A border state of mind [535]
Greetings from The Borders...
Welcome. If you are new here, I’m Christian Payne. I’m generally interested in most things but in this weekly dispatch I seek out novelty, explore the relations between things, how we share, what we share and consume, plus where we might be going. Thanks for joining in.
And if you are a regular, welcome back.
#TheAction
The guests left a few days ago and some new ones will be here imminently. Thankfully my personal journal will have some thoughts banked and so this dispatch will be a hurried mix of hammering keys and the voice dictation of recent happenings.
Outside of catching the edge of storm Floris it’s been a blissfully ordinary week. Yes it was windy but that was about it. The trees shed some deadwood and I headed out to tidy the rest.
The last few days has seen me gathering and processing firewood with the manual pole saw as well as the chainsaw.
On arriving in the Borders, just a little further north than the northeast of England, it was immediately clear that gathering and drying firewood is very much still a part of the culture here.
The windfall after Storm Arwen in 2021 had bolstered everyone’s wood piles to impressive sizes. Pass an open barn door and behind a little machinery, you’d see walls of neatly stacked firewood ready to feed a fireplace and warm a home. It is the fireplace at the end of all this that connects our labour to comfort, past to present and perhaps even connects our effort to what would have meant survival.
It reminded me of visiting relatives in the Italian Alps last year and years earlier, Ukrainian family in their tiny offgrid cottage.
Once essential for survival, wood is our oldest form of energy. Over the course of my life I can recall only a brief spell when I didn’t live in a home with an open fire or wood burner.
Perhaps the satisfaction I get from harvesting firewood is in my DNA. Because here, even with all the technological advances... solar panels and oil heating, we still burn wood. When managed responsibly, it’s still the simplest, low-tech, sustainable, and long-lasting way to store the sun’s energy.
This house has three fireplaces. One open and two with wood burners. Thanks to an extraordinary level of insulation, we may only need to use the main one.
Although we’ve yet to experience a winter here and I doubt the four crates of seasoned wood I brought from our last home will last the season. So I’m out there almost daily.
There’s little felling to do. I’ve safely landed a hung-up tree and then snedded, logged, and split it. Otherwise, I’m deadwooding, coppicing, thinning and pollarding.
The smaller logs i’ve stacked to season will be perfect in the fourth wood fireplace (another wood burner I forgot to mention) which heats the steading. This is probably the easiest building to keep warm and I’m sure my mother-in-law will be toasty all winter.
Should you be interested, Birch, oak, and ash yield the most energy at about 18 GJ per tonne. Larch, though a softwood, comes close at 17–18 GJ per tonne, followed by fir at 17 and spruce around 16.
Once stacked with airflow (and there are endless ways to do that), firewood is good to use when its moisture content drops below 20%. As you might recall, I have a special gadget with which to test that.
Where once most of what I did revolved around pixels, there’s now something grounding about working with wood, alongside the seasons, in rhythm with the weather.
The act of gathering, splitting, and stacking firewood feels disarmingly simple. And there’s a sense of purpose in the physical graft and in preparing for the future. It also brings me closer to nature and to the lives of our ancestors who have done the same for millennia.
I know I keep returning to themes of survival, stewardship, and belonging... But that’s what I am drawn to right now. I’m not wishing winter in, but the fireplace as a symbol of resilience and comfort is central to this story.
#ThePictures
It’s still photo month. And will be for the rest of August. All you have to do is drop a photo into an online place of your choosing with the tag #PhotoMonth. Here are some of the images I have shared so far.
Did I tell you about the time I bricked my car key messing around with the Flipper Zero? Looks like the tool I was playing with has been refined a little more. It’ll still brick it but it’s not even easier to do it.
A 35mm film photography Tumblr.
#TheWords
To live in a border state of mind
is to embrace both stillness and movement,
history and change.
Time folds differently
when the land remembers what the maps forget.
Belonging is a rhythm, not a boundary.
