Another local newsletter fell through my letter box the other day. It seems our fair town of Swindon wants to change, wants to progress, wants to become a cultural vanguard. Yeah? Really? The civic leaders and planners trumpeted that line thirty years ago, which shows how little vanguarding they managed to achieve.
One of their former pet projects, the 'circus tent' market hall, is to be demolished which has alarmed local traders who can't afford the high street premises. The planners haven't said so, but clearly that building wasn't the success they dreamed of. Worse is yet to come. Finally approving a plan to restore the old Victorian era Locarno building, currently a burned out shell, what do I see? Restaurants. Lots of restaurants. Swindon was once known for having the greatest concentration of drinking dens in one square mile, now it wants to be known as the place where you stuff yourself silly. As if it has escaped the attention of planners that many of our local restaurant premises are vacant or closed for business. But it seems you can't have culture without places to consume expensive gourmet food.
Hmmm... But most of those premises aren't open commercially....
A Bird In The Rafters At work I left the rest area and headed back toward the warehouse floor, a daily ritual that one must complete with strict adherence to the timetable or suffer the wrath of management. On this particular day I met a guy by the forklift garage, holding an extensible plastic rod that was wobbling right up the top of our modern tin shack. A bird was trying to nest in the steel beam rafters. Not the usual pigeon - those birds seem to nest anywhere and don't much care who walks underneath - but a large heron, a bird more accustomed to natural waterside surroundings. I watched as it got fed up of being prodded and effortlessly winged its way to another perch, where it would await another prodding. Lovely bird, but it can't stay in the warehouse.
I wonder why it came inside? To find a safe nesting spot? Seeking a warmer nesting spot? Or perhaps it was looking for a restaurant?
Working With Machines One job I regularly undertake is compacting cardboard and plastic rubbish in hydraulic baling machines. They're powerful beasties, crushing the waste with 3,000lbs/sq in (Hey, imperial measurements buddy - we're talking Brexit here). The amount of packaging used by car parts suppliers is enormous and you would expect it to be, since each article has to arrive at the production line absolutely spotless and perfect. The only problem is of course that I have to let the other two shifts use 'my' machines when I'm not there, and what a mess they make. Wires not properly installed making it difficult to extract the finished bale, or more usually, simply over-filling the machine until it isn't possible to bale it at all. Oh no. They've done it again. So I have to open the doors and let the rubbish cascade out onto the floor and repack it properly. And stop well meaning colleagues from trying to stop the rubbish coming out. Life is full of action and adventure in waste management.
The managers of course know the problem exists. They would do - I've told them - but nothing seems to improve. Oh well. At least there's been no weekend working for me to put right. One of the welding robots stopped working and its replacement caught fire. Technology is great isn't it?
Election Ploy Of The Week Okay, against all odds, Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes and that makes him President-Elect. But what do I hear? One party in America has decided the voting system has been hacked, and wants a recount. If enough states do that, and it only needs one or two, Hilary Clinton is technically the winner. Imagine that? Of course if Donald gets trumped at the last call - can they do that in America? - Clinton would likely be the least popular president ever. Now there's an achievement.
Many years ago I was killing time in the IBM bldg atrium next door to NYC Trump tower; it had tables for public in the days before vagrants, amidst bamboo and even a computer museum open on weekends. I was about to bolt for opening time at the Metropolitan Museum when I saw a security man swing open a hidden door from Trump lobby to IBM atrium. I zoomed thru in order to save steps walking around bldg, eyes riveted forward to clear thru the ugly bordello-like marble decor and pop out the main entrance.
It was deserted except for one tall frizzy blond man with armful of documents who straightened up in an escalating haughty scowl as we passed. No eye contact, and I dimly realized I was invading Trump personal space, but he wasn't much on my radar and I had a higher mission to focus on. Later I learned that his first wife designed the lurid decor, and it perhaps had the same function as some Roman ruin props at the entrance of my parents retirement home complex - make a certain unwelcome demographic uncomfortable. Probably explains decor in a biker bar, etc... not that the customers like it but it scares away the folks who don't fit in.
In the early opening time at Metropolitan museum, probably on another visit but maybe the Trump one, I encountered artist Andy Warhol. I was just exiting the deserted Egyptian temple which was bathed in yellow light, and the approaching pasty be-wigged celebrity urgently locked eyes with me. It would be logical that his concern was that I leave him alone with his trailing photographer to do poses. But it felt more like he as a needy person was feeding off my recognition of him. I recently thought of an even less palatable motive, but anyway I blazed past as a sightseer on a higher mission.
Other features of NYC in the past were the higher crime rate. Before the pacifier effect of cellphones, women walked in fear, and as a long legged male you couldn't help but tailgate slower walking women almost quaking in fear as you finally passed. I had to do the quick walk sometimes, when I would go to saturday night musical events in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant. If the doors weren't open yet, you had to keep orbiting or else be swarmed by lounging troublemakers.
Just the other day I wandered through town in that aimless state of uncontrolled free time that sometimes happens between shifts at the car factory. Ooh look, a book store, let's have a browse and see if there's anything worth reading or better yet purchasing with my new found affluence. So I wandered in and headed for the 'scifi/fantasy' section as it was the nearest section I had any interest in reading. Almost immediately I spotted it. the Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set.
Good grief, I remember the Basic Rules from when I was a teenager back in the seventies. Oh what fun we had. gathering around a table pretending to be heroic fighters, rascally thieves, clever wizards, or insidious clerics. Or for that matter, pretending we knew anything about medieval society, Arthurian mythos, or that we'd actually read Lord of the Rings. No matter, the Dungeonmaster would hide his papers behind a cardboard screen and describe the world we were about to set forth into and play merry adventure.
D&D always came back to haunt me. For a while in my thirties I ran a game world for a bunch of players. Some might snigger or shake their head, but it was fun, social, and the added maturity of the players resulted in a much more rewarding experience in my opinion. It does occur to me that there must be plenty out there who don't know what a tabletop RPG is all about. I did think computer gaming had all but destroyed the hobby - what a surprise to see the box on the shelf of my local bookstore.
Nostalgia is a compulsive beast. My mind goes back to those starting games and so often they began with that first old door in some neglected or forgotten crypt. Listen at the door? An odd sound, like a rasping noise, intermittent but quite audible. Aha, so you try to pick the lock do you thief? Yer can't, 'cos the door ain't locked. Duh!
Armed to the teeth with blades and spells, ready for anything, eager to find what was the other side, they ask what's inside. In the centre of the dark chamber is a table and chair. A goblin is sat face down, holding a bottle, snoring as he sleeps off his ill gotten drink. The fact the poor little green creature was incapable of defending himself or that he would know where the treasure was mattered not one jot. The players would burst through the door and in a mad frenzy of rolling twenty sided dice the creature is dispatched to the grave. Then the ritual of searching the body. When they discover all he had was a pair of used underpants the players got annoyed, having risked their lives for so little gain. That's okay. Two levels down in a room far more secure is something they won't be so brave against. Heh heh heh.... Such fun.
Reality Check Of the Week With my nostalgia trip over it was time to head into work and resume my quest for a comfortable life. Yesterday I had a bit of a problem. Recently I've been handling packing waste on four baling machines, half the section in total, and believe me, I get swamped out with mountains of cardboard and plastic regularly. On this particular day two of the machines went out of action. Oh no!
So I improvised, swapping full and empty waste cages, heading outside into the cold where the big industrial balers were to make sure the cages were emptied, and after a shift long physical exercise regime like that, I was broken. I had, by my own initiative, kept our section from complaints of senior managers for leaving the section looking like a rubbish tip. And no-one thanked me. Nor did I find any treasure. Worst of all, I earned no experience points to advance my 'Level'. Pfah. This real world stuff sucks big time.
