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It’s amazing, the quantity of human activity that’s out there, waiting to be discovered. Tino Contreras, a prolific Mexican jazz dude, is new to me. A multi-instrumentalist, whose main instrument is drums, with a passion for jazz. Sounds totally up my boulevard!

I hope that some of the tracks from the above album are on the Jazzman compilation. I just ordered the latter via Discogs, for £3.99.

Rather amazingly, this dude, born in 1924, only passed quite recently, in 2021, aged 97! And he put out an album (on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label) – above – the year before he passed. Aged 96… Pretty bonkers!

Why ‘FC’ on the kick drum display head, you might ask? Well, his full name was Fortino Contreras Gonzalez. From which he obviously derived the more contracted version. And in this early photograph, it seems he was going by his full name, albeit abbreviated to just the first two initials, a la Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich, etc.

There’s a terrific interview from 2018 with Tino here.

The above photo was allegedly taken in Turkey!

I’ve had another episode of extreme fatigue. Had one yesterday evening. Really, really horrible. I just pushed on through that one. This time it was so appalling I had to stop. I called both 111, and my local Doctors’ Surgery. Got an appointment at the latter, for later today.

So, I’m taking a brief breather. I don’t think I can safely drive until I feel a bit better! Maybe 20 minutes rest? A bite to eat, and a drink of water, etc. Hopefully I’ll feel better, and be able to finish my current delivery shift?

I pulled over in Apethorpe, by St. Leonards. It was raining when I parked. It’s stopped now. It’s very peaceful here. There are several incredibly beautiful villages in this area. I passed through the very picturesque King’s Cliffe on my way here.

Now, to St. Leonard’s…

The local vicar unlocked the church for me, and chatted to me about it a bit. A lovely lady! Under the tower, I took the snaps, above and below. Different focal points/exposures, for different aspects of the same view.

The corbels are great. But so high up my iPhone struggles to capture them. I simply must get a better camera for this sort of malarkey!

It’s odd, but I’ve noticed that most – or at least a lot of – old churches have one or two large ancient chests. The carving on this particular example puts it a cut (boom-boom) above the average.

There’s a rather odd selection, window wise.

The main window is totally blown out of the water by this:

This is the window in the chapel dedicated to the FitzHerberts, of nearby Apethorpe Palace. And just as their home is far more splendorous than God’s house – and St. Leonards is still pretty splendid – so too is their part of the church.

As amazing as this enormous edifice is, let’s turn back now to the window behind it. That’s really something special, in my opinion.

Along the bottom of the window are a series of texts. Which make pretty strange reading. Or at least they do to me. Here they all are:

Bonkers, eh!?

On, to Cotterstock:

After the restorative sojourn at St. Leonards, I finished my shift. And after that I wandered around Ashton, where my shift had ended, taking the following snaps:

This post is headed up by the ‘after’ pic. Below is a before one.

Simon, the guy who recently serviced our boiler, came over today. And fitted our has hob. It’s great to have all four rings working. On the old hob, the littlest one ceased functioning aeons ago.

It took Simon a lot longer than anticipated to do this job. And it precipitated much cussing! Apparently almost all hobs differ slightly, making each one a new and different pain in the arse.

The electric oven’s still not been used, on account of my wanting to be 100% sure there’s nowt left in there, transport or packaging wise. We don’t want melted foam or plastic stinking out the house, and ruining our brand new oven.

Our dear little hairy pal, Chester, was keen to play today. In fact he usually gets that way at some point every day.

Clearing up around the house, I found an air quality monitor. So I’ve put it up, on’t wall. I took the opportunity to also wall-mount the thermostat controller.

On my way home from my second and final delivery shift of the day, I stopped to admire St Mary The Virgin. I’ve often passed her. And she always turns my head. But this is the first time I stopped to investigate.

Sadly she was shut.

Passing through Melbourn en-route home, I saw this picturesque cottage being re-thatched. Took a quick snap. The Old Ways live on.

