Crisp & Even

Margaret & I went to Prague last month & the pic above is a view from the battlements of the Castle - which means that, give or take 800 years of urban development, you're seeing what Good King Wenceslas saw when he looked out on the feast of Saint Stephen. No, I can't see any poor men gathering winter fu-u-el either, but it allows me to wish you all the very best for Christmas & the New Year.
Hither, page, and stand by me!

A wet bang to the mouth

Dwarskloof Farm – Greyton South Africa 13 November 2008:
It has rained solidly for almost 3 days. We had 55mm of rain on Tuesday; 72mm of rain Wednesday and, so far, in the first 5 hours of Thursday another 22mm. it continues. The vines were due to have their second drink on Tuesday a mere (forgive pun) 5mm. They have now had the equivalent of 6 months of rain – if it only worked like that. In 3 days the sun will bake the ground and I will be trying to get the irrigation system to work.

The result of this excess is that I now know that the water reticulation works and that the dam is full and that the gateway to the farm is/was blocked. Greyton too is cut-off and this merited a mention on the national TV (SABC 1, 2, 3). I laboured with the mini-digger for a couple of hours in the pissing rain and cleared a way BUT fear that now, 12 hours and 50mm of more rain later, that my toil was in vain

Talking of Blocks. Al 'n' Val has had to put off their adventure to the animal park at Inverdoorn until the water abates. We have broken into the emergency red and white wine stock (the unmarked 65p a bottle stuff).

It's almost a year to the day since the last once in a hundred year storm. Surely it should have been another 99 years?

The young vines look well though. They haven't been washed out of the ground and there is evidence of budding.

A South African farmer was interviewed tonight, on the SABC News, about the fact that his harvest of table grapes would more than likely be wiped out by the storm. He agreed with the reporter and smiled and shrugged and said 'hell that's nature'.

I await the dawn to see what havoc nature has wrought.

I feel most sorry for Al 'n' Val. Their first trip to SA and marooned with us. No Monopoly board games and dwindling emergency wine stocks.

A technical note:
55mm of rain is equivalent of 55litres per square metre. 55 litres is roughly 11 UK gallons. Each vine has a catchment of 1 square meter.

Isn't that interesting?

 

Bang to the mouth 4- Leak Seeking Project update

8 Nov: 12 noon. The Rastas are still in the tool shed.

Bang to the mouth 3

They say that timing is everything. On the evening of Thursday 6 November 2008 and the morning of Friday 8 it rained. Jake-n-Sam's crew completed the planting of the 3000 Viognier vines at 5 in the afternoon yesterday and it started raining at 7ish. The vines need 5 litres of water each in the first few days and (yippee) we've just had the equivalent of 10litres in the last 24 hrs - see graph and also http://www.thedawes.net/.


We've been praying for rain for months. The Winter here has been unusually dry, barely 30 litres per square metre per month for the past 4 months. Which is not good. We've spent a smallish fortune putting in a sophisticated irrigation system which depends on the dam at the bottom of the yard being full of - rainwater. This timely downpour is encouraging, as we have still to find where the system is leaking - I buried the pipes some weeks back confidant that there would be no need to ever see them again. Forever an optimist.

Nevertheless, this week has been a success.
Zakrey and I collected the vines on Monday. They slept overnight in some seaweed (Kelp) treated water to condition the roots and at 8 am on Tuesday 4 November Di and I planted the first 10 vines ourselves and then let Sam-n-Jake's planting crew do the remaining 2990. I fretted like a mother hen for an hour or so but could see that everything was under control and that Zakrey and Charles had the post plant watering system sorted and so retired for breakfast with Di, Jake, Al and Val (on their first trip to SA) and later Sam and one of the many Sam-n-Jake offspring and, oh yes Ben the dog.

It took 3 days to plant all the vines - 750 the first day, 1250 the second and the balance yesterday. About 5 of the crew and Zakrey are now tidying the yard and moving some of the bigger stones back in the vine line to act as mulch and storage heaters. It's still raining a little which is frustrating my leak seeking plans.
The next stage is to make sure that 'they' have taken and then cutback and fit grow tubes and then get the cordon wire and anchors fitted. For that I need to get Jamii Hamlin of Ecostake back to show me how to do it. I also need to record how we managed to be using stainless steel posts instead of timber... see later
When I was in paid employment,prior to my retardiment, as my Grandson says, I used to have a worry attack in the early hours - usually when the digital clock said 505; where I would mentally list all the down side things that I had to do on a project or administration of the company. I haven't had any of those moments for a year now.. BUT they've started again with the realisation of the work needed for this wine project.The pre-growing stages - ripping, staking, digging can be extended, delayed, mechanically intervened but once the vines start growing I will have to move at nature's pace. Cornflakes and tea and then leak seeking will begin.
15 mins later:
Zakrey, my Rasta vineyard manager (as he has taken to calling himself!), on seeing me leak seeking in the rain, from the shelter of his tool shed, said
"Hey boss-there's no need to water until Monday, stop worrying, at least the pump in the sky is working, do what I and I are doing - relax." (Rastas use 'I and I' instead of 'We'). I might knit myself one of those red green yellow hat things that Zakrey is so fond of,whilst I wait for the rain to abate.

