Thank heavens for health and safety

Health and safety gets a bad press these days. It’s blamed for us not being able to do lots of things that we were once able to do – smoke in pubs, ride motorcycles without crash helmets, allow children to hold burning candles in church ...

Cut through the tabloid bluster and we have to agree that health and safety is a good thing. If it had been around in the 1950s in any meaningful form, my great Uncle Fred Burrows may well have lived to a ripe old age.

Fred worked on the railways in Doncaster (a railway town) and, in the 1950s, rail moved most things in the country – people, goods, livestock, all went by train.

The Flying Scotsman

It was known that my mother’s uncle had been killed in an accident on the railways and the family legend was that he had been run over by the Flying Scotsman, the famous express train that ran between London and Edinburgh.

Thanks to some research by Mike Towers, my cousin’s husband, I now have the facts – and they are not pleasant.

Fred was killed in 1956. He was indeed a railwayman and was working on the tracks when he was run over by a train. Both legs were severed and he died from shock and loss of blood. It must have been horrific.

At the inquest, the coroner asked if any measures could be taken to prevent a similar accident and British Railways said they were satisfied with the precautions taken. What were those precautions? This is a transcript of the report of the inquest printed in the Doncaster Chronicle.

-------

Doncaster Coroner asks about safety measures

Rail man seemed to slip – killed

After a look-out man’s warning shout, three men jumped clear, but a 56-year-old railway lengthman seemed to slip and was fatally injured when a van and coach ran over his legs at Doncaster station.

This was disclosed at the inquest when the coroner Mr W H Carlile asked witnesses if they could suggest measures to prevent a similar accident.

They all agreed the position in which they were working at the time of the accident was very awkward but were satisfied with the precautions taken.

A verdict of accidental death was returned on the lengthman Fred Burrows, South Street, Highfields, near Doncaster who, said Dr Stanley Pearson, senior casualty officer at Doncaster Infirmary, died from shock and haemorrhage following double compound fractures of both legs.

Reginald Clarence Burton relayer, Shaftesbury Avenue, Intake, Doncaster said he was acting as lookout man about five yards from the other three men who were clearing snow from a set of points. He had no idea of the train timetable and his attention was mainly directed to the south to some carriages in the station to see if there was an engine on them.

"I turned round to look in the other direction and saw a pilot train approaching about 10 yards away from me. I shouted straight away and the other three men began to jump clear but Burrows seemed to slip. He was working on the side nearest the platform and had less room to get out of the way," said Burton.

They found Burrows lying between the lines. He was conscious and trying to pull himself up to a sitting position

------

So here’s what happened - the men were working on an icy track, the look-out was looking the wrong way, he didn’t have a timetable to say when trains were due and the first (and only) warning was given when the train was just 15 yards away.

British Railways said it was satisfied with the precautions taken.

Can you imagine the rage such complacency and carelessness would create today? Fred’s widow would have the compensation lawyers queuing outside her house (and quite right too).

A hunting we did go ...

Max at the hunt gathering in Stilton

Today we went to Stilton to see the Boxing Day hunt meet up.

It’s a toss up which end of the social/political spectrum I feel least comfortable about - the class-driven, toff-hating anti-hunt brigade or the hunting, shooting, fishing set. 

Oscar Wilde described foxhunters as the “unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable” but I think the hunters he was referring to were the upper classes.

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect today’s hunts are made up of bankers, lawyers and rich farmers.

I admire anyone skillful and brave enough to ride a horse, I like dogs (especially working dogs) and the hunt does generate some much-needed cash in the rural economy, but the real reason why we went to see the hunt set off today was to show Lucy a little slice of England.

It might be chocolate-box England, but it’s authentic enough and it is quite a spectacle. The local hunt is the Fitzwilliam and it meets at the Bell Inn at Stilton on Boxing Day. The Bell is an old coaching inn and the main road through Stilton would once have been the A1 Great North Road.

Today, it’s a stranded backwater, but the old road is good and wide and the police close it for traffic for an hour to allow the hunt to assemble. A few hundred people come to watch and the pubs in the village have a busy hour or two serving drinks and lunches. There was a good turn-out of hunters (perhaps 30 horses) and they were a splendid sight en-masse.

