Breaking and entering

This week: ; ;

It’s Saturday afternoon once again. It seems to come around so quickly!

Although the time is only 4pm, I have the lights on because it is so dark. We are surrounded by storm clouds, with a thunderstorm to the north over Brač and to the south over Sveta Nedilja.

With close to 78 mm or 78 litres\m² this week, I’m not too worried about getting some more rain today, although a bit extra would be nice.

I have watched this storm approaching from the north west. Once again the topography of the island has interfered with the path of the storm.

Directly south of my Dol House, is the highest point on the island, Sveta Nikola, at 626 metres. A small chapel, built in 1487, is on top of the peak.

I can’t actually see the peak because of the wooded hillside behind my home, but it creates a rain shadow for Dol.

Then when you look at the Blitzortung website, which records lightning discharges in real time, you can actually see the storm split into two, caused by the topography of the island and the height of Sveta Nikola.

I took a quick walk up the hill to photograph the approaching storm. I was trying to get a lightning discharge, but decided that as the first drops of rain fell, I would retreat back home. Of course I wasn’t on my own either…

The dark afternoon reminds me that in Europe the clocks change at 02:00 tomorrow, going back an hour.

While we get an extra hour of daylight in the morning, it will now be dark by 17:00 and the days are shortening a we head towards mid-winter.

I also get my hour of sleep back, which I lost when the clocks went forward in the spring… 😹

Jobs this week have included doing an autumn clean in the dining room after having the doors and windows open all summer. Laying the fire in the wood stove ready for its first lighting this winter and other odds and ends.

I also planted the last of my spring bulbs, this time mixed Fritillaria. They are an original Mediterranean plant.

The week has also seen the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster. I wrote an article about the disaster where 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a coal mine slag heap gave way and engulfed a school and part of the village of Aberfan.

In doing the research this week, I came across an article in the British Newspaper Archive, which confirmed that a Police Mobile Column were deployed from Wolverhampton.

The Mobile Columns were a cold war unit, designed to keep the country running if the UK was ever attacked. They began in 1949 and were finally consigned to history in 1970. Little history about them exists, but there have always been suggestions, lacking any firm evidence, that the only time one was deployed operationally, was to Aberfan. At last I had the confirmation.

What surprised me was some of the responses I had to my article. Two people, in different parts of the country provided additional information, including that two columns were deployed, the Welsh Region column and the West Midlands Column. Nowhere has this ever been disclosed before.

Very few accounts exist of what police officers (and all emergency workers) were faced with at Aberfan, because of the horror and enormity of the event. PTSD had not been recognised 60 years ago. Today just a tiny number of the almost 300 officers on the mobile columns are still with us. They were clearly affected by it and have suffered ever since.

I have been able to provide two police museums with the result of my research and even some previously unseen photographs of mobile column officers at Aberfan.

Seldom has any article I have written produced results like this and it is nice to complete some history, from an article about such a horrific event.

Breaking and entering…

I got up on Thursday morning to find a door broken off its hinges and lying on the floor.

To be fair, I had been woken by an altercation at some point, lots of shouting but nothing more and for less than a minute, so didn’t get up to investigate. This was clearly the result.

I have several “cat flaps” which allow the felines free entry to get at their all-day smörgåsbord, their beds and in and out through the yard gates. However I am not unduly surprised it has broken.

This cat flap is 20 years old and is in its third home. I have repaired it at least once when the hinge gave way and the magnetic catch long since failed to engage, so I don’t think it owes me or the felines very much.

When the BBC filmed their “Secret life of the cat” , the university researchers were surprised to discover the number of felines who used cat flaps, not just at their own homes, but anywhere there was a smörgåsbord and a cat flap.

I would like to think that the shouted conversation which woke me, went something like:

“You can’t come in”
“Why not?”
“Because I say so.”
“So who are you?”
“I’m the boss cat.”
“But why can’t I come in?”
“Because you don’t have a warrant…”
“OK, but next time I’ll come with some friends you might not like…”

I know that I have nocturnal visitors to my smörgåsbord, who do not live here. I have my suspicions where they live…

The cat flap is not repairable. No amount of glue and fixings is going to repair it this time, so it is going to have to remain open until the replacement I have ordered on-line arrives, in about a week’s time.

Smelling the sawdust

There are some very evocative smells. Things like fresh baked bread, the petrichor smell after rain and a wood butcher’s workshop.

Different woods have different odours and a skilled carpenter or cabinet maker will identify a wood, not just by its colour and grain, but also by its smell.

Walnut gives off a raisin like smell; Pine has a sap smell, like a Christmas tree; and Sandlewood has a sweet smell, which is why it is used by perfumiers.

While the rain beat the retreat on my workshop roof this week, I was inside working on the wooden window frame I am making.

I calculated the dimensions and planed then cut the wood to size for the frame. This week I bought the undercoat and top coat I need to make it weatherproof, so I now have everything in place ready for construction.

The first thing I did was to mark out the tenons, the rectangular tongues which fit into corresponding mortice holes, using my Mortice Gauge, I marked the outline of the tenon joints.

A Mortice Gauge is an indispensable part of a wood butcher’s tool kit and I have had and been using this one for at least 55 years, getting it when I was still at school.

Another tool is the right angle square and of course the pencil.

Once I was happy with the marks, I moved over to my band saw. Traditional woodworkers would have used a Tenon Saw, a saw made specifically for cutting tenon joints.

I have two or three examples. However these need to be be sharpened every so often to keep them in perfect condition. Mine have never been sharpened and I don’t have the skill or knowledge to do it myself.

So I decided on the “quick” method, using the band saw.

This is where the smell comes in. As I was cutting the pine, it released that lovely fruity, spicy sap scent, which then filled my workshop.

Of course there is a downside, because it means that the timber I am using is barely seasoned and still has a high moisture content. Dry wood does not smell the same.

The finished tenons are still rough but will be ready to be glued into the mortice holes, one I have cut rebates for the pane of glass. But that is a next week’s job… NCG