The weather is getting colder. The words of wisdom issued by weather girls on television isn't necessary for me to know that, With doors open to the elements the ambient warmth is quickly defeated by draughts or breezes that penetrate. One young lady from Poland is suffering from the decline in British weather. It's laughable, it really is, because in her country the winters can be way more severe, yet she stands shivering in the same ambient warmth that we Britons take for granted in the workplace. And that's after the company issued everyone with bulky winter jackets. Forklifters are wandering around in garments that would protect them from the Atlantic swell, one increasingly resembling a WW1 air ace, and layers of clothing like hoodies are much in evidence. Yet although the outside gets very cold at night now, the inside temperature is much the same as it has been for the past month. One colleague who works on waste is now spending much more time indoors. I asked him about that. He said it was because the next shift was coming in and making his job difficult. Yeah. Right.
My Phone Company Two weeks ago I discovered my mobile phone was blocked. Apparently I needed a PUK code to get it working again. As you might expect, security issues mean that you can only get PUK's from your mobile provider, as I quickly discovered. I tried to use their website but my account number wasn't accepted. Oh great. So I looked through my statement and found the hel mail address. Which they don't recognise any more. You have to use the website. Which I cannot use because they gave me an account number lost in the files marked 'Miscellaneous'.
Does this company want my business? Do they want any business at all? yes, Virgin Mobile, I'm talking about you, and your lack of customer service. Your loss I guess.
Driver of the Week This much admired accolade goes to the moslem lady I saw the other day. Right now one major road junction in town is being upgraded with work expected to last until January and big delays advised by electric signs. Motorists for the most part are taking it all in their stride, queuing up responsibly and patiently, but this lady? Apparently she'd taken the wrong exit, but instead of finding a more suitable turning place she decided that continuing was not a good thing and proceeded to cut across the unsurfaced road marked off by road cones. her car wobbled over the rough terrain, confused motorists unsure of what she was up to, and with complete determination she turned onto the opposite lane and squeezed into traffic. And not a single horn was blasted in her direction. Keeping Allah a bit busy there, I suspect.
Yesterday marks the point at which I truly became a rock star. Not because of millions of pounds in the bank, wild celeb parties in exotic locations, records in the charts, or thousands upon thousands of doting fans - nope, none of those which I freely admit aren't exactly part of my life experience - it's because yesterday I got recognised by a newer generation for my music. You have to ask how they stumbled across it, I mean, I was never a big draw back then, something like twenty five years ago, or since, and record sales were not making any impression on the public even in the days when we went out gigging to sell them. But they were, a group of kids who weren't even born when I gave up performing publicly, exercising their right to poor scorn upon my musical efforts. Hey, that's fame, you don't get the praise without the criticism.
What shall I do with me new found fame, I wonder? I know, I'll tell more people about it. I think that's what you're supposed to do.... Can't remember....
Big Bad And Bursting In I don't relish the chances of those Russians stationed on the far northern island of Svalbard right now. It seems that hungry polar bears, denied their natural habitat of pack ice, have done what bears end up doing everywhere else in the world and have started persuading the human beings nearby to stump a choice meal or two. The Russians are besieged in a none too friendly situation, and worse still, the young polar bears are learning that humans are weedy creatures who have lots of food to steal. A sleigh dog or too has already been eaten.
I remember not too long ago a documentary about putting animals back in the wild. There are benefits to letting carnivores loose - it restores a natural balance and eventually leads to a more fertile and varied environment. Except bears. Put bears back in the wild and the first thing they do, not knowing where to find food, is to seek out human settlements where they almost instinctively know they can scavenge from. Like they do anyway.
I wish those Russians on Svalbard well and hope they don't run out of flare cartridges too soon.
Trip Home OF The Week It's a long walk home from work, so imagine my despair when the storm started an hour before I finished in the afternoon. It really did lash down intermittently. It was well humid too, almost tropical, and although not so hot as holiday destinations it was still well warm for a British September.
Some of the lads in the changing room exchanged a few wry jokes about me having to walk in the torrential rain. Oh how they laughed, but as usual, I had come prepared. Not only that, I knew full well that the storms were in a line passing over the factory. A little south, where I was headed, it was bright and sunny. So not only did I manage to walk home, I didn't get soaked either. Result.
Just one small point though.... Usually a colleague stops to offer a lift in his snazzy non-Honda. On that particular day, he drove right past me. Okay. I can deal with that.
I see another high ranking terrorist received a visit from a US drone. Well Mr Al Ad... Erm... Al Adn.... Well whatever your name was, I doubt you'll be missed. Oh. You weren't.
Personally I don't really like assassination as a tool of global politics, but in all seriousness, I just cannot find myself criticising America for it if extremist hatemongers get a taste of their own medicine.
Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch There's more and more nationalities that I'm stumbling across at work. South Africa, Colombia, and Nepal. All working in Swindon? Amazing what a global car manufacturer can do for a town. Except train their employees. I've been there two weeks and still haven't received 'full training'. How hard can this job be?
Too hard for one lad. he had that aura of mischief about him. I never spoke to him much, partly because his vocabulary was limited to several phrases, partly because it was impossible to feel safe in his presence. Whilst the boss was wandering the shop floor he observed this one particular individual outside, throwing cardboard boxes backward over his head into a baler machine. Come with me young man! And that was the last we saw of him. Turns out he was also enjoying a wizard wheeze throwing on the handbrakes of passing forklift trucks. We were lucky something didn't blow up. Instead, the boss did.
A Little Red Faced When Facebook wanted to launch their own satellite costing millions who did they turn to? NASA? Russian Space Agency? India or China? Nope. They went to Spacex, creators of the worlds first re-usable launch rocket, or at least, re-usable when they can land it without the thing exploding. So having successfully landed their creation, they perch the Facebook satellite on top, refill the tanks, and light the fuse... KABOOOM!!!!
You really have to admire the Spacex sales team.
Product Placement Of The Week Buy a Honda.
There you go. My first ever product endorsement now that I'm sort of sponsored by them. Americans have no excuse because some of the cars we're building are heading their way. That means that some of you will be purchasing automobiles that have my DNA on them. Now before I get letters from US lawyers demanding compensation for some horrific accident (or even just parking in the wrong place), I would point out that I did report an error in one part the other day. Potentially I saved the company millions in product recalls, or who knows, even lives. Didn't even get a thank you. Hmmpf.
I read a free e-memoir of a WW2 bomber co-pilot called "Serenade to the Big Bird" that I can't recommend but started me reflecting on work and family trends. Actually his writeup of prewar and likely postwar goals of him and his buddies was interesting - chase women under any pretense, suck down hard alcohol in down-times when possible, but expect you will eventually have to secure a highly paid job to support some irresistible nonworking spouse and various children.
He didn't survive the war, but his and other accounts depict that both men and many women were in a frenzy to meet up more than today, and not just due to the disruption of war. Hormones and hedonism seemed in the air, but the assumed trajectory was toward serious (1950ish) domesticated worker bee life. A recent article http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-idle-army-americas-unworking-men-1472769641 "The Idle Army: America’s Unworking Men" shows a major new alternate lifestyle with hedonism, kids, but without any thought of work.
The US publishes pretty low unemployment figures, but they only count unemployed JOB SEEKERS. The US rivals Greece in OVERALL unemployed, which are not just those in school or retired. It can total almost 40% for male grown ups. Almost a hundred million of all (4?) genders not seeking work. I'll skip the guesstimates of how many of those are brazenly coasting on benefits, crime, grey market, or disability fraud, but you see the swashbuckling lifestyle of them all the time. Those arrested at age 18 with 11 children by 5 welfare mothers with a flashy car but unemployable. No incentive to engage in civil society, and police of all races are grimly experienced, not biased, with dealing with their hostile sense of entitlement.
This social ill was seemingly created by "compassionate" politics during my lifetime, generally without carrots or sticks. The problem is not from immigrants or the married "underprivileged" or many others who still work hard and bear the burden of taxation, it is product of social engineering by naive children and grandchildren of 1940's boozers who played but worked hard. Oh, and who died early of lung cancer due to the culture of free cigarettes issued to US soldiers, when the Germans had already proven the cancer link.
