously wasteful expensive affairs. Possible the only thing more wasteful and expensive is a baby. So how to have a wedding that fits in with our low impact ideals?

Well that one is going to be the subject of a future blog when we have a few things sorted, it will also explain further reasons for absence.

As will a further post about the garden.

Long term readers will have noticed that there has been no updating about the harvest this year, basically because there hasn't been one. I lost my way at the beginning of the year, one or two things then went wrong and I never really got into it again. However the last month has seen some major progress along these lines and again that will be an upcoming blog.

So peeps, thanks for hanging around, those who have. That is a mini catch up and there is more to come.

One last note, we managed to hold of till November with the heating this year. Quite chuffed although it is on now as you should never be able to see your breathe inside a house! Also we have a real problem of acclimatisation. That is m'Lady and I are both naturally warm people so we tolerate the cold really well. Last year the heating only came on if the house was below 15 degrees unless we had guests or the Daughter who is a bit of a wuss. This means that when it gets warmer than about 17 degrees we suffer quite quickly with over heating. This year I have decided that I don't want to spend mos of the year uncomfortably warm so the winter heating is not going to get us to a point where that is likely.

In a few years the Daughter will be old enough to be told, tough put a jumper on!

TTFN

DtB

Hi All

Hi guys,
Just realised how long it has been since a post. Far too is the answer to that one.

And this isn't really one either, well it is but not a great in depth affair, unless I go on like usual, oh you know what I mean.

Anyway life has been very hectic these last 4 (eep!) months and I have loads to tell you all when I finally get a minute.

Take care for now if anyone is still watching!

Thought I would share.

My day started with me reading about fisting sheep.

Clearly there is more to this self sufficiency thing than I originally thought!

Not where I thought I would be at this stage in my life I have to tell you.

Feeling a little dirty.

Well time came to finally put this one out there and get things straight.

I have been absent an awful lot lately, and my garden languishes for several reasons, but one of them is as follows.

I have for years, doodled and designed, I have come up with witticisms to challenged Wilde himself. I have pitched ideas to people and they have found them to be worthy. I have wanted them on t shirts.

Therein comes the rub though, one of the few talents I possess is hardly usable as to do so I have to tap into a market that I am trying to rail against. This is possibly one of the single biggest decisions I have made in adult life. Don't get me wrong there have been some other doozies. Should I leave my wife, should I have that last slice of pizza etc, the list is endless.

But this is the throwing away of a core part of my being. It is whoring myself to the world I detest so much.

But then I think, no matter what I do people are still buying cards and t shirts. My ranting hasn't stopped this and doesn't do anything to help me achieve my goal. If people are parting with their money, then instead of all that money going to some nameless corporation how about a little bit of it comes my way and goes in my dream fund. Then the money these people spend on fripperies and trifles enables me to reach my goal of self sufficiency rather than someone else's goal of getting a big yacht.

This argument sounds flimsy to even my ears, but my only other option is to let my ideas go to waste and never see the light of day.

So I have launched a Cafe Press shop to showcase my wares. You can get to it from that link or click the little piggy that has appeared in the top left of my blog. You can also add the button link to your blog if you wanted. There is another little box has appeared on the left with the code you need to copy and paste where you want it.

If you fancied doing a bit of advertising for me I wouldn't complain, there is absolutely nothing in it for you except a little bit of good feeling and just maybe a glass of home brew if we ever meet up.

I also have a blog running now alongside the shop which can be found at http://theblackpigshop.blogspot.com if you want to check it out.

At the moment there are only a few t shirts up there but I have loads of ideas and scant time to get them done, so keep checking back for updates.

Cheers

Why I have been absent.

Well if this works it would be ace!

This is the reason I haven't been on line much. Between learning, recording and trying to figure out how the hell to get this in the blog well.




It should sound like this...



I wish.

Syzygy the sequel.

Well this is the two hundredth post for me and by a great coincidence it happens to coincide (as coincidences are wont to do) with our 400th egg. 

Given we only have three at the moment I cannot complain with the 19 eggs a week they are averaging.

So lets hear it for the girls.

In appreciation of.

I wanted to post something a couple of weeks ago but knew I had this coming up so thought I would hang on.

