The spot of things

I can hardly be called an anorak yet. A slang term, an anorak is a person, typically a man, who has unfathomable interest in arcane, detailed information regarded as boring by the rest of the population, and who feels compelled to talk at length about this information to anyone within earshot.

I must admit becoming close now that I have made this definition, obtained from Wikipedia. I do, to use an overused cliché, tick some of the boxes. I don’t think at this stage I qualify for the full Berghaus.

Why this particular garment is selected must be to do with what was identifiable with people who stood outdoors for long times looking for things. Trainspotters are the group which spring to mind. So much so that wearing an anorak anywhere can immediately identify you as a trainspotter.

But that aside. Why I qualify as part of the anorak gang is that I have taken to spotting Eddie Stobart lorries. When I say “I “, I mean “we”, because it’s Trish, my wife who really started it. Eddie Stobart is really clever. He has a large and always growing (93 added since January this year!) fleet of trucks and trailers which are painted in a distinctive green livery and each one has – and here is the clincher – a woman’s name. Well most of them.

And that is the thing that we collect. The names are written in a little notebook with the date and checked with the Stobart list. No spotter would be without one. The list is to Stobart spotters what an Ian Allen book was to trainspotters.

The spotting takes place when travelling on the motorways and roads as we pass our journey. It’s not too demanding or distracting during a journey. In fact during a three and a half hour journey, the best we’ve done is about ten lorries. We see more, but recording ten is about the limit for us. And that it’s were the difficulty lies. You see, taking that we travel in one direction at about 70mph and the lorries approach at about 50mph that gives a closing speed of 120mph. I calculated that gives a 1.5 second window in which to identify the name written on or above the radiator grill of the truck. Several factors affect how successful we are.

• The length of the name. Sometimes as much as three.
• The unusual nature of the name. Mairey and Maisey look alike at 120mph when viewed from opposite inside lanes of a motorway
• The distance the lorry is from you. If you are in the overtaking lane, you are two lanes nearer.
• The manufacturer of the truck. Scanias tend to have their girl’s name written smaller and on one off the bars of the radiator grill. Volvos and Mercedes trucks have more space above the grill.

You are now beginning to see how the anorak slips on so easily! The game is a team effort, as confirmation of a spot is needed, confirming by reference to the spotters guide to settle the odd letter dispute. Where one of the other names was not identified, but only the first, then only the full name will be recorded as a spot if there is only one lorry with that first name inn the book.

I am getting giddy now. I can feel the constrictions of the anorak as I write. You can record in your Anorak Spotters Guide that you have found another one.

Plumber's post script

He came. After explaining he was late dealing with an emergency involving his sons windscreen wiper in Penistone, I was clearly dealing with a multi-talented and therefore trustworthy artisan.

The plumber stroke heating engineer was absolutely brilliant. No tut-tutting, lower lip curling, sudden intaking of breath so stereotypically associated with tradesmen was evident. He bustled, flashed the PTFE tape, sorted the radiator, once-overed the boiler and stated how its condition was good. He inflated the pressure thing (not too technical I hope) at the back of the boiler. There was a slight leak on the lower tap of bathroom radiator which he fixed and on which I would have to keep an eye.

The system was up and running and he left and I was only £56 down. The snow has melted and the sun now shines.

A cold snap

My central heating is not working. In case I might forget this slight diversion from modern comfortable living, Mother Nature, in all her climate changing turmoil, amidst all the talk of global warming and Britain becoming developing a Mediterranean climate, has decided to cause snow to fall overnight.

Plumbing is no where near my strong point of household maintenance. Apart from cutting wood reasonably accurately and joining the same with a lower level of skill, plumbing is a horror show. The only plumbing job I can do well and with some knowledge and confidence is bleeding the radiators.

I mention this because having discovered the water pressure falling frequently in the boiler, air in the system may be contributing. Bleeding the radiators, or rads as we plumbers call them, may solve or eliminate the cause of the problem.

My strategy was this. I will ring the heating engineer. I found his number but felt that one of his initial questions after I had described the boiler behaviour would be about my having bled the radiators. One more check would do no harm. The radiator key was at hand which was an immediate bonus. I single handed must have kept radiator key manufacture going for years. Radiator keys are like elephants when they die – they go away, never to be seen again. But not at this moment.