Things just get more and more awkward every day. It really doesn't feel like I'm in control of my life any more, and to be honest, there's every reason to believe someone is interfering in my business as no opportunity to disrupt my income is being missed. Well, for the time being, I'm back in the saddle, working at the Honda car plant. Don't get me wrong - this is not my dream job in any way whatsoever, but it will pay the bills for a while.
My colleagues, many of whom are being taken on at the same time as me, come from a wide variety of countries. There are of course the ubiquitous Poles, as well as Hungarians, czechs, Goans and other assorted Indians, Italians, Egyptians, and at least one American appeared on the radar today. Two of my female colleagues wanted to know who he was, and with typical working class forthrightness demanded "'Oo are you then?". It turned out it was the Vice President of Honda USA on a visit. Result.
On the negative side the 'full training given' turns out to be rather less full and more sporadic. I even had to walk away from one trainer I was assigned to because he admitted he didn't know what he was doing. The trouble, so the agency informs us, is that Honda don't normally take on so many temps in one go. There's certainly demand for them - I've had a total of five agencies trying to hire me for the same job. I know, the scheme to earn five times as much has occurred to me, but I tried that once before in another warehouse - it doesn't work.
Also Not Working My grand plan to learn some Polish has hit the rocks. Not through want of effort, it's just that the Poles shorten their vowels so much that their language is almost impossible for us lazy English speakers to get right. I've had one young Polish lady reduced to hysterics by my continued efforts to say "teabreak" in Polish. The word is said something like p'sher'va, but as easy as it looks, she just giggles and says it again in clipped Polish preciseness.
Vending Machine Of The Week The works canteen has a row of typical vending machines for snacks and drinks. They do work, as it happens, as anything not working is not the Japanese way. So, having no cash to spend, I decide a cup of free cold water would do. Number eighty.... Aha... I now have to chose whether I want Strong, Normal, or Weak water. Really?
My trials are nothing compared to one colleague, FJ, who is the only temporary worker to receive full training, knows everything, and thus is respected and consulted by all despite this being his first job and only present for a week so far. He's even decided to go on the night shift to get away from all the fame and fortune. His choice of breaktime tipple was Beef Soup. Strong, naturally, as he always chooses Strong. Big mistake, FJ. When it says Strong, it means it. Now he buys cans of fizzy drinks and looks forward to his girlfriends curries to get through the day, and breaks out in a sweat whenever Beef Soup is mentioned. Personally, I 'll stick to water. It doesn't seem to make any difference which strength I choose.
The last two weeks have been physically demanding if not quite strenuous. I've been working for a private military company, one of the commercial enterprises that service the needs of modern armed forces under contract. Although strictly speaking that makes me a mercenary, I was not dealing with arms in any way, just the logistical side of army business. Finally, with the schedule successfully completed, we were allowed out of work an hour early.
A different mood had swept across the town of Swindon. I'm not sure why. I passed the beer garden of a popular drinking den on my way home, and unusually, it was full of families enjoying the afternoon. Maybe it was the weather? The sun was hot and the breeze delightfully cool. Or maybe it was just that Friday feeling? At any rate, I felt the need to just chill out, relax, and enjoy the very same afternoon. I sampled the new blackberries growing out of the hedgerow beside the road. I'm not the only one to do so of course, you find individuals occaisionally collecting berries, but a berries in the mouth as I pass by is a welcome relief on warm days. Most are young and a bit sharp, but after a while you get used to finding the larger, more mature berries, and they taste just great. They weren't enough however. I needed to stop and let the world whizz by.
I found my spot at Summer Gardens. To tell the truth, it isn't exactly a garden at all, just a large patch of grass hidden between residential and business areas. It is however wonderfully sheltered. Beneath one of the oak trees I sat down, listening to that wonderful sound of wind in the leaves. I'm not really into that 'communing with nature' thing, but this once, it felt right to do so. It isn't the sort of place you see wildlife in daylight hours - too many smelly human beings - but I did spot a white butterfly moving randomly a little way off. A white one, not the dirty grey modern variety. It occurred to me how few butterflies there are now. In my childhood, you'd see loads of them, everywhere,.
The outside world still intruded. Barely audible was a passing police car, then a fire engine. A lorry bleeped as it reversed into the business unit behind me. Cars passed by the multi-story parking lot the other end of the Gardens. None of it really bothered me. Eventually I needed to be somewhere else, so I gathered myself together and hobbled away on stiff legs. That's the price you pay for inactivity, but this once, I really didn't mind.
Another day, another job interview, and another bag full of documentation and proof of who I am, what I was, and why I think I could be. For a moment my trusty old CAA pilots license passed through my hand. I hadn't seen it for some time as no-one had ever asked to view it, and as for flying, I haven't been at the controls of an aeroplane since 2002, which at my age means to exercise the full privileges of licensing means another round of costly dual instruction and expensive medicals. Not really a practical lifestyle choice at the moment, not with my career wading through the mud.
I happen to be one of the last Britons on the old UK CAA lifetime PPL's. These days a pilot can either get a UK recreational license, restricted to British airspace, or the full European JAA five year license. I wonder what will happen now that Britain has voted for Brexit?
Those were the days. I would come out of work early on a Friday afternoon, glance up at the sly as I walk across the car park, and decide whether to pop down to the airfield. Looks like a lovely day. Let's go!
After an hours blast across southern England in my trusty old Toyota sports car I arrive at the field. There's no fuss or nonsense getting in, and I park up to visit the flying club office, where I ask about availability (always a formality, they had enough aeroplanes to go around) and sign out my choice of aircraft. Then it's up to the tower to look through the NOTAMS (Notices To Airmen) to make sure I don't do something stupid, ignorant, or just plain illegal.. Check the weather report. All looks good.
Today I'll be flying one of the Piper Tomahawks parked out on the grass. The PA38 is not exactly exotic, just a simple two seat American trainer, and good enough for an hours flying to keep my hours up. The metal airframe is hot to the touch under the summer sunshine, even with white paint, and the moment I open the cabin door I feel the heat inside - it's like a cooker in there. So, leaving the cockpit to ventilate and hopefully cool down a tad, I leave the door open, stow my bag, and wander around on my preflight check. You really need to do these habitually. You cannot assume an airframe is ready and safe to fly.
After testing this and pushing that, I conclude this aeroplane is okay to fly. The cockpit is still uncomfortably hot, but I expected that, and put up with it. A few more checks, then the business of starting up can begin. These aircraft are not sophisticated. Their design, both airframe and engine, dates from 1930's technology and that means I have to do some jiggery-pokery with the plumbing to persuade that lumpy four cylinder engine to turn. Not like a car at all. Even with an electrical starter like this installation, there still needs to be a number of controls set just right. I push the primer pump a couple of times, set the mixture, set the throttle, shout "Clear prop!" to prevent anyone lurking under my Tomahawk from being minced by the propeller, and try the starter.
The engine doesn't like being woken up. It turns over with a click and whirr, the innards doing everything except firing. Woah! There it goes, bursting into noisy life. Immediately I reset the throttle, check the readings on the instruments, and prepare for movement. Call the tower and tell what I intend to do today. They reply with the usual terse permissions and advice, so now it's just me, releasing the brakes and letting the Tomahawk trundle forward. On the grass it waddles and rocks about, so go careful, because if that propeller hits the ground my flight is over before it begins.
Now I arrive at the end of the runway. A last minute check that the controls are working as expected, that the engine temperatures and pressures are within safe limits, and run the power up briefly so I know the engine is working properly. I have to know that - take off is the most dangerous part of the flight, the moment when the engine is under the greatest strain and the aeroplane at the slowest speed. One last call to the tower and they confirm the runway is mine.