About a fortnight ago it was Nettle Week. Now these days it seems every last unmemorable occasion or worthless cause can have an awareness week and to be honest I am as jaded as a big lump of jade when it comes to them. So there are Marigolds in Botswana? Woop de bloody do.

But Nettles really come into my world. They are the unloved, the forgotten, the downtrodden and so often these days, down right destroyed.

I love nettles. They are amazing plants. They do pretty much everything.

Well alright not everything, but they provide vital habitation for several species of butterfly, they are home to one of the earliest appearing aphids which means they are the breeding ground of Ladybirds. They make excellent compost and mulch. They can be used as a dye, a food and a tea. They make excellent liquid plant feed. They have been linked to possible cures or remedies for arthritis. The list is endless. And we kill and poison them and get rid because they look a little unsightly, they take over a bit and they have that stingy thing going on.

Well a few weeks ago I found a new use for them, one that will hopefully prickle the minds of one or two of you at least.

Nettle Beer.

I feel an instructable coming on.

For Nettle Beer you will need:

100 stalks of nettles with leaves.

12 litres of water.

1500g (3lb) of sugar.

50g (2 oz) cream of tartar.

15-20g yeast (1/2 to 3/4 oz)

You will need a big pan for this, and also bottles that can resist pressure. Something like a grolsch bottle or at a push a 2 litre lemonade bottle.

Remove any dirt and roots. I cut my nettles with some hedge clippers so took no roots in the first place.

Then wash them in a convenient bath.

Then with a pair of secateurs I chopped them up into iddy biddy little pieces and popped them in a pan.

This is our 15 litre pressure canner, that gets used for everything else.

I then added 12 litres of boiling water. To do this I boiled the kettle and added it to the pan and repeated until I had boiled enough water. At the same time I had the stove on to keep the pan boiling. The method recommends boiling for 30 mins, but by the time I had got all the water boiled they had had 20 mins anyway so I just gave them another 15 to be safe.

 I then put the sugar and the cream of tartar in a large brew bucket and strained the liquid into it. Here I have a piece of cotton cloth in the colander to make sure I get all the gritty bits out.

At this point the liquid needs to cool quite a lot before the yeast can go in. Much above 30 degrees will kill the yeast, or seriously impair its ability. This took a couple of hours to cool.

Just before I added the yeast I took a gravity reading. The final alcohol content can be calculated if you know the original gravity and the final gravity. Here the original is about 1050, assuming it finishes out at 1010 then this brew should be somewhere just shy of 6%.

I added the yeast and put the lid on the bucket and put in an airlock. Within about 30 mins this bugger was off and bubbling so this is quite a quick brew.

Leave it to ferment for 4 days, then comes bottling.  Before you start, skim off any scum on the surface you can and try not to disturb the sediment at the bottom unless you like it yeasty. I took another reading here and it was still at 1020 which meant it had a way to go  to finish and to be honest I think that is too much.

I have spent some time each night opening the bottles to let them de-pressurise as I don't want them blowing up. I think in future I will check it is around 1010 before bottling.

The recipe I have calls for it to be chilled at this point for at least a week but I simply have nowhere to put 12 litres of Nettle pop. Which looks like this.

So then comes the moment of truth, trying it.

Now as I depressurised this one earlier there is not much head on it but it has indeed settled to about 1010 which is fab. The rest should hold a nice little head with a bit of luck. It doesn't taste too yucky either!

Somewhere between Cider and Lager, not my usual tipple but any port in a storm. I had to fight the urge to put a splash of black currant in it.

Needless to say, when handling the nettles wear gloves. Be careful with that much boiling water and DO NOT USE bottles that will not take pressure. This is likely to blow them apart!

The reason I really like this Beer is it is good and quick, it brews in a week, it only matures for a week and you have to drink it in four weeks ideally. It will keep longer but after about 8 weeks it will be going to vinegar. This speed makes it ideal for putting on when I have another batch of ale that needs to sit four weeks but doesn't get chance due to me drinking it early thus losing out on a good brew.

In future I will get a nettle beer on first to make sure I can wait!

It's also always nice to do something full process. The real ale stuff is okay but is not as ecological as I would like. When I can sparge my own hops then that will be the ticket, for now this'll do.

I want some of my own.

Right nothing sordid or rude here, so bring your minds out of the gutter.

