Jacey Bedford's Journal

The dog has been enjoying the snow. She thinks it's marvellous, but can't figure out why she can't find snowballs that have been thrown for her. Because of not getting grit or salt in the dog's paws BB hasn't gritted the yard, so it's a bit treacherous underfooy, but otherwise the white stuff hasn't been too much of a problem - mostly because we've not really needed to go out in it on a regular basis. However they're promising a further 20 cm tonight combined with high winds and resulting drifts.

My little car (KA) doen't have winter tyres, so I haven't even swept the snow off it. It looks like a little rotund snowmobile. It's the only car in the street that hasn't moved since the snow hit, but BB has winter tyres on his so if we've needed to go anywhere he's volunteered to drive. This afternoon he took me down to Denby Dale to a) pay our taxes at the Post  Office b) call at the local butcher's shop for one of his excellent steak and potato pies, and c) pop into the wool shop for some black merino to knit a new pair of ankle-warmers (hey, my office gets cold in winter because the floor under my carpet is stone flaggs over a vaulted stone cellar). On the way home the wind had started to blow and despite the snow having been down and settled for the best part of a week, the wind was whipping it up from the fields and opportunistically blowing it across the roads at every field gate and opening in the dry stone walls. At one point it looked like the snow was boiling over the top of the walls, whipping up and over like wisps of steam.

Now it's midnight-thirty. It's perishing outside and the snow has started to fall.

However if the weather forecast is to be believed it's going to turn to rain by tomorrow night and then puddle it down for the next couple of days. Oh joy! My Great Granny would have nodded wisely. She always said that it took a fresh fall of snow to take away the old stuff.

We've been grumbling about snow, but it will be floods next as the frozen ground fails to soak up the excess rain. Beware.

So I eventually managed to google a number for DPD in London - 0845 950 5505 if you ever need it - and finally managed to get a department that could help me sort out the mysterious 'sorry-we-missed-you' note through the door.

But it created even more of a mystery.

The young woman (let's call her YW) insisted that the note had been left thriugh my door on Friday. Nope, not Friday, I tell her. The note arrived this morning, around 11, at more or less the same time as the post. YW asked if I might have missed it or if it might have been stuck in the letterbox. No way. I had post on Saturday, for a start, and our letterbox is a straight-through opening in the door.

I asked if she could tell me where the parcel was from? Germany, apparently. OK, so I'm not really expecting packages from Germany but my printing (which I am expecting) usually comes from Holland, so, hey, it's anyone's guess.

We go around in circles for a while and then I say: Look, there's no confusion between 10 Park Head and 10 Park Lane is there? Because we do both (very unfortunately) have the same postcode. There's a pause. This package is for 10 Park Lane. But there's no recipient's name on the system. (Note: a package being addressed to 10 Park Lane does not necessarily mean it's not for me, as a company often believes its own postcode database over an address that I have entered personally - and 10 Park Lane sounds so much more like a real address than 10 Park Head.)

So I sak: Why has the we-missed-you card been put through the letterbox of 10 Park Head this mornng? It wasn't, the YW insists. The drver left it on Friday. I give her credit for stickng to her guns, even if they were pointing the wrong way.

So according to the YW the package will be redilivered between 2 and 3 today. To 10 Park Head or 10 Park Lane? Who knows?

So I call long-suffering Lesley at 10 Park Lane who has already had her gas and electricity supply hijacked by my power supply company and has been the recipient of any number of letters and packages for me over the years.

No, she knows nothing about it. No she hasn't put the we-missed-you card through my door and no she's not expecting any packages from Germany, but yes, she was out last Friday if anyone had tried to deliver to her.

Now, if Lesley didn't do it there's NO WAY that anyone else can have put the w-m-y card though my door other than the delivery company because it's a generic unaddressed card. Only someone in possession of the paperwork could have put it through my door (or Lesley's). And that someone, despite what the office in London says, did so this morning.

So... it's 2.15. Lesley has kindly agreed not to go out to the shops until after 3 to give the mystery parcel the opportunity of being delivered to 10 Park Lane. I am, of course, exactly, as usual, sitting in the office which is by the front door, with a bloody big doorbell relay direct to the room.

