Stone Clearing With Richard Herring - Chapter 65

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

Chapter Sixty-Five - Geometry Leffon. It's about half past four in the afternoon on 10th June 2020 and Rich has recently been bitten by a stone, but he's still not shy. It's the podcast with everything, a squirrel dicing with death, an encounter with some ramblers, witches' fingers, dicks and balls, a tribute to a fallen stone-clearing hero and a selection of stones that have been precision engineered by nature. That's everything right? There's no other podcast like it. If you want to be one of the lamestream fooles then you can join me most mornings at around 8am for live stone clearing at http://twitch.tv/rkherring. And if you're with Amazon Prime you can give me free money. Here's how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVji_FONrxo

Stone Clearing with Richard Herring Hello and what's that? There's a squirrel in the road. A live running along the road. It might not look like long. There's a car coming. Get out of the way. Oh no. Oh, that's the excitement to start the day. It's alright. It ran into the road and then out of the road again this time. Welcome to chapter 65 of Stone Clearing with Richard Herring. It's 1634. It's the 10th of June, 2020. I know these audio chapters have not been as forthcoming as they once were. I hope you'll forgive me. You can catch me most mornings on Twitch. You can also give me free money there if you're an Amazon Prime member by linking your Twitch and Amazon Prime accounts. Remembering to come back and subscribe every month, it costs you nothing extra. I get £3.50 every time you do it.

Finally, Stone Clearing is paying off. Not that I'm doing it for the money. That money will of course be used to make more podcasts. I do Stone Clearing for love. It's not a very nice evening. I'm doing an evening Stone Clearing for you. Drizzle. Dark clouds up above. Missed the significant hail storm the other day. It was luckily not out. I had been caught in hail before in thunder and lightning, but that was not recorded. So Wolfie, here we are out in the field. The stocian, the crops are growing. We'll give an offering to the Alpha and Omega Can. And off we go. Lots of weeds in this part of the field. Still some stones from the video podcast I streamed, rather I did speculate I might finish the job. Last weekend I think I may have been presumptuous. There are still a few stones out here.

As you can hear the pitter-patter and raindrops picking up a nice knobbly brownie there. Remember I still love you more than the mainstream audience are getting up to almost 200 people a day watching me. At one time it's probably up to 300 or 400 tuning in at some point. I think often just tuning in and what the fuck is this and then tuning out again. There's been some close calls to the Stone Starzy. I had a serious injury this week when I was bleeding. Hopefully that will not happen again. I'm carried on. I'm a professional both broadcaster and stone clearer. And I do not stop just because the top of my finger has been sliced clean off. That may be a slight exaggeration. But only a slight one. The top of my finger is still there. Oh there's a nice, that's almost perfect ball though. Look at that one Morse. That's almost worth a photo. It's like it could be a...

Let's see if I can take a photo without wrecking the recording. Look at that Morse. It's like a ball. I hope we had that click. Let's just check we're still going. Of course we are. All good. That may have been used as a tennis ball in the past. Brown round. It's off the field now but I've never seen quite as a perfect spear as that in stone form. Formed by nature. The planet Earth I suppose would be another example. It's not a perfect spear but it's more of an egg shape. The planet Earth. Pigeons flying through the crops. I don't know if we haven't worked out what the crops are yet. Some kind of cruciferous vegetable has been suggested.

A couple more stones off the field. Yeah I'm looking at it. There are still quite a few stones here by the edge I think. I think I've just got excited with the idea. Might finish. I hope lockdown has been treating you okay. My daughter went back to school today. She's there three days a week. So we may be returning some kind of normality or we might be about to go back into a disastrous second wave of illness and disaster. It's not been easy for anyone I'm sure. I think for some people it's been slightly less tragic and even pleasant in some ways. I've certainly been more towards that myself. It makes no difference out here on the field. This is what we should be talking about. Just popping out to pick up a couple of stones I spotted. Hassle-hoffing out.

