On a “Cut & Shut” with the Invisible Man

As I type this I am at 36,000 feet  listening to Buddy Holly. Something about listening to Buddy in an aircraft seems very wrong!

As I climbed aboard Continental flight CO27 from Birmingham, UK to Newark, NJ I had mixed feelings. First the elation of being gifted an aisle seat. This was improved further when I realised that the two seats adjacent to me were occupied by the Invisible Man and his partner*. Yes, I had a row of three seats to myself – now watch and learn as I spread myself out . I know it’s not an upgrade to Business Class but I can live in Cattle Class when all around me are crammed in and I have a row to myself. There is nothing like space and other people’s discomfort to give me a warm glow. No, it’s not selfish, I’ve done my time and flown the miles, I’ve earned this. I still have the mental scars of a flight to Mexico stuck between two very fat women and my last flight from Newark to Boston was between the Halitosis twins – THIS ROW IS MINE.

The smug feelings were somewhat dampened as I took my seat as looked up at the overhead lockers. Imagine my concern as I note, and I kid you not, that the row numbers go like this …..31, 32, 34, 35 …..

Notice anything there? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ROW 33? I am not kidding there is no row 33 on the plane. Now I know that some people are nervous of things being numbered 13 and so I would allow for row 12 to smoothly transition to row 14, But I can see no reason for missing out row 33. That smacks of extreme carelessness.

Should I be worried?

Now I’m not a big fan of United Airlines / Continental but fly with them I must – as long as my employer is paying but a missing row really does give me some major concerns. I can see only two reasons why row 33 is missing and neither of them gives me a warm glow.

The first is that it was a manufacturing error. OK, so I am sat at 36,000feet flying at about 550 miles per hour with nothing beneath me but a cold Atlantic in an aircraft that has been built by some Boeing red-neck than has problems with counting sequentially when he reaches the 30’s. I want to be flying in a plant that has been hand built by skilled craftsmen out of unobtanium not some tit who can’t count.

The second and even more worrying scenario is that this Boeing B757-200 is what is know in the trade as a “cut and shut”, in other words a plane that has been assembled from the front end of one plane and the rear of another**. They would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for that meddling kid in 34C that noticed that an entire row had been lost in this botched union.

I have saved this to a USB stick and will tuck it inside the Black Box when I have finished.

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 * I’m not sure whether the Invisible Man is married, gay or travelling with a business colleague on account of the fact that I couldn’t see either him or his partner.

** usually after accident damage!

A win at last

Sunday started an hour earlier than I would have liked as TP had a Rugby match scheduled at a nearby club.

His Team were matched against a “Development Squad” at one of the big local clubs. I have to admit that I wasn’t over confident as the A-Team feature a few County Players and I thought that the Dev Squad** would be pretty handy too. TP’s team have been a bit “iffy” recently and consequently I expected the worst ….

…. How wrong was I!. TP’s team absolutely thrashed the opposition with a final score of 34:5. It was an impressive score for an away match on a pitch that had a slope like a Himalayan foot hill. It could have been higher still as a couple of tries were lost due to an infectious case of “white line fever” where the players failed to pass to better positioned team mates. TP nearly scored too but was tackled in to touch just on the Try Line. Hopefully this will give the team the confidence boost they need and put them in shape for next Sunday’s home fixture.

The afternoon was somewhat hectic as T&M needed walking, my case needed packing and I had a piece of back bacon that needed removing from the dry cure, soaking and then having a thorough rub with black treacle.

After that I was ready for a very early night as I need to be up and out of the house by 6 a.m. to catch a 9 o’clock flight to Boston. This however was not going to happen as 30%’s brother and his GF joined us for Dinner before we went to the Courtyard Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon to spend an evening in conversation with Tim Minchin.