Lining up on the runway is quite an experience, no matter how many times I do it. The width of the tarmac, the knowledge of what the strip is for, and the anticipation of a sudden burst of speed and power to get this aeroplane into the air. With everything ready to go there's no more delay. The throttle lever is pushed steadily forward, the engine bellows loudly, and the little Piper starts to accelerate. Unlike a Cessna which almost flies itself, the Tomahawk is a reluctant flyer and needs persuasion to lift off. A pull on the yoke at around 50 knots and with a slight unsteadiness, I start to leave the world behind me.
For a short while I'm in a tiny little world of my own, a metal can suspended half a mile in the air, growling loudly around the sky. Occaisionally a voice over the radio interrupts, sometimes quick orderly exchanges with air traffic control, or simply someone else talking on the same frequency that doesn't involve me at all.
As usual, the air is a little hazy, and although I steer clear of the white cumulus tufts as the law and commonsense dictates, I can't really see that far, just a dozen miles or so, and the various thermals and gusts of wind make the aeroplane wobble and jolt. I see another light aircraft flying a little way off. A military helicopter blasts past below at an impressive speed. A couple of gliders in the distance wheel about looking for the same thermals I'm trying to avoid. Maybe you might spot a car on a road down there. For the most part, my little world is a solitary place, the world outside strangely empty and silent.
Sooner or later I either run short of fuel or money, so the flight has to end, thus I head back to the airfield and call them to announce my imminent arrival. They reply with instructions on which approach to use, and it's up to me to guide my aeroplane correctly. The runway looks ridiculously small from there. Getting down accurately is a skill that requires practice, one I enjoy completing successfully, and it is a necessary part of flying. What goes up must come down.
I adjust the power to control my rate of descent. I adjust the aeroplanes attitude to control my speed. A little counter-intuitive perhaps, but that's how flying works, and I've done it often enough not to have to think about it. With a few more adjustments the aeroplane settles into an approach I'm happy with. The runway gets larger, and closes on me ever quicker. Start to ease off the speed and descent, trying to judge it so the aeroplane is hardly descending when... There's a hesitant whine from the stall warner. A quick screech and bump as the tires touch the tarmac. All power is off and I'm down, keen to get off the runway and open the cockpit before it starts cooking me.
Finally I arrive at the parking place. On with the brake, shut off the fuel and electrics, letting the engine stop itself, and finally, a chance to get that door open and breathe fresh air. My ears are buzzing in the odd silence that follows a flight. There's a stiffness in the legs after having to push rudder pedals for the last hour. All I do now is finish off putting everything back where it belongs and close the door behind me, then back to the office to sign off the airframe. That was a good flight. I enjoyed that.
Here I sit typing outside in what was hysterically promised to be a massive tropical storm from a weakened hurricane. Even weather reports on TV were pre-empted by big brother robo alarms which couldn't be muted even if you hit pause button or changed the channel. Well, the wind is less than usual, sky is greyer than usual, sprinkles are a little more persistent than usual... just what anybody would expect from checking doppler radar etc of oncoming storm. Oh, you can feel a sinister quality to even weak wind gusts... it's how fast they accelerate rather than their tame speed.
I've seen it umpteen times; we luckily have a massive mountain that hurricanes have to cross first, and the forecasters are oblivious to the demonstrated historical fact that it snuffs out much circulatory power out of such storms. They probably know; only recently did their models pay attention to geography, but they probably don't dare stick their neck out and depart from proven flat-world forecasts. Maybe faked out a guy who repairs wind-blown roofs and is an instructor pilot to boot; I see him blogging he has boarded up his windows.
This time I really detect fraud. The storm has long been rated at the slowest possible speed to raise any alarm, and was forecast to not drop even one knot after mountains and cooler water for an unprecedented period until it passed all populated areas. There is a disaster industry where politicians and scientists huddle and warp the message for both good and bad intentions.
I suspect the storm has long been under dangerous wind speeds, but the nerds were afraid of the small chance it would ramp up and force them to flipflop their warnings. Forget the truth, don't inform us lowly taxpayers but pump condescending spin to keep us manageable. I have sat thru a scientific review of the Japan tsunami event, and came to see many public warnings of such waves are overblown compared to what is known to science. Even if you have infinite power behind a quake, it takes unusual predictable geology to allow that to translate to big waves. Most places cannot create dangerous waves... they are like huge engines with a tiny propeller that can't exert it's force.
Anyway, I think politicians show worse motives here. Wasn't it the Romans who instituted bread and circuses, which google calls "a diet of entertainment or political policies on which the masses are fed to keep them happy and docile." Now they exhibit benevolence by overhyping storm dangers and needlessly opening shelters etc which is much cheaper and more visible than working on crumbling infrastructure. They monopolize news in their hardhats, for instance triggering buying frenzies on bottled water... a ridiculous product that can make folks sorry they didn't get nutritious drinks at the same price. The brain runs on sugar alone, and once I was stranded in the Sahara with nothing but lemonade sport powder for several days - comfy because wells and shade was available in my spot.
One of the great truths of Britain is that for every run of good weather, you pay for it by rainy days to come. Right now the weather is prone to heavy showers. Typically I got dampened by drizzle as I arrived at the library, only to see sunny skies out of the window as I'm typing this. I'm not tempting fate by declaring when I want to go home.
The other day I was watching the birds in the park. The feathered ones I mean. Their antics are fascinating, especially when one gets cross with another. They don't just spar and conclude it like mammals, birds really do bear a grudge and once they don't like somebody, the aggressor keeps attacking the victim incessantly until it goes away.
Or until an RAF Typhoon fighter screams across the park overhead. What a racket. But then he was shifting, using that surplus of power for airspeed, going about his potentially dangerous business. I didn't think of it any further, other than he blasted across Swindon at more or less the same altitude that civilian light aircraft often do. Come to think of it - there weren't any light aeroplanes about. Perhaps the Typhoon had chased them away?
Then I spotted the unmistakeable presence of foreign airmen trying to understand the British cabbie as they flagged down a taxi. Not in ordinary or dress uniform either, but in their flying gear no less. Hmmm... I surmise, Dr Watson, that an air show is taking place within driving distance. I further deduce that since RIAT takes place at nearby Fairford Air Base around this time of year, that the town is strangely packed out with shoppers, and the roads jammed with endless queues of cars, that they are about to take part in Britain's premier airshow. But you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work that one out.
Life In The fast Lane Although I'm not a Formula One fan, I did watch the British Grand prix this weekend. It started under a cloud, literally, with one of those heavy showers. This made for some dramatic racing. The drivers must have been all too aware how easy it was to lose control of their powerful lightweight machines, not known for being easy to drive at the best of times, and you could see real seat of the pants driving going on as cars wobbled and slid all over the place. I though F1 was boring? This was good viewing.
Here's the funny thing though. The danger hotted up as the sun came out and the track began to dry. With grip returning, drivers were pushing their cars harder right up until they strayed into a puddle and whoops - there goes another rubber tired car, sliding spectacularly for hundreds of yards, unstoppable in true Hollywood fashion by any of the run-offs or gravel traps. I saw formula one cars doing four wheel drifts as they coped with unexpected issues in the bends. You don't see that every week, not in a sport that relies on downforce and grip.
The speed of pit stops was stunning. The last time I took any serious notice of F1 racing crews took six or seven seconds to change tires. These guys were doing it in half that. I watched spellbound as Verstappen overtook his rival on the outside, earning a 'fastest lap' in the process. Woah - that was racing, full on. But as the water evaporated the average speeds of all the cars lifted and the race turned into the usual high speed traffic jam. Yawn. Oh well done Hamilton. Nice victory. I fancy a spot of lunch. Time to raid the fridge.
So there you have it. To rescue Formula One from the dullness of anonymous insectoid machines buzzing around the track in an endless technological blur, hold the races in Britain. Forget all those exotic foreign locales with guaranteed sunshine and yachts in the harbour. Bring it back home to Britain where the weather can turn a certain result into a jaw dropping spectacular. Or at least until technology eventually finds a gizmo to cope with British weather once and for all.
