Climbing the Boston Stump

I didn't think I would be writing this post. But I'm inspired to take the blog forward reinvigorated. So: on with Lucy's Adventures!

And this is a post that describes a scary moment or two. Because I hate heights. On the other hand, I won't let personal fear thwart me if I really want to see something, nor a degree of physical effort.

What is the Boston Stump? Well, it's the very tall, conspicuous tower of the main church in Boston in Lincolnshire, St Botolph's. And I mean really tall, really conspicuous! You can see it from all parts of Boston. It is of course a magnet for visitors. It's far and away the main reason for visiting Boston at all, although there are certainly other sights, and I wouldn't dismiss the place as uninteresting and unattractive. It's an old town, historically very important, and there are signs aplenty that it has always been a major port and market centre. This is the town that gave its name to Boston in Massachusetts in America. St Botolph's Church is ample evidence of past wealth being poured into a very impressive medieval building project.

Boston today has unfortunately become linked with the subject of Eastern European immigration, as indeed has all of Lincolnshire. Outsiders, fed with scary media stories over a long time, might be forgiven for thinking that this is a place taken over by Polish immigrants, with the British residents marginalised and restless, voting for Brexit for xenophobic reasons. Emphatically not so. True, you can easily catch Polish being spoken in the streets, but I saw only one bilingual public notice (up the Stump: more on this later). It seemed to me that the Polish contingent had blended in rather well, and some individuals had happily settled down here, and had woven themselves into the fabric of the local community. Do not believe what journalists in search of a story push at you: the flavour of the place was still thoroughly English. As English as Lincoln itself.

But let's climb the Stump.

My visit to Boston in May was the first for many years. Indeed, I hadn't walked about the place since going there on a late-season holiday break with Mum and Dad in October 1992, staying then in the New England Hotel in the Wide Bargate. I was highly curious to see what changes had taken place in twenty-six years.

The Stump stands right by the River Witham, and one street in particular, near the station, called appropriately Tower Street, has a fine view of the Stump. Here are two misty 1992 photos of mine, and then two 2018 shots from this same street.

In the three lower shots, the river is in between where I'm standing and the Stump. Men do say 'tis called the Stump because it resembles a tree trunk that has been blasted by lightning emenating from the Heavens. A thunderbolt from the Hand of God in fact. (Not to be confused with the Hand of God that I understand gave Argentinian footballer Maradona an edge in the 1986 World Cup)

Let's walk towards the Stump and feel its presence closer up. First you cross a footbridge that wasn't there in 1992...

Then you pass between buildings down on the river's edge, one of them a pub. 

A old chappie in pensioner attire - you can just see him - lurched out of the pub door and buttonholed me with Yorkshire-sounding words on these lines: 'Ee, where's bridge?' To which I rather stupidly replied 'I'm afraid I don't know - I'm only a visitor.' No wonder he gave me a sniffy look and asked somebody else. I didn't care. Before me lay Boston's finest (and tallest) building.

Let's go in. I won't overwhelm you with too many shots - see Flickr for more - but the interior really was rather impressive.

It's become customary with me to take many pictures of buildings like this. I enjoy the architecture. I also enjoy the carvings in wood and stone, the monuments, and usually (though not always) the artworks. But let's attend to the main purpose of my visit. I wanted to climb the tower and see the view. It was, unsurprisingly, £5.00 to get a ticket from the church shop. I didn't begrudge that at all. And I had fun using my phone to pay with. It's so amusing that this continues to amaze people who serve you.

The procedure was this. There were winding stairs up, and separate stairs down, one-way in each case. These were the doors. 

You took with you a numbered card which you handed back when finished. It had rescue advice on the back. Here was mine.

You also signed a register. 

There was a warning against climbing at all if you couldn't handle the effort needed.

There were indeed over two hundred steps - I counted 204 on the way down. 

Right. Let's go up. The entrance door clicked shut behind me. Stone steps wound their way upwards. You just had to put one foot in front of another and hope that you made it. There are usually places to pause and take a breather if you need to: sedentary medieval clergy on spare diets were not necessarily fitter than modern people. 