You are the true fans of stone clearing. I'll never forget that. Just trying to dig up the stone. Let me just get out with my foot. The cuts on my finger still slightly stinging. Still slightly open. Right on my picking up finger, the middle finger of my right hand. You'll know my hands are small enough already without losing any further bits out of a small. It's a reminder not to be, at this time you should be wearing masks when you're going out. Perhaps you should be wearing gloves when you're stone clearing. I have not learnt my lesson and I'm not wearing gloves.

I'm here, gloveless, wearing my stone clearing t-shirt as it happens. Despite some things, you might hear a little triangular stone. It's more of a pyramid actually when you pick it out. Getting some interesting geometric shapes today. Woofie! Woofie a bit back to normal after I think being freaked out again. She's now been, she's walked at lunchtime by a dog walker with other dogs. And I think when that stopped, it freaked her out a little bit.

She also spent some time with my in-laws. It's nice to have her back. I don't know if she seems a little happier. I'm letting her off the lead for the moment. Let's see how that works out. So we might just do a short lap here. Gotta get back for tea time. None of the crowd pleasing shenanigans of the video.

If we know which is finger or which is dick, we'll find out what you're doing there. You're doing a poo or a wee. When you find a stone that looks like it could be a which is finger or which is dick, you sing which is finger or which is dick, which is which, which is which. It's good, but it's very crowd pleasing. None of the singing ringing tree, which I don't believe in. I don't believe in feckless people who watch the live stream.

I think that's a real thing. But that's just created by me. Like Fine Santa Claus is created by Coca-Cola. Something like that, isn't it? Just to try and draw in the gullible feckless idiots to hopefully part with some money. And no stone pole, even though that is a thing that we do here. Just, I don't think we'll have time to get past there today. The stone stars we have been at in numbers, but again,

I think they favour the video over the audio now. So not seeing much of them. I love these, these brown, another geometrical shape. It's geometry today. This is almost a perfect cube. It's a sphere, a pyramid, and now not quite a cube rectangular, a cube or anything, is that what they're called? Or is that perfectly incorrect now?

They're often dark brown stone. I don't know what it is, but they often come out and look like the nature's bricks. They haven't been hewn by human hand. You get to see all these different types of stone. It's part of the pleasure of another very round one. It's much smaller though, but it's perfect. So what's going on? Maybe it's confirmation bias,

which just starts looking at the shapes you see this stuff, but I don't know. I really don't know. A tiny little pebble on the path that'll just track that off. Everything has to come off. I'm going to get the little ones off now. I was bowling some stones down here earlier. We'll get across the path, across the field.

There are some beauties across here, so you've come at the right time. I did bowl some down the bowling alley, as it's known earlier, to try and get them off. Wolfie brought one back there. I can't remember if I cleared it or not. There's a nice one here. Oh, Wolfie, don't jump. Another triangle.

This one's very much triangle rather than the pyramid, like an arrowhead. It's bounced off. It's off the field. One bounce and off the field. Very satisfying. Good throw, and that was some distance from that one. You can probably tell from how far I've walked

since I was speaking to you earlier. Anyway, which is finger or which is dick? Well, I think it was which is dick. Wait, choose finger. I said I wouldn't do that. You're too sophisticated. Audio files. It's nice to be back doing the proper podcast.

Oh, and right in the corner of the field. Good job I turned this way. I can see it. It looks like a ghostly figure floating above the ground, to be honest, wearing all red. It didn't seem to have his feet on the ground or her feet on the ground. Who knows what the stone stars are employing now.

We've seen a moorlock last week. We actually passed. I know there's the all in red, all in red. I don't know what they're doing. They look like a triangle themselves. It's a red triangle. Is that a whiz bit or something? One of the misdemeanors.

There's a red triangle, misdemean. They've got no head. It's just a red triangle. Walking along, not touching the floor. I promise you can see this. It's a some distance away. But that's definitely what I'm seeing here. So it's too far away to interrupt what I'm up to.

I'll take a little wander out to where the big stones lay. Here's a nice one. Oh, here's a few nice ones. The first one was not as big as I expected. The second one, oh, quite big. That makes up for the first one. The third one, I'm getting a little bit of a tinty-winty one. I mean, they're all mediums.

But compared to what you're expecting to find out here in these land of the giants. I'm just stopping to pick. I've got four. I mean, I won't be to carry too many more anyway. I've got four pretty big stones here. One of them is super big. Let's see what this is.

