Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

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Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you and yours Dave.

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Freakanomics.

I'm 20 years late but it's very interesting.

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Warning. I read a blog called, and written by Dull Men. The following post could easily qualify.




Almost every day, and usually first thing in the morning, I walk my dog Poppy on a three-and-a-bit mile route (there and back) through Fosse Meadows.

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It's an amazing country walk with acres of open meadows and miles of woodland paths, and because I walk it every day I get to see the trees, fields and landscape in all seasons. I love it.


Fosse Meadows Country Park https://share.google/nXmTL2Nm66AS5UYMx


This time of year brings a particular problem though, there is one section of the route that is restricted to a narrow path between two fences and, because everyone from my village who wants to go to FM has to pass through this constriction it very quickly gets churned into a quagmire.

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Solution? Wellington boots. Simples.
Or so you might think...

To be continued.

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Ordinary Wellington boots aren't really suitable or comfortable on long (ish) walks, but 4 or 5 years ago I discovered these.

Neoprene Wellies.

Basically a sturdy well made rubber boot with a tough, grippy sole and a waterproof Neoprene upper that hugs your leg instead of flapping around.

Bliss.

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Now part of the bottleneck section has a blackthorn hedge running alongside it but to give him his due, the farmer is very conscientious and cuts it every year, usually just before the quagmire season.

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The thorn that gives the blackthorn its name is a phenomenal weapon. Up to 4 inches long and as hard as iron, it can really inflict some serious damage. The saving grace is, it's a defence weapon. Leave it alone and it will leave you alone.

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Unfortunately the leave it alone method doesn't work when the farmer's flail cuts the thorns off and sprinkles them into the mud on the path.

The thorns retaliated by piercing the tough sole of my right Welly, causing a leak.

I put up with the leak for the rest of the quagmire season but when the next one arrived I decided to buy another pair.
"If I get another puncture" I rationased, at least I have a spare left welly in good condition.

I managed to get through the next couple of years without incident, but this year the blackthorn struck again.

Now I am on my third pair of Neoprene Wellies and I have two spares, both left.

Surely the odds of puncturing a left one next time are getting shorter.

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I almost became a shoplifter when I bought those Wellies BTW.

They came from a local garden centre "Palmers" a vast emporium with like, 100+ cars in the car park on a Wednesday morning.

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I walked through the door and asked the first sales person I saw where the Wellies were kept.

"Oh I couldn't tell you, this section is The Works. You want the garden centre section."

I continued on and asked another person in a more gardeny looking section but apparently that was Pet's Corner, nothing to do with the garden centre.

I eventually got to what HAD to be the garden centre bit, (I say bit, it was bigger than Meadowhall and there wasn't a staff member to be found.

After an hour or so of aimless wandering I stumbled upon the welly section, found the pair I wanted and tried them on. Then I took them off again, tucked them under my arm and set off to find the till.

I found some tills but they were the ones for Pet's Corner. Then I found some more but they were for The Works. Both refused to take my money.

Then I went through some double doors and found myself outside in the car park.

I was soo tempted to just get into my car and drive away but I went back inside and spent another 20 mins looking for the tills or a staff member.

What a ridiculous experience

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A couple of months before Christmas I was 13st 8lb so I went on a simple diet. Breakfast of eggs on toast at 8am, packet soup around 2pm and whatever Mrs cooked for dinner. (Or tea, as normal people call it.)

By Christmas I was 12st 10lb, which is fine for me. Any fitter and I'm a serious fanny magnet.

When I got back on the scales in the new year I wasn't surprised to find I had gone back up to 13sr 6lb.

"No problem" I though, "I'll just jump back on the two meals and a soup thing again.

It hasn't happened.

[Karabiner]

I was pleased in a way to hear about your wellie as I feared for poppy's feet as you were telling the story.

I'm sure there's a two left feet gag in there somewhere but it hasn't come to me yet.

I've been piling on the pounds too Tom, I blame the seasonal port and stilton amongst other things - not playing enough golf either.

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Poppy does occasionally (rarely) pick up a thorn Ralph, but she never actually pushes it into her foot more than a mm or so because she can feel it. She just holds it up so that I can remove it.

[booder]

I am sure a man ofyour resourcefulness could find a way to repair your wellies,hot knife,superglue or gorilla tape any good ?

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You would think so wouldn't you Boo.

I found the offending thorn and pulled it out with a pair of pliers. The hole it left was virtually invisible, a tiny pin prick, so I did as you suggest and went with the old hot knife trick. That failed because the sole didn't melt under the hot knife, it just went white and crumbly, like like a perished tire on an old pram.

I scraped the crumbly bit away and re located the hole with some difficulty. Then I tried to force some Gorilla Glue into the tiny opening.

I did a test but as I walked in the mud the boot made a gentle sucking sound, and it wasn't long before I had a wet foot.

I concluded that the thorn hole was too small to get glue into properly so I drilled it out to about 1/16th" and tried again. This time it leaked even worse and when I examined it the glue had actually fallen out.

I read the small print on the glue and it said, "Not suitable for polymer based or oily plastics"

I have a range of glues but they all say the same thing.

I thought about trying a bolt and two large washers but then I decided that if the wellies are £50 a pair and I could average year out of them, it would only cost me £1 per week. Plus if I didn't keep puncturing the same side I could use my spare, thereby cutting the cost down to 50p a week, so that's the way I went.

I'm sure it will even out if I live long enough.

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https://explore.org/livecams/africam/olifants-river

That is what you call a river in spate.  Can't imagine the volume of water going through.

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Incredible isn't it?

I have a small shallow brook that runs past my place. It's about 10 feet wide and in most places somewhere between 6" and 1ft deep. It flows at around walking speed. (I know that because if I throw a twig or something in, it keeps pace with me as I walk along the path.)

I estimated that there would be around three 45 gallon drums worth of water in one of my stride-lengths, that works out at approx 150 gallons of water keeping pace with me, or 150 gallons per second past any given point.

According to my reckoning, (and reckoning isn't my strong point) that's about 12,960,000 gallons per day, just in that lazy little brook.

I can't even begin to guess how much water flows down your river.

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And what a great excuse to post this pic I took a couple of days ago.

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nice pic. My new phone has a bit of a zoom on it (.5, 1 and 2), so hopefully if I spy any interesting nature when I am out and about, I'll be able to take a better picture than with my previous one.

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Yeah, my phone has no optical zoom but I got lucky with that pic.
Normally the egret is very shy and flies away before I can get into phone cam range, but thus time I was just driving out of my gate and he wasn't afraid of me in the car so he just sat there.

It is worth using the digital zoom on your phone cam rather than taking the pic and then cropping it because although digital zoom is essentially just a crop the act of zooming let's the camera know what you are trying to do and the software compensates accordingly.