Popps

44°N Hall of Fame

welcomes it's first and founder member

Popps

Without whom, the World, and particularly the 'Vax-Penne-Vaour' Triangle would be the poorer.

Catch his blog at

http://www.bitsnbobsshowntell.blogspot.com/

October Competition - Farine v Chaux - Il faut calculer!

Spent today mixing stuff. The Stuff in the first photo went onto the walls. The Stuff in the second photo went into my tummy oh!

  
What you need to do is come up with is a a NUMBER. 
The Number is between 50 and 150.
The mix in the barrow comprises two types of lime and some hemp fibre.
The mix in the bowl comprises plain white flour and the content of two plain yogurt tubs.

The FIRST MIX covers 3 square metres
The SECOND MIX makes 4 nam breads ( for tonights meal of dahl and onion bahgees).


COMPETITION QUESTION : If I wanted to cover the same area of wall with nam dough, what would be the equivalent total number of Nam Breads I could have made ( and maybe eaten) with that dough?

In deference to TOPPER - the FIRST PERSON to give me a number within 3 of the answer will win a place in the 44°N Hall of Fame. But DON'T KEEP ON GUESSING - only three attempts will be accepted per entrant, the third or latest being considered FINAL.


In case your wondering, I have, JUST NOW, calculated the answer and have written it down  - and my dear wife Denise, will O.K. that. 


Good Luck

YEAH or NAY - Tank Crew 1945

Happy Fellows indeed posing for the camera yet Two of the Four failed to come home. Dad was one of the lucky pair to survive and so I suppose I exist because he was spared - but  Buddists may have something to say to that logic, and at greater length I suspect! 

So, if you had to say, either yeah, or nay, on a "BRING BACK CONSCRIPTION" on a Government Referendom - then what would you say? YEAH or NAY

Black Spout

Lochnagar in the late sixties was a lonely place. We felt it was ours - special somehow - and my time on its frozen slopes, often frozen in body, and numbed in the mind, live in me to this day.
I would hazard that the mountain knocked out the rough shape of the 'Me-to-Be' from its cracked and leaky mould.

The view down the 'Spout' shows a climber easily soloing up the gully without need of a rope, or even crampons. The snow looks deep and soft, and the axe, held in his right hand, provides sufficient security. 


But, one day in November 1969, the same photo would have shown three climbers, situated approximately 100+ meters further down-slope. The photo would also have shown that they shared no rope. Two of the climbers had axes, the third was wearing crampons on his boots. The axe-less, crampon-equipped climber was 30m up the gully which at this point was more a ribbon of ice between glazed rock walls,  than the snow filled chute you see in the photo. 

What comes next you can guess - the Cramponned Climber slips, falls, Can't brake, and plummets into the Two down-slope who somehow stop his descent. The Three are shaken, the more so to realize that the Faller has probably broken his Arm. 'The One' is in pain, 'the Two' are in "Let's get out of this Predicament" mode. They decide to climb on, as it's simpler to go on up, maybe only 300m to the summit of the gully, that to try and reverse down over 700m of steep frozen snow. Good decision. Shortens to distance, and hence the time.

RESULT : SURVIVAL : Minimal gear, no medication, no digital compass or Iphone, no way of saying hello to anybody.  Foolhardy - Yes. Stupid - No. But in 1969 we went with what we had. And I applaud those amongst us who publicly shun the so called 'modern' benefits of our current lives.

I'm reading a 'Popps' book I recently borrowed, 'A Friend of the Earth' by 'T C Boyle' - 71 pages in out of 308. I'm liking it. (Our generation.!!!!!.............)

Pork Chops - September Competition

So what has a raging river in spate have to do with the title - "Pork Chops" ?

 

I know of one answer - because I "was there"

How many others of you can come up with a tidy solution?

A simple paragraph, two or three sentences will suffice - and I promise the supplier of what I judge to be the best entry TWO wonderful, full-flavoured pork chops.

