Two Thousand and Great – Week 48

Dear all,

I’ve had to make a small change to my weekly calendar, Tuesday is no longer a swimming night but bell ringing. My second lesson went quite well, I’m starting to build up a bond with my bell and slowly but surely gaining a bit more control of it. The bell I use is called Michael (I was told the reason why once but I can’t remember.)

It’s the second heaviest bell in the tower and weighs 9 cwt 1 qr and 10 lbs which equates to 474.5 kilos. 

Tuesday’s lesson started slightly differently to the week before, the bells were not up when I arrived which meant that I was tasked with getting the bell upside down and staying there. This meant I had to combine everything I had learnt the week before. I started with the down stroke trying to get some momentum into the bell slowly feeding out the rope as the bell swang higher and higher, as the rope lengthened I had to start applying pressure on the back stroke as well, this meant I was now combining the skills for the first time – properly bell ringing for the first time.

There is a surprising amount to remember how far to stand from the rope, how to pull your arms, where to catch so as not to end up pulled off the floor or end up with rope and carpet burns over your hands. Everyone has been very patient with me and are always offering me tips, they are a really nice bunch of people.

Through the night I was given the chance to ring a few more times, I am slowly but surely getting more of a feel for the bell. The group make it look very easy, they have almost total control over the bells and are able to change the speeds and stop the bells at will, I have been told that this week I will get the chance to join in with a round, I’m learning so much so quickly, to get an idea of what the group look like in the tower there’s a video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aEwxnEoZsK8 The man with the beard is called Tony and he leads the group (he’s also ringing Michael on this occasion).

As part of my homework I was given a few copies of The Ringing World to look through, it was like having my own round of Have I Got News For You’s missing word round – http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2143628&id=660945790#/photo.php?pid=2143629&id=660945790 I’m understanding about 5 out of 10 words at the moment when watching the group this might help to flesh some of the rest out.

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Homemade bread day was a bit different – I had a plan to try and and make some speciality bread that I had often seen in Carluccios. Basically they make a thin strip of bread which has one side covered in pesto, this is then rolled up into a snail shape left to rise and then baked.

The result is a great bread with gorgeous pesto running through it. My plan was to make a slightly more pizza type bread dough than normal bread mix and to try and make my own version. (to make a pizza type dough you add a little olive oil to a standard bread mix)

I prepared the dough and allowed it to rise a little, I then beat it back and tried tried to flatten the sections of dough to allow me a chance to roll flat. In a small bowl I had mixed some red pesto with finely chopped sundried tomatoes which I then spooned onto each bread strip and rolled the dough before placing onto a baking sheet.

The bread didn’t flatten particularly well so I tried a few different styles, whether making a doughnut style roll or a croissant type and then baked them for about 15 minutes in the oven. The rolls tasted great, but didn’t really have Carluccios’ presentation. I will try to make them again as I really like them and when I get it right it will be added to the cookbook.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=85279&id=660945790

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I had intended to celebrate false confessions day on Friday, but, in the end I didn’t (or did I?) – no I didn’t. I ended up at a friends film screening which was good fun, before heading home, I’d had the day in my mind for a while, but didn’t get the chance to confess to anything. At one point I found myself talking to people only in film titles (I have no idea why) but couldn’t find a way to confess to anything major. that said every cloud has a silver lining – As a fall back I’ve found this – Make Your Own Head Day on Friday – papier mache here I come! – http://holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/November/makeyourownhead.htm

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This week to my relief I found out that the school friend who had kind of mentioned she would consider letting me deliver her baby had got on with it all without my assistance. A little premature, Ronny is thankfully no longer hooked up to machines and appears to be happy healthy and getting stronger.

Congrats Nikki, I guess this is one of my challenges I am happy to fail.

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I was set a challenge earlier in the year which involved fishing – In the ’summer’ months this was lovely as an afternoon beside a lake allows you to get your thoughts in order and properly relax. As the car came to pick me up before 7am on Sunday in the dark with snow falling this didn’t seem such a good idea.

I have had a good stab at trying to catch decent sized coarse fish this year landing a few nice carp, roach and perch, but hadn’t caught much in the way of predator fish (the Zander which I caught in the summer hardly counts as it was so small) the main lake in Bury Hill does hold some lovely large pike and generously sized Zander. 

Arriving as the snow started to get heavier we made our way down the bank to a spot recommended by the assistant in the lake’s shop. One of the regular pike fishermen usually sets up in this place.

The snow was settling as we cast our rods into the water and then it began to warm up, this would usually be lovely but snow gets warmer it become rain and this isn’t anywhere near as much fun. 

