15°C, breezy with empty threats of showers
Turntables: Wow! here are some long lost names still alive & kicking:
turntableworld. Grado, Goldring, Ortofon, Sumiko, and so on.
Some astronomical prices but at least it’s somewhere I can get replacement stylii. The tip for mine costs £140, the memory of times when it sold for £45 are still vivid. Either my memory is good, or inflation is higher than I thought.
16°C, sunshine & moving air
“the Daily Mail as a “sexist, racist, bigoted, comic cartoon strip”.
-John Bercow
So it’s official, Bercow is the Speaker in the House of Commons. I wouldn’t normally bother with this, a paper that I never buy. But this is the 2nd top selling paper in the UK at over 2 million copies a day. People read this, much of which is irrational, contradictory or obviously wrong. Mind you, The Sun sells 3 million to an almost illiterate small-minded ‘readership’.
It’s all very well grumbling, but this post would be incomplete without a solution. Here is an add-on for Firefox which replaces links to bigoted pious DM rants with nice pictures of kittens: Link. Clearly such a feature is an outrage of the worst kind, but you know…
19°C, clear. Comfortable.
Children are growing up too early. The news story of the season this year: The chattering classes are upset about media forces on young children, padded bras for under 11s, hip-thrusting semi-nude dancing on popular music shows, make-up on pre-teens.
“children are experiencing too much too young in terms of sexualised images and aggressive advertising“
I speculate that the younger children are not being “sexualised”, they probably don’t know what on earth that means. My current thinking is that it’s a manifestation of consumerism. Child-cosmetics, I have to admit to some dis-comfort here; hence I am interested in the debate. Young girls using cosmetics, painting themselves and looking rather incongruous in their war-paint. It’s lamentable in adult women in my view, but in children, it’s rather disturbing. They do represent a market, and yes, are probably being targeted by the ad-men. That thought does scare some; see the Pinkstinks website.
It looks to me as if the under 11s are emulating the teenagers, the teenagers are emulating the twenty-somethings, the thirty-somethings are holding onto their youth and the forty-somethings have their arms folded and are tut-tutting at the youngsters.
From their perspective, the under 11s are imitating older children as they always have done. Was it ever thus? I can’t see any way of preventing or restricting it all. Some may be guilty of projecting adult desires onto an age group that can’t possibly know what sexualisation means.
Is there is simply too much money available. That money is like a drug, it’s intoxication is irresistible to most, it does seem to overpower any remnants of idealism that people may hold. As you can guess, I don’t always like western modern capitalism, I have a distaste for any decadence anywhere.
Has feminism been beaten back by consumerism? I have a horrible feeling that it has.
See Pinkstinks.
24°C, 
Very hot in the mountains this time. This time we could see from the summits, the vistas were vast and far ranging. Some have said it is possible to see Ireland from these peaks. Thought sceptical at first, I conceded, though still await that view myself. Two litres of water is simply not enough for days like this, I’d need a 3 litre water pack but that’s quite a weight, and there is no water on the peaks, the rock is very dry, there are no springs and no ponds.
Camper’s tip: to conserve gas when cooking rice or pasta- boil as normal for 10′ then switch it off and let stand for a while, then put the gas back on to re-heat. Much of the cooking, especially with whole-grain, is re-hydration, so some standing time is as good as continuous heat.
24°C, light winds, no clouds.
Swim in Llyn Cwmffynion. First wild-swim of the year in a hidden corrie beneath Nantlle ridge. The water was shallow, only knee deep so no real swim I admit. The ridge was clear this time, the view almost endless and the hills rich in thick velvety emerald grasses and bilberrys. I simply wanted to stay and to stay. In the end we were drawn down by the thought of a quaint mountaineer’s cafe in Rhyd Ddu.
20C, 
.
Carpet cleaning machine: Rug-doctor is surprisingly effective. It’s noisy and can’t get into the pokiest corners of my attic but it does turn the soapy water into the appearance of old cold coffee. Strangely satisfying, in a domestic way.
Campag-8 gears still don’t index, even after replacing the cassette today. I’m just as puzzled and annoyed by this problem as the last time I posted about this. I really don’t want to upgrade the drivetrain to 10-speed or worse to get a slick gear-change. Those systems are fiddly, difficult to tune and unnecessary. There is really no need for more than 8 gears (x2) on my bike. I’m not just saying that just because I’m a single-speed bike rider.
What is the solution to this?
15C, 
, easing westerly. KC44 miles.
June already, but I haven’t finished with May yet. Look, here I am wishing my life away in an inverted way and I’ve been in bed since 8.30pm. Can I use an excuse? I’d like to use the one about cycling 44 miles then driving 100 more.
My old dog is certified stupid- I have just had to rescue her. She’s been barking for a while, that bark she has reserved for ‘let me out’. So, the caring responsible pet owner that I am, I went to investigate. There she was standing on the kitchen table, unable to get down. I hope I get into scrapes like that when I’m old.
17°C, sunny earlier.
The pond has gone all green and bubbly looking. What’s going on down there? I hope the bubbles are oxygen, otherwise the animals I introduced the other day might asphyxiate. Perhaps not though, it does look fizzy on the surface.
Hope it clears itself soon.
16°C, Sun.
The pond is now populated with some plants, But the water is cloudy with algae now. I’m holding out for the plants having the effect of clearing the water. There are animals in there that depend on it, including leeches!
16C, clearing up, still windy.
Been away: on work’s DofE trip. Now I’m sleep deprived, the first walk didn’t finish until 8pm so the kids were still cooking at 10pm. Other teachers didn’t eat until after that. Such an arrangement doesn’t work for me.
Film:Breaking The Waves– Lars Von Trier. A difficult film this one, but somehow compelling. Not one to watch with your folks I found. Stark and a test of stamina, you need to cope with the mental illness theme; if you can, there is a reward despite the feeling that you’re being tested.
Micycle 