The terrifying countdown to Hebden Bridge

Ages ago, Blogger stopped supporting third party widgets, and I lost my pretty little Daisypath ticker that told me how long I've owned Chertsey. But I noticed that Nev on Percy has been counting off the days of his retirement, so I followed up his counter, created a new one there, and fingers crossed, it seems to work. I like the no-nonsense meter better than the pretty ticker anyway. We shall be celebrating my ten years of historic boat ownership in September.

In the meantime, though, I also made a countdown, to see how long we have, mentally, emotionally and practically to prepare for this year's HNBC expedition to Hebden Bridge. And it is - gulp - only a shade over three months. That is, frankly, terrifying. I can get only the barest minimum time necessary off work, meaning that we have to go out and back the same way (all those smug gits with their shortened boats and tugs are bragging about the Leeds Liverpool; my alternative would have been via Preston Brook (don't ask me any more just yet, it's all a bit vague) but as it stands it's Rochdale there and Rochdale back), and very little time to prepare the boat.

Jim is now full time managing Sebastian's shop while Sebastian takes the next step up the ladder towards qualifying as a solicitor, so he won't have much time to spare either. I have no ideal how we're going to manage Geoffrey, who has never been boating before and - the horror - likes swimming. I haven't even started the new strings yet; the engine's still smokier than Jim would like so in all probability I'll be steering through Harecastle. We've never done the Rochdale before but when people who have been boating for forty years did it two years ago and say it was the hardest thing they've ever done, you can't help feeling a bit nervous. At least I'm building up my fitness - though I think I might need to work on the upper body strength too from what I hear.

I was, frankly, shocked to see how little time there is before the event - and includes the time to get there. Give me a few days of blind panic, and then I'm sure I'll start to formulate a plan.

At least I'm writing about boating again.

More light and shade

There are now only two rooms in the house with just a bare lightbulb. Not bad, after getting on for two years.

The latest room to be fully furnished with lighting is the dining room. I've waited a long time for this, because I knew exactly what I wanted, and thanks to Lampspares, and Ryan the very tall electrician from Barnsley, I now have it.

Oh, and thanks also to the two beautiful glass globes we bought for a pound each (or was it the pair?) at the South Heighton Bonfire jumble sale about twenty-five years ago. Fow many years they graced the hall of the house in Newhaven, but they have now found their true home and vocation.

Ryan supplied the galvanised conduit and did a brilliant job of these and a couple of other jobs (if he had a website, I'd link to it); the flex, hooks, chain and very-tricky-to-put-together lampholders were from Lampspares. And the idea of attaching the hook fitting direct to a junction box which inspired the whole set-up came from Pete Boyce's eclectic and eccentric premises.

As I've said before, I know pseudo-post-industrial is all a bit 2015 (up here, anyway), but this is actually pseudo-railway waiting room type vibe, so that's OK then.

Scary

Sebastian and I had a little text exchange a few weeks ago.

I asked whether, if someone had an irrational fear of hot Vietmanese soup, they suffered from phophobia.

He wondered about the person who had an irrational fear that they were being fobbed off with fake hot Vietnamese soup: fauxphophobia.

Maybe you are afraid that you are being supplied inauthentic hot Vietnamese soup by your sworn enemy: foefauxphophobia

I thought, what about if you had an irrational fear that the counterfeit hot Vietnamese soup supplied by your sworn enemy might contain the blood of an Englishman, or be accompanied by bread made from ground bones: the diagnosis would then be
fee-fie-fofoefauxphophobia.

I think that's about as far as we can take that one - unless of course (in the immortal words of Glyn Worsnip), you know different.

What's the advantage?

I have a fair bit of brass at home, but no Brasso, which is all on the boat. I wanted to polish my GWR carriage lamps, and the only form of Brasso I could get in Tesco's was this:

Now, obviously I'd come across Duraglit wadding before, but I don't think I've ever tried to use it in my adult life. Having tried unsuccessfully to apply it to my lamps, and ended up with bits everywhere, I am left wondering, what's the good of it? What possible advantage does it offer over a bottle of Brasso and a rag?

Running news

Two and a half years ago, I got very excited because I had run a mile for the first time in my life.

Yesterday morning, I ran a mile and a half: the furthest I have ever run, non-stop, in my life.