TV program Of The Week I nominate Love Island. Get a bunch of working class hunks and babes and watch them compete for lurve. Or not, if you have the gumption to change channels before you get sucked into this pointless farrago. The television announcer breathlessly sets the scene for us, musing over whether one guy or another will get a certain girl. Oh how the tension builds. Truth is, the entire rationale appears to be that we watch a bunch of nobodies trying to be somebody by shagging anybody in front of everybody. Truly missable.
In the last few weeks I've rediscovered a television series from the sixties. The Saint were the adventures of gentleman adventurer Simon Templar, played by Roger Moore, a sort of poor man's James Bond without the gadgets and evil villains taking over the world. Moore plays the part with his usual bond-esque humour but it is hard to imagine a real life counterpart so genteel and light hearted. In his world, just like Bond, he's infamous and known to everyone yet can wander around incognito until the he gets betrayed by a twist in the plot.
The thing is, like most sixties television in Britain, production values were very low scale. You can see that corridor is a painted backdrop. That car chase across Germany looks more like Essex. The train carriage is a simple sound stage set. Paris no more than a backdrop of Notre Dame. But you don't mind that, because again, like most sixties television, these programs tell stories. The adventures might be contrived, predictable, sometimes even completely implausible, but unlike modern series the episodes don't rely on emotional wrangling or deep significance. It's actually fun to watch, a guaranteed gritty fistfight in every episode, and the sixties cut scenes and cars add period flavour.
Of course, when Ian Ogilvy took over in the seventies, changing the charismatic Volvo P1800 sports car for a lumbering Jaguar XJS, the mood had changed. Gentleman adventurers were a thing of the past, aside from James Bond. American imports introduced us to the Ford Torino of Starsky & Hutch, Kojak and his lollipops, and in Britain, series like The Professionals had opted for a more down to earth and working class feel. The Seventies - when Britain joined Europe and the Old World finally withered away.
Hmmm... We've just decided to leave Europe. I wonder....
Pole To Port Stanley The Douglas DC6 is a pleasing shape in the air, a fifties four engine propliner descending from that old warhorse, the Dakota. In the night sky a few miles south of the Falklands, the Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engines, each capable of 2400 horsepower, droned on. Below us, hazy patches of sea mist lit by the moon. A few whisps of cumulus drifted by. Above, the stars, strangely static despite our two hundred mile an hour cruise. Most of the passengers would be dozing off by now, too tired by the white knuckle ride on takeofff and the subsequent journey across the South Atlantic to stay awake, too distracted by the vibrating rumble and the stale interior to sleep well. Finally, the radio messages became more frequent, and the command comes through to descend and head for the approach to Port Stanley.
In real life my hand would have spread across four chunky levers, but with a couple of keypresses, the angry noise reduces to a quiet grumble, and the plane starts to lose altitude. But of course this isn't real. Finally with some time to relax and forget the busy schedule of the past year, it was time to break out the flight simulator.
I'd been watching Pole To Pole, a travel documentary by Michael Palin, and fancied a go at flying down there. My first attempt was hopelessly inept. I ought to have known better, given my real life pilot training, but I took off without planning and quickly found the cold air causing engine failure after take off, made worse by the prospect of ending up in the icy waters of the polar seas. Not good.
Okay. Lets think about this. The gravel runway in the simulator at the end of a rocky archipelago was too short for the heavily laden DC6 so I prepared every trick I could think of, and took a lot longer to warm the engines, running them up to power much more gently. Without that two hundred foot cliff off the end of the runway all would have been another disaster, and the random weather I took off in was appalling. All that had been coped with. There was the runway lights at Port Stanley.
Realism? Well, Microsoft might claim its as good as it gets, but I certainly wasn't. Might have to practice a bit more before I get that phone call from a desperate airline.
Crisis Ot The Week This star prize has to go to Brexit. it must have been obvious there was a chance the British public would choose to go, and everyone quickly forgot that until we kick off Article 50, nothing changes, and even then, there's still a two year negotiation period. Come on Simon Templar. Shoot the bad guys, kiss the girl, and put Britain back on course. At the moment you're a lot more real than some of our overpaid politicians.
Right now the wildlife in my home town is on full throttle. Most of the older foxes I got to know and name have disappeared, replaced by lots of young striplings who are busy learning the art of surviving in Swindon now that mum has kicked them out of the nest. Along one street in particular, you often see rubbish in those blue polythene bags the Council supply left out for collection but in a few instances, ripped open and the contents spilled across the pavement. I suppose for the most part residents blame the very same foxes I see every night, as well as the ones you hear shrieking in the distance. But they might be wrong.
In fact I know they are. I often see a badger on this one street in the early hours of the morning, waddling around at a brisk pace. Normally he sees me coming and scarpers. Once I surprised him in one of those tiny front yards you see in Edwardian brick terraces. Again, it made a quick escape. The other night I was heading the same way. There he was, snuffling at a bag of rubbish, a silhouette in the lamplight but unmistakeable.
It didn't matter to me. I had other places to go, and so continued along the pavement, wondering when the badger would notice. he didn't. Tucking into someone's discarded takeaway, he was lapping up every morsel and enjoying his free meal to the max. So engrossed he was that I walked right up to him, stunned he could be so careless. There he was, right at my feet, a wild badger doing badger things. The moment had to pass because I needed to carry onward, so I tapped the ground and quietly said hello. Immediately the badger realised something was not quite right. He tensed. Then, with a careful sideways glance, he realised the danger, and immediately fled under a nearby car. I went my way, he went his. Life goes on.
Oh No You Don't I live in what must be described a noisy part of town. Drunkards and partygoers often stroll past the house. In the quiet hours of the morning, they sometimes pay rather too much attention to my home than I would like. Last night I kept hearing noises that made me suspicious, as far as you can be when you're half asleep. Upon investigation I saw nothing untoward. However, later that same night, I heard the sound of a few miscreants being herded into a police van and driven off. Whatever they were getting up to, it ain't happening now.
Scramble of the Week At the local park it's usual to see a swan or two on the lake. On one particular morning there were five, lazily drifting around the surface of the water aimlessly as they do. Now once in the past I witnessed an angry swan cross that lake semi-airborne, heading right for me. It was a fairly intimidating sight. But for some reason these five swans decided it was time for a squadron scramble. All of them hurtled across the lake, their wings audibly beating, stretching forward and really going for it together. Erm....
At the last minute they realised the Luftwaffe were not bombing Swindon and gave up their race across the lake, settling down into the water again with a noisy bow wave. Oh good. But that was definitely an experience.
Some say... He's stuck in an ailing BBC motoring show. Some say.... He might soon have a new master. Poor old Stig. I've watched a couple of the new Top Gear episodes and I have to say it's a bit painful to watch. It's like the old Top Gear but without the same camaraderie or intelligent comment. Me no likee.
Can the show be rescued from the evil clutches of the mad radio presenting tyrant? Well, rumours suggest an F1 star is being lined up, and has already pleased fans with his approach. Poor old Stig. Being ruled by someone who can drive a car....
Black Cats Crossing My path Can't remember whether it's lucky or unlucky, but black cats have featured in superstition for a very long time. Personally I haven't noticed any correlation between the proximity of feline mammals and events within my life, but then I suppose I'm not that superstitious. The other night however was noteworthy. I was walking along a main road adjacent to a trading estate, which for those unacquainted with British life is an area of small industrial or business units. The nearest was about eighteen to twenty feet high. I saw a falling object, hitting the ground with almost no noise, a black flash. It was a cat, emaciated to a degree I've never seen before, almost like an animal composed of black pipe cleaners, which had apparently jumped off the roof in a desperate move to avoid death by starvation. How the heck did it get up there? Clearly an omen. Never live on a roof, my friend. The Gods have spoken!
