Does it have oceans?

Pipe-dreams

2011-06-21T19:42:00.000+01:00

Hi there. plumbing fans!

Boy do I have a treat for you. A couple of pictures of some lovely, lovely pipework.

Plumbing, unless you do it regularly, is always a bit of a scary proposition. The potential for catastrophe is quite high, so whenever I set about any project involving a lot of copper tubing and soldering, I get pretty nervous.

At the centre of this project is a great big brass casting which will be hidden behind the bath and shower controls when the job is complete. All the pipe connections on this manifold are for 22mm tubing and as I've hardly ever worked with anything bigger than 15mm, this is rather exciting.

Anyway, after a couple of days of soldering, compression fittings and doubt, I reached the point where I had to turn on the water and see where the leaks were hiding.

Guess what...

No leaks!

So, just for a couple of days, I'm changing my name to Mr Smug.

Slow progress, but progress nonetheless

2011-06-15T23:45:00.000+01:00

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the bathroom reconstruction project, so I thought I'd let you know how it's going.

In short, it's going slowly

We started taking it to pieces on 30th April and by the time the plasterers arrived on 10th May, everything that was removable had gone; bath, wash-basin, toilet, airing cupboard, tiles, plaster, floor covering, lighting, the lot.

Here's how it looked at the various stages of dismantling

This is the point immediately prior to two days of plastering action, when we were completely bog-less. The only things that we didn't remove were the hot water tank and the central heating pump.

After the plastering, it looked like this.

Once the plastering was done, I refitted the old lavatory pan, which was a bit of a relief, then put back the old bathtub on temporary, flexible plumbing. Although this isn't awfully elegant and we have to use buckets of water to flush the toilet because there's no cistern, at least we can have a bath and go to lav without having to nip next door.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well.

Then one evening, as Blight-of-my-life was in the bath, she noticed a wet patch on the floor near the hot water tank.
"Have you spilt any water by the tank?"
"Err, I don't think so. Why?"
"I think it may be leaking"
I had a quick look. It was leaking.
"Arse!"

It was time to call in the experts. In this case, it was time to call Mr Barnett.
I explained the problem and asked if he could fit a new hot water tank for us. With everything else that would normally be in the bathroom gone, there'd probably never be another time when installing a tank would be so easy.
There was good news and bad news. He said he could do the job, but not until the following Monday. Not only would we have no bathroom, but we'd have no hot water for the best part of a week.

After a couple of days, there was some better news. Mr Barnett was able to do the job three days sooner than he'd expected, so after just four days of kettle washes in the kitchen sink, we had proper hot water again, and I could start building the airing cupboard wall.

And here's where we were a couple of days ago. The stud wall is up and waiting for the shower manifold and associated piping. The ceiling is painted, all the walls have been primed with PVA and a coat of emulsion and the bracing is in place for the new bath.

As you can see, we still have the old bath and flush-by-bucket lavvie.
It's funny how you get used to things.

Inception

2011-06-06T18:43:00.000+01:00

It's taken me a while to catch up with the film "Inception", but it was certainly worth waiting for.

I'm not going to say anything about the plot, story or characters, because I wouldn't want to spoil what, for me, was one of the most exciting and engrossing 148 minutes I've enjoyed for some time.

If you want to see what it's about, by all means take a look at the entry for "Inception" on IMDB, where you'll find trailers, cast list and as many spoilers as you want.

Although I enjoyed this film the first time I watched it, I wanted to give it a second viewing to get a better understanding of what it was all about.
Strangely enough, I enjoyed it even more the second time and
I fully expect that a third viewing will be just as rewarding.

Sweet dreams...

Pick your own "Desert Island Discs"

2011-05-30T10:58:00.003+01:00

The BBC radio show "Desert Island Discs" is built on one of the simplest of ideas. If you were marooned on a desert island with just eight pieces of music, which eight pieces would you choose?
Each week, a different guest is asked to make their selection of music and also pick a book and a luxury item to make their exile more bearable. The show, devised by Roy Plomley, was first broadcast in 1942 and is the longest running factual programme in the history of radio.

For a short period, the BBC have given all those of us who are never likely to be invited onto the show, a chance to make our choices. So if you fancy registering your particular desert island listening faves, check out the "Your Desert Island Discs" web-page.

Just for the record, (no pun intended) the songs that I picked are:

"Harry's house/Centerpiece" by Joni Mitchell
I'd have to take something by Joni Mitchell. She was probably the first female singer/songwriter that I picked up on and she will always be the bench-mark. She's written so many outstanding songs over the years that I could have easily used up all eight choices from her back catalogue. This song is a perfect evocation of a particular American lifestyle. It also has the advantage of being two songs in one, so I effectively sneak in an extra choice. Smart, eh?

"One of those days in England (Parts 2 to 10)" by Roy Harper
An anthem of nostalgia for an England that may well have existed and that I can almost remember. I was too young to remember ration books, but I do remember the smell and heat of steam trains and how, if you were lucky, the engine driver would acknowledge with a grin if you'd waved at him.
The song also begins with references to "signing on" at the dole office. That rings a few bells too.

"He's on the beach" by Kirsty MacColl
This is a song that I could imagine being sung by everyone who isn't on my desert island.
It's also fabulously upbeat.

"Watcher of the skies" by Genesis
I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard this track. The mellotron introduction was like nothing I'd ever heard before and it made me realise that there was a whole new area of music out there that I could enjoy. A shared appreciation of this type of music led to sharing flats and houses with a whole raft of friends and this song is for them.