I haven't been completely idle inbetween. I ran that old mile, along the A57, a few more times; slipped out of the habit a bit in the summer when there was boating to be done, and in the winter when it was too cold and frosty, and in the autumn when it was too busy to think about anything... But it stood me in good stead; I found that I could trot along the towpath at a useful speed for useful distances, and I started to actually genuinely enjoy and look forward to an early morning run (I can't quite fancy it any other time).

Then I moved house. And spent the best part of nine months working on it (along with Jim). And once the dust had settled, what I quickly noticed was that there was nowhere I could set off for a run from my new house without tackling some serious hills.

So for another few months, I didn't.

Even without deliberately going out exercising, I've developed serious 'Sheffield legs' - calves like I wouldn't have believed - negotiating Blake Street on the way back from Tesco's, the library, and most days, work.

Then I thought, well, the hills aren't going to go away, so I might as well make a virtue of them. I worked out a one mile circuit that involved going up a fairly steep hill, down an more gradual one, then finally (in a fit of masochism) up Blake Street (which is the one in the photo if you hadn't guessed, and is, according to the BBC, the third steepest residential street in Britain. There was a Welsh one in the news the other week competing with New Zealand's steepest street, but I don't think it was residential...) Obviously I couldn't run the whole of that mile (yet) but I have managed about two thirds of the Blake Street section (yes, uphill), and all the downhill bit of course. So that's been good exercise, but I still missed the possibility of running consistently for a decent (for me) distance.

However, I think I've sussed that now too. If I go downhill a little bit (and am prepared to come back uphill on the way back) I can run along the Langsett/Middlewood Road which, while not completely flat, is certainly not hilly (as its status as a tram route attests). I tried it for the first time just before the weather got really cold (I'm not risking my neck if it's icy) and managed a mile and a quarter (including the first downhill bit from home) non-stop running before I turned around and came back.

Yesterday morning it was mild enough to have another go, and I needed to take Bluebird to Malin Bridge to be nursed through her MOT, so having arranged to drop her off really early, I ran back - all the way to the bottom of the final steep bit, which was a mile and a half mostly not downhill.

I'd better keep it up if I'm to be in shape for the Hebden Bridge foray.

Heritage pub 3: The Red Deer

My second favourite Sheffield pub is another which the book puts in the inventor of historic pub exteriors, 'for pubs where the historic interior has been entirely destroyed'.

So I have taken a photo of the exterior, which apparently is little changed since 1825 (except for the bloody great mural, of course), in which you can't really see the three original etched windows.

I like the Red Deer because it is reasonably near work, has decent beer and friendly staff, but above all because alone amongst my top three, it does food - and rather good food at that. Their nachos, in particular, are fabulous. Whereas many places would be happy to open a packet of Doritos and microwave a bit of cheese on the top, the Red Deer's tortilla pieces are freshly deep fried ... mmmm... They do other good stuff too, with some imaginative but not ridiculous vegan offerings. Nice spicy mini vegan haggises, battered halloumi, and, as I had on Monday, southern fried tofu with sweet potato chips. It used to have a reputation for being full of engineers, but since they've moved from nearby Mappin Street to the carbuncle manque that is the Diamond, maybe less so... They also have real fires in two of their three fireplaces. So it's a shame that those three fireplaces are now in one big room, which includes an extension, but I'm still always happy to visit the Red Deer.

Lost canals are turning up everywhere!

I haven't yet watched any of Captain Ahab's 'Canal Hunter' series of videos in which he tracks down sections of the 'lost sixty miles' of the BCN. I'm not great at sitting down to watch stuff (I find it a bit overwhelming); I always prefer to read about it, but ...

[ranty digression] It makes me quite annoyed now you can hardly get written instructions for anything, but have to sit through a video or screencast - the latest example being how to get my online feedback in my student persona. Had they written a few paragraphs, I could have quickly skimmed to the bit I needed, but with the screencast I had to sit through three and a half minutes of stuff I did already know how to do, and even then it wasn't as easy - for me - to understand.[ranty digression ends]

... I will, of course, make an exception for the Captain, and I can see how the use of a visual medium like video is really suited to this kind of project. But I haven't got round to it yet.

