Dom Davis (The Blog)

Tomorrow I’m up at 06:00¹ to drive down the coast to Horsey where, apparently, there is a windpump looked after by the National Trust. It appears that there is an important distinction between a windmill and a windpump since doing a Google search for Horsey windmill does not yield the National Trust website. If you take a different tack, go to the National Trust website and search for Horsey a result for Horsey windpump pops up. Go back to Google an search for Horsey Windpump and the NT website pops up first.

I’m all for pedantry and yes it does pump water not mill corn so it isn’t a windmill per se but you’ve got to face it, show anyone in this country a tall round building with a bunch of sails on the front of it and they’re going to go “it’s a windmill”². Now, if that person were computer literate, connected to the internet and wanting to find a tall round building with a bunch of sails on the front in a specific location such as, picking a place at random, Horsey they’re going to search for “horsey windmill”. They may have their nomenclature entirely wrong but you still, ideally, want them to find your website (even if you start the page with “Actually, it’s a windpump you uneducated heathen”). Making then work to find the page really is just poor marketing.

Anyway, I shall be at Horsey for before sunrise³ in order to learn how to take photos of windthings which will hopefully prove useful for the wedding when we’re staying at a windB&B (formerly a windmill).

¹What does the ‘o’ stand for? Yup, oh, it’s only 20 minutes earlier than I usually wake up

²If they don’t I’ll pretty much guarantee they’re an anorak

³07:38 since you ask

Yesterday The Zozo and I went to go see the registrar to be grilled on how well we knew each other and get everything booked for the wedding. These days everything is done online and the registrar just fills out a form on the computer, hits print and you’re away… except that just after they’d printed my form the network went down. Not useful since they still had The Zozo to do.

A few minutes of confusion ensued with cables being checked for looseness, things clicked on screen, things tried and then tried again to see if they’d work a second time all of which culminated in the trainee heading off to see if anyone else had the same problem and the registrar searching for the old school hand completed forms.

Having witnessed all this I had guessed that it was the internet connection that had died and, knowing there were builders doing work in the offices, I put two and two together and come up with unplugged or cut cable. Sure enough everyone else in the building was suffering from the same problem and the builder was summoned to see if he could shed any light on it. He couldn’t, and he was sure he’s not unplugged anything important.

At this stage I decided to step in and ask if, by any chance they were working near a box, probably blue, with lots of blinking lights and lots of cables coming out of it looking like the network cables we could see in the room. On seeing the network cables the builder went ‘ah, I know what you’re talking about’ and headed off downstairs again. 30 seconds later everything was working again. I’m betting he’d plugged in something he now realised to be important

Steve¹ will, in the next hour, get up on stage and finally release whatever it is that Apple are releasing today. Being a rabid Mac fanboi I’m interested to know what’s being released and no doubt I will absolutely have to have one as soon as I know whatever it is (it happened with the iPhone, the cube, the 30″ monitors to name but a few). The problem is I can’t afford one. This is new to me² and no doubt the fact that I can’t have one will mean I want it even more.

Tempted as I am to delve into my savings to get one I need that money for other things (food for one thing :S) so instead there is a plan, not a great plan mind, but a plan none the less. A small (depressingly small) sum of money will put placed on what can only be described as a punt on the markets tomorrow. Should that punt pay off then all the winnings will be placed on another punt and so on and so forth until either one of the punts fail (highly likely) and I’m left with nothing or I have the money to get the new shiny toy. In theory I could turn £10 into over £700 in 4 trades. In practice £10 will probably turn into £0 in one or two, but hey well, nothing ventured nothing gained, and perhaps the gods of technology will smile on me and grant me the money for the iMustHave before it’s released.

¹Because those of us indoctrinated into the cult of Jobs are on first name terms with him

²OK, I had to wait for my big current computer but that’s because it was stupidly expensive and just going out and buying it when I first decided I wanted one would have left me paying off my credit cards for 5 years at a stupid rate of interest. That’s not to say I was doing without as I had less silly macs to play with in the interim.

Morrisons are currently running a promotion on Belgian buns selling two packs for £1.50 (normally it’s 1 pack for £1). Given there are two buns per pack this effectively means that one bun is entirely free. I think you’ll agree that this is not an offer that can easily be walked away from so I was forced to place two packs into my basket.

The problem we have, or at least I have, if you could call it a problem, is that The Zozo doesn’t like raisins (doesn’t like fish either – but what can you do?) and to head home with 4 delicious buns which she couldn’t eat would be enough to have me sleeping on the sofa. Putting the buns back was not an option so instead I bought 4 Tiramisu (her favourite desert) for her to eat thus rendering everything fair.

