h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Peanut

Good to read that you are on the mend.

We got the breeze this evening. After our weekly shopping expedition Mrs Cass very sensibly changed into shorts, which seemed a very good idea- and was, except that I got a bit of a shock when I stepped out around 8pm to go and pick my peas. Quite bracing. I suddenly was aware of being in short-shorts, but I am part of that generation that grew up in shorts. I can not now remember whether I had long trousers as soon as I went to secondary school. I suspect not.

I picked my rhubarb at the week-end and Mrs Cass made a couple of "Upside down cakes" (one to freeze) to take to our son's for tea on Monday. She got her warming up all wrong. But it was well-worth the wait in the end.

Yesterday she made a new ointment using the French "Immortelle" flowers and she was showing me a print out from the Web. In English they are called "Everlasting" and seem to have incredible health properties that have been known about since Ancient times.

Cass

Morning Cass



I shall google Everlasting, I am quite taken with the idea of ointment making. Hiccup wants to make stinging nettle shampoo

Mum has recently got into wine making again so I was hoping that over the weekend we could make rhubarb wine together.

Rainy day today but not on a weather warning level thankfully, it does though look like we have a puddle rain over us that is going to be hanging around for sometime

Peanut

Morning Peanut

You posted three hours ago! I suppose we are just late risers.

Mrs. Cass's ointment making was inspired by the programme by that "Chinese" bloke who did a TV series on making your own medicines from natural ingredients. Two important ingredients seem to be Almond Oil and Beeswax, and last summer we were excited when a swarm of bees settled in our garden and started to make home for themselves. Mrs Cass looked at various sites concerning building hives and capturing swarms to place in them.. We got quite keen on really natural Hives, as opposed to the conventional honeycomb ones. But before our plans could get too far, the swarm left leaving a magnificent wax honeycomb. She has used this to supplement the beeswax that she buys from a local beekeeper.

Sounds like in your Hedgehog garden you could have a bee hive.

Some months ago Mrs. Cass took a box of assorted jars to leave with her Homeopath, who very quickly sells the lot at £4 -£5 a jar, some people placing orders in advance for the next batch. Mrs Cass also distributes them to (mostly females) amongst our family and friends. Do you fancy a little Domestic Industry? The homeopath actually lives near Glastonbury.

Good news perhaps about our son's car- it was booked in for its MOT yesterday, which, knowing my mechanic should mean that it will pass, and also should mean that (as per what we agreed when I left it on Monday) there has been no great unforeseen expenditure.. But lets not count chickens..

Have a good day.

Cass

Hi Cass

I think you mean James Wong, cool dude, British born, Dad British, Malaysian Mum

A beehive is quite tempting, even though I am very allergic, makes you careful I guess. I have had bees set up home for a while but not stay. We also lived successfully with a wasps nest at the back of the garden. We try to make most things feel at home here if they pitch up apart from hogweed.

We wanted to make the most of having the car this morning, so did a tip run, then went for a walk on the hills, then a quick dash into town.

Keeping fingers crossed for the car

Peanut

Morning Peanut

I have been a bit caught up recently in trying to draft yet another letter to a publisher to try to get my latest thing published. I have probably written too much yet again. Not to mention getting captured by Wimbledon - in spite of best intentions.

And then Mrs. Cass sometimes calls me into the garden to do some chore or to give me a guided tour.. Fortunately she is now in the full pride rather than suicidal stage, but her latest idea is a garage plant sale.

Yes James Wong.. The name reminds me of three Wong sisters I taught. One of the three told me that one sister never spoke to her mother because she refused to speak Catonese.. Last time I saw that sister she was married to another ex-pupil, the first British born black person to go to Sandhurst. I asked her about the younger sister who had refused to talk to her mother or embrace her Chinese "roots". She had gone to live in Hong Kong.. Love and hate.

By the way (as you probably know) the Chinese diaspora spread all the way down to Malaysia.. One of Han Suyin's novels is based upon her own period of medical practice there at the time of "the troubles" against British rule.

