timu_at_home

So now Waverley Borough Council only collect real rubbish once every two weeks our car port fills up with bags of recycling material - there are bags of cardboard ( they don’t take that), boxes of tin cans, bags of plastic bottles, and boxes of bottles - all waiting to either be collected or taken to the local tip. Is that really more efficient, every household in farnham queueing in their car to drop the rubbish off that used to be collected by one big efficient deisel engined lorry?

All vegetable matter has gone into a couple of compost bins far away at the top of the garden ( to avoid the fruit fly swarms that erupt when you open them) . Now we have an Original Wormery at quite a discount via Waverley Borough council. Its like a wheelie bin but with a mesh divider about 6 inches up and a tap at the bottom.

You put the worms in some compost on the divider and then tip in all you organic waste, every week or so you open the tap to let out some 10X concentrated plant food and once a year you tip out the compost (keeping the tiger worms).

Ours seems a bit of a slow starter maybe its the cooler weather - lots of drowned worms but some are quite active in the compost. More reports as it matures or dies.

Several people have asked me about the dogs, especially given the website name.. samoyed.org.uk.

They are both well rested after an idle summer keeping cool, although our summer holiday in Shielfoot up near Fort William in Scotland was cold and wet. They’ve put a few pounds on but the dropping temperatures have allowed us to get the kickbike out a few times recently and they should start to get fitter, mind you last winter was so warm we only got out about a dozen times. Finn has kennel cough so is not going anywhere till he finishes his antibiotics, he is making the most alarmingly loud coughing sound as though he has something stuck in his thoat.

Its coming up to Bonfire night so you never know what time people will let fireworks off and cause a barking frenzy - last night there we some let off at nearly 3:00am - idiots…

“Penguins stopped play” by Harry Thompson isdn 978-0-7195-6346-1

Very funny insight into village cricket, very moving at the end.

Every night I cycle home past Church Crookham towards Beacon Hill and Farnham, because I am feeble I don’t go up Beacon Hill but turn right into Tadpole Lane and round the lanes through Ewshot to rejoin the main road. The right turn into Tadpole Lane is I think the most dangerous bit of road in all Surrey. The cars come up behind you at high speed and will often try and overtake as you turn right.

On Friday night as I waited in the road to turn right behind the oncoming card I heard that dreaded sound of a skidding car. I don’t wait right on the white line as some drivers think it fun to pass without slowing down… In this case I was right in the middle of the lane, three flashing back lights, lots of reflective patches and a reflective band on my indicating arm, clearly I was invisible or getting home was more important than driving safely.

Rather than get squashed I dived through the oncoming traffic into Tadpole Lane - not too soon as the car took to the verge at the last second to avoid killing me. I didn’t get the number plate details and the video camera on my handle bars would not have caught it either maybe I should point it backwards!

That junction needs to be a 20 mph zone.

Technorati Profile

Whilst I’m still employed as a Principal Engineer in Service at Sun Microsystems I’ve decided to keep my blog there for technical things and use this for all the other personal things like Samoyed dogs, cycling and drivers.

technical: http://blogs.sun.com/timatworkhomeandinbetween

personal: http://samoyed.org.uk/blog