DPD has 45 minutes left to get it right.

What are the odds?

To DPD: Kudos to your delivery driver. He managed to sneak up to my front door and put through a 'sorry we missed you' card while I was sitting withn ten feet of said door. He did not ring the doorbell and if he knocked did so extremely quietly. Do you pay him overtime for having to come out again tomorrow?

Also kudos to your automated telephone system and to your website which manages not to let me telephone a real person to complain to.

DPD, this is a rubbish service. I don't even know what you were trying to deliver, or from where, but when my package eventualy arrives (if it ever does) I will contact the sender and advise them to use a different delivery company.

I saw crocuses (white and purple) growing on the grass verge down the road into Huddersfield thids afternoon (the ones up here are still in bud, but on their way). They made me smile. Spring is coming!

The bad news... the reason for the trip into Huddersfield was to take BB to A&E. He managed to trap the end of his index finger in the car door this morning. Self-inflicted, he admits, but... Big Ouchie. It's pretty well mushed up his finger-end and nail and the doc had to remove a flap of his finger tip. That's gotta hurt.

I was up writing until around 4.00 a.m., but when I did try and go to bed I just lay there for (seemed like hours), listening to the wind howling off the moor. During that time I counted seven separate clunks of things being blown about outside that shouldn't ought to be.

BB retrieved the garden furniture this morning. Nothing broken that we can see but sometimes you don't find out the worst until the water starts seeping through a bedroom ceiling or oozing out of the wall below the valley gutter. We only just finished decorating the smallest bedroom after having the ceiling replastered due to a persistent water encroachment.

Had an odd couple of days for reasons I'll not bore you with, but I have managed to chop quite a few more words out of 'Between Wind and Water'. I'm now down to 109,000. Yay! Smaller is better unless I chuck out the baby with the bathwater. Thanks to brownnicky for a read-through and a kick up the focus,

In other news, son J managed to survive Hurricane Irene as it passed over his head in Princeton with only a power cut to show for it. In sympathy we were also without power for eleven hours on Sunday due to an underground fault. Workmen spent hours down a succession of holes in the road, shaking their heads and sucking air through their teeth in best garage mechanic style. At one time I was despairing for the freezers, but 11 hours is just about do-able if you don't open the damn things up while the power's off.

No film of the week this week as H is rehearsing today. No big deal. We've seen everything we really wanted to watch until the next batch of releases, and it would have had to be Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Unfortunately I've seen the trailer so many times in the last few weeks that I feel as though I've seen the movie already. Happy to give it a miss unless nothing else comes along.

I was woken up the other morning by a strange unrhythmical tapping. When I went to the bedroom window I spotted a small, rotund bluetit outside on the stone sill, pecking away at (I presume) insects on the mastic round the edge of the UPVC - or maybe on the UPVC itself.

And last week a strange fluttering sound in the living room proved to be a young starling that had fallen down the chimney and was flapping round in the ashes under the grate, trapped by the ash pan. It kept pushing its beak through the crack. So I opened the French windows, closed the internal door and pulled out the ash pan. The bird fluttered on to the inside of the fireguard and then spotted the opening and flew away - apparently none the worse for its adventure.

The old sash windows (painted solid) hadn't been opened for years when we moved into thew house in 1980. Catching a starling that's trying to flap its way through a window pane is a neat trick. Luckily they get so focused on what's on the other side of the glass that they completely fail to see the hulking great human creeping up behind them. You can usually get your hands round the body - or if desperate, can lower a lighweight teatowel over it, walk it through the house and let it out of the back door.

I have baked cake. Three cakes to be precise... for Christmas. One traditional ten inch square Christmas cake to a recipe that the mother of a woman I once worked with (in 1975) cut out of a woman's magazine in the early 1950s. The original recipe being for Prince Charles' christening cake. Of course, like cooks do, we've all messed about with it a bit. No candied peel shall pass the door to my kitchen, for instance, so that part of the recipe was deleted immediately.