It's just a man and a lamb. Although we are equally hairy!

A year already?

Hey folks,

A relatively quick one after the mammoth eye bending of me last post.

It doesn't seem a year ago since pink socks and a hard days graft but it very nearly is.

In fact it is about 11 months, and again I got a call to go help out. So today I have been wrangling sheep and separating them from their outer casing to help out. They are very early this year though, in fact one or two of them have been shorn despite still been in lamb.

The conventional wisdom is shear in June, but the trouble is this year has been very dry for prolonged bouts and then a lot of short heavy rain followed by dry. This is fly strike season.

That is every bit as bad as it sounds, flies lay eggs in the wool then the hatchling maggots burrow down and eat the skin of the sheep. It can be very nasty and in itself can kill a sheep if bad enough, but worse still it leaves open sores that can get all manner of infection.

A dead sheep does not pay it's way, it will not produce little lambs for meat, so anything that kills a sheep has a huge impact on a farmer's livelihood. It's a brutal way to look at it, but hey, we all buy food so we all support farming one way or another.

There have already been several fairly nasty strikes already, so the urgency is utmost. Trouble is they are not ready to be shorn.

The fleece of a sheep is made up of a lot of fibres together, all covered in oily lanolin. In the normal order of things the sheep starts to shed its wool, the fleece lifts. That is a significant amount is separated from the skin and takes the lanolin with it.

This leaves a nice, very fine layer close to the sheep's skin that is easy to cut with a pair of shears.

When you have to cut them early this does not happen so the job is a fight, the sheep fights more because it is in greater discomfort, and you end up cutting them more as you are fighting harder. It's possible to take quite a bit of skin with the shears, think Kebab here, and this at best leads to more discomfort and at worst to serious infection again, so they have to get a blast of iodine to sort it out which makes them bleat I can tell you.

But we got about 10 done between us, fighting all the way, and manage to cut out a whole load of maggots off another before they became a problem.

I enjoyed it furiously, I ache almighty and the pink socks need washing again.

It might just be to do again on Saturday!

Quick one

I do not normally advertise or promote services here, but I thought this was worth passing on for anyone who is interested.

99£ Solar power for your house.

There are terms and conditions and you have to be an Eon customer initially, but the savings should soon rack up if you are an average household.

The basic rub is that Eon's partner get the tie in tariff from the grid not yourselves, so you just benefit from the free energy that is produced. You need to make sure this is of benefit but at under £100 you are soon going to be in pocket regardless and you are doing some good to the globe.

I reckon we still start to see more of these kinds of things being offered.

Waste

Right as I have been absent for a few weeks I thought I would make up for it here. This one is a bit epic so make a cuppa and bed in for the long haul.

Louisa at the really good life posted this blog about consumables and waste which made me think about what we do.

The concept of chronicling waste is a nice one, but I fear without a point in our house. Not that I don't see it as a good exercise, far from it, more people should look at their waste. No I mean it is a little late in the day for us as we are pretty good.

First, what is waste. Well it is anything you throw away or dispose of. This can include everything from the milk carton to the water you wash the cup with.

It's well worth thinking of the waste streams in large amounts. For example if you buy a bag of crisps, somewhere there is a lorry driving around with a trailer full of crisps. Another lorry had to drive to the crisp factory with a trailer full of crisp packets and another one with a trailer full of crisp boxes to transport our fragile fried potato product. So forget the crisps a moment, right there is two lorries worth of product that goes in the bin.

Now most of us would be horrified at the thought of driving a lorry full of crisp packets to the tip and emptying them out but we lose sight that we do it everyday just in much smaller bits. If you look at some of the various consumables manufacturers around the world some of the facts they put out are scary. For instance 418 of a certain well known chocolate covered wafer biscuit are eaten each second. So that's 418 waste wrappers then.

Thinking big like this can focus you on the small stuff, yes you are just one person but you are one person who on average produces half a tonne of waste a year.

Waste takes a lot of forms from the above mentioned milk just and water to the little things like the foil of the milk jug or a tea bag or a multitude of other little things. Little things? One isn't a problem but over a year it's half a tonne of little things! Just like people it soon mounts up.

Almost everything we consume is manufactured or processed these days, it comes in packets, packages, parcels, tins, jars and jugs. All hermetically scientifically sealed in a protective environment just for you.