Cold and damp, my fishing partner and I were contemplating giving up by about 1 o’clock when something fateful happened. He had a bite, his rod bent double for a few seconds and then nothing… this action though reaffirmed our belief that freezing ourselves in order to catch a fish was a good idea.

I befriended a robin* by feeding it some bread and maggots, but still the lack of action continued. Looking across the lake nobody was having any luck, people were packing up and leaving all over the place when I heard a little noise as my bobbin started to slowly drop down a few inches. There was definitely something playing with my line but would it go so far as to take the bait?

The quickest answer to this is no – after 6 and a half hours of freezing conditions we gave up, nobody had managed to catch anything on our lake and with hands like iceblocks we headed home. Personally I blame the cold snap which hit on Thursday, the water is usually good for pike at this time, once the weather has calmed down a bit we’ll be back. I need to catch a few more decent fish to pass that challenge.

* http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2143628&id=660945790
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I know this strange day isn’t on my calendar but I am going to celebrate it as an extra one as I believe in the concept – despite the fact that the Government keeps dropping interest rates (and now VAT) to try and boost consumer spending to get the economy back in order. Buy Nothing Day – www.buynothingday.co.uk/ Seems a fine idea. Take a look at the website – our culture of consumption needs to be looked at and initiatives like this can raise awareness.

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A few things to look forward to this week, Sunday sees my transformation into Father Christmas as I have to dye my beard and hair white. I’m going to try and give blood one morning this week, if only to get good pics for the blog of needles and the like.

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I accepted a new challenge today which isn’t going to be easy. Realising I have to lose some weight still to achieve one of my challenges, I’m no longer allowed to have any carbonated soft drinks until January 1st 2009. As someone who doesn’t drink teas and coffees etc, this effectively reduces my options to milk, beer, neat spirits the odd fruit juice and water. It’s a lot less to give up than things like NO-vember but it’ll still be tough for me. 

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One final thing, I hope someone can help me out.

As you might know one of my best friends lives out in Spain teaching English to the locals – one of his students has come to London to perfect her cockney rhyming slang and have everything she’s learned about English and Grammar totally confused by Londoners. She’s looking for a job and I said I would try to help her out.

Young girl (28) with basic – to good levels of English is looking for anything really – based North London she has retail and bar experience – if anyone knows of anything that might suit her please let me know ASAP.

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Rob – Soon to be Santa

Two Thousand and Great – Week 47

Dear all

There’s a new Sally in my life, I seem to have carpet burns on my hands… but it’s not a new relationship – On Tuesday I attended my first bell ringing lesson (my original start to this sentence wouldn’t have got past spam filters as it mentioned swinging and bell ends…)

I heard back from the CCCBR and they put me in contact with a local church with a team of ringers – turning up a little early I made my way up a tiny spiral staircase up the tower to the bell room. After a little background about the church and bells. Slowly but surely the ringers started to turn up. My lesson started by watching the group as they worked through a couple of routines. As far as I could work out everything followed the lead of the tenor bell, but this started to go out of the window when one of the team started shouting out numbers, by watching I slowly started to worked out that the person however many left of the tenor called first took the lead followed by the second number. So far, so easy but I still couldn’t work out who the others were following. eg 3-5 meant the third bell to the left from the tenor took lead and was followed by the 5th bell.

After this I was given my first lesson, it all started with the back stroke, with my hands cup below waist level right over left the bell was pulled down, the rope went slack  before rocketing upwards pulling my hands with it. Just before the top of the swing the bell achieves almost neutral balance hanging directly upside down and a slight tug sends it swinging down again. After about 20 or 30 repetitions of this – the instructor worked out the bell was too light for me and I got switched to a heavier bell where I actually could feel through the rope what was going on.

I watched the ringers perform some more routines called Two Bob and Ganzer (?) – ganzer seems to be the one you hear when a wedding is in the Church, before I was given my next lesson the down stroke, On a rope there is a large fluffy section which is called a sally, the bell was set in the up position (upside down) so a light pull started it swinging, the sally falls towards the floor as you make the back stroke and as it is going up you grab it to pull it down again to speed up or slow down the bell. 

You only get  a split second to do this pull as the momentum of the bell whips it away. A lesson I learned incredibly quickly as I didn’t release it quite fast enough leading me to get lifted slightly off my feet and have the rope screaming through my hands for a pretty impressive carpet / rope burn.

I was honoured to be able to go up into the bell room at the end of the session, (when bells are rung on Rememberance Sunday they put mufflers on them and I was invited up to see the bells as these were removed.) The bells are huge, and despite understanding a little about physics the stays and the balances they didn’t look big enough to counterbalance the whole bell. 

Bell ringing is a lot tougher than I imagined, but, i’ll do it and hopefully pass this challenge. The tower physically moves when the bells are rung and I can’t wait to go back this week to hear the bells at their full volume.

