Alan Skeoch

Year: 2025

  • EPISODE 1,452 BULLDOG AND HOSPITAL BEDS

    EPISODE 1,452   BULLDOG AND HOSPITAL BEDS


    alan skeoch
    june 10, 2025

    A hospital bed is designed to to carry 600 to 1,000 pound weight.’There are not many thousand pound
    patients…maybe a couple of three hundred pounders.Why such a heavy bed?  For side rails, electric motors, cranks, etc.
    .

    We had these monstrosities long ago.  Never became a rental because it took four people lift one bed. Sent to scrap yard.

    Replaced by these fake beds. WE have 12, enough for a prison camp or hospital ward.






    How do you like the bulldog shirt?

  • A;l… where have you been?




    AL?. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

    I think this picture explains my absence best..

    Three months in a neck brace day and night.  
    bone chip. Ten doses of Tylenol 3…with
    subsequent hallucinations.  etc.etc. Marjorie has been my personal care
    giver and is exhausted.  Half of our house is a ‘no go’ zone.  My head is bent but
    will recover or so I have been told.  

    enough?

    What is the most dangerous place? The Bathroom…be careful!!!

    PS – Marjorie chose my shirt to match my skin colour.  EPISODE 1,453

  • EPISODE 1,45O: OUR CAT IS FERAL …RUNS AWAY BUT ALWAYS COMES BACK–HER NAME IS CHELSEA BUN.


    EPISODE 1,45O: OUR CAT IS FERAL …RUNS AWAY BUT ALWAYS COMES BACK–HER NAME IS CHELSEA BUN.

    alan skeoch
    may 30, 2025 
     \
    CHELSEA BUN is a barn cat.   Not domesticated into doorstop cat.     She loves us all the same.   She
    washes our dog Woody often while curled up between his paws.  He puts up with that although
    with a longsuffering look. We worry the coyotes who frequent our back lot will get her so
    keep her leashed.  but sometime she gets away.  Would her colour be camouflage?


     

  • Fwd: EPISODE 1,409: EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE 1916? – 2025



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: Fwd: EPISODE 1,409: EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE 1916? – 2025
    Date: May 28, 2025 at 11:01:52 AM EDT
    To: john Wardle <jwardle@rogers.com>, Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>


    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 1,409: EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE 1916? – 2025
    Date: May 26, 2025 at 9:00:38 PM EDT
    To: john Wardle <jwardle@rogers.com>



    EPISODE 1,409:  EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE   1916? – 2025

    alan skeoch
    may 26, 2025

    NOT MUCH OF AN APPLE TREE 


    Not much of a tree,I admit.  More dead than alive.  An apple whose apples are scabby, wormy and small.
    Only one branch is alive, the others have been dead for years. Decades.

    Edward Freeman bought this 25 acre farm for $2,000 in 1916.   Not much of a farm then and not
    much of a farm now…dominated by one giant swamp and several small swamps. Only one tiny patch
    of good soil while the rest of the land is a glacial dump with many boulders rolled smooth by the ice 
    for thousands of years.Edward Freemans family suffers a lot of disapointment .    The dream of a new
    life inCanada had been a nightmare by1916…an 8 year nightmare.  1908 to 1916…tough years.  

    Canada was not a pleasant place.  It was on fire…really on fire and Edward Freeman got burned.

    This farm, however. was where
     the Freeman family rooted themselves and where some of their progeny remain rooted.





    WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE INTERESTED IN THE SLOW DEATH OF AN APPLE TREE?

    I think you could.  That tree will soon be gone … only a memory that will never be replicated.  Never ever?
    Appple trees are like humans that way.   They do not breed true.  When our son Andrew revs up his
    chain saw next week or next  month and the chips start to fly that apple tree will be no longer.  So this story
    will be all that remains.

    Mygrandfather, Edward Freeman planted this tree around 1920 give or take a few years. I think he was trying 
    to recreate hia early year when he was head gardener of Eywood, a country estate…1500 acres…in the heart of 
    Herefordshire, England.   Apple Country where Red Streak apples, grafted apple trees. were crushed and 
    squeezed and aged to produce he best hard apple the world has ever produced.Cider apples are special.    Not cooking apples….not
    not applesauce apples.   idea apples….hard apple cider with an alcohol content adored by drinkers some of whom 
    drank from crystal glasses and by less sophisticated scrumpy version sold from beneath pub counters in tankards.

