Conked Out

Eddie the whippet conked out this morning at home. He will miss his family and walks very much.
Eddie 22/02/2002 - 27/10/2016

Eddie, my whippet, died on Thursday. He would have been 15 years old early next year which is a good age for a dog and for the most part he kept himself active until late last week when I could tell that he was struggling to keep up during his walk. He had been getting gradually slower and creakier over the course of the last couple of years and had needed lifting into the back of the car for a while. Occasionally, he would slip on the vinyl floor in the kitchen and struggle to get up but over the last week that had become a constant feature. I took him to the vets on Monday and tried some anti-inflammatory medication for his back legs but it was also obvious that he had lost quite a bit of weight since he was last measured in July. He spent most of his last few days sleeping. Once it is time, old dogs seem to go downhill very quickly.

Eddie - the puppy shot

Eddie - 2D dog

In some ways it feels similar to when my cat, Emma, died five years ago but I think cats and dogs age differently. Both will slow down and become less active and both will be less agile. However, dogs never seem to quite lose their puppy mentality and the slowing down can become confusing to them as their minds want to bounce around whereas their bodies are less willing. Cats also slow down and sleep a lot but then that is typically what they enjoy doing anyway so it doesn’t come at such great loss – they simply wind down naturally.

For me it is odd. I still have our other dog, Sam, to take for walks but there is now a strange ghostly void. The one thing that Eddie was always prone to do was to be distracted by a combination of bad smells (and the woods are full of them), various wildlife and the inevitable attraction of other dog owners and their invariably more appetising treats. This meant that we were often stopping to catch up with him and ended up chatting to other dog owners who were always very fond of him. He was also quite vocal, at least when he was younger, and would make the most peculiar noises often at the bemusement of both other dogs and their owners alike: “want one” was a favourite noise when pestering for treats or conning the local park ranger out of his picnic basket. All this made for great companionship and whilst Sam will obediently stay at heal whilst out walking he doesn’t really say very much.

Eddie having just won the dog-food medal at the London Olympics

We got Eddie as a puppy so he has been a constant presence for over 14 years. The children haven’t known a time when he hasn’t been there. It is difficult to explain this to them. I frequently see references on the likes of Facebook to the “Rainbow Bridge”, a kind of afterlife for pets, but I really can’t be bothered with that. The phrase I used was “conked out” which was the self-chosen epitaph of John Le Mesurier who Eddie somehow seemed to resemble in canine form: quiet, gentle and good humoured.  I suppose that we all live in a bubble of time and once that time is up all that remains are memories. At the moment, those memories are very raw but over time the mind has the habit of screening the painful ones out so that only happier times remain.

The best place for a whippet to sleep - somewhere soft, warm and drunk.

Pandas Are Rubbish

Pandas are rubbish. Well, that was the conclusion that we came to this week. I know there are a few conservationists that disagree with the amount of time, money and effort that is spent on panda conservation given that their main problem is that they appear to have chosen an evolutionary dead end by being carnivorous bears that have adopted a vegetarian diet whilst losing practically all interest in reproduction; but that isn’t really why I think they are rubbish. I came to this conclusion after a visit to the zoo.

I last went to Edinburgh Zoo around 3 years ago and at that time their giant pandas were not on display for reasons best known to themselves (well, their keepers anyway). My daughter had spent an evening at the zoo a couple of months ago with a youth group in what had, at first, sounded like a “night at the museum” type trip. In fact this is largely what it was but, unlike the museum, most of the zoo’s exhibits tend to pack up and go to sleep at night. As I had last Monday off work and needed to amuse her for the day she decided that a day at the zoo sounded like a good idea.

Being October and a weekday it was a good time to visit the zoo as it was fairly quiet. When we arrived I was asked whether we would like an appointment to see the pandas. It appears that they now regard themselves on a par with the Pope in granting audiences but I thought we may as well give it a go. At the allotted time we went along to see said pandas and received a very informative lecture from their keeper but the pandas themselves didn’t show. All I have to show for the visit is this picture of a pile of panda food:

The only thing I would say in their defence is that the publicity that pandas attract both for a tourist attraction like Edinburgh Zoo or in the general world of conservation brings in quite a bit of finance that less attractive, if more worthy, endangered species don’t. Since my last visit the zoo looks to be really in top condition both for the exhibits on show and in terms of the conservation work that is going on. Many, if not most of the exhibits are endangered or at least threatened in the wild and they appear to be involved in many breeding programmes to keep the species alive. They also appear to have upgraded many of the enclosures which, if not entirely ideal compared to a life in the wild, appear to be keeping the animals content and stress free. Maybe pandas aren’t completely rubbish after all.

Confuse the Market

One thing that has been worrying me lately, what with the price of oil going up and the value of the pound heading South, is what effect this is likely to have on gas and electricity prices. The cost of the various energy suppliers can vary quite considerably depending on whether they are fixed or variable price, whether they have a large or small standing charge and whether there are exit charges tied to a fixed-term contract. It could be quite confusing but there are various websites like Uswitch and Which? Switch to help find the best deals. The problem is, that they can cause even more confusion than they resolve.

On the surface, it looks quite simple and, for someone who is on the standard variable tariffs from their traditional supplier it probably is. The problem arises when one is already on a fixed tariff, potentially with an early termination fee, and which runs out sometime in the next year. If any of these are the case then the price comparison could be misleading; possibly to the point of directing one to a more expensive deal.