Off I went turning and tightening, armed with a towel to catch the spurt of water. You can now buy a key with a small plastic reservoir to catch the spray, but that is for amateurs who know not what they do. Besides it is over twice the price, but the saving I made now pales to the slightest economic significance.

It was the in bathroom where it happened.

The bleed tap is easily reached and I turned it to open. Water gushed out but not from the bleed valve, but from the main fitting. My reaction was to tighten it quickly, but the washer which kept the thing water tight seemed to be now protruding from the where the fitting meets the radiator and water was still escaping. And escaping quickly. My mind did not fill with images of submariners fighting pressure leaks after being depth charged but of how to reduce the flow of money that was bound to be increasing. There was certainly some damage limitation being attempted. Like a paramedic on the scene of a dangerously haemorraging patient, I grabbed towels to apply pressure and soak up the flow.

Eventually, the spurt became a trickle, the trickle became a drip and then it stopped.

All I had to do now was isolate the flow to the radiator and I will be able to run the system until the heating engineer comes. I still had to call him, but not now from the position of competent householder but from that of meddling incompetent. I then discover that I am not able to isolate the radiator so we are without hot water for heating or washing. And, I remind you, it has snowed.

The man on the phone after some sympathetic words that ten years is pretty good service from a make he had never heard of. His boiler was 8 years old, of known manufacture and no doubt extremely well fitted by his own expert hands and he felt was becoming due for replacement. He was like a vet telling a loving pet owner that the best thing was to put poor Rover down. We laughed and blamed the builder of my house for cutting corners. We shared a moment of male bonding against modern builders. The bonding ended when I explained pathetically the damage to the offending radiator.

He added encouragingly that someone would be here “first thing” in the morning. I got up to a cold house at 7.45am. It is now 8.45am.

I admit to knowing very little about plumbing. There is a new addition to my plumbing glossary. I am also not sure what is meant by “first thing”. At least the snow is melting.

A plucky performance

I am pleased to say that I had one of those sublime times at the Theatre Royal in Wakefield. I received tickets as a birthday gift to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. The performance was thoroughly satisfying. Great humour, great performances and a wonderfully shared atmosphere will live with me for a long time.

I have been a fan of their sound for a year or two. I saw them on TV sing and play their take on Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. The image of a group of evening dressed English people singing this grunge rock classic quite delighted me. I have always been won over by music that makes me laugh or smile and here I was again.

They carry an air of English calm. It all seems to be just something to do. They walk on stage and talk as if they are interrupting our night out. But they are fun. Their act can be summed up for me in their introduction to and thier explanation of the range of sizes of the various ukuleles. They simply say which will burn longer if placed upon a fire, but this deprecation is a humorous front to superb musicianship with the humble ukulele.

John Chesson is accredited with saying that a lover of music is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. If the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were to play the William Tell Overture, they would erase, by their individual sound and humour any memory of the Lone Ranger and possibly that of Rossini and William Tell because one of their supreme skills is to disguise a tune or subvert its genre so that you feel I am listening to something new, or at least taken delightfully by surprise.

Looking back over this, I can recall Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Victor Borge, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band, Alex Harvey, Flanders and Swann, Neil Innes (as an individual performer), Randy Newman, John Otway who all have at times done something with music that makes me smile or laugh out loud. The list is not complete. There will be others that I have come across and temporarily forgotten. Tom Lehrer. See, there are many. I just like it. Victoria Wood. These performers take humour in all its broad sense and apply it to music. Sometimes just as music. From the slapstick of Spike Jones to the ironies of Randy Newman. From the parodies of Tom Lehrer to the clever social observations of Flanders and Swann. I just think it’s great.

I don’t want to analyse why I find it funny. The author E B White once said that "Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." And that’s what I feel.

I simply celebrate the joy it has provided. I have dipped widely into this pool of fun and not all of it makes be fall over with laughter. I’m pleased its there.

I recall laughing at Benny Hill’s songs in the 1950s, long before he became more salacious and Yakkety Sax ended his shows. The line “while naughty Samuel Pepys” made chuckle at this delightfully simple pun. Well I was only nine. More recently, the dark and subversive lyrics of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen have swayed me, sometimes with their outrageous lyrics.

I know all about icebergs. And clearly this is yet another iceberg that hides a whole lot more talent to laugh at. There will be performers who will fail in their endeavour to make me laugh or smile, humour being such a subjective area of experience. Oscar Wilde, of course, said many things. He most certainly had things to say about music.

“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory,” said Mr Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. I think he should have added laughter too.