Some of the dogs are very friendly

However, the real stars with the public who come to watch are the hounds. Foxhounds are quite large dogs, but pretty gentle (provided you're not a fox). They’ve clearly seen all this before and know full well that lots of people come with doggy treats in their pockets, so the pack immediately starts working the crowd. Once the dogs have completed a sweep  of people, pausing for the odd stroke and ear scratch, they undertake a full search of the surrounding area for any discarded edible item (which includes hose poo).

They were very interested to sniff my trousers and gloves, covered as they are by the smell of Holly, and Holly was very interested in a return sniff when we got back.

The master of the hunt gave a little speech before they set off. He thanked everyone for coming, he thanked the hunt staff, he thanked the Bell Inn for its hospitality and he reminded the crowd that there was a general election next year and that we should all support the party that supported hunting. I’m guessing he wasn’t talking about the Lib-Dems.

That done, the master of hounds gave a few toots on his horn and the pack of hounds, which was becoming increasingly impatient to leave, formed up and set off with the lead horse, followed by the rest of the hunt, which seemed to comprise mainly women.

The hounds will follow a scent laid down across a course designed to give dogs and horses a decent run. If any foxes are disturbed along the way, then that’s bad luck for the fox. It’s illegal to hunt any mammal with dogs, but if the dogs disturb a fox and happen to kill it before they can be called off then it’s not a crime.

Tom took this picture of the hunt setting off (above). Lucy below at her first hunt.

Books read in 2014

I haven't been reading as much this past year. I'm tempted to say the reason is that now I'm retired I'm  too busy (which is true) but it's really because I no longer have the dead time of two-and-a-half hours on a train every day.

Twelve-and-a-half hours every week is a lot of reading time and I do sort of miss it. I now spend the time between 6pm and 7.15 watching Pointless and Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, which is diverting but isn't really improving my mind (not that the canon of work by George R R Martin did much for my mind).

Anyway, my list of books read in the past year is much shorter than it was in 2013. Here it is:

Flag Fen: A Concise Archæoguide by Francis Pryor

It has been interesting (as a local) following the story of Flag Fen. It started years ago when I was working for the Peterborough Standard. They found the wooden remains of a causeway going out into the fen between Peterborough and Northey Island, where Whittlesey now stands. Then they found  what looked like a village on an island of logs, with masses of well-preserved timber.

The story has moved on - it's now almost certainly some kind of ceremonial structure linked to a religion or form of worship we no longer know. There are only a couple like it in the world and speculation is that worship was moving away from stone/wood circles and towards water as a sacred medium.

The book tells you everything that's known about Flag Fen, also quite a bit about the pre-history of Peterborough and Fengate. It's academic, but also very readable.

The Enemy at the Gate - Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe, by Andrew Wheatcroft.

I read a little about the Ottomans last year - the struggle between Spain and the Ottomans for control of the Mediterranean and also the fall of Constantinople. I followed up with Osman's Dream, a full history of the Ottoman Empire.

The Enemy at the Gate tells the story of the Turks' siege of Vienna in 1683 and it's quite a story. For the Turks to send an army as far as Vienna and then lay siege to the city (and be within a whisker of taking it) was an amazing feat.

Equally amazing was the spirited defence of the city, led by Count Rudiger von Starhemberg and its relief thanks to Charles, Duke of Lorraine, and the Polish King John III (Sobieski). Had the Ottomans (led by Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa in the name of Mehmed IV) succeeded, then the Hapsburg empire may have fallen with its emperor, Leopold I. Indeed Leopold I may have been Leopold the last!

George of Hanover (later George I of England) brought 600 cavalry and fought in the relief force as Europe's warring kings and princes finally showed some unity, bankrolled by Pope Innocent XI.

If Kara Mustafa had taken Vienna, it wouldn't have meant Europe turning Islamic, but it would have extended Turkey's influence. It may have prevented the First World War, or it may just have substituted one player for another. Imagine a German-Ottoman alliance against Russia and France ...

As it was, after a bitter battle, the Turks were routed and Prince Eugene of Savoy, who had fought in Charles' bodyguard became the commander who drove the Turks out of Budapest, Belgrade and the Balkans over the next couple of decades. The Ottoman empire never really recovered.

Wheatcroft has an easy narrative style without simplifying his facts or analysis. It's very readable.