The aforementioned Mr Minchin has written the music and lyrics for Matilda, The Musical which is currently receiving massive acclaim and which I fucking missed because I was in Boston on the night I had front row. stalls tickets! 30%, TP and Jules all told me how fantastic the show was – CURSE THEM. Tim spent the evening talking about the show and how he constructed the songs. He was his usual funny self and he threw in a couple of his comedy numbers as well as excerpts from many of the show’s songs.

Despite not having seen Matilda, the show was great but I have this message for the arsehole that decided that he needed to check his i-Phone on the stairs as the entire population of the auditorium exited at the end of the show ….

…… “You, Mate, are not that fucking important and neither will you ever be that important. There is nothing in your tedious little life that necessitates holding up an entire theatre audience just because you want to see whether you have a text or a Facebook message. Also, you are not good looking enough to get a shag now FUCK OFF out of my way and try to get a semblance of a life instead of living a sad, empty, virtual one through the semen smeared screen of  your bloody phone – WANKER.

Rant over.

Oh, there was one other thing, the hens have managed a total of 6 eggs over the past eight days. It should be noted that I am well aware that this is down to two hard working members of the flock and the other, bone-idle, dozen or so better watch out - I know who you are*.

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* You can tell the layers by their bright red combs. The "slackers" are easy to identify.

** "B" Team

Domesticity

On Saturday TP spent the day with his Mum and 30% had nipped down to the Hair Salon to have some welding done so I was left to my own devices in the morning. NOTE TO SELF: comment* on 30%’s hair on her return.

I took T&M out for an early walk and then returned to dig my suitcase out from the garage ensuring that I picked the one with the US power adapted after the cock-up of my previous trip. I then spent a happy hour or so collecting my travel essentials together and made a start on tidying the kitchen.

30% and I lunched together and then I spent a couple of hours doing some necessary woodwork in TP’s new bedroom…..

….. Andy & Steve have been re-hired and are turning up the week after next to decorate the two bathrooms and TP’s new room. Although it is a pretty straightforward “sand and paint” sort of job there was an irritating narrowing gap between the TP’s door frame architrave and the wall. I therefore had to scribe and cut a fillet of timber a couple of metres in length and between 6 and 18 mm in width to fill the unsightly gap. Job Done.

In the evening we dined out at The Why Not; a local pub. The food was absolutely fantastic and the menu was surprisingly extensive. I had smoked duck breast as a starter and followed it with fillets of Sea Bass. I couldn’t fault it and TP and 30%’s meals were reported to be just as good.

We retired from the pub quite early as we were all shattered and collapsed sated in front of the TV.

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* “Positively” is probably best for my health

A Mystery Solved.

I bumped in to Marilyn this afternoon when I was walking T&M.

Marilyn (not her real name) is "mum" to Murphy and, until fairly recently Twig; a greyhound who sadly died last year. We wandered along where our walk routes overlap and Murphy bounded along with T&M. Marilyn commented that the exercise was doing him good as he no longer had Twig to play with. It was really nice to see T&M cavorting with him, especially as he bounded in to the Dew Pond which encouraged T&M to follow. Tyson was quite apprehensive as I think she is nervous of water after falling though the ice in to the Old Moat when she was chasing Ducks on Boxing Day. Her confidence eventually won out and she bounded in. Her desire to play with Murphy suggests to me that her next season may not be that far off either!

During the walk the conversation turned to Blaize who was another 2010 casualty and this is the mystery in the title of today's entry.

Blaize was a young gelding that lived in a paddock along my most frequent walk. Most days I would stop and give his nose a rub and rummage through my pockets for a Polo or two which he seemed to enjoy. Blaize was a fairly young horse, maybe 5 years old, but he had never been broken as it was suspected that he had a weakness in his forelegs and it was thought that he would not make a good hack, being susceptible to lameness. He therefore lived out his days in the paddock scrounging a variety of titbits and treats from the various walkers and passers by.