This means a lot of waste material and in the case of cleaning and cosmetic goods a lot of chemicals. There are also a lot of chemicals in some foods but that is a different rant.

So lets start with the obvious bad boy. Plastic. The poster child of the 80's. Before then plastic was awkward and not the easiest thing to make then all of a sudden there was an explosion in what could be done. Suddenly everything came wrapped in plastic or made from plastic. Now plastic is one of the biggest waste issues on the planet. Yes many of them are recyclable, the trouble is very few of them are. 

The reason for this is simple. Most plastic use is in food wrapping or containment (remember the crisp packets), and plastics are chosen for this for specific properties. The trouble is a food plastics have to be guaranteed food safe, and the processes of recycling don't promise this. Unlike glass and metal that are heated to a high enough degree bacteria and pathogens are killed, plastic is melted at relatively low temperatures or not even melted at all depending on the process. So recycled plastics often are not used in food wrapping, or at least a great deal of plastic waste isn't used.

This brings us to the three R's, and unlike the terrible school one where only one is actually an R, our R's are all R's. With me? Then you are as daft as I am.

Reduce Reuse Recycle, this is the mantra of the neo hippy. And this is the order of preference.

Before you buy something you should assess whether you need it first, may sound overkill but 8.3 million tonnes of food are thrown out in the UK every year. Forget about the waste, that's about £50 a month the average household throws out. Can you really afford to burn ten pounds every week and a bit more for good measure?

So how do you reduce waste? Well first identify what you are wasting and this is where Louisa's idea comes in. I have done this for a few years looking at everything that comes through the house in terms of need, impact and output.

See what you can get rid of. We don't eat any processed or prepackaged foods. Everything we get is fresh vegetables from the farm, fresh meat from the farm or the little bits we need from a supermarket. By not having wrappers in the first place we don't have to throw them out. When we get apples from the supermarket we don't get a little plastic bag to put them in, we watch some poor minimum wage till tart struggle to stack ten large British apples on the scale. Being a hippy can be fun!

So we have eliminate food packaging from our bins with the exception of milk cartons and juice cartons and a few others I'll come back to these later. We also have reusable bags so they are not waste.

In terms of food waste, well step one is don't waste any. Make only what you need or be prepared to eat leftovers. Tonight for tea we had leftover soup. Rice was added to fill it out. Tomorrow sausages will be added to pad out the last of it and we have made one meal last three days. Of course we do end up with food waste, sometimes we just have too much even with best intentions. The lord knows I have never been able to gauge just how much potato is in a potato, that or mash is self increasing, I just don't know. The veg comes in its own wrapping. But anything that can goes to the hens and they in turn provide me with eggs. Anything the can't eat is bokashi fodder and then in the compost for the garden. The eggs shells are cleaned, boiled and fed back to the hens to provide them with the essential minerals needed to produce an egg shell. Funnily enough each shell has just enough of these.

No food waste leaves the premises though, it is all put back into the chain somewhere.

In terms of cleaning products we don't buy any. m'Lady makes her own soap that has no packaging. We don't buy shampoo or conditioners. A quick glance at the ingredients in these products will reveal they are almost identical. A few years ago I used to work in a cosmetics environment and I can tell you now there is little difference between either of them and soap. In fact most cleaners contain the same few chemicals and then additives to do one or two things. If you want to save money stop buying the expensive shampoos and conditioners that say healthy looking hair in the commercial. They are full of silicons and methicones that make your hair shine so indeed it looks healthier, but they are doing no good to you, your pocket or the planet.  m'Lady makes a soap that functions as both shampoo and conditioner.

Now the lye she buys and the oil we buy do have packaging. We are on our first tub of lye still so instead of buying lots of bars of soap in wrappers or bottles we have one plastic bottle that can be recycled. The oil comes in bulk in a metal can, that will be recycled as mentioned above. Soap making is a scary chemical process but is easy and in the reach of everyone. You don't need a laboratory. Just some sense. We have even had my 9 year old daughter helping out, under supervision and well kitted out but all the same.

The only cleaner we buy is Ecover or a refill so the bottle is getting used over and over, and the product is less harsh, I am sure we could remove this from the process as well though and make our own liquid cleaner.