"Black light machine" by Frost*
The first time I heard this, I could not believe it. As with the Genesis song, I know exactly where I was for that first time. It had probably been decades since I'd been so joyfully surprised by any piece of music.
Ten minutes of almost perfect "prog" and it also includes my absolute favourite guitar solo.

"You've got a friend" by James Taylor
A song for me to sing along with while I watch the sunset and think about all my friends back in civilization.

"Bring the rain" by Judie Tzuke
Another female singer/songwriter. If there's a British Joni Mitchell, this is her. I've never understood how she failed to get the recognition that she really deserves.
A lovely song.

"Winter wine" by Caravan
This track is taken from "The Land of Grey and Pink", the first album that I bought. That record was played almost to destruction in a flat that I shared with some friends back in the 1970s.
If there's a single lyric from any song that I feel sums up how I'd like to live my life, it's in this song.

Life's too short to be sad, wishing things you'll never have

You're better off not dreaming of the things to come
Dreams are always ending far too soon.

You find out who your friends are when you've got no toilet

2011-05-29T11:09:00.001+01:00

There aren't many scarier DIY jobs than removing a lavatory, especially if it's the only one in the house.
This is a task that I've had to do a couple of times, but this time, as we needed to clear the bathroom of everything that could be removed ready for the plasterers, we knew that there would be no opportunity to refit it for at least two days while they did their stuff.

Luckily for us, our neighbours were kind enough to offer us "unrestricted access to their facilities".
This was a considerable refief, so that's a big "Thank you" to them.

It could have been so much worse...

Plumb Crazy

2011-05-27T02:34:00.001+01:00

This is just a quick update for those of you faithful followers who may have thought that I'd moved to Alpha Centauri. Alongside all the normal excuses for not posting; work, gigs, rehearsals and chronic laziness, I've been doing a bit of DIY.

A couple of weeks ago, we started renovating the bathroom. This is a project that we've been contemplating for several years, so I surprised myself by agreeing that we should get the job done this year. Before I knew what was happening, we'd bought a bathroom suite, ordered a load of new tiles and arranged to have the room re-plastered.

As our house only has one bathroom, comprising bath, washbasin and our only lavatory, the logistics of ripping out the old fittings, knocking all the old plaster and tiles off the walls, getting the walls and ceiling re-plastered, re-tiling and installing the new suite was never going to be plain sailing. If nothing else, we knew that we'd be facing at least two days with no operational toilet once the room was stripped clean for plastering, followed by a period with a jury rigged bath on flexible plumbing and a WC that is only flushable with buckets of water.

I probably would never have considered doing this type of job myself if I hadn't installed the old bathroom, nearly thirty years ago. After all, I'm older and wiser now and plumbing technology has moved on, so it should be dead easy now...

Here's how it looked before we started.

to be continued...

The spirit of "Spinal Tap" is alive and... well

2011-05-06T23:34:00.001+01:00

My band, "Nightflight" had a gig last Saturday at one of our more regular haunts, "The Old Ship" in Macclesfield.

This is a great little boozer. We generally have a good time when we play there, so we're always happy to accept a booking.

Up until about a year ago, the space available for setting up the equipment was pretty cramped. We had to find a way of shoe-horning four people, a PA system, a bass amp and speakers, a drum kit, a keyboard and sundry microphone stands and foot-pedals into a small alcove surrounded on three sides by bench seating and an upright piano. Playing in tight spaces is difficult enough, but setting up the gear is even worse. Everybody is in each others way and it becomes hard not to have a massive sense of humour failure.

Fortunately, it's much better now. The landlady had all the benches taken out, along with the wretched piano and installed some extra power sockets and a nice new floor. We've got sufficient elbow room to set up the gear without constantly bumping into each other and our performance is less likely to be marred by the guitarist getting a cymbal stand jabbed up his rectum every time be takes half a pace back from the microphone.

So the gig went pretty well. There were quite a few familiar faces there, so we played the usual mix of classic rock covers and our own original songs and this was very well received. We had a good time. In fact I think I may have been enjoying myself a bit too much.

A couple of our most loyal fans had come along and as they are keen on our version of "Holding out for a hero", we decided to finish the night with it.

Yes, I know it's completely cheesy and that Bonnie Tyler should never be forgiven for inflicting the song on humanity; but it's fun. There is no way that you can overdo this song. It is an excuse for all manner of over the top power-chord nonsense, monstrous drum rolls and neo-operatic vocal drama.

The fan club was lapping it up, everybody was up and dancing and "Hero" was going down a storm.

For the big finish guitar solo, Dennis, taking advantage of his wireless guitar rig, set off across the bar into the midst of the dancers, so I decided to join in too. As we shredded away surrounding by the bopping throng, I had a brilliant idea.

"I'll try that thing they did in the Spinal Tap film, where the guitarist does his solo and leans backwards so far that he ends up lying on his back, still playing."

It started well enough. I went into a sort of limbo posture and dropped down on my knees, then gradually leaned further backwards as I pounded out a thundering bass line to underpin the howling guitar solo.

Further and further backwards I went until, inevitably I lost my balance.

My shoulders hit the floor and I continued playing. as I lay on my back surrounded by completely perplexed punters.

Now why I ever thought that this would be a bit of quality showmanship, I have no idea. After all, in "This is Spinal Tap" it didn't exactly end well, but at least they looked the part. Check out the video clip of the trailer at about 2 minutes 30 seconds, and you'll see what I mean.