Now, it's no secret that Captain Ahab is a bit  of a fiend for the BCN, but imagine my excitement when Diamond Geezer followed up a post about CRT's lockage stats with what promises to be the beginning of a series on London's lost canals ... two posts, for starters, on the Grand Surrey Canal, all of which has been filled in (some as recently as 1980), and much of which has become road, leading to some surreal bridges and bollards, all beautifully photographed and written up in dg's inimitable style - plus links to loads more info (which I haven't followed up yet either). I hope it is the start of a series...

P.S. Just doing a quick search of dg's oeuvre, I found a 2010 post about the Croydon Canal from which I learn for the first time that I actually  spent the first year of my life living near the one remaining unlost bit of a lost canal.

On the run

Last week, Geoffrey ran away. It was around lunchtime on the Friday; he and Ricky were helping Jim in the shop, and a customer came in and left the door open. Faster than the eye could see, Geoffrey was out and away. (Ricky, being such a good boy these days, stayed put.)

Naturally consternation ensued. I was being kept apprised of events via text, and following the updates on Facebook (public pages, no I haven't joined!) but there was very little I could do from here.

The biggest worry was that he'd get run over; the next biggest - after he'd been at large for some hours without that happening - was that he'd get out onto the Downs and either catch a sheep (we have no idea whether Geoffrey goes for sheep, or even if he knows what one is, but it's a reasonable bet), or stay out there for weeks living off the land (as I'm sure he's perfectly capable of).

With the help of Sebastian and Fiona, all sorts of groups and mechanisms sprung into action, including a group of people who use their drones to search for lost pets. It was amazing the goodwill that poured forth from total strangers. There were many sightings, but no one got close enough to catch him. Night fell, and bedtime came, and still he was missing. At least that Friday night was mild, but colder weather was forecast imminently, which was an added worry.

However, on the Saturday morning, Jim got a phone call - Geoffrey was found, safe and well, and had successfully been detained. He'd got as far as the edge of the Downs, and leapt a very high fence to get into someone's garden. Once in, it seems he couldn't get the run up to get out again, so there he stayed. When the householders let their dog out in the morning, in strolled Geoffrey, none the worse for the experience.

He was very tired though....

Although he was found only about five miles from the shop, Jim plotted all the sightings on a map and calculated that he'd probably travelled about ten miles altogether.

I think he was sorry...

Ricky did do a runner from the shop once, but was apprehended three doors up the road eating a workman's sandwiches.

... and other stories

The foolhardiness of trying to carry tea in your hat is one of the many things that remind me of a story I was told as a child, but of which I can now find no trace.

It concerns a small boy who is sent to market on consecutive days to make various purchases: a cow, a cat, a pat of butter, something valuable...

Every day he attempts to convey his purchase home according to the instructions he was given the day before.  Every day this goes horribly wrong and he gets into trouble. For example, when he's carrying something precious, he gets robbed, so his mother scolds him and tells him he should have hidden it under his hat. The next day he goes for butter, puts it under his hat, and by the time he gets back it's melted all over him and he gets another bollocking. But all the time he's really doing his best, and just trying to do as he's been instructed.

I felt for him then, and I feel for him now, because it strikes me that this is an autistic person's experience; trying so hard to get things right and never quite understanding why it doesn't work out, when you've done exactly as you were told. I often think of the story because I often feel like that even now. At the very workshop to which I took the tea, I failed to do what was intended because I took the instructions too literally, and missed out on the opportunity to contribute as a result. However, thanks to the Equalities Act 2010, at least I didn't get a beating.

If anyone knows or can help me track down the story, I'd be delighted.

Don't carry tea in your hat

One of the idiocies of the modern world with which I will have no truck is the 'reusable' cup which is designed to look like a disposable one, complete with Tommy Tippee lid. These are, apparently, made of compostible bamboo fibre, held together with 'resin'. Be that as it may, because they have no handle, they also have a silicone plastic sleeve, and the aforementioned lid, made of actual plastic. They - looking at my colleagues' - seem hard to keep clean, and not very durable. So much for being environmentally friendly.

I have a reusable cup. If I take care of it, it will last forever. It's a china mug. If it gets cracked, or chipped, or the handle breaks, I can use it to keep pencils in. If I do ever need to dispose of it, it is at least inert and non-polluting, and could be used as a very small amount of hardcore.

