July 13th 2010 - most of my jots now on facebook, roof phase 3 is done, I'm waiting to hear if Merv will fix the ugly gap in the ridge by the end of the week... There's not much we can do about the messy twotone look at the front where the roofers didnt bother to shuffle the slates but used dark ones on the right and light on the left - I spent many hours up there with a wire brush on an angle grinder scraping the worst of the white muck off , but it still looks stupid from the road. They say it will even out in a few decades - but wanted the cash right now!

Saw the Blockheads at Nozstock last weekend - great bass player, Phil Jupiter did a great job with Ian Dury's lyrics, gone but no forgotten...

Roofing paused while I wait for Merv of Whites Roofing , Risbury, Leominster HR6 0NH to clear up a few worries I have - they've used non permeable felt whereas before there was none so there's a lot less ventilation to dry out the dampness, and the countersinking holes seem to be smaller than the nails, little things..
I can recommend the Slate Roof Bible if you're interested... There's bits we've done and redone three times - like the ventilation at the south, and one side we'd concreted up where the birds used to get in, then google told me the swifts and swallows need nesting, so i angle-grinded them slots, and we concreted in chicken wire to stop them getting too far into the house...

F*c*book! Most of my online chatty stuff is now on Facebook cos its easier and quicker.. http://www.facebook.com/dicegeorge is where i'm at

24th december - I chickened out of driving to the Stones for solstice because of the huge snow cloud hovering over it on the internet weather charts.

December 13th - the roofers came early November and took lots of slates off then it rained for fifty days.. so christmas is cancelled, i've been up there every day filling the rotten wood etcetera with a little help from my friends... (but I cant turn people away on new years eve can I (unless they're banned for obvious reasons))

Liberaling at Bournemouth.
and Wednesday morning will be Stonehenge sunrise again. (now its 20th septemberer 2009)

Wed 16th sept hurray the surveyor has surveyed, he said his meta work plans were correct but I need concrete lintels in the wall. I'e been blogging about this on f*c*book

rainbows

August2009 22:43 2009/08/10 sincce the big green got nobbled iv been painting windows and learning f*c*book - i havent time to log in to it every hour and follow every conversation, but i did have a few fun chats.. www.facebook.com/dicegeorge is my bit...

Nozstock was good... my local festi..

Andrew R. Owen of Shropshire, a chartered surveyor, had promised to visit this week but I just phoned to arrange a time and he says he has a holiday coming up and cant make it. Drat. (12:29 2009/08/03) His drawings to insert a metal beams to support the broken roof specify a firm support. I was unsure if the wall would take it, as there is a door a few inches away from it, having removed more plaster I am certain it's not strong enough. He took months to send me his plans after his site visit, so I took months to pay him. I hope I dont lose another year. Without this beam I cant get the roof repaired. And it would be daft to repair ceilings etc before the roof is fixed as it may rain and then water would come through. (see more

May 6th 2009 - I've popped back from Rainbow , hope to be back up there Friday night for full moon..
then back to Hatters for more DIY and recording Jes guitaring , then off to Sunrise Festival as a punter - so I should have lots of time to jam, dance, talk and listen...

oooo that was cold... 28January2009 -

checkout my egroup for updates

Monday10nov2008: Neil popped in today and looked at the foundations, apologised for being late, they'll come and puty in some foundations where water over the decades has washed away the lime cement... OK. I'll delete his firms details below here...