When I did this, I just ended up looking like some poor old bloke who'd "had a fall".

It was a very long way from rock and roll...

Silence in the library? I think not.

2011-04-28T22:31:00.001+01:00

I had to call in at our local library earlier today. One of the books that I've had on loan was overdue and although normally I could have renewed it online, someone else had reserved it, so I had to return it.

The book in question was "Rough guide to MACS & OS X: 10.6 Snow Leopard". I've recently bought an Apple Mac Book laptop computer, so I needed a bit of guidance and this book has been very helpful. The information is clearly presented and well explained, without being overly chummy and patronizing. If you are a PC user but thinking of getting an Apple computer, I'd happily recommend this book to get you through the early days.

Nowadays, a visit to the library is just one more of those occasions where I'm forced to acknowledge that I am getting old. They used to say that you knew you were getting old when the policemen started to look younger. I passed that milestone yonks ago; even the librarians are looking younger now, so I wasn't too surprised to find that the chap behind the desk looked barely old enough to have left school.

"Hi" he said
"Hi. I'm sorry, but this one's overdue" I said, placing the book on the counter. "I would have renewed it, but it's been reserved..."
"Ah, sorry about that."
He opened the book and passsed it under the bar-code scanner.
There was a pause, but obviously the scanner had failed to read correctly, as he repeated the process.
He detatched the scanner from its holder and tried again... and again from several different angles and distances.
It was like watching Harry Potter trying to cast a spell with a malfunctioning wand. The scanner just wasn't reading the bar-code.

Eventually, after a few more fruitless passes, he gave up on laser technology and turned to the computer keyboard to type in the book's identity code, long-hand.
When he'd finished, he looked up and said,
"Y'know what the problem is?... It's a book about Apple Macs, and this system is run on a PC..."

I burst out laughing.
You just don't expect stand-up comedy from librarians.
So that would seem to be another compelling reason why we should fight to keep our libraries safe from closure.

I still love this job

2011-04-07T14:16:00.000+01:00

We had some "Good News" at work the other day.
Jodrell Bank Observatory has been selected as the home for the Square Kilometre Array Project Office. The SKA will be the world's largest radio telescope and it will be located in either Australia or South Africa. It is a global effort by astronomers and engineers from many countries, so being chosen as the place where the whole project will be managed is quite a coup.
Inevitably, news like this generates media interest...

I was working a Day Shift on Monday when the 'phone rang.
"Control room?..."
"Oh, hello. This is Kate from the BBC. Could I speak to Professor Simon Garrington?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't transfer you from this 'phone. It's a dedicated line just for the telescope control room. Hold on a moment, let me give you his office number."
"OK.Thanks."
I checked the internal directory and gave her the number, she said "Thanks" again, and that was that...
Until I realized that I'd given her the wrong 'phone number.
"Oh great," I thought. "That'll make a good impression. I wonder if I can ring her back with the right number." I quickly called "1471", got her number and gave it a ring.
"Er, hello." I said. "This is the Controller at Jodrell Bank. You called a couple of minutes ago, but I've just realized that I gave you the wrong telephone number. Look, sorry to have messed you about ,but I've got the correct number now, if you still need it."
"That's OK. I'm almost there now. I should be arriving at the Main Building in a couple of minutes."
"Oh. I didn't realize you were en route. If you park right outside the front entrance, I'll buzz you in."
"Thanks."

Simon met the lady from the BBC in the foyer, so it was about half an hour later that they both came into the Control Room to do a short TV interview about the SKA news.
"This is Kate Simms, from BBC North West News. And this is Kim our Duty Controller for the day."
As we shook hands I said "I'm afraid we've already spoken. I'm the bloke who gives out duff information and wrong numbers."
Honesty is usually the best policy.

Kate Simms is charming. Considering that she was working to quite a tight schedule, she was impressively down-to-earth.and calm. There was no visible trace of the stress or terseness that occasionally reveals itself when media folk are working to a deadline.
She singlehandedly recorded a short TV interview with Simon at ground level, then she lugged all her camera gear up into the telescope bowl to shoot a second interview, before returning to the Control Room to join the crew who had arrived with a satellite communications truck, to prepare for a live interview which was seamlessly dropped into the lunchtime news.

You've got to say it's a good day at work when, not only do,you get to hear some good news, but you also meet a genuinely charming celebrity.

SKA Image Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/SKA Program Development Office

"The optician will see you now..."

2011-03-29T04:40:00.000+01:00

I wear glasses.

I got my first pair, for reading, when I was about twelve years old, was wearing them full time from sometime in the 1980s and now need varifocals to compensate for the deficiencies of genetics and age.

I don't actually like having to wear spectacles, but have got so used to them that even when contact lenses have been suggested as an alternative, I find that I'm reluctant to change. It's as if I feel that my face would be incomplete without them.

It's been a couple of years since my last eye-test, so while I was in town this afternoon, I went into Specsavers to see if they could fit me in. As luck would have it, I only had to wait for two minutes to get an appointment; an all time record for me.

The test confirmed what I'd suspected and I needed a new prescription, so next Wednesday I'll be collecting my new specs.

