Last day

Last day of May, and the last day of our holiday sadly. We spent another few hours in the garden clearing the border, which is now looking pretty darn good and makes the garden appear much wider. There's a couple of metres of clearance still to do - probably another day's work - at which point the whole of the left-hand side will be done.

Since this represents our entire plan for the garden this year I think it's safe to say we're ahead of schedule and we might start thinking about clearing the bottom border, building a raised bed, or even planting some rhododendrons (all in the plan for Year 2), and the discovery that New Plumber knows someone who can demolish cement asbestos garages, introduced the possibility of bringing that item forward from Year 3!

Still not quite Capability Brown standard but for two non-gardeners we've surprised ourselves with how much fun it's been.

With the hottest part of the day approaching we decamped to our nice cool lounge to watch the last five episodes of The Wire (Season 2). Even better than the first, and it's now easy to see why this is such a cult programme. Season 3 starts on BBC Two on June 15 and we can't wait.

Shower shenanigans part 2

New Plumber returned yesterday to prepare to fit our new shower tray, which was allegedly going to be shipped directly here. Sure enough it turned up mid-morning, and once he'd levelled the floor beneath and added some support in the shape of a slab of marine ply, we took a tentative stroll across the tray and marvelled at its stability and lack of flex.

Since the trap on the new tray is in the front right corner rather than the rear, some rejigging of drains was required (revealing another dubious practice of Previous Plumber: the use of push-fit joints in areas that would become inaccessible. New Plumber - very sensibly in my opinion - prefers to use bonded/sealed drain fittings in underfloor voids, thus assuring that slight movements will not cause joints to fail) and then it was time to cut the new tiles and fit everything together.

After several hours running up and down stairs (he cut the tiles in the front garden to prevent clouds of ceramic dust flying all over the house) and without a single wasted tile, the job was done. Sadly he ran out time to grout up, which can't be done until the tile cement has gone off, but he returned today to finish that part of the job. This introduced a further delay - silicone sealer can't be applied to wet grout - so we'll have to wait until Monday for that, and then a further 24-hours for the sealer to go off before we can shower.

So it was baths all round again today. Not ideal in this hot weather but at least the end of this tedious saga is in sight. Ironically, but predictably, the revamped shower looks almost indistinguishable from the leaky version, which is irritating in its own way. When you've forked out around a grand it would be nice to have something to show for it beyond the absence of a wet ceiling. I took a small crumb of comfort from the fact that, when we were trying to trace the details of the original fittings, we discovered that Previous Plumber no longer deals with Original Supplier, so we can only hope the incompetent fools have gone out of business.

Book Review: The Full Montezuma

This is less of a book review and more of a warning. I can't really review it properly as I didn't get past the fifth chapter, so I'll just say: steer clear.

Peter Moore is a humorous travel writer in the mould of Bill Bryson. Whether his other books match Bryson's I'll never know, because on the evidence of this one I don't even want to bother trying. In fact I hesitated to put the two names in the same sentence. In this book Moore sets off to travel across Mexico with his current girlfriend, whom he's only known for six weeks and to whom he constantly refers as the "girl next door" or, more often, simply "the GND."

I don't want to waste too much of my time or yours on this dreck so briefly: it's sloppily written, cliché-ridden, doesn't tell you much about the places they visit, displays an almost total lack of editing and is completely unfunny.

Moore's website makes occasional reference to his critics, assuming them to be frustrated authors. Well I'm happy to bolster his preconceptions in that one regard. Because this is yet another book that makes you think "Christ, I can write WAY better than this," and yet there his books sit, on the bookstore shelves, having managed somehow to be published, while mine continues to bounce back from agencies as if it's on elastic.

Scan fail

When discussing the merits of Aunt Bessie's cooking instructions a few days ago, I did intend giving you the pleasure of a pictorial representation of said pie, which looks every bit as delicious on the box as it did in real life. Sadly a quick reccie of the AB website turned up only a tiny thumbnail, so reluctantly I decided there was nothing for it but to scan the box.