By the way- update on the KA. When I went to the garage the chief mechanic returned from the pre-MOT saying that it still drives really well and that everything can be done for £280. I had thought £300 in view of MOT, service and essential repairs. So it looks like our son will have his car anytime from Wednesday.

How is your weather. Wet and cold here. Now that I have finished my letter (I got up at 5.35am) and it is gardening weather options are reduced.. BUT.. I have just remembered the Roof on Centre-Court. I guess that in view of the weather-forecast they will just have it on all day.. Mind you the last matches by Nadal and Federer you wonder whether the top-players actually would not appreciate the old "rain-stopped-play" days.. These lower ranked players have often not played as many rounds in the tournaments as the top ones and seem to be more inspired by the roofed-Centrecourt.

Cass

Hello Cass

I was wondering if your time had been captured by Wimbledon and what jobs Mrs Cass had been assigning

probably you have written a little much, seems to me to be part of you

It has been a very wet day here but brightening up now. Which is good timing for me, I have done my household chores and appointments, now I can just potter about for a while

Peanut

Hi Peanut

The difficulty with writing more concisely is that an ex-colleague lecturing in London University, who looked at my 'stuff' in c1980 when I had hopes of getting a "sabbatical" in order to focus on what I was trying to write, told me that it was not necessary "to reinvent the wheel".

But- in fact- I do believe that we need to get right back to fundamentals, and especially since that remark I have made it my business to discover the ideas of largely forgotten or neglected authors and events, whose contribution was essential in getting us to where we are-- and whose "steps" that made "The Ascent of Man" possible -- are now discarded and ignored.

This point was made, for example, about William Cobbett by C.K. Chesterton c1922. When Cobbett died the Times obituary said that he was a remarkable example of what one person could achieve by their own endeavours without any connections or patronage. "Nevertheless, though a vigilant observer of the age, and a strenuous actor in it, he lay upon the earth as a loose and isolated substance. He was incorporated with no portion of our political or social frame.. He belonged neither to principles, to parties nor to classes..He was an English episode, and nothing more, as greater men have been."

In fact championing the writing of William Cobbett is one of my many projects.

Cass

Hi Cass,

I remember William Cobbett, I enjoyed studying that period of history at school. Funnily enough I was thinking about a book I have, radicalism and reform just a couple of days ago, one of those hankerings to read something that I haven't thought about for a while.

Peant

Hi Peanut

Something else we may have in common.. and another problem that gets me in trouble with editors..

I keep wanting to explore my areas of ignorance determined to try to see things whole.. But Matthew Arnold wrote that education was reading with clear purpose, and most people seem to assume that this means specialising in one fragment and trying to read all about it..In order to become an "expert". But then you just get people who are 'know-it-alls' about facts, but can explain nothing that usefully fulfils my mantra: "We study the Past, so that we can live the Present with an eye on the Future".

I believe( as in fact T.B. Macaulay wrote c18280) that the pursuit of historical truth involves trying to understand everything about everything that people have done. As Macaulay said that was impossible, so history could not really use the Scientific method but Art. The historian sketches his idea of the Past picking out key features of the whole scene, and I am always drawn to the blank areas- Nature abhors a vacuum. And the most useful maps are sketches.

Cass

Hi Cass

I got up late today 8am

I don't have any head space this week to think about anything other than my domestic dealings. I'm just about keeping up with the Guardian and BBC economy section but that is it

Cat to vet today.

Will your son be picking the car up?

Peanut

Morning Peanut

My "late" was 10.57.

Good luck with the vet.. We heard from our son in Monday that the homeopathy Mrs. Cass prescribed for his aged dog (16)seems to have perked him up..

Re the car the garage confirmed yesterday that it should be ready today. But our son has to wait for the cheque that I gave him to cover his initial expenses has cleared the bank. He thinks that should be Wednesday. But his working day is 10-6.30 after which he has to cycle home etc. Still we are nearly there.