It worries me that so many people think that they "don't need glasses".
There are thousands of them out there, insisting that they can see perfectly, when the truth is that they really ought to get their eyes checked and get some corrective lenses to see through.
I can understand their reluctance though. It's clear that the percentage of people who wear glasses is far higher than it was when I was a kid, but there's still a sort stigma associated with needing glasses.
Vanity requires that you don't display your imperfections and such an obvious indication that your eyesight is less than perfect, as a pair of glasses, is hard to deny.
This a potentially dangerous vanity, particularly if you drive a car. I've even heard people say that they've got glasses for driving, but they don't wear them because they make them look stupid.
I seems that they'd rather knock some poor sod off his bicycle because they didn't see him, than appear unfashionable.

Having my eyes tested and getting a decent pair of properly prescribed binns isn't going to guarantee that I won't have an accident, but if I do, at least I won't have to spend the rest of my life knowing that I could have done something really simple that could have prevented it happening.

Ask a stupid question...

2011-03-28T11:04:00.000+01:00

I've just been doing my "Civic Duty" by filling in the 2011 Census form.

Is it just me, or is Question 19 a bit poorly thought out?

If the answer is "Not at all", how likely is it that I can read and understand the question?

Talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey

2011-03-19T12:19:00.000Z

I wouldn't normally post about something that is so far from my personal experience, but the plight of the people in parts of Japan is impossible to ignore.
To experience an earthquake or a tsunami is hard enough for any nation, but to cope with both of these natural disasters and then have to respond to the threat of a meltdown at a nuclear power plant and the prospect of an uncontrolled release of radiation represents an exceptional challenge.

As if the effects of this compound disaster aren't enough to contend with, the people who are part of the rescue effort, or trying to get things working again, or trying to find missing members of their family, or simply just trying to stay alive also have to put up with the world's media arriving by the planeload, looking for ever more dramatic things to film for the rest of us to watch on our 50 inch plasma TVs.

Every news crew wants an exclusive, so the temptation to squeeze more drama into any report must be hard to resist and it would take a very special kind of news editor to lead with the facts from a well informed source when they have some grim video footage, accompanied by an apocolyptic commentary by "their reporter at the scene of devastation", to open their news bulletin with a doom-laden splash.

Well I don't trust them. I don't believe that they can bear to let the facts spoil what, to them, is just another story. I particularly don't trust news-mongers to tell us anything reliable if it involves science.
I don't want to get my news from these monkeys.

If, like me, you want to find out what's really going on at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, you might like to take the advice of Charles Stross, and have a look at the International Atomic Energy Agency site. The situation is clearly presented, without any tabloid melodrama, by people who are a whole lot better qualified to explain this complex and continually evolving situation than a bunch of TV journalists who know more about camera angles than containment vessels.

The world is full of nutters... (Thank Heavens)

2011-03-12T07:44:00.002Z

The technology that delivers the music we listen to has come a long way during my lifetime.
I was reminded just how much things have changed by a recent post on Techno-Billies.

The first record player I can remember was a varnished mahogany box with a handle at the side to wind up the clockwork motor, and louvred vents at the front to control the volume of the sound that was produced by a steel needle as it tracked the groove in a 10 inch disc, spinning at 78 rpm. I can't have been more than four years old, but the memory of The Goons singing "I'm walking backwards for Christmas" is still clear, more than fifty years later.

During the time that has passed, the way we listen to music has changed almost beyond recognition. Now, my entire music collection is available, stored on pocket sized sliver of digital wizardry that barely weighs as much as that single, scratchy recording.

So bearing in mind the compactness of modern audio equipment, the ease with which we can use it and the quality of the sound that it produces, I find it hard to understand just what possessed Simon Jansen of Auckland, New Zealand to build his "Steampunk Record Player".

Whatever drove him to create this work of whimsy, I salute him.
The Sex Pistols have never sounded better.

Good News From All Over

2011-03-05T17:30:00.000Z

Once in a while, you hear some good news.
This is particularly pleasing when it comes along against the background of general misery and drabness that seems the default setting for a lot of people at present.

I'm very happy to pass on a couple of bits of news that are, for me at least, cause for celebration.

Oddly enough, I received the second good news bulletin via the bearer of the first bit of good news.
Pretty much on the same day that "Rage Against The Lymphoma" blogged that she has had the final dose of chemotherapy in what has been several months of extreme unpleasantness, she gleefully announced the birth of her sister's baby boy, who just happens to be my newest great-nephew.

So congratulations to Mr and Mrs Realmenwritelongcopy, "Hello" to Jonah William and thanks Rage' for spreading all the good news.

Not a stereotypical stork

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Jonah weighed 8lb 10oz.

Another five minute job. Yeah, right...

2011-02-28T10:59:00.001Z

Thanks to the peculiarities of my shift rota, I had a day off work last Thursday and as the weather was so spring-like. I decided that I really couldn't get away with spending all day dossing in the house.
"I know what I'll do", I thought. "I'll have a look at the pressure washer and see if I can sort out that leak that Blight-of-my-life mentioned last week.

The pressure washer spends most of its time at the farm where it has a tough life cleaning up after the horses, so after a leisurely breakfast, I nipped up to the yard to fetch it. Once I'd got it back home, it soon became clear what the problem was. Where the hose pipe that supplies water to the machine is attached, there is a plastic threaded coupling that screws onto the metal inlet pipe. Over time, this plastic coupling has been repeatedly overtightened and the thread has partially stripped. Given the sort of damage that the poor thing had suffered, I wasn't too confident that it would refit securely, but I thought it was worth a try.
After only a short battle, I'd got it all back together and it seemed as if it might work.
I connected a hose pipe from the garden tap to the repaired coupling and plugged the electrical power cable into a mains socket in the kitchen. I switched on the power, turned on the water and...
...nothing happened.

