Posts

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Finally, we got a Tesla

Many years ago I pre-ordered a Tesla Model 3 when they were first announced. I didn’t go through with the purchase in the end and now that I finally have one I massively regret that decision. Best car I’ve ever had.

So this post is serving three purposes really.

Purpose 1 : Yes, we finally have a model 3. Long Range AWD

Purpose 2 : You can see the oil patch left behind by the Porsche that I was going to keep but ended up trading it in to get rid of the oil leak problem.

Purpose 3 : You can see what my “driveway” was like yesterday. Today it looks like this…

Hopefully tomorrow it will look a lot better and next week it should be done. Due to a possible “breakdown in communications” between me and the builders they dug up a bit too much of my garden which I’m a little sad about. It’s my fault, I should have got off my arse, bought a tin of that spray paint to mark out the ground and drawn a line exactly where I wanted it. It’ll be fine. I’ll work something out.

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Fire!

Anybody that knows me even slightly will know that I like a good fire. Nearly burned my parents’ house down when I was about 6 but that’s a whole different story. You may also remember I accidentally burned down my woodstore too, but that was in a previous post

Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong. I was out with Mr Simkiss a while ago and he mentioned that he’d been having a near constant fire in a 55 gallon drum. I had a 55 gallon drum sitting about doing nothing so I put some air holes in the bottom, filled it with wood and a little petrol and off we went.

So now I can reseed that bit of ground next to my oil drum and I only have to worry about a small bit of ground getting wrecked when I have a fire. Genius. Should have done it years ago…I’d still have a wood store.

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Jet washing

We had new paving laid at the back and it seemed like quite a good idea at the time to have quite a light Indian stone. Turns out it properly shows up dirty dog footprints, dirty boot marks, everything really. We put some “Wet and Forget” on it last year and it took away all the green algae that grows on there but after a cold wet winter it definitely needed a jet wash, which we did the other day, and another dose of “Wet and Forget” that I’ll get around to soon.

Don’t pay too much attention to the black stuff, that’s just crap that’s been washed down by the jet washer…but just look at the colour difference between the washed stone and the unwashed!
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Usual April 1st Post

Three years since I stopped working [ mainly due to the Conservative governments ridiculous introduction of IR35 ] at Sky and this time I definitely can’t say I’m still retired. I’ve been doing some bits and pieces for Jason Coope which has been on the whole quite good fun. Ignition is a great tool, Docker and Traefik are excellent fun and Liquibase is quite a good bit of code but does have a few quirks that have been giving me sleepless nights.

Anyway, in keeping with April 1st being the day that I kinda retired I’ll continue making something not particularly healthy for breakfast.

A simple fried egg on white toast with ketchup.
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Merseyrail robbing bastards

Paul, Jason and I decided to go for a few drinks in Liverpool. We decided to catch the train – turns out we could have gone in a limo for less money.

The problems began at Ormskirk train station where there was an absolutely massive queue for the ticket office and the train was just sitting on the platform waiting to go. We decided to hop on the train and buy a ticket online. Turns out you can’t do this on Merseyrail. You can do it on pretty much every other train operator in the country but Merseyrail are a bunch of robbing bastards who would rather take the income from fining their customers rather than fixing their systems to accept e-tickets.

We all received a fine of £107.90 which is reduced to £57.90 if paid within 21 days. So it cost £173.70 for the three of us to do a 30 minute journey. But at least we got some nice receipts and a blog post!

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Commemorative Plaque

Whilst I was laying the bricks for my workshop in a spectacularly bad manner, Oliver came along to “give me a hand”. He laid one brick. One! It was this one.

He didn’t lay it badly really. Quite proud of him

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Zelda

Had my first real life Zelda BoTW or ToTK if you prefer, moment. In an otherwise barren and boggy wood I found a single flower. Kinda made me wanna grab it and see what happened next, but I didn’t, because I’m not yet quite that bonkers.

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SoLo

One of our local Michelin starred restaurants does a rather fabulous lunch taster menu with wine pairing. It’s a trifle expensive, especially when you start with cocktails, finish with cocktails add the cheese course and two rounds of plum sake to go with the cheese…but it’s worth it. Probably wouldn’t do it every weekend though

The fallow deer course
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Water problems

The front of our house where we park the cars has always been prone to a little dampness since it’s the lowest point of our little enclave of houses. This Winter has been spectacularly bad since it feels like it’s rained non stop. This has been our reality for a few weeks.

However, in the past few days the builders that are planning to build on the “swamp” that is behind the far trees in the above photo have found a blocked land drain. They unblocked the land drain and hooked it into their drainage system and for the first time in possibly two years we’re all seeing the water levels fall in the “swamp”. The ducks are moving out and my car parking spot has now dried up. My back garden no longer squelches underfoot and all seems good. Admittedly we’ve had a few days of dry-ish weather but I’m still quietly optimistic that removing several hundred thousands of litres from the field next to us will solve our problems. Fingers crossed.

As an aside – rumour has it that my elderly neighbour blocked the land drains deliberately a few years ago for some unknown reason. The same guy that promised he wouldn’t sell the land to the builders until after his death. He’s still alive but the builders moved in a year ago so hey-ho.

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Scroll Saw

When we did the extension the builder installed some Oak skirting boards. He did the joins using a butt joint. I moaned about it here [ https://junglefreedomfighters.com/?p=2017 ] in the past.

