After literally months of waiting, I’m now using a 1mbps broadband connection after BT finally completed the upgrade last night. Ruralville has been lagging behind a bit compared to other communities in the area, mainly due to our remoteness from the exchange. But BT have recently upgraded the cables to the village in order to get our tiny school connected.
Of course, 1mbps will seem very slow to those people who live in major city centres and are getting speeds that are five or twenty times faster thanks to cable networks. The truth is that many rural areas barely have broadband at all and we are usually a long way down the queue for technical upgrades. Perhaps we will see faster radio-based broadband systems introduced in the near future – they’d certainly be useful around here and probably an awful lot cheaper to install.
Category: East Sussex
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Surf’s up
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Autumn
The first weekend of October and we’ve had our first and second frosts of the season. This morning, H had to find the deicer to clear the windscreen of her car before setting off to work. Meanwhile, I get to stay in the warm with a nice cup of coffee. Not that I’m rubbing it in or anything.
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Birling Gap
I’m never going to listen to my wife again when she says "don’t bother bringing the camera – it’s not a nice day and the photos won’t turn out well". I was quietly cursing the fact that I didn’t have the camera with me yesterday as we admired glorious and huge fields full of poppies near East Dean (the East Sussex one, not any of the the other East Deans) and then stood at the foot of the majestic cliffs at Birling Gap as the waves crashed in – all bathed in splendid sunshine. Bah!
Incidentally, I’m sure that there is a joke in a place name like Birling Gap. Much like there must be a joke in Tarring Neville. -
Challenge
Our challenge this morning has been trying to decide how to vote in the county council election. Labour aren’t really an option, as the council has only ever been either LibDem or Tory. The Tories are the current incumbents.
Having studied the literature, I can find hardly any differences in policy at a local level. The main one I have found is that the LibDems oppose the introduction of charges for local car parks, whereas the Tories would rather introduce them and reduce the Council Tax – either way, you end up paying for the car park somewhere. Also, there is a rather complicated argument about the local planning process which essentially boils down to the LibDems wanting to keep the existing cumbersome and expensive process or the Tories wanting to spend a lot of money to change it – either way, it ends up costing us somewhere.
On balance, we feel that it comes down to track record and, put crudely, the Tories have increased the Council Tax more slowly during their period in charge than the LibDems did when they were in charge. Services have also improved and a few niggling local issues seem to have been sorted out.
So, it looks like a split ballot for me – different Xs on each of the two papers. But at least I can feel safe in the knowledge that I’ve voted locally in the local election and nationally in the national election. I encourage you to do the same.
Oh, and another factor – only the Tory county council candidate bothered to visit Ruralville (or our home at least) – so we can be sure that he knows we exist out here.
UPDATE – H has been to the polling station already and caused quite a stir, being the only voter there and causing palpitations for the rather elderly polling station officers who clearly are not used to such glamour so early in the day! I’m on my way there now. -
Men with big sticks
Nipped round to the pub this evening to watch some big grown men dancing and hitting big sticks, with bells tied around their ankles and wrists. Apparently, good luck and fertility shall favour those that watch Morris dancing. Not sure about the fertility bit, but I had the misfortune of having to stand the drinks. Bah.
Ruralville must be one of the few places in the south east of England where Morris dancers can perform their rituals in the middle of the main road at 8.30 on a Wednesday evening with no fear of being run over. -
Posters
Unscientific BBC survey suggests that fewer people are putting up party posters in the run up to this election than in previous years. There certainly seem to be plenty around here, although red seems a rare colour.
Interestingly, party political posters are exempt from the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 (my favourite piece of legislation to flout, as regular readers will know) provided they are removed not more than 14 days after the election. -
A step in spring
Finally managed to find time on our own today to take some exercise – a 8.5km circular walk from Ruralville passing through two nearby hamlets and, needless to say, a pub. The cloud and haze rather spoilt the views, but it was excellent nonetheless, particularly to see the spring flowers starting to bloom. We passed through open fields, narrow lanes, coppice, woodland, heath and golf course – certainly varied. We also discovered an absolutely fantastic spot in the woods, with moss-carpeted floors, towering beech trees and the babbling of the confluence of two small streams – definitely a future picnicking spot, we reckon.
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Grr
To the bright spark that drove into Hels’s car in one of the lanes in Ruralville, smashing off the wing mirror, and didn’t stop – thanks. That’ll cost us quite a bit to have fixed.
To whichever of our cats it was that knocked over the full vase on the dining table overnight, spilling water all over my brand new Wallpaper* magazine and leaving a huge water stain in the table and an even bigger puddle on the floor – thanks. Next time, I’ll use the pair of you to mop it up. -
Bloody cold. And dark.
A power cut hit Ruralville in the small hours and power has yet to be restored. Our heating, though gas, requires an electricity supply to function. Thankfully, our log burning stove doesn’t require electricity, so there is a little heat in the house as snow falls steadily outside. Thank goodness for laptop batteries (mmmm, warm knees) and redundant dialup accounts.
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Neighbourhood watch. And clogs.
Update on the neighbour situation from the other day. It seems that everyone is now in agreement on the way forward, so we hope that a quick trip to the pub for beer and curry tonight will patch up any slightly damaged bridges. Which is a good thing.
As for the Dutch guy problem (or Dutch problem guy), he seems to have gone very quiet indeed. And I’m not too worried by that. I think that problem will go away. In fact, in many ways, his ejection of playthings from his perambulator has left me free to make vastly superior new arrangements concerning a couple of products, much to my satisfaction.