As for our own car, I have to renew the insurance, and having talked with him I woke up yesterday thinking that I have been stupidly assuming that nothing has changed when I get my quote. We were still paying for a value of £7,500 from 2006. I phoned to amend that to £4000, which brought the quote down by £20. Then I talked about actually looking fo another quote, and the person said wait I will get back to the insurers and ended up with a £60 reduction. I did not close, though today is the renewal day, and I had a scare when we lost our BT line yesterday afternoon. We get to take technology for granted.

By then I had phoned the Peugot place where we bought the car and a helpful salesman told me that the standard retail value was now £2,500. So now we are back on line I will see what I can find in the way of other deals, before phoning back.

Better get on.

Cass

Peanut

Quite a day.. Here is the letter I have just been drafting:

*********************************************************************

Dear Croydon Pound

Having discussed today’s events with several people I feel bound to appeal against the clamping and the related fees related to the action taken today.

There is of course the argument that “ignorance of the law is no defence”. But there are also twin responsibilities incumbent upon the law (a) to be clear , to be clearly stated and easily available, and (b) to not mislead or entrap members of the public. And this is also true of those who are agents of the law.

In the case of our car R189MVO we have kept it off the road on a SORN basis since some time before the end of its last tax disc in August 2009. This is easily verifiable by all our neighbours who have seen it over that time, the state of the car when it was eventually taken to the garage to be made roadworthy and MOT’d once more, the mileage as revealed in its last two MOTs (before and after the Sorn period) and the fact that the whole system of number plate recording and analysis around London will have seen no trace of it on the roads.

Some months ago, however, we decided that, if our son finally passed his Driving Test ,we would get the car on the road again and give it to him. About six weeks ago he did pass his test, and a few weeks ago we started that process. I looked in vain, however, at the documents that I had for any clear explanation as to exactly how to proceed in such a case as ours.

What my SORN documentation stated was that, when the car was untaxed (and it can not be taxed until it has passed the MOT) it could be on the road for necessary transit essential for it to pass the MOT, which presumably means to the garage and back, or the testing centre and back.

So over the week-end of 23-24 June I charged up the battery and on 25 June I drove the car to my garage for them to assess what needed to be done, to get it fit for the road and take it through the MOT. This they did by mid-day on Wednesday July 4.

But our son could not yet get his insurance on that day because a cheque needed to clear his bank, and I did not leave to go to the garage to get the car until c10.30 am today 5 July.

I left the garage and arrived back home about 11.15. There had been some rattling in the rear of the car as I drove, and I thought that it was probably the back seats which had not been properly fixed back into their sitting position. But I could not open the back “door” and had to go to get some easing oil, afraid that I might have to take the car back to the garage. Fortunately the oil did the trick, and I was able to fix the seats. Then I oiled a couple of other locks, while contemplating whether or not to put the car back on the driveway, where it had been for the last three years.

At this moment I saw a Community Support Officer come into the street and make a fast little circuit on a moped. As he was coming my way I requested that he should stop and I asked his advice as to whether I should place the car back on the drive, in view of the fact that our son was going to come over to pick it up when he had concluded the taxing and insurance process. He said that it should be OK , but that I should leave a note with some details on the dashboard. But, by this time he was obviously being radioed by people who wanted him to get out of there. I assumed at the time that he was urgently required somewhere else, but others more experienced in these matters have suggested another explanation..

I have to say that most of the people that I have spoken to subsequently suspect that there is some “Scam” involved in such clamping, which is at the expense of law-abiding people who are trying to do the right things. Certainly, having lived at this location since 1978, I have to say that the presence of this Community Support Officer in our street just the day after our SORNED car had passed its MOT does seem too unusual to be totally coincidental. And I feel that if he was a genuine about his role as a Community Support he would have advised me not to leave the car in the road, rather than the reverse. Policing and law enforcement in this country was never based upon entrapment before. The only real argument that I can think of in his defence is that he assumed that I had collected the car the day before and had already been “keeping it on the road” since mid-day on Wednesday.

As it was I printed and left a note, as he recommended [photocopy enclosed] and went with my wife to do our weekly shopping.

While we were away:
(a) our son phoned and left a message on our answer phone [c12.32 pm] saying that he had not been able to tax the car ‘On Line’ because, though now his insurance had come through, and the car had passed its MOT, he could not tax it because his name was not on the Registration Document. Until the car had passed the MOT there had been no point in transferring the registration.