Just before Christmas Blaize disappeared from his paddock, or so I thought. The weather at that time was cold with heavy snow so I guess I just assumed that he was snug in his field shelter. The weather tended to make me hunch in to my coat and scarf and trudge on. So it was a couple of days before I noticed the blue tarpaulin in the field which was ominously horse shaped, or should I say "dead horse shaped". An acquaintance confirmed that he had been put down but that his corpse could not be moved until the snow had cleared somewhat.

The mystery was why he had been put down. He had seemed a young and healthy animal and had become a regular visit for me and many others. He had become just as much of an acquaintance on the walk as many people and a lot more personable than some!

I found out from Marilyn that he had been a victim of the hard frosts and snow and had apparently slipped on the frozen ground and damaged one of his front legs beyond hope of recovery. I'm guessing a break and so the vet was called in and his days were ended.

It was a bit dark walking past his covered corpse for a week or so until the thaw set in and a JCB was able to access his paddock and dig a suitably large hole. I quite miss the old fellow and the field is not such a pleasant point in the walk now it has a slight rise of bare earth at its centre.

Picture Post. No. 2

Another quiet day and there are only so many dog walking tales that a body can take so I have trawled through my picture archives and decided upon this one.

Geese: Tarbet, Scotland - Summer 2009

It was taken in Tarbet in the North of Scotland in the Summer of 2009. We were waiting for a boat to take us over to the Handa Island Bird Sanctuary and this flock of geese were gently paddling across the bay.

Marauder's Bumper Book of Crimes No. 5 in an occasional series

Yesterday morning I hosted a conference call to discuss Disaster Recovery on the latest assignment.

During the introductions Marauder decided to announce herself to my colleagues. It appears that her volume control and sustain are currently set to 11.

Travel Planning

Yesterday evening's request to travel to Boston early next week meant that much of Tuesday morning was spent battling with Dante's unwieldy on-line reservation tool to locate flights that allowed sufficient time to transfer from one airliner to another and a hotel that was in the same city let alone State.

I may be exaggerating slightly but the tool is appalling. I asked for hotels in the vicinity of Cambridge MA. In fact I asked for hotels withing 3 miles of Cambridge MA. Why then was the bloody tool giving me a list of 50 hotels, the majority of which were more than 10 miles away? It even gave me half a dozen hotels which didn't have an "approved room rate". In other words; book at your peril because there will be all sorts of scrutiny when you try to claim the room cost.

And as for flights, don't get me started. American Airlines and Continental are merging and the damn tool gives flights by each of these carriers to Boston. The only difference is the logo and the flight number but the tool will only let me buy a flight from one of them. No clues as to which one I just have to select one and hope. No surprises then, when I had to abort, go back and select the other one!

I don't mind choice but take exception when the damn things are presenting invalid information and have filter tools that don't work.

Then there is the general grumble that I cannot fly direct to Boston and have to travel an hour further in to New York, spend a couple of hours in the Terminal and then fly back on myself in to Boston. That results in an additional 4 hours of travelling time and an additional 400 miles of air travel.

Did I mention the entirely separate travel authorisation tool where I need to estimate all of my expenses and then get 4 levels of approval before I book my trip?

Rant over.

Unexpected sight

This morning I took a drive in to the nearest Circle of Hell to meet up with Golfy. Golfy has recently moved in to a similar job to mine and we agreed to meet up and have a chat. I have decided that I may know very little but am an expert in being the New Guy in this role. Golfy is now challenging for this position which means that I am heading for the anonymity of been around a bit and therefore should know better. Curse him!

It is Golfy's birthday to day and he is 294* I therefore decanted a portion of the 2010 Blackberry Vodka for him and took it in as a gift. He seemed to be delighted and took a sip from the bottle at approximately 9.15 am. That is, perhaps, a glimpse in to his near future as a possible way of dealing with the new job.

