southern42

' afternoon all from red dragon land. Sunny, hot with pleasant breeze. A lot cooler indoors. Breakfast outside then tidied up youngest's jasmine of dead leaves and flowers and gave it a good soak before bringing it back indoors, by which time it was 11.00 and getting quite warm BUT...NO NOISE! No sound of drills, lawnmowers. loud chatter, loud music. Yesterday, morning through to evening, it was continuous noise with a mixture of lawnmowers, strimmers, garden get togethers, BBQ party - I only did my bike ride on the terrace, and even then it was not quiet! So a lovely quiet half hour was spent pruning a fuchsia of its deadwood and chopping the branches up to go in our new G waste bin, currently, at the end of the road waiting for the council to empty it, assuming they will come and empty it. Some more branches to chop up later, and then get the saw out to attack the larger branches. Ooops! That might get a bit noisy. Fitt and Elfie keeping active. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

' morning all from red dragon land. Wall to wall sunshine, 20C, light nor'easterlies so say pine cone predictors. I think I will have to put in some G time, if only an excuse to enjoy the warm sunny weather followed by bike ride on the terrace, late afternoon. Going back a bit, we had one of that variety on the boom of our old yacht. The snake imposter came highly recommended to deter seagulls, or rather their droppings which would cake not only the deck but the sail cover and that was not as easy to clean! I think it worked for a bit - until the orange/black markings faded, anyway. When we sailed off to the Isle of Man and Bangor, County Down we were away for two weeks. We came back to our mooring and the tender was not only entangled on the buoy, it was covered in droppings and needed a deep clean before we could put our stuff in it and row ashore. I will admit, I was not the one to do this job! Fitt and Elfie taking in some fresh air. Mugadecaf time. Take care, play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

' afternoon all from red dragon land. Happy Anniversary to Mr and Mrs O. Sun shining and not quite so windy as yesterday. I had just started to warm up with a toot-on-the-flute when next door's cat was just about to head down the steps into the garden when she turned round to see where the sound was coming from. I began to play Brian Boru's March, she sat down looking through the gaps in the blinds which cover the French doors and stayed there for quite a few bars before moving on. My first appreciative Audience...? Maybe, I'll put out some cushions, next time....with a collection tin... On second thoughts, I can do without smelly fishbones or a birdie skeleton, thank you very much. Fitt and Elfie having a whale of a time. Take care and play safe _________ Best wishes Polly

' morning all from red dragon land. Came down this morning and found yesterday's ERs post still "loading...". Went back a few pages and it definitely did not load. You did not miss much... Start again... Today's wind is stronger than yesterday's according to the pine cone predictors, so I guess I will not even attempt 5 mins on the bike, today. It could also be the ruin of the broccoli. Apparently, it needs staking or the stems banked up with earth, and will not produce the flowerheads until next year...if it lasts that long! I googled broccoli growth a couple of days ago... Aghhhhh! As it was Father's Day, yesterday, I made a rhubarb crumble so we have the remainder of that to look forward to. Fitt and Elfie watching the calories... Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

Never mind the fishbowl in HO, how about having one of these on your layout? https://www.boatyardbus.co.uk Our daughter sent us a photo of it yesterday.

Our bus service, goes via the hospital, but it was a bit of a walk to the entrance and it gets mighty wet and windy up there! Recently, it was moved close to A&E and the Main entrance - a lot more friendly. If it is still sited there during the current situation I do not know. Hopefully, I will not need to find out!

Happy anniversary, Simon. Have a lovely day.

' afternoon all from red dragon land. Had things been different, we would probably be at Didcot, after leaving here on the Holyhead-Euston train on Thursday to catch the 23.00 Paddington-Penzance Sleeper with an off-peak day return for yesterday to the Bodmin & Wenford Rly, then a few hours in Penzance, retuning on the 21.00 Sleeper back to Paddington to see the Cornish countryside as the sun went down (assuming it was shining, of course), arriving for breakfast at Paddington, followed by an off-peak day return to Didcot Rly Centre and returning back home on the 18.10 Euston-Holyhead train. A bit of midsummer madness! Next year, maybe? That is what we said last year, when the dates would have coincided with the solstice but things getting in the way of going... Yet, strangely, I am not disappointed. I guess it is because I am having the time at home to do and enjoy the things I usually have not got the time for! Intermittent sunshine. Good enough for me. At least, I will manage a bike ride on the terrace. HH, superb picture of our terrace you posted, by the way. Close. Very close. And here is our view of it.... I had to fight tooth and nail to keep the "Moon at Night" slab. The builder was going to turn it over! Yes, in truth, it is purely the build up of several past sprayings of various m*d*ll*ng bits and other paint jobs but I saw it as another part of the lump of slate's history. Besides, I saw it as a work of art to keep and who wants to pay for someone else's when you can have your own for free and for nothing (yn rhad ac am ddim) as we say round here? The first of our G waste collection goes out this Thursday, then we can start working round the overgrown areas and make the place look a bit tidier. Time for lunch. Fitt and Elfie working up an appetite. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