(b) The car got clamped, as we discovered when we returned from shopping around 2 pm. "

*******************************************************************
The upshot was that I had to pay £260 for the clamping, £160 of which will be refunded when I take the tax-disc (which is now on the car) to the offices of this company about 7 miles away. Apparently the DVLA can tell them on line if a car if not taxed, but not if it is. But I want my £100 back as well.

In fact, as you can probably tell, I rather enjoy a "good fight" and facing up to this unforeseen challenge energised me to overcome all obstacles.

It just meant that when our son arrived to pick the car up c7.15pm I had not cleaned the inside as I had wished or sorted out 'bits and pieces' that either will come in handy for him, or need to be thrown away.

But as this refunding business requires (a)the tax-disc on his car, and (b) me and my credit card, he has volunteered to drive me there on Monday, when he does not work (being a shopworker).. And , as his wife is off work with an injured hand, I have suggested (weather permitting) we could have a country walk and a picnic since there are some nice hills nearby.

Cass

Morning Cass



Ouch, that is just mean. I hope they decide to be reasonable about your £100, especially as you have only been doing everything you can to make sure the car is road-worthy and legal. Also I'll keep my fingers for weather on Monday

I set myself daily tasks, chores and challanges this week, one of them was standing up for my consumer rights over a computer. I've been sent from piller to post and everyone has been exceptionally unhelpful

Talking to 'Dave' my tech hero, he says that a lot of people come to him to get their 'puters' fixed because of the hassle of getting things sorted through retailers and manufacturers and I can see why.

Peanut

Hi Peanut

Thanks for sympathy..

Actually last thing last night I noticed a piece in our free Guardian [not your Manchester one] which referred to our local MP (among others) raising questions about the policing of the Croydon riots.. Evidence has come to light that suggests that the Met had what one might call a "political" and Police rather than public agenda. They were happy to have dire warnings about the consequences of the Government action proven by the turn of events and van loads of police from elsewhere were turned away. This has prompted me to write a letter this morning to that MP raising this whole question of services offered to the public (public and commercial)being often plagued by self-interest and selfishness, from what appears to be a SORN rip-off scam to which I fell foul yesterday, or MP's expenses or the Banking sector.. [Poor Mr. Diamond, 'doing the honourable thing', Mr. Preston assuming that, om top of the £120m he has received (can one say earned) he is likely to receive a "Golden Handshake" of £10m.] Or H2G2 comments about the Doctor's strike the other week.

One of the problems these days seems to be that very few people actually know how to do things apart from go through the motions when "systems" are working properly.

Naomi Klein in "No Logo" wrote about the rather amazing story of US Ghetto culture, when young people outside of the Affluent US culture because of their poverty and general exclusion went to the scrapheaps and found the materials to make their own look and their own equipment like Ghetto Blasters. Soon the great corporations found that people were bored with the anodine goods produced by the assembly-line designers who had gone through the system. They sacked them and hired people from the Ghetto so the "Urban Guerrilla" look became big business.

Cass

Hi Cass

At last it stopped raining and the sun has come out.

I expect you are watching or listening to the tennis though rather than watching the weather

and

Peanut

Hi Peanut

Well we did have a bit of sun, and I was rather annoyed that we missed the Murray set. Checking on the TV text it said last night that the match was scheduled for 3.30- a break from tradition, but I saw that the British Grand Prix was supposed to be on, and thought that TV scheduling was over-riding tradition once again.

So I was very pleased to see Murray one set up.But I am a huge Federer fan and was dismayed that in fact Murray seemed to be winning because Federer was missing shots many of which the Federer we expect to see would make in his sleep. For me Federer at his best turns the sport into a performance art.

Cass

Hi Peanut

In some ways a perfect result for me.. for Roger Federer and as I see it for Andy Murray.

