Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Subsidies in action

From blogoir I discovered this cool site trying to throw light on EU farm & agricultural subsidies.

For instance in the UK the average direct aid per farm worker is €9,236 and each hectare of farm land gets €210. Huge companies also have their snout in the trough e.g.  Tate & Lyle Europe receives an annual subsidy of over £120 million! Tate & Lyle is a company with annual turnover of over £3 billion and profits of £300m

I also see from the cabinet office that Tate & Lyle took Sir Brian Bender & his wife to Wimbledon too – must be to sample their sugar on the strawberries.

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School work

Whilst in one of my attics, trying to sort out why the shower drain isn’t working.

I came across the ironing board that I made at school when I was 13 or 14. Since it was combined woodwork/metalwork  I had to make the bracket as well!  Interestingly my mum used it until she died, giving it well over 30 years of use!

Here’s the bracket that I so struggled with nearly 50 years ago :-

In those days we also had to make things like ashtrays and matchbox holders:-


alas, no longer polished to perfection 🙂

The Pièce de résistance however was the bookcase I made. Still in use to this day in my bedroom.

An other memory of metalwork was in our final school leavers exam, we had to make a toilet roll holder. 

I was total clueless so the invigilator helped me and in fact just about made it! – Result a distinction in metalwork and a life lesson in always asking for help and getting other folks to do what you are not good at 🙂

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Muddy Boot day

After my hectic night with Sally (see her posts here and here) plus stopping to take a snapshot of  one of the three police cars wrecked on Regent Street we didn’t make it back home till 1am ish.

Mud, Mud glorious mud
Mud, Mud glorious mud

Then today was up and away to be at Cambridge Rambling Clubs ‘A’ walk led by Carolyn with a 9am start from Hardwick across the total overkill of the blue footbridge over the A428  followed by many many muddy fields to Elsworth for a drink at the George & Dragon run by the aptly named Mr & Mrs Beer.

Here is the walk with some great shots of muddy boots:-

Cambridge Ramblers – Elsworth Walk

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