We are the proud owners of a wireless Lexmark printer. The X4580.

A sexy looking beast, I think you'll agree, and it comes with an impressive list of features. Printer, fax, copier and scanner. I don't *quite* believe its stated speed of 18ppm full colour, but to be fair that claim is caveated by the all-important words "up to." Personally I've never known it print a page with any appreciable amount of colour in anything less than 20 seconds, but for our purposes that's fine, and its great benefit is, naturally, that it can sit over there atop the filing cabinet without any physical LAN connection. With just its little wireless indicator glowing a happy green.

True, it does tend to drop the odd packet while printing, at which point both printer and driver are prone to getting totally and utterly confused, requiring a complete reboot of either the printer, or the PC, or occasionally both. But this is a relatively rare occurrence and is nowhere near as annoying as its rather idiosyncratic behaviour when scanning. Which is the point of this tale. I know, I know, you were beginning to wonder whether I'd ever get there.

So there I was with my empty cherry pie box sitting on the glass, and the Lexmark printer - sorry, Multifunction Device - set to 'Scan'. At this point the device offers a list of PCs that it knows about and invites you to select the one you'd like to scan to. So far, so sensible. But then it goes into "Downloading Application List" mode. Yes, it interrogates the chosen PC to find out what apps are installed, so that it can scan your object and launch the right app. You can scan to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Paintshop Pro, PDF, JPEG, or basically anything you have installed that can cope with an image file.

But, see, my problem is, it downloads this application list EVERY TIME.

Now I don't know about you, but once I've got my PC set up it very rarely changes in terms of installed apps. When I can do my documents, websites, email and so on, I'm not one for constantly downloading new apps. But this damned thing will interrogate my PC for each individual scan. It can't even remember the application list DURING a scanning session. But the worst thing of all - and the point of this post (and the reason for the lack of a picture on my cherry pie cooking instructions post) - is that on around 50% of its attempts, it will FAIL to download the list. And guess what? Failure then requires a complete reboot of either the printer, or the PC, or occasionally both.

So in the end, I couldn't be arsed.

Hey, Lexmark? Are you listening? Memory is cheap, in case you hadn't noticed. Download the frigging list ONCE and SAVE it. And then offer an option to refresh the list as and when necessary. Then maybe I'll stand a better chance of decorating my blog, and keep my blood pressure down at the same time.

Biting the bullet

After more than two years of problems with our shower, and the recent failure of the structural underpinning idea, today we bit the bitter bullet and welcomed a new plumber into the house to rip out the shower tray and refit it properly.

It's quite alarming how quickly a relatively normal looking bathroom can be reduced to a building site. Within a couple of hours, the shower screen was off, the tiles had been removed from around the tray and the tray was out. We'd already sourced another box of 9 tiles from the original supplier - pretty lucky two years on! - which when added to the 5 we had left over, we calculated would be enough.

With the tray out, New Plumber was left scratching his head. Unlike every tray he'd ever seen, where they're designed to be fitted onto a level surface and the fall to the drain is moulded into the tray, THIS one required a fall to be created in the fitting surface (which explained in part why the original fitters had taken chunks out of the joists - but not why they had not given the tray enough support to prevent it from flexing).

We debated whether the tray had been supplied with a fitting kit that would have made the job easier, but at a distance of two years it was long gone, if it ever existed. There was only one sensible solution: a new tray. Which introduced its own problem: how to marry the new trap with the existing pipework for the drain, minimising the amount of disturbance to the network of hot, cold, and central heating pipework already criss-crossing the space below.

With at least a day's delay while the new tray was ordered, shipped and delivered, we resigned ourselves to being showerless until Saturday at the earliest.

The sense you were born with

We had cherry pie for dessert yesterday, and very nice it was too. Morello cherry, to be precise. Aunt Bessie rarely disappoints. Having neither the time nor the inclination for home-made puds, finding a source of mass-produced grub that approximates to home-made is no mean feat, and in that department the Aunt Bessie brand is a front runner in our house.