More Bad Dreams I have two strange dreams to report. The first was a night time foray with me at the wheel of a car, heading into a rainy old Victorian terrace street, only to encounter trees lying in the road and a car that refused to obey the laws of physics by neatly skidding into position in a side street without obeying a single control input from me. A message that I'm not in control of my life. Good grief, I didn't need a dream to tell me that.
The second was more interesting. I was at the wheel of a van minibus, filled with arguing migrant workers from some obscure poverty stricken part of the world. So I drove off, and followed the road into an area that seemed to be fenced off. Quite soon I found the road blocked. Oh pooh. So I turned around, and found my starting point blocked off too. No matter. using the van as a sort of low speed battering ram I pushed through the temporary fencing, whereupon hordes of nearby policemen descended on me and demanded to know what I thought I was doing disobeying road signs and breaking through their palisades. Fill in this form? Summons? Oh pooh. Still, at least it was only a dream, one I have no wish to live out. A clear warning from the spirit world to drive with due care and attention even though I don't drive and haven't for some years. Still, warnings are warnings.
Loyalty Card Of The Week One of my local fast food outlets has for some time issued me with a loyalty card. Pay more than five pounds and I get a stamp. Five stamps and I get a free meal. it's been a good deal for me, I have to say. Only the other day the proprietor refused to stamp it because... erm.... Well he's from a racial minority and when upset his English is difficult to follow. So now I can only have my loyalty card stamped if I spend more than five pounds on meals numbered one to eight. I think that's what he said. But it says if I spend more than five pounds I get a stamp. He reluctantly stamped it, quote, for the last time, unquote. I see..... So what have falling black cats, fallen trees, and obstructions on her majesty's highways got to do with problems in paying for food? This omen business is hard.
I do most errands the green and healthy way, with long walks along busy roads. I drown out traffic noise with noise cancel earphones, typically playing historical lectures. Still I miss parts, such as due to the arrogant ear-bleeding level of gov't sirens going to typically false med emergencies such as to request recreational pain pills. So I switched to histories of composers like http://www.robertgreenbergmusic.com/great-courses/ where there would be song samples and content that won't suffer much by occasional interruptions.
By the way, I just read that since our police sometimes clear vagrant campers from 100% blocking sidewalks on my busy route, a top federal official has punitively blocked milliion$ of our fed tax money from reaching here. Idiot limousine lefty... he expects us to abandon foot travel for electric cars. Many of these vagrants are not poor but admit to being awash in benefits like fake disability. Some flew 5 to 10 airline hours to reach this place, famous on the internet for "blind compassion" where they can spend their benefits purely on intoxicants with no obligations.
Anyway, I'll point out some lecture anecdotes that surprised me. My listening was fractured, so I sought confirmation in (fractured) Wikipedia which normally contradicted the lecturer. Start with Shostakovitch, the stark modernist of a century ago. I have visited his son and grandson in their home, so I hope I don't sound ungrateful for only liking one work which was sort of a redo of some Italian work. Right after WW1 there was disinterest in the harsh mechanical sound, so he sought out income from a quite delightful and accessible piece that I wish I remembered the name of.
He redid many of his own works as well, just as they were falling out of copyright. Most of the lectures were about the drama of him trying to survive the wrath of Stalin. I liked Shost. quotes on Stalin being worse than Hitler for Russia, which still acknowledges the almost infinite horror of Hitler. Putin has whitewashed the textbooks about Stalin, and the west is content with Hitler rather than Stalin or Mao as symbolizing the essence of killer.
The lecturer digressed into a conspiracy theory that Stalin was murdered because he was about to start a war with China and terrorize Russian Jews. Wiki seemed to carefully shoot that down in favor of the conventional natural(ish) death theory. The supposed assassin Beria seemed unlikely. He was a depraved counterpart to Hitler's Heydrich, both sort of secret intel police heads that enjoyed personally torturing and killing... especially young civilian girls picked up off the streets daily.
It was not too long ago when construction at Beria's old mansion turned up many young female skeletons in his garden. Daughters of high officials up to Stalin were warned to not accept a ride from Beria. Reading histories of Stalin (a terrorist even when young), Beria, and Heydrich are somehow more depressing than Hitler who at least espoused some appeal toward ideals rather then being brazenly devoted to nothing but evil.
Lastly Tchaikovsky and his music, maybe only matched by Vivaldi in terms of accessibility. I came to realize that practically his only work I grooved on was "Serenade for Strings" https://archive.org/details/SerenadeForStringsInCMajorOp.48 which the lecturer said was flagged by "serenade" to uniquely be a pleasant interlude. Other works seem dramatic to bombastic accompaniments to his high strung life. The lecturer called him a serial molester of slightly underage boys, including his servants. One committed suicide, which was followed by writing of his ultimate gushy heartbreak work (I think in Swan Lake) which I have seen middle aged women melt to.
Wiki doesn't take that shrill approach, saying just that he enjoyed man-friends more than his bizarre marriage, and that he died in a cholera epidemic rather than suicide for being outed. I have heard endless hand wringing supporting the latter theory, that he was driven to suicide due to society's homophobia. The lecturer took a strange middle path, that Tchai .killed himself out of vanity to not be remembered as a gay composer. He was about to be reported as gay to the Czar in some minor investigation, but there were no punishments for that except raised eyebrows. The lecturer said Tchai. knew how to easily avoid cholera outbreaks, but was so jealous about his hard-won conventional legacy that he took a poison that mimicked that agonizing, drawn-out-for-days death!
tt was inevitable really. I know Britain has a reputation for being a damp country and my home town a reputation for being rainy among the British, but eventually the winds turn northward and bring hot weather from the south. Which is why, as I go about my business in the town centre, all of a sudden there are crowds of bellies and shorts ambling around like wot you do in warm weather. It's as if a switch goes on in the British mentality that urges them to wear those holiday clothes one more time before life goes back to dreary damp ordinariness.
More Foxenders Sadly, I have to confirm the death of Frodo. There he was, laying inert by the roadside as I got a lift home from a colleague. Not to worry. Young foxes are everywhere. Far more than I saw last year. I saw one grab hold of a discarded lager can and run off with a foxy grin. I dunno.... The youth of today....
Strange Dreams Last night I had one of these strange episodic dreams. I was a detective in an American style undercover cop drama, albeit one in the lunatic dreamworld. The villain was a London style gangster who was suitably paranoid and psychopathic, who was ready to eliminate any minion who did not answer the phone after three rings. The crime had something to do with piles of documents. In the light of day, wide awake, and with the dream already fading in the memory, I cannot understand at all what the idea was or how any profit was made. No matter. The crime boss wanted me to do this task, the cops wanted me to do this task undercover, and I wanted to stay alive, a task made all the harder by the female chief detective who insisted on being in charge and wore her clothes in a style that amounted to pornography, almost like an open challenge to any male stupid enough to notice.
Funny thing was, having gone through the ambling drama once, I went through the dream again, albeit with some differing details. Only with the same villain and the same plot. So it was just like those television thrillers after all.
Promotion of the Week My job is strictly speaking a temporary post, albeit 'ongoing' work. However, to get the position as semi-permanent I had to prove myself, working hard, being on time, show willingness to undertake the most menial and pointless tasks. Just lately one of the regulars has been off on holiday (How does he afford that?) and his replacement, of the rare female warehouse worker variety, has been made semi-permanent after one week. Okay. I can deal with that.
I downloaded a free Amazon Kindle book which was a memoir of a Brit reporter stuck inside Paris under siege by Prussia. 1870 was an interesting period where the unified architectural redo beloved by the world today was being started, and then fired upon, for the oddest of reasons. Napoleon3 was trying to suppress urban revolutionists on one hand by making wide blvds that couldn't be barricaded against gov't military response, and on the other hand by baiting the Prussians into a war which could bolster French patriotic unity.
