Lookering

I'm pleased to announce that I am now a qualified lookerer having attended the course yesterday.  You've never heard of lookering?  There is a suggestion that "lookerer" is a Sussex word and I must agree that it sounds like it.  I first heard - or rather, read - it about a couple of months back on another blog.  Although the meaning seemed pretty obvious given the context in which the word was used, I nevertheless looked it up in my dictionary.  This is not the world's most comprehensive (English) dictionary - the New Oxford Dictionary - but it is no pocket-sized volume either.  The word wasn't there.  I Goggled it and the first results led me to the web site of Brighton & Hove City Council which confirmed what I thought.  A lookerer is basically a stock watcher (with "stock" as in livestock) and, in the case of BHCC, a volunteer part-time shepherd.  The Council, I discovered, were wanting to recruit more lookerers.  It sounded an interesting thing to do, so I applied.  One of the requirements is that would-be lookerers attend a one-day course.  As I said at the start, I attended the course yesterday.

The city of Brighton & Hove has within its boundaries a number of areas of rare ancient grassland, unimproved pasture which is the habitat of numerous flowers and insects found only on this particular type of land.  In order to conserve this centuries-old sheep pasture, the Council has contracted with a sheep farmer for him to provide animals to graze the appropriate areas.  These are generally small pockets of land and are scattered around the edges of the city so it would be impractical for the farmer to attempt to visit all his stock with suitable frequency.  In view of the locations, the rangers and farmer have agreed that visits should be made to each site twice daily when sheep are grazing there.

So the course covered the theory of how this pasture came about, why it is important to conserve it, common sheep ailments and how to spot them, sheep and the law.  Then the afternoon was spent on the sheep farm near Lewes where we learned the intricacies of electric fence netting and how to handle sheep.

I found it all most interesting and the farm is in a delightful situation at the opening of a valley running back into the Downs.  Unfortunately, that means that the recent rains have rund off the hills into the yard - which is now covered in mud up to six inches deep, some thick and glutinous, some sloppy and watery.  Fortunately I was wearing wellies but those who wore hiking boots came away with wet, dirty feet.

Now I wait to see when my first live lookering is due.

~~~~~

These sheep on Clayton Hill seem happy enough.

Is your signal really necessary?

I have been following with interest the correspondence in the magazine of the Institute of Advanced Motorists concerning the idea that there are times when it is not necessary to signal one's intention to turn.  This correspondence has been dragging on for ages as the magazine is only published four times a year.  What I witnessed the other day was, I suggest, an occasion when a signal really was superfluous.  I was walking along the pavement when the driver of a car parked thirty yards or more ahead of me and facing the direction in which I was walking, started to indicate his intention to pull away from the kerb.  I was the only pedestrian in sight, there were no other parked vehicles within a hundred yards and there were no moving vehicles in sight.  That driver probably flicked on his indicators before even checking for other traffic, doing so as an automatic thing.

OK, so that is an extreme example, but I seldom indicate my intention to turn right at the crossroads at the end of our road.  I have to give way so any driver of the major road will probably be completely uninterested in what my movements will be: I have to wait for him to pass before doing anything.  However, if another vehicle is approaching the junction from the road opposite me, then I signal.  I do the same if there are pedestrians who will need to know my plans.

The argument is that signalling a proposed turn should be a conscious action, not something that is done automatically.  It should be an action taken only after the situation has been assessed, almost a reminder that an assessment is needed.  A reminder to look specifically for other road users and pedestrians.  Yes, I can see the other person's point of view, that signalling intentions is so important that it should be an automatic action, but I still prefer my way.

On the other hand, one of my biggest gripes is about people who fail to signal.  If I am waiting to join a roundabout and the driver of a car already on it fails to signal his intention to leave by my road, I often lose the opportunity to pull away.

But don't let me get started or I'll never stop!

~~~~~

Following on from yesterday's picture, here is another of the River Adur, at low tide this time.

Pass the.. er... um...