However, on Thursday, for the first time, I wanted to take a cup of tea from one building to another, as we were having an early meeting in the second building. As I hadn't yet got round to buying a lid for my mug  (I have just ordered one now), I found a paper cup which just about wedged in the top, and thought that that might serve the purpose of preventing it slopping over the sides.

It was very cold on Thursday morning, so I wrapped this arrangement of mug and paper cup (which I had stabbed in the bottom with a pencil to let the steam out) in my woolly hippy hat. This is a splendid hat, made of rainbow striped wool with a lovely fleece lining, which accompanied me on the epic 2010 icebreaking trip from Kings Bromley to Great Hayward, where we gave up and left the boat frozen in for six weeks. I am very fond of this hat.

To cut to the chase, it didn't work. By the time I'd crossed the road, the package felt distinctly damp; when I arrived at The Diamond (shortlisted for the 2016 Carbuncle Cup, and in my view it wuz robbed) it was actually dripping. So I stopped by a recycling bin and got rid of the paper cup, mopped myself down, and went off to brainstorm a whole department approach to the student journey for a couple of joyful hours. I still had about two thirds of a cup of tea, and it was still hot, so that could be counted as a partial success; however, my hat was in no state to be worn home.

I put it on top of the water boiler in the office in an attempt to dry it out. None of the radiators in the office is turned on, because the office mysteriously maintains a temperature of 29 degrees centigrade throughout the winter without them. We think the Careers Service on the ground floor has some sort of thermonuclear device. When you enter the office on a cold January day, you have approximately ten seconds to remove eighty percent of your clothes before you expire from heatstroke.

When I got home I ran a sinkful of warm water and Woolite, and washed my hat. My god, it was filthy. As filthy as I suppose you'd have every right to expect a hat that hadn't been washed since going boating in 2010 to be. And now it's all bright and sparkling, having dried on my patent woolly hat drying device, viz. a long-handled sieve wedged into the radiator. So all's well that ends well, but nonetheless the moral of this story is, don't carry tea in your hat.

Books I read in January

Back by popular demand (mine, because it fills a page), here is the first of 2019's monthly rundowns of my not-so-elevated reading habits:

Christobel Kent The Dead Season (local library)
I discovered Christobel Kent by accident when trawling the library (I found The Day She Disappeared) and found that what looked like a run of the mill women's thriller (because that is a thing, I think) was actually very well-written and engaging, with a good plot and plenty of suspense. So I got onto the Sheffield libraries website and tracked down as many as I could (because Sheffield Council, excellently, doesn't charge you to reserve books and have them delivered to your local library). The Dead Season is one of a series about an ex-police, private detective, in Florence. Yes, I know I don't usually do foreign-set stories, but the strength of the writing carried me through, and I have to admit the atmosphere of a stifling Florentine summer was excellent.

Jim Kelly Death's Door (local library)
I'd read Kelly's stories about journalist detective Philip Dryden, but hadn't come across his policemen, Shaw and Valentine. It might take a couple of books for the characters to develop fully three dimensionally, but the plot was good.

Christobel Kent The Killing Room (local library)
Another Sandro Cellini story. Again, good plot and writing, and the characters starting to really take shape.

Christobel Kent The Loving Husband (local library)
Good plot and characters, lots of suspense, another winner.

Christobel Kent What We Did (Kindle)
I downloaded this one to take to Southampton, because my one remaining unread library book was a large print hardback. This was less gripping, being not so much a whodunnit (or even a whydunnit) but a wedunnit (and are we going to get away with it).

Christobel Kent The Crooked House (local library)
Good characters, atmosphere and suspense, great writing and observation, but a plot that left me wondering why. Maybe the sort of book you have to read twice.

Sabine Durrant Take Me In (Tesco's)
Frustrating story of annoying people who do idiotic things because of pointless guilt, with a very unsatisfying ending which does nothing to resolve the main question and only reason for reading to the end. Nice detail of PR work though.

Patricia Gibney The Stolen Girls (local library)
Irish-set police thriller, average to OK, but with some leaden dialogue and excruciating prose in places.
 

The 31st (post) of January

So... so far, so good, with the intention to post every day. Every day in January - achieved. I only have to get half way through February and I'll have equalled the number of posts from the whole of 2015, and by the end of February I'll have beaten last year's total. I'm quite confident, now I've got back into the swing of it.