So far so good, but it didn’t take into my account my complete inability to leave any kind of nice food uneaten which resulted in my trying to consume my body weight in Belgian buns. Not great for ones figure… or digestive tract. Still, I’ve been good… ish (for a given value of good) and there is still one packet of two, rather large, buns left for consumption tomorrow. The plan is to eat one for pudding after lunch and one for pudding after dinner. I suspect they wont last that long though. So much for the diet.

Today The Zozo and I went for lunch at a nice pub in Holkham which I thought we could also combine with a trip to the beach there given it’s supposed to be one of the top ten picturesque places in the UK. What we hadn’t counted on was the weather being a bit damp and very cold. Fine for a drive and a meal inside, not so good for walking along beaches. The decision was made that we would simply drive down the access road to the beach, see what parking was like, turn round and head home. Simples

Meal finished we headed to the car where I faffed with the TomTom doohicky, pluged the phone in and fired up the TomTom app, pulled out of the carpark, crossed the road, drove 5 meters down the beach access road only to discover you need to pay the man £3.50 to go any further down it (it does include parking for as long as you want so it’s not so much of a swizz). The choice was either cough up or turn round and since The Zozo already had a tenner in her hand I guessed we were heading onwards and… well, onwards really. Ticket in hand we completed the last 1/2mile of the journey down the dead straight road and parked up, took the iPhone out off the doohicky, put the doohicky away and got out for a walk (well, we’d just paid to park there, we weren’t going to turn round and head out just yet). All in all it took longer to sort the satnav out, assembling it and dissembling it, than the entire journey. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered

So today I had to pop into Norwich to go collect a load of polystyrene blocks¹. Since I’m not so hot on navigating around Norwich centre I just plugged the post code into the iPhone and got the TomTom app to navigate me there. Given where I was going was close-ish to the station I had assumed that it would take me the way it took me when I went to the cinema (also close to the station), but I was wrong. Instead it had me hang a left down a road I’d never been down before and go down some of the smaller Norfolk roads. This in itself isn’t a problem but I did manage to stuff up a turning (I turned right instead of bearing right) and ended up going down the smallest road ever, bracketed at each end with a sign saying ‘Mud On Road’, although ‘Mud Road’ would be closer to the truth. This is where the fun started.

At every turning into a field, (and there were a few) the mud became several inches deep which was worse than driving through thick snow as the tires kept sliding into the ruts and trying to follow them. Deciding that if I hit any of these patches at speed I’d end up in the field I backed off the speed and slowly pootled down the road at a crawl.

Next up was the white van. It was clear he wasn’t going to pull over so I was forced to slowly reverse half a mile to a passing place so I could let him pass, before slowly heading off again…

…only to meet someone else at almost exactly the same point. Deciding I wasn’t going to do the whole reverse and come back again I rather pressed the point of them moving only to discover there was a passing place just 50m down the road. Grrr!

Tiny roads navigated I started getting into suburban Norwich and then found myself having to go left onto the main road. Now this was a Sunday and traffic wasn’t too heavy but I was stuck there for 5 minutes until someone crossed at a pedestrian crossing just before the junction, mercifully stopping the traffic and letting me escape.

Deciding I didn’t like this new route² I just ignored the instructions for the first part of the journey home forcing it to take me the more usual way. Much better, and this time when signs said ‘Mud On Road’ the road was wide enough for two cars to pass and the ‘mud’ was nothing more than a couple of brown tractor tracks stretching a few inches onto the road.

¹for sitting people on when arranging them for portrait photography if you must know

²The TomTom does some kind of clever thing where it works out routes based not only the roads, but also average traffic conditions so routes can change depending on the time of day, or day of the week

So Specsavers decided that they would use Postman Pat for one of their advertising campaigns. The storyline, such that it is, is that Pat accidentally sits on his glasses and then proceeds to drive off trying to deliver the post but, ultimately, failing.

What could be wrong with using Postman Pat you ask? Nothing… you’d think. After all this is a children’s TV character. What could be more innocent than that? Well lets look at the facts shall we.

Pat sits on and breaks his glasses while getting into his van. So far so good. Pat then proceeds to drive off, not noticing that Jess, his black and white cat, is still on the bonnet of the van. He hits a road sign, leaves the road, crashes through a fence, then a brick wall before he looses the Jess (thankfully she seems unharmed) driving through a garden. The next scene shows Pat picking up a bag of vegetables instead of the bag of post and he then goes on to try to deliver said vegetables. Pat is last seen driving off after hitting a sign.

Ignoring, for the moment, that glasses could correct any kind of vision defect that would cause you to fail to notice a cat in your field of view, or mistake a bag of vegetables for a bag of post, Pat should have been aware of the fact that his eyesight was poor. As an upstanding citizen he would have reported the fact to the DVLA and would be issued with a driving license that would require him to wear glasses to drive. Pat ignores this and proceeds to drive while being unable to see. He then fails to stop at a number of accidents after causing hundred, if not thousands of pounds of damage.