Refilling is the next thing, we saved up some jars and bought some kilner jars and now these get refilled with anything from Jam to dried garlic. So we buy no more jars unless we need more to store them in. 

I like a drop of ale from time to time, so I home brew. This year I hope to be wine independent. I currently get tins of home brew ale but 1 large tin against 40 bottles is a no brainer in terms of waste reduction. I saved bottles and now clean and reuse them. If they need replacing I can generally find some.

These are just some of the ways we avoid waste or deal with it so it doesn't leave the house. We are stuck with things like loo roll, but we make sure to get recycled. The consumables we are stuck with are flour, sugar, loo roll, milk, fruit juice and feed for the pets.

So to avoid as much packaging as possible we buy in bulk. The bigger something is, the less surface area it has per unit volume. That is bigger things use less packaging per gram.

This can be hard to get you head around so think of a cube. It has 6 faces. If you got 8 of these cubes and stuck them together like Lego so you had an Uber cube it still only has 6 faces. Each of our little cubes is only showing 3 faces now, three of them are hidden inside. So in this example something that is 8 times as big only uses 4 times the packaging. What that means is the economy of scale says if you can buy something that is bigger you will throw out less waste in the long run. We buy animal feed in 15 or 25k bags, flour in 12.5k bags. Sugar in 3k bags but this year we are going to get 12.5k at a go particularly round brewing/jamming season. Make sure though that you don't buy more than you can use. We go through a 12.5 k bag of flour in 2 months roughly because we make our own bread. If you don't use it and end up throwing it out, you have increased your waste.

So in our recycle bin goes the odd tray from the meat, the milk jugs and the odd tin can. Then periodically something like a paper feed bag. In our waste bin, we put the contents of the rabbit hutch and hoover and that is about it. Our carpets are synthetic so can't go in the compost and the rabbits produce more poo than I can deal with at the moment. I have plans for this though which will mean more compost!

I could go on far more with this one. We barely half fill our recycle bin each month and each week we put one small kitchen bins worth of rubbish in our regular waste. I still see this as a personal failure and will get to a point where that isn't happening either. Finding a local organic milk delivery is high on my list of priorities.

I always have suggestions if people want ideas for how to use things, and I am also always open to new ideas of how to re use things.

The necessary evil.

Right, a mate made a recent valid comment on my post excited which I think is fair to address in another post entirely as it is quite a big issue and a valid problem facing anyone trying to live green and low impact.

Lisa, I don't think you are missing the point entirely, a lead acid battery is not a nice thing in terms of what goes in it, it is a bit of an environmental nightmare waiting to happen. It is full of nasty chemicals and heavy metals wrapped up in a bit of plastic for good measure, and used for storing electricity which is simply put one of mankind's crowning achievements and greatest evils.

It's great because in theory it made labour easier, improved our quality of life and brought vast improvements in many fields from communication to medicine. However it also made slaves of us all and ushered in an age of super consumerism where trinkets are bought today and disposed of tomorrow. We are all surrounded by the stuff and I am no exception.

Which brings me to the aim of my life, I want to get to minimal impact without huge compromise. I could live a zero impact tomorrow, but getting up at the crack of dawn and going to bed at dusk, making myself out of step with the world I have to live in, whilst making it physically impossible to maintain contact would not be a great life. While we're at it I would be running around naked and only eating raw food that I can find with in the few miles of my house and seeing my hairy arse rustling through a bramble is probably not on everyone's bucket list.

So I have to find a way of living that means the compromises I make are tolerable, I brew my own beer rather than transport stuff miles, that kind of thing.

Any way we are getting off track somewhat. 

My aim is to be grid free. If I could be without mains water and electricity that would be ideal. It is possible to run equipment straight of the generators but this is tricky business and locks you into patterns. To generate enough power to run a kettle for instance might take a much bigger panel to produce the 2kW it needs, and you can only have a cuppa at midday in strong sunlight. That is a little over simplistic but it does emphasise the point.

So we need a means to store the power we use, the first step is reducing our output so we don't need so much power in the first place which means I can get away with a smaller battery in the first place.

But it still comes down to being able to store enough power to provide your daily needs and a few days grace if there isn't wind and sun, unless you live somewhere you can use hydro power which is pretty much endless.