The unexpected sight - Yes, I'm getting to that - on the way in to work I saw a small herd of Fresians strip grazing a fodder crop. "So" you might ask, "what is so unusual about that?". It is the middle of January and it is rare to see dairy cattle turned out in Winter. They are usually housed in barns and fed on silage, hay and concentrates rather than go to the effort of turning them out to graze pasture that isn't growing. It was a rare sight and it triggered a memory from some forty years ago.

When I was a child my Dad was a Dairy Farmer too and I remember being in the cattle shed during the winter feeling the warmth from the cows and the unmistakable smells of the beasts, their food and their wastes. But most of all I recall the day in Spring when they were finally turned out. It is an unforgettable sight; that small herd of cows released after perhaps 3 months inside. I remember them galloping and bucking with the sheer exuberance of being released back out in the pastures.

Golfy and I had a good day and I gave him an overview of my current project to give him an idea of how things are done. It looks like we will be working together for the next few weeks at least. I have to say that this might seem to be a case of the blind leading the blind but, as we both agreed, we old enough to ask for help and guidance so I'm sure things will be fine.

I returned home early as TP had been off school sick and he was still huddled on the sofa. He appears brighter this evening and I think he may be fighting off a cold.

As for me my evening started with the rubbing of cure in to the loin of pork. I then came to my laptop to write this Journal entry .....

..... that was my mistake. I now have to arrange to fly to Boston next week for a Customer visit. I really should turn off the instant messaging software but that would only have delayed the request. Ho Hum!

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* in cat years

Eggs & Bacon

Today started with a whizz over to the Rugby club for 10 o'clock only to find that TP's team had an away match but we seemed to have been missed off the email advising us of the location and time of kick off. Having missed the match we left TP to his own devices in the car and took T&M for a walk over the fields behind the pitches. There seemed little point in simply turning round and going straight home as T&M seem to enjoy walks in pastures new.

The missed rugby match meant that I had regained an hour of my life and used this to start the curing of a large loin of pork that 30% had picked up in Tesco on Friday. The plan for this piece of meat is to produce some more Black Bacon following the success of our first attempt that was devoured over Christmas.

The Loin will be massaged in a dry cure daily for the next five or six days before being washed and soaked and then massaged in black treacle for a further week. The result should be a fine piece of Black Back Bacon ......

...... and perfect timing too as the first egg of the year was laid by one of the Minorca's this morning. About time too - those idle hens haven't laid an egg for the best part of 4 months as the moult and the diminishing day lengths inhibit their laying. I'm not expecting a glut anytime soon as it could be days before she lays again and weeks before her colleagues decide to pitch in. That's the thing with older hens, they lay lovely big eggs but not many of them.

This afternoon 30% has planned our US Road Trip and TP and I have pretended to help by nodding and saying yes at the appropriate points.This is not wholly true but apparently my tangential research in to how much a bison would cost* was "Not Helping".

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* a calf is in the region of $700 - $1200

Dog House

Funnily enough this is not a Tyson or Marauder related Journal Entry.

It is a reference to TP's metaphorical location as, for the THIRD time, he has gone straight from school to a friend's home and not bothered to 'phone to say he has arrived.

I'm not, or at least I don't think I am, an over protective parent, and I have not spent the past 24 hours fretting but it would be nice if the little git took 2 minutes of his life to phone home.

A quiet day

Things have been quiet all week and I am starting to look at some on-line education to keep me occupied, fill some knowledge gaps and place ticks in boxes.

Mind you, after yesterday's entry I am also tempted to look at jobs where the salaries are on the increase as Dante's salary reduction tactics i.e. not applying inflationary increases means that within a short space of time I will be able to slip from a  Technical Sales role to a B&Q shelf stacker with no impact on annual income. Plus I will then get a substantial discount on DIY materials and be able to shrug aimlessly at customers and direct them to the wrong end of the store before buggering off for a tea break.

Dad popped in for coffee this morning and brought Tilly with him. He disappeared with a couple of frozen packs of pea and ham soup and a large jar of pickled eggs. He has promised to drop off some of his tomato soup when he next visits. We do this often - swapping food and recipes - and it is always a delight. His most recent offering was a pork terrine that Younger Brother dropped off when I helped him out with his dissertation a couple of days back.