I first tried these comparisons out on my mother-in-law’s house. In fact, this was pretty straight forward as the cheapest deal was with her current supplier and both the gas and electricity unit rates and standing charges were lower than she is currently paying and, without the switch of supplier, there is no early termination penalty to pay. Given that she has recently had a new energy-efficient boiler fitted this should lead to a good reduction in her energy bills for the next year.

The problems started with our house. Our current tariff runs through until next May and there is a penalty for swapping suppliers before then. Having plugged the figures into the comparison site it did offer a few tariffs that were lower. I discounted a few as they didn’t take into account the penalty but one did look cheaper that was also with our current supplier. The problem was that the comparison assumed that we would be paying the supplier’s standard tariff after the current deal expired (we would almost certainly not do this) and it also assumed that our energy consumption would be even throughout the year – by far our biggest energy expenditure is for gas consumption over the Winter period.

In fact the tariffs started to become even more complex once the variables of expensive standing charges compared to cheaper unit rates were taken into account. In the end I plugged the various tariff figures into a spreadsheet and came to the conclusion that if I really wanted lower energy bills I’d have to switch of the lights and put a woolly jumper on - which makes a nonsense of trying to compare prices in the first place. However, what the graph from the spreadsheet does show (which the comparison websites don’t) is that there is a definite cut-off point between the two tariffs with the newer one making sense between the end of November and the beginning of April whereas the current tariff makes more sense during the summer months.

I’m not sure that an online comparison facility would ever be able to reproduce that level of detail and it would take someone as obsessive as me to have kept all the data (although a Smart meter might be able to handle this). I suppose it is back to one of those old clichés: Do Your Own Research.

Castle Campbell

I visited another one of Historic Scotland’s properties last weekend. This time it was Castle Campbell in Dollar. It’s actually not that far from us but for some reason it’s a part of Clackmannanshire that I seldom have reason to go through.

Access to the castle is interesting. There is a car park at the top of Castle Road but it is advised to avoid it due to the state of the road leading to it: steep, narrow and pot-holed. However, there did seem to be quite a few cars parked there including one rather low-slung BMW that I suspected would need repairs to the suspension afterwards. We actually parked at the lower level “woodlands quarry” (as recommended) and walked up.

The castle itself looks spectacular when approaching it, rising out of the forested glen beneath. It is also a blessed relief after walking up the steep castle road for a seemingly interminable amount of time (actually only 15 minutes but it is a solid 15 minutes climb). Although it is a ruin it is actually quite well kept, particularly the central tower which is accessible on several floors and has a self-service tea room at the bottom which was a nice touch. The roof of the tower is also accessible which gives some spectacular views of Central Scotland including the Grangemouth refinery and a disused power station.

In terms of history, it was once visited by Mary, Queen of Scots, for a wedding (unsurprising as she has stayed in pretty much every building in Scotland beyond a certain vintage) and was also visited by John Knox, the miserable Calvinist preacher, in 1556. There is a platform known a John Knox’s pulpit in the gardens to commemorate this. One assumes that this is merely ceremonial as there is a sheer drop on the other side.

On the way back to the car park we followed the path back through the glen. This actually goes straight to the lower car park and is a much nicer walk although it would be advisable to have sturdy footwear as I could imagine it would be rather hazardous on a rainy day.

Keeping The Heat In

When we first moved into our house I installed loft insulation and replaced the old incandescent bulbs with low-energy ones. At least I did this as far as I could. There was quite a bit of loft space that was inaccessible, including a large section that is over the main living room, and I was unable to change the light bulbs in the back bedroom as they were on a dimmer switch so I was stuck with the incandescents.

Earlier this year we had a call from a firm that was fitting loft insulation in difficult to reach areas. Specifically, they were looking at fitting it behind the sloping roof in what they described as “room-in-roof” insulation. This was on one of those government energy efficiency schemes that is paid for by power generators who are still operating coal fired plants so it didn’t cost us anything. It’s also a really fiddly job that involves opening access hatches and having the fitter being a lithe individual with the body fat ratio of a whippet.

The insulation fitters did what they said they would, in that they inserted Kingspan type insulation in the sloping roof sections, but inexplicably they left the large expanse of roof above the living room without any insulation at all. Apparently this was not on their list of things to do. Fortunately, they had done the really fiddly bit for me by creating the access hatches so this week I added a few layers of glass fibre insulation myself. However, I am hardly lithe and whilst I may be a fair bit lighter than when I last installed insulation, I don’t exactly have a particularly whippet like torso. Anyway, I persevered - i.e. squeezed myself through the access hatches and cursed relentlessly whilst pot-holing my way around the minimal loft space. Since I am unlikely to go back in there I really ladled the stuff on there – up to 600mm in places. I think it is safe to say that it is well and truly insulated now.

Fixing the lights was, by comparison, a doddle. What actually prompted me to fix this was that one of the incandescent bulbs blew and the only replacement I could get was a halogen light that, for reasons best known to itself, would only produce a tiny amount of light without going into a strobing effect. The fix for this is to replace the lightbulbs with dimmable LED lights and to swap the old dimmer switch for a trailing edge one. This is actually remarkably easy as both switch and light are a straight swap. The new dimmer has electronics in it which control the dimming effect and also means there is a slight delay which somewhat negates the “instant light” feature of the LED bulbs but does mean that the light fades in with a remarkably pleasing effect. I was also able to do this without crawling around a limited space swearing.

This should, theoretically save me a few pounds from my energy bill but the real benefit is that I should have a warmer house and more effective lighting. As autumn is now in full-swing it is not a moment too early.