Bloody builders - Neil promised to come at 11 on Wednesday, now its friday 7th November 2008 and I've lost patience and decided to blog it. It's been goijng on too long - Caldicotts came and widened a doorway and fitted a metal beam but when they went I thought it looked unsafe. I asked the uk.d-i-y internet group for advice, they were almost unanimous that Building Control should have been involved as the door widening was structural - over it are upstairs and two halves of big heavy slate roofs... after a week's delay buuilding control came and agreed with me that the brickwork wasnt strong enough, it was starting to crack, and after another week or so Caldicotts came back and propped it up again and rebuilt their support with concrete blocks. But on this wednesday I was clearing away beneath it and tidying up when I noticed that I was brushing mud from underneath the concrete blocks - there had once been a doorway there so where they'd built their blocks was resting on mud, and would slowly sink down over years, or maybe months or weeks, and crack the supports....
I havnt blogged about it but now its been two days since Neil promised to come and I just phoned and they said he's busy - though I said again that it isnt structurally sound. As I asked two of the builders - 'When you told me it was OK, were you lying or were you incompetent?"
and now, here for google:
xxxxxxxxxHere was their business name xxxxxxxxxxxx
Luckily for me I havnt paid them yet.
15:43 2008/11/07 in the time i've typed this they havnt phoned back, so they promised to, if they had I wouldnt have uploaded, but now im ready to upload... 15:44 2008/11/07 uploaded 00:35 2008/11/08 they didnt phone today, maybe next week...

30october2008 - recovering from last weekend when a hundredish rainbow circlers came to hatfield for the AGM...

and have been struggling with the builders... will update soon, meanwhile checkout my egroup dicenews

7September2008: back from camp, dicenews.com and dicegeorge.com have gone offline, i'll try and get them back, meanwhile www.phreak.co.uk/stonehenge/ is one way to get to some of my stuff... (but if you're trying for dicegeorge.com you wont find this information....)

Simon of Kentish Town Rainbow Centre (a squatted church), and at Wandsworth Eco Village died recently, I lost the email letting you know, sorry, his cremation was today and his ashes scattering is tomorrow at Clapham Common

See you at Stonehenge Wednesday night, Thursday sunries????

Ann Colthurst of Gosport died a few weeks ago. I used to visit her in her bungalow a few streets away when I was a kid, she'd talk of when she used to live in South Africa, and she taught me to play patience and solitaire. I remember the big glass balls of her solitaire set. She must have known my young mind, and fostered my love of logic and mathematics. I too love to see young minds grappling with new concepts such as numbers...

Last weekend a teenager friend asked me to help with his maths homework, 'easy' I thought, but when he mentioned Simpsons rule and approximating integration of something like sin(x)x to the xth old braincells which had been sleeping since I was a student failed to reawake from their dotage...

I'm still trying to find out what happened and why at a friend of a friend's party here a few weeks ago, I've had letters from quite a few people, nothing to report publicly at this stage, I'm still waiting for more apologies and explanations, some of the confusion dates back to Wandsorth Eco Village , I thought my MP of the time had sorted things out but it seems that mistakes and misunderstandings continued, perhaps my present MP will have better luck, - I've promised him an anecdote about one of his colleagues at Oxford if we have to meet in person ...
The only MP I personally trust is Simon Hughes - he once gave me a lift home from a Young Liberal meeting to my bus when I was parked behind some squats in Rotherhithe Street, with a nice view of the river and Red Ice Brian as a neighbour and guide to the city, after we'd been evicted from Greenlands farm Glastonbury...
Many years ago I wrote Why I am not an Anarchist in the anarchist mag Freedom , and I still agree of most that I wrote, at least that which I can understand. But can I be sure that my words mean the same to me now as they meant to me then, or of whatever they mean to you, dear reader or readeress?

It's a long time until New Years Eve and the next planned party here at Hatters!

Much of my energy the last week has gone digging around the walls of this old house, the rain on the garden was draining backwards, in and under through the air bricks, and down through a huge hole into the cellar.

The plastic bags which were under the drip in the cellar could have been there for ten years or more, they disintegrated when I tried to move them but I couldnt recognise what used to be in them. Perhaps it was clothing. I will go down with heavy plastic bags, a strong light, gloves and facemask sometime soonish and get them to the dump. I dont think the binmen would take them!

I'm sort of like an archeologist trying to deduce how the house was built and why, and the various alterations, and buildups of leaves and compost...