There was no water coming out of the garden tap.

Once I'd turned off the water at the rising main, it didn't take too long to determine what was wrong.
With the water supply safely cut off, I removed the tap and discovered a displaced rubber seal in the valve which prevents water from the garden hose siphoning back into the supply pipe. It must have been damaged during the ridiculously cold weather we had in December.
I decided that it would be easier to replace the tap, rather than to try and bodge the valve.

While I was picking up a replacement tap at Wickes I decided to also get a replacement for the leaky, in-line stop valve for the pipe that feeds the garden tap, as this may have contributed to the frost failure of the garden tap.

Plumbing:
I've never looked up the dictionary definition, but it won't be complete if it doesn't mention hours of frustration, swearing, seeping compression fittings, cursing, skinned knuckles and that insidious feeling that even though you've checked your work for leaks a dozen times, as soon as you turn your back it's going to explode and leave you ankle-deep in misery.

In the end, I think I only had to refit the new garden tap twice and in-line stop valve three times before I was happy that there weren't any leaks from any of the joints. Even so, by the time I'd finished, I'd used up all the available daylight, most of my patience and several dozen metres of PTFE tape.

Having fixed the garden tap, the only task that remained was to test the repair on the pressure washer.
So I plugged the pressure washer in and turned on the power, connected the hose pipe to the garden tap, turned on the tap and switched on the washer.
"It works!", I exclaimed, as water blasted out of the spray nozzle.
"Bollocks!", I cried, as the hose union fell off and water gushed all over my feet.

I guess that this is what artists call "a work in progress"...

The best car I ever owned

2011-02-20T23:03:00.002Z

After more than six months of self-imposed exile from the land of "Back-in-the-1970s", I think it's probably safe for me to do another nostalgia post and tell you how I came to buy a luxury saloon car at a far from luxury price and why it changed my life.

By the time my Austin A40 finally became too unroadworthy to struggle through an MOT, I'd been working as a self-employed steelfixer for several months.
Steelfixing is one of the lesser known occupations in the building industry and it involves the assembly and placement of all the steel reinforcing bars that are subsequently covered in concrete, creating the extraordinarily versatile and strong composite material, reinforced concrete.

Most of the building contracts that I was working on were in Stratford upon Avon, some fifteen miles from home, so the demise of my car was a bit of a problem. Getting to work entailed cycling ten miles to my workmate Brian's flat, changing into my working clothes, then travelling to the job in his pickup truck. We'd spend all day grafting away on site and then I'd return home via his flat.
I don't recall how long I managed to keep up this ridiculously energetic regime, but I do know what convinced me that I needed to rethink my travelling arrangements. One morning, the front light on my bicycle unsportingly fell into the front wheel half way to Brian's place. The wheel imploded in a welter of shredded spokes and as the front forks plunged into the tarmac stopping the bike in its tracks, I inevitably continued for a short time until I too plunged into the tarmac.
I went off the idea of cycling to work.
I needed another car.

As often happens, help came from an unexpected quarter.
Brian and I were at work one morning, assembling the column reinforcement for part of what was to become a covered shopping precinct in the centre of Stratford, when we were hailed.
"Oi! Steelfixers! D'you want to buy a car?"
It was one of the labourers. He was a young bloke who had only recently started work at the site, having moved into the area from somewhere in London. As far as I knew, the only car that he owned was an enormous old Rover that he used every day.
"What?... You're not flogging that old Rover are you?"
"Yeah... can't afford to run it. You can have it for fifty quid."
Brian and I both burst out laughing. This was clearly a joke, or possibly some sort of scam. The vehicle he claimed to be selling was about fifteen years old, but when it was brand new it was a top quality luxury saloon. This was the sort of car that the Prime Minister could be seen getting into in Downing Street.
"Fifty quid?" I said, "I don't think so... I'll give you a fiver for it."
He found my offer, shall we say, derisory. I can't remember his exact response, but I know that the second word was "off".
He left us and set off across the site to continue trying to find a buyer.

Brian said, "Y'know, fifty quid's probably a good deal, assuming that it's got an MOT."
"Yeah, but it's a bloody monster. Christ, it's got a three litre engine, it weighs a ton and it must drink petrol like it's going out of fashion. And what's the insurance gonna be for something like that?"
"A nice motor though....", he pondered "Well, it used to be a nice motor."
"For fifty quid there's gotta be something wrong with it. It's probably stolen or something. He's only been here a for week and he's hardly the sort of bloke you'd expect to have a Rover 3 litre."
"Yeah. I s'pose so... Come on, let's finish this and get over to the caff."

We didn't think any more about it. After all, if somebody really did want to risk buying what was bound to be a heap of trouble, they'd be sure to offer more than five pounds. So it was a bit of a surprise when, shortly after lunch, the guy came back and said, "Err, how about six quid?"
"Are you serious?"

He was serious. Which is how I ended up paying six pounds for a two-tone green Rover P5 3 litre

Same make, same model, same colour, but not my Rover, alas.