' evening all from red dragon land. Happy anniversary Tony and Adit. Baz and Chris, hope you are both feeling better soon. Andy, good to see you back online and settling in OK down in 'ampsher. Some disappointing news here, today, with a large number of people having been tested positive with Covid-19 at two factories in Llangefni on Anglesey and in Wrexham. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53091149 Main event of the day, here - click n collect from Tess Coe's and sorting and sanitising it all. Glad when it is done, that is all I can say! Fitt and Elfie still here. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

' morning all from red dragon land. Cloudy, sun poking through, no wind. Showers may/may not arrive. Pine cone prophets covering themselves. Bike ride on the terrace should go ahead. Better chance than yesterday when the odd spit turned into a drizzle and I called it a day after a mere 7 mins. Six notes put together on the Yamaha, so far - played as long notes at the moment. As a kid, one of our little 'uns was always measuring to improve his performance in whatever he was doing so, yesterday, I thought, why not? Thus I decided to time how long I could blow the lowest note, C. 10 secs increasing to 12 secs as I went up the scale. Room for improvement but I do have a reference to go by, now. I wonder if I could double it? We have signed up for the councils garden collection - where garden waste once went as part of the weekly refuse collection, a few years ago, they decided to charge us for the privilege, thereafter, we took our garden waste to the council waste depot, currently closed, instead. We have taken over a neighbour's collection, who is no longer using it, and the bin comes with it! So, I can get the loppers out again and prune back some overgrown shrubs and keep the rest of the growth, intended or otherwise, under control without too much bother, not to mention a large overgrown clump of montbretia (crocosmia) gorgeous at the end of summer though! Mugadecaf time. Fitt and Elfie keeping in shape. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

F minor. The E flat is tricky to play with a half covered hole on the 3rd righthand finger but it is preceded and followed by easier fingerings. Just a matter of getting the right amount of the hole covered at the right moment. Ageing skin covering on the fingers does not help but I will not let that stop me. As to the tune: | 4:4 crotchet, minim, two quavers | dotted crotchet, quaver, crotchet, crotchet | (Repeated with varying note values in the first bar) Good to see you posting, again. Polly

' morning all from red dragon land. Sunny - at least up until lunchtime. Early bike ride on the terrace, again, so devoid of any sun, anyway! The fingering on the new fife coming along slowly - a grand total of five six notes so far in order of playing: rising: C, F, G, A flat, C; descending: B flat A flat, G. Higher notes to follow, in order of scale: D flat, E flat, E, F, G, A flat Anyone worked out the tune yet? Accents around here vary according to area, town and village. Not only the accent, but the Welsh language. When Ray started work, his Welsh speaking colleagues would argue the toss on whose Welsh he should speak, even if they only lived a few miles from each other! Bangor Welsh is interlaced with English words and phrases far more so than is Caernarfon Welsh. So, in Bangor, you will not only hear Welsh speakers using English expressions, you also hear English speaking Welsh people including Welsh phrases and idioms, in their speech, such as, "I haven't got the mynadd."* In other words, "I can't be bothered!" / "I haven't got the patience." * mynadd pronounced mun'-add (the dd like the th in bother.) Also, English spoken by Welsh speakers has its own forms. A typical one is the question, "Isn't it?" at the end of a statement. This seems to be a translation from the way Welsh is spoken and adopted in Anglicised areas. Another one is the word cadw (ca'-doo), keep. When, in the library, we English speakers would say, " I will put the books on the shelf / away" or "I will shelve the books," Welsh speakers among us would say (in English), "I will keep the books," the use of "keep' used in a slightly different way to how I use it. When I say, "I will keep the books on the shelf" it has a different meaning to the act of putting them there. It refers to where they will stay. Subtle, but that is how languages are. I will not go into the variables I hear of English spoken around here by the English, not even in the same, self-isolating household... Fitt and Elfie keep going. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

Some years ago, on BBC Radio, there was an account of some regional accents by a researcher. It noted that accents were much influenced by where you live, so, just for an example (that I remember), accents of regions with strong cold winds were governed by speaking with lips almost shut; in flat areas, such as where I grew up, the accent is basically spoken on a monotone; and go to the South Wales Valleys and the voice rises up and down. During my college day, I was late for a concert in London, and had to wait until a break in performance to be let into the Hall. One of the stewards sat and chatted with me and asked where I was from with my Yeovil sounding accent. It was apparent to me, that with my mix of friends from the North West, North East, South West and South East of England, Northern Ireland and Rep. of Ireland, my own specific (Hayes) West of London accent had become modified! After living and working in Wales for less than two years a gentleman came into the bookshop and complimented me on my "lovely Welsh accent" (top left hand corner of Wales variety that would be!). Even now I know my original accent is not what it was because hearing someone speaking with a Hayes accent stands out like a GWR loco among all the others! That may sound odd but, growing up, I never thought we Hayesites had an accent, just everyone else! Now, I find it stands out as an accent in its own right, just like that of a gentleman we met at the Conwy Valley Railway earlier this year. It stood out from the crowd. Polly

