Can I help you sir?

As we approach the end of week 6 of lock-down I thought I would share a couple of updates from life locked inside the pub. Let’s be fair if I had offered a golden ticket to spend your lock-down in the pub it would have been over subscribed, after all where better to be?

So today is my line cleaning day and I have cleaned the single line that I have retained for personal consumption. Sounds great doesn’t it, ice cold draught beer… The flip side of this is a distinct absence of choice. Those who have drunk with me will know that I do change my beverage from time to time and having only one draught line somewhat precludes that.

I start 11 gallons of product like an Olympic sprinter, its the best thing that I have ever tasted, pure nectar. The trouble is that there are 88 pints in there and (as your mum always told you) until that is gone you can’t have anything else. I sit down and think that I fancy a glass of wine and this little voice says ‘have some beer first’ then there is this little debate before I fold and drink some beer, see you never realised how tough it was did you?

The fact that pubs are closed appears to have been accepted by the general public far quicker than I expected. Despite lights ablaze and music blaring I leave the front door open and it is used only by delivery people. We have developed a system, given the no contact rule, for dealing with deliveries whereby they place items just inside the door and I either spot them on CCTV or fall over them.

It is funny how used you get to furniture and shadows and well to being open I guess. Obviously I have moved furniture around and the amount of times I step off the steps with a paint brush in hand to see ‘who that is’ before realising its a table! Apparently it takes me longer to adjust to being closed than the general public. I know the pub is shut, after all that is why I am painting and it looks like a bomb site, yet the other day I got off the step 4 separate times for the same bloody table that caught the corner of my eye.

It is bad enough dealing with the ducks without going to serve the furniture. 4 times, that is not just special that is Gav special! I am not that stupid though, I introduced myself to said table and now I don’t have to get off the step I can just call out to see if Bob wants anything. See, they all think I am daft but I am as daft as a fox me.

 

 

Henry counselling and sober sausage

A quick update from Plough towers where I have just finished work for the day and settled down with a pint (sorry not sorry).

I have nearly completed the first stage of white painting, it is staggered to make sure we don’t run out of paint, and moved onto colour. I am approaching the task with renewed vigour and this is reflected in the fact that I am shattered, a very positive thing in these times.

I must apologise to anybody who observed me appearing to perform some sort of odd dance in the window and will explain the scene for anyone that is still wondering what I was doing. I had removed some caulk and loose material from the top of the window reveal in order to replace it with filler. One of the things with old buildings is that when you expose the structure it likes to get out.

So I was faced with a constant stream of debris coming from the void that I was back filling. The solution to fighting this tide was good old Henry but, with soft gloss paint around, I couldn’t let him thrash wildly around. That is why, if you happened to look at the window during this time, you will have been met with an odd image.

I can assure you that all was entirely innocent and what you actually saw was me, stood on a chair, retaining Henry’s hose between my thighs and attempting to direct said nozzle so as to best capture the flowing debris. All is good now and Henry is currently being counselled by CB duck in the hope that she can get him back to work in the morning.

I was reflecting earlier that it is just shy of five years ago that the pub looked like this and was closed as I pushed through many long nights to get ready the first time around. I may not be pulling as many hours this time around but that is the lack of a deadline, I still managed a healthy 12 hr shift today. The big difference this time though is the presence of my buddies.

Now when I can’t find that thing that I swear was right there a minute ago I immediately look for Terry duck to see where he has hid it. Every time I pick up a paint brush I hear sausage duck (3 days sober) say “I wouldn’t do it like that”. Thanks guys now lets have a beer its another day tomorrow.

 

All white at the back?

Team Plough, that is me and my supervising ducks, are now well into project ‘paint for sanity’ and I am not entirely sure of its merits.

I should make it clear that I detest decorating in all of its forms. Partly this is because the Engineer in me seeks a perfection that I am incapable of achieving and partly it is because I find it so terribly boring.

I struggle to find the motivation to start especially when I am painting white stuff white. Having said that we are well underway despite the continuous nag of the ducks to stop and have a beer.

Having started with the worlds biggest prep fest I have suitably re-calibrated myself to ‘pub’ mode. This is important as otherwise I risk getting so bogged down fixing old issues that I will never finish.

I was sat on the floor painting yesterday when I spied an awful set of runs in my fresh work. In true Gav style I set about chastising myself roundly for such a mistake and attempted to recover said runs with a brush. When I realised the offending work was too dry to recover with a brush I cursed myself further after all, as the ducks pointed out, it’s not like I am in a rush is it?

Now getting up and sitting down still causes me some discomfort (note its no longer pain) so I was in a proper tantrum when I got up to get a cloth and wipe down the offending paintwork to make it easier to sand when the rest was dry. As I angrily wiped away my fresh paint I heard Terry the duck giggling so yelled at him ‘can’t see what you think is so funny’.

