Billhook

Not sure if you are just winding me up but here today it has been bitterly cold in the Westerly breeze and the Blackthorn is only just coming out.

Not sure about the frost requirement. All I know is that I was walking the fields in just a t shirt on Wednesday which was a balmy Spring day, but yesterday I had a pullover and wax jacket on and it was perishing in the wind!

I remember the 1970s very well. UK was on its knees, a has been nation laughed at by Europe and nothing on the World stage. Power cuts, dock strikes, miners strikes, British Leyland strikes, rail strikes it was not good and the Unions were too powerful. She started off well with the Falklands campaign which brought respect on the International stage. She took on the unions which was never going to be popular with them or their families but it was quite popular with the silent majority. She freed up the financial world to make London one of the most important places and really the cause of our wealth today. She was like a fierce school head mistress who nobody liked but most people respected and one of her greatest legacies was to join with Reagan to sort out the Soviet Union and cool down the Cold War., the fall of the Berlin wall and much more of the relative peace we have had since then until the EU started to tinker with the Ukraine......... The fact that Reagan stopped to consult her on their way to Russia showed that she was a World leader. She did have a vision that everyone could see, it did not appeal to all but at least it was a vision and she was a leader. A great contrast to today's crowd of blow with the wind men in grey. As a final note I am proud that we have had women leaders in these days of sex equality as an example to many countries that would never elect a woman on principle. A lot of our strongest leaders have been women, both Elizabeth 1 and 2, Victoria,. When Margaret and the Queen were ruling over us we were run by women, bit like me in our household! (Never happened in America!)

The other thing I am not too sure of is the flowering of Bullace, Damson and Mirabellum, the latter I know is flowering now and the first two I suspect will flower like the Hawthorn in May but someone will probably correct me We do have a lot of Bullace in the hedgerows here. After a couple of superb Spring days here the Blackthorn has suddenly started to come out with just a few white flowers on each shrub

Where are you Mark? it would be helpful for my little bit of research if anyone replying to this could state the general area they are talking about , please!

Well it certainly turned colder here in the East Midlands when those high winds were here and we have had a few frosts, but there is no sign of the Blackthorn flowers yet and certainly no Hawthorn in leaf.

One of my father's pet sayings which was proved correct nearly every year. We nearly always had a mild spell with drying winds in the first two weeks of March and all the farmers would become very excited and pull land over ready for drilling. We would try and plant some early potatoes and I remember being on the back of a Howard Rotoplanter and it was so cold by late March when the white flowers of the Blackthorn (Sloe) appeared, that I am surprised to have retained my testicles. After this warm February I would be interested to hear reports from up and down the country of the weather when the white flowers appear.

Song for y'all to sing whilst hammering posts in!

Just did the test again but included the one flight and am now up to 6.6 tons It did not ask me about my 53 year old car which although not used on a daily basis does not do more than 22 mpg on petrol However by continuing to use it I must have saved a countless amount of energy that would have been involved in buying a regular replacement. Not sure if that balances out! Same goes for using the recycled bricks and wood in my home.

Not a lot! i live on a farm so no commuting, bike nearly everywhere, eat only Scottish smoked salmon which do not fart very much. Eat own vegetables and fruit. Solar electric and solar tube hot water and wood stove heating. Wood taken from mainly wind fall in the farm woods and processed by me. Very rarely fly apart from one trip to Finland at the New Year for a special birthday , first and last flight for many years. House built from recycled bricks and wood insulated with icynene foam Not sure how to enter the diesel and consumables used on the farm by the tractors and machinery which presumably do not count as my personal footprint as it is a business footprint.

Big halo and virtue signal from me at 5.9 tons but even if we all reduced it to one ton it would still be nothing compared to the energy required to keep the military just on manoeuvres let alone dropping bombs in the far East. A single Eurofighter mission from here to drop a bomb on a target would probably use more energy than everyone's footprint here on Arbtalk A single volcano eruption would be similar. The elephant in the room is the world population which has to be reduced. The only sensible way without war or disease or compulsory cull, is to put a chemical in all sugar which makes people infertile. You would let it be known that this was to be introduced to give people the choice.. This would help stop the obesity crisis as well as the population increase. If this did not work you would make people take an infertility pill before they boarded and aeroplane, or bought exotic foods from far away, or bought any fossil fuel.............keep ramping it up until we arrive at a manageable one billion.

I cannot stop thinking how much June Millington, the lead guitarist, looks like Jimi Hendrix. She is from the Philippines but has similar features to Jimi because of his Red Indian genes from his grandparents.

They were called "Fanny" which in the slightly more prudish 1970s may have been the reason that they were not so well marketed!

and more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcb1HpH42N8

Great Girl Band from the 1970s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imZUqkPlUaQ

A Handful of Dust is a film I can watch again and again Wild Geese for a bit of adventure

Yes Thank you for that from me also.

To be fair to the guy he did say that real life is not like the movies where nine times out of ten a victim of a heart attack seems to make a complete recovery with a couple of big electric shocks. I am slightly confused still about the meaning of a cardiac arrest. Does it mean that the heart has stopped beating altogether or that it is just about beating erratically and causing a small amount of circulation but not enough for the victim to remain conscious? If your victim is in the latter state and you have no phone and you are in a field miles from anywhere and there is an electric fence around the field, would you not give it a go if all else has failed?

If you are miles from anywhere wihout a phone signal and the choice is either leaving someone to die or try anything, then it has to be worth a go.

Just been on a very good first Aid course and we were discussing defibrillators. I asked if it was possible to use a cattle electric fence unit in a dire emergency when you are literally out in the field and of course I was laughed at, with all sorts of reasons about different voltages and how it would be applied. I thought that the 8000 volt low amps of the fencer would be very similar but again made to feel small and ridiculed by the instructor. Found this on the web when I returned home. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4459660/amp/New-Zealand-man-jump-starts-heart-electric-fence.html

Could cure the obesity crisis.

I vaguely remember being told that it was good for trailer floors because it was more resistant to abrasion, for instance when tipping sand or coarse material. It is hopeless if in constant contact with water, but kept in the dry when stored and maybe oiled, perhaps??????