Normally, the rollers on the folding machine need to be taken out and cleaned every 5,000 or 10,000 folds. A messy job, resulting in black inky hands. Today was a bit of a change! I’ve been folding posters printed by others on dayglo paper (our Riso won’t handle coated paper). Sadly, the dayglo coating does get onto the rollers, and they need to be cleaned every thousand folds or so! However, it makes some kind of a change to see the bright green stripes rather than the dull black ones …
I was in the middle of sorting out the front room for the imminent arrival of batch 1 of stuff from Green mount when I got a Facebook message from Clive Brown (former Outer) saying he’d be in Worcester that afternoon. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years. A rapid juggling of priorities, and I met him at Foregate Street station. A stroll through to Elgar’s in Reindeer Court (one of the former coaching inns) for lunch, then a womble round the Cathedral (sadly, no access to the gardens). Then a walk past the St Andrews spire down to the river, across the bridge, back across Sabrina bridge and up alongside the railway / the Butts, ending with a pint (Clive) and coffee (me) in the Crown (another of the old coaching inns). A very pleasant couple of hours.
Then home, to more sorting out and the much-delayed Warndon newsletters.
And then, an evening watching the live-feed of the extraordinary meeting of Worcester City Council about Local Government Reorganisation and the transition to Unitary authorities. The Chairing by Mayor Mel Alcott was rather poor, but the discussion was constructive and well-thought-out on all sides (apart from one attempted question from Alan Amos!). After an extended break of nearly an hour, the Council reconvened to approve a motion that got supported nem con (a couple of abstentions on one clause), which is almost exactly in line with the position that Worcester Green Party adopted at our own additional Business Meeting a few days ago.
Exhausted and relieved, an early-ish night, going up around ten and asleep before midnight, having clocked up 10,900 steps during the day.
Newsletters from our Riso printer do tend to shed ink onto the moving parts of our folding machine, which builds up and eventually stops it working properly. I do try to clean the rollers and other bits every 5,000ish folds, but this time it was much closer to 10,000. A fiddly job and easier to do barehanded than in rubber gloves, but still …
I went over to Oak Cottage on 21st December for a pre-Christmas visit, the first time I’ve managed to go there for about nine years. I really couldn’t face travelling via London, partly because the Worcester-Paddington Hitachi trains are desperately uncomfortable on my back, and partly because I didn’t feel capable of doing the Underground in the pre-Christmas weekend rush. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for such autistic things to become more intense, or more allowed, in the period following diagnosis. Anyway, I went via Birmingham and Cambridge, being collected by Sim from Ispwich station.
It was a very pleasant stay. I’d been a bit worried that Charlie – the most recent puppy, who is very nervous and defensive – would be a problem, but he seemed to remember me from Green Mount and settled down OK after the first ten minutes or so. Anne was, as I’d gathered, beginning to lose the plot a little, but we had several good long chats of reminiscences and it all went fine. A couple of good long chats to Sim – about Green Mount and suchlike. Phoebe drove me back to Ipswich on Mon 23rd, and we pent nearly all the journey talking about autism stuff, in a very useful, enlightening, and productive way.
The journey back, by the same route, was fairly vile, and not improved by a rail replacement double-decker bus from Coleshill to New Street. I got home about 9pm.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were largely quiet recovery days. A brace of partridge for Christmas dinner, as I’d been unable to get a pheasant – probably the first time I’ve had partridge for over 50 years. Soup from the carcasses subsequently, of course, and I’ve frozen some as well.
Despite my best intentions, I did end up making a start on printing Green Party newsletters on Boxing Day. On 28th I sent a list of “state of play” to Alex Mace, for him to chase up the outstanding artwork, all of which (except Warndon) duly arrived by New Year’s Eve. I did manage to finish all outstanding newsletters by lunchtime, so some 26,000 in the last fortnight, each one through the duplicator twice and the folding machine once.
I noticed that the winter-flowering clematis has started to open – nearly the latest I’ve ever known it (last year was 4th November – it’s an extremely variable plant!). Weather this morning was vile, so I didn’t manage to get out to cut my traditional New Year forsythia until it cleared up around lunchtime. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for a couple of days, needing a lot of sleep, and aching not only in the usual wrists and ankles, but in my upper arms and thighs. It’s an odd feeling, almost as if there are large bruises, but there’s no sign of any discolouration. I’ll take things fairly easy for a bit.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks! I’m in the middle of what I hope will be the last batch of current newsletters, which will bring me up to having printed 19,600 since the start of the month. That’s two or three hours every day, with a couple of days off during the period.