Zulu: Queen Victoria's Most Famous Little War, by W. B. Bartlett

The film Zulu has made this conflict more famous and more glamorous that it really deserves. It wasn't the British Empire’s finest hour; it was (I suspect) fairly typical of what happens when opportunists and chancers get to be in charge of a country and see a way of feathering their own nests.

Bartle Frere, the governor of the region, wanted to expand his territory into Zululand and he was supported by Lord Chelmsford, a man desperate to make his name. The Zulus were a pretty warlike bunch, but happy enough to sit behind their border (most of the time).

A war was started by Frere by making demands that the Zulus couldn't meet and despite a British commission supporting their border claims, Frere and Chelmsford invaded Zululand with three columns.

Chelmsford was not a competent leader or general. His plan was simple, he thought if he marched troops into Zulu territory, the Zulus would join them in battle and be mown down by rifle and Gatling gun. The flaw in his plan was that the Zulus, inconsiderately, decided not to line up and be shot.

Instead they used hit-and-run tactics, made best used of the terrain and Chelmsford ended up with one column massacred and another besieged in a forward base. A furious British government now had to send more troops to win a war they hadn't wanted to be fought in the first place.

The end was inevitable, the Zulus were eventually mown down; Frere was sacked and Chelmsford's reputation in tatters. No-one came out of it well, least of all the Zulus. The author does a good job of pricking the bubble of glamour that has surrounded the war thanks to the excellent, but historically flawed film Zulu. The injustices are laid bare, both sides' tactics analysed and personal bravery (and cowardice) highlighted. Chelmsford's complete incompetence is thoroughly exposed.

Max lent me the book (he'd found it in a second-hand bookshop) and I left it with Lucy's uncle in Ecuador. He runs a British language library in Quito and this sorry tale of colonialism should sit well in a land that's suffered similar ills at the hands of the Spanish.

Loos 1915 by Nick Lloyd

I had discovered that my grandfather, Richard Little, had fought at the first battle of Loos in 1915 and I wanted to read a little more about it.

A former colleague and fellow pension fund trustee, John Spencer, is something of an authority on the First World War and has a small business leading battlefield tours. He recommended Nick Lloyd's book as the best account of the battle.

Loos, like many battles during this war, shouldn't have been fought at that time or place. It was a hopelessly optimistic objective in a wider plan to support a French attack further down the line. Just as the Somme offensive sought to relieve massive French losses at Verdun, Loos was intended to draw German resources away from another part of the front to allow the French to break through.

Reading it made me quite angry. Here was incompetence on an incomprehensible scale. The book might have been titled 'How Haig Almost Killed my Grandfather'.

The British command failed to learn from earlier battles that year which tactics worked best and which didn't, so they employed those that didn't; they used poison gas for the first time and were so determined that it would work and it should be used, they persisted even when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.

Worst was that there was conflict between two British commanders - French and Haig. Haig commanded the battle, but French wouldn't give him control of the reserves, so they were positioned too far behind the lines to effectively reinforce the front or quickly occupy territory taken in the first wave of attacks.

The reserves often had no maps, they didn't have a clue where they were, they arrived late, artillery support was inadequate ... the list goes on.

My grandfather was in the 10th battalion York & Lancaster Regiment, raised in south Yorkshire during 1914. He was among the first of Kitchener’s new recruits and he and his comrades were about to get a bitter awakening. They were in the reserve, but managed to reach their objective and relieve the first wave of troops by midnight after the first day of the battle. They were expected to launch a fresh assault on the German second line on day two.

The battle was a complete shambles. Logistics broke down completely, everyone was late, no-one knew where they were and battlefield intelligence was completely missing. Nick Lloyd's account of what happened to the 10th York & Lancaster Regiment is at odds with the war diaries of the battalion. He says orders were misinterpreted and they moved into an exposed position, German artillery spotted them and shelled the hell out of them.

The war diary (and I've read it in detail) has them in position and attacking their objective. They take ground, but are under murderous fire from a number of machine gun positions, which they cannot locate. They fight off a counter-attack and then try again to take their objective, but suffer the same fate. They lost around 350 men out of a total strength of less than 800 and were relieved later in the day.

Casualties at Loos were higher per capita than the Somme. The area immediately in front of my grandfather's position was called Corpse Field, which gives some idea of the situation.