Oh, yes. That was a good call there. That was quite a bit of an iceberg. So five pretty big stones and many more on passing. This needs a good day or two just concentrating on coming past here. Don't come this way then often. Yeah, this is where the real tonnage. I've got thick stones.

I'm going to place them down the hill a little bit just to try and build up the wall. If we go down the hill, it's progressing pretty well. I have been out here every morning, as you'd expect. The plain dividends. Just to get to a point where I'm moving the wall away from the hedgerow. Well, more from the edge of the field to where the fence is at the back. Actually, it is stretching on.

Yeah, that's more like it down through there. That's where these need to go right into the back. I mean, I think this will be a very thick wall at this point. We'll see. There's plenty of stones out here to fill up this space. We'll head across to the stone pole. I know a lot of you would miss it. It does belong.

Whoopee! Come on, let's go. Hi there. No problem. Come on. Just a couple of ramblers. That's the corner where the stones are to get you. And you can tell they're always brightly coloured.

The man in the turquoise amourac, his wife, or his fantasy wife. Which looks like total recall, where they're taking on roles, ascribed to them by the stones that are as they were in bright red. They like to flaunt themselves like peacocks. They don't care. That makes them more visible.

But they're hanging around corners ready to get you another very circle stone. That's a third. But again, it's much more of the one we're featuring in the picture. It's like witches' balls have been deposited across the field today. Solitary tree. I'm going to pick up some ammo for the stone pole, just in case we get interrupted again. I've been doing some bad aiming.

But I am incumbent with a camera, of course, which I'm not with you. I have both hands free. When I'm talking to you, which is how it should be. Also, Wolfie is very intent on getting in the way of the stone pole. Don't get to hear those crow calling in the distance. It's quite a sound. Poppy's grown here,

marking those that have fallen. I'm going to pay my respects to Michael, who has actually probably featured on this podcast. I've stopped to talk to him a few times. He was the original stone clear of this field. Without saying so, he passed on the job to me. He created the original can. That's become the main can that I've built on and made his early works in.

Pathetic, I have to say. Hold on. Here we are. Stone pole. Bad miss. Another bad miss. Another bad miss, all to the right. And now that one to the left, that wasn't the pole. Is it going to be one out of five or none out of five?

Oh, that one. Wolfie jumped up and diverted it. It was going to hit zero out of five. That's a disaster. No cheering from you. Michael's the only person who caught me in the act of stone clearing. So he had to dive. No, he didn't.

The reason I didn't kill him. But he proved himself to be fellow stone clearer. He explained to me that he crossed the field. He would take one stone and place it on the can every time he crossed. And like all stone clearers, he was passed on to the great stone clearing field in the sky. I mean, hopefully it's been cleared of stones by the other people who died. Michael can just have a bit of a rest now. But death comes to us all.

Stone clear, very rare. Michael was a man of advancing years, maybe in the 70s or 80s. And very rare for a stone clearer to get that far. So I tipped my stones to him. Perhaps it's he who's leaving the geometrical shapes on the field today. You know, tomorrow I will be going out of the streets to tip my hat to him and wish him farewell. One of the first people to welcome me to this village. Very sad news.

But there we go. Life goes on. The stones, they must be cleared. We have no time for sentimentality. For every time we stop to cry, we waste the energy that could be used to clear a stone. A teardrop shall do naught. I can wash the soil away from a photon. I've shed pretty much every possible bodily fluid on this field.

I was recently blooded. Have I cried? I cried a bit when I cut my fingers, to be fair. It hurt quite a lot. I've done all the rest though. So his voice will live on, of course, in whichever podcast episodes he might have been in. I'm pretty sure. One of the early ones.

That's not the red triangle. There's another red anorak. The third red anorak we've seen. One on the gigantic triangle floating in the distance. Again, letting us know shapes are important today. One on a rambler and then this final one. Unless the female rambler has killed the male rambler and left him in a ditch. The third person in a red anorak.