I gave him the cash. He gave me a receipt, the car keys and all the vehicle documents.
I hadn't even had a proper look at the car, let alone driven it, so the first time I got into the driving seat I was surprised to find that it was an automatic. I'd never driven anything without a manual gearbox before, so my journey home from work that day was something of an education. Just getting to grips with a vehicle that was far larger, heavier and more powerful than anything I'd driven before would have been alarming enough, but the added complication of trying to unlearn all those reflex actions that are a part of driving with a manual gearbox made me wonder whether I'd really made the right decision.
By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck.

Given this inauspicious introduction to my new vehicle, you may wonder why it became the best car I ever owned.

It was certainly the cheapest car I've ever bought. It was also the most luxurious; well it would have been if it hadn't been fifteen years old and steadily disintegrating. For such a large and apparently unwieldy car, it was beautifully well mannered and even when I made the sort of poor decisions that only a man in his early twenties can think are sensible, it never punished me for my stupidity, steadfastly allowing me to keep control; the stabilty and trustworthiness of its handling saved me from myself several times over. It was the only car that I've ever been able to put into a four-wheel drift without any fear of it going badly wrong. (Yes, that's just the sort of decision I meant)

I went on some memorable trips in that car with various friends, hurtling up and down the gloriously uncongested motorway network to gigs, to parties, or for weekends away camping. But none of these things are really what made Aunty Rover so important in my life. It's more about the people who I met through owning that particular vehicle.

If I hadn't had such an unfeasibly large car, it's unlikely that I would have been asked by some old school friends to help them collect some musical equipment from London. If I hadn't taken that particular road-trip I doubt whether I would have got to know those friends quite so well and it's even less likely that they would have invited me to share a house with them and join them in their musical enterprise as road manager.
When it was time to move on again, friends I'd made through the band, who lived near Bristol offered me a place to live, sharing their house while I worked as a van driver for a mail order catalogue company.
Six months later, when the company opened a new depot in Devon, I transferred and lived in another shared house, near Newton Abbott. When we had a party, one weekend, various far-flung friends turned up, including a girl who had been to college with one of my housemates.

And that's how I met Blight-of-my-life...

Another way to hear new music

2011-02-19T18:30:00.000Z

Although I'm in the middle of writing one post, I've simply got to write a quick one about yet another way to hear music via the web.

If you haven't already come across it, have a look at "Last FM"

You don't have to register or log in, you can simply decide which band or artist you'd like to hear, enter their name and then sit back and listen to a selection of tracks by that artist and others that are of a similar style, presented as a sort of customised radio station. This can be a great way to discover the sort of stuff that you might enjoy but wouldn't normally get a chance to hear.

This week, I have been mostly listening to "Frost* Radio"

Support your local band

2011-02-05T20:18:00.000Z

Being in a band is great.

It ensures that you carry on playing an instrument and learning new pieces of music, it forces you out of the house to rehearsals when you might just be tempted to blob in front of the television and it gives you an excuse to go into music shops and try out ridiculously expensive instruments and amplifiers that you have no intention of buying whatsoever.
Whether these were ever the reasons that anybody first decided to join a group I have no idea, but certainly, once you have got past the expectation of chucking in the day job and setting off on a world tour with all the attendant joys of fame, fortune, fornication and freely available recreational pharmaceuticals, it's the small joys of the hopeful, amateur rocker that make it all worthwhile.

My band, "Nightflight", rarely gets to play to huge crowds, typically playing pub gigs, the occasional function or local fetes or festivals. With the varied mix of solid rock covers, power ballads and original material in our repertoire, we can cater for quite a varied audience and even add customer requested songs to the set if we've had reasonable advanced warning. So far (touch wood) we've never got it hopelessly wrong, so the response is somewhere between favourable and very enthusiastic. this is particularly gratifying when you've played an original song that folks may never have heard before.

One downside to being in a band is that it's often not so easy to get to see other bands play. As I work a rather complicated pattern of shifts for my "day job", it's quite unusual for me to be at a loose end on a Friday or Saturday evening. If I'm not actually at work, my band will probably have a gig shoe-horned into the date that is available. Yesterday evening, however, was one of the rare occasions when Blight-of-my-life and I were able to go out and see some of our friends play for a change, so it was off to "The Navigation Inn" in Macclesfield to see "Amandla".

Three quarters of "Amandla". Sarah must be at the bar...

"Amandla" are a local four-piece band and they have been delivering quality blues and rock to the good folk of East Cheshire for ages. When Blight had what is known as a significant birthday, a couple of years ago, they played at her party. I've been lucky enough to play alongside two of the guys. Corin has depped for us several times when we've carelessly lost our drummer for one reason or another, and it was Ross (the one with the hat) who invited me to join him when he was putting together a band a few years ago and lured me back into performing.

I'd forgotten just how good they are. They opened the first set with a Pink Floyd medley which began with the introduction from "Shine on you Crazy Diamond". Ross has absolutely nailed the guitar tone for this and when the Corin and Al (bass) joined, nobody in the pub was left with any doubt that they were in for something special.
Since Sarah joined them, "Amandla" have been able to broaden their repertoire to include material which would not otherwise be such a comfortable option. Alanis Morissette's "Ironic", "Call Me" from Blondie and a cracking version of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet" have all found their places in the set, allowing Ross to concentrate on the bluesier stuff from Buddy Guy and Dr Feelgood.
To top it all off, they finished the night with their Rock Classics medley; fifteen minutes of pure and unadulterated joy.

So altogether a splendid night out.

If you get the chance to see them, do yourself a favour and grab it with both hands.