Back to St. Mary… I knocked at the door of the large house (former vicarage?) next to the church. But answer came there none.

The gorgeous hedgerow arch above looks amazing. It’s even more magical to take shelter under it in a downpour. As I was doing when I took these pics.

When I got home, utterly spent, it was feet up on’t couch time. But I spotted that the sky was unusually pink. So we popped out to have a look.

Kind of accentuates the cherry blossom.

These photos are nice. But they fall a long way short of capturing the actual colours, or the powerful impact of the light as we saw and experienced it. Magical!

I finally got around to moving the filing cabinet out of the corner, in my drum room, where I could’nae get at it. And I put a new lampshade on an old lamp, making it look fresh n’ new. The colour once again coordinates well with the feature wall.

There’s still vast amounts of stuff floating around without a proper home. But I’m chipping away at it all the time. Now… time for some serious bedtime reading:

Today I fitted the new light fixture and lampshade, in the drum room. The colour rather neatly, and completely by lucky chance – or serendipulosity – is colour coordinated with the new feature

I bought the lampshade yesterday (or was it Monday?). And trimmed the short length of ‘hang’ cable to make it even shorter. The ceiling is low in the drum room!

That was yesterday. Today I’m putting the damn thing up. Hope it won’t prove too tricky?

Sone time later…

Antonio popped out to have a run. So I thought I’d try and do this job whilst it was just me at home. But it took ages in the end. As I was busy doing other small chores as well: washing the breakfast dishes, hoovering the lunge, and taking the old fridge to the municipal dump. There’s always so much to do!

Having, naturally, to switch off the lighting circuitry fuses, I had to work by lamplight. And the awkward overhead angle, accessing the ceiling fixture = sore neck!

When it was just a naked bulb, the light was just above my head. Having to have a little bit of cable length, to allow for the desired flexiness, means the lampshade is now below noggin level. Hey-ho… compromises!

The observant viewer may note the weird black gooseneck doodad, to the left. That’s for an ‘over the kit’ phone-camera set up, as and whenI’m either recording drumming vids, or teaching via Zoom or Teams, etc.

I’m still chuffed with this small but noticeable improvement. Each little chip away at the ol’ block gets one that little bit closer.

‘Twas lovely out, this evening. I saw this beauty of a church, and stopped to take a snap or two.

Well, it leads up to… a funky little room, over the porch. That’d be a nice place to sit and read or write, methinks.

All told, a pleasant time was had, out n’ about.

Ah, the simple pleasures. Our old butter dish, a porcelain jobbie, got broken. That was ages ago. We’ve been using an ugly old takeaway tub, ever since.

But takeaway that takeaway tub. Plastic ugliness begone! This is rather lovely. All glass. All see through. Nice and simple.

Woohoo! Our new cooker arrived today.

The main element of the old oven went, again. It did so once before; I ordered a new one and fixed it. But this old stinky dirty broken down thing needed to be replaced.

Whereas for the gas hobs I need a ‘gas safe’ certified engineer, to sort us out, with the electric oven it’s a pretty easy DIY job. You just have to be safe, methodical and accurate.

Getting the old cooker out wasn’t too hard. Awkward and heavy, yes. But a one man job, nevertheless. What this revealed though, was pretty grotesque.

I gave the internal space a good clean. And then got the new cooker in position to be wired in. It is of course hard-wired to the mains, as it draws a lot more power than your standard three-pin plug socket outlets. This is fiddly, but pretty easy.

Done. Took a bit of sweat, some huffing and puffing. But it’s sorted now.

Rather foolishly I orders this oven – actually the same brand as our previous one (Russell & Hobbs) – without checking the dimensions! Could’ve gone horribly wrong!

But it didn’t. She fits the space like the proverbial glove. And once all the fuses and switches were turned back on, she powered up first time. Fab!

Very satisfying. Thanks again, Dan Ellis.