I had to laugh, though, at the cooking instructions. I mean, it's bad enough that pie packaging and the like have to carry the legend "serving suggestion" these days, just in case customers are stupid enough to believe that the box includes, you know, a jug of custard, a bowl, a spoon and - who knows? - probably even the person holding the spoon.

But that, apparently, doesn't even scratch the surface of customers' stupidity. And I quote:
"To oven cook: Pre-heat oven and remove outer packaging. Glaze with a little egg and/or milk and sprinkle with sugar. Place product on a baking tray and bake in the centre of the oven for 45-50 minutes, until pastry is golden brown. Half way through baking, turn the foil (round not upside down) to ensure even browning. Ensure product is piping hot before serving."

The italics are mine. You can imagine the phone call:
"Aunt Bessie support line. How can I help?"
"Allo. Is that Aunt Bessie?"
"It's the Aunt Bessie support line, yes."
"I want to speak to Aunt Bessie."
"Er... well she's not here right now. My name's Janet. Can I help?"
"I got pie all over the oven."
"Oh dear."
"Yeah. I followed your instructions, an' now there's pie everywhere."
"I don't think there's anything in our cooking instructions..."
"An' 'ow am I meant to serve it up, anyway, when it's upside dahn?"
"Upside down?"
"Yeah, like it sez in the instructions."

You couldn't make it up. Well, I just did, but I'm assuming the amendment to the cooking instructions came after just such an incident. The alternative is that someone in the Aunt Bessie packaging design department actually believes the public are stupid enough to misinterpret the line "halfway through baking, turn the foil to ensure even browning." Which, in a way, is even more frightening.

Puffin and blowin'

Almost exactly four weeks ago, Nikki discovered the RSPB's Puffin and Gannet cruise. Today, we drove over to Bridlington to board the Yorkshire Belle and take the three-hour trip up the coast to Flamborough Head to enjoy some of the most spectacular views imaginable of the hugely successful sea-bird sanctuary.

The journey to Bridlington took around two-and-a-half hours and, being Bank Holiday weekend, parking was at a premium by the time we arrived. The cruise sets sail at 4pm, so we had a couple of hours to walk along the sea-front absorbing the holiday atmosphere. The weather was not as bad as we expected - during the week the more worrying forecasts of heavy rain and wind had abated in favour of low cloud and showers, but in the event we did enjoy one or two breaks in the cloud that made the views even more breathtaking as shafts of sunlight illuminated the limestone cliffs.

The further North we sailed, the closer we got to the nesting sites and the more numerous the birds became. Herring gulls, kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, gannets and fulmars were present in abundance, and we saw quite a few puffins (usually moving too fast to photograph unfortunately) and even the odd shag. Many of the birds don't make "proper" nests. They simply roost on the cliffs, each of them seeming to know exactly which few square centimetres of the precarious perch belongs to them amidst their thousands of neighbours.

The gannetry at Bempton Cliffs is one of the most successful bird sanctuaries in Europe and has grown its bird population over the last 20 years from a few thousand to over 80,000 pairs. When the boat stops by the cliffs it's hard to know where to point the camera first, as the floating razorbills take off away from the boat, flapping their short stubby wings and leaving a trail of splashes behind them, while white-faced puffins swoop low over the water at high speed.

Looking directly overhead the sky is peppered with soaring, gliding, diving birds, either leaving for an evening fishing trip or returning to roost for the night. In the end, with my battery flashing red after having taken almost 200 stills and several minutes of video footage, I let the camera dangle and just absorbed the atmosphere, the constant cry of the seabirds, the smell of the water and the gentle swaying of the boat.

All too soon it was time to set off on the return leg to port, which seemed to pass much more quickly than the outward leg. One of the most enjoyable days out I've ever experienced, and nicely rounded off with a fish supper at a coastal chippy.