What lies beneath

2011-01-24T23:22:00.000Z

The last time I mentioned my model railway on this blog, it was a tale of woe about hamfisted drilling and the sudden and unwelcome mutilation of some of the track.

It took me quite a while to work out exactly how to fix this self-inflicted wound, but I did eventually come up with a workable solution and shortly before Christmas, I successfully cut out the mangled section of track, re-attached the upper layer of baseboard and fitted a new section of rail where I plan to construct a girder bridge.
It was a hell of a lot more difficult to repair than it had been to lay the track the first time around, so to prevent another unexpected separation of the upper layer of baseboard, I've added some extra woodon spacer blocks which are screwed, as well as glued in place.

Now, I don't do New Year Resolutions and I'm particularly wary about trying to stick to any hard and fast regime or daily activity. Anybody that follows this blog will already know how erratic and fickle my level of commitment can be, so I have amazed myself by actually doing something on the model railway every day so far this year.

Of course you'll now be expecting it to be almost complete.

Well, it isn't.

However, the good news is that I've fitted all the point motors and finished wiring them up, which was an extremely finicky process. I've also made a start on the operator control panel

Here's a quick peek at what lies beneath the baseboard. A handfull of point motors and a bunch of multicoloured wires.

I guess it may not seem like a lot of progress, but it is a strangely satisfying way to pass the time.

This is not like watching paint dry...

2011-01-16T01:18:00.002Z

As some of you were less than overwhelmed by the excitement of watching snow dribbling out of a radio telescope, I thought you might find this slightly more stimulating.

If you haven't heard of Scottish street trials rider Danny MacAskill before, you may be astonished at not just his skill as a bike rider, but his seeming lack of anything like fear or an appreciation of the possibility that something could go horribly wrong.
You'll probably be unsurprised to learn that he is sometimes known as Danny MegaSkill.

"Remember kids, Don't try this at home..."

Not my turn in the spotlight

2011-01-03T05:37:00.001Z

This evening, BBC Television will be broadcasting the first of a three night series called "Stargazing Live". These programs will be shown at 8 pm, on BBC2 and will be hosted by Professor Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain, live from Jodrell Bank.

I haven't seen the Control Room in so much turmoil since we had the film crew from "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy" doing a two day shoot a few years ago. In front of the Control Desk the set design team has built a raised area and a pair of platforms for large, plasma display screens. There are an array of studio lights strung from the ceiling, various microphones in strategic places, lighting control panels, audio mixers and all the miles of cable that go with them.
The rest of the main building is festooned with temporary signs and arrows pointing the way to the Production Office, Makeup, Green Room, Rehearsal Room and Dressing Rooms. Outside the building there's the kind of circus that always accompanies this sort of undertaking.
There's the "Gallery Truck", with an enormous articulated trailer which houses the outside broadcast control room. This appears to be one of those origami vehicles where the walls extend in all directions creating an internal working space that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. It's probably as close as you can get to having an actual TARDIS.
There are lighting trucks, satellite communication vans, catering trucks, a marquee laid out with tables for refreshments, portable toilets, generators, water bowsers, a mobile security post and a bunch of other non-specific vans.

The thing that's difficult to believe is that when I finished my shift yesterday morning, none of this stuff was here. As I walked out of the Control Room, the set designer and his team had just pulled up outside the Main Building.
While I was at home asleep, the place was transformed.

It's just the luck of the draw which of the six controllers gets which shift when this sort of event is on.
I can't decide whether or not to be disappointed that I'm not on-shift for all the fun and games. It's always interesting to be behind the scenes and watch how media stuff works, but it can be quite stressful too. We cannot afford to let the artistic demands of the TV crew influence any operational decisions about the way the telescope is driven. There's always the chance that you'll have to tell the director that he's not going to get his preferred shot of the telescope positioned low to the horizon because the wind is too strong.
As you can imagine, that doesn't go down too well, but it's better than breaking the telescope.

Anyway, if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of me actually working you are going to be out of luck. Your Controller for Monday and Tuesday evening's shows will be Jock, and on Wednesday it will be Andy.

"We are in control...": Andy and Jock are second and third from the left, respectively.

Festive malarkey

2010-12-26T22:29:00.000Z

So how was your Christmas...? Oh good. How lovely.

My Christmas has been pretty good too, as it happens.

On Christmas Eve, while Blight-of-my-life was out making sure that the horses weren't getting too excitable in the snow, I (finally) put up the Christmas cards.
The "Top Card" award this year was shared by my eldest brother, whose card was a print of one of his own paintings, and my erstwhile work colleague from sunny Devon, who had ensured that his card would be the first we got by sending it in January... and then sent another one that also arrived before all the other cards

Later that evening, my band played at a local pub.
I wasn't too keen on the idea of playing on Christmas Eve, as I thought it might be a bit like being Santa's support act; but it was actually really good fun. Inevitably we were duty bound to include something festive, so "Santa Claus is coming to town" was added to the setlist. We'd also been asked to play Blondie's "One Way or Another" especially for the landlady and it went surprisingly well, considering the minimal rehearsal that we'd given it.

Perhaps the best bit of the gig was an appearance by our special guest vocalist.
Our Lady of The Keyboards had put an armlock on her son Josh and he'd agreed to join us for the last two songs of the first set. As he's a professional performer (World tour with "Mama Mia" and more recently touring in "Dreamboats and Petticoats"), this was a bit of a treat.
It also knocked about ten years off the average age of the band.