Next, one has to question this persons lucidity. Regardless of if you could see or not, the act of striking road signs, fences and brick walls with a vehicle has got to be noticeable. One has to be criminally negligent, or on something, to fail to notice these events. This goes doubly for posting vegetables through a persons letter box. You could argue that the two sacks containing the vegetables and the letters were similar but when it comes to the contents their not even the same shape. To have a postman who is either so off his face, or who cares so little about his job so as not to notice that what he is holding is a large spherical object and not a thin rectangular one is just beyond comprehension.

Finally, given Pats complete inability to see anything, let alone read, coupled with the fact that the vegetables are not addressed how does he know which letter boxes he should be posting things through? He can’t, he’s just randomly distributing the contents of his bags.

So we have a criminally negligent, possibly high person who has broken a number of laws, destroyed property and woefully failed at his job being used as a spokes person for a company. I don’t know about them but I’d be distancing myself from Pat as soon as I could. I’m pretty sure that once the police become aware of the (readily available) evidence that Pat will be facing prosecution, not to mention the loss of his job.

I was under the impression that weddings were these hideously complex, fantastically expensive shows where the veneer of ‘The Perfect Day™’ was spread thinly round the climax of months of grief. Thankfully I am wrong, or more to the point our wedding isn’t going to be like that.

Tip number one for a stress free day is a small venue. Why pay for a large venue that will cost a fortune and increase the likelyhood of one or more of the guests having a drama when you can have a smaller venue that is every bit as lovely (if not more so) and much cheaper. Less guests mean less cash, less worries with seating plans, not having to worry about things like a top table, dance floor, DJ, etc. All in all A Good Thing™.

Tip number two is to phone the registrar on a day distantly removed from any where they may be moving office or any other such activities. Admittedly I failed with this bit, choosing instead to try to phone them on Friday just as they’d finished packing up to move office. Monday they were closed and Tuesday (today) the finally opened at a bit before 10 but were unable to secure my booking because they needed paying and the card machine wasn’t up and running. Given we’d found the perfect venue on the perfect date there was no way I was letting any bugger nick our spot so I jumped in the car, drove to their office and booked in person. I’m hoping that will be the most stressful event of the whole wedding planning process (I’d rate it about 0.4 on a stress scale of 0-10).

Tip number three, and one I’ll be sticking to rigidly, is that although there is a maximum number of guests we don’t need to invite that number. If anyone who is invited is not happy with any of the arrangement we’ll cheerfully uninvite them and put the money towards the honeymoon.

So the date is set, registrar booked, venue booked, photographer sorted, makeup sorted, dress in the process of being sorted, suits sorted, flowers paid for (but need to be sorted), cake is pretty much sorted. All that’s left to do really is choose the menus and say ‘I do’. Got 9 months to sort that out

It’s occurred to me that perhaps it might be cheaper, less hassle and slightly less dangerous if I were to spend 99p on a bag of Morrisons finest kindling. The thought occurred to me as I was trying to get a fire load of hand sawn [my step-father doesn't trust me with the table saw] green wood to light with the use of two fire lighters, a paper starter log and half a can of lighter fluid. The current crop of wood is so wet you can actually hear it hissing as it burns. It’s fine once the fire is actually going as the heat soon gets rid of the moisture, but that initial bit of getting it going could do with some nice, dry, easy to burn wood. Don’t get me wrong, it’s huge fun sat there spraying lighter fluid onto an already lit fire and watching the flames leap about [for as long as the lighter fluid is applied, all too soon it's burned off and the flames die out] it’s just I don’t want to get it wrong and be sat there two hours later going “So I was trying to light the fire with some fire lighter…” to the local fire brigade

So The Zozo decided it would be a good idea for me to watch The Descent as I’d not seen it yet and the sequel is winging its way to DVD soon (not that it’s crap and went straight to DVD, just that we never got to the cinema for The Zozo to see it). The Zozo likes scary films and films with lots of blood and gore in them (she loved the Saw films). I’m not so keen on gory films and I don’t do horror all that well which meant that a lot of The Descent was watched while pointedly concentrating on anything but the television (mainly with The Zozo laughing at me for being a wuss, despite her having the advantage of having seen it before and knowing what was going to happen).

If you’ve not seen the film the basic premise is a bunch of women go caving (there’s a bit more to it but I wouldn’t want to spoil the plot) and it does beg the question: what do people see in caving. Even before the films got going they’re crawling through tiny little passages, half submerged tunnels and pitch black caverns with sheer drops. I’m not sure how this constitutes ‘fun’. Personally you’d never get me doing that (I like my caves to be big, roomy and well lit with easy access to the exit) and if, for whatever reason, I was forced to go into a cave system I’d now make sure I was toting large amounts of firepower… just in case.