Behold - we are here - you are there - and we shall be together on Tuesday when we welcome a new demonstrator - Robert Till.
I am running out of time as work has been busy, and when not at work I have been a tad busy with other things as you will see below. The back end of this email was written last week and will end up on my blog on www.philboulter.com next week sometime, the top end - the woodturny bit - I wrote this evening in a rush, having just got back from Yandles. I will check and send it tomorrow afternoon.
Today Mike Larby, Anne Bleloch, Hazel Bentley and myself had the day out at Yandles - then we went to a little pub for lunch, then on to Axminster power tools in Axminster, and skirted the coast at Lyme Regis and Charmouth before heading home after a splendid day out in very good company. Thank you to all for their cheerful countenance today - it was a lovely end of the week.
So - in a rush - as the time before the next meeting has almost wasted away.
1. Next Meeting - Robert Till
2. Competition.
3. Saturday Workshop
4. Mad Two weeks I nose you know
5. Telephone madness
5. County Show
Next Meeting Robert Till
Next Tuesday 11th September sees a new demonstrator to KVWT - Robert Till. I am excited to see new demonstrators - always - and Robert has a very good pedigree and is a good friend of Steve Heeley who we know. As usual I did look him up in the googleweb - I found these revealing pictures.
I know which one would have me seriously worried. Robert Till's website is here.
His work is varied, spread between hollow forms, bowls, spindle work and production turning as well as demonstrations. I have looked at write-ups from other clubs and Robert is well received, so I think we are in for a good evening. So welcome Robert.
Also on Tuesday Mike Allen will let us know the procedure for the Newbury Show on Tuesday - and I will publish it afterwards to the volunteers.
Competition
The competition this month is for Russian Dolls or for Nesting Boxes. I am sure there will be some good ones on show if you Putin the effort - it should be interesting although I am not actually that fond of Russian Dolls - they are so full on themselves.
Bought a new muzzle for my pet duck the other day. Nothing fancy, but it fits the bill.
Saturday Workshop
The Saturday workshop this month is on the 22nd September - and the theme is Yo-Yos and tool sharpening. I have a Wolverine Sharpening system and will be bringing it along with me to let other people see how it works. If you have a favourite sharpening system, please bring it along if you can and let people see how it works.
We do have a Yo-Yo competition later in the year - so help yourself by coming along to practice on the 22nd September at 10.00am.
Anyway – on to other matters.
Mad 2 weeks
The past 2 weeks have been mad. I went to the local hospital to get the large spotty warty thing cut off my nose, actually I saw Tony Harvey while I was there - he goes in for check-ups on the new heart valve they fitted every now and again. I think they have to spray it with WD40 every so often, then bend if back into shape, stamp his service book, pat him on the head and send him on his way.
Tony's lovely wife told him she thought they would have less arguments if he wasn’t so pedantic. Tony replied “I think you mean fewer”
Anyway - the warty thing, I was sent to varicose different departments and finally got sent away and told to come back three months later. Annoying to say the very least.
What was even worse was a couple of days later they rang back to say "can I come in next Tuesday?" Fools - of course I can, but why couldn't you do it last Tuesday?
I duly turned up at the outpatients department and waited patiently for my name to be called. It took a while. When invited - I went in and found two nurses laughing about the previous patient who apparently had been complaining very loudly about the chairs in the waiting room (which, to be honest, were brand new and very comfortable) - obviously easily pleased on the humour front. Chairs? who the hell complains about chairs?
When they had recovered - they sat me down, checked my name (apparently it is important - and at least made sure I was not the next patient who was due to be circumcised). Frankly I can do with every bit I can these days.
They got me to sign some forms, which I really didn't read - and I was told what would happen, it consisted roughly of the following;
"We will give you a local anaesthetic, slice off the wart, cauterise the bleeding site, put a plaster on it and send you home."
The bleeding site? They seemed so polite when I came in?
Cauterise sounded a bit drastic - (v. c.1400, from Old French cauteriser, from Late Latin cauterizare "to burn or brand with a hot iron," from Greek kauteriazein, from kauter "burning or branding iron," from kaiein "to burn" (see caustic). Related: Cauterized; cauterizing. cauterise in Medicine.) I was going to be branded!!
Senior Nurse Sharon Docherty proceeded to tell me the injection for the local anaesthetic would hurt. I queried the need for making an injection painful when it was intended to reduce pain. My enquiry landed somewhere past Heathrow. "You ladies always say it's going to hurt just to cover yourselves" I said.
"No" she replied with a very straight nursey visage, "This will hurt". I was left with the impression that she was not sugar coating it.
I will spare the delicate reader the swear words I would like to type - but FFS it really did F hurt. It hurt a whole F lot.
"I'll give it a few minutes to take effect" she said, "while I sharpen the old Wilkinson, it will also give you a chance to come down from the top of the curtains."