Such losses are incredible and highlight the thoughtless slaughter allowed by high command. A battalion is thrown into the battle, loses almost half its strength and is withdrawn in less than 24 hours, to be replaced by another hapless set of cannon fodder.

My grandfather was one of the lucky ones, a survivor (although he may have been injured). I hope to visit Loos in 2015 – the 100th anniversary of the battle – to see where he fought. I'll be referring to Nick Lloyd again, but I'll have to buy a paper copy of the book - I read it on Kindle and maps just don't render well enough to allow me to reference places properly.

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

If Loos in 1915 sounds pretty grim, it was a walk in the park compared to the Russian front in the Second World War.

The Forgotten Soldier is a war diary by Guy Sajer, a Frenchman with a German mother, who volunteered to fight in the German army.

Posted to the Russian front, it’s a tale of unremitting misery, you wonder how anyone could survive (and of course, many didn’t). Most of the time Sajer had no idea what was going on or why; he just followed orders and did his best.

His account illustrates graphically the confusion of war, he didn't have the big picture, just his small part. It’s not easy reading, but it is compelling.

Cold by Ranulph Fiennes

Max bought this book for me and it’s signed by Fiennes himself (he came to give a talk to the Dulwich College geography group).

An account of Fiennes’ travels and adventures, its main focus is the famous trans-globe expedition of the 1970s, when Fiennes became the first man to reach both poles by land and circumnavigate the globe by sea and land.

It’s a pretty amazing story and a pretty amazing life, but it’s also a lot more than a simple account of his difficult journeys. Fiennes looks at the history of exploration, the men who first visited and opened up these areas; also the people who lived there and how they survived. He's a surprisingly good writer (for an explorer/adventurer). Cold is a cruel extreme, this is a book to read beside a nice warm fire or tucked up in a comfy bed.

Things I've done for the first time

This is a list of things that I've done for the first time during 2014. I thought it would be interesting to keep a little list (although it turned into a long list) of 'firsts'. It's by no means everything, but I think I have the main ones sorted.

1. I retired

It was my 60th birthday in July 2013 and I'd decided a few years back that I should retire at 60 if I could afford to. I thought I could afford to, but I wasn't dead sure and it would have been easy to have said I'll do another year, save another £10,000, just make sure.

I didn't, and I'm pleased that I didn't. I've had enough money and should have enough to see me out, so I did the best thing and asked for early retirement back in June. Somewhat annoyingly, the company offered a voluntary redundancy scheme just a month before my retirement date and I bet I would have qualified. That would have added maybe £75,000 to my pot, but it's no use beating yourself up for decisions that might have been. I made the best decision I could at the time, based on the knowledge I had.

I was a little apprehensive about retirement. I wasn't worried about boredom, but I was concerned about stimulation and missing work colleagues, relationships/friendships and gossip (the social side of work, if you like).

Retirement has been great; I've had the chance to do lots of new things and I've never sat down and thought: "what am I going to do now?" It's been quite the reverse in fact. I've not had time to do lots of the things I thought I'd do - without the dead time of commuting, I'm reading less and writing less.

Last-day-in-the-office selfie - only me left 

2. I became a school governor

I said that when I retired I'd volunteer for a number of things. Life has been pretty good to me, so I thought I should put something back. I read that there was a shortage of people willing to become school governors, I thought that might utilise some of the skills I used in my job, so I signed up for a website called SGOSS, which is an abbreviation for something, and aims to link volunteers with vacancies. In the meantime, I'd mentioned it to my friend Pauline Coakley, who is chair of governors at the Duke of Bedford School in Thorney, and it turned out there was a vacancy there.

So I became a governor in April and it's been interesting. It's good to be involved with the school again, having had no contact since our children left, and I do feel that I'm doing something useful. There's very little as important as education.

The school got a rating of "good" in its Ofsted inspection in April, our head teacher resigned in June, we recruited a new head in October, I became vice-chair and now I'm involved with projects to set up a new website and to look at provision of school meals. So it's been quite a busy eight months and with a new head in place from January and a deputy head to appoint in spring, it looks as if it will stay that way. I’ve also met lots of new people from the village.

3. I used snowshoes

At the start of the year, Sam and Lucy were living in Villaret sur la Rosiere, near Bourg-saint-Maurice in the French Alps in order to do a full ski season. We'd gone down with them in December 2013 to help carry their gear and made several other trips to spend time with them.

