The Frumplingtons

The pace of life is getting faster every day, but, alas, there’s not much any of us can do about it. One thing that really annoys us is websites where none of the images have been optimised, and where even the thumbnails start at 150kB. There’s no getting around it: it’s darned inconsiderate, that’s what it is.

Of course, some sites can’t help being a bit slow for such primitive internet connections as ours. But now, at least for a couple of sites, there are ways to get round the problem: use the mobile page instead.

It might come as a surprise to some, but you don’t have to have a mobile device to use the mobile web. Here are a couple of examples:

I usually keep up to date with my favourite blogs by using the Bloglines online feed reader. But I’ve just discovered it’s even quicker to use the Bloglines mobile page. If you, too, are still on dial-up, why not give it a go?

And secondly, a few minutes ago I was looking at the latest pictures of the recent flooding in our county. And I did this much faster than usual, by going to Flickr mobile.

So, now you can surf the net on a slow connection without wasting half the day waiting for everything to load up. As far as I’m concerned, the more sites that get themselves geared up for mobile users, the better.

As we were walking home the other day, I perchanced to glance into the window of an ethnic new age type of shop and spotted a didgeridoo. Chris has always wanted one, and me being a big softie bought one for him, here it is.

Alongside is our ficus tree, a rather handsome specimen…for an artificial one!

So when you’re sitting there quietly reading our words of wit and wisdom and hear a deep rumbling sound, no you’re not hungry, it is not your stomach grumbling…it’s Chris playing with his didgeri-whatchamacallit!!

In a break from our unending decorating routine (I honestly believe we’d have had less painting to do if we’d gone to work on the Forth Bridge), this week we have been polishing our brass. I heard recently, most likely on Flog It, that people don’t buy brass any more because they don’t like going to all the trouble of cleaning it.

And I remember thinking at the time how lazy some people could be. What idle, shiftless good-for-nothings, I thought.

You can probably tell from that last remark that I have never owned any brass before; well, I did have a Zippo a few years ago, but, as far as I know, that was self-cleaning, like a car I owned at about the same time, funnily enough.

Now, however, we have several pieces of brass. We bought most of them locally, admiring the intricate Celtic designs and conveniently ignoring the patina of age. Oh all right then: the grime.

I must say though, they do clean up very nicely. In fact, you could even go so far as to say,

They gleam…

They sparkle…

They coruscate.

There’s no getting away from it though: cleaning the bally things makes your arm ache even worse than than doing a hundred press ups. There’s a down side to everything though. The up side is that, when they are all cleaned, our brass wall-plates will make the house look really smart. Plus, I can pretend I’m an art restorer: just don’t let me near any fragile frescoes — my technique might still be a bit too vigorous yet.

And by the time we’ve finished we’ll have arm muscles like Popeye, although I’m not sure whether Shana’s quite so keen on that. P’raps I should go and ask?

Not long to go now: UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, will soon be moving from Number 11 Downing Street to Number 10. Having recently experienced all the upheavals of a move ourselves, we are naturally curious as whether he will be doing things differently from us. For example:

• Did Gordon Brown consult one of those homefinder websites or just decide to move ‘on spec’?
• Has Gordon Brown thumbed through his local Yellow Pages and opted to have his stuff moved by one of those ‘man and van’ outfits, or,
• Will he take the easy route and just knock through the wall and install a connecting door from his current gaff?

(Actually, there might already be a door there. If not, there is, no doubt, an extensive system of secret tunnels.)

• Has Brown taken out a mail redirect or will he just trust to luck and hope his successor at Number 11 is good enough to forward his post onwards, preferably without steaming it open and reading it first.
• And will Brown be scraping off the awful tartan wallpaper he has presumably plastered all over Number 11 to remind him of his native land, or will the redecorating be carried out by the landlord before the new tenant moves in?

Who will the new tenant be anyway? Does anyone know? And will they be receiving one of those ‘Welcome to New Tenant’ packs along with the keys to the house. Because there are things they’ll need to know, such as: are their bins are collected weekly or fortnightly: is the house fully double glazed;

And, if they fancy a change of style, is stone cladding allowed in Downing Street?