It was about this point that I too realised that the runs were historic, they were there before I even owned the pub! So after much verbal self-flagellation I had erased my new work because of somebodies previous shoddy work. After a couple of pints I saw the funny side and had a beer with Terry duck, Sausage is still on soft drinks.

So all good here at Plough towers, I am off for a post work drink with my buddies.

Prostituted boxes and dodgy genes

Let me start, in deference to many friends, by establishing that this post is not a complaint merely a reflection. So lets get a fact out there first: I am old, I really am its a matter of fact. Now some people who have more years in than me will argue that I am not old but they are wrong, they are simply older than me which does not, in any way make me somehow not old.

My qualification for age is not merely some number rather it is the condition of the machine that I inhabit. You see some of us spend our lives using our brain and earning our living from what we know, for the rest of us it is a life of prostitution. I don’t mean the short term prostitution of the adult variety I mean the long slow sale of our body in return for wages.

When I laughed at ‘old boys’ with gloves, knee pads and all the gear needed to make an old body toil they knew what was coming but the same naivety that built the industrial revolution said I was right after all we are forever young right? So I was born with a reasonably functional body, I am neither the tallest or fastest I have a ‘workers’ body rather than an overly skilled one but it continues to serve me well.

If I was to tell a young man how old man me feels…. well firstly I know for a fact that I wouldn’t listen! But you know that there are days when simply walking is a struggle, as for lifting? give me a couple of hours. I type this with one wrist in spasm and unwilling to release its grip on nothing. These are nothing but minor inconveniences compared to the real trauma that people fight every day but they remind me that I am on the way out of, rather than the way into, this world.

Old age has not been kind to my gene pool and I am more conscious of that as every joint tightens in the inexorable grip of arthritis. But unlike previous versions I have made my position clear…… Ms Nature is not my friend but my enemy and I will fight her all of the way. I will fight her slow creeping theft of my resources just as I fought her determination to reclaim limbs when I smashed them up. See that smile, its mine and its real but more often than not it hides a multitude of pain that I like to think of as ‘background pain’, hey nobody is young forever.

One for the Engineers…. my optician has been trialling mono lenses such that one lens does long and one does short distance vision. Could I get on with them ? no, and I think a large part of that is that I knew what was happening and kept testing the idea. Now I tried varifocal lenses and they told me that they are much more complicated to adjust to, literally seconds and all good, never (or perhaps I mean ‘always’) challenge an Engineer…..

And lastly one for my old rail crowd….. I always said it, I always said stock would age us more than anything else so here is mine…. the amazing class 91. As an apprentice I worked on the Christmas tree….. I probably still have scars from brush boxes in red hot motors at BN. I returned to put the grandest of ladies through Donny at mid life and now they are piling out to the scrap yard. They join a list too long to share here but one that reminds me of my age, when I joined the railway only the newest of stock wasn’t slam door. when every project has a minimum 30 year life you can age quickly, watch out nipper its a breath away.

The bedroom: Angry buzzing and motorised heads

My trusty hand-held vacuum cleaner has finally had to retire, it was a solemn moment but it has served me well. For some time now the battery has not been holding its charge but the other day this became a health and safety issue so I had to call time. I am sure that some of you will be wondering how a flat battery in a vacuum can be a health and safety issue so I will explain.

I heard an intermittent buzzing sound on a number of occasions whilst walking around my apartment and, after the fourth occurrence, decided to go and investigate. In the bedroom I found a wasp the size of a brown bear* angrily attempting to leave by the window which, despite his powerful attacks, remained resolutely closed. I backed slowly away and collected my trusty hand-held vacuum before creeping into the room, using the stealth of natural cover, and approaching the angry yellow devil. Now if you have tried to capture flying things in a vacuum you will know it is not as easy as it may first appear, the blighters tend to get out-of-the-way at the last-minute. The trick is to get close, but not to close, and then allow the air flow to draw them in before they see you.

Having positioned the nozzle like the expert hunter that I am I pulled the trigger and, following a struggle, the vacuum won and drew him into the little clear bin, that’s when it happened. The battery died and all sound stopped apart from a now furious buzzing and banging off the plastic bin from the enclosed wasp. Realising he wasn’t as trapped or concussed as I had hoped I rushed to the kitchen to set the device on charge, you cannot operate it whilst charging, and to my horror watched the enraged wasp climb towards the exit! withdrawing the vacuum from the charger I gave him a quick couple of laps of the bin before having to hit the charger again. I repeated this cycle three times and was acutely aware that the wasp was getting more angry, he kept trying to sting me through the clear plastic, and improving his technique. On the last attempt the wasp clung to a dust ball and avoided the cyclone winds so something had to be done.