Because Margaret doesn't ski (and doesn't want to learn) we skied for a few days and looked for other things to do on others. She was quite keen on snowshoeing, Sam and Lucy had reconnoitered a route and so we set off to walk through the snow from St Foy to Le Monal, a small village which is uninhabited in winter. It was a lovely, sunny day, the views were great and the climbs not too severe.

Walking on modern snowshoes is very easy, you just need to remember to walk with your legs a little further apart so you don't step on your own shoes. You also need to keep fairly close to the trodden path, move off into soft snow and the relatively small snowshoes they use here won't stop you sinking in.

In Le Monal, we were able to sit in the snow and bask in the sun, while enjoying some magnificent views of the north side of Mont Pourri. We liked St Foy so much we're going back this January.

Le Monal in January.

4. I raised ornamental grass from seed

This doesn't sound much of a first, but it was quite demanding. I grew Angel Hair (stipa tenuissima) and Blue Grass (leymus arenarius) partly because Margaret wanted to convert our patio to gravel with assorted pots/planters and partly because were had agreed to run the plant stall at the church flower festival and I needed some plants to sell. I thought the Angel Hair would go down a bomb, but it was tricky to shift. Lots of people already had it in their garden and said it seeded everywhere. Considering how tricky they were for me to germinate it, I found that hard to take.

The Blue Grass was the hard one to germinate. It was in and out of the fridge, in and out of a plastic bag, in the sun, in the shade and I even took it on holiday to France because I thought it might die if I left it unattended for a week.

Having babies is easier (for me, not Margaret).

5. I skied in La Plagne, took the Vanoise Express

I skied a lot this year and there were lots of firsts in terms of new runs (Reynard will forever be etched in my memory) but I did do a couple of bigger firsts. Sam and I skied across to La Plagne from Les Arcs, taking the massive cable car that links the two resorts. It’s called the Vanoise Express; the cars are double-deckers and can carry over 100 people and it gets you across pretty quickly. The cables stretch 1,800 metres and it rides 400 metres (1,200ft) above the valley floor. I went back to La Plagne several times in the spring, sadly it was later in the season when the weather was quite warm and the snow was not very good.

On the Vanoise Express.

6. I drunk Genepi and Green Chartreuse

Genepi is a sweet, alcoholic nectar of the gods. I love it. Green Chartreuse has 60 herbs infused, but it's the high level of alcohol that does it. After a hard day's skiing it can kick-start your evening. It also revived Tim Dawkins, Davina's boyfriend, restoring his voice after three children's parties in one day.

Both drinks are essentially alcohol, sugar syrup and a few herbs. Once I( get my still sorted (a first for 2015) I’ll be aiming to recreate these great tastes of the French Alps.

7. I got an allotment

When Sam and Lucy came back to England following their six months in France, they were planning to live with us for a while to allow them to find new jobs outside London. I thought it would be a good idea for Lucy to have an allotment to cultivate, otherwise she'd be digging up my lawn to plant beetroot. As it happened, they went straight to Jersey and I'm left alone with the biggest allotment in Thorney!

I have enjoyed working the plot and I’ve got half of it pretty much dug over. I’ve spent about £1,000 on shed, weedkiller, wood, plants, compost, bark and manure and so far I’ve had about 2kg or onions, all the courgettes and runner beans we could eat, a barrow-load of apples and some leeks.

Plenty of digging required when this was taken.

8. I used a rotovator

See above! I bought a rotovator to help with the digging and when that proved useless, I bought a bigger one. Here's some advice, don't buy a rotovator until you have tried digging with a fork. It's the best way and also good exercise.

Rotovators chop up the weeds so you end up with three times as much bindweed as when you started; they are stolen or they break down! Having said that, if you had a large plot of weed-free, previously dug loam, they are great for creating a fine seed bed.

9. I swam in Lake Annecy off a pedalo

About 30 years ago, I swam in the Thunersee at Interlaken in Switzerland. It was a hot June day and the water was absolutely bloody freezing! I resolved never to take a dip in an Alpine lake ever again.