Bang to the mouth 2

I forgot to say that on top of everything else we decided to bring our trail hound ben(digo) to this South African house and farm.
So far he likes it. He's made 6 new friends and is the talk of the village. He arrived 2 hours late on Saturday 1^st of November along with my missing guitar.

The trip to pick up the vines was successful – there are now 3000 sticks sleeping overnight in 4 bins of water.
Tomorrow at ¼ to 7 we plant.

Post Post - above is picture taken on the 4th of November: Bendigo helping to plant vines

A bang on the mouth

Today, 3 November 2008, I am going to Voor-Groenberg Nurseries near Wellington to collect 3000 new Viognier vines to plant in the prepared holes in our virgin vineyard. I'm borrowing Steve-n-Jane's Toyota Hilux bakkie and setting off soon via Caledon (to get our mobile 'phone unblocked). I should get back mid afternoon in time for the arrival from England of Val and Al Block. Val & Al are staying for 2 weeks and, as well as being here to witness the planting of the vines, they are also singing with us at the Abbey Rose tomorrow night.

I'd always meant to write a contemporary account of the planning and building of the South African project and of our complex travelling and living arrangements between the Western Cape and West Cumbria. However I'm pretty sure it is almost impossible to devote probably 1 hour a day to the journal whilst doing the project. SOOO…. what I've decided to do is to start now, at the planting milestone, to try my best to write up the vineyard project on a weekly going forward schedule and also try and intersperse the contemporary stuff with a commentary on the past 3 years. I've got notebooks, sketch pads and correspondence going back 10 years so it should be easy. History, as we all know, is only 1 person's interpretation of what actually happened. I'm not going to spend a load of time polishing and 'byuddy shining' it (to quote my 3 year old grand-daughter). I would appreciate though some editorial help from Nick (please?) and Emma (please please?) to keep me within the rules of written English and any possible libel action.

I'm also going to publish to the blog as I go. That way it's out there, not skulking on my hard-drive, and it will encourage me to get the records up to date. Good theory!

The vineyard project started I think in early 2005, though technically it had been brewing (sorry) since we bought a house in Greyton in May 2001 - or maybe 1996 when Di and I first travelled together to SA or maybe when I worked in SA during the 70's and first visited the wine lands. Hell - I don't know.

Anyways – in January 2005 we decided to buy a piece of farm land from Steve and Jane Collins with the intent I seem to remember of creating a wilderness reserve and maybe building a small house once we had sold our place in Greyton and also our share in a café and gallery there. Complicated or what?

The chronology (is there such a word) gets a bit blurred but I think it went:

May 2005 – buy 90 hectares of land from S&J Collins – eventually agree to share it with them – they have South West side we have North East – see Map later.
May 2006 – after a lot of walking round decide on place for the house and start building
July 2006 – Sell Greyton House
December 2006 – sell Café and Gallery
April 2007 - House substantially complete – move in
September 2007 – electricity switched on
October 2007 – retire from paid employment in UK
March April 2008 – rip and prepare the land for planting
May June 2008 – install stainless steel support system to half of vineyard
July August 2008 Install Irrigation system
Aug September 2008 – intend to plant vines – FAIL
November 2008 .. here we go

Looks simple doesn't it – but just wait there's 36 months to account for.
The view this morning

Zimba, Camden Maine

To Whitehaven, for an optician's appointment. Walking along the hard standing on the harbour my gaze was caught by a boat of quite outstanding elegance. A 60-foot yacht with a sleek black hull and neat cream-coloured strip decking that made it look quite the Art Deco transport of delight. The Zimba was registered in Camden, Maine, from which it inescapably followed that its lucky owners must have sailed it across the North Atlantic.
This led me to think of those Cumbrians who made the crossing the other way under sail, generally to the Maritimes and the Carolinas, in search of better fortune; and of others whose enforced transportation brought them from Africa in vessels whose home was this Cumbrian port. What the Zimba's crew came in search of is probably not difficult to gauge: Whitehaven arguably looms larger in American history than British. The family of their revolutionary hero hailed from hereabouts, and the town's Lowther-built gridiron was allegedly the blueprint for Manhattan's streets. And in 1778 the father of the US Navy, a local lad, brought the Revolution home with an abortive strike at the colonial power's economy by attacking the third largest slaving port in Britain. (One wonders what the Virginian revolutionary leadership felt about this stunt).
Whatever the reason, the Zimba gave Whitehaven harbour a welcome breath of sophistication and class.