The other two are Guinness cakes, which require the boiling up of dried fruits in a mixture of melted butter, brown sugar, a full can of Guinness and mixed spices. (Smells gorgeous and would make a fantastic ice-cream topping in its own right.) Once this is all boiled up, simmered and left to cool you just wallop in eggs and self raising flour and chuck it in the oven.

Simple.

The Guinness cakes are gifts. The standard Christmas cake will be marzipanned and iced for family and visitors.

The Christmas season has begun!

It's thawing here today, but we still have about a foot of snow and our side-road is still white. I believe we're expecting more snow tomorrow. With BB and I both working from home it's not as if we have to be anywhere anytime soon, so it's not been much of an inconvenience yet. I had to cancel a dental appointment on Thursday, but what's inconvenient about that?

Cracked completely. 46 inch flat telly coming next week.

Yeah, I couldn't resist it. At long last I've bought an iPod Touch (4th gen, 32g). I managed to get it on to the house wifi network (score one point for me!) but I'm still fathoming out how to work it to get the best advantage. It's the first ipod I've ever owned, so I'm really only just beginning to grasp first principles. Yes I have managed to use it to listen to a series of podcasts from the (free) university lectures available, and I have managed to sync it to my google calendar, but there's lots more I can do with it, I'm sure.

My big bugbear is that everything seems to hinge on being able to operate the itunes software. Since I'll mostly be using the touch for audio books and radio plays (transferred from my own computer files for starters) It's annoying to keep finding myself accidentally connected to the itunes shop.

For some reason I don't seem to be able to edit titles. I keep getting pushed towards getting the title and track info from the web, but a lot of the music I listen to is folk music from small-time record labels. It's not ON the web to download. Why can't I just edit the details in itunes once I've got the mp3s sitting there? I found a screen that looks like I should be able to do that but for some reason all the boxes I need to edit are greyed out. Frustrating.

I'm looking forward to getting the video recording up and running. One of the reasons for buying the Touch was that I'd been contemplating a small HD video recorder and this feature is incorporated into the Touch. That's one of the reasons I went for the 32gig memory instead of the 8gig.

So, come on, all you iPhone and iPod owners, give me some general hints and tips please.

Much of the pressing backlog of dayjob work is out of the way.

Now all I need to catch up with is the ongoing work I missed out on while playing catchup. [Sigh] Does anyone have a cloning kit? I could do with being two people... at least between now and Christmas.The trouble with being in business for yourself is that you're automatically promoted to the level of your own incompetence and there's no boss to blame when it gets sticky.

On the upside, I just had two pieces of nice news:
1) A phone call from whittering  to say she can come up for Christmas after all, which is great.
2) Several emails from al_parrish (ex of Canadian supergroupTanglefoot) to fix up a time for him to do a solo tour in the UK early 2012.

Today was a day of paperwork: contracts, mail, folders and files. The backlog of work hardly seems to be going down... or rather it is going down but more is arriving on my desk daily.

Yesterday I got to go to The Square Chapel Arts Centre in Halifax with The Churchfitters - a fine band from Brittany who are on my agency books. Superb concert. Four very well matched musicians. Rosie with a delicious bottom end (I'm talking voice, here) and multiple instruments including sax, whistle, dulcimer, uke and percussion, Topher holding it all together with outstanding guitars, Chris's soaring fiddle and ethereal bowed saw and Boris on home made basses, percussion and occasional mime. And Boris's basses have to be seen to be believed. A standup bass that started out life as a cauldren and a dustbin lid and a bass banjo thet used to be a saucepan... a kind of panjo. A brilliant all-round show. Dynamic, lively and a lot of fun.

Still here. Still playing catchup. Desk still looks like an explosion in a paper factory, though there may, in fact, be slightly less paper today than there was yesterday.

I feel like the poster child for: 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life!'

Sunday birthday over and done with (thanks for all the good wishes). Monday shopping trip (Ikea) with S as a birthday extension day and a unwind from everything. But now comes the day when I have to face the pile of stuff on my desk that has accumulated while I've been on the Artisan tour and at Milford. Today is damage limitation day, i.e. doing stuff that is about to explode in my face if I don't see to it.

Aaaargh!