The aged P

Took a day off work to visit Mum today. Our social calendar (at weekends, at least) has been, and is going to be, pretty hectic of late and it was the only way we could squeeze a visit in. I'd been feeling guilty at the amount of time that's elapsed since our last visit (first weekend of March) but I needn't have worried. Her memory is so bad now that I honestly don't think she knew how long it had been.

Example: I call to tell her we're coming for a visit on Friday and by the time she's walked from phone to calendar she's forgotten what I said, and writes it up as Saturday. So she wasn't expecting us until tomorrow.

It's frustrating, because for once we had a heap of news, but while I was telling her all about what we'd been doing and where we'd been going, you could almost see the words entering one ear and exiting the other. With a glazed expression in between, exhibiting no interest at all in what I was saying.

And it reminded me of a thought I've had a lot recently, regarding our sphere of influence and how it resembles a normal distribution curve. Babies and very young children know nothing of the world outside their immediate environment, and to a large extent the world outside their immediate environment knows nothing of them. As they grow and start to attend school, make friends and go out into the world, they take a greater interest and are in turn more well known and recognised by their peers. At the height of their career, in a small number of cases, they might influence and be known by a large percentage of the world's population, but even "regular" people follow world news and are known to maybe a couple of thousand others.

When you start down the other side of the curve, heading for old age, the reverse happens until, in most cases, you end up like my Mum: knowing or caring very little about what happens outside your four walls, and vice versa. Hope I die before I get old, sang The Who famously, and on the evidence before me today I have to say, they were bang on.

Snouts in the trough

Politicians, eh? My dear old Dad always used to call it a dirty business, and by God he was right. Even if you accept for one minute the old chestnut trotted out on every news bulletin in the past few weeks - that people go into it in the hope they'll be able to make a difference - it's clear there's a whole bucketload of truth in the adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Among the miles of column inches and video footage that's poured from the media since this story broke, there are some who claim there are more important stories that should be grabbing our attention in these credit crunchy times, that the sums of money involved are relatively small (in government terms, if not in average people's salary terms) and that maybe not everyone at Westminster is to blame. A lot of this, for me, misses the point. The point is: integrity. The expectation of it, the lack of it, and its apparent replacement by hubris.

I can't say I'm happy to pay taxes. Is anyone? When I look at my pay slip each month and work out how much is taken away before I see any of it, I scratch my head and sigh. When I was younger I naively consoled myself with the thought that those responsible for spending the money we all grudgingly hand over were at least using it for the general good, to improve the lot of the community and to support the less fortunate. Years of watching them blow billions of pounds on fatuous schemes, illegal wars and town twinning put paid to that notion, leaving behind a much less attractive reality - that successive governments exhibit greater or lesser degrees of incompetence but in the end they are, all of them, incompetent to some degree.

But at least, I told (fooled) myself, they weren't benefiting personally. Were they? Well yes, of course they were. Where there's power and influence, there's money. And where there's money, there's the chance to pocket some of it. And where there's a chance, for most people, there's a temptation, a shrug, and a quiet trousering of the wad.

Credibility, my old boss used to say, is like virginity: one cock-up and it's gone forever. And throughout this sorry tale, there's been much more than one, as credibility and integrity have been shredded. Some random thoughts:

• The expenses fiddling had been going on for years. There's no evidence that anything would have changed if there'd been no leak, despite there being gross, obvious and ongoing breaches of rules, lack of correct monitoring and a general approach of grabbing whatever they could
• When it began to occur to them that we might find out, they continued to do everything possible to cover it up. Parliamentary Ombudsmen who got too close to the truth were sacked, or prevented from doing their job. Motions were passed to try to prevent the application of the FoI Act to MPs. The general impression, far from being one of gravitas and integrity, was more like the behaviour of ants when their nest is uncovered. Scrabbling around trying to hide the treasure
• Once the truth was out, suddenly everyone was a "victim of the system." I've done nothing wrong, I obeyed the rules, why didn't someone tell me I couldn't claim for decorating, moat cleaning, 17th-century mahogany hand-carved furniture, etc, etc. For people who supposedly have the intelligence and leadership qualities necessary to run a country, this was at least disingenuous. I've seen better behaviour from schoolchildren.
• It soon became clear that claiming to only have followed rules wasn't going to wash with the public, who not surprisingly expected more from their leaders. So did they come clean? No. They started looking for a scapegoat, of course. Step forward Speaker Michael Martin, who was required to fall on his sword as the man in charge of the fees office, which presumably was staffed exclusively by people who couldn't tell the difference between a legitimate expense and a fiddle. Today's Matt cartoon in the Telegraph was spot on. Two MPs are standing in the shadow of the House of Commons and one says to the other: "As soon as I saw what I'd been up to, I knew the Speaker had to go"
• Even though the solution to the problem should be very simple - it is one, after all, that every major company in the country solves on a daily basis - the arch complicator Gordon Brown as usual managed to make it sound like a problem so complex that it challenged the brightest minds in government. (*cough*) It was going to take weeks, maybe months to come up with a solution. Remember this: it takes a really intelligent, innovative and astute person to analyse a situation and come up with a simple solution. Just about anyone can think of a way of solving a problem that is long-winded, complicated, and difficult to manage.
• Finally, we had a bit of a backlash from the smarting MPs who didn't like the thought of their gravy train being derailed. One overblown ego even went so far as to claim that the whole expenses debacle was driven by jealousy, just because "I've got a very big house." I don't know about you, but I don't want the country to be run by people like that. People who think the country owes them whatever they choose to take, that privileges are theirs by right and the rest of us should keep our noses out of their business because we're clearly too thick, or too jealous, or too insignificant. Politicians serve the people, not the other way round, and servitude exhibits humility, integrity, compassion and hard work.
  

So what's the answer?

One of the things that has many people scratching their heads is the entire question of having two homes, where one of them is effectively paid for on expenses. What is that all about? There are countless thousands of people who have to work in the City, and live elsewhere. They commute. They work just as long - or longer - hours than politicians, often for much less money. If they don't commute daily, they stay in hotels and claim the cost of that on expenses. Works perfectly well for them, why not for MPs?

If there's a question of security, or for some unfathomable reason London hotels are not suitable for politicians despite being just fine for every other businessman and woman in the capital, then build somewhere, or compulsorily purchase somewhere, and fit it out for the purpose. Either way it's got to be cheaper than the current scheme. And they don't need flock wallpaper and 17th-century desks. They're supposed to be working people. Regular furniture from IKEA is good enough for us, so it's good enough for them. There's only 600-odd of the buggers, and they don't all need another London pad anyway.

And finally, and probably most surprising to the general public, is this whole business of the incompetence or downright fraudulent behaviour in the fees office. Anyone who has worked for a UK company will have had to submit expenses for travel, accommodation, or small purchases needed in the course of doing their job. The Chief Executive of McDonalds, Steve Easterbrook, made exactly this point on Question Time last week. Why is it so hard? He, or any UK business leader, could solve this broken process in a week, given chance and the will to solve it. But maybe that's just the problem? They don't really want it solved. Not by "an outsider." They want another arcane, secretive, self-monitored scheme so they can carry on with their snouts in the trough while giving the impression of reform.

Carry on Camping

The day dawned misty, and since breakfast wasn't served before nine, we were up, showered, dressed and out just as soon as the cleaner had unlocked the front door. A field of tents looks deceptively attractive in the early morning light but I remain unfooled. A feeling reinforced by Annie's later report that she'd spent a very uncomfortable night, having forgotten to bring all her bedding supplies, and was *definitely* planning a trip to Buxton later that morning to stock up on pillows, a duvet and possibly even a hot water bottle.