The only way to store power is in a battery, and these come in many forms from Lithium ones to the simple lead acid accumulator we are all familiar with. Now the advantage the Lead acid battery has is that it is user serviceable. Well managed a good battery can last at least 20 years. So it's lifespan is good. At the end of it's life the lead acid battery is almost 100% recyclable and because of the nature of the contents they are recycled these days.

The reason they are nasty though is what goes into a lead acid battery. Starters is Lead which you might of guessed from it's name. Lead is energy intensive to mine and process which is never good. Stick it in a bath of sulphuric acid and start producing hydrogen gas and you have a recipe for a bit of a disaster. We've all seen the Hindenburg footage so everyone knows the dangers of hydrogen gas.

However, the incumbent energy is no different to coal, the dangers are maybe more common but less frightening that nuclear, and none of the alternative battery types are any better, many rely on much less common metals. But Lead Acid has another advantage, it is cheap. In fact it is one of the cheapest available storage mediums.

And I get off the grid. Which is the better part of the equation, again I take control of my impact. Like I said at the start, the alternative is to live electric free which I cannot do any more than I could give up my car and walk everywhere. 

So it is evil but it is necessary to my plan, and on balance it is no more evil than what is already there.

Excited!

Right the Vitriol is finally unleashed, thanks for putting up with me! Apologies if it upset anyone, we are all entitled to our opinions, that is just something I wanted since I was about 13 so seeing the chance sail past... well Bygones.

Back to other things.

I have been very remiss in posting so far this year, but truth to tell, I've not had a whole lot to tell you about. The early part of the year saw us too busy to do much of great interest, even no  power nights fell by the way side. Or we were out and about at various shindigs.

Come the Vernal Equinox and the clocks going forward, I aimed to be out and about in the garden.

Unfortunately the weather has rather spoiled this for me. The ground here is too dry to do anything with meaning my plantings are behind schedule. In fact I may have to abandon plans this year, I'll have to see what can be saved.

That said I spend the last weekend planting out seedlings. I now have ten tomato plants and four peppers in the green house. There are three tubs of chillis waiting to come out when the weather settles a little. I have peas in that are going well depsite the sun. I have put in sweetcorn and potatoes and French beans and the herb bed is loving it's new location.

I also have a cherry growing from a stone, which I was really surprised about. I set a dozen going a while back and planted them out, at least a year passed and nothing so I was getting ready to bin them this year when I noticed the first green sprouts and saved it. Now it is nearly 10 inches tall and will be getting trained as soon as is possible.

But the cucumbers haven't germinated for me this year, and one entire strain of pepper also failed to take off. I will leave them in the seed pots but I am not hopeful it has to be said. The cucumber is particularly upsetting for me because it was my first attempt at saving seed. I don't know if I did something wrong or if it was just a dud. If you have got any going, I'd love to know about it.

Decorating also took over a large amount of my time recently. The bathroom was grubby and needed attacking, so now it is tiled and mostly grouted and looks lovely. New taps replaced the old not so suitable ones and it is ready to be painted and finished soon. But there have been a few days work for a room so small.

There is also the little matter of the banjo as well,  which I have to admit consumes a lot of my spare time. Video will be posted at the first opportunity, or when I feel confident enough anyway.

But the subject of real excitement in my life at the moment is a major step for me.

I spied that Maplin had a deal on a solar briefcase a few weeks back. This is basically a large solar panel that is housed inside a hard plastic case that folds in half. It was cheaper than buying the parts to make a seperate panel, had none of the fiddly effort and is ready wired. Now don't get me wrong, I am all about doing things by hand myself and still have plans to make my own larger array in the future but solar cells are delicate things so this was a great find. Under £50 for a decent panel.

Then I found a very cheap battery on ebay that is brand new. It is a lead acid battery which many people don't like as they come with a huge environmental impact but they are the best answer to storage of power if you want to be grid free. Car batteries aren't suitable as they cannot take the cycling so you have to get something a little more stout.

But now I just need to find some cheap and cheerful LED lighting and we are suddenly off grid for lighting at home!

When I get stuff sorted there will be a more in depth post on this and the subject of power.

But after getting the chickens it was one of the big ones on my list to tick.

A mite angry

Why in a world where millions are not entitled to vote, or if they do there vote oft counts for nothing (the NO campaign conveniently didn't mention these countries when it was talking about the rest of the world's voting systems) do the slackers and muppets in this country not go out and vote?