Ive just bought a electric wire tester from China on the internet, havent got it out its box yet, i was thinking if i pushed some grey wire down a drain and connected it to the gizmo if may tell me where the pipes going without me having to dig up all the pipes (and possible damage more of them...)

I took my sister's daughter and her friends and family to see Sinbad the Sailor panto at Gosport's Thorngate Hall, I havent been there since I was a kid, the hall's a lot smaller than I remember it, but it was great, amateur dramatics...

I'm busy busy busy, trying to do my first ever tax return, and learning house DIY ( http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y is a great resource.) I found 3 cut off wires which were live today, waiting for the electric company to fit a new fusebox and isolator before I begin to rewire and mend the existing circuits, which I believe I can legally do under Part P (whatever that is). Edition 17 of wiring regulations is coming out in a week or so, I'll buy an uptodate reference book when it does.

Having a bit of problem with spam emails today, been getting on average 6 a minute, someones been sending fake emails from my dicegeorge.com domain, and theyve been bouncing back to me.

New Years Eve at Hatfield was fun, we were jamming around on the Here and Now stage (4 pallets) at midnight, then dancing to the Tali Dubpram sound system. Unfortunately I had a bit too much to drink a bit too early, so retired to bed earlyish. Who broke the guitar?

Then I hurt my back in the garden, which has slowed me down a bit.

When I've sorted my papers and my sisters a bit more I'll get back to work on Jeremy Sandford's archives, and the other projects I'm in the middle of. I might even write my book.

Happy New Year : 5January2008
We had a big New Years Party at my new old house, I spent weeks getting the kitchen sink working and moving stuff around, thanks to all who made it such fun. And Stonehenge was good, and Christmas, and my Birthday...

Yesterday I sorted through a big box of mail and stuff, some a month old, January I've got to get my filing system into order. There's loads outstanding over my sister's death, my dad's bookshop, etc; and for the first time ever I'm trying to fill in an income tax form, etcetera. It was so much easier when I was living in my bus. I'm making a New Years Resolution to reform into a super-efficient organised person, starting the day after tomorrow. Though I havent got far with the one of a few years ago to Learn To Sing! I'm having to put most of my projects back to February, but doing a few minutes on each of them occassionally. havnt time to write more... checkout my egroup newsletter for other bloggy spurts...

18th december, back at hatters, several small water leaks, loads to do, not enough time to bog here!
ive put some lights up on the chimney...
c u at stonehenge friday night?

Sunday14October2007: busy busy busy, Rainbow Circle are coming to Hatfield on Friday, there's holes in the floors and ceilings to be patched safe etcetera...

I went to the auctions on Wednesday and bought 3 ladders for £3 and an aluminium stepladder for £3 and two chairs for £1 and then made an impulse bid of £1 for a piano. That evening Philippa gave me Jeremy Sandford's wooden flute that I'd always loved.

Thursday morning I was awoken from dreaming of how to get the piano to Hatters with the news that my sister Hilma had died of altitude sickness in her tent in Bhutan, two days' walk from the nearest phone.

2nd october - almost two months since i updated this blog - ssory...
rainbow was fun, in parts, now i've been back about a month working on the house. Oh - and Suze the Blues wake was here, I popped back from rainbow for it, her band Here and Now played in the oakroom, it was fantastic, when they slipped into Violence is caused by governments, armies, police force, the room exploded with energy, I looked at the band and dancers and sussed how many of us had been dancing at Stonehenge Free festivals, for me it was like a reunion of the class of '76! I wrote about this at the time on my dicenews egroup, which is like the old dicenews newsletter i used to do in london and roundabouts...