After wading through the first of Graham's enormous breakfasts (I think he may have invented the phrase "full" English) we set off for Poole's Cavern. An attractive underground jaunt for the totally unfit, as it involves only 26 steps to reach the furthest navigable point which ends up being 30 metres underground. Educational too, as our guide pointed out several broken stalactites. Apparently the Victorians thought they'd be able to sell the sparkling stalactites, and threw rocks at them until they broke off. Once the rocks were brought out into daylight, where they looked just like... er... white rocks, the cavers realised they were worthless and threw them away. Who knew the Victorians were such vandals?

After that we wandered into Buxton hoping to visit the antiques fair, but as they were expecting a £5 entry fee - each! - we skipped that and wandered aimlessly around the shops for a bit, dodging the rain. We bumped into a small party of campers in town and stuck with them for half-an-hour or so, until we heard the call of the coffee and ducked into a café for a drink and a sticky bun.

The weather brightened up slightly after lunch so, having "done" Buxton we headed off to one of Nikki's favourite villages - Ashford in the Water - and spent some time watching the ducks on, and the trout in, The Water (the River Wye). Around 3pm we decided it would be a good idea to return to the campsite and see if anyone else had arrived. Sure enough, Jamie & Lise had pitched up - literally - and with crystal blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead, we relaxed in the field in a small enclave of camping chairs and enjoyed a swift bevvy.

It was not to last.

A rather angry, low-flying, brown cloud approached rapidly from the West forcing us to seek refuge in Andy & Lara's canvas mansion. Which is where we remained, all conversation drowned by the spatter of rain on the polythene windows, until the rest of the group returned from Buxton. The rain passed over just long enough for four of us to assemble Annie's new portable barbecue (Focus DIY; £39.99) and once the charcoal was fired up, Nikki and I took the opportunity to return pubwards and sample another of Graham's delicious evening meals.

As we were awaiting the serving wench, the sound of hail hitting the pub windows once again briefly drowned conversation in the bar. And then, as if by magic, most of the campers ran in, trying to escape not only the hail but the flying hot charcoal released from the barbecues as they had blown over. Yes, for the second year running the Birthday Barbecue was wrecked by the weather. Better planning called for next year, we all agreed.

Camping it up

Let's get one thing straight. We don't do canvas. So when Annie announced that there would be another Buxton camping trip to celebrate her birthday, we decided to opt for the kind of camping that involves a coal fire, home-cooked food and beer from a pump rather than a bottle.

Yes, that's right. We stayed in the pub next door. Next door to the camping field, that is. We had every intention of sitting around the campfire at some stage, and quaffing brewskis from bottles and plastic cups, but for sleeping purposes a hand-carved late-17th-century mahogany bed and a nice firm mattress are so much more suitable for aging bones than lumpy damp grass and anything you have to inflate, and with our shower currently out of commission, the opportunity for a room with en-suite shower was too good to miss.

So we arrived at the pub/camp site around 6pm, and being the first there settled into the... er... settle to await further arrivals and sample the beer. And, later, the food, which was excellent. Nikki and I both chose one of Graham's pies - me the steak & ale; her the steak & stilton - and we both marvelled at how much meat he can get into a single pie. These are large pies - probably a good 12" diameter - so you "only" get a wedge, but wow! a wedge is all you could manage. The pies are a good inch-and-a-half deep (3-4cm in new money) and with pastry being not much more than a millimetre thick on top and bottom, most of that depth is solid meat. Delicious. Served with a vegetable medley (crunchy broccolli, zingy carrots and peas that tasted as though they'd only just been podded) and some of the most excellent chips ever tasted. I nearly didn't have room for pudding! But only nearly.

The Friday nighters were a small but select bunch and we enjoyed more beer, more chatting and more coal on the fire until the campers retired to their camp, and we climbed the creaky 15th century stairs to bed.