I don't know if it was a result of research by scientists or just the opinion of a newspaper feature writer, but it was suggested this week that the best time for married couples (and unmarried couples as well, I suppose) to chat, discuss matters and make decisions is over breakfast.  Whether it was a group of scientists or one solitary writer who came up with that premise, they or he had never visited my house at breakfast time.  I suppose when we were in the first flush of married life, when the stars of love were still in our eyes, we might have taken breakfast together - but that was many years since.  For much of my working life I had left home long before the Old Bat placed foot on floor.  Things are not so very much different now I'm retired.  I rouse myself to shower and dress, then see to the dog and take out yesterday's newspaper and any other items destined for recycling while the kettle boils and the coffee machine burbles.  Pour the tea and take it upstairs.  After that, I eat my muesli (or bite-sized Shredded Wheat depending on which I am "on" at the time), drink a cup of coffee and glance at the front page of the paper.  Madam might get up while I am washing up the few bits or - as seems to be happening increasingly frequently - she might decide she wants another half an hour in bed which usually means another hour at least.

Breakfast when we are in France is different.  Over there I still take her a cup of tea and then I read a book while I drink mine.  Once the Old Bat has reached the shower room I switch on the coffee machine, then I wait until she is getting dressed before I depress the toaster in the hope - usually a vain hope - that the toast will pop just as Madam enters the kitchen for breakfast.  That was the general scheme of things up until the visit before last.  It was then that the extra half-hour business started and on our last visit it happened every day.  So I started eating my breakfast toast and marmalade in splendid isolation before driving off to buy fresh bread for lunch.

But I can't imagine us holding any sort of meaningful discussion at the breakfast table even if we were there together.  The Old Bat just isn't a morning person.  If we could hear each other over the crunching of cereal and the scraping of the burnt bits of the toast, any conversation would probably run along disjointed lines akin to this:

"Pass the... er... um..., please."

"Good heavens, look at this!" (reading the newspaper). "Sorry, what was that you said?"

"I've dropped a pill."

"The butter?  Oh, you want the marmalade.  What colour?"

"Mind the thingy doesn't get it."