Went to pull some rhubarb from the garden this afternoon - to make some jam. Planes flying overhead - the first I've noticed. Manchester Airport must be operational again. They've apparently been open for business since Tuesday, but advice to passengers still says be prepared for delays and cancellations.

green_knight has been asking about the naming of a community for de-clutterers.

Some years ago BB and I  thought we should starts a society called Womblers Anonymous, for all those people who collect things that-might-come-in-useful-one-day. Every week you have to go to the meeting and take something to throw away. The trouble is that with a meeting full of fellow Womblers someone else would be bound to pounce on it and say: I'll take that if you don't want it!'

Everyone would end up going home with a different piece of junk that somene else had thrown away.

Today I've thrown out six old pillows, two old duvets and two pads for cushions. Whoo-hoo! Yes! Result!

I can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I managed an entry on LJ. Anyhow, folks, I'm still here, behind my keyboard, watching the snow again.

Tried to go and see Percy Thingy, Lightning Thief with H on Wednesday, but we hadn't accounted for a) a flat battery on her car and b) half term, so though we made it to the cinema, we didn't make it in time, so we went shopping instead. Only food shopping, nothing exciting.

And that was the highlight of my week... except... I had my dental appointment cancelled last Friday because my new-new-new dentist (who assured me, on the only time I've been to see her, that she was 'here to stay') has now left the practice. I'm booked in with the fourth new dentist at the same practice within a year. Sheesh! I had the same dentist for almost thirty years, and now he's retired they can't keep one for thirty days. What's wrong with this picture?

I just trailed down to the nearest supermarket, Morrisons on the southern edge of Huddersfield. At the deli counter I asked the cheery assistant to cut me a wedge of chicken, ham and pork pie from the ten inch 'stand pie'. She heaved it up and attacked it with gusto, but despite the enormous knife deemed to have difficulty in cutting through it. On managing to separate the segment successfully, she glared at the blade and said, "I could ride bare-arsed all the way to York on that!"

I've got to use that in a book. In fact I think the character might end up in a book!

This week's been a riot of being dragged in various different directions

* Meeting about 5 x 400 ft windmills that some idiot wants to erect within half a km of the village

* Chasing up possible quarrying plans that have been stealthily included in the council's planning framework for which consultations ended before anybody knew about it. (In a cabinet marked 'Beware of the Leopard' in the planning ofice, I suspect.)

* Starting alterations to the magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel as requested by new agent-lady. (No elves; some backstory; more sex; change of main character from a pirate to a privateer etc.)

* Meeting to plan the Mighty Zulu Nation's upcoming showcase at the festival organiser's conference

* Hair appointment.

* Three trips to the gym. One to the cinema (Don't go see The Men Who Stair at Goats. All the best bits are in the trailer.)

* Trip to an amzing little textile museum in Skelmanthorpe - a cottage owned and run by one very elderly but knowledgeable man who is a resource all by himself. The cottage is as-was

* Supplying sympathy to BB who has something suspiciously pig-fluey but might just be a lousy cold and cough (which he almost never gets).

So I missed armistice day completely. I was (unexpectedly) in the hairdressers at 11.00 on 11/11 having expected to be out before then.

So here are mine:
Grandpa: Tommy Bennett, Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Served 1914-1917. Invalided out at Passchendale


Leeman Poulter: Mum's first fiancee, navigator. Shot down over Germany 1942 approx. MIA He might have been my dad...except i wouldn't be me, would I... Weird thought.


Mum: Joan Lockyer, NAAFI (How come the landgirls all got medals recently and the Naafi conscripts didn't?)


Dad: Tony Lockyer 9th Queens Royal Lancers (tank regiment) Drove a tank across the Western Desert (El Alamein) and was a 'D-Day dodger' fighting in Italy. Met Mum in 1948


Lest we forget.

Swamped with work - and the more swamped I get the less work I want to do. You know how it goes. Got some packages posted off today, though, which is A Good Thing. My office already looks better. And despite all the day-job work, I had an idea for a short story and made a decent start on it.