And the same from me. _____________ Best wishes Polly

It was purely an advertising gimmick in the days of the 1860s railway, the village station being along the route of the 'Irish Mail' train (1848-2002), London - Crewe - Chester - Holyhead and ferry to Dublin.

That reminds me of the days when we exhibited our shunting layout, Avago. As the name implies, the viewer did the operating - three buttons for Forward, Stop, Reverse and toggle on/off switches to select the sidings. At one of the National Quarry Museum, Llanberis, February Half Term events, in the freezing cold, a young lad of about eight or nine was captivated by it and returned the next day, accompanied by his Dad, just to give me a picture he had drawn of it in felt tip pens of the loco shunting the wagons on the rails. Forget the scenery, just capture the action! Brilliant! Another railway modeller who will go far. We sold the Layout but I still have that boy's picture. Girls were often the better operators, especially at working out a strategy, but more likely than having a go themselves, directed their younger brothers! How often do we underestimate the ability of a child, I wonder? Ah, well, ' morning all from red dragon land before I forget! Sunny, at least until lunch time so bike ride on the terrace planned for this morning. Then a bash at playing some notes on the new fife - brain and fingers have already been told to behave, today! My cleaning rod turns out to be too wide for this one, so I have found an old knitting needle hoping Ray can modify it down in the shed! Hopefully, I will make progress on the headboard, having redesigned the lettering, again! I think next time, if there is one(!), I will try and do it with transfers! Maybe, I should have thought of that before... Fitt and Elfie plodding on. Take care and play safe _________ Best wishes Polly

I grew up surrounded by Welsh neighbours, from north and south, and spoke my first Welsh as a toddler in Blaen Clydach while staying with Godparent's family. Then picked up some more Welsh from Ivor Emmanual on TV's Gwlad y Gan (Land of Song) then a bit more from next door's great niece who was the same age as me. I just carried on, never fluent but it went downhill somewhat when I retired. So, iechyd da i chi i gyd (good health to you all). Spot of trouble with speelchequer to get that right. And what do I remember of my stay in Wales - painting the sheep on the mountains in infant school and the phrase, ych i fi. There was, also, kept in one of the kitchen wall cupboards, a concertina folded paper strip called "A yard of Welsh" with one word on it, namely: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. I suspect Dad brought it back from his stay on Anglesey for wartime army training. Not surprised I ended up living in Wales, really. Hey, the sun has come out. Bike ride aborted earlier when it started to rain. New fife no.2 arrived yesterday. Yep, another one, the main differences being in C rather than D and 8 finger holes instead of 6 holes with the fingering being closer to playing a keyed flute. Something to help me back into playing my flute. I did hesitate before getting it but I came across a price I could not resist - price reduction at the cheaper end and free postage. So, under a tenner and job done. Some would have cost me more than double that. Some photos from a couple of days ago. Broccoli seems to be doing well and the pansy may just about make it if the bugs leave it alone. It has made a comeback before, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Fitt and Elfie a bit sluggish today. Take care and play safe _________ Best wishes Polly

What else? It IS Wales, isn't it mun?

' night all and nos da

' evening all from red dragon land. Mixed weather today. Got bike ride on the terrace in before the rain arrived and also cut down some bamboo for next-door who is growing some sweetpeas. Drizzle arrived as I was removing the leafy stuff off the canes, gradually retreating into the porch doorway. The leafy stuff will be used instead of bark chippings which I ran out of at the beginning of the season. It is free so I am not complaining! Our bamboo is looking a bit worse for wear after the winter. So I am taking advantage of time at home to cut it back and see what happens. Broccoli coming along, although the leaves are attracting a few hungry critters by the looks of it! Toot on the flute going OK. Playing up to an hour at a time, now, as opposed to struggling for 5-10 minutes. Still searching for the perfect tone, though. It will come...maybe... Fitt and Elfie keeping pace - just about. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