Bug spray sprayed in front of the operating vacuum seemed to do nothing more than empower him, I think he got the fragrant notes that ‘attract insects’ but skipped the ones that kill them. I managed to get some kitchen towel into the nozzle and left him to tire himself out with only an occasional glimpse to ensure that the tissue remained in place. My plan the following morning, if he hadn’t expired, was to microwave the bin, yes I know its cruel but he was bloody angry and bloody big! Luckily he gave up the ghost overnight but, to be on the safe side, has been discarded with the machine, can wasps play dead?

Now all of this is actually a preamble to the real purpose of the post which revolves around the new hand-held vacuum and its attempts to mess with my head. This machine comes with a motorised head specifically for mattress cleaning, no concern of mine but hey that’s what came in the box. So when the box arrived did I discard the motorised head? hell know I set about cleaning my mattress like anybody that had brought a new gadget. Now I do, from time to time, vacuum my mattress but I do so with the upright machine and this doesn’t have a motorised head. So I set at my mattress with a brand new clear dustbin and you can imagine what happened, why oh why do they make them clear? I think that this is exactly like the carpet washers where if you were to use them on a brand new carpet the water would go dark, it’s just an illusion intended to make you think that you are achieving something.

I have never stopped to empty the upright pre mattress and then check the results but even if I did they would never be as impressive as the first time, that virgin plastic bin has a lot to answer for. So now, as much as I tell myself that it is all some manufacturers mind games I will be increasing my mattress vacuuming schedule. When my grocery shopping was delivered this week it contained another of those brilliant pieces of marketing, scent beads for laundry, never knew I needed them. I use fabric conditioner in my laundry that proudly proclaims to give me weeks of freshness but now the same manufacturers are telling me that this is all lies. Obviously no mere liquid could achieve this you need perfumed beads, stands to reason surely? Apparently perfumed beads mean that my laundry will stay fresh for decades or, I presume, until it has been put away in a drawer.

So now that my bed linen has been scented with perfumed laundry beads and my mattress vacuumed with a special motorised brush it occurs to me that these two manufacturers may be in cahoots, could it be that the perfumed beads add the dust that the vacuum then collects and proudly displays?

 

*ish

Winter builders and conspiring floor cleaners

The east coast wind calmed yesterday and this morning was replaced with torrential rain but its still been a pleasant weekend all in all. Looking out this morning, after the rain, I caught sight of confirmation that, despite views to the contrary, I have grown up. The sight of a child, no more than seven years of age, building a somewhat extravagant sand castle was that of a true child at work. The little lad was dressed up in winter clothes and had thick woollen gloves on but did it stop him? did it hell! Not for him the warmth of a café or a pub, he wasn’t going to simply observe he was a bold explorer and this empty beach was his.

He toiled against the wind, quickly working out that letting go of sand was a bad idea unless you faced downwind. The result was quite impressive, reasonable architectural merit and good proportions. It was all the more impressive for being the work of a seven year old in October! I for one salute the young man for his stoic refusal to bow to nature, it will serve him well.

Because I am grown up I didn’t spend the day building sandcastles, somehow I think I missed out. I chose to shampoo the hallway carpet, hey why not? I have no idea of the etiquette of carpet shampooing, I vacuum regularly but the concept of washing carpet has always been a battle except, of course, for when you move in. Having set up the monstrous carpet washer and pre vacuuming the carpet, why does it have to be clean first?, I was away. Now I am not a carpet engineer but there is nothing in this top of the line cleaner that makes me think that it does anything other than spray water on top of the carpet and then vacuum it off.

If, as they would have us believe, our carpets are hideous greasy objects then how does this clean them? The machine that I have has rotating brushes but they don’t force themselves into the carpet they float along the top tickling it. There is no concept of scrubbing so, as far as I can make out, it simply lays the solution on top. But, and here’s the rub, the vacuumed solution is filthy. I believe that there is a filter in the machine that colours the water to make us feel better, make us believe that we have cleaned something.

To further support my theory the carpet washer collected  sand. Now I know that there is sand in the flat, it is a consequence of living so close to the beach, but I had just vacuumed! Somebody is lying to me, either the Dyson super cyclone monster is missing something or the Vax carpet scrubber is making up the residue. My money is on them both lying and I think that it all started when the world went clear. What was the reason that all vacuum cleaners started getting clear bins? Why was it that the manufacturers thought we wanted to look at the dirt, like our own miniature ant farm? They didn’t but they knew that if we had clear bins we would see the ‘dirt’ and convince ourselves of the need to clean more often, its all a fix!

Mark my words sooner or later there will be an expose in the Sunday newspapers about carpet cleaners that sell us a solution that goes grey on contact with water and vacuum cleaners that come pre loaded with dirt to make it look like they are working.

For those following the other project the current number is 11,488