Well, it wasn't too bad. I can recall struggling with some tower and lighthouse climbs I've attempted. This one, taken steadily, didn't make me feel uncomfortable. The stone steps were in generally good repair. Nor did it become claustrophobic - spiral staircases like this tend to get narrow in their upper sections. Certainly the upper hundred steps were narrower than those below, but not as awkward as those you encounter when climbing, say, the tower of Worcester Cathedral. This said, I was glad to emerge into daylight again. Here we are. What could one see?

Oooh. A southerly view over the town centre and river! There's the footbridge over the river.

The river is tidal, and this was low tide. At high tide it fills its channel to the brim. At each corner of the tower, you bent low and passed through an archway to enjoy the view on the next of its four sides.

I looked upwards. 

I wasn't by any means at the top of the tower, where the bells were, just two-thirds of the way up. But that was quite sufficient for a really great view. And high enough to induce vertigo, or at least an unpleasant sensation. Despite the safety rail, that parapet was a bit too low for my liking, and I began to feel a concern for my personal well-being that showed on my face.   

But the Melfords are not ordinary mortals. I quelled my naked fear and persevered.

Oops! Got a bit too close to the rail there.

That was it. I had seen the panorama, and on a clear sunny day at that. I had my photos. A long-time wish was fulfilled, a personal challenge met, and the brave reputation of the Melfords upheld. Time to go, before the dreadful height turned me into a jelly. But I still had enough curiosity to inspect the entrance to stairs that led even higher, though locked against ordinary persons.

Ah, a bilingual notice! The first I'd seen. And not a new one. Clearly people from Poland came up here too. As English people visiting Gdansk might do. Here was the way down. 

My escape route! I didn't rush it, and carefully counted the number of steps to take my mind off how tired my leg muscles felt. At length, the bottom, and the exit door.

I was the perfect visitor, and did all that they required. I now felt well justified in having some refreshment at the church café. 

It was very nice. I was definitely refortified after the climb.

My visit to Boston didn't end there. I spent another hour exploring the place. Essentially, it was hardly changed. Some things had come, others had disappeared. The market place was still an impressive open area with its distinctive old-fashioned Five Lamps. 

Upmarket shops I remembered from 1992, like Oldrids and Coneys, were still there. They were both worth a look. Even the New England Hotel seemed to have survived unchanged.  

I got the firm impression that Boston's town centre was bucking the national trend, and thriving. It certainly had the air, spurious or not, of a busy and prosperous place, in no way dragged down by recession and an influx of foreigners. It looked cared-for and tidy. I wouldn't say it was picturesque, any more than I will say (in a forthcoming post, though not the next) that Hull is picturesque. It was busy, and commercial, but kind to the visitor. I want to return and see a bit more.

I walked back to Fiona via the old road bridge over the river, which in 1992 was the only way to cross the river on foot. The view of the Stump was just as good. Or would have been, if the tide was in!

  

Notice of a drastic pruning of posts

2018 is proving - by accident or design - to be a year of changes. With my 66th birthday less than a week away, I'm getting ever older, and it becomes important to focus on what matters most to me. That has prompted a series of rethinks on what I do with my time.

This blog started in February 2009 in a crisis situation, with my Mum's death, and great personal changes looming. It was a channel through which I could explore what lay ahead. It satisfied an urge to write. But it was always personal. I did play with wider subjects, but that sometimes got me into trouble with the people I mentioned in my posts. I found that embarrassing. And also discouraging: I was coming up against the problem any writer faces from time to time - destructive feedback. Perhaps I'm too sensitive, but it hurt. It didn't happen often, but each negative consequence made me decide that it was best to keep well away from certain subjects. Eventually, I arrived at the present position, where the blog is hardly more than 'Lucy's Adventures', illustrated with the same kind of photos that you can see in quantity on my Flickr site.

And that is most of the problem nowadays: the blog and the Flickr site overlap far too much. The blog has in large measure become 'Flickr with words added' - and I question the effort put into writing all those words, when the pictures posted on Flickr often say it all. I know many prefer reading about what I get up to instead of looking at pictures, but I do pictures best, and always have done. And the Flickr site far outstrips the blog in popularity. It's clearly where I should be concentrating my efforts. 

I still like the idea of blogging, and I haven't run out of things to say, but it's too time-consuming. The time has come to stop writing regularly for it.