Les Delices De Cumbria - Part XXII

New horizons in post-Euclidean geometry over lunch with the Intrepid Mountaineer at The Glasshouse in sophisticated downtown Wigton. Intrigued by a menu item we asked the waitress for advice.
"This ciabatta rustic triangle. What is it exactly?"
"Well, it's sort of square-shaped like . . ."

Road Rage County

Getting beaten up in public is always a rather embarrassing experience, and I'm pleased to say I managed to avoid such inconvenience in Sainsbury's car park on Saturday morning.
The facts of the case are as follows, constable:
Stuck behind a tractor en route to Cockermouth, I was tailgated by a silver Volvo. The lad in the tractor had his girlfriend in the cab and a phone in his hand so I hung back, awaiting developments. The Volvo overtook both of us on a blind bend. Gestures followed as he sped off. A few minutes later on Gote Brow the Volvo was parked on the curb. As I passed him he pulled out and carefully followed me into Sainsbury's carpark. Tattoos and muscles got out and walked over to me.
"Have you got a problem with my driving marra?"
Clearly this was a tabloid headline waiting to happen, so I gently encouraged him to get back in his car and drive away. He did so, after a few soothing words, but was obviously very upset that I hadn't given him the opportunity to use his fists.
I then went and did a spot of shopping.
Postscript: a straw poll later in the day suggests that what I should have done was drive further down mainstreet, turn left into Cockermouth police station and park in the bay marked 'Staff'. Let's hope I don't ever need to.

"You're Not Normal"

That's what my physiotherapist said this morning while dealing with the wreckage from the dorsal catastrophe in Stac Pollaidh car park. I think she was refering to my lumbar muscles, but the last time I consulted her she told me I was 'clinically short'. (Trust me honey, that's not what the other girls say). After half an hour of pressing and pummelling my back now definitely feels worse than it did when I got out of bed. So it must be working.

Purple Haze

Driving home so-late-it-was-early I noticed the sky above Moota Hill was already lightening behind the traces of rain-clouds. About to descend towards Parsonby I caught a glimpse of something astonishing. A lens of purple light stretched the length of the Solway from Cardurnock to Robin Rigg. It seemed to be floating in the middle air, weaving between the red-lanterned transmission towers of Anthorn, wreathing the shore light at Southerness before dissolving around the offshore wind turbines in mid-channel. The effect was jolting and hallucinatory, not so much a trick of the light as a shameless piece of effrontery. A moment's thought suggested that a shoal of cold night-air above the Solway was condensing mist and then refracting what little pre-dawn light was streaming over my shoulder from above Skiddaw and the north-eastern fells. The sight was a small bit of nocturnal conjuring to which I was very probably the sole witness. All it lacked was a distant Brockenspectre, a ghostly car projected upon the lens of light.
Two minutes later, in the lane at by Arkleby Toll a hare appeared in my headlights and ran off just ahead of my wheels before vanishing into a dark hedgerow.

Nine Feet Over The Tarmac

Here's a salutary tale of serendipity and confusion from that half-derelict palace of memories the Electrical Intertubes.
'Improved Sound Limited' were a 1970s Krautrock band of quite outstanding obscurity. In the twilight of their career they contributed four tunes and a song to the soundtrack of Wim Wenders' 1976 Cannes prize-winner Im Lauf Der Zeit. Unavailable on DVD and rarely watched even by Wenders afficionados, the film's a long, slow-moving meditation on (among much else)friendship and the passing of time. But it's shot in serenely elegiac black and white and if you watch it in the right rhythm, is an utterly compelling experience. The music, all airy country blues, willowy pedal steel and echoing drums, matches the images with quiet perfection and suggests that songwriter Axel Lindstadt had been listening to a lot of Harvest-era Neil Young. It also has some sumptuous saxophone riffs (OK, you can see where this is going). The music made an enormous impression on me when I first saw the film. From time to time, I tried to track down a copy of the soundtrack - even going to the trouble of collaring Wenders at a film festival in the '80s and asking him about it. (He was evasive).
One evening last week I was surfing Youtube when I came across a series of short films made by a middle-aged Frenchman calling himself 'radiateur93'. Montages of family photographs and home-movies, they were deeply personal works, watching them felt impolite. But 'radiateur93' had spliced them to the Improved Sound Limited Im Lauf Der Zeit soundtrack. A brief traverse led me to the band's own surviving videos and promos. The bad news: their other music really is quite mind-bogglingly dull. The good news: a compilation CD 'Road Trax' exists, and it includes all five soundtrack pieces. In an instant, thirty years of searching were rewarded. I surfed off and ordered the CD from an obscure Berlin music shop.

