Life, the Universe and Everything

Moira Furnace Folk Festival is a small event usually held in late-August in the North West Leicestershire village of  Moira  which advertised a ceilidh: For comparison here's  video of the 2019 event which shows the same band, venue and number of dancers as at the 2021 event.  It's typical of many smaller festivals in that the ceilidh is a small event with a local band and attracts a crowd of  30-40 people.  So, does this imply that Covid-19 has ceased to impact public dance events? Almost!  I saw just one face covering and the wearer did not attempt to dance  Hand sanitiser was available and I saw a few people use it  The caller asked at the beginning if we were Ok with dances involving touching other people and did we mind changing partners?  There was no dissent and many accepted "Dance line it's 2019" stickers from me On a couple of occasions, the caller made  (possibly humourous) concessions to infection control such as calli...

This post is written to document what is and is not happening as of early August 2021 at a festival that usually sees lots of dancing. It's hoped that the observations will help dancers, organisers and others to plan for the future. Introduction In normal years, this festival has a lot of social dancing in the form of ceilidhs, contras, American squares and the odd Bal or two. Typically, theses events are in marquees or local community halls. The number of  different people dancing over the course of the week probably approaches 1000. By the time the festival started in 2021, "dancing like it was 2019" had been legal for several weeks  but due to the long lead times for booking infrastructure, etc. the cut-down festival planned no indoor events and no dancing.  The Anchor Ceilidhs One of the pubs, The Anchor Inn put on their lunchtime ceilidh series. Differences from 2019 included: No late-afternoon ceilidh Another row of tables on each side of the dancefloor which reduce...

 Many years ago, I stayed at a Youth Hostel where the warden had papered on wall with Bartholomew's Half-Inch maps covering all of Wales and the borders.   This inspired me to do something similar with OS 1:50,000 maps in the first house I bought. It was quite difficult because some of the map sheets had been printed at different times to different standards. There were woods that changed their shade of green half way across and and "C" was missing from "Cotswold Hills". It's a lot easier today as the OS (and some of their distributors)  offer what are essentially paper prints from their database. The actual map area of the sheets is 80cm  x 80cm corresponding to 20km x 20km (1:25,000) or 40km x 40km (1:50,000). You can specify the exact centre point of the map you want so I chose my house.  (Actually, that's not quite true, you can only specify the nearest Postcode and the software jumps to the grid reference for that. If you wanted to order more than o...

If your toilet cistern is taking too long to refill and be ready for the next user (Mine was taking 10 minutes!) you may have found some of the great articles and videos that basically tell you to dismantle the float valve and clean out the blockage. A few others suggest you may have low water pressure but are using a high pressure nozzle.  Try those approached first and if one of them solves your problem, that’s great and you can stop reading now.  Another cause can be that the rubber diaphragm in the float valve is the wrong way round.   Here’s the story… I actually had two problems with my cistern. As well as being slow to fill, after about 18 hours, it started to overflow very gently. I replaced the rubber diaphragm being careful to put it the same way round as the old one. This fixed the overflow – although adjusting this correctly was difficult because it took tens of hours for the water flow to reduce from extremely low to zero. However, the filling was just a...

In the 1960s, 70s & 80s, I did a lot of touring cycling in the UK, Ireland and France. Typically 50 hilly miles a day. I put together a nice Mercian frame and decent parts to make an effective touring machine. As I lived in Cheltenham, which is fairly flat and prone to cycle theft, I also assembled a shopping/commuting machine with just 5 gears, straight handlebars, a basket and a powerful horn. The mudguards didn't match partly to save me buying a new set and also to uglify the machine and make it less likely to catch the eye of a thief. Recently I moved to Stroud, a town that has hardly any flat roads at all - and neither does much of the surrounding countryside. I brought my old Mercian with me and did some basic maintenance to deal with it being almost entirely unused for 35 years. As the washer in the pump had perished, I ordered one through Amazon and also 2 inner tubes. Being used to an 18" pump, I was pretty dubious about the 34cm Draper pump but it was ver...

A couple of months ago I bought a JBL Link 10 "smart speaker". It worked fine with a couple of niggles: Every few days, it would mute itself. You could tell it was still alive by the way the lights flashed for the appropriated length of time when you asked Google something. A full power cycle was needed to get it to speak again If I unplugged it to use it as a "radio" in the bathroom, it shut down after 15-30 minutes I finally got a clue when it it was providing the sound for a YouTube video over Bluetooth and it muted itself while I was "watching". This coincided with the sound of my central heating system shutting down for the night.  So I suspected a power surge issue. Looking at the back of the speaker, I noticed that the battery indicator had just one flashing light rather than the 5 available. Now, JBL don't supply a mains charger, but they do supply a micro-USB cable which I didn't have a convenient socket for. What I did have was...

At the time of writing, it is still legal to take exercise in the form of going for a walk. To check the current rules in more detail, see here . Here's some suggestions about doing it in a safe and pleasant way. To keep at least 2m away from other people (as you should), then you probably want less crowded places. So, if you're used to getting out into the great outdoors, think about the places you've been before. Are they often crowded? Is there a large car park, nice cafe, public toilets, etc? Give these places a miss. If there's hardly ever anyone around your favourite place, that could be a better choice. With places you don't know, you're probably best off with places you've never heard of before.  If a place is famous (EG: The Pennine Way), don't go there. Some of the unknown places have great scenery and if they don't, at least they're empty of people and therefore safer. Another good trick is to go for a walk at a quiet time. It...