Keith's 'nother new hobby

Regular readers will probably know that Keith is a man of many talents and is always 'fettling'. Recently, this has mainly involved doing things with pieces of metal and lathes and mills in the shed - sorry, his workshop. Every so often, he emerges to tell me what he has been doing, scattering tiny shavings of metal and plastering door handles and walls with black handprints in the process. I do sometimes think back with great sympathy and understanding to Thora Hird's character in 'Last of the Summer Wine' as she refuses to let her husband in the house before she has laid down copious sheets of newspaper. I'm just not quick enough!

Anyway, this week, he has discovered a webcam focused on Trondheim port and has spent many happy hours watching the comings and goings there. Actually, that's not strictly true. Ships not generally being fast moving, he can spend hours watching very little, so then he progessed to www.marinetraffic.com, which he has used a few years ago when he was tracking the journey of the Delica which he had bought from Japan. (Yep, don't ask. I can't believe I didn't blog about that!)

However, he can now follow and identify the ships and ferries that travel up and down the Norwegian coast. Remember Slartibartfast of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' fame? He spent a lot of time designing the fjords and coastline of Norway and, looking at the map, he could be justly proud of his efforts.

So, from there, we progressed to another site which shows air traffic and Keith had just identified a Virgin plane on its way from USA to London, when, hey presto, we heard it outside and managed to catch sight of it as it passed overhead. I kid you not! Big Brother is watching you takes on a new meaning when Keith's on the case.

Of course, he didn't do anything useful, like book us a Norwegian cruise, but maybe he'll get round to that tomorrow ...



The Horses' Field


Toby and I walked past the horses' field the other  day and these two were peacefully surveying the world and all passers by. The photo is poor quality I know,   but you try taking a photo with one hand while trying to restrain an energetic, impatient small dog with the other! The field is quite large and houses about a dozen horses and it's the one which is currently under threat of being covered with yet another housing estate. It isn't really the horses' field, of course, but is owned by the university and rented to a nearby riding school. However, the university have decided that they need to sell various pieces of land around Wrexham in order to fund their fancy new projects, and that's why I'm pretty sure that, in spite of all the local objections, and we have objected very strongly, although I still haven't had to resort to chaining myself to railings,  they will end up selling the land with outline planning permission for 127 houses, which is their current aim. 

Of course, we have just endured six years of building noises and disruption on the land behind us, the local primary school is over-subscribed and has nowhere to expand to accommodate growing numbers of pupils, the local surgeries, well they are not really able to meet current requirements, let alone an ever increasing local population, and the roads are more country lanes than roads and busy enough at present.

Maybe the council will listen to our objections and refuse planning permission, at first anyway. But as we know from past experience, applications will be re-submitted two, maybe three times, until eventually, permission is granted and we shall lose yet another piece of green in our area.

Plaster board and dust

So, we're still no further forward on the British Gas smart meter front and I've given up making non-existent appointments with them...