Big Day Out: Hereford

Introducing a new feature to the 'blog, the first in a series of one in which I take you by the virtual hand for a walk-through among Britain's most famous features, country towns and attractions. Many of you around the world will not be so lucky as I am in being able to hop into an eco-friendly vehicle to navigate the highways and by-ways of this wonderful land but... don't worry, we've got you covered!

Accordingly sit back, relax and let the captain guide you among the streets and back passages of Hereford, the county town of Herefordshire. If you ever need to guess a county town, incidentally, simply drop the 'shire' off the end of it and you're there!

We stayed at the historic Green Dragon Hotel in the heart of town, didn't we, which I prefer to the riff-raff at the Premier Inn ~ this one full of widows, vicars, retired colonels and weirdos like me. Nell Gwen stayed here with the king, so I checked the bed for stains. They still have a letter of complaint from Sir Edward Elgar, and out the back you can see where once were kept coach and horses!

From the hotel it's a short walk to the bridge across the River Wye, which floods to the base of its parapets periodically. It appears the years 1946, '47 and '48 were a real pisser, although 1998 was even worse, having returned for an encore!

Re-tracing our steps back toward the centre of town, here a home for retired nurses provided by a local philanthropists. Nowadays as they are thrown on the scrap-heap instead the building has fallen into disuse, but is doubtless preserved by its heritage until such time as teenage vapers set fire to it!

A delightful view of the cathedral that they started building nearly a thousand years ago, and the builders have said they'll be back next month to finish it. It contains a 'chained library' that was implemented to stop people from nicking the books, and it also contains a copy of the Mappa Mundi: one that you'd not want loaded into your sat-nav any time soon!

No high street would be complete without an Oxfam shop full of tat, although I felt obliged in this case to add 'Shags locals in places like Haiti' to that list of to-dos in a permanent marker!

This nice man was clearly foreign as he knew how to play the accordion. He wasn't overly keen on a pic ~ in case I guess he thought the revenue might have advanced to facial recognition ~ but he had to relent when I pointed out I'd given him 50p!

Nonetheless the sound of the accordion supplied a gay backdrop to the atmosphere at the street market, depicted here. The space is reserved for pedestrians, the car here only being used to take out as many as possible, as is traditional nowadays!

Nothing I like more than a bit of mongery in public, and all hail to this example a little further beyond the street-market. What I like even more is the fact that have not even bothered to put the name up there. It may well feature on Google's maps but you can do that for yourself!

Herefordshire is famous for its cattle and there's a life-size statue of the eponymous bull at the tail-end of the market. Frankly if I had a scrotum that size I'd spray it in gold and walk around with no trousers on all day. In fact s most statues around the world are burnished gold in parts ~ the mannekin's penis in Brussels for inst ~ that we could and should start a trend with this guy's genitalia!

Nothing I like more than a gaily-coloured eatery, of which Hereford has many and among them this one containing tapas. Ole!

Advancing beyond the market-place there is a modern shopping-mall that includes a public lavatory within its multi-storey. To access it requires an elevator announcing 'Have a nice day!' when you enter it, although I'd have preferred something more culturally relevant like 'Stop dicking around and get a move on!'. Free however and a delightful amenity.

You can drink coffee in Hereford and do so sitting on a Vespa, though the word does mean 'wasp' in Italian and I don't want my scrotum anywhere near one of those as I relish my flat white!

There are seagulls in Hereford as elsewhere, although this one has shit himself he's waited so long for his flat white!

I prevailed upon a young lady to take this 'portrait of the author as a young man' as I stood next to someone who'd fought in WW1... and I thought they were shorter in those days? Anyhow he had to put up with being gnawed by rats whilst sleeping in a trench full of water; although in fairness my flat white could have been hotter!

Reason for me being here being to take the long view when it comes to a university that junior can attend, although I'd been disappointed by the scarcity of young folk lying wasted on the streets at break of day. This is the country's newest, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering and I was here for an open day. It is doing great things, though I'd have preferred a higher class of biscuit at the intro! I asked 'Why Hereford?' and it is because they never had one, which is reasonable!

It was an exciting day to be here as the match at the football stadium must be won in order to assure the club's survival in the Northern Premier Football League. Why it is in the Northern and not the Southern is a mystery, though they told me that it had something to do with the chairman, who made his money at Red Bull Racing and gets to pick and choose who goes where, like a footballing game of Risk. The Northern is the second oldest league in the world... something else we gave you!

Here advertised on the wall of the stadium itself, a reminder that whilst you've got Taylor Swift, we've got the Mindboggler. Given a fiver he told me I was thinking of the one on the left in K-Pop Demon Hunters, and that I'd like to shag her. Amazing!

Ed. We apologise for the excess use of exclamation marks in the text, this merely in a desperate attempt by the author to whip up a little enthusiasm.

Float On

Slip the waders on and slide the cat on the tail-gate in a trice these days to update the static test with the displacement strips in place, and while they don't appear to have elevated things overly the trim is ideal. The forward bulkhead practically clears the water with that at the rear submerged to the base of each battery-pack, which is next to nothing by way of an impediment.

