Category: Abodes

Avatar Farm jail

You really get to thinking when playing with kids toys. Your brain is half-asleep anyway, so when faced with the prospect of mashing wooden blocks with a talking train you start to think outside the box.

What’s missing from this scenario? What could possibly make this more interesting? The baby orb is off doing his own thing because apparently walking around the perimeter of the living room is much more interesting than anything in his toy box.

I believe that most farms, not all farms, would benefit from having a jail. This way all the misbehaving animals would have somewhere to go and think about what they’ve done. You could also use it for lazy farm hands or crops that don’t grow as big as you’d hoped.

In this scenario, the goat was caught trying to steal the farmer’s crypto after lacing his morning coffee with sedatives.

Lump them all in the jail for a bit of down time so the farmer can get on with their day safe in the knowledge that everything will be better. Imagine how big your eggs would be with chickens that feel shame. Crikey!

Avatar The Tip

Look, here’s the thing. We are all now men in our forties. We all own houses and our houses have gardens. Our tastes have changed. We have left behind clubbing, recreational drugs and happy slapping. Our interests and pursuits now are more sedate. And it is time – in fact, I think if we’re all honest with ourselves, it is long past time – that we paid our respect to one of the great joys of middle aged life. I am talking about The Tip.

Nowadays, of course, it’s called a Household Amenity Recycling and Waste Compartmentalisation Zone, but nobody actually calls it that. I know that the council website refers to it by a long name and an acronym at least five letters long, but everyone just calls it The Tip.

What I want to know is, how good is your local tip? I’ve lived near some pretty average ones in my time but we lucked out when we bought our house. My local tip is excellent.

It doesn’t have a huge landfill next to it with seagulls constantly circling overhead, which the one near Swillington used to when I was a kid. It’s one of those little places that just has a line of massive skips and you back your car up to them, and presumably they get emptied and all the crap gets taken away somehow. But I’m willing to overlook that for three key benefits.

  1. Proximity. The Tip is five minutes away in the car. Discarding my worldly belongings is therefore very convenient.
  2. Friendliness. The Tip is staffed by four or five people who are usually having a laugh with each other and are very happy to direct you to the right place when you bring something unusual. Half the time they will do the unloading for you and wave you off with a smile. I did not know a tip could be like this.
  3. No queues. Previous tips I have known have involved a mile of queueing to get inside. Not round here. There’s a booking system, so you go online, book your slot, and when you turn up you get in straight away. You never wait. It’s a revelation. They should all work like this.

Filling a car with junk that’s been cluttering up the house, loft, garage or garden and then slinging it all away is one of the real highlights of middle aged life. You know it to be true, of course you do, but I have to admit I was doubting it recently, until I got home from The Tip and Kate asked whether she could come next time. So we’ll going together, because she wants to go to The Tip as well, and feel the rush of throwing all our old crap into a big skip.

Here’s to The Tip, everyone.

Avatar Newsboost – new town incoming!

Shock news today as Preston City Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council announce joint plans for a brand spanking new development to be built between two well-established towns.

We have it on good authority that something new is happening between Preston and Blackburn.

“This country is full of old,” said local Preston councillor Tolika Doolittle. “It’s swimming in old. We are surrounded by history which is great for tourism, however it doesn’t leave much room for anything else. We’re seeking to build something special that will get people’s tongues wagging.”

The new establishment is set to be built in the space between the two aforementioned towns.

“We’ve taken a bit of Blackburn and taken a bit of Preston, carved them off like slices of cheese. Nobody was really using this land anyway. Once you’ve seen the initial artist’s impressions you will be blown away.”

‘Presburn’, as it is currently known, is still at the initial early stages, with development due to start in six months time and completion expected by 2030.

Locals have been resisting though with several online petitions raising awareness of the small villages already built in the proposed area of development.

Hoghton, Feniscowles and Witton Country Park all sound made up but they are real places with real people living there. We pushed Tolika Doolittle for further comments about this.

“Where? Who? Do they have a Starbucks? Probably not. It’s best to bulldoze now and ask questions later. You’ll all thank me in the end!”

Will we though? Stay tuned for more details.

Avatar “Shed Avengers 2” – mini review

A few years back, I reviewed Shed Avengers, a game I managed to complete but found somewhat frustrating. I said I probably wouldn’t play it again.

Well, the same studio has now released Shed Avengers 2, a follow up to the original, where the same hapless protagonist finds the new roof felt he fitted in the first game has started to deteriorate, allowing rain water in to his garage once more. I expect you’re both dying to get your hands on it and give it a go, but I got a sneak preview.

This is a shorter game than the first, since the whole roof doesn’t need re-felting, but don’t think for a moment that it’s going to be easier. Since the first game the garden has filled up with all sorts of new things, including the materials for a half-finished renovation of the flowerbeds and a new log store built up against the garage wall, offering new hazards and problems to solve.

The game opens with the discovery that there is still no ladder on the premises long enough to safely get you on the roof, but now with the added difficulty that the place where the ladder went last time is now home to a log store and a water butt. The only place to put the ladder is therefore down the side of the structure, which is almost a foot lower down, meaning you have to climb to the top of the stepladder and then step on the handle at the top to try and heave yourself up while the ladder wobbles about on its unsteady gravel footing.

Once you’re up on the roof, you find several large tears in the felt, plus most of the clout nails holding down the edges have torn through the felt leaving dozens of little holes. All of these need painting over with a tin of thick rubberised emergency roof repair material, which is viscous, difficult to apply and probably toxic. A thick frost had formed overnight which is only now melting, leaving the roof partly icy and entirely wet.

Maneouvering across the roof is extremely difficult. The underlying woodwork is still fragile and prone to movement, but is now overlaid with felt that is already torn and mustn’t be disturbed any more, in case more tears appear. This makes it difficult to reach all the places that need to be repaired.