Movie Review: Star Trek

First off, I should say that I think J.J. Abrams has a blimmin' cheek calling his film "Star Trek" as if it is the first one ever. OK, he - or more accurately writers Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman - pulls off a clever trick that means, in some respects, it could be considered to be the first one ever, but that's not the point. Neither do I agree with those who argue the franchise needed "rebooting" - whatever that means. OK Star Trek 10 (Nemesis) was a turkey, but there have been turkeys before. It made its money back. It needn't have ended there, even if none of the cast were up for another, and starting the story again at the beginning doesn't necessarily qualify as a reboot. A retelling, maybe, but even so I think it would have been more respectful to have a marginally longer title.

But I seem to have started off on a negative note which belies the enjoyment I derived from this movie, and its many good points. That aforementioned trick IS clever. It allows Abrams unprecedented freedom from canon, which for a 40+ year franchise is no bad thing. Having to bear in mind every little nuance that went before, from five TV series and ten movies, even if those events are all in the future and all you have to do is avoid doing anything which precludes them from happening, must be like wearing a creative straitjacket for the writers. Even with this freedom, the writers do a remarkable job of staying within the known Star Trek universe, and maintaining the characters as essentially the same people we grew to love all those years ago in TOS. And on top of that, they layer on credible new slants, excitement by the bucketload, and some memorable chunks of dialogue that will stay with me for many years (e.g Captain Pike to Kirk: "Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved 800 lives, including your mother's. And yours. I dare you to do better."). The only thing they don't do, and for which the film suffers to some degree, is come up with a basic story that is anything near interesting. For once though, that lack does not wreck the film, which is saved by the humour, the action, the effects and the cast.

Yes, apart from a small handful of misses, the cast are uniformly good, and some are outstanding. Special mention has to go to Karl Urban as Doctor "Bones" McCoy, who for much of the movie acted as though he was channelling DeForest Kelly, so accurate was his mimicry of Bones' famous verbal ticks and body language. "My GOD man!", "Dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor, not a physicist," and "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" tripped off his tongue as if he'd been saying them all his life, which of course Bones would have been. Nice touches with the origination of his nickname, and his early befriending of Kirk too. The other stand-out for me, and much has already been written about this so I won't dwell on it, was Zachary Quinto as Spock. Uncanny facial resemblance coupled with excellent writing, a more complete backstory than we've ever had before, and a compelling insight into his early life as a total genius made his probably the most powerful character in the entire movie.

Chris Pine has received much praise for his rendition of Kirk, and although it took me a while to warm to him in the role, and I wouldn't go so high and wide with the praise as some, he certainly did manage to bring something new to the role and make it more than a Shatner clone. The only one that didn't really work for me was Simon Pegg as Scotty. Comic relief is great, but I don't remember Scotty being *quite* so much of a loon, and I don't think it sat well. He can certainly say "I'm giving her all she's got, captain," well enough though.

On screen the film looks every penny of the $150m it cost (and which it virtually made back in the first two weekends at the box office, in the US alone). This will definitely be one to buy on Blu-ray. I don't have any time for those who ask why the technology looks so much more advance than it did in TOS. The answer is simple, and has a lot to do with why the final TV series - Enterprise - failed for me. Making a modern show with technology that looks faux-clunky doesn't work. We loved TOS with its clunky hardware because we knew it was the best they could do at the time. Now film makers can do better, so why wouldn't they?

All-in-all then, another Star Trek movie to love, without a doubt one for the collection, and now that it's proved a huge box office hit I'll be amazed if they don't make another. All I would ask is: please, please next time, give us a good story. Remember Wrath of Khan and make it so.

A-hedging we will go

Rain was forecast for lunchtime today, but we figured if we pulled out our collective fingers we'd be able to at least plant *some* of our nice new copper beech hedge plants - which arrived on Wednesday - before the shower started, and having achieved something in the garden I'd feel less guilty about taking time out to see the new Star Trek movie later.

The morning was deceptively sunny as we stepped out immediately after breakfast, and sized up the task. Starting at the furthest cleared point (where the pond used to be) and working back towards the house, the line of the hedge was pretty obvious to start with, demarked as it is by the large acer that sat behind the pond, and an old dead tree stump.