I just hope it's not too little, too late. I haven't updated or weeded my blogroll yet, but I'll have to soon. My blogroll was set up for my benefit; a one-stop portal for the posts I wanted to read over breakfast. Time was there'd be half a dozen a day or more new posts, but no more. Some only post while they're boating, so the winter months are quieter (except for the indomitable icebreaking Herbies); some - including the fabulous read that was Valerie - have sold up and stopped blogging, while others have just petered out. None of the historic boaters on my list has posted for over four months.

I would dearly love to add some new blogs to the blogroll, but they have to be ones I'll enjoy reading - well-written, interesting - and if they're occasionally funny, that's a bonus. So please do send me your recommendations. And if there are any other old boat blogs that I'm not aware of (they don't even have to pass the interesting test) I will definitely add them.

At present it seems that the only blogger who's increasing their posting rate is Nev on Percy. Diamond Geezer is, thankfully, showing no sign of packing away his keyboard, and to be honest most days is enough on his own to get me through breakfast. It's a sad fact though that blogging - personal blogging at least - is being supplanted by faster, shorter, picture-ier media. I don't know how many of those on the blogroll are now communicating primarily through Facebook, Twitter, maybe even Instagram - but I'm certain that at least some of them are.

Who'd have thought, fifteen years ago, that we would so quickly arrive at the day when blogging was seen as old hat.

Marie and me

Loyal reader Frank commented on Monday's post about my nascent anthropomorphised pottery emotional vegetable receptacle collection 'I may be completely off the mark here but I'm betting Marie Kondo's philosophy is not yours.'

Well, Frank, I wouldn't say you were completely off the mark, but, in many ways I am a follower of Marie Kondo. You only have to look at my drawers:

Completely and utterly Kondo'd.

I am not following her TV exploits, but I bought The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying a few years ago, and did indeed put quite a lot of it into practice, and found it very helpful. Sadly I can't refer to it now as I have lent it to Sebastian, in the hope (not yet realised) of passing on a little of that magic.

I did work through her categories, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. There are some things I will keep forever and ever and ever, but I am actually quite a ruthless chucker-awayer of the other ninety-eight percent of my stuff. Particularly with clothes, I have a lot of churn. I still like my own method for wardrobe sorting (sadly the post has lost its photos) and it's overdue being applied again. For quite a while after moving to the new house, I didn't acquire many more clothes, being at a safer distance from the charity shops of Broomhill and Crookes. But - as noted on Monday - it's becoming all to easy to slip into Hillsborough, which has at least half a dozen and - with a few exceptions - a lot more keenly priced than the ones up the hill. To complicate things, I'm now the sort of affluent professional who can occasionally justify splurging on a new dress (very rarely anything else - half an outfit never feels like such good value) in the sale, and they obviously can't be got rid of, ever.

The key element of Marie Kondo's philosophy, it strikes me, is that you should keep things (and only things) which 'spark joy' - or if that has lost a little in translation, that make you smile. And my sad onions and disappointed celery absolutely do fulfil that function, and are, therefore, it seems to me, completely in line with her philosophy. Mr Celery is in fact already earning his keep:

Yes, I do have a lot of old tat painstakingly collected historic artefacts. I am also (almost) obsessively tidy. They are curated as carefully as any museum or gallery collection, arranged and positioned to the inch (or less, if I'm honest). I wish I weren't like this. People come to my house and say 'I wish I could be as tidy as you.' But I go to their joyfully chaotic homes, where things are genuinely, spontaneously (dis)ordered rather than carefully contrived, and I wish that, just sometimes, I could be as untidy. But as I can't, perhaps buying things that are intrinsically superfluous is the next best thing.

Happy Birthday Chertsey

Today is Chertsey's birthday - her official birthday at least, the day she is recorded as having been 'delivered' from Harland and Wolff to GUCCCo.

Here she is in the first year of her life, as pictured in Alan Faulkner's The George and the Mary (and wrongly captioned in the new edition), loading strawboard at Northampton.

And here are a few more snapshots from different points in her life.

At Stratford, in 1964:

Photo: Max Sinclair

And back again fifty years later:

Here's Chertsey in 1970 on the River Wey, en route to the National at Guildford:

Photo: Richard Pearson

And here she is in 2016, on the Wey again for probably the first time since, this time on the way (pun unavoidable) to the HNBC rally:

Happy 82nd birthday old girl.