Like heleninwales , I was without connectivity all day (thank you, Demon Internet) so it was a good job I'd arranged to go to the cinema with H this afternoon. We went to see Surrogates - about which I knew nothing in advance. Bruce Willis solving crime in a world where everyone stays indoors and interacts with the world and each other via their robot selves and a virtual-reality type link. A pleasant diversion but not an earth-shattering movie.

Nice to see H back from her trip to Canada and the USA. We're starting Artisan rehearsals for the reunion tour Monday after next.

Went to York yesterday with Canadian song-maestro James Keelaghan and his trio (David Woodhead, Zav RT plus Nancy - David's wife). Spent the afternoon mooching about my favourite city - including the required walk up The Shambles and down Stonegate and via Barley Hall. Then tea in Batty's cafe with Nancy, a trip round the outdoor food festival where I bought cheeses - a Norwegian Gjetost and Old Amsterdam, though I was really looking for White Nancy which they didn't have.

Then - an hour in Borders checking out their SF/F section.

Yes, of course I succumbed. Though I could have spent a fortune I was quite strict with myself so I bought only: The first of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books, Storm Front, and - a complete impulse buy - Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings. This is the third in a trilogy and they didn't have the first two, but it looked sufficiently interesting to give it a try. So now I'm torn: do I read them out of order and risk spoilers, but make sure I really do like it before buying the first two parts, or trust that I will enjoy all three and splash out on The Blade Itself and Before they are Hanged? Anyone out there read them?

Then - on to the gig at the Black Swan, a longstanding folk club in one of York's oldest pubs (the building was there in the early 1400s but it's only been a pub from the mid 1700s). This was my only chance on this tour to see the James Keelaghan Trio in action. Brilliant night, fantastic music. I wore a big silly grin from start to finish (in addition to my clothes before you lot get all smart-arse).
:-)

I can highly recommend his new album, House of Cards. He's a powerful songwriter and a consummate performer with a rich baritone voice and an assured presence. There are tracks to listen to on his website and a run down of the rerst of the dates on his current UK tour.

Getting my head into the right space after Number One Daughter's wedding seems to have taken me longer than I expected. It was like trying to come round after jet-lag. I seem to be back in the rhythm now, though. What have I done since the wedding...

Cleared up at the village hall and drove home (Sunday)

Saw off Number One Son to the USA to start his five year PhD at Princeton. (Monday, early.) And he even remembered to call me to tell me he was safely arrived and settling in!

Slept for two days - off and on - and read a couple of books, wrote a couple of reviews for my book log and slept some more.

Went to the Village Hall committee meeting. (Tuesday.)

Did a bit more family history research after four birth/marriage certificates arrived in the post while we were away at thew wedding. (Wednesday and Sunday.)

Started writing a short story. (Wednesday.)

Took Mum to the local market. (Thursday.)

Helped out at the Village Hall tea dance. (Friday.) Yeah, it may sound a little weird, but now we have our lovely new grant-funded village hall we are experimenting with all sorts of community functions. We only got a dozen people (average age 70+) but they had a whale of a time and I remembered how to dance a Valeta.

Helped out at the village BBQ (Saturday) serving burgers, hot dogs, salads and cakes.

Watched Season One of Moonlight (it was OK but I wasn't enormously impressed) over the weekend.

Harvested runner beans from the garden (Sunday.)

Watched Season One of Doll House (Saturday and Sunday). More in a separate post.

OK, so looking at all that, maybe it wasn't enmtirely a wasted week... And today I'm getting my head around the day job again. Have done two Certificates of sponsorship (think electronic work permits) for two incoming American performers. Just gearing up to do a big mailshot.

Best Beloved's 60th Birthday party on Saturday - catering by me involving cake baking (tick), cupcake making (tick), trifle making (half-tick), shopping for buffet ingredients, meats, cheeses, quiches etc. (tomorrow morning)

Trip to Wakefield on Wednesday to buy fabric for wedding outfits for Number One Daughter's wedding (for me and mum). (tick). Actual sewing - timescale 2 weeks. Sewing by me.

Hair permed (not a DIY job) (tick).

Wedding cakes (3) made and sent to be iced. One job done.(tick).

House tidying. (Err... sometime.)

Oh and - yes - the day job.