I'm not going to take the blog down, but I have already deleted all of my past blog posts up to the end of 2014. And I will next look very critically at the posts already written in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Some will stay available to read. Most will be deleted.

I have, of course, an archived copy of every post I ever wrote, preserved in a long, long series of Word documents. No part of this essentially autobiographical record will disappear from my personal records. But most of it won't be available online from now on.

I suppose I will never now reach that one million figure for viewings! The total stands at 914,790 as I write this. But chasing a big readership has ceased to matter.

Will there be new posts in the future? Perhaps, maybe, I don't know. Google will doubtless remove the blog after a while, if I fail to put up any posts. If I decide that, truly, I'm writing for absolutely nobody's benefit except my own, and possibly a handful of friends who swap texts and emails with me, and see me from time to time anyway, then I may quit entirely.

Even now I feel rather sad about bringing my blogging project almost to a close. It has had a very long run, and plenty of success, and (I know) was a help and support for a few people. It also put me in touch with several readers who have become firm friends, and also a very distant cousin who didn't know that my part of the family existed. One or two complete strangers got in touch too, and for a while we had an agreeable exchange. But brushes with academics, media folk and the odd bigot introduced a sour note. It's so easy to give offence with the words you write! It's in my hands to put a stop to it, by not blogging and not giving them a chance to air their assumed superiority, or their malcontent. They can take their bad attitudes elsewhere.

I'm not at all finished with writing. Every day I make practical notes on this or that. But I don't think 'creative writing' is my forte. I most like getting behind the wheel of Fiona, and going off somewhere, and taking photos of what I see. That's the thing I love doing.

If anybody wants to keep tabs on me in the future, then my Flickr site is the best place to visit. The latest pictures - which always include shots of myself - are in the Photostream, or they can be seen according to subject in one or other of the Albums. Here's the direct link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lucymelford/.

Same day sequel
Well, that's 2018 'purged'. Twenty-four posts deleted, but forty retained. Now that wasn't too much of a slaughter, was it?

Next: 2017, 2016, and 2015. It's easiest to work back in time, making a note of the post titles to be deleted, and then doing that in one go from the Posts list. I deleted everything up to 2014 that way. (It wasn't worth keeping such old posts in the public eye, as they didn't reflect my contemporary life sufficiently)

My friend Angie has already expressed heartfelt regret at the idea that I may not blog again. So I've paused, and stopped the Quit Blogging Juggernaut in its tracks. I won't stop writing. But I will have to give blogging less of my time. I'm thinking now that I will cut back to two posts a week, or eight each month. That's two good posts per week, well-written, and well-illustrated if the subject calls for it.

And so the proud 'Lucy Melford' name won't disappear from the blogging world after all.

Out with the old

I've been up in my attic, and had a good turf-out of all my old electronic stuff going back the year 2000. It's all redundant now, long replaced by more up-to-date things. Several boxes worth. It entirely covered the table in my study:

CD installation discs, CD backup discs, cables, connectors, all kinds of gadgets (and accessories for them), instruction books, warranty information, and so on. All of it useless or unnecessary now. Plus packaging.

In theory it would all be a quick task to pop this lot into one or more strong plastic bags, and then into an outside bin (recycling for the packaging, otherwise landfill). But I scrutinised it all, just in case. For instance, it occurred to me that the clear-plastic CD drum covers could, when inverted, make good containers for nails and screws and other small items in the garage, when I finally get round to sorting the garage out (a job that should have started after Dad died in 2009). Even so, I will end up throwing 99% of it out.

I found a few gems, though. Items of historical interest, though not interesting enough to keep!

Here's one: a cassette-tape player/recorder:

I don't remember buying it, so it must have been Dad's. I jettisoned all my tapes eons ago, so there was no point in keeping the thing. But just think: back in the 1970s, the cassette-tape deck was the only way to go if you wanted portable music (meaning 'listen in any room, in mono' - this was not of course a wearable device).

Then I found this. A clamshell pocket organizer by Sharp.

This was from 2000, and (just) pre-dated the rise of proper stylus-operated electronic organizers with much larger memories and plenty of downloadable software to use, that could do a lot, lot more. Like Palm's offerings, and Microsoft's range of Pocket PCs. I suppose this Sharp device might have suited a lot of people who simply wanted to make brief notes that they wouldn't keep for long. Dad used it for this and that. I quickly discovered that 256KB of memory was a tiny drop in the ocean, compared with what I really needed.