Rainbowing - derbyshire again, Re: evolution! 13:10 2007/08/15
http://www.rainbowcircle.co.uk/evolution2007.html
Kith asked me was it all right? Well no, not 100%, I wouldnt expect it to be, I said 60% OK, which looking back on it from the perspective of this quick blat back to Hatfield is perhaps underestimating how wonderful rainbow camps are, I'd just had the responsibility as a co-ordinater of again asking 2 people to move their tents out of their carpark and was in pain, i find it so hard to do, and i dont have the diplomacy and tact of Franqui...
Its not Anarchchy its Anarchism, we come together to share a field, and agree to be bound by the rules and customs as evolved by Rainbow Cirle over the years. However we're all individuals, and didnt Franqui talk of responsible rule breaking, which means not smoking during dinner time, but perhaps smoking in the tipi at night when nobody in there objects, and there are no children in...
Gosh the food's been great, I've been busy building domes and plumbing etcetera etcetera...
and wasnt the Big Green great, the rainbow van had failed its MOT but a friend lent me a huge Winnebago to get our domes and stuffbr there and back, what a trip! only one scratch where I got diverted through the tiny village of Hognaston - whooops!
It did over a hundred down the M1!
but scary on the village lanes,its so wide, and left hand drive, and stupid mirrors, and a huge ovhang at the back...
thats a hundred KPH not MPH hm hm ha ha
I sprained an ankle on the thursday at Eartheart at the big green dancing to Hawkwind, whoops sorry XHawkwind, whooops sorrry Inner City Unit playing hawkwind songs, Nik Turner and Judge Trev and Ron Tree and others I dont know and occassional tromboning from me in the audience...

Thanks Alan for lending me your winch, Ive now got Lettice Sandford's old gypsy caravan out of the holly tree and into the garden where hopefully sunshine will dry it out...
And I've winched my bus back, and my caravan out ready for August Rainbow Circle REvolution camp...
Off to the Big Green Gathering very soon, I hope its not too muddy... Hatfield has been surrounded by floods at Tenbury, Leominster, Bromyard, Hereford, Worcester, but the house is cleverly built with natural drainage half way up one of the highest places in Herefordshire. Saturday I cycled to the nearest pub, the Kings Arms Docklow, locals talked of the snow in 1947, and a photo one had of a train on the old railway in the floods where the water had put out its boiler's fire!

Monday 16th July, Iv been too busy to blog. Got broadband on Friday 13th to downstairs here at Hatfield Court, it's so fast! Ive ordered ethernet wires, they should arrive any day then I'll have internet up here in the orange room. I look out of the window at the darkening sky, there's a beautiful Ash tree halfway down the garden, I'm gonna saw it down soon. I've cleared lots of Ash and Sycamore and ivy and brambles which were too close to the house, my room wall was mouldy cos it wasnt getting any sun. And dozens and dozens of oaks and other trees were felled to make this house, It'd be a crime to let the sycamores destroy it. But that Ash is different, its not damaging the house. Im not just running out and doing it, I've been thinking of it for weeks, wieghing the pros and cons. There are many Ashes here. And with that gone I will have a view of the hill fort opposite, and of Hay Bluff, as the builder of the house designed it. And the view of the house will be improved. Im gonna spend the coming months looking at all the trees and plants, seeing which flower, which are what, and only then will I do some pruning, taking out some which shade others. Now that I have internet I can research things like that. What I should be doing is patching the roof, there are still a few minor leaks. But what ive been doing the last few days is patching up an old wooden gypsy caravan which was rotting away in a holly bush. I started winching it out - (im gonna have it in front the garden) but the roof was swaying, i found only one corner is attached, the rest has rotted, a whole side is held up by the roof! And Ive spent days patching it with pallet wood and screws and glue... It was Jeremy's mother's, Lettice Sandford - there was a photo of her getting it pulled across the alps by two oxen. I hope i scanned it - cos most of the originals got burnt.

and I've been to Finland for a week, my aunt Irma's funeral. I've always believed I'm only half English, but in Finland I discovered how British I am. I dont like it too hot - I cant work in the heat. Here's a picture of a house a friend of a friend is building, with triple glazing and 40cm of insulation in the roof - unfortunately here in England there are too many building regulations, allegedly i'm not allowed to improve the ancient electrics in this old house...