Just after this transaction completed I finally found my way to Wenders' own website rather than the cybersquatters selling DVDs of his films and discovered that it offers free mp3 downloads of the same songs. It was the work of five minutes to download them, burn a CD and walk over to the car.
So I spent part of a bright summer evening driving down that boulevard of broken dreams the A66 to the tune of some achingly familiar music on Thursday. I suppose the Road Trax CD is on its way from Berlin.
Coda: for those still wondering what the fuss is about, I also discovered that Youtube has an old 70s trailer of Im Lauf Der Zeit which almost completely fails to convey the hypnotically serene beauty of this film.

WARNING: Contains scenes of existential Volkswagen driving. Do not attempt this at home. Or on the open road.

Kylesku Bridge

At Kylesku, deep in Sutherland, the high road leaps across Loch a'Chairn Bhain on an elegant, spritely concrete bridge that curves extravagently between two rock promontories. At the far end is a stone memorial to the British submariners and 'human torpedoes' of World War II who trained in these waters. The list of their dead is long: the description of their operations, manoeuvring two-man subs sat astride explosive-stuffed cylinders onto the keels of enemy warships in dark, muddy, freezing waters, terrifyingly claustrophobic. Tonight, in the upper world of Sutherland the light of the midsummer evening gives an intensity to the blues of the loch, the greens of the hillside that is a kind of wildly expansive luxury. Above me the green hillsides sweep upwards to 800 feet of sheer cliff: the sandstone buttresses of Sail Gharbh, north-eastern spur of Quinag, loom like a dreadnought's prow. The mountain seems painted by the wild vision of one imagining some otherworld. For a moment it is not of this earth. I pause and wonder what thoughts and sensations this hill engendered in the human torpedoes of Kylesku when they turned their eyes away from the deep.

Train Spotter? Yes .. for a year; Weather Station for more than a year? - could be

Now's your chance to keep up with the weather at our emerging wine farm in SA. I'm here on my own today and RW has emailed me to say that I should light a fire.
Dwarskloof Weather Station

The Book Of Emigrations

As the dizzy blonde disappeared up a pinnacle, there cycled into the car-park a geography teacher from Largs and all his worldly possessions. He had, he informed me, spent the last ten years touring the world on two wheels and was now cycling to Iceland. Apparently it was preferable to life in Largs. Essential information for anyone who needs to get out of Reykjavik in a hurry: a one-way ferry ticket to Bergen costs £160. A one-way ferry-ticket to Thurso via Bergen costs £79. Perhaps Bergen has a congestion charge?

Great Mountaineering Disasters Of Our Time - # 375

Stac Pollaidh, the car-park. Intent on ending the perfect day in Assynt with an evening of scrambling across the sandstone pinnacles of Scotland's most photogenic mountain, I put on my boots and bent down to tie the laces. That was the moment at which my lumbar vertebrae decided that I might think I was going scrambling but they had other plans. Pop! The pain was excruciating and made standing up a real challenge. Twenty minutes of gentle hobbling and some stretching exercises brought things under control but meant that agile scrambling was out of the question. Then a dizzy new age blonde in a camper-van turned up and informed me that bodily injuries were a result of bad thoughts and negative feelings. Was she by any chance a physiotherapist, I enquired. Sadly no, and after some analgesic banter she headed off up the hill she claimed to be 'strangely drawn to'. Then I remembered the presence of an effective pain-killer in the boot of the car. I don't recommend drinking malt whisky from the bottle while semi-recumbent in the driver's seat at a major tourist destination. "It's for my bad back you understand," starts to sound a little unconvincing after a while.
Dear Readers, whatever you're doing I hope it's less painful and involves more vigorously expressive movements of the pelvis.

The High Road To The Deep North

I'm sitting in a quayside bar in Ullapool at the cocktail hour - the 80/- hour, I suppose - recovering from exertions on the fells. Once again the long-planned assault on The Matterhorn Of The North has been postponed - this time on account of a bizarre series of orthopaedic disasters brought on by an embarrassing incident in the car-park at Stac Pollaidh. So while the air pulsates to the odour of Calmac diesel mixed with an aerial suspension of sub-flashpoint lard from the BBC Radio 4 Chippy Of The Year 2004, I'm enjoying the prospect of Loch Broom, the green lushness of Inverlael and the distant snow-patches atop the Fannaichs. Sheer heaven.

Lamb Shank

Spotted lying in the street outside The Caley Inn, Ullapool: the skeleton, just about picked clean, of the hind-quarters of a sheep. At least I think it was a sheep. Read the menu with care . . .