The single most important poll in my life, and I would favour the rest of it, and nearly 60 percent of the country couldn't drag it's lazy arse to the polls to vote.

This angers me especially seeing as the vote went the wrong way. I would favour given the overall swing in the by elections this was people making a whipping boy of Mr Clegg, or a lot of students taking out their dissatisfaction by scuppering his plans. I hope I am wrong on that last point but folks are daft at the end of the day.

So I am a more than a little bit angry with the 60 percent who didn't vote last week.

Also I'm a little bit angry with the majority who did.

I am yet to hear a reasonable reason for voting for the No campaign, any one who cannot argue there own point but has to badmouth the other side of the argument makes me nervous. In all things.

So the amount of negative polling in the No campaign rang major alarm bells, and not a single argument thrown forward held water.

Your vote will count less than others under AV? Not any more so than it does now at worst, at best it equalised the playing field.

Some poeple's votes are worth more because they got their first choice? Er no that is the whole point of the ranking system you get the person highest up the order you voted for. Everyone has the same chance to vote for multiple people so every one has the same chance of having to rely on a secondary vote.

AV will lead to more hung parliaments? Well news flash, we've had two in the last 60 years under the current system, and also the system shouldn't lead to hung parliaments any more than the current one as it still produces a clear winner in each constituency. We elect who we want to win.

AV is unfair because the person in second can win? Well twice in the last 15 years this has happened under the current system. At the previous election the Labour party took victory with 70000 fewer votes than the tories. In the late nineties, the tories polled third behind the lib dems but still took opposition.

The thing that really pisses me off though is that more than one person told me they were voting no in the referendum, then complained there was no point in voting because it doesn't change anything.

This just makes them numpties in my book. It's like leaving your front door open when you go out then complaining you got robbed.

I'm sure many of the people reading this had to vote No as statistically over 3 out of every 5 voters did, and disagree with everything I say but too many people I have spoken to who voted No did very little research into it themselves.

If anyone out there who voted No wants to explain to me why and why it was a good idea, I would love to hear an answer that makes sense...

So you've had a bad day?

Listen to this then...

Tubthumping

Right I tell you now in honesty this one is political. I make no apologies for it. I am putting my thoughts right out there and do not expect people to agree. There are things you may take offence at but frankly the things I say that may cause offence, well I am not sorry about them in the least and you need to look to yourself on those.

In the UK we are about to face a historic choice, the people are to be allowed to decide whether we need a change in the voting system or not.

Now I find myself in an uncomfortable position here, you see for once in my voting career I find myself aligned to the UKIP party, no doubt also some other minority and bigotted parties are also rubbing there hands in glee and that one fact is possibly enough to sway the scales against them.

Then again possibly not, these radicals seem to have more and more followers these days.

That is one reason why  the vote should be Yes and I will come to it.

However first I am going to be honest about things.

Do I think the AV system is going to be worlds better than first past the post? 

Well no I don't, frankly it still has flaws.

So why am I voting yes?

Well, this is a once in a lifetime chance to make a real change to politics for the proletariat.

Wait a minute you say, you voted in the election surely that counted.

Well probably not, you see our current system is set up around constituencies that are not fairly balanced. It isn't one vote one seat in the house. How so?

Well constituency A has 30 voters, constinuency B has 45 and constituency C has 20. Party X has a safe seat in C and wins the poll with 13 votes to Y's 5 and Z's 2 . A and B are marginals.Excuse the poor formatting but the table below helps illustrate a point.

     X     Y     Z

A   7    11   12

B  10   17   18

C  13    5     2

     30  33   32

Party X comfortably wins their safe seat as was expected. The two marginals go to party Z by very narrow majorities. Look at the figures at the bottom row, this is the total number of votes for each party. In the above very simple example, Party Z take government with two seats and party X sits in opposition despite having the lowest vote count, these are the first past the post rules. However the clear majority of voters chose Party Y who are not represented at all. Is that right? Can that happen?

Well in answer to that yes it could, in fact even more extreme in 2005 labour got 60,000 fewer votes than the conservatives but won 92 more seats. In total they got little over a third of the poll but still took power in a landslide victory.