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If I apply the same logic for how I became an artist eg. if I draw something and soemone else pays for it – I think I officially became a gigolo on Thursday. One of my favourite challenges of the year (to kiss 50 red haired ladies) was paid in full on Thursday, effectively meaning I was paid to kiss girls which equals gigolo…  (That said if I do bump into any more gorgeous red heads before the end of the year, I might still be tempted to use the charity as the excuse and pretend to still have a couple left to kiss to complete the challenge.)

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Today is the second of my November Strange days –  Homemade bread day – As I didn’t have the energy to get up at 4 am to bake before work I will do it tonight after swimming. (I’ve had to change my weekly regime to fit bell ringing in.) My plan is to try and make bread with pesto in, I have seen these in Carluccio’s but never tried to make them. I have an idea how to the pictures next week and the cookbook entry might tell you how it turned out. 

Today also marks the start of National Entrepreneur Week. I along with a group of friends have had a long term belief we could open a new drinks venue called the half a bar – the only draw back to this was the belief we could only Semillion – I’m doubting it’s viability… I will not even mention the restaurant idea (different more twisted friends this time) – that one really needs work. The premise is probably more tasteless than anything the kitchen might turn out.

I’m only saying this as the Dragon’s Den stars seem to come up to my work quite regularly and if amongst us we can come up with a good enough idea I am sure I can pitch it to one of them. If anyone has an idea that needs proposing send it through and I’ll see if I can get an answer. I might even be able to help out, lots of people keep telling me I won’t know what to do with my time next year, this might be a start.*

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Not long left now, but if you have a challenge please get them to me quickly as I need to plan these last few weeks.

Rob / Devani 

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PS> A few people might have seen one of these before.  

The Basic premise is – everyone on this mailing list is roughly the same age. If you’re stuck for in idea of what to buy someone as a christmas gift, we might be able to avoid blundering by sharing recommendations. if we all share our top 3’s of the year we can get an idea of what has been loved, liked and disliked in 2008 by people like us and possibly help come up with a top choice xmas gift for someone else. On my facebook group I have created a link where people can post theirs – http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=6044&uid=7856163663

Here’s mine: Top albums of 2008 Sonny J – Disastro Noah & The Whale – Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down Los Campesinos! – We are Beautiful – We are Doomed Top Books of 2008 Joseph O’Neill – Netherland Is this supposed to be Funny – Dagsson (funny, but it’s dark.) Average American Male – Chard Kultgen (as above)

Over rated things definitely include Quantum of Solace – when I went to movies I remember that they used to have story lines and character development, this film lacked either and was therefore a collection of big explosions and action but nothing to engage you….

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* there’s also talk of a comedy / music / variety night in February in aid of Multiple Sclerosis which I have agreed to help out with in any way I can.

Two Thousand and Great – Week 46

Dear all

I was somewhat spurred into action last week as I realised there are only a few weeks left to try and complete a number of the tasks that have been set.

My week has been peppered with strange emails about vbell ringing and becoming a town crier along with advice on beard bleaching and many other things. The only email I have held back from writing was the one from an old school friend who mentioned she was pregnant and due in December – giving me a chance of completing the deliver a baby challenge. Seeing as I am scared of the word crowning, trying to get this email out has been tough.

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As far as challenges and preperation go, so far all I have learned about bleaching my beard  is it’s a bad idea, according to hairdressers ‘hair bleach is an irritant  and should only be used on the head, it could burn my face.’  Having listened to all the professionals I am going to ignore it and set about the beard with Jolen, which is used as a moustache bleach by darker haired ladies and thus more suitable to be used on the face. this could take a while but the result will make me look like santa claus (if only for a day or two before I go swimming and end up like the Grinch)

From my long column of emails I have found a church near to me that still uses human ringers. I am due to go along tomorrow night to meet the Tower Captain and possibly pull some bells. I have to say a huge thanks to the people at the CCCBR again, who have been really useful – I know that trying to pull at St Paul’s Cathedral was going to be a long shot but I still get to complete the original challenge.

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Last Thursday was my first strange day challenge in November Guinness World Records Day. I went out in the morning and bought a copy of the Guinness World Records 2009 and looked through it to see if there were a couple I could have had a stab at.

Some of those which looked interesting were -
Most eggs smashed on the head in one minute – 40
Most Tee Shirts worn at once – 224
Greatest weight lifted by beard – a 63.2kg woman lifted 10cm off the ground (but I thought that would probably hurt a lot)

Looking at a few others I spotted one which looked plausible:

The record for catching Maltesers thrown from 2 metres (6 ft 6 in) in the mouth in 1 minute is 19.

