Day 592, In town tonight

Make your way toward Barker's Pool.  Don't tell me you can't find it it's been know by that name since around 1570, and no that isn't ten past four.*

You are now well poised to take a dip in any of the water features.  These water features were installed to provide washing facilities for those within the City bounds to whom access to a bath was not possible.  It is not unusual to see, often on a Friday or Saturday evening, the foaming water from where someone has availed themselves of the opportunity for a wash and used slightly too much bubble bath while they were at it.

The tall structure to the right is actually a loofah holder.

What incredible wonders, right here on our doorstep.

It is a pity about the lack of towels though.**

* Variations of this joke construction have been told by anyone from Basil Brush to, er, many people that don't have a hand operating them.
** Always know where your towel is.

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Day 591, Still, life.

Exploded bedroom event.

Flora.

Fauna.

Tractor paper.

Puncture.

Where is the clarity.

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Day 590, It's the Farfield Inn

Dating from a time even before telegraph, it's the Farfield Inn.*  Built in 1753 this Grade II listed building is on Neepsend Lane in Sheffield.

The Farfield Inn survived the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864.  The Dale Dyke Dam near Low Bradfield collapsed and flood waters killed 238 people and over 700 animals.  The pub though survived.

The 2007 floods however haven't been so kind to the building.  Or perhaps it is our modern insistence on making things clean and replacing plaster work, a sort of health and safety issue that has caused some delay in reopening, whatever, the pub is still closed here in 2016 almost ten years later.**

If you've never been in the pub then you have missed a treat.***  A jukebox with the records in the wrong way round, yes they were real 45 RPM vinyl singles, so the B-side played as the A-side etc.  A customer base, if anyone was in (there often wasn't), that was slightly more oddball than found in pubs less off the beaten track.  And a general level of dishevelment that implied you weren't in some funky up-town joint, there was no chance of being served a cocktail of any sort, which is actually a good thing.  I'm almost certain the beer lines had tadpoles living in them, but that was probably just me.****

I expect there'll be a few more floods before this building ever reopens to the public.  If it doesn't mysteriously catch fire four or five times first.  Although the chances of mysterious fire are probably not too high - everyone knows that listed buildings occupying prime building land are much more flammable and likely to 'accidentally' burst into flames and this isn't prime building land.*****

* There's a proper telegraph pole there on the left.
** I have no problem with health and safety, I'm guessing it is too costly for such a large building and the tiny number of customers it attracts.
*** Not really.
**** The Howard in the city centre definitely did used to have 'residue' in the beer lines, and for a busy and popular pub that is inexcusable.
***** Is anyone particularly perturbed by there being two spaces after a full stop and before the next sentence?

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Day 589, Uptime top ranking

This isn't a record, not by quite some distance, but 1200 days was a reasonable amount of time.  The only reason the server was restarted was because it had to be physically moved.

A physical server, now there's a novelty.

Now most of our servers move on their own, unless prompted by a few mouse clicks.

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Day 588, Office world

This image should need no explanation.  Anyone that has ever worked in an office will recognise it.  Although it occurs to me that there might be one or two people that have never worked in an office, so for them I will explain.

This picture features a hand shadow of a large dog about to eat a large-headed boy, or girl, or person of indeterminate sex.*  I'm certain every office has one of these.**  Every office I've ever been in has had one.***

* The sex of the doll is not relevant, stop going on about it.  In fact how can a doll even have a sex, it's just a collection of plastics moulded into a shape that we have assigned human characteristics to due to indoctrination from an early age.  Or something.
** Only me?
*** The hand is that of a colleague skilled in the art of hand-shadow theatre and is available for hire.

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Day 587, The fantastically expressive forehead of Monty Don

Monty is a chap who appears relaxed and at ease in the surroundings of his garden, Longmeadow, when he is presenting Gardeners’ World.*  He has space, many sheds, and an endless supply of all manner of different types of compost, it is idyllic.  This week however I noticed something that I’m surprised to have not noticed before, how incredibly expressive Monty’s forehead can become.

It was during another programme where Monty was away from his own garden, he was presenting at the Chelsea Flower show, where the expressiveness became apparent.  While looking at the show-gardens there was a moment where the normally gently rippling horizontal lines above his eyes, which run almost from ear to ear across the expanse of his forehead, suddenly became vertical and contained within an area of a width of 5 centimetres directly above his nose.

Monty was expressing a small amount of criticism about the planting arrangement and other structures in one particular garden.  His language was as usual measured, there was a slight increase in the passion of his delivery, but the forehead told the full story.  The usually mild mannered, if sometimes intense Monty, was by the evidence above clearly apoplectic.  For an instant I had visions of sledgehammer wielding demolition, and bonfires of substandard grasses.

I imagined the Briza media was quaking at his feet.**

The moment passed and Monty returned to being his usual avuncular self, and even offered explanation and understanding for why the garden was as it was.  The forehead had returned to displaying the dancing horizontal lines of static from a 1970s TV tuned between channels, and all was well.

Monty forehead, with compost and gardening wound

* Gardeners' World.
** A type of grass.


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Day 586, Where's the post?

Scoping out the Post Office in advance of sending off ebay items I discover the Post Office has gone.  Not physically gone, the building is still evident, but the activity that took place there is no longer happening.  There's no sign to indicate what has taken place to cause this change, and neither was there information to say where it had gone.

Google helped though.  There was a Twitter user with a history of 15 tweets, a handful of followers and following, and a photo of a Post Office sign with the correct name now hidden in the back of a paper shop.

I've no idea why this move has taken place, but I'm going to pin it on privatisation as that is a handy hobby-horse.*

In other postal news the actual Royal Mail (if it is still called that) delivery hasn't yet arrived, and it is approaching 4.45 in the afternoon.†  Privatisation again, fewer deliveries and a larger amount of post for each operative to deliver.  Probably.

In further postal news a competitor of the Royal Mail managed to deliver a 'sorry you were out' card to someone else's house.  At least the email telling me I was out went to the right address.  Their website helpfully had a phone number to contact them in the event of any enquiry.  This phone number also helpfully only had an automated menu with no option to speak to anyone, and there was no option for "you are a bunch of clowns, please try again but this time with the correct address."**  Eventually it was possible to subvert their automated customer avoidance system, but only again after using Google - and also by having prior knowledge that their delivery depot was in Rotherham.  This enabled me to make a more effective search for a telephone number, and this number lead to a real human being.  A brief conversation, a laugh, a joke, a court case, and the driver returned with the item I wasn't expecting.

This story would be complete if I could add that I hadn't ordered the surgical support from the thoroughbred stallion which recently competed at Doncaster's Town Moor racecourse, the home of the St Leger, and that some unknown person is going to be very disappointed.***

ebay item

* Isn't it donkeys that normally get things pinned on them?  Maybe this should be sitting on the hobby-horse.
** Strictly speaking this is the owners of the company that are a bunch of clowns, it would be unfair to apportion this accolade to the employees who are probably being screwed by management in some way.
***  But that isn't true.
† The post arrived at 5.50pm.

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