TP is spending the night over at a friend's so it was just 30% and I that sat down to a couple of fine steaks from a local farm washed down with a 2002 Faustino IV Reserva. 30% commented that it was quite a fine bottle of wine to open just because it was Friday but we agreed the steaks definitely deserved it.

Think of a Number .....

Today is the point in Dante's Staff Appraisal Process where I get to meet with my Manager and he tells me how I have done in the past year, what my performance rating is and the things I should look to do in the next 12 months.

Any of you who don't work for Dante's will be possibly thinking "seems fair enough" but those who do will either be sniggering cynically or frothing at the mouth.

You see, Dante's appraisal system is a little odd in that it has a stated aim*** of driving up the performance level of its personnel. One can understand that any organisation would want to do this to be competitive and it does, of course, use mentoring and training* to do this. It also, and here's the rub, has quotas for each Performance Grade.

This makes it very rough on those who are at the point between one grading and another. There appears to be no lee way; x% are top performers and get the benefits. You may have worked your whatsits off during the year but if your face doesn't fit and the bullshit you and your Feedback providers have given is not up to the mark, then forget it. I probably also need to point out that it is a qualitative system rather than a quantitative system so the judgements are made on the basis of narrative and perception rather than fact finding.

I suppose, at this point, that I should state that I did OK. not "great", not even "not quite great", but "OK". This is what I had expected. I have just moved to a new role and could hardly be expected to be winning hearts and minds with little or no experience, but I did OK.

Where this approach is especially rough is at the lower end of the performance spectrum where a low grading can result in all sorts of management focus and activities to "up one's game". That is all well and good if you truly need to pull up your socks but what about the poor sods that have been pushed in to that category by the immovable clip levels that are in place. They were doing fine. They weren't top flight bods but they were there keeping things running and fixing broke things. They were perhaps, never going to set the world on fire but they are a necessary part of the organisation and understandably tend to get very demotivated when they get a crappy rating just because a management policy set a quota rather than developing a review system that actually attempts to accurately rate personnel.

There are countless gripes and issues with the system and one of the major ones is that it is securely linked to the pecuniary rewards. Consequently one can have worked one's balls off but be just outside the clip level and get sweet  F A when the pay rises are announced. I have encountered this situation personally and know how insulting it is to be told that you are situated high in your performance category. So what, when push comes to shove there are no formal gradations in that category so I am just the same as the slacker that has managed to pull their socks up and crawl from an "unsatisfactory" to a "satisfactory".

I know this is a difficult task. A lifetime ago I used to appraise staff and I know how hard it is to stray away from the middle ground and define someone as a star or as crap but that is what is needed. Managers who know their people and can identify wheat and chaff.

I could go on about this "ad nauseam" but the bottom line is that an Appraisal System should be just that. A system that evaluates an organisations personnel. Dante's seem to have bastardised that in to some form of black joke that doesn't stand up well to scrutiny.

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* Provided that you can book and complete your course before the budget is frozen**
** usually around 2nd February
*** as for it's unstated aims -"don't go there".

Picture Post

A quiet day at work and so I have taken the opportunity to trawl through My Pictures and present this one.

I took it at San Diego zoo back in August 2006 when we took our first road-trip. I love the pattern on the Hippo's skin made by the sunlight hitting the waters surface.

Back to work

Tuesday was my first day back in front of the laptop after the Christmas and New Year break.

It was a relatively quiet day as the 4th of January was the deadline date for my current project and we are now hopefully in to a lull whilst the client makes some decisions. There are a few loose ends to be tied and whilst addressing one of these I noted how my world had turned during the past year.