The total on the Riso stands at 2,442,654. It was around 1,134,000 when I took the machine over, so I’m creeping up on one-and-a-third million.
And I’ve just had an email saying that they want to make some alterations to one of the two newsletters that I’ve just printed side one of! If they do, I hope it’s side two, as I’m waiting for a paper delivery and only have about 1,600 sheets left, so any re-print would have to wait.
It’s been a depressing few days since Trump Mark II was elected, and I’ve kept away from social media and news sites (even my beloved Guardian) for fear of falling into a deep and gloomy hole. It’s clearly going to take a while longer. Emergency cheering-up procedures have centred round food: I admit to a self-indulgent Worcester Burger Shop delivery, and there’s making scones (and I put clotted cream on the Waitrose order), an apple Charlotte, a full roast-pork-with-crackling dinner last night … Having the wood stove lit over the weekend was also good.
Most unusually for me, I didn’t observe the Silence either yesterday on Remembrance Sunday (10th), or today on Armistice Day (11th), though I have as usual been wearing the White Poppy from All Souls’ Day onwards. There’s a whole area of thinking about death and destruction which is starting to seem more imminent again: Trump, Putin, Chinese expansionism. I know that my generation is historically exceptional in having avoided living through a war that had direct domestic impacts, but I’m increasingly concerned that we may yet see one.
As distraction, there have been Green Party newsletters. Lots and lots of them, including two batches for Bromsgrove. In fact, I’ve done nearly 17,000 over the last ten days, at around three hours a day. I’ll think about asking for them to be a bit more spread out in future! Still, it’s been the kind of thing that requires enough attention to stop me ruminating, without actually being mentally demanding, so that’s all good. And I’ve taken the plunge to “upgrade” both laptops and the upstairs desktop to Windows 11 – a more mentally demanding task! However, it’s necessary if I’m going to successfully sync data on the newer, more powerful, but much bigger Thinkpad to the elderly T460s, which has been a struggle to keep going but is more convenient. The plan is to have both in simultaneous use for as long as the old one holds out.
On a more positive note, the assorted “any time but Christmas” cacti have been flowering profusely, and the winter jasmine outside the French window is magnificent (and there’s some in a vase indoors – just about the only flower still going).
I’ve had a fairly nightmarish couple of print runs on the Riso after I replaced the stripper pad, with multiple pick-ups and blank sheets.That’s meant standing over the folding machine ready to catch anything printed only on one side, or completely blank … and there have been around 50 such per thousand sheets of paper. Ugh!
Today, finally, I’ve got the tension on it dialled in just right! A thousand sheets of paper fed in, counter showed a thousand coming out, and the same for side 2. Yippee!
Riso ink arrived last weekend while I was away. The outer box was of course sodden, but the contents are fine. Paper arrived on Monday. I’ve been too unwell to deal with any of it until today, but at least most of the paper is now in the cupboard, and the rest is neatly stacked with the ink on top. A proper sort-out will happen next time have the printer out to use.
Also arrived was a pack of 10 stripper pads – not easily available here, so ordered from the USA at a cost of some £15. Hopefully, fitting one will finally cure the multiple pick-up issues I’ve been having, but that’s a project for next week, once I’m feeling a bit better.
The Riso engineer last visited a year ago. Yesterday, I had to have the engineer out again! Perhaps it’s the time of year … Anyway, the reading yesterday was 2,371,900 – so I’ve done just over 400,000 copies in the last year. EEEK! Mostly double-sided, but still not far short of quarter of a million bits of paper.
Knowing the engineer’s early habits, I’d got the machine out the night before. He rang very shortly after 9, and arrived around 9.30 – which is about the earliest that there’s a reasonable chance of on-street parking round here.. Riso now fixed … there’s a queue of around 6,000 to do (12,000 sides), with about the same again promised for next week.
Back home on the patio for a much-needed coffee after a couple of hours outside the rather breezy St Barnabas polling station. Sunny spells means that people are much more cheerful than the rather vile weather we had in May! Calls of “hello” from passers-by on the other side of the street and suchlike are always encouraging.
I’ll put in another couple of hours this evening. Most of Worcester Greens are over in Herefordshire, to support Ellie Chowns who stands an excellent chance, but I’m not up to a full day’s activities there.