"It's alright, the dog doesn't like marmalade but she'll grab your toast if you drop that...  There's a repeat of that show we liked tonight.  But it starts at half seven so I'll record it, shall I?"

~~~~~

I see that a 12 month ago, over the Christmas and New Year period and well into January, I was taking the Old Bat to her oxygen treatment sessions on Fridays and would grab the opportunity to take pictures in the Shoreham area.  Like this one of Lancing College, seen from Mill Hill across the River Adur. The Gothic revival chapel is said to be the largest school chapel in the world. The school was founded in 1848.

Enough of your blarney!

When I think back and picture myself in my early teens I hardly recognise the boy I see: shy, retiring, timid even.  Certainly not a young man full of easy confidence in himself.  Not that I'm claiming to be full of confidence even now, but I am certainly not afraid to stand up in front of a crowd of strangers and say my piece.  I hope I'm not considered verbose even though I am often the first to speak on a matter raised at a Lions meeting.  I do try to let others start the discussion but very often everybody else seems reluctant to do so.  If I don't say something, nobody else will either!  (I nearly used the word loquacious instead of verbose but decided it's just that little bit less derogatory.)

If I am not verbose, then neither do I consider that I have the gift of the gab.  Verbosity and the gift of the gab are often seen as synonyms although to my mind they are not quite that.  Verbosity, to me, is when somebody just can't stop themselves talking even though what they are saying is not entirely relevant or to the point.  The gift of the gab, on the other hand, indicates to me a useful propensity for saying the right thing at the right time - and not necessarily using hundreds of words to do that.  Eloquence would be another word to describe almost exactly what I mean.

Another near synonym would be blarney, but that is reserved almost exclusively for the Irish and implies, to my mind, a generous helping of over-the-top flattery.  Just why every Irishman is considered to have kissed the Blarney Stone is something I have never discovered.  Oh, did you not know that?  The Blarney Stone really does exist.  Blarney is a small town in southern Ireland not far from Cork.  Blarney Castle dates from medieval times and is now little more than a ruin.  It is there, high in the walls, that you will find the world-famous Blarney Stone.  To kiss it, one needs to lie on one's back with one's head sticking out over a gap (with a considerable drop), lean down and back to kiss a stone in the opposite wall.  And not just any stone; only the Blarney Stone counts.

The Old Bat and I took a holiday in Ireland back in about 1967 or 8 and it was then that I kissed the Blarney Stone - and here is the photographic proof!

And while we're on old pictures, here's another of the Old Bat.  She must have been about three - and no, that's not me holding her hand!

Young love

The Old Bat was just replacing the phone when I arrived home on Monday morning after my meeting with the accountants.

"That was Maggie B.  She rang to tell me my picture is in The Argus today."

(The Argus is the "local" newspaper, originally for Brighton but nowadays more of a general Sussex paper.)

She went on, "It was when I was May Queen back in 1959.  Something to do with the 30th Brighton Scouts."

And that, she claimed, was all she could remember about the occasion when the local paper first published her picture.  Do I need to tell you that I rushed round to our nearest newsagent's shop, despite having been banned from the premises (but that's another story), and bought a copy of the paper?  And there it was, the picture of the Old Bat - on the nostalgia page.  (Where else?)  "Does anyone know this smiling May Queen?" asked the paper.  The Old Bat is adamant that her name should not be divulged so I have not rung the paper.  I had hoped the picture would be on their web site but so far it has not appeared so I have scanned it.

Seeing the picture, which dates from before I first met the Old Bat, reminded me of those early days in our relationship.

We met in the banking hall of a branch of Midland Bank.  The Old Bat - but she was still a Young Bat then - and I both worked for Barclays Bank but at different branches.  In those days, junior members of the staff of banks within a small area met every morning to exchange cheques drawn on those other bank branches that had been paid in by account holders; it was called local clearing.  It so happened that the branches at which we two were employed were close together and formed part of the same local clearing group.  I was immediately stricken by this attractive young lady but I was shy and, in any case, already had a steady girl friend.  The Young Bat didn't appear on local clearing very often but I eventually plucked up enough courage to suggest we met for a coffee after work.  I was, frankly, rather surprised when she agreed.  Somehow, things just didn't progress from that cup of coffee and, in any case, the Young Bat appeared even less often on the local clearing.

I was transferred to another branch some miles out of town but that girl was always lurking at the back of my mind, even though many folks rather assumed that in the fullness of time, my then girl friend and I would marry.

It was approaching Christmas and a friend of mine announced that he would be hosting a party.  My girl friend was in training as a nurse and already knew that she would be on duty on the day of the party.  I wanted to go but it would have been bad for my reputation, my street cred, to turn up without a girl.  Was it possible, I wondered, that the very attractive girl from that other branch of the bank would come with me?  I didn't know if she was still at that other branch but I did at least know her name.  After several days during which I picked up the phone numerous times only to put it down before making the call, I eventually told myself that faint heart etc.  She remembered me - and she agreed to come!  I don't suppose my work for the rest of that day was exactly the best, but so what?  She had agreed to come!

The party was at Rod's house, which was in the same part of town as mine;  the Young Bat, on the other hand, lived two buses away, a journey of about three-quarters of an hour.  She suggested that she should catch a bus to a spot she would easily recognise and I could meet her there rather than have me travel all the way to her house.  So it was that, although I knew in which road she lived - which just happens to be one of the longest in the city - I didn't know her exact address.  But that didn't seem very important - at the time.

We left the party in time to catch the last bus out of Hangleton but too late for the bus that would pass the Young Bat's house.  This meant the last three-quarters of a mile would be on foot - uphill all the way.  By then it was bitterly cold and I was being led along streets I didn't even know existed when the Young Bat suddenly fell to the ground in a faint.  So now I had a girl lying on the ground in a faint, I didn't know where she lived, and I didn't know where I was anyway!  It was late and there was nobody around, but one house - just one - was showing a light at an upstairs window.  I managed to get the girl onto her feet and half carried her to that lighted house.  The lady who eventually answered the door took pity on me - or rather, on my companion - and allowed us in so that she could warm up and come round enough to tell me where she lived.  It turned out that we had only another couple of hundred yards to go.  Her mother was still up waiting for her when we got there - but what a way to meet your new girl's mother for the first time!

I did eventually do the honourable thing and break it off with my previous girl friend and it was not that much longer before the Young Bat and I were engaged.  This grainy picture dates from then and has long been one of my favourites.

Should I or shouldn't I?

I have been thinking about the possibility of taking on a new challenge.  So many people I know or whose blogs I read seem to have done it that I am feeling quite left out.  It's almost as though they are living their lives to the utmost while I am just coasting along; they are testing themselves against the heaving waves while I stay paddling in the shallows.  I suppose it all started with my daughter.  She is the only one in my immediate family - in which I do not include my cousins - to have attended university and gained a degree.  What is more, she extended her studies and last year gained her MA degree.  Someone else has just completed a French course, someone has very nearly finished writing a book and yet another person has started an online course in digital photography.  So I got to thinking, what should I do?

My first thought was that I could study for a degree.  But a degree in what?  My best subject at school - and consequently my favourite - was geography, but I somehow don't see me getting a degree in it.  But I do like reading, and I sometimes try to kid myself that I can write, so how about English?  Not knowing quite what would be involved, I looked up the Open University's web site in the hope of finding out.  I had not actually reached the details before I spotted a link to "prices".  Ah, yes, prices.  I had forgotten all about having to pay.  I clicked on the link - and very quickly decided against studying for a degree.

My next thought was photography.  Yes, I could do an online course.  Then I recalled an earlier occasion when I signed up for a correspondence course in photography.  My tutor was so dismissive of my efforts and so patronising that I quickly became disenchanted and never did finish the course.  Perhaps the same thing would happen.  In any case, I work on the monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare principle: if I take enough pictures, by the law of averages I should get a reasonable one every now and then.  But I think I'm better than that anyway and I'm happy enough as I am.

Then I remembered: I have already taken up a new challenge.  I will be attending my lookerer's course this coming Saturday, after which I should be qualfied to act as a part-time shepherd.  Besides, I just don't have the time for anything more.  I'll just stay in the shallows and paddle; it's far less stressful - and who needs stress at my age?