Well, in July (after being assured by Sam and Lucy that the water was like a warm bath) I broke that rule and had a swim in Lake Annecy. I was back in France to help bring their stuff back to the UK and we had a trip to Annecy for the day. The lake is huge, it is warm and you can hire a pedalo for an hour or swim from a beach. The bed of the lake shelves very gently, so you can still stand up even 100 metres from the shore, so a pedalo saves you wading out for ages.

If I was making an argument that the quality of life is so much better in France than in England, I’d take my opposing protagonist for a swim in Lake Annecy.

10. I walked on a volcano

The next four firsts are all connected with another first - I visited Ecuador. I wasn’t planning to visit Ecuador, but Tom and Lucy announced they were getting married and Margaret and I, together with my sister, flew across for the wedding.

There were lots of firsts in Ecuador, including visiting Ecuador, but the volcanoes really made an impression on me. Who isn’t fascinated by a volcano? There are lots of them in Ecuador including one (Tungarahua) which is currently erupting. Cotopaxi is only a few miles from the capital Quito and is a classic strato-volcano; if you asked a child to draw a picture of a volcano, they would draw Cotopaxi.

We were able to visit on a clear day when the whole of the mountain was visible and got up to about 4500m. We would have reached the snow line, but there was a fierce wind which was whipping up ash and sharp cinders and blasting them straight into our faces. See my blog: http://ericsdailydiary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/ecuador-cotopaxi.html

If you asked a child to draw a picture of a volcano, they would draw Cotopaxi

11. I crossed the equator

When I was a young boy, many of the heroes presented to me were explorers - Shackleton, Scott. Hillary ... the world still seemed to have undiscovered places and if you wanted to get to America, Australia or even France, you went by ship. Cheap jet travel hadn’t shrunk the Earth and satellite mapping hadn’t catalogued every square inch.

For me, there was a fascination with crossing the equator. On board ship, people crossing the equator for the first time (at least in the books I read) had to undergo an initiation ceremony involving Neptune, shellbacks and polywogs (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony) so this seemed to possess a magical quality to me.

Now, we cross the equator at 500mph and at 35,000ft, so the magic is lost. Tom and Lucy were married in Cayambe, more or less on the equator and I must have been back and to across the line several times. I would liked to have visited the equatorial line in a park near Cayambe (not the one the French built, which is several hundred yards awry), but there just wasn’t time. I missed a great photo opportunity, but nevertheless, I knew I was on and across the equator and I can say I have stood on both the equator and on the Greenwich meridian.

12. I saw the Southern Cross

I have always wanted to see the Southern Cross, the iconic star constellation of the southern hemisphere, which is famously featured on the Australian flag. Christobal Cobo, an old friend of Lucy’s who now lives at the Hacienda Guachala with his wife Gabriella, knows a fair bit about astronomy and we were talking about stars in the southern hemisphere the night before the wedding (when it was too cloudy to see anything).

Wedding day night was much clearer and so he took me into the darker part of the courtyard to see the Southern Cross. On the equator, it's quite low in the sky (directly south, of course) and, looking north, you can also see the Great Bear (the Plough), which is the iconic constellation of the northern hemisphere. It is possible also to see the North Star from Cayambe, but Christoble explained it was very close to the horizon and you needed to gain some elevation in order to get a view.

13. I swam in a volcanic pool

Natural hot springs are 10 a penny in Ecuador and we were booked into Termas de Papallacta, a spa resort on the slopes of the volcano Antisana. This is a popular place with tourists and natives (as it’s within easy reach of Quito) and it was busier than other places we’d visited.

The water from the hot springs is piped into pools around the resort and these vary in temperature, ranging from warm to “like a very hot bath”. We tried them all. Several pools are large enough and deep enough to swim in, others are more for wallowing. Our chalets, also had their own network of hot pools and we were able to enjoy those after nightfall. I was going to have a dip the next morning, but they has all been drained overnight and were still filling up.

You can see why ancient peoples found hot springs such a magical thing. We’re used to baths and showers and it’s still pretty amazing.

14. I ate at Rules

Rules is one of the oldest restaurants in London. It specialises in game and was one of Winston Churchill’s favourite places to eat. I’ve often thought I’d like to eat there (more for the experience than the cuisine) and so when my boss Marc Tucker offered to take me out for a farewell meal following my retirement, I suggested Rules.