I thought I'd thrown out all of my Palm devices, but now came across this one:

It was an E2 from 2005/2006. It was a budget model that I purchased soon after retiring. How old-fashioned it looks now! But I liked all of my Palms, apart from the fact that they were not durable and eventually something would go fatally wrong. I worked my way through several between 2000 and 2008. An eventual switch to Pocket PC gave me a device that lasted. After that, it was the Sony tablet and the first of my Samsung phones (the Galaxy S2) - and goodbye forever to PDAs.

Fantastically, I had retained all the original documentation for my first PC, made by MESH. This included instructions on how to install Windows 98 SE and its drivers from CDs and a floppy disc or two. Not an OS I loved. Windows XP was so much nicer.

Did I just mention floppy discs? How long has it been since one owned a machine that can use them? (In my case, not since 2007) Here's a shot of two that came with my MESH computer in 2000:

This is what the 'save' icon in every Windows application is derived from. A whole generation may not realise that.

Well, item by item, I filled four stout plastic bags, stapled them shut, and popped them outside.

I was left with a box-full of backup CDs covering the years 2000 to 2009. A couple of hundred of them. I didn't want to keep them. Since 2010 I'd been using a more modern storage medium for backing up, two 500GB external hard drives. I should have got rid of these CDs long ago. Oh well, I'd do it now.

But actually, how do you 'get rid of' a durable CD-ROM? You shouldn't just chuck it in the bin, intact and capable of being read by any Tom, Dick or Harry would finds it. I didn't want my backed-up photos from the mid-2000s being gawped at. Nor any genealogical material. Nor any financial stuff. I found by experiment that scratching (or even scouring) the surface of a CD with a knife or screwdriver had no effect whatever on its readability. So each CD would have to be broken into bits. This is how I've been doing it.

Take one deep cardboard box...

Now fix two pliers onto a CD in a fashion similar to this...

Next, put one's arms deep into the box and sharply twist the pliers away from each other, or towards if one prefers. The plastic CD should splinter, the shards being caught by the box. And after a few dozen, the bottom of the box should look like this:

I don't kid myself for a moment that a forensic team with advanced equipment couldn't read some of these fragments. But your average scavenger won't be able to. I'm not saying that any of my backup CDs contained things the world should not see, but it's best if nobody gets the chance.

I haven't yet finished mutilating my backup CDs - finishing the job will take an hour or two more. But once done, I can move forward with my New Backup Regime.

I've been giving the whole backup matter some Deep Thought recently. I am going to shift to mostly incremental backups, on external storage. What I really want (for 'physical' storage) is a multi-TB SSD for that, but I can't afford one at the moment. However, I can for now make better use of the two 500GB external hard drives. These will replace the ageing desktop PC for permanent incremental archiving. So I'm going to transfer the current contents of the PC to the two external hard drives, and progressively add to them as I go along. This is after placing the cream of what I want to keep on my phone and laptop, and up in the Cloud.

I have imagined various scenarios:

# My home burns down while I'm away caravanning - but the phone and laptop are safe.
# I lose everything except my bag - so I still have my phone.
# I am a naked survivor of some disaster, and must rebuild from Cloud storage only.

The two hard drives are small and easily-concealed, and can be hidden at home - or travel with me - as I decide. Strange to think that if anyone asks to see 'my photo and computer equipment' in the future, I will show them merely my phone, my laptop and these drives. How minimalist can you get?

The desktop PC will be decommisioned, the hard drive extracted and crippled, and the rest of it junked. That will make the 'computer desk' in one corner of my study redundant, and I will pass it on or junk it too. With the corner emptied, I can then rearrange my study and find badly-needed extra space for my books. I have a definite Improvement Plan for my study, you see.

I'll keep the 2007-vintage scanner and printer, on the assumption that they can be made to work with my 2016-vintage laptop, given appropriate software downloaded from the Epson website. I'll plug them into the laptop when I do some scanning or printing. I'm pretty sure this idea will work. But if not, I'll have to invest in a new scanner and printer. That won't however be an urgent thing.