Again. FFS
I dried my eyes, and a few minutes later she flicked my nose with a specially trained nurses fingernail. "Did that hurt?" she enquired. "No" I honestly replied. Although to be fair it was never painful before, I could have hit it with a cricket bat before - pain was never the issue - trying to peer over the top of it to allow me to drive the car was my major complaint.
Nurse Jekyll took my answer at face value and told me to shut my eyes while she shaved off the warty thing.
Let's consider ratings here. The injection, on a pain level of 1 to 10, was a 9.5
Shaving off the warty thing with a Wilkinson that she had tried her best to sharpen on the concrete step to the hospital garden was, (in best spinal tap mode) an 11.
I reiterate. FFS!
What was the point of the F'ing injection when it made absolutely no difference to the excruciating pain I was now being treated to? Once again my eyes were bulging out of my head as I stared at Nurse Bastard from the relative safety of the ceiling.
She observed my countenance - and calmly said "The local didn't work then?"
Really? REALLY? That's the best she could come up with!
Not to be slowed with an answer, she quickly followed up with a swift "There is rather a lot of blood, we need to stop that quickly, lean back again and I'll stop the blood flow"
You trust a nurse don't you. They are angels. They administer relief and warmth and love to injured souls and mop many a fevered brow. Safe in this knowledge I leant back and prepared myself for some sort of soothing salve which would wash away the throbbing ache and stinging pain.
Hindsight is a wondrous thing. Looking back on things from a distance I do recall her saying that in order to stem the flow of life giving liquid there would be a degree of cauterism to be tendered.
Branding.
Burning.
Fire.
FFFFFF FFFFFFFF SSSSSSSS Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
This was scored at 15 out of 10
I swear she was enjoying it. Three attempts it took to stem the blood flow - every bloody one of them red hot.
I won't be repeating the process unless I need a wheelbarrow to carry a wart around with me.
I was patted on the head, given a voting form to say how wonderful they were and sent on my way.
In the comments section I put the following. "The nurses were wonderful - I was cared for and treated promptly. Sadly the chairs in the waiting room were bloody disgrace." Pick the bones out of that one.
That was Tuesday, now came Wednesday.
The SIM card on my ipad needed to be replaced. Apparently, although it had been working fine for the last 4 years I needed a new one. It arrived in the post last Wednesday - (this being before the nasal interlude) "put it in right away" the nice men said, "not a moment to lose" they said, "everything was automatic" they said, "it will take 10 minutes to register itself" they said, "the old one would stop working" they said. It turned out that everything they said was bollocks apart from the last thing.
I will digress at this point. Rather than sit and type all of this out - I would prefer to dictate it and get someone else to type it. I can't afford a secretary - so I have tried to use the Windoze Speech Recognition software that comes with Windoze 10. You have hopefully read the paragraph above about my sim card - this is what happened when I dictated it.
Around at the same time I received a new system can't in the the post from the ledge in mobile with instructions to make sure that I used it and he clearly. So doing as I told I removed the old; from my load hand and reducing the you want needless to say he did not work. Courses in right away they said - and the mice men that said it put it in , not a younger woman stopped working moment to lose they sad, everything was atomic they said, it will take 10 minutes to register hotel greeb the old one would stop working unfortunately they said it all the everything they said was bollocks by blocking the last link
On the plus side - it got the word bollocks correct! I have decided typing is slower - but tad more accurate.
Like I said, that was Wednesday. I rang them, got through to a foreign call centre to ask why my iPad would not work anymore with the sim card they had just sent me. I spent 90 minutes being told I should try to make a phone call and see if it worked - no matter how hard I tried they could not understand that I could not make telephone calls on my IPad and it would not send texts either. I might have got a bit angry - they cut me off.
Things got better on Thursday - I rang them and it only took me 45 minutes to *not* get a decent result. Still an issue - and by now my landline had packed up as well, so I was now reduced to ringing them on my work phone. I rang on Saturday and was told that I would get a visit from a telephone engineer on Monday afternoon after 4pm.
Good. Except..... Monday was due to be a tad busy.
My car had to go into repair - turned out the appointment I waited for three weeks to get fell on the Monday - at the same time I needed to go to the pre-diabetes Clinic at 11.00am.
So - take the car in at 8.00am, wait for the repair, then go to the clinic, leave there at 12.00 and dash to the office for a meeting and back home for the engineer to arrive at 4pm. Did I mention that the chap putting a new fence in the front garden in place of the horrible overgrown hedge I had - put his spade through my cable TV and internet wiring - as well as the telephone cable while I was out?
Monday was just the gift that kept on giving.
I should stick to cars - especially as my mate Tom is doing so well as a car mechanic. He looked happy this week, he told me he had just finished stripping a 21 year old Escort.
Tuesday it is - I need to rush this one so I am off, see you soon.
One final point – as at the end of this month my email address will be phil.boulter@ntlworld.com
Phil Boulter
Vice Chairman
Kennet Valley Woodturning Club
07836 274345 Daytime work
01635 826009 Evening