Stonehengeing in a few hours (12:14 2007/06/20) for solstice sunrise and sunset. In fact the northest sunrise may be not on Thursday but on Friday morning, I used to heckle English Heriticage and the alleged druids about this but this year I can't be bothered.
Then I may be to Finland for my aunt Irma's funeral. How long had we been talking of a visit to Finland, my mother country, I havnt been there since my 21st birthday. But it has a place in my mind, is not my bus called Karelia?
James Yellow sub died a few days ago, I remember him from the Kentish Town Rainbow Church , and Wandsworth Ecovillage and Dead Womans Bottom Road protest site I missed Sunrise Festival where he celebrated his 60th birthday, theres a video at www.myspace.com/earthcircustv
I was at Rainbow Circle kids camp, putting up structures until well past halfway of the camp, oh for more helpers., especially in the Revolution camp i'm co-ordinating in August, after the Big Green Gathering.
Oh, and earlier this month I bought Hatfield Court, the south end, where Jeremy Sandford used to live. Had my bus towed here yesterday, been working on the drains...

Cornwallys?
13:47 2007/05/16 Wednesday 16th May, in my bus at yoke farm, waiting for Larry and the flatbed to arrive from cornwall, then i'm off to Ashbourne to help set up rainbow circle's half term kids camp.

Last Tuesday I at last got what remained of Jeremy Sandford's papers and tapes to safety. Hereford Archives hired a van and came and took them away. I hope to continue indexing them when I'm back from Rainbow.
Two weekends ago I drove down to Cornwall for a weekend at the Rainbow Beltane, I'd never been to Cornwall before - though I set off for the 1999 eclipse from London two years early, when it came to it my bus was stuck at Radstock with radiator problems - I should have cycled or hitched there, but there were problems on site...

It's been a good winter here at Yoke Farm amongst the hippies, reminding me of Greenlands Farm Glastonbury 1983-5, This last was somehow my most peaceful winter for some years....

Oh, Tony Blair's resigned, after ten years as Prime Minister. A good speech, in which he said something like whereas political visions are a rainbow of colours, reality is black and white, or grey. Or something like that. I didnt attack him in this blog, whereas I was outspoken against Thatcher , actually I supported ousting Saddam Hussein because of his genocide against the Kurds and dissidents. However the disaster of Iraq seems to be Donald Rumsfield's fault for not planning for after the invasion, they sent about a million Iraqi soldiers home without any pay, it's no wonder lots of them set up as armed gangs...

Broadband (24 april 2007) hurray, a week or two back at last we got broadband, and withing a few days I had a wireless network working to a caravan outside the farm. One plan is to have home made antennae communicating with this field, but this may have to wait some months, if I stay.

I'm hopeful about getting my bus fixed, a scrap yard in Wales has found several with the wrong ratio, they'd work but they're from diesel buses so the bus would go faster than the speedo says, and have trouble going up hill!

Dont know if I'm going to get to Rainbow Beltane at Ventongimps, Redruth, Cornwall, it sounds a lovely site. I'm definitely going to Rainbow Circle Kids Camp at half term, and helping set up and pack it up, and then in August I'm co-ordinating our Evolution Camp. I'm gonna try and stay with them throughout the season, that's part of the promise I feel I made when I volunteered for the Winter Working Group, but I may walk away at the next AGM, especially if the tat down is as hard as last summers. Is that a threat or a promise?

Narrowband - uploading at 9.6Kbps again...
23:31 2007/03/26 we still havent got broadband here in this muddy field...
i've bought the Ubuntu Book, and installed ubuntu6.10LE frrom the DVD. The dual boot works - if this had gone wrong I could have lost all my WindowsXP applications and files, but it worked ok - phew!

But the problem is that it cant read my NTFS windows data files, soemewhere i think it said maybe ubuntu7.04 does, its a shame because i'd have thought it'd work for my typical windows XP system, but it didnt.