Early in 2010 I became aware of a very senior member of staff at Dante's Nine Circles of Hell. I became aware of him because he used to send legally necessary missives to me and five thousand of my colleagues telling us that 20% of us were to be made redundant. They were neither pleasant or unpleasant mails. Just communications that had to be made as part of a headcount reduction and the associated UK legislation. It was a rough few months and I was one of the lucky ones.

During that process and, in part, as a result of the negative feelings it evoked, I decided to take on a new role at Dante's - pushing another boulder incessantly up the hill - as it were.

The net result of the role change is that this Senior Daemon now e-mails me personally and even bothers to send a "Thank you" when I reply.

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But that wasn't what I had planned to note down today.

The holidays are over and most people are back at work. This means that I can retake my walk and not have to utter a jovial greeting every 400 yards to a bunch of people who I have never seen before and am highly unlikely to see again.

Christmas Holiday walkers ...... its not a crime. I can understand why people would want to take a walk at Christmas. After all, the weather was fantastic and there is nothing like exercise to shift the uncomfortable stuffed feeling that follows a full breakfast, followed by chocolate, incessant nibbles and a colossal turkey dinner.

As I said, its not a crime but I have found that I have become very possessive about my walking routes and strangers are not particularly welcomed. I am not alone in this feeling and other regular walkers feel the same....

...... and that is the peculiar thing. I am quite happy to bump in to other regular walkers but the "Christmas Walkers" are a source of mild irritation. Why is that? I suppose one of the factors is that my fellow Regulars are used to each others dogs and accept the canine chaos that ensues when dogs meet up and perform the obligatory chasing round in circles accompanied by enthusiastic barks. Christmas Walkers, on the other hand are an unknown and I end up frequently calling T&M back and restraining them to avoid startling these "once a year walkers".

As I jot this down I think fondly of Francis who died sadly and unexpectedly at the beginning of 2010. I didn't know her particularly well but we used to meet regularly when walking and she shared this view. She was a vivacious retired nurse who was "mum" to Mungo and Fidey.

Helping Out

A large chunk of my final day of holiday was spent in the company of my much younger brother.

We don't see a lot of each other as he is currently away at University in Cardiff where he is studying Illustration. The reason for the visit was that he wanted me to give his Dissertation a look over and see whether I could assist with its readability.....


...... after a few hours on the Psychology of motivation and creativity I have to say that my head hurt.

I hope he does OK. It is nerve racking to take apart sentences on a subject one is not overly familiar with and reassemble them hoping to clarify thoughts and arguments.

Advance Planning

30% and I are air-miles collectors, or rather the credit cards we use allow air-miles to be taken as an alternative to in-store discounts. With the increasingly wide availability of card payments points we simply make the majority of our purchases via a credit card and then settle the account at the end of each month. This approach allows us to rack up as many air-miles as possible at no cost other than a little discipline around payment method and account settlement.

Today we reaped the rewards as we booked 3 flights out to LasVegas in August. We don't plan to spend much time at all in Vegas, it is simply a reasonable entry and exit point for a road trip through some of the Western States. There are always plenty of hotels and hire cars available and fight availability is good via the air-miles site. We plan to head North from LasVegas towards Yellowstone but at the moment that's the sum total of our planning. Some of my colleagues have suggested that the Grand Tetons are a "must" if visiting Yellowstone so the route is likely to take in that National Park.

We have been out West a couple of time before and I absolutely adore the Western States I have visited; California, Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I even enjoyed the desert landscapes of Nevada so am really looking forward to the next trip.

We didn't quite have enough air-miles to get three free trips but the discount was excellent and we have three flights for the price of one and plenty of air-miles left over to book the hire car.

Roll on August.

New Year seems a bit of an odd celebration to me. It is, after all, an entirely artificial point in the calendar. If one were looking for a significant date in the calendar that was a transitional point surely the Winter Solstice would be better, not from a pseudo-Druidic religious viewpoint, but from a celestial mechanics perspective it is the point at which the days start to  lengthen and therefore a more logical point to mark the end of one year and the beginning of another.

