Saw a post about pictures

An estate agent set up a competition about pix of your home town; I thought not really my cup of tea but I wonder how many votes it will get.

Star Fish

Luckily found some pix I had taken of the Star Fish site out on Claverham Drove.

                Interior shot of the inside showing the two chambers
Must have been some of the early pictures I took when I first went digital. 
The site is now getting very downgraded. Really needs covering up with dirt again and fencing off to stop the heifers climbing up over it and knocking the dirt off.

 12 or 13 years ago it was a little bit protected by the brambles 

              Most of the interior is fairly sound but cow shit all over the place.
Pity really that the farmer doesn't cover it over again and fence it off. There can't be all that many of those places left. After all it is our local history. After it's gone folk will be saying "Oh what a shame we have nowhere left now to show how things were done during the war."
Almost 80 years ago and what is left? 
Very little.
Only wish I was a bit younger I would have a go at getting something done about it.
I doubt if there is anything surviving down at Blake's farm at the mouth of the Congresbury Yeo. 
The only thing that is not deteriorating is the concrete slabs where they used to light the decoy fires.

It seems as though Yatton is very keen on the Strawberry Line and Nature sites but doesn't worry about things like this.
Yet these places saved many folks lives during the war years.

Dare I say "Wake up Yatton and get your finger out"

One thing is certain.

‘taint goin’ to be ‘Cigeretes and Whisky and Wild Wild Women’ that drive me crazy and drive me insane. It will be the modern machinery inflicted upon us by the makers of the latter day.
My Smart car re-named by me the Smart Idiot is a nice job – provided you don’t need to work on it.
Then you need to take it up (or down) to either Cribbs Causeway or Taunton where for a maximum fee Mercedes  will solve your problem if you have enough money in your bank account.

A similar thing happened to me this morning when after making up, and printing out a crossword. I printed it out first 2 Prints on scrap paper, 3 out of 5 on foolscap sheets.
Foolscap number 4 caught because of a slight buckle in the lead in.
Result — Paper Jammed, paper number 5 jammed behind it it too.

Now I bought my Cannon printer Pixma MG5550 not new but reconditioned. I load my own ink cartridges because I print out a lot of stuff in monochrome rather than in colour.

I have had this happen before so I lifted the lid to the ink cartridge and hooked out the jammed paper from the front, then went round to the back and removed the odd bit of paper there.

Job Done? 

NO Not on your Nelly it was not.

2 hours later after many tries to get it printing again I realised the Ink Cartridge carrier was rather stroppy at moving forwards. Coaxing it I could see a little bit of paper about 2 inches wide and what turned out to be around 3 inches deep in the claws of the rollers.

Using the 12 inch forceps – that I refrained from giving away from my Pike fishing days — I could just manage to nibble away the the bits.
Result Printer working again after 3 hours of assorted swear words and newly invented swear words,

Now had I not kept the forceps and thought to look behind the ink Cartridge I would have had to have sent off the printer to the nearest Cannon mechanics site. Where? Lord alone knows.. Cost ? Lord knows how much. 

Bullace or Cottagers Plum.

Some years back now I visited the site of an old family leasehold. Known as Mary's garden from the original 99 year lease taken out around the early 1800s

Seeing some suckers of trees growing from my G.G.G. Grandmothers Bullace trees (Prunus domesticus)

growing I dug one of them up and planted it in my sisters garden in the  retirement bungalows in Churchill Avenue where it carried on growing.

When, later on she had to go into a nursing home I decided that as the tree, small though it was; would probaly be dug out and thrown away I would take it out and put it in my gravel boarder.

There after a couple of years it put forth blossom but has not shown signs of being fertile. 

The blossom always shows before the leaves which are healthy looking and give a good cover on the tree a few days after the blossom starts to show. It may be that it is too early for flying insects to fertilise the flowers. I don't know; however as the old saying goes "Hope springs eternal" and I would love to have a chance of trying a fruit before I "kick the bucket".

I am now quite a bit too old to venture up to the site of "Mary's garden" again in October or early November when the plums are ripe to try some from her own plot.