Emotional vegetables

No, not a new term of abuse (well, not that I know of), but my latest collection (when you move from having two of something that you don't even need one of, to three, that's the start of a collection).

It started with a sad onion (the small one). I can't even remember where he came from. But when I was in a charity shop in Eastbourne with Sebastian last year, we heard the staff talking... 'What happened to the sad onion?' 'I haven't put it out yet.'  I pricked up my ears. 'Sad onion? Please can I see the sad onion?' Because obviously, when you have a sad onion, you need another sad onion.

The second sad onion is in fact a classic SylvaC sad onion.

Then on Saturday I was on the phone to Sebastian, and he asked me if I collected sad onions. Well, I said (mistakenly, as it turned out) I don't think there are that many different sorts of sad onions out there. So I would willingly widen my collection to embrace anthropomorphised pottery vegetables of any variety, displaying any emotion.

And in a truly uncanny coincidence, on Sunday afternoon my task tombola (don't ask; I'll tell you soon enough) sent me charity shopping. I'll be going up to Broomhill next weekend, so I strolled (briskly, it was bloody cold) down to Hillsborough, and in the first shop I visited (which I would have missed out entirely if I hadn't snuck into Morrisons to use the loo) blow me if I didn't find a smiley/sullen celery:

A slightly creepy smile, but a smile nonetheless. Turn him round though...

and he looks very grumpy. Or possibly disappointed. I mean, I would, if I were celery.

None of these things is any use as a receptacle. The sad onions are too small to hold anything other than a very small quantity of very small (or finely chopped) onions, and the celery pot (vase?) leaks copiously if you fill it with water (although I admit that might not be a deliberate design feature). It doesn't look much like any celery I've ever seen either. Lucky it's got 'CELERY' written on it - on both sides - or I would have taken it for a pointy cabbage pot.

But none of that is the point. It is a collection, perfect in its pointlessness.

You have to wonder how these things came to be designed ('Hey guys, I've had this great idea!'), manufactured, marketed, sold, bought, given (because I doubt anyone ever bought one for themselves), received... 'Oh, thank you mother-in-law, now I will never have to serve your son limp celery again.' 'Why, thank you darling, now Reg won't be able to eat too many pickled onions at the buffet, after what happened last time... How clever of you.'

Babe magnets in the woods

Happiness is...

... shelves to put my Waterways World collection on.

Not to mention Practical Householder 1958-63

Ali

My little sister would have been fifty today...

Alison Ina Hale

25.01.1969 - 07.01.2012

And lampshades

I do like a 1930s glass lampshade, and in the past few months I've collected three of them in my charity shop round.

Firstly this one - which I actually paid TEN POUNDS for in the Broomhill Oxfam

and which graces the downstairs loo, followed a few weeks ago by this one - also from Oxfam in Broomhill, but only £3.99

which lights the lobby by the back door.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the St Lukes Vintage shop - again in Broomhill - yielded this beauty for just £1.99

to prettify the light at the top of the attic stairs.

Then from the collection I have this in my study

I seem to recall that we paid quite a lot for that one in the Newhaven Flea Market (before that formet chapel beuilding went on to become flats).

Waiting in the attic are two more

These are the ones I've had the longest, and were jumble sale purchases - the bottom one was £2, I think, and the to one £1 - or it might have been the other way round. The big orange one was the very first. They will all be in use eventually - and if needed I can get all the necessary ceiling roses, hooks and chains from the brilliant Lampspares.

Lamps

Sebastian bought me a couple of fabulous GWR-related Christmas presents, including these lamps, which I put up using the drill that he (and Jim) gave me for my birthday.

They were sold as candle holders, but they look too complicated to just be that. Here, however, is one looking pretty with a fake candle in it

They'll look even better when I get round to cleaning them.

Why would they need ventilation holes in the side if they were just for candles? And that raised cross is hollow pipework, which opens out behind the bracket and through into the cylindrical bit. To me this suggests gas. Now that might sound absurd, but a bit of Googling shows that railway carriages were lit by gas, in America, and in Scotland (where at least one disaster ensued, as late as 1915).

I know at least two people I could ask, so - if they're not reading this, and no one else tells me in the meantime - I'll keep researching and report back. But in the meantime I just wanted to show them off.