' afternoon all from red dragon land. The Welsh heavens opened and have given the garden a good watering. No bike ride on the terrace, today, then. Toot on the flute progressing nicely. The last weekly oiling of the fifes takes place today, then monthly til the end of the year. Music for the fifes is more or less settled according to the way they sound. Easy, really. I had already started playing the tunes from the Radio 4 UK theme on the rosewood fife and I prefer to play them on this, so it was an easy decision to assign a set of early/traditional music to the Renaissance fife, so long as I like the sound! There are several things left over which I keep for the plastic piccolo which is now playing nicely - sometimes, anyway! A bit quieter than the fifes so annoying the neighbours may be a bit more difficult! I do pretend there is an audience out there, even if it is only the birds, to encourage me to play rather than just amble along. There are a few pieces I was already playing (from memory) on an occasional basis, but most are recent choices. So, in the absence of a Desert Islands Discs list here's my Desert Island Fife playlist. Most have connections to something or someone. Rosewood fife playlist The South Wind & Star of County Down, both played in 3/4 time, to a the rhythm that conjures up the gentle roll of our yacht in a fair wind. Tunes adapted from Celtic Guitar by Glenn Weiser, Warner Bros 2000. Tunes from the UK theme, some tunes of which I already knew, played at 5.30am and followed by the Shipping Forecast, was a deliberate choice after Mark Damazer (Controller of Radio 4 at the time) decided to knock it off the air (for a news bulletin), the last regular 5.30am broadcast on Sunday 23 April 2006. At the moment, I play the tunes in pairs, a player's turn consisting of two pieces being the tradition at the Conwy Folk Club, at least at the time we were regulars. This pairing is based on the UK Theme which had one tune played over another. So, O Danny Boy followed by Annie Laurie, etc. We listened to the UK Theme while waiting for the Shipping Forecast on the boat in our sailing days - usually coinciding with our return into the Menai Strait from the Anglesey coast or from the Lleyn Peninsular. All to do with the tide, requiring slack water (at high or low water) at Caernarfon Bar in the south when coming in/going out and at the Swellies between the Britannia and Menai Bridges coming in/going out from the north as on one occasion when going off to the Isle of Man getting up at 4am! Sun all the way out of the Strait through Puffin Sound then fog all the way into Port St Mary. Did not see a thing, only heard a foghorn from (presumably) one of the ferries crossing diagonally behind us, a bit close for comfort from our point of view! The Renaissance fife playlist are: Brian Boru's March, sometimes called Irish March Anon, Summer is icumen in (This year's cuckoos were behind this one!) William Byrd Cradle Song (My main area of study centred around this composer.) Michael Praetorius La Volta Antonio Vivaldi Winter (Largo) from The Four Seasons Turlough O'Carolan Si Bheag, Si Mhor Trad. Welsh lullaby Suo Gân Welsh hymn tune Arlwydd Dyma Fi Polly Mur Mer, the polymer piccolo. Includes: Irish Reel, The cup of tea. I find the tune, taken at a moderate speed, captures the great British chin wag which puts the world to right over a genteel Afternoon Tea with Welsh Cakes and scones or Lunchtime in the Clubhouse at West shore rather than at the breakneck speed of a quick slurp before dashing off somewhere. This may well become my signature tune. Air, Down by the Salley Gardens Turlough O'Carolan Planxty Irwin As to Cerys Matthews, a few years ago, before I retired, a note from "Pontio" was emailed to university staff asking people to nominate people they would like to see at Bangor. Yes, I did, and yes, she came and, yes, I got to see her perform. Yes! Brilliant, as they say round here! Looks like it is tea and crumpets time already. Fitt and Elfie on the march. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

They have the Wars of the Roses in common... Hat Coat

' morning all. First, condolences to NHN and the staff on Fraggle Rock. Another beach weather day so plans to visit the garden with the watering can filled from the water butt. A toot on the flute before lunch - it will be a lot cooler for both of us! Hot sweaty fingers and moisture on the chin where the fife sits does not make for pleasant notes let alone music, it seems! Bike ride on the spot will be in the cool of late afternoon but enjoying the sunshine. And I have promised myself I shall get my LCGB REC Thames Valley Rail Tour headboard made today...Hmmm!....Promises, promises. Fitt and Elfie ready for the days activities. Take care and play safe. _________ Best wishes Polly

Thank you to all who gave some suggestions. Having looked them up, I do believe it may be the broccoli. It was the yellow flowers that did it since nextdoor's plants bolted and produced hundreds of them last year. Quite a show! I have a few coming up so looking forward to seeing how well they do. Not what I was planning in this part of the garden, but since they are there, I might as well leave them! _________ Polly

' afternoon all. We have lovely beach weather here so I decided to put toot on the flute and tiddly headboards aside and get out in the garden. That was all well and good until I stopped weeding. Phew! Talk about hot! So I retreated to the kitchen for a mugadecafcoffee & ERs. Now, I have a question. There is, surrounded by smaller weeds, some of nextdoor's crop of self seeding jungle forming plants! Can anyone identify it for me, please? I did search it but failed to find out! I do not ever recall it growing in the vegetable garden when I was growing up. I did think maybe something like beetroot. Fitt and Elfie burning up... Take care and play safe _________ Best wishes Polly