In some ways the very real public support and appreciation in being a losing finalist was perhaps more healing than delivering Britains' first Champion would have been.. As someone who knows a bit about childhood trauma and the bitter realisation that there is real nastiness "out there", I have never personally been able to disassociate Andy Murray from the Dunblane Massacre that he was to some extent part of: and,if he was too young to take it all in personally, one must imagine how his Mum reacted when she rushed to the school not sure perhaps whether he was one of the dead or not.

Some years ago one of my tutor group around 15 years old had a quarrel with his Mum and left home for a while, she knew not where. To me, and to him, when he came to see me and I persuaded him to at least call home on my office phone just to let his Mum know that he was alright, she described how she was at work when he was just a baby: and she heard that there had been a really bad fire at the child minders with fatalities. She did not know that for some reason he had not been there that day, possibly he was too ill and she was terrified that she had lost him.

The pain involved in love and affection.. But when it is based upon such collective strength ["whenever two or three are gathered together in thy name"] it can only be a source of future strength.

Cass

Hi Peanut

"Just to lt you know that while you might not be around you are not forgotton"

Hope the cat has made a good recovery and you survived last week.. As you had gone quiet I took the liberty of checking for "vital signs"- and noted that this week you have Hiccup off school and Spiller around.. Have a great week.

Regards



Cass

Morning Cass



The cat is an ongoing saga I think, still he has is looking very contented at the moment, snuggled up with his favourite person (Hiccup). He has a bit of a cough at the moment, an occasional short hack of a cough that sounds like a woof

We have been enjoying our time together and there has even been decent weather for walking in the gaps between the downpours

How have you been these past few days



Peanut

Morning Peanut

It took me a few minutes to recall main events.. Our son came over on Monday to drive the car plus tax disk to the "Pound" to reclaim my £160. But, just before we left, Mrs Cass said that there were problems with the printer. She had tried to do something while an essential maintenance programme was running!

The drive was pleasant and novel, though the Pound itself set in an Industrial Estate was quite depressing. It is set just outside one of those characteristic large Council Housing estates that relocated people needing social housing outside the city, rather in line with Robert Owen's "New View of Society"- and it has become infamous. Mrs Cass once went to do Supply teaching in its High School and was offered the post of Head of Department, so desperate was the school for appropriate staff.

Back home again I spent hours trying to get the printer working,Mrs Cass saying that she can not live without a printer. I finally late Monday - having been offered a cure over the telephone by the manufacturer's Helpline for a minimum of £70- found a Just Answer website with technicians working for £21. Tuesday morning I used that service and got the printer working again.

I then felt able to get on with essential things and booked my annual blood-test which I attended yesterday.

I can understand why my memory had rather washed out these things that really count as accidents and incidents of life. But "Wash out" rather applies to my ongoing struggles to find the right conditions to complete the planting of my allotment.

I seem to have watched quite a lot of TV. Perhaps having taught in some girls only schools- and remembering the original cartoons from my youth- I seem to "get into" St. Trinians films. Monday there were two interesting documentaries- one on the impact of the riots+aftermath on some rioters and victims, the other on some of the UK's active centenarians.

Then nothing I wanted to watch so I finally got round to watching DVD's of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking Glass"- trying to overcome a lifelong incomprehension of just why people really enjoy such classics. I suppose that the whole thing is based upon a Victorian ideal of a "golden childhood" in which a young innocent like Alice can zoom from one place to another in a default mode which says that for the most part life can not harm you.

But the eldest of those centenarians was the oldest survivor of the Holocaust, having been sent to the camps with her son, and survived by continuing to play classical piano concerts. At 108+ she still "keeps her hand in". She explained that life is all about trying to be positive and happy, the test and proof of this being that her twin sister, who always looked on the dark side, died in her seventies.


I suppose the most positive news is that our daughter phoned on Sunday to say that she and boyfriend had looked at c8 houses, since they have agreed to buy a house together, one large enough to start a family in the next couple of years (she is 35 in a few days). Marriage may or may not follow. Yesterday she sent us the Estate Agents website info on the house they liked most and revisited with boyfriends parents, Dad being a builder- and this Victorian house having an unacceptably small kitchen. Well. It is life moving on and perhaps I need some of that Alice positivism.

Have another good day.

Cass