But don't delay - the deadline I've set to Midnight 20th September.

 

Charles my Grandfather

Stockport in the 1920's - on the steps of what was then a slum above the Mersey.

Carlton Crescent. The street was bigger then, but this house and three others still stand, now a block of four tidy terrace houses, amid the new build that came in the years thereafter. My Grandfather, in his wasted waistcoat, was already a wasted man and soon to die. As a victim of pneumatic fever as a child, his health was always suspect.

Alice, his wife lived on,  and as her grandson in years to come, it were her special presents at Christmas that I always anticipated with the greatest excitement. She always came to stay at that time, and I seem to remember five of us in the same bed on Christmas morning, opening the presents.

Charles,  I never knew much about - I've uncovered more details lately - through asking Dad about him - what he remembered, because for Dad also, his Dad died early.

My dad, Joseph,  bottom centre in the photo, and holding his younger sister Vera, was born in 1915, but as you can see in the discharge papers, Charles was officially registered 'Unfit for Service' for the Great War in September 1916, after the Somme, but well before Passchendeale in the following year. Had he made the trenches, chances are that he wouldn't have survived.  He did live on and Dad tells me that he remembers scooting to the corner shop on a Friday night at his Mum's request – for a few staples and sometimes a simple, cheap packet of 6 woodbines for his Da. Dad never remembers his Dad smoking in front of him – must have been his little treat! He was a journeyman. Worked away from town from time to time, always for a pittance. He worked as a cotton operative, and I don't suppose the dust helped his asthmatic problems with his endemic lung weakness due to childhood illness. But he wouldn't have been alone. Chronic disability shortened the life of most poor folk at that time.

One detail of his life surprised me ( I first heard it from Dad's own lips last August – one year ago) – evidently Charles used to have many of the local wives calling in with their baking – cakes and other fondery – that Charles then decorated with piped fluting, icing cakes in a style that presumably, the women of the area couldn't match! Or why else would they bring their precious baked goods to be adorned by another? He must have been good at it. He'd also, armed only with some simple hand tools, transformed the front parlour of a neighbouring property into a shop front. He was obviously good with his hands and a true craftsman. Unrecognized and forgotten now, other than for a handful of relatives, but loved and surrounded in Heaven I hope by all his family and friends.

Wormholes

I have to admit that all that stuff about Space being curved and Time itself running fast, slow -  anywhichwaysitlikes - leaves me slack-jawed and lost. It's not that I don't find it interesting - I really do wish I could get a better grasp on it all, but I reckon the modern day Cosmologist must have a direct line to God, or some such other deity cos I'm blowed if I can understand it.

From time to time I've bought books on the Stars, the Universe, Einstein - I even read one or two. I even bought one called '42' but contrary to believing it would answer all my questions, it turned out to be a history of the aftermath of Stalingrad, and the German withdrawal!

Every kid has now heard of 'Black Holes'  fantastically exciting places where the Very Lifeforce of Creation gets swallowed for ever - adults of a certain decrepitude still view them as places they wake up in, at 2.30am, in a cold sweat, treading deep, deep water amid the flotsam and jetsam of their disparate, pathetic lives! (But that's another story).

Then there are 'Wormholes' - these are even more exotic because if you get sucked into one of these beauties, you don't get to disappear for ever. Oh no, you get spewed-out someplace else - presumably in the same Universe but I'm not even sure of that now I think about it. 

Anyway, for those readers more familiar that I, here are the bare essentials, the formula for making your own time-traveling Wormhole-traversing Zimmer-Sling (patent applied for) : 




But please don't mistake the above for the formula below - this is for a non-traversible device - using this as a template would be serious error - it would be akin to slamming into a barn door at MACH 5. I only include it as it doubles as a useful generator of an anti-pasta fusing agent: I've used it once with great success though I inadvertantly splashed some slugs of the gel which melted all the way through the IKEA worktop before I realized it's potency ( I recommened a dilution of at least 10:1).