I appreciate that the majority in the Judea / Christian world go with 1st January but I just think it's a bit odd and to me 21st December is more significant as I know, from that point, that the days are getting longer and that, in time, the Spring will arrive with the associated explosion of life.

Even this suggestion is somewhat globally localised as the Southern Hemisphere would look to 21st June as their New Year as this is the point at which their days lengthen again.

Putting this aside, we had a normal Saturday really. Christmas debris was cleared and the pile of logs deposited near the garage just before Christmas was stacked under a tarpaulin with the assistance of TP.

We went to my Dad's for dinner and he had done a beautiful roast leg of lamb and, to 30%'s delight, a trifle for dessert.

Advanced woodwork

30% claims not to know what a compound mitre is.

Having cut a slice of bread from the loaf this morning I'm not sure I believe her.

Thursday

Thursday morning was spent attaching the TV wall bracket in our bedroom. All went well and within a relatively short time it was firmly fixed and vertical. TP and I then slid the TV in to position and I swore repeatedly as it was irritatingly out of true due to some play in the aforementioned bracket. This necessitated numerous trials and adjustments to resolve, but resolved it was. I can now report that horizons are appropriately horizontal and street scenes are no longer reminiscent of Pisa or some post-earthquake location.

My next mission is to raise floorboards to locate and route coaxial to enable connection to the Sky box.

Today like Wednesday and also Friday is a holiday for me but I have been persuaded to attend a number of relatively short but vital review calls. The persuasion was the unspoken and therefore incredibly sophisticated "its only a couple of hours over the three days" but I am realising how even a single conference call* takes away that holiday feeling because a colleague is now controlling my time.

It is Moneypenny's birthday today so we are off the spend the evening with James Bond and Moneypenny and our mutual friends, and childrens' TV Rag Doll characters, Rosie and Jim. A splendid time was had catching up on news and generally taking the rise out of each other whilst the collection of children disappeared to munch on pizza, play on the XBox360 and watch DVDs until a time far too late for even the eldest of them.

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* Never mind the necessary follow up emails that then seem to be absolutely vital.

Hunter Wellingtons aren't worth the money

A real pea souper today that didn't clear.

A quiet day involving little more than a walk and a trip in to town to pick up a bracket to wall mount the new TV. You can tell it was quiet when a seasonal visit by Village Idiot gets a mention in The Journal. He was his usual self recounting tales of his Christmas Budget; £27.00, and the fact that he had already knackered his new Wellingtons shifting the lorry battery that he uses to wedge shut* the door on his fowl pen.

This provoked a rural Consumer Review and both VI and I agreed that there is absolutely no point in buying expensive wellies as they do not appear to have a longer lifespan than cheap ones. My last pair were Argylls that I inherited from my Dad who, in turn, acquired them from Ministry of Agriculture stores. These were at least 16 years old when they gave up the ghost in the January 2010 snows. I nipped on to one of the local feed merchants to get a replacement pair and briefly toyed with a pair of Hunters but these are for people with thinner calves than mine so opted for a replacement pair of Argylls. I noted, with mild interest, that Argylls are also produced by Hunter and state that clearly inside the boot.

I hated the damn things from the start. They were floppy and rubbery rather than firm but pliable like the previous pair and never gripped the foot properly as the old ones did. I persevered but never really bonded so it is with mixed feelings that I point out that they have worn out in less than 10 months. I kid you not - I haven't punctured them or ripped the upper - I have actually managed to walk the heels off them in under a year.

I only wear them when it absolutely soaking so it is not as though I have used them day in day out but my road test suggests that most of the £30 I spent on them was pure profit as a pair of Dunlops are about £12 and I am pretty damn sure they will give me at least as much mileage.

I cant believe I have just written a review of a pair of Wellies but, thinking about it, I wish someone had 12 months ago.

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* when I re-read this before publishing this read "wedge shit the door". Having seen the state of VI's fowl pen, either will suffice