A Gneiss Day Out

Ride the high road to the deep north beyond Ullapool and you'll come to Inchnadamph Lodge, a tranquil 19th century farmhouse B&B in leafy shade by a quiet loch. It's miles from anywhere but evening meals can be had in the hotel down the road, a branded monster of a hostelry that's undergone several extensions since the 1950s, none of them sympathetic.
A few miles up a rough track from here the western face of Connival, all dilapidated butresses and crumbling strata, broods above the glen. A stiff pull and some elementary scrambling takes you up to its ridge: then the gneiss sets in. Crisp rocks and volcanic boulders that crunch beneath your boots in a tone suggesting they're much smaller and lighter than they actually are. Fifty metres up the slope and you realise they're the best business an orthopaedic surgeon could wish for. Ankles turn, knees ache, hips scream across this volcanic minefield. At Connival summit the ridge to Ben More beckons: a half-mile switch-back of slabs boulders and shillies of the same gneiss that bludgeons your cartilege into unconditional surrender. But the view is a reward beyond price: the line of the Assynt mountains from Cul Beag to Quinag, enticingly distant, and linking them on the far horizon a blue line between heaven and earth that is the Outer Isles.

Walk that line: Suit or Sandals or Suit with Sandals.

There is interest in the set up of Community Interest companies in Cumbria associated with Energy - (Energy Coast paper (see previous blogrant)). An agency was approached to gauge interest and I suppose ultimately some funding. The response, though positive, ended: The problem …. with Social Enterprises is what they do in a Gross Value Added (GVA) model.  Not for Profit companies don't contribute much to The Economy.

Community Interest companies have better buy in and more success over private 'incomers' - so why the caveat?

Superficially the agency is correct. Not for Profit companies shouldn't contribute losses to the economy. However there are quite a few For Profit companies (big ones too - Northern Rock – to name but one) that have not contributed much to the GVA. (Work through that last sentence again before moving on – it's a wee bit convoluted but I think I know what I mean).

It's a very fine line to walk:  the one between profit seeking, sharp suited entrepreneurs and sandaled, socialist do-gooders. The former is seen as dodgy to fund and the latter is also dodgy; but for different reasons. The fact is that government agencies would rather give money to the profit seeking, sharp suited entrepreneur.

Social Enterprises are not agencies redirecting public money for a fee. (Agencies that sometimes spend less on themselves than the money they are given to redistribute). Social Enterprise are sustainable - not for loss (as I prefer to call them) organizations meeting their own costs and able to make a difference and add to the GVA whilst putting any profits back into other social ventures or repaying the funder. They need to have all the controls and processes that normal businesses have – where sensible and appropriate of course. However their focus is to provide jobs and services for the common good and pay fairly its employees and supply partners.

On a GVA basis I would do away with all government funded agencies and just let me decide who gets the money.

Rant over for today.

I haven’t ranted for a while – but there was an item on the news yesterday about contractors and the Office of Unfair Trading that wakened the dragon.

I am not fond of some of the 'big' contracting outfits in the UK and thus am loathe to think well of them whilst they undergo the Office of Fair Trading investigation of uncompetitive practices and collusion. However, I do have a lot of sympathy as I believe that it's the Competition Laws and government buying policies that drive companies to collude or collaborate. The practice is widespread it seems so for some they have colluded unwittingly.

The Office of Fair Trading police are there to find unfair trading, on their dawn raids – and so they will and have done. Their powers are terrifying and encourage people to NOT bid for publicly funded projects. I've very recently retired from a contracting company – they don't build schools or hospitals and are very much of the mechanical/electrical discipline rather than building or civils – so collaboration is unnatural -we don't trust our contracting colleagues (sorry). Nevertheless I am sure that we will have transgressed the competition laws and no doubt we will have colluded.

The whole competitive process is unfair and stacked against the idea of competitive sustainable contracting. We are not talking about cartels here or' ringing' prices for commodities such as cement, bricks and bolts. We are talking about guessing the price of something very complex, like a school or hospital, and then being able to deliver and make 2% net profit. In my experience it is all too easy to guess, I mean, estimate, low by 10%. Making 2% net is pretty good, especially as costs have been known to go up over the life of a project.

About 10 years back I was involved with an initiative driven by the DTI to make contractors more competitive – ACTIVE it was/is called, born out of something called CRINE. Analysis of the acronyms reveals:
- Achieving Competitiveness through Innovation and Value Engineering (if I remember correctly) and,
- Cost Reduction in a New Era.
Basically these mean: early collaboration by clients with contractors; choosing the best contractor most able to do the job; don't compete on price – compete on ability; concentrate on the engineering and project management not on the provision of a cost that equals or is less than the budget; carry out cost and value analysis at every stage of a project; don't replicate roles within client and contractor teams; encourage collaboration through the supply chain … and so on. I know it works, because that's the way my company worked and I saw in ACTIVE the way forward for a sustainable contracting industry.
However, at the same time, government was pushing the answer to life the universe and everything – COMPETITION. How would they build hospitals? How would they decommission the nuclear industry? How would they restore our heritage? - COMPETITION.