This is because the marginal seats have fewer voters in them in general, so swaying the minds of a few people mean that the overall election can be biased. I believe I am correct in thinking that in the poll previous to that the Lib Dems had the second greatest total of votes after labour but these were over fewer seats that the Tories so they remained the second party. 

The last election was decided more or less by about 450,000 voters in marginal seats

In fact in the last election in Leeds your vote was roughly comparable with 0.1 of a vote when you account for how many voters there are in each constituency.

Voting Yes will start to change this discrepancy, it will also make the practice of tactical voting more dangerous.

Currently we have a two party system, although there are far more than two parties.

It boils down like this, you have staunch Labour and staunch Tory voters, these will vote regardless of policy or practice for the Party who's colours they have taken. They are frankly muppets who do not deserve the gift of voting. You then have a pot of voters who are not aligned to one of the big two and do not agree with any policies but still vote for one of them because they don't want the other buggers getting in. These are worse than muppets. I don't have a word to use but so many elections have gone the wrong way because of these people.

I currently am the third and best kind of voter. I choose my party based on what I think are the best overall policies. This means I have voted both Labour and Lib Dem. I am yet to find anything positive about Tory policy overall but the day may come where I will vote for them because I agree with them.

I am not indecisive, I make my decision based on fact and who represents the best choice for me, not some daft arsed tabloid argument.

But tactical voting makes a difference. But what if the impact was reduced and suddenly MP's had to try harder to canvas those voters who now have another choice? 

This also brings me back to my opening statement. Many fringe parties recieve votes in protest at the Labour and Tory parties. Votes are cast because it's an up yours to them both, in truth this is foolish as the chance to make a difference left you the minute you picked a party that stood no chance of getting in.

There are many arguments on both sides for the AV argument. They are all easy to find but I suggest you have a look here for one that gives both sides.

To me the spectre of a hung parliament is nothing to be scared of. In practice we can get those in the first past the post system as we have seen in the last 12 months. One or two hung parliaments might  quickly make voters start to vote truthfully instead of tactically. A being frank, 15 years of Tory domination followed by 15 years of Labour have hardly set the good ship Britian on an even keel have they?

If you vote No because you feel let down by current events and Nick Clegg, then again you are a fool who does not deserve the vote that many died for. Vote on the grounds you are genuinely convinced this is the best idea but not out of spite, you will not get another chance soon to change your mind when you are let down again by the ruling party you didn't vote for. Don't vote No or Yes because some pop star or other fleeting celebrity encourages you to do so.

The AV system isn't going to be perfect, before that happens the constituencies need to be resorted which is the next step. Could it be the Tories are against the AV vote because they would lose most?

We also need to up the turnout, which ideally should mean voting becomes compulsory. It works for Australia.

But AV represents the first step to true political reform, maybe the first step to true proportional representation. The first step to a true fair one person one vote system where every voice is equal and our leaders are much more accountable to the voters. Not a situation where nearly two thirds of voters are not represented by the government.

The only vote is Yes, if you vote NO I don't want to hear you complain in the future about how the current government are screwing things up. You made it possible for them.

Right soapbox ends. I'm off for me tea.

ps I am not in the practice of censorship so if you want to leave a comment feel free, however I won't accept any that simply attack me personally for having my views. If you put forward a good argument I will post it. Yeah lets have a debate!

Being honest

Right, although spring is really here there is another reason I have been much absent of late.

I bought an old banjo some time ago and nice as it is, it could do with some attention. Trouble is that would leave me banjoless at the sharp end of the learning curve.

The other day I was idly browsing ebay when something caught my eye. As m'Lady and I work in the same building I regularly ping her things on the internal chat system we have. 

Well this particular day I got a reply asking what I want for my birthday/christmas. Yes my brithday is in august and the season of the fat red guy is some way off but we pay scant regard to such calender rigidity in our house. If we have cash and something comes up we really want, we will get each other it.

So this arrived about two weeks ago.

Ain't she purty. 

So I have been playing banjo furiously. It's a much better instrument than the old one in terms of playability, I'll not go into the technicals, suffice to say my playing has jumped on no end in the last few weeks. 

I will be back around more often soon, I promise! Right must go, I can hear her calling.

Oh yes, second hand by the way, I love ebay some days.

And I love m'Lady, she gives me the best gifts.