    I never really knew my grandfather except in bits and pieces.   When I remember him best he was an elderly

    man who dragged his arthritic leg to the woodpile behind the farm house to split kindling for winter fires.  I had no idea

    what meant to be a head Gardener in England.Oh I knew him.   Like when granddad and mom pinned me
    down in the bedroom beside the attic with a salt and water solution to kill the pin worms of my youth.   Or later when we….grandfather and me 
    shot a porcupine in the big maple tree.  I did not want to do it but  porcupine quills in farm dogs noses were bad he said.
     
    Let’s pretend we have the power to recreate Edward Freeman  using the bits and fragments he left behind. 
     Let’s use this old apple tree to take  us back. Both the apple tree and Edward Freeman are worth the time tunnel trip.
    It will take several episodes.  By the time we are done the apple tree will be cut into chord wood some of which will be
    present in the smoke we breath and thereby be a part of us.

    1916 WAS NOT THE BEGINNING OF THE FREEMAN STORY…FAR FROM IT….WE MUST GO BACK TO 1871

    NEXT EPISODE


    Alan 

    post script;  Warning, do not chew apple seeds .  Why?   because they contain cyanide which is a dangerous poison.
    If you chew between 150 and 1,000 appleseeds you could get very sick.


  • Fwd: EPISODE 1,409: EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE 1916? – 2025



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 1,409: EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE 1916? – 2025
    Date: May 26, 2025 at 9:00:38 PM EDT
    To: john Wardle <jwardle@rogers.com>



    EPISODE 1,409:  EDWARD FREEMAN: HEAD GARDENER: THE LAST APPLE TREE   1916? – 2025

    alan skeoch
    may 26, 2025

    NOT MUCH OF AN APPLE TREE 


    Not much of a tree,I admit.  More dead than alive.  An apple whose apples are scabby, wormy and small.
    Only one branch is alive, the others have been dead for years. Decades.

    Edward Freeman bought this 25 acre farm for $2,000 in 1916.   Not much of a farm then and not
    much of a farm now…dominated by one giant swamp and several small swamps. Only one tiny patch
    of good soil while the rest of the land is a glacial dump with many boulders rolled smooth by the ice 
    for thousands of years.Edward Freemans family suffers a lot of disapointment .    The dream of a new
    life inCanada had been a nightmare by1916…an 8 year nightmare.  1908 to 1916…tough years.  

    Canada was not a pleasant place.  It was on fire…really on fire and Edward Freeman got burned.

    This farm, however. was where
     the Freeman family rooted themselves and where some of their progeny remain rooted.





    WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE INTERESTED IN THE SLOW DEATH OF AN APPLE TREE?

    I think you could.  That tree will soon be gone … only a memory that will never be replicated.  Never ever?
    Appple trees are like humans that way.   They do not breed true.  When our son Andrew revs up his
    chain saw next week or next  month and the chips start to fly that apple tree will be no longer.  So this story
    will be all that remains.

    Mygrandfather, Edward Freeman planted this tree around 1920 give or take a few years. I think he was trying 
    to recreate hia early year when he was head gardener of Eywood, a country estate…1500 acres…in the heart of 
    Herefordshire, England.   Apple Country where Red Streak apples, grafted apple trees. were crushed and 
    squeezed and aged to produce he best hard apple the world has ever produced.Cider apples are special.    Not cooking apples….not
    not applesauce apples.   idea apples….hard apple cider with an alcohol content adored by drinkers some of whom 
    drank from crystal glasses and by less sophisticated scrumpy version sold from beneath pub counters in tankards.

    I never really knew my grandfather except in bits and pieces.   When I remember him best he was an elderly

    man who dragged his arthritic leg to the woodpile behind the farm house to split kindling for winter fires.  I had no idea

    what meant to be a head Gardener in England.Oh I knew him.   Like when granddad and mom pinned me
    down in the bedroom beside the attic with a salt and water solution to kill the pin worms of my youth.   Or later when we….grandfather and me 
    shot a porcupine in the big maple tree.  I did not want to do it but  porcupine quills in farm dogs noses were bad he said.
     
    Let’s pretend we have the power to recreate Edward Freeman  using the bits and fragments he left behind. 
     Let’s use this old apple tree to take  us back. Both the apple tree and Edward Freeman are worth the time tunnel trip.
    It will take several episodes.  By the time we are done the apple tree will be cut into chord wood some of which will be
    present in the smoke we breath and thereby be a part of us.

    1916 WAS NOT THE BEGINNING OF THE FREEMAN STORY…FAR FROM IT….WE MUST GO BACK TO 1871

    NEXT EPISODE


    Alan 

    post script;  Warning, do not chew apple seeds .  Why?   because they contain cyanide which is a dangerous poison.
    If you chew between 150 and 1,000 appleseeds you could get very sick.