Well, like another free Kindle memoir from the Confederate war department in US civil war, it was an interesting time covered by a rambling lousy memoirist. It worked better when I mixed in readings of a quality history book of FrancoPrussian war, which was one of the bloodiest yet most needless of the 1800's. Bismark also wanted to bait France into war in order to rally and unify Germany; southern parts of modern Germany had been losing interest in joining up with Prussia, just as Parisians were increasing hostile to their agrarianist national gov't.
Well, I haven't read that far and am already forgetting stuff, but I have the nerve to make a few observations. Napoleon3 is thought to be the dunce because he was tricked into declaring war first over a ridiculous nicety about how a wedding was called off. Bismark got the appearance of not initiating war and was able to win it with better organization and cannons (although worse small arms). I do give points to Napoleon3 for trying sort of a "suicide by cop" approach of wandering a field under fire when things first looked hopeless (his companions were hit), then surrendering to stop bloodshed well before ammo ran low. Bismark wanted to shell Paris vs his superiors trying a standoff first.
My most bold observation is that there seem tremendous echos of 1870 tactics in WW2. It almost seems like WW2 wasn't an attempt to redo the freakish case of WW1 more effectively, but to address or relive the more conventional issues of 1870 war. In the case of 1940 France, it was still hobbled by terrible communications and disunity which made it hard to benefit from some superior technology like tanks and fortresses.
In the case of Germany, so many of the oddball concerns of Hitler which were in his generals memoirs seem to be avoiding pitfalls from the 1870 war. Hitler was obsessed by the exact performance of every small arm, maybe recalling the much superior 1870 French rifle and crude machine gun. Many 1870 units squandered ammo to a disastrous extent, and Hitler insisted certain wasteful units not be resupplied with ammo as a punishment that could mean wipe out. Speed of deployment problems of 1870 would be ruthlessly corrected, etc... I may not be explaining this well, but there seem echos galore.
"It's Starwars Day" proclaimed one of my colleagues at work. Huh? What's that all about? Well, it turns out that "May The Fourth Be With You" has become an annual urban festival amongst those who cannot tell fantasy from real life. My boss noted my disapproving expression and chuckled.
So in order to restore the balance of the Universe and allow the Dark Side its right of public expression, I suggest "May the Sixth Be With You", which for those who have lived in backwoods cabin for the last three decades is a play on words between the date, sixth, and the alien dark side faction, the Sith (Who featured in Starwars Episode One, The Phantom menace.
Okay. You can go back to sleep now.
Wake Up Call Trumpy has done it. He's got the Republican US presidential nomination. A triumph for celebrity tycoonship. In Britain we're a bit more canny, preventing Alan Sugar from world domination by making him a noble. However international politics will change as a result if he wins the final vote. Expect hard bargaining and a gruelling thirteen week 'last man standing' battle as America seeks its Apprentice. Talk about the Dark Side....
Cute Moment of the Week The other day I discovered Herbie the Hedgehog has a friend. There they were, both snuffling in the grass together. Awww..... Funny thing is normally hedgehogs end up as a somewhat flat pile of squishy goo, and given that Herbie snuffles next to a main road, you have to admire his survival instincts. Or perhaps he stretches out with his feelings? Letting the Force guide him in his do or die struggles with Dark Side motorists?
Right now - this moment - it just started pouring with rain. Sunshine and showers the report had said and lo and behold as soon as I risk a journey to the local library, fate punishes me for my presumption with a cascade of water down the windows. So now I'm trapped in the same building as the rest of library going public.
Oh ye gods, the rain it doth rain harder. It has just become a veritable deluge out there. Stand by for more updates as we go Live At The Library.
Changes at the Industrial Estate Every day as I plod back and forth from work I pass through an industrial estate, and in particular, the back of one factory. Over the years a growth of silos, ducts, electrical transformers, cabling, piping, and extractor fans has spread out of the back wall like some industrial fungus. The racket it used to make was extraordinary. I swear one of the reasons I got into trouble not so long with benefit payments was because I answered my mobile in that locality and the person on the other end thought I was stood next to a jet airliner at an airport.
Now it's all gone. Swept away by the cutting torch. All the myriad holes in the wall covered over with plywood and wire mesh. And in it's place the inevitable result of a blank canvas. The graffiti mice are busy decorating the wall with the usual urban hieroglyphics.
More Foxy Stuff I saw three foxes hunting together a week ago. Three. If that's a mating trio, something strange is going on in Fox-Enders. Having spotted a number of foxes I don't recognise, clearly the wee beasties are doing well. Bertie the Badger still noses around peoples houses late at night, and Herbie the Hedgehog still snuffles in the grass beside a main road. Oh... Hang on....
Weather Latest The rain has stopped. yes, ladies and gentlemen, in a surprise move Nature has decided that Swindon will be spared any further downpour, or at least until I venture out of the library. And now, back to the normal program....
Yet More Foxiness I was told something interesting by a work colleague. He keeps a young cat and because he lives close to a main road, he only lets it out late at night. One night he'd gone back out to the call the cat in. It didn't answer. Naturally he began to worry. Again and again he called but no cat. Fearing the worst, he was about to give up when his precious pet wandered back through the undergrowth happy as larry, with his latest friend, a young fox, walking beside him. Awww.... Cute.
Secure Shopping Now that the new shopping mall is available and just around the corner from where I live, I have begun availing myself of its products and produce. This frequent visiting has resulted in the security guards watching me closely, and to be fair, some of the comments made by the fresh meat staff haven't been exactly complimentary. The other day I'd had enough of the close scrutiny, so as the security guard passed me, I followed in a non-provocative manner watching him. He got the message. Now they watch me from thirty yards further away.
And Finally The sun is out so it's bye for now. This is rainy old Swindon you know. Use that sunshine while it lasts.
What is still worthwhile to watch on cable TV? I can't save $ by "cutting the cable", because they negotiated a discount to my neighborhood on the basis that everyone must pay for at least basic service. This when my favorite genre of history documentaries disappears from History channel, and reappears free on youtube. Well, some channels like Smithsonian or Arts & Entertainment have good detective-type documentaries about recent history, which BTW go by different titles in different parts of the world.
"Air Disasters" covers intrinsically interesting causes of a particular airliner crash, but gosh you have to tolerate some slow pacing from this Ontario/Quebec subsidized production. You can see their points coming a mile away, maybe amid clumsy attempts to bluff you. It's not that Canadians are slow, but I think their media experts have brain-drained to the U.S. where they are quite prominent. They tend to wash out the color into a pale grey... is this dreariness for hiding cheesy low budget re-creation filmsets? But the ultimate findings turn out to be fascinating and surprisingly nuanced. I used to think it was knee jerk "blame the pilot" which they do at 70%, but not solely or lightly since the investigators tend to be pilots too.
Smithsonian channel now follows this with another docuhour "Alaskan Aircrash Investigations", which is a bit more lively and colorful, but disturbing for a taxpayer. Alaska has a crash every other day in the summer, typically in a tiny 1950's era plane doing some kind of cowboy antics. Big budget investigations seem to be made as if they were airliners, with representatives of various federal departments, engine manufacturers, and airframe manufacturers who plod around swampy crash sites with a band of sheriffs to fight off bears or clingy family of victims.
Helicopters bring remains back, which is sometimes rebuilt and tested over a thousand miles away... presumably to see if a device from 1952 can be improved so that the one other surviving example must do an upgrade. Well, it can be good, like an illegal heater upgrade done to a whole fleet of bush planes proves to be capable of knocking occupants unconscious from CO poisoning in minutes. They get friends of the pilot to give gushy background info thru the subterfuge of filming before official final report, which often condemns pilot negligence.
Similar in spirit is A&E "The First 48" which has long covered real who-done-it murder investigations in a fast paced format. But now it is dragging with a lot of gushy emoting by the fam/friends of the victim, which may be responsible for cutting down from 2 to 1 case per episode hour. Another bad trend is the victims and perps seem to come from the same pool of dysfunctional, blatantly lawless, and self sabotaging in lifestyle. It's not a question of how to possibly dream up the rare potential killer, but how to eliminate the many obvious violent drug dealing 18 yr olds, each with multiple welfare baby mommas.
