Life, the Universe and Everything

I've been getting fed up with what seems like a prolonged “common cold” this Winter. There seems to be a lot of it about – some of my dancing friends are coughing for England. So I looked into it. A significant infection route is not directly via the “coughs and sneezes that spread diseases” but more like this: ·         Infected person touches their face (we all touch our faces a lot) ·         Infected person touches uninfected person's hand (Dancers do this a lot) ·         Previously uninfected person touches their face – especially their nose or eyes So I started thinking about more hand washing and looked into it. There's certainly some evidence that it can help. There's quite a lot of “anti-bacterial” soaps and hand washes around but the common cold is a virus so it I started looking for something viricidal. The answer seems to be alcohol, specifica...

I was in the small Cotswold village of Windrush recently and noticed this poster I like the detail "Please bring a cushion and a log!" presumably for corporeal and thermal comfort. The death of cinema has bee predicted many times. TV was supposed to kill it as was Broadband but here it is, alive and well in a remote Cotswold village.

Took this picture recently, Click to see it full size.

I have no opinion on Scottish independence as such. That is for the Scottish people. However, I'm very disappointed by the standard of public debate. The main technique - mainly from south of the border - seems to be Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) Just today, we heard from a military chap that independence couldn't happen because everyone in the British forces swears allegiance to " Her Majesty the Queen, her heirs and successors ". Yes, he gave did us the detail I've italicised in strong, resonant tones, the pompous ass dear man! A few days ago, commentators were expressing concern about whether the Scots would cope without the Pound. Anyone would think that no country had ever seceded from another but of course, it happens all the time. For an example close to home, take the Irish Republic. They used to be part of the UK until 1922. It was a fairly acrimonious affair but it was made to work. Yes, there was an Irish Pound and they decided to keep pari...

It’s a village on the Cotswolds originally founded over 100 years ago by followers of Tolstoy. The philosophy has changed over the years but it's still a “community” with meetings to make decisions. It's not a posh “gated community”, I know some quite ordinary people who live there. Still, instead of a “village hall” they've got the “Colony Hall” and the library is “The Book Room”.  Sign The Colony Hall Middle England has its garden gnomes and neatly clipped hedges but Whiteway is different Like most village notice boards, this one gives a snapshot of local life Excellent garden shed A stony ploughed field. A lot of Cotswold fields are like this which must make for hard work. The lime will make  the soil alkaline and especially good for growing cabbages Wikipedia entry

  Found this sign on a railway station platform. Presumably the fear is that someone might conceal a bomb in a saddlebag. Not completely far-fetched as the bicycle has a far from peaceful history - the Vietcong used loads. Presumably, there is not an equivalent notice for the car park. That's probably because a search of a parked car is a more serious business. On the other hand, a car bomb could be very much larger than a bicycle bomb. I wondered if the danger of a car bomb in station car parks had been thought of and perhaps stations were designed so that the nearest potentially explosive car was a "safe" distance from the platforms? A quick look at the satellite pictures on Google maps shows it isn't so. Although car parks are not right on station platforms like this bike park, some of them are pretty close. So, this sign isn't evidence of a carefully thought out security policy, it's just a nonsense.

Apparently, there's this problem with Satnavs. Errors mean that lorries get stuck on country lanes or as the bureaucrats would have it, "local residents end up with inappropriate traffic on their doorsteps". More shockingly, "some motorists do not update their satnav maps, either because they forget or are not aware they can do, which makes the problem even more serious." What is the world coming to? The upshot is "Norman Baker, Local Transport Minister, will host the Government's first 'Satnav Summit' to thrash out solutions to end the misery caused when lorry and car drivers follow out of date directions from their satnavs." Sigh! They don't know they are born! Maps didn't always come with a satnavs attached. Before the silicon chip version there was the folded paper carbon-based edition. There was a brand called "Ordnance Survey" run by a government department and updated every 15 years if you were lucky. You us...

Gardeners! This is a good time to buy seeds. A lot of the usual places sell them cheaply in early January - and quite often it's fresh stock. I've noticed 50% off and 3 for 2 deals in local shops. Another advantage of buying now is that things you are particularly interested in are less likely to have sold out. Lidl are not usually so quick off the mark - they put their seeds out in February. Worth looking at as some of their seeds are unusual and none are more than £1 a packet.

Here's a typical, topical and local plea to recycle: Councillor Stan Waddington, the county council's cabinet project champion for waste, said: "Don't throw your Christmas trees away. If you are not planting them back in the garden, chop them up and take them to your local household recycling centre. Let's say it would be a 10 mile round trip to the rather unpleasant recycling centre. I used one of the online calculators to find that  it would cost about 200g of carbon - not to mention actual £££. Let's think of some ways to reduce this: Don't have a Christmas Tree at all - my system - zero carbon - bah humbug! This is simple and effective. Unlikely to catch on though as the Norwegian military-industrial complex :-) are likely to oppose it tooth and nail - they have more spare trees than people. Ok, most trees in the UK are locally sourced but there's still commercial interests pushing you to buy them. Suppose the county council sent round a ...