We're heading down the hill. And then look at another cuboid stone. This is just phenomenal. I mean, I'm stretching a little bit to call that a cuboid, but it's as close to a cube as you'll like to see in a sculpted stone. Congratulations, by the way, to people in Bristol for clearing some bronze from streets and throwing it in the harbour. That is an acceptable way to get rid of non-organic material.

Bronze technically a stone in its raw, ore form. I said ore. I came up with the idea of taking it back out and making a sculpture, depicting the statue being pulled down. Then Banksy comes in a day later saying, my dear, everyone says how brilliant it is. Well, that's the way it goes, isn't it? One rule for Banksy.

He already owns all the banks. I don't know why he needs to do art as well when I'm trying to do art. No one cares about me out here on the field building my wall. Look at his little girl with a balloon. Whatever shit he's been doing next. The thieving bastard. Arriving at the Ditch that stopped Brexit. It's also the Ditch that will lead to the sacking of Dominic Cummings.

And it's also the Ditch that will reinstate the statue of Edward Colston as his only right. It's a very politically confused Ditch. That's all I can say. It's right wing sometimes, left wing sometimes. I'm not even charging what it decides. It's a generous this time. There were some dog poo amongst the stones here. I'm just going to pick up, cautiously pick up some stones around.

Oh, actually some of them are just little cones off a tray, but some of them are dog poo. We're on a dog poo around today. A lot of emails coming through, of course, as we leave the field, just place these babies on the alphanomaga, and then we'll bid a jet to the station for another week. Um... There they go.

Let's get Wolfie on the lead. Good girl. You haven't let them. Who have you? There's no dog poo around here. There's so much dog poo around here. It's disgusting. This will be anything.

Wolfie, good girl. Come here. Hi there. You all right? Good, good. It's not so great. Hi there. I'm sure you can do a bit too.

See you soon. Another possible over-the-stone size. He wasn't really socially distancing. He touched my dog. Just a sign of the power, the FF hold over assault. Email's coming in. Uh... This one's from, um...

Aerial... Chimney Pop. Aerial Chimney Pop. That's been teased at school with a name like that. Uh, saying, How are you sure, Richard, all the people going around the field are the stone starsy? I'm sure that nice guy, Michael,

who was in previous episodes, probably wasn't. And how do we know that all the rest definitely are? It's a good question. I mean, I can't be certain. Uh, one of the... I guess one of the things that the stone starsy are trying to do is to spread confusion and mistrust. But also, there's just so many people dressed in bright colours

to so many middle-aged women. Middle to late-aged women, really. Uh, who, uh, are there. It's just too much of a coincidence for them not all to be in the stone starsy. And, you know, they're all... They act very suspiciously around me. They mistrust me that they think I'm weird. And I think that's a sign enough for anyone.

Uh, nearly home. There's no squirrels squashed on the road, so I think that squirrel got away with your words. Into our brand-new gate that is already sticking and already cracked. Very annoying. There you go. I'm just gonna pop into the garage for a second, because the door wasn't probably shut.

That's not right. That shouldn't be on either. So I'm just in the garage. That's the garage door. Again, like everything in my fucking house, brand-new doesn't quite work properly. Sometimes it just bumps up a little bit for no reason. You have to go and close it again.

Every single fucking thing. Right, let's see if I can get that. My wife put the switch in the wrong position. What can you do, right? They're all in the kitchen, so I'm gonna have to go. I can't. Just listen to the tones, my friend. Remember to listen to the tones,

and we'll see you next time. On the tone clearing with Richard Herring. Hopefully the weather will be nicer. Thanks for tuning in. Goodbye. Listen to the tones, listen to the tones, and they in turn are li'lif'n to ye, my friend, my fine friend. You have been li'lif'ning to stone clearing

with Richard Herring, with me Richard Herring, and we'll feed the dog, and also a couple of ramblers and that man at the end, and some weird geometrical stones. The music is by Mike Coffgrave. The voice of the Patons is Michael Faheen. Listen to the tones, my friend, and they foul thing ye Mary does.

Don't listen to the birth and truth. Don't listen to your underhands. Listen to the tones, listen to the tones, and they in turn foul li'lif'n to ye, my friend, my fine friend. Thanks for tuning in.