With three bags of well-rotted manure to give the plants a head start, mixed with the soil from the trench, we dug in (haha!) and got on with the task, which went surprisingly smoothly with me digging and planting, and Nikki fetching the trees, taking away the empty pots and making sure I had a ready supply of manure. We reached the acer in record time (trench one) and filled the gap between acer and stump inside the first hour (trench two).

We decided to press on, and strung some string between the tree stump and a random piece of breeze block beside the conservatory to give us the line to hedge to for the latter half of the job. Just as the string was tied and I'd dug trench three, a few spots of rain made their presence felt. Not wanting to leave a newly-dug trench to fill with water, we ignored the rain and carried on planting. A good move as it turned out, because the short shower had stopped by the time we reached the Camelia that marked the end of trench three.

So on we went with trench four - the final frontier - completing the whole job in a little over two hours, which greatly surprised me as I'd expected to have to do it over two days. Feeling very pleased with the end result, which looks for the time being like a thin row of plants but will hopefully grow into a hedge much quicker than the forlorn row of dead sticks that represent my previous experience of beech hedging, we set off for the afternoon showing of Star Trek.

Reinforcement fail

It didn't work. The shower still leaks. Bugger.

Stop Press: feeding the birds costs a lot more than tuppence a bag

After extensive online research into various hedging options, we decided to make the most of the Bank Holiday weather (supposedly at its best today) and take a tour of various local garden centres and hedge suppliers. Partly to check out the deals and partly to get a look at the hedge plants on offer. The last time I planted any copper beech it was bare root stock, mail order, and they arrived looking like a bunch of dead twigs.

Worse, a year after planting, around 25% of them remained looking like dead twigs. Mainly because they were dead twigs. The rest came slowly to life over a period of several years, but even after five years they still didn't resemble a hedge so much as a line of leafy sticks stretching the length of the garden.

Bugger that. I want it to look like a hedge from the off this time, so we'll be going for plants in pots. 2 litre pots at least.

It proved a productive trip as we discovered a fantastic garden centre in Woodford. Massive, it is, with an extensive range of... well... just about everything you'd imagine a garden centre should carry plus a substantial amount of stuff you wouldn't expect and quite a few things I didn't even know existed.

One of the things Nikki was keen to find was a bird feeder. Partly because she's always wanted one, and partly because Nat wants to study feeding habits of urban birds. As you'll no doubt realise in view of my comments above, this place had a fair selection of bird feeding equipment. About 500 square feet of it to be precise. We ummed and ahhed about exactly what we wanted, but as I always tend to the more esoteric and expensive end of the market, as soon as I saw a feeder marked "Deluxe" I knew that was the one for me. And then we needed the clever little pots to hang off it. And the grub to stuff the pots with. By the time we added it all up we'd spent about ninety quid. Looks nice though, dunnit? Nobody needs to mention the fact that it's crooked. I'd spotted that, thanks. After I'd assembled everything.

These things are supposed to be moved every two months, so I'll straighten it up then, OK?

Reinforcements

Our builder's been round today. He had an idea about the shower tray. The one that leaks because it wasn't put in properly. He reckons that if he reinforces it from underneath with some well-positioned lengths of two-by-four (or, for Harry Enfield fans, twobefourbetwobe), glued and screwed, then the previously unsupported tray will no longer flex and, in not flexing, won't break its seal and therefore won't leak.

Sounded good to us, especially as the solution can be executed through the hole in the kitchen ceiling rather than requiring a complete rip out and refit of the shower enclosure, AND we've ended up with a patch of new plaster where the hole was.

It was a blimmin' mess though, I can tell you. With the inter-joist muck falling down, additional bits of ceiling (to make the hole rectangular), wood being sawn and plaster being slapped around, we'll probably be cleaning up 'til this time tomorrow. And then there'll be painting I expect. There's always painting.