I found myself at an ACTIVE workshop at the DTI offices in the morning of the same day, where in the afternoon I attended a seminar at the same office on - COMPETITION. Competition, as described by the men in grey suits, is all to do with getting as many companies as possible to bid for the work and also to bid with the best safety record; best engineering record; best quality record; best corporate social record; best administration record; best financial record. All very laudable but guaranteed under PFI and PPP projects to put costs up drive projects into over-run and companies and clients out of business. 15% of the costs of a PFI are taken up with getting the contract wording 'right' and policing to make sure the contractor doesn't rip off the client. A £10million project thus only has £8.5m available to the contractor to actually build. Where's the 2% profit? The industry is littered with write-offs by PFI contractors.

So, why does competition drive people to collude?.

The tendering process demands much more of the contractor. The ACTIVE approach discourages the growth of pre-contract resources (pre-engineering ?) and claims/clever estimate driven quantity surveying departments. The COMPETITION process does the opposite – confrontation and counter actions cost much more than facilitation and action. My retired from company specialises in Nuclear Decommissioning and Heritage Restoration and they saw their marketing and tendering and post contract effort increase from 2% of staff effort to 9%. These costs have to be recovered from the client thus putting further pressure on the 2% margin.

The competition process usually demands that at least 5 contractors are asked to bid and have to show either in a one stage or two stage process that they are capable of doing the work safely, well and without going bust, whilst investing in the local community for the best value price (lowest). The resources and costs required to prepare the bid – with all the bells and whistles can reach £80k (weigh 22kg and be in 12 lever-arch files) or so for a £5M project. £30k for even the smallest of projects. For 4 of these people this is lost money and they may be struggling for resources or borrowing off other projects. Yet we cannot refuse to bid because we have been asked to and may not get asked again and the client needs to make up the numbers to obey the rules. We have been encouraged through ACTIVE and others to collaborate with our competition and supply chain as the projects have become multidiscipline and clients only want to place one contract. Clients also encourage teaming in the supply chain to fulfil the building of capacity in the locality as tenders over a certain amount have to bid across the European union. Being too busy is no excuse – it makes sense then that the contractor with the resource to produce a good bid and estimate of costs does it and uses his supply chain to help him. Hopefully he is able to guess his costs correctly to allow the 2% margin and pay for the tender and fees to the lawyers. If bidding in a team or consortium it is likely that another member might also be bidding with a member of another consortium – how can there be collaboration without breaking of the competition rules. It's inevitable that the 'others' get some idea of the prices and elect to cover the price of the company likely to win rather than lose face by not putting in a bid. Just ringing up a supplier and saying have the others asked you for a price for supply of pipe and then saying can you copy me in I'm too busy to send you the details and quantities separately can be construed as collusion. One company sending out all the specs to the supply chain instead of five all sending out the equivalent of a small forest in Norway must be a better use of the planet's resources.

On TV yesterday an expert reporter was explaining that Company 'A' had won a hospital contract at £12M because companies 'B' and 'C' had 'covered' the company 'A' prices by bidding £12M plus; the client's budget was £10M – meaning that the tax payer had paid £2M too much. I have a feeling that the real price should have been nearer £15M and contractor 'A' got his estimate wrong. Contractors 'B' and 'C' would still have had to have done a load of work submitting the other tender deliverables even if they didn't work up a proper price. A fixed price bid is a wild guess to 3 decimal places – so my old chief estimator used to say.

I have a solution:
The client should put major effort into working up the right price for the job- he could even pay a contractor – 1 only, or a consortium to provide that price and if necessary value engineer it to the budget. The project could then go out for bidding. Contractors would in effect all bid the same price. "Yes – I can do that project for your budget price of £12M and make 2% profit". The client should then make his decision based on who is most capable of doing the work and has the resource to be able to do it in the timescale.

I'd also be prepared to pay 10% more just for peace of mind and the luxury of not having any claims or employing a shed load of quantity surveyors, lawyers and auditors to argue over the final account. Oh- and I'd also scrap all this KPI based payments and bonus nonsense. By all means measure performance and run KPI's but don't make them a reason to pay or not pay.

There are projects that have gone well under the competitive process. I know of an £8m project, where the public client was brave enough to choose and defend to the auditors the 2^nd lowest bid because he wanted the specialist experience of this particular contractor. The job went well – the QS's were sent away – effort went into engineering and project management not apportioning of blame for the things that were wrong. The project came in well under budget – slightly late. The contractor made 6% and enhanced his own and the client's reputation. An analysis of this project would make good reading but the grey suits would only say 'they should have taken the lowest price and saved the difference'

I could go on… but… back to my retirement lair.

From Western Cumbria to Western Cape Feb 2008 letter 1

We are 4 months in to our first 6 months posting to Dwarskloof Farm.

Dwars is an Afrikaans word meaning 'across'or 'challenge'. It certainly has been a challenge. First the lack of electricians then the floods then the worms then the power cuts then the power surge then the visitors then the crickets then the post office then the insurance claim then the gates then the cv joints on the car and …new tyres… It goes on and on .. it's a relentless challenge. Dwarskloof literally means 'across a ravine'.