Well I’ve just been bought a scroll saw [ thanks Mum ] to have another crack at all this. The scroll saw is essentially a powered version of the coping saw I mention in the post above.

Turns out I’m still a bit rubbish at it.

Shiny!

The skirting board joint you see above is my first attempt. I’ll persevere with my scroll saw with a bit more practice and then hopefully I’ll finally have the skirting boards I’ve dreamt of.

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Holly Dog

Jac and Mark and the kids all went out to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays…yeah I should really know which one but I’m rubbish at things like that and I was totally distracted by us getting Holly for the day.

We absolutely loved having her. Yeah, there were a few puddles. Yeah, she did nearly break the patio doors by running head first into them. Yeah, she did have a bit of a chew on my hat. But it was brilliant to have such an excited bundle of energy in the house. Violet enjoyed it for the first hour or two but then she wanted a sleep…and Holly didn’t.

As a side note I also popped around to Jac and Mark’s yesterday and Holly came running and jumping at me and was so excited that a bit of wee came out onto my foot. Her wee, not mine.

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Baking like Nana Molly

When I was young and at Primary School my Mum was a Schoolteacher and so couldn’t pick me up. Fortunately Nana Molly lived a few hundred metres away from my school and so after I finished school I’d walk over to Nanas and she’d make me my “tea”. Dinner was often “Lobbies”. Meat, potatoes, onions and other veg in a gravy. Some call it potato hash, some call it scouse. We called it lobbies. Anyway, quite often Nana Molly would also make jam tarts. They were amazing. Highlight of my day even though it was just shortcrust pastry with some jam in it.

I recently had some pre-rolled shortcrust pastry that was past the use by date so I had to do something quick. So I picked up some sausage meat from the local butcher and made some posh sausage rolls. I had some left over pastry and we had some jam in the fridge that had been there a while and this is the end result.

The third from the right was made without using a pastry cutter. Dunno what I was thinking
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More Power!

My friendly neighbourhood electrician finally found some time for me and came and hooked my workshop up to power. I specified my usual ridiculous number of plug sockets, four strip lights and two outdoor sockets. The electrician quizzed me about what I intended to use the outdoor sockets and I had to admit I had no idea. I’m sure they’ll come in useful for something though.

We left the armoured cable trailing over the garden because neither of us were up for digging. The sun came out the next day and Oli fancied earning a bit of cash so out he went and buried the cable for me. He actually did a pretty good job of it too.

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Never gets old

Will we as a race [ or possibly that should be as a gender ] ever get tired of drawing penis’ on things? It’s a pastime as old as the hills. I reckon somewhere in Africa there’s a cave with a huge penis drawn in dinosaur blood or something.

Anyway, I bring you the latest act of petty vandalism from my little boy.

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Charlie’s new band

About half of the Kelly family made a trip into Manchester to see Charlie’s new band [ Cromwell Range ] perform at the Lion’s Den in Manchester.

Playing the drums these days – is there anything the boy can’t do?

Beers were drunk. Laughs were had. Eardrums were destroyed.

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Ooni Pizza Maker

As you can tell from this blog I’ve been a bit of a layabout for nearly three years now. I’ve got stuff done – just not any paid employment. Well all that changed recently when I started doing a bit of work for Jason Coope to help him out with a few bits and pieces. I got paid. Paid some actual money. So the first thing I did was buy an Ooni Pizza Oven. My friend Aggy raves about his pizza oven and Amelia and I recently had a shockingly horrifically bad pizza takeaway. So I thought I’d make my own. We already have the Kitchen-Aid food mixer that can kneed the dough for me. We have the funky GBBO Neff slide and hide oven that does a 40deg dough prove. So all that we were missing was the thing to cook the pizza in

Gas powered thing of beauty

So after watching a few YouTube videos and reading a few blogs we were off making our own tomato and garlic topping.

Then we fired up the oven with annoyingly a new bottle of gas because the gas we have for the barbecue has a different connector.

Then about 60 seconds later we had our first totally home made pizza. Better than that piece of shit we bought from Sahara’s in Ormskirk [ ooops, I accidentally named them ].

Yeah, we’re one of them families that likes a bit of pineapple on their pizza!

I’m currently tracking how many pizzas we make and working out how much it’s costing us per pizza. But I can already state quite definitely that the quality is better than any take away pizza we’ve had for a long time. My dough making skills aren’t quite there yet but I’ll keep watching videos to try and improve.

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Can I Crimp-it

Apparently yes I can. My darling daughter bought me a Crimp-it tool for making food related stuff. I initially meant to use it to improve my pastie making crimping finish – but I think it’s a bit big for pasties. I need a Crimp-it mini!

Anyway, the day came that I had a leftover Sunday roast and some wraps…so what is a man supposed to do?

Mushy peas, ham, stuffing, chicken and carrots…in a wrap

Pop it in the Crimp-it tool, microwave it for a bit until the edges of the wrap seal and then remove it from the Crimp-it tool and carry on cooking in the microwave.

It was well lush

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Magic Monday OK Chicken

The more observant amongst you will notice we don’t have a Magic Monday December post. That’s because I forgot to take a picture. In order to relieve everyone’s stress levels though I can report we had Crispy Chilli Chicken. Which was ace.

The OK chicken that we had this month was…alright….edible…not bad….I’d go with OK. So we’ll not be getting that again.

The league table currently stands at:

  1. Peking Chicken
  2. Crispy Chilli Chicken
  3. OK Chicken