But for Browny, moving day draws ever closer. Careful how you pack those china knick-knacks, Gordon!

Today is Chris’s Birthday, or B-Day if you prefer!

Due to having signed The Frumplingtons Official Secrets Act, I am unable to reveal his age. All I can say is that it is somewhere between…sorry can’t even reveal that!!

Because it’s Chris’s Birthday, we have planned a wonderfully exciting weekend. The Frumplingtons Good Life Re-enactment will be taking place over the next few days. I’m sure you all remember the Good Life, Tom & Barbara…yes?

Good, well we’re starting with the small stuff first. I found some wonderful seeds on ebay, Asparagus Sprengeri and Kalanchoe Blossfelldiana. Chris found a site to make our own plant pots.

As I sit here typing this, Chris is busy folding pieces of brown wrapping paper, the site uses newspaper, but we don’t read newspapers! The brown paper works brilliantly, we already have our first seed planted! Go on, try it, you know you want to!

Now I need to fathom out where to put the chickens…pigs…

Shana spent most of lunchtime looking at hats on the Internet. When I asked why, she said it was because of all that globular warming stuff and the recent increase in hot weather:

“We ought to get ourselves hats. They’ll help to keep the sun off our heads,” she said. Thinking about it, that’s probably why I tend to talk so much tosh: my brains have been fried. I said nothing though: Shana would only have accused me of being self-deprecating. And in any case, it’s not as if any of my nonsensical blatherings end up on this blog; everything on here is strictly edited according to self-imposed quality-control guidelines.

Shana asked what sort of hat I’d like. I’m afraid I might have been a bit vague with my reply:

“Oh, I’ll just have a John Deere hat, like any other MidWestern farmer,” I said. As far as I could tell though, Shana was taking no notice:

“You can have baseball, panama, straw boater or cowboy,” she said. “Pick a style.”

Well, straw boater was out, for a start: I’m not wearing any hat that looks good on a donkey, even if they do have to have holes specially made in them for their ears to stick through. As for a cowboy hat, well, the last time I wore one of those was when I was about ten. These days I’d simply look like a washed-up country-and-western singer. I had to give some kind of answer though.

“I’m not sure,” I said, unsurely. “I do know a homburg wouldn’t suit me.” Shana rolled her eyes. “In fact, if you did get me a homburg, I’d probably say, to paraphrase Scrooge, ‘Bah, homburg!’” But still Shana persisted:

“What size hat do you think you’ll need?” she asked. At least that was easy enough to answer: in much the same way as Henry Ford once said you could have any colour of car you liked as long as it was black, so I didn’t mind what sort of hat I had…

…just as long as it’s big.

“Yeah, that figures,” muttered Shana, approaching me with a draper’s measure and a businesslike attitude. Before I knew where I was, Shana had found out the size of my swede:

“Sixty-two!” she declared. (Or it might have been, “Aha! Sixty-two!” I don’t remember very clearly on account of my mushy brains, you see.)

“You don’t mean…you can’t mean…,” I blabbered, “Sixty-two inches?” I did a quick mental calculation: “That’s five feet!” I exclaimed. “Do you mean to say my head is five feet in circumference?” I was horrified. A five foot head? That’s gotta be even bigger than Daniel Lambert’s, I thought. Shana wasn’t listening to my protestations though. She was busy ordering something. A hat, most probably.

“There!” she said. “I’ve ordered you a John Deere baseball cap. If you want to be a tractor boy, that’s what you can have. And when it arrives, you’ll bloomin’ well wear it. ”

It’s not just the non-arrival of a poster that’s been vexing us recently. We’ve had a couple of other annoyances to deal with. On Tuesday afternoon we bought an indoor tv aerial (I’ll explain why in a future post), only to find, when we got it home, that the little compartment on the back that is supposed to hold the batteries for the aerial’s integrated signal booster, simply wasn’t there: we took off the lid and found nothing but two bits of wire.