I found out that some of the desks in my office are exactly 2 metres long and this provided a perfect base from which to attempt the record. Despite not having practised (bar one thrown Malteser which I didn’t catch) and being slightly handicapped by choosing a partner, who by her own admission can’t throw, I think we did alright.

I managed to catch 12 Maltesers in my mouth and very nearly 2 more, the beard might actually have helped cushion some of those which arrowed at my face and given me a chance to catch them.

Being so close my throwing partner started to talk up more record attempts, using phrases like practise and trajectory. As someone who remembers one of my challenges involves losing 2 stone this year I might have to defer the chocolate catching for a few months. For Norris McWhirter type scrutiny you can view the build up here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82798&id=660945790 and see a video of the record attempt here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH28JZA8hAQ

When I got home I did try to break a few others – Unfortunately I missed out on the longest beard record by 5ft 3 inches. I failed the Most teeshirts worn by 191 (I think I was at a disadvantage by not actually owning the 225 teeshirts needed to be able to break the record and having them all at roughly the same size. xl or xxl. To really stand a chance of breaking this record the competitor needs to be an xs and then they have more chance (especially as bigger tee shirts weigh more) I might recreate this attempt when someone else is there to photograph me as I was struggling to extend my arms enough with all the layers to take good pictures.

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Away from all this and as it’s coming up to christmas I thought I’d show you a website which is fantastic:   http://www.top-mates.co.uk/

Sadly for all my friends they now know what they are going to get for xmas – but I wanted to share.

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As some of you might remember, I was talking about NYE  last week and trying to find ideas for somewhere to go, it’s going to be a bit odd as for me the highlight of the night isn’t going to be bells ringing but the sound of a pair of clippers and the chance to shave my face and head properly.

Seeing as the idea of doing this in a club was a bit of a non-starter a friend has actually decided to put on a house party with a hats, wigs, beards and masks theme. I have contacted a few people about it and hopefully I haven’t offended you if this is the first you’ve heard about it and wanted to join me there. Please send me an email and I can tell you details.

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Any lots to do,

Keep challenging me, I’ll keep accepting

Rob / Devani

Two Thousand and Great – Week 45

Dear all

I’ve decided I’m not a fan of magic. When you’re young and you see a trick it’s amazing, there is genuine wonderment, the who, how, where and when, hundreds of questions. As you get older you know that what you are seeing is a construct designed to fool you, if you spend a little time thinking about it you can sometimes work out how it’s done, (but it’s nicer that you don’t and suspend your disbelief to fully admire the illusion.) Truly brilliant tricks can still baffle and astound.

Friday as well as being Halloween was National Magic Day, my final strange day of October – I now wish it was a day I didn’t celebrate as I think I have ruined magic… Battling through hundreds of children in fancy dress and mums in velour tracksuits (which were possibly more grotesque and scary), I went to Woolworths to buy a magic set. I settled on a big boxed monstrosity ‘Mind-Blowing Magic’ made by a firm called Marvin’s Magic that claimed to have 125 different tricks inside - http://www.marvinsmagic.com/Default.asp/Page/Buy/Section/3

I know I do not need to explain why I wasn’t out on friday night but it might explain a few things (like the lack of new recipes this week for the cookbook or much of anything else.) On Monday night I somehow managed to poison myself quite severely. I generally have an iron constitution and my body handles anything that is thrown at or into it. Something went wrong, a simple meal of beef and vegetables ended up like something which wouldn’t have been out of place on Halloween. Food poisoning resulted in an inability to hold down anything more complex than dry toast and water for 4 days and the thought of going out for a night out in London surrounded by strangers in fancy dress getting more and more inebriated was totally beyond me.

So I found myself in on a Friday night, faced with a big box of magic. All those who read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell might wish to stop reading at this point as my experiences were nothing like those… having mastered a couple of the simpler illusions, cups and balls, dice tricks etc.. I went into the card tricks part of the box which is when everything started to go a bit wrong.

I was introduced to something called Svengali Cards and every card trick I had ever seen suddenly became incredibly crap, the book destroyed magic for me, I suddenly knew how tricks were done like getting cards to go through windows and stick to the other side, how to force someone to draw the card you want them to – I felt cheated… I was going to add a few videos of the tricks to youtube etc.. , but I actually got depressed by it all.

Loads still to do, speaking to a hairdresser this week about getting my beard dyed white in a couple of weeks. Someone else about getting all the hair in my body ripped out. etc, etc…

Also keeping an ear out for something good to do on NYE, several people have expressed an interest in spending it together, I think they all want to shave me or something. If you hear of anything good let me know.

Keep challenging me, I’ll keep accepting

Rob / Devani