Gut feel is it is likely to be underpowered, but proof's in the electrical pudding and there will be plenty of scope for upgrading the packs, motors and propellers as this should swing a couple of 24" props with the axes set here 25" apart.

A good sesh and in fact one of the frames ~ which could almost have been painted by Monet at Giverny ~ is good enough for the website, where it now hangs for the public to adore.

Hang Loose

The first prototype is hung from the rafters where I plan on it staying while I work upon the second in order to prove that it cuts the mustard as a vessel of any kind: a reason being that wiring four motors up for any sort of vertical lift is an expensive pain in the ass that leaves you reliant on experts who'd rather do something else.

You can see here how those uPVC extrusions are overly flexible, though it's not so much of a problem in the fulness of time as (a) it provides shock-absorption in an industry wholly lacking it and (b) skis of all types have evolved from planks of wood to composite engineering marvels and there's no reason why these shouldn't too.

Fortunately the second prototype ~ aimed at motion under displacement and on the plane ~ has wooden hydro-skis which as ever are provided by Cheshire Mouldings.

I told them that I'll rate them for maximum velocity on smooth water for a fee, and the best thing is they're from down the road here in St Helens.

Think global, buy local, eat pies.

Going Postal

Here two ways in which Royal Mail, recently flogged off to a foreigner like all else in the UK and the Royal Family surely likely to follow... Our Dominions eat Dominos.

But the historic post-box, each of which bear the initials of whichever monarch was reigning at the time, has been given a makeover with a camera, solar panel and wifi with which to allow for the electronic dispatch of physical letters... which Denmark has given up on entirely.

Ironically the only people who post letters are older than I am and lacking means to read the instructions along with the time, I like them bought a stamp and used the conventional type sunk into a brick wall further along the road.

What we should really do is maintain systems that would continue to operate in the event of a war, as they did in the two previous. When it comes to aerial navigation, ask yourself why the US decided not to scrap ground-based aids which run whether the internet does or not*.

Rather more successfully altogether the Royal Mail recently trialed Beta's electric aircraft around the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, requiring a fraction of the fuel and maintenance of the fossil-fuelled version.

* VHF Omnirange. I've booked a hotel in order that the family can enjoy a visit and picnic at beacon 'BHD' on the south coast. During my Instrument Rating I organised a visit to the non-directional beacon we'd used all week, though sadly I was the only one to turn up on the day.

The Seventh Seal... ed Laminate.

Always give the Boat Design database in the US first dibs when it comes to dropping the latest issue, and here the revised pattern for construction of the catamaran. The monoski still gets the bulk of the views, but it's early days and my commitment to a cat instead is unwavering in view of its practicality in transporting men or materials. Or women, LGBTQ+ community and Uncle Tom Cobley though not all at same time.

You know the reasons why, so you can just keep quiet. It does though mean that in view of the nice weather it'll be waders on and back to the pond for a sneak peek.

The weather in the UK and specially the northwest is worryingly how meteorologists predicted... in the UK we don't dismiss climate change as fake news or shoot politicians who say so, the reason why so many people from the US are swarming all over the Cotswolds like locusts.

What it has meant is that like the binary weather of the prairies we suffer a winter of non-stop rain that turns on a dime into shorts weather. What it means for boat-building therefore is a winter of groundworks intent upon stopping the garage floor from flooding, and instead diverting water into a much-anticipated static test-tank.

The post title refers to the fact the foam-sheet is now sliced like seven eggy soldiers albeit the last is split further into two narrower slices for displacement strips.

It is also the title of a film by Ingmar Bergman about the pet seals he kept at home in Sweden, and their eventual encounter with a Grim Reaper.

Tele Drone

The London Marathon is though the world's most valuable one-day charity event and likely so because from the start it has ~ like the Parkrun ~ been organised by volunteers largely without government involvement, which would kill it stone dead.

And if you don't believe that, France effectively banned the staging of park runs on health and safety grounds, and because it prevented Europeans from getting obese.

This man though has run five marathons dressed as a phone-box in aid of a brother with muscular dystrophy.

I have put in for the free ballot and ensuing draw, more in hope than expectation. I did so last year too, and escaped only narrowly when a further draw was made at a local running club for someone who'd made the cut but couldn't make the race.

It cut the odds to nearer Russian roulette ~ 'Oh dear' I said upon missing out again.

St Oswalds, Winwick

What do you see that I do? What should scream at you is the fact the spire's a later addition: restored in 1869 while the rest of the church dates back a thousand years.

In fact it is England in a nutshell, appearing in the Domesday Book of 1086; lodging Cromwell's troops during the civil war of 1648; altered by architect Pugin when not working on Parliament; hosting the Titanic's captain marriage in 1887 and where I drove by in 2026.

Ed. The fine for use of a mobile phone whilst driving is £1000, tho' this was taken with a flat-cap-mounted hands-free device that live-streams the author's life 24/7.