One of my random street conversations this week was with a couple in a fiat camper van outside Lidl who were over from New Zealand touring the UK.
Both were right leaning covid deniers in their 60's and you might be surprised to hear we had a lovely chat. We listened to each others opinions while not feeling like we had to agree. Although after sharing my experiences of loosing some elderly friends during covid from respiratory illnesses, I may have shifted their thinking a little.
After all, New Zealand's quick response in regards to border controls had minimised deaths and had them wondering what the big deal was. Personally they had not known of anyone who’d died. For them, the pandemic was more about increased government control than a public health threat.
Then came a comment that stuck with me... "What the world needs now is a benevolent dictator." I don't think they were joking, or meant Trump, but it got me wondering if it's even possible for an authoritarian ruler to use absolute power for public good.
While appealing in theory, I have strong doubts and explained that in my opinion centralised power can corrode even wellmeaning leaders who are not kept in check with institutional feedback systems.
We talked for over an hour but I wish I’d had more time to flesh this out as all I could come up with was that democracy will always trump authoritarianism. The trump pun was not intended but got a smile and we parted as friends.
A little research once home seemed to show most political economists and historians feeling the same way and arguing that over time, absolute rule becomes selfserving or unstable.
Trump is not a good candidate to look at, as I don't feel his motives were ever in favour of the well being of others. Especially the swift, centralised decision making and dismantling of agencies that were there to save lives. Even actions that appear altruistic, like the Armenia/Azerbaijan peace talks or supporting Ukraine... under the surface they seem to serve some underlying self‑interest or legacy building.
Although imperfect, democracy has endured because it distributes power. The centralised nature of authoritarianism may be able to act fast, but without scrutiny it drifts toward self-interest and decay. The messiness of democracy is its strength as it admits error, adapts and continually returns the power to us, the people.
I’m glad I stopped to talk with the Fiat couple. We were from opposite sides of the world... and the political fence. But they got me thinking thoughts I don’t usually think. I hope I did the same for them.
#TheSound
Been on Discogs now for 10 years and still finding it useful. Are we connected there? I was always very precious of keeping my account Vinyl only, but with the price of CDs creeping up I’ve started unpacking boxes in the attic and logging them as well. I’d forgotten how many CDs I own. promos, obscure bands, and albums that never made it big. It’s been great revisiting the format and rediscovering the music that shaped the 90s for me. Some of which never made it onto streaming platforms. Hearing these tracks again feels like uncovering a lost part of my personal soundtrack.
[Currently listening to the not so obscure ‘Have a drink on me’ by ACDC off ‘Back in Black’ and remembering one night in Rock City hearing the first line of “Whisky, Gin and brandy, with a glass i’m pretty handy”. I convinced the barman that this was an actual cocktail called an ‘ACDC’ and ordered one for me and a friend. I don’t remember much after that.]
I love finding these little audio nuggets. This podcast is celebrating 15 years of 99% invisible and teaching you a lot about great sound design and production along the way.
#TheConsumed
I drank it before I thought to take a photo… but imagine if you can a ‘Normandy Mule’.
It’s a French twist on a Moscow Mule and made with calvados, ginger beer, fresh lime or lemon juice and garnished with an apple slice. I had it over ice in a copper mug.
I saw that some recipes also include a dash of Angostura bitters, which is the one type of bitters I usually have to hand so will try that next time as i’m sure to make it again.
#TheFound
As I get back into detecting and upgrading my gear, I’m now more apt than ever at finding long lost rubbish. There are a few targets that can deliver the crisp repeatable tone of a coin buried in the ground. Crumpled aluminium foil is the worst of it.
When my new detector (mentioned below) detects something, it assigns it a number based on how conductive the object is. That number is called the Target ID, or TID. It helps me guess what the object might be before I attempt to dig it up.
Low numbers (0-30) can mean very small or thin items like said foil or tiny bits of metal. Mid-range numbers (40–70) could be things like ring pulls, buttons and some coins. High numbers (70–99) often suggest coins, silver, or larger copper items.