This isn't even a fair depiction of murderers in general, but more the case for poorly policed areas like Chicago - recently famous for becoming a murder war zone after implementing "compassionate" minimal prison sentences. I remember older episodes with more interesting suspects, like a cagey old hermit who would only talk (indeed confess) to a rubenesque policewomen using just a hint of flirt dangled like a carrot. Little progress seems to ever be made without deceiving suspects or brandishing a potential death sentence, practices probably on the way out.
A more satisfying series along the same lines is "Homicide Hunter" which covers a more diverse slice of cases in one city by one detective (Kenda). He wasn't the first choice for this somewhat low budget series, but his low-key skills in a non-war-zone city in Colorado forces the series to show the quirks of real stranger-than-fiction stuff that appears among apparently well-meaning people in benign everyday surroundings. It's repeating on Investigation Discovery channel which you may channel surf by due to typically cheesy overwrought re-creations of crime.
What I would like to see more of is the genre of sitcoms that satirize modern life. A trying-to-be sane or nice person like Alan Harper colliding with cheerfully off kilter types like hedonist Charlie Sheen in "2.5 Men". One of the first of this type was "Married with Children"s dad trying to survive his cheerfully out of control wife and kids. Maybe these don't age well because with time the craziness of some characters becomes more culturally accepted and the striving to be respectable is less and less identified with. But maybe one more such series for dunces like me?
The agency had booked me for a very early start at a warehouse an hours walk away. At that time of night the streets of Swindon are usually empty, perhaps just an occaisional drunken bellow from some unseen club-goer bumping into pavements, or more usually, a passing car taking less inebriated club-goers home.
And so it was quiet. All of a sudden a white BMW blasted past me, almost out of nowhere. I have no idea what speed the driver was doing but it was seriously over the top. It was so fast, the engine so aggressively snarling, that the effect was startling. it actually felt like violence. I've never experienced that sensation before, and I'm well acquainted with fast cars.
Later on I passed an industrial estate and experienced a bright flash. What the....? My first impression was that someone had taken a [photo in the night, but there was no-one about. How odd. No matter. Anyway I arrived at work and being sociable I began chatting to my boss about idiot BMW drivers attempting to break the land speed record in town streets. He interrupted me as I began and said "You're going to tell me about a bright light?"
No I wasn't, but it turned out that his colleague had seen it too. The whole sky lit up for a moment./ Some of my fellow workers saw it as well, one describing it as 'Seriously weird'.. As we worked through the small hours of the morning there were some news report over the radio - always impossible to hear properly when lorries are reversing in and out of the premises and sweaty blokes pushing parcels of all sorts here and there. Eventually we found out that it was an atmospheric disturbance and nothing to worry about. Not the North Koreans then. Oh good.
Foxenders Almost every night there's been life's little dramas played out among the fox population. Urban foxes are pests, certainly, but I can't help watching their activities with some casual interest. They all have names now. Ferdinand, the big male, is unusual in that he just isn't fazed by human beings - I've walked past him within feet before now.. He's potentially dangerous. Having kept a low profile since Christmas I had thought he was dead and gone, but no, I spotted him, glaring at me in the dark as he always does. Only the other night I incurred his displeasure by disturbing him as he was getting it orn with his chosen vixen, who ran off when I strode into view. Ferdinand stayed put and glared at me.
Fuzzy always retreats in the direction of his set when he gets disturbed. He was injured and limping not so long ago - I haven't seen him since. Ferkles simply moves on and knows that once he's inside another persons garden, pursuit is unlikely. Flakey is well funny. Always going into a panic when disturbed and never knowing which way to turn. Then there's Frodo, with his distinctive black ring on his tail and a penchant for disappearing much sooner than most foxes who see you coming. Lately Frodo has found himself a girlfriend and he's become positively careless. You can actually see a dazed grin on his face. Bless.
I have heard it said that foxes kill and eat cats. I don't believe that, or at least, consider it unusual. Reason being of course is that I see foxes and cats co-existing quite comfortably. The other night I disturbed one fox - Ferkles I think - and as it ran off to a safe distance it passed a cat sat on the pavement. The cat simply watched it run past and didn't stir. Didn't even tense up nervously like cats do if they perceive danger. A cat who knows foxes won't bother him.
Let me review some of my timid steps of using new consumer technology... nothing electronic, but more on the humble side:
With tired looking bath tile and kitchen counters, I avoided the expense and trouble of replacement with some of those special purpose epoxy paints. As I feared, the finished look was a little uneven due to non-ideal temperatures and applicator tools. But the coverage of any porous grout and a few tile cracks gave a great waterproof and uniform look.
The only drawback was the tile paint didn't stand up to the rare abrasion very well, but little problem for me because I was that rare person who didn't take the opportunity to change the color. A scrape is invisible and typically still waterproof. Oddly the (non-matching) counter paint is bulletproof from abrasion, something I was concerned about even tho I never chop stuff directly on the counter.
There is one quirk which I just now realized may be my fault. The counter stains from food! A dot of tomato sauce or orange juice will be instantly tattooed on the surface. Well, it is very faint, but will take about a month of regular cleanings before that shadow disappears. I guess it is my fault due to sanding the results to give a uniform somewhat rustic look from the patches that were more or less glossy. It must be porous, so I guess I should wax it or something.
Next challenge was my car battery dying between starts. Over time the alternator gets weak and various gadgets stay annoyingly active when the car is off. I had one of those jump start batteries that had lost it's oomph, so tracked down the few replacements that weren't already sold out from a nation's harsh winter. First tried one, then two small lithium batteries that plugs in a cig lighter. They are actually feeble chargers that can rarely give enough help, but turned out useful for locking or unlocking a trunk which can only be done electrically.
Then I got a medium lead-acid jump start battery which sometime would do the job after couple minutes, but finally I had to buy a cheapo full size extra car battery with jump start cables. I normally wheel all 4 of these on a handcart to start the car! But the best help was couple dollar battery cutoff switch. I had tried to install the wrong kind long ago, but this new one did the trick. It was preassembled all wrong, probably due to a return before I got it, but after correction it almost negates the need for jump starts and may someday prevent a theft.
The last new item was one of those Turkish pistol replicas that they use to fire blanks in the air during celebrations. They seem legal in any state other than NY, and even in Canada if it has a flare attachment. It is so fascinating because mine is a near twin to a real Beretta semiauto model which is made in Turkey anyway. Apparently it is legal in (eastern?) Europe for firing nonlethal tear gas or in Russia for rubber bullets.
Anyway in my area gun ownership is extremely rare and I can hardly remember my only pistol experience on an old model 1911 automatic. Now thru handling the action, I can evaluate crime events with the more modern pistols. Even today a gov't employee reportedly shot thru adjoining offices when cleaning his Glock. I had heard how super safe they were due to NO manual safety (but 4 automatic safeties?) but how does this apply when cleaning them? BTW, there was little danger of hitting anybody because gov't employees here are eternally absent or on junkets. Today's news covered how great it was only 31% prison guards called in sick during super bowl rather than the usual more than a third. And how it was unavoidable due to monopoly gov't union rules - outrageous.
Another advantage besides understanding crime reports (robbers with jammed guns, etc) was hand strength and dexterity issues. I sometimes have to rig and unrig sailboats for hours at a time until my fingers cramp up into distorted positions. Handling this pistol with it's stiff Turkish springs lets me for example compare right and left hands in the decocking process or whatever. My left really needs more exercise, for which this strange toy is the perfect exercise machine. BTW, I didn't get the more risky model that fires blanks forward - oddly enough my elementary school had a special presentation on how dangerous those can be to any finger or skull in the way.