We seem to cross the ravine every day. Just posting a letter can be stressful. The post office closed with the demise of the petrol station in November. The petrol station (state of the science new pumps no less) was due to open again in January BUT 'they had the wrong sort of electricity' so it remains fenced off (Feb 2008). Post Office has moved to Municipality buildings but has to be manned (personed?) by a duly authorised post office official from Caledon (22kms distant). Post office hours are 12 noon to 3pm with an HOUR for lunch at 1 pm

7.30: rise and prepare myself for the task of posting a letter during the 12 noon to 1 pm time slot.

11.45: I leave home to travel to town (Greyton)

12.05: I join the queue to buy the required stamps to send a small envelope to Cape Town

12.57: Envelope is measured and weighed and declared to be a standard envelope. The uniformed post office official looks disappointed.

12.59: I am proud possessor of stamps.

1.05 pm: I walk to site of fenced off petrol station and post letter through wire with stick and masking tape device (fashioned earlier in the day)

1.10: order 'coke float' at Oak and Vigne to calm fevered brow.

1.35: receive 'coke float'

1.45: leave Oak and Vigne to travel home (forgetting to pay)

2.00: arrive home

Duration of task 2.15 hours. By now the day is almost over - pointless trying to start another task. I'll wait for RW to break open the new bottle of gin at 6 pm and note that the last time we drove to Capetown it took 2 hours.

Nick And Ben's Bogus Adventure

On Saturday afternoon I took Ben The Trailhound down to Mawbray (as previously blogged), one of his and my favourite spots. Usually he romps along the boardwalk and cavorts on the beach. This time he got a scent within seconds of leaving the car, and was off along the seaward fence towards Allonby. I walked down to the beach, expecting his return (trailhounds have a highly developed topological awareness and if you don't know where they are, they almost certainly know exactly where you've got to). No Ben. I set off along the line of fences to Allonby. No Ben. I walked back. No Ben. Reasoning that he would make for the car, I returned to the car-park. No Ben. I waited patiently until the weather had turned, and horizontal rain powered by a Force 6 gale was lashing the windscreen, before walking along the fence once more. No Ben. So I started knocking on doors. After a diverting but fruitless encounter with Cumbria's celebrity chef (who gave the impression I was by no means the first person to have lost a dog at Mawbray) I soon found the trail. Yes, the chef's neighbours assured me: a trailhound had been here an hour ago. Their friend The Active Citizen, who was visiting them, had taken him home and called the Dog Warden.
After calling The Active Citizen, I eventually got through to Allerdale Borough Council's emergency out-of-hours help desk. "Is it about the trailhound?" they asked when they picked up the phone. Clearly Allerdale was having a slow emergencies day. They gave me the number of the kennels to which their Dog Warden had delivered Ben.
I drove the 15 miles to High Harrington to be reunited with a mildly distressed but unharmed trailhound. The kennel-owner had some difficulty with the fact I wasn't the person on Ben's ID-chip, which led to a certain amount of No, I am not the Renaissance Man, nor was meant to be . . confusion, but after signing off Allerdale Council's paperwork, I was allowed to take Ben home three and a half hours after he first disappeared into the dunes.
The phone rang as soon as we walked through the door. It was The Active Citizen, wanting to know was the trailhound safe and well? I reassured her that he was.
"Was the silver Mondeo in Mawbray carpark yours?" she asked.
Yes, it was.
"Only that's where we found him - he was sitting next to it."
Very politely, I thanked The Active Citizen for her help.
I'm curious to understand how a collared and well-kempt dog, sitting next to an empty car in a place where many people walk their dogs, is in any sense lost, strayed or abandoned. However, it is reasuring to know that Allerdale Council's Dog Warding service is so efficient that it can spring into action and transport a dog 15 miles on a Saturday afternoon before his keeper has any sense that the animal may be lost.
There's a moral about the state of our nation in all this, but I'm not sure what.

The Group Areas Act, 2008

The higher gardening in South Africa seems convulsed by a campaign to eradicate 'alien' flora and populate 'native' species in woods and gardens. My land management friends tell me this is a project doomed to failure, but in a country with a history like South Africa's, it's difficult not to see this approach as a metaphor.
Up on the Wild West Coast at Lambert's Bay, next door to 'Potato World' (incredibly, not a starch-related theme park for the couch-bound but a chip factory - it seems that when the Atlantic fishery got all fished out they diversified into the other half of the fish and chip market), a colony of 16,000 gannets sits atop a quarter-mile-square slab of guano. Things turned ugly a while back when a colony of seals arrived in search of food (a result of the same ecological pressure that caused the fishermen to move in on the potatoes), worked out that what fish there were to be found were inside the gannets and promptly started eating the seabirds. We heard all this over a beer with a tanned and grizzled gannet-warden in the bar of the Lambert's Bay Hotel. His solution to the competition-for-resources problem was admirably simple: the gannets were confined to their white guano-stained slab; the seals to their wave-darkened promontory rocks. A wide no-creature's land was decreed between the two groups and patroled by conservationists. Any seal straying into this area was deterred with extreme prejudice and deported back to its rocky homeland. The DMZ was then fumigated to remove the enticing odour of seal and the status quo preserved. The day we were there both communities seemed quite content with their separate developments. Some things don't change.