A quick rummage in the bin yielded the receipt. Back to the shop for a refund (or probably a replacement) tomorrow. At a whisker under fourteen quid, that’s not something anyone — and certainly not us — is just going to shrug off.

Monday evening though, was much more frustrating. We had ordered a table and some chairs for the library part of our house. We wanted to put together a relaxed sort of ‘bistro’ look, because the library is also going to be a dining area, mainly at breakfast time. A smaller table than our current one would make this part of the house look more spacious and stylish, we thought.

We had already waited several weeks (delays caused by problems at the suppliers, apparently) and were, as you can imagine, delighted when the furniture finally arrived. Strong, rustic-style iron furniture. Yes, I know it might sound a bit industrial but it looked pretty good when we started unwrapping it.

Until I spotted a minor flaw with one of the chairs: one broken leg, sheared off halfway down. I don’t mind propping up a table with a bit of folded up cardboard (yeah, I know, I can be almost as resourceful as survival guru Ray Mears when I want to be) but I’ll be darned if I’m balancing a three-and-a-half-legged chair on half a shelf of paperbacks. I mean, if I’d wanted a milking stool, I’d have ordered one.

The email is already on the way to those concerned. Trust me, heads are gonna roll!

Back in May, somewhere around the 10th, I believe, we sent off for a poster from, naturally enough, Allposters. We received our poster a couple of weeks later. However, it turned out to be a case of, right picture, wrong size: too small for the space we had reserved for it.

Allposters admitted their error; they could hardly do otherwise, really.

They even said we could keep the undersized poster we already had and resell it, if we liked.

No sign of the picture we originally ordered yet though.

Better look on the bright side; maybe it’ll arrive next week. There’s a blank space on the wall waiting…

Update — 25th June:

The long-awaited poster arrived in the mail this morning. Whoopee!!!

The 123rd Lincolnshire Show starts tomorrow. It’s OK if you like farm animals, I suppose, and I guess a lot of people must do, because it always attracts huge crowds.

There’s more to it than livestock though. Let me think…

Oh yeah, tractors!

Actually, there’s loads more than we’re telling you. To find out more, go to the Lincolnshire Show website.

Just for the record though, Mint Sauce, the Frumplingtons mascot, will not be appearing at the show as an exhibit. Why not? Well, he doesn’t want to embarrass all the other sheep by winning all the prizes. Considerate little fellow, isn’t he?

There have been several thunderstorms in our area today, so we stayed in for the afternoon. We’re not scared of storms though; in fact, we enjoy watching thunder and lightning whenever we get the chance. But it is important to remember that storms can be dangerous if you don’t take care.

However, contrary to popular opinion, the most hazardous place to be during a thunderstorm is not under a tree. The real answer might surprise you, but…

The lavatory is by far the most dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm.

Yes, if you want to avoid getting struck by lightning in the water closet, our advice is to keep well away from the loo.

The science is simple. Allow me to explain:

Generally, people are told to avoid large bodies of water, such as lakes and rivers, during thunderstorms. These are places that tend to attract lightning, and as we all know, electricity and water don’t mix (not in good ways, anyhow) so swimming, paddling or being near to water during storms is a bad idea.

When you’re on the toilet though, you’re only inches away from a big puddle of water — at any rate, your extremities are (!) — and your body is effectively earthed, via your lavatory’s soil pipe.

And that soil pipe doesn’t end in your bathroom. It goes outside (repeat after me) into…the…ground.

Clearly it only takes one air to ground lightning strike in the wrong place for you to feel a rather uncomfortable tingling sensation in Lower Saxony.

So, what can you do to minimise your chances of getting fried on the khazi?

There’s only one thing for it: wear an item of metal headgear, such as a Pickelhaube, as worn by German soldiers during World War One, with a lightning conductor attached to the metal spike. I shall soon be making some of these, with the aim of selling them via this blog — as soon as I can lay hands on a large quantity of cheap leather and a cobbler’s apron. Bulk orders welcome. They will, of course, be given free to anyone leaving a comment on this post.