~~~~~

These folks seem to have the right idea.  They were watching a game of boules in the small town of Ardes, France.

Component accounting

Unusually, the chairman of Brighton Lions Housing Society and I (I am treasurer/company secretary) had a pre-audit meeting with our accountants today.  I say "unusually" because the pre-audit questions are usually dealt with quickly and simply by a telephone call.  However, this year things are different and there is a new requirement in our accounting system which was best discussed face to face: component accounting.  To be fair, we had been warned last year that this would be introduced and that starting from the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2012, we would have to comply.  Basically, it involves the way we treat the depreciation of our building stock.

(I have no intention of trying to explain what depreciation is or how it is applied in accounting.  A fairly simple explanation may be found here.)

The standard practice in past years has been to depreciate our buildings over their expected useful life, which is 100 years.  But some clever so-and-so has realised that the various parts of a building don't last as long as the bricks and mortar.  Rooves, for example, need replacing after perhaps 60 or 70 years; kitchen fittings every 20 years; and so on.  So, there has been produced a list of what are considered to be separate component parts of a building.  These include the main fabric, the roof structure, windows and external door, gas boilers, kitchen fittings, bathrooms, electrics and lifts. 

In the past it has been our practice, when replacing a kitchen or bathroom or when we replaced all the windows in a block of flats, to write off the cost in that year's accounts as major repairs.  But that is no longer good enough.  In future, these costs must be capitalised and the value depreciated over the appropriate number of years.  But even that is not all.

In order to achieve a fresh starting point, a clean slate (if you will pardon the dreadful pun), we have to allocate a percentage of the original cost of each building to the various components and then calculate the depreciation afresh.  What is more, where any component has been replaced, the book balance of the old component must be written off and the new component listed in the fixed asset register and the appropriate depreciation to date calculated, with a journal entry being raised for "prior year adjustments".  In theory, it should be necessary to go right back to when the first block of flats was built - which was 1962 - and list major changes since then.  In practice, our accountants will produce a schedule of major repairs over the last five or six years and we will see which need to be capitalised.

All in all it's quite a headache.  And we have just four blocks of flats comprising 109 units and six bungalows.  I hate to think of the work involved for some of the major players.

~~~~~

Having been burbling on about Brighton Lions Housing Society, let me show you one of our blocks of flats.  This is Lions Dene where there are 33 flats (I think) plus a doctor's surgery and a meeting room for Brighton Lions Club.  The flats are let as social housing to persons of retirement age.