Christmas Day itself was very uneventful.
Even though Blight had to see to the horses, I decided that I deserved a lie-in after my night of rock and roll excess and didn't surface until gone ten. At lunchtime, we ambled along to "The Crown" to meet Chemical Al and The One Wise Woman for our customary Christmas drink and then it was a brisk walk home for Christmas Lunch.

This year we had scrambled egg and beans on toast and shortly after that, I went to work.

And if you think that working on Christmas Day isn't much fun, then take a look at this.
This video was shot a few days ago, by Scubamanders, as I decanted the accumulated snow from the bowl. It isn't wildly dramatic, but it isn't something you see every day.

I've been doing this job for nearly ten years, but it was the first time I've done this particular operation.

Great News...!

2010-12-16T11:15:00.000Z

I know that you've all been on the edge of your seats, waiting for the news about "The Other" speaking clock.

Well, I am overjoyed to inform you that I've just 'phoned it and the time is now correct, so "Thus Communications" have fixed the problem.

My work here is done; another triumph for the Grumpy Old Men, I'd say.

Apologies to BT: The Speaking Clock is Correct

2010-12-14T19:51:00.001Z

I'm starting to realise what it's like to be Boris Johnson. This is the second time I've had to publicly apologise in a month.

My previous post, stating that the Speaking Clock was four seconds fast, was not entirely correct. It appears that although the speaking clock messages that I was getting on our telephone system at work have been incorrect, the BT Speaking Clock service is running perfectly.
The most likely culprit for this peculiar problem probably resides somewhere in the telephone system of a third party communications supplier.

Some very helpful comments from one of my long-suffering followers, drew my attention to the fact that our telephone network is no longer a strictly BT operation, so it was quite likely that some third party complication could have nadgered the normally reliable service.
I also had a chat with a chap from The Greenwich Observatory. Although he explained that they are no longer "The Keepers of Time" at Greenwich, his assessment of the problem was in line with Jon's explanation.

Apparently you can effectively buy a speaking clock device for your telephone network. This uses a radio timing signal, broadcast from Anthorn in Cumbria, to keep it locked to the correct time. Unfortunately, if your speaking clock box loses the timing signal, it continues to operate but uses its own internal quartz crystal oscillator to keep on time. If this oscillator isn't running at the right rate, the thing will gradually drift off.

It's plausible that this is what's happened to the rogue speaking clock which I was using.

If it does get sorted out, I'll let you know, but until then,
"At the third stroke, it will be time to make a grovelling apology to BT... PIP...PIP...PIP"

The Speaking Clock is 4 seconds fast

2010-12-14T11:31:00.000Z

Yesterday I discovered that the BT Speaking Clock was approximately four seconds fast.
But before you rush to your 'phone to check, remember that it is not a free service. I don't want to encourage anyone to increase the income of BT whilst proving the inadequacy of their service.

I spent a fairly frustrating time trying to report the fault, but as anyone who has tried to report a problem using an automated, multiple choice 'phone reporting system will appreciate, as soon as you have a problem that falls outside the normal options, you are snookered.
Eventually, I managed to negotiate my way through the various layers of, "Press one for Billing, press two for Broadband, Press three if you are losing the will to live...", until I was speaking to a human being.
I knew that she was almost certainly not the right person to deal with this particular issue, but I hoped that she might be able to contact the appropriate department.

It did not go terribly well.

Although she was not actually rude, her reaction when I tried to report the problem was somewhat terse. I explained that I realized it was not really the sort of fault that she would normally be resposible for dealing with, but as there appeared to be no other way of getting in contact with the service provider, I was hoping she could either pass the message on herself or refer me to a more appropriate department.
Her response was, "What business is it of yours to tell us that the Speaking Clock is wrong?"
"Well, it is a service that I'm paying for, and it's supposed to be reliable... and not four seconds fast."
"How do you know it's wrong?"
At this point, I decided to keep it simple.
I could have explained that as I was in the Control Room at Jodrell Bank, I had access to two independant Global Positioning Satellite Clocks and our own on-site Atomic Clock, all of which were telling me that the Speaking Clock was wrong.
Instead, I just said, "I checked it against the Greenwich Time signal "pips" at 9 o'clock, broadcast by the BBC. And before you ask, that was the analogue service, not digital."

Now I have no idea whether this has been passed on to anyone in BT who is interested or capable enough to sort it out, but at 7:45 this morning it was still wrong.

I'll let you know when it's been corrected.

The "Station Clock" at Jodrell Bank

Thin ice

2010-12-03T18:39:00.000Z

We are looking after our neighbour's dog Kiera, for a couple of days, so taking her out for walks has meant that I've been getting rather more excercise than is normal for me.

As if the novelty of being dragged about by an enthusiastic springer spaniel wasn't enough, the fact that we've had a pretty good covering of snow has made it even more entertaining. For a dog, even the most boring looking bit of hedgerow seems to take on added sniff-worthiness when it's smothered in snow, giving all the regular routes added value.

Most of our walks include bits of canal towpath, but as we've been having temperatures of ten below zero whole sections of the canal are frozen over. Narrow boats are ice-locked at their moorings and the ducks are skating about on the surface as they compete for scraps of bread. The only place where the water remains unfrozen is beneath the bridges and this where most of the ducks congregate when they've had enough of people laughing at them as they slither helplessly about on the treacherous surface of the ice.

Spaniels are typically keen to involve themselves with water, not to mention ducks, and Kiera is no exception to this rule, but there is no way that I