It’s a superb place,somewhat of a different age but not out of place in modern London. Service is excellent and I had roast suckling pig and a syrup sponge pudding to finish.

15. I organised Ciderfest

We staged Ciderfest in July to say thank you to people who had helped with the cider making and who had donated apples in 2013.

It may become an annual event. People seemed to have a great time, although we were really lucky with the weather and had it been raining, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with the numbers indoors.

This coming year, if it all turns out OK, we will have more cider for drinking and also a couple of new people to invite. It might become our annual party.

16. I visited Ripon Cathedral and Fountains Abbey

I took a motorcycle trip with Tom to Derbyshire and Yorkshire in August and there were a lot of firsts - Snake Pass, Holme Moss and Skipton ...

Two other firsts were a visit to Fountains Abbey and Ripon Cathedral (or Minster). Fountains Abbey is the ruined remains of what would have been one of the most magnificent religious complexes in the country. It would have been amazing in its day, which is odd because it was founded by the Cistercians, who eschewed luxuries and comfort. I guess they thought the magnificent buildings were to the glory of their god and not for their aggrandisement? Anyway, Henry VIII confiscated the land and riches during the Dissolution and so plunged them back into poverty, where they were happy. It’s a great place to visit.

The crypt at Ripon Minster is one of the oldest buildings in England - it’s the remains of an old Saxon church. It’s reached by narrow staircases and is quite atmospheric. Worth going if you’re in the area.

Fountains Abbey - magnificent ruin.

17. I used a stump grinder

This is an unusual entry and it’s the second power tool I’ve used for the first time this year (see rotavator). We had three large conifers cut down in late spring; you can never get the stumps cut low enough to the ground with a chainsaw, so I hired a stump grinder to finish the job.

I wasn’t sure what to expect and it is a strange tool. The cutter is set in the vertical plane is is basically a heavy wheel with a large notch. You position the machine over the stump and lock one wheel. You then draw it back and forth across the stump, cutting a large groove. You then reposition it and make another pass. I created three barrow-loads of sawdust and a lot of noise, but the stumps were dispatched in a couple of hours.

I hope to put a small octagonal greenhouse on the site next year. It will be the first time I have owned a greenhouse.

18. I am learning Spanish

I love languages and I feel quite uneducated that I cannot speak a foreign language with any fluency. I can get by in French, order beer and food ... that kind of thing, but I couldn’t have a proper conversation. After “hello, how are you? I’m fine too thanks”, I’d be struggling.

I can’t even do that in Spanish and when we were in Ecuador, I felt slightly disrespectful at not being able to at least make a gesture in speaking Spanish. If I’m lucky enough to be able to go again, then I aim to at least have better Spanish than French.

I’m having classes at U3A and I really enjoy them; it’s also an excuse to travel more in Spain. I tell you what, if any Spaniards want to know what the time is I’ll be right on it.

19. I went to Jersey

Sam and Lucy have moved to Jersey and we made a trip across in September to take them some of their possessions which had been left in our garage.

The ferry goes from Weymouth to Guernsey and then on to Jersey and it takes about four-and-a-half hours. Jersey is granite, it has some lovely beaches and pretty villages; it’s also really small (nine miles by five miles) and the speed limit across the island is only 30mph (20mph in many villages) with a small section of dual-carriageway at 40mph.

We’ll be going back to Jersey at least a couple of times a year I hope.

20. I went to an Allen Jones exhibition

This was two firsts for me - it was the first time I’d seen any works by this famous pop-art/shock-art artist and it was the first time I’d been to the Royal Academy on Piccadilly.

The exhibition made me feel very uncomfortable; it presents women in a way that I don’t like. It treats them as exaggerated sex objects; as vulnerable and exploited, and also as predatory. I couldn’t tune-in to his message.

21. I went for dinner at Lutyens

Lutyens is a swanky, fashionable restaurant in Fleet Street. It just happens to be in the building that used to house the Press Association.

Our actuaries and our lawyers took members of the pension fund trustees there for an end-of-year dinner. For the trustees who worked for the PA in Fleet Street it was a nostalgic return. We dined in what used to be the post room and dispatch department and lots of my fellow trustees were getting quite misty-eyed about it.

We polished off three bottles of Pol Roger to start and the meal was very nice. The most amusing thing was that there was an Allen Jones painting on the wall!