I thought I’d mastered this one by the time I’d got half way around the repairs, and it was certainly a much quicker game to play than the first. But it had a final trick up its sleeve – the final level requires that you get down off the roof without sustaining a life-changing injury in order to win.

This is very tricky since you are, by now, freezing cold and can’t feel your hands. The top step of the stepladder, itself not to be stepped on according to the instructions, is so far below you that your feet don’t reach it. By rolling on to your front you can just about get your foot on to the handle which is absolutely not safe to step on, and dismounting involves a careful balancing act so as not to destabilise the ladder and fall. Naturally there is nobody else on the premises to either hold the ladder and help you down, or to find you lying on the ground with several broken bones and call the emergency services.

Like the first game, while Shed Avengers 2 presented me with interesting problems to overcome and puzzles to solve, I wasn’t keen to go back and play it again. However, it was clear at the end that there was still rain water coming in to the garage, which stopped me getting a perfect score, so I will have to give it another go in January. I can’t wait.

Avatar The right way round?

I am at my best a pedant and at my worst a twat.

Have you ever been walking around a shop and something catches your eye for the wrong reason? With the Orb now here on planet Earth it means that any casual shopping either doesn’t exist or can only take place if the grandparents take him for the afternoon. I love my Orb but he’s not old enough to comprehend that sometimes boring chores need to happen. You get them out the way and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all over. Game over, man. It takes so much longer with a trailing Orb. You take up way more space with a buggy or a pram.

There we were, looking for a new Christmas tree in every garden centre and kind of shop that would sell them. Once it’s done you have a tree that’ll last for a decade (no more flopping around trying to decide what size constitutes as “too high”) and you can get on with your life. Trying to get there can be a long and treacherous hike though; be sure to pack for all weather types.

I can feel my eyes glazing over underneath the artificial lights. My lizard brain screams, “get the one with the thing and the other thing and get outta there,” and I want to agree with it but there are so many options to consider that I shrug it off and carry on browsing. You can’t make a split second decision when fake trees can reach upwards of hundreds of pounds. What if we make the wrong one?

I’m walking past the lighting section in a particular store and I see it. “Wait, what? Nah that can’t be right. That has to be wrong, right?”

Shouldn’t it be ‘rechargeable octopus table lamp’? Why is the Natural History Museum collaborating with Dunelm? Who would buy such a thing and why do I care so much?

Does it really matter? Hardly. With Orb life being the only life there’s very little else going on. If you want thrilling stories and sexy adventures then you’ve come to the wrong place. I have nay nonny no nay none to my name. What I do have are questions about grammar on the boxes of table lamps.

Welcome to middle age. Population: us.

Avatar Retirement thoughts

Now that we’re all middle-aged, there’s the lingering prospect of all the good stuff that you hear about but don’t get to experience until you reach a certain part of your life. Want some examples? How about pains in parts of your body that don’t make any sense (“I never use my little finger so why does it feel as though a lynx is trying to slash its way out of it?”), confusion when entering a room (“wait, wait… I was here to find the… banana, was it?”) or perhaps feeling out of touch in every possible way (“when did people stop using Netscape?”).

It’s inevitable. Though we may joke about being right on the fashions, it’s been some time since I was anywhere near the fashions; I’m barely in the same postcode let alone being right on them. Sigh. Can’t be helped.

There’s no time to sit and ruminate on how unnatural it feels looking through a Reddit post or ask why everyone dancing on Tiktok is going to destroy the human race, there’s so much to do before then. I’ve got to pay off the mortgage first, which means working until I’m probably in my 70’s given that the retirement age keeps going up. There’s also raising my second child (I’m reliably to blame for that one) which is about to begin any day now. Oh, and I still haven’t finished the garden. I think the gooseberry bush is dead.

When the weight of responsibility gets on top of me, I drive a hundred miles out of my way and stop to look at this view. Why? Because one day, I am going to buy it and build my dream home on it.

Now I know what you’re thinking and, you’re right, it is very small. Too small in fact. You have to think outside the box because otherwise your dreams will never come true. The Japanese have been getting by with very tiny pod or capsule hotels for years now. Here’s how it’s going to look:

  1. The bedroom or, more accurately, the standing bed. I think it’s asking too much for the entire building my house will stacked against to turn 90 degrees to the right so that I can have a flat surface, so I will have to get used to sleeping standing up. I’ll nail the pillow to the wall and utilise a slim sleeping bag for maximum space efficiency.
  2. The toilet or, more accurately, the cereal box in the corner. Nothing else will be able to fit in that space except perhaps an A5 lever arch file, and I can hardly three w’s in that now, can I? It’d go everywhere.
  3. The sitting area or, more accurately, the only space left to do anything. I don’t know where all my video games are going to go. I guess I’ll have to put them in storage unless by the year 2055 I’ll have super cool VR goggles where I can play them all using my brain impulses so I can probably lie in my “bed” and play them there, leaving the sitting area for entertaining guests. A snug flat screen TV in the top left-hand corner, a kettle for hot bevs and a shoebox as a coffee table? It’s all coming together.

I’ve got it all planned out. It’s going to look incredible. The only problem is where Vikki and the baby are going to go. I guess I’ll have to purchase the flat on the other side so they can stay there.

That’ll work. For sure.

Avatar Cabinet saga, part 2

Back in May I offered a tantalising glimpse of my next DIY project, which were a set of custom-made alcove shelves. In the two and a half months that have passed since then, you have probably thought about little else.

It’s not yet time to show you the final result – not when I can wring another post out of this story – but it is time to update you on scribing, a new skill I had to acquire as part of this project that would let me cut pieces very precisely to fit the contours of my old house’s wobbly walls.

Read More: Cabinet saga, part 2 »