It's good to have a good sort-out. Twenty or thirty years ago I would hang onto things forever if I thought I might want to see them again. But at this time of my life, I want to slim my possessions down to what matters most to me and nothing more, keeping 'family heirlooms' only if I like them and they are meaningful. Because eventually I intend to redecorate my home on clean, unfussy, Scandinavian lines. You know: comfortable, but no clutter.

Same day sequel
A friend I saw that evening advised me that if I wanted a single device for future backups of whatever had been accumulating on the two 500GB hard drives, I could buy a decent 3TB external powered hard drive for only £90. That's affordable, and still leaves me with a minimalist set-up, with every key component portable or easily-hidden. 

No more magazines through my front door

Ha. Another stage completed in going paperless!

This morning I received another Boundless magazine. At one time this was the CSMA Magazine - the CSMA being the Civil Service Motoring Association, to which any civil servant could belong, working or retired - but a while back they decided that the rising generation of younger members wanted to read something less focused on cars and 'club' activities, and more on holiday and leisure pursuits in general. So the magazine, which got posted to members monthly, became full of stuff to entice you off to exotic locations for a weekend break or something longer. There was an awful lot of advertising in between the articles. And items on motoring as a hobby - on four wheels or two - got a bit crowded out.

There was the occasional interesting article, but for a long time I've hardly glanced at Boundless, and more than once have thought of asking the publishers to stop sending it. Presumably it was possible to read the thing online? If so, I'd be content with that. But I couldn't see any way of altering my contact preferences to stop the paper version being sent. It seemed too much trouble to phone them up and make enquiries about how to do it. I suspected, anyway, that as the magazine had become such an advertising vehicle, they didn't want to make it easy for Boundless members to opt out of being sent a regular copy.

But my personal drive to go 'paperless' has been gathering momentum in 2018. I decided to send them an email about stopping the paper magazine. So earlier this afternoon I bunged off this:

Dear Boundless

I am keen to go paperless as far as possible. I've tried looking for it, but I can't see how I can ask for the Boundless Magazine to be delivered to me online-only, dispensing with the paper version through the post. How is this done, please?

Lucy Melford

I wasn't expecting a same-afternoon reply, but I got one.

Good afternoon,

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm that I have suppressed the magazine from us and you will be able to locate the new magazine every two months on our home page www.boundless.co.uk .

Kind regards,

Josh

Well, thank you Josh! One more item of unwanted mail eliminated. A little less for my local postie to deliver. And no doubt a little less revenue for the Royal Mail too, but I can't feel too bad about reducing their income-stream. I'm much more concerned with the unnecessary use of paper and printing chemicals. And the whole idea of being sent something I don't want, even if it goes in the recycling bin.

The monthly magazine sent out by the Caravan and Motorhome Club is very similar, and although not exactly 'unwanted' - it has more articles in it that I want to read - I would be perfectly happy to read it online. So I immediately logged onto their website and altered my preferences.

Not content with this, there was yet a third magazine that thumps quarterly onto the Melford doormat, the one sent by Volvo. They seem to think that I have eagerly bought into a high-spending, stylish, outdoorsy Scandinavian lifestyle, and want to devour articles that expound the kind of aspirational thinking that in Volvo's dreams goes with owning one of their cars. Funny how living such a lifestyle requires so much in the way of leisure accessories made especially for the latest model range. They won't fit my eight year old car. So the magazine has limited interest, except as an insight into the direction Volvo is taking its products - ever upmarket, it seems! My own dreams are grounded in practicalities and how much I can afford. It was time I stopped this paper magazine coming.

It was as simple as amending my preferences - or seemed to be.

And that means a bit less wood-pulp needed. And, since the paper version of all these magazines has to be encapsulated in plastic, a bit less oil consumed. I'm not fanatical about this, but it does feel that I'm doing the right thing to Save The Planet.

At the same time, I have to confess that I don't read e-books, and like to buy a proper paperback book that I can read in the traditional fashion, and afterwards put on the bookshelves in my study until I fancy reading it again. It's in my world as a distinct tangible object, something to pick up and grasp. And I like to turn real pages when following a story. I'm sure I'm being illogical here, in preferring a paper book. But I dare say I'm not alone.