The worst thing about macs is how they teach people to drag things to the recycle bin to eject them, on a windows machine this can delete valuable music files... did the men behind the apple mac design this on purpose to annoy windows users? i hope not.,, there are enough annoyances with computers without adding to the complexities...

Last week I went to Stonehenge for equinox, a few of us got together and fixed the problem we'd had with George Firsoff's stonehengepeace egroup spammers, its buzzing along now...

MUD!
22:31 2007/02/28 I say that i dont drink and drive- and i do refuse even a sip of beer if i'm driving. I cycled a lot in London and Somerset, I know that alcohol makes me over-confident and unbalanced.
But when i think back to Saturday i may have been over the limit when i drove that morning. Friday night I'd gone to the Porter Butt in Bath, got very late to the wake of the funeral of Tim. I didnt know anyone there - found at later that dozens of my friends had left earlier. Recognised one, Marco, he sang at Jeremy's funeral. I drank a lot there, and sherry afterwards, and was sick down the toilet, and woke up with a huge hangover, was meant to be at Glastonbury at 11 a.m. for the Rainbow Cirle meeting, but only left a bit before 11. I certainly wasnt on top form, sorry world, and 'dont do it again' to me.
Then Saturday night I was going to the Glastonbury Panto, but when I passed the assembly rooms at 7.15 the door wasnt yet open, I walked by and went visiting, met someone going to the gig, and went there. Dragonsfly, the lovely singer I know from Tribal Voices , but what I didnt remember is that their dancers dance in couples, and loners like me dont fit in, I learnt to dance at Stonehenge Free Festival to acid rock bands like HereandNow, my dancing often is very fast and random and if ikm too drunk i know cos i fall down!
Monday went visiting, now back in my bus in this muddy field. I took the broken diff crown wheel to bromyard scrapyard today, the one they had shown me last week is too big.
I still havent sussed if we can get 3G internet or broadband here at Yoke farm, I'm using my mobile phone at 9.6Kbps again tonight.. browser with images turned off, Outlook Express headers only, FTP takes 30 seconds fro the tiddliest HTML file..

Wed 7th Feb: snow!

Tues 6th Feb : a kindly passing tractor towed my bus from the gate where its been for months and months up the field to where I want it to be for wind power...

23:46 2007/01/22 - getting colder, got burner on in here my bus... experimenting with some new software I got off PC Utilities magazine, portable applications which should run off a USB drive, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and NVU I've already used in their non-portable forms, Scribus DTP is a new one to me..

it'd be good for me to declutter some of these webpages, but it much harder to simplify a webpage than to add a new idea... I once lost lots of images and so invented this javascript to load the images from various other websites, its very complicated and took me lot of effort, but to remove it i'd have to rediscover what i did, which hurts my brain just thinking towards it...

Had a quiet Christmas, as I'd wanted, (turned my phone off for a few hours which was quite daring!)
20:58 2006/12/27 Now there's Tchaikosky's Pathetique on Radio 3, my favourite, and before that was some Schostokovitz, and before that on Radio2 at seven (and every day this week) Bob Dylan's show. I used to hate his singing, but he doesn't, he plays great records and says wise things...
I'm thinking of celebrating my next birthday with a huge party, and lights and bands, don't know where i'll be, check my egroup for more info nearer the time, 365 days to go...
I'll be celebrating my Two Hundredth Birthday!
In the past i've kept my birthday secret, to avoid drunken mishaps, and because (as every fule know) Peter Pan and the lost boys didnt have birthdays - that's the downside of eternal youth, no birthdays - and to wind up the astrologers (at the Big Green last summer I went up to the astrology booking stall and started saying " I dont know exactly when or where I was born but I do know what sort of a person I am, so could you do a reverse astrology on me to work out where and when i was born?"

Some of my earlier writings are now at dice2006.htm and dice2005.htm and dice2004.htm
(see dicetime.htm for more dicegeorge words

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