But it is certainly not foolproof. Especially as i’m not detecting on a large field in the middle of nowhere, I’m currently only able to detect on our own land (and beaches when I get there). This is somewhere people have lived and farmed for centuries. And where people have lived, there tends to be a trail of junk.
As well as old fire pits and holes where previous owners would bury or burn the crap they didn’t need, I’ve found junk and general farm detritus. Junk can have good numbers, especially in relation to depth, position and the soil conditions. Which as it turns out it riddled with iron contamination.
So that’s why my find box looks more like a bin. Old bits of 1930’s furniture, a crumpled pot of pig medicine, brass drawer handles, a clock cog, a horse box door from a matchbox toy, rusted chain links and gate hooks. All these things hint to a bygone age and tell a story, even if it’s not one of treasure.
Still, there is something oddly satisfying about looking beneath the surface and piecing together the everyday past. But i’d still like to find something that little bit special. A pre decimal coin will do.
#TheThings
If you feel like digging out your old CDs then ‘What Hi-Fi?’ have reviewed a few new players. Or if money is no object though you might be tempted to get something that ingests your collection into FLAC.
And this is my new treasure finding device that is currently ridding the land of bottle caps, foil and ring pulls. The XP Deus 2.
I know I said I was looking at something from Minelab but the service and patience from Regton.com who answered all my questions and more had me realise that I could buy a slimmed down version of the detector I have lusted after for years. The XP Deus II WS6 Master is a lightweight, wireless metal detector that uses a small ‘puck’ control unit instead of a traditional screen. This small screen clips onto the headphones or stem and lets you control all the main settings like sensitivity and discrimination. The key thing for me is that it uses advanced multi-frequency technology that also works on the beach. Plus not that i’ll be swimming with it, but the coil is fully waterproof.
I love it. It’s easy to carry and far easier to use than expected.
#TheThanks
Massive thanks to the paying subscribers who continue to support this dispatch and the adventures/experiments that make it. You know who you are. ♥️
If you are reading this in the app as a ‘follower’, please subscribe as ion I do decide to migrate elsewhere it would be great if we remain connected.
..And if you value these words, ideas and curation, please consider an upgrade to become a supporting subscriber. I’m planning some more audio for the podcast. You’d get that, access to the archive and the discord.
Or if you prefer a random hat tip you can do that via PayPal
#TheWeb
I asked my kids if there was a class at school where they are shown how headlines can mislead, how statistics are twisted to fit narratives, and how regurgitation and repetition can shape belief. My daughter said modern studies is close but it’s not yet been covered. This article by Mic Right does a great job of highlighting the issue and just how critical media literacy is today.
I’ll be popping south down the Documentally community map near Newcastle on Tuesday. NE16 5PX. If you’re free.
Ancient Seafarers or tsunami survivors?
Memoir, mythology, botany, and cultural critique come together in an attempt to reconnect with nature.
Some of my other places include these… and supporting subscribers also get access to a Discord server. Message me for a link. 👍🏽
Apparently AI is not making engineers 10x more productive.
I want one of these as a bank card that will show me how much money I have in the bank. Is that what liquidity is?
There’s too many words up top so I’ll post the Bluesky Dictionary here.
#TheEnd
Thanks for reading. Hope all is well in your part of the world. If you feel like commenting please do. I’ll get to looking at them in the not too distant future.
Right now, I might just have time to grab a shower before the guests arrive and the weekend begins. Have a great week!
“Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking.” ― Vaddey Ratner
Discover.
See you out there.
Over…
You’re going to be about 20 mins from us on Tuesday if you have time for a cuppa and a village ramble? No worries if you’ve had a more exciting offer ;)
I picked up an old Technics portable cd player to hook up to my desktop speakers and listen to my old CDs. It’s fun. I still have my eye on the Fiio DM13 though but that Shanling looks interesting