The Bright Lights Tonight

Even in Cumbria the northern night skies are no longer the jewelbox of childhood. Light pollution from Carlisle and the coastal towns swamps much of the starlight not already dowsed by the particulates that hang heavy in industrial skies. Here in the populous, over-developed north of the planet you look up and feel yourself solitary in the isolation of a lonely universe.
Down below, in the unpopulated oceanic vastness of the southern hemisphere, the night skies give an entirely different impression. Orion, shorn of his scabbard, sports an enthusiastic erection, a lover not a hunter. The Milky Way streams in incandescant profusion across the sky, and the Magellanic Clouds swarm with light. It's impossible not to feel a local part of so great a celestial network, and the most distant realities seem close enough to touch. Stargazing brings with it a wondrous sense of connection, and I'm looking forward to the next time I see the Southern Cross from a hillside in the Western Cape.

SA closed- back at just after 2

TWIR's reference to 'struggling for some days with the eccentric opening hours of South Africa's public services' may puzzle some. I'm of the firm belief that we could have won the Anglo Boer and Anglo Zulu Wars sooner (if, in deed we did win - discuss?) if we had have attacked at lunchtime.
The local post office in Greyton shares premises currently with the Municipality administration. There appears to be only one member of staff - a bored Afrikaans lady. Her hours of work are 'wait for it': 12 noon to 4 p.m. with an hour for lunch. Although I have never seen her eat her lunch, nor have anywhere to go, other than sit at the other chair; give up hope of collecting the registered letter or buying stamps. Oh! and take along some ID. I didn't. And put in 3 trips and 30 or 40 carbon miles collecting my repaired spectacles. Stress?
The Office of Home Affairs is, how can I put this without hopefully being deported, a bureaucratic nightmare. The red tape and idiotic forms I can sort of live with, and the blu-tacked posters of Mbeki and pals and handwritten 'Our President' labels BUT. Last week we attempted (again) to extend our visitors permit. 50 minutes into the interview, the bureaucrat, unannounced, stood up and strode off to the 'rest area' carrying some of Dion's excellent fish and chips in a Styrofoam box and balancing a tinnie of coke atop, whilst gripping a copy of the SA equivalent of Hello magazine under her chin. It was lunch time. We have not been back. Our permit expired yesterday but I note that the form says that we can stay as long as we have applied to stay, 30 days before expiry... which we did. The form is silent on the need to have the application granted. Looks like we won't be deported afterall. The question is do we go back to the OHA?
Oh .. and ... the pie shop across the road (what's this other SA obsession?- calling shops Pie Land or Mr Pie? Mr Exhaust... Bead Land... Irrigation Land.....Mr Safety Film) was also closed until 2.
I've had a bad week. Forgive me.

Alvin & Ziggy

There being no stars to gaze upon, we arranged a tour of the SALT on its plateau just out of town. The Renaissance Man will probably be blogging about the sheer mechanical engineering of the telescope's intricacies of design. For me the most startling parts of the tour were two exhibits in the visitors' centre exhibition which precedes sight of the telescope. On the floor in the corner of a gallery sits a large, twisted mass of nickel and iron: it's a meteorite, a navel-stone which fell to earth somewhere in the Karoo. Almost reluctantly, I touched it then tapped its surface with my knuckles. It rang metallic, deep and true. There was a cold frisson to this encounter, both a sense of wonder that I was touching something left over from the formation of our solar system and which had been present out there for thousands of millioons of years, but also a feeling that, for all the strange trajectories of its wanderings, I was the unregarded piece of stardust whose course had led me to a brief encounter with something that would endure till the Big Rip.
Round the corner from the meteorite was the cast of a skull, the blank-orbited heavy-browed Australopithecus Africanus, possible ancestor of Homo Sapiens, who was perhaps wandering across the veld when the lump of nickel was still out beyond Pluto. The hominid family tree is such that you and I cannot claim that this individual is a common ancestor, but certainly a very distant cousin, someone with whom we share DNA and perhaps some degree of humanity. It's probably impossible to think your way into the mind of another creature, however close, without the certainty of the shared artefacts of consciousness such as language and a sense of self. But after the coldness of the stone, I was struck by a forceful sense of the reality of the individual, the selfness, that had inhabited the bones and given them life. No doubt s/he had looked up at the stars which gave birth to the twisted nickel a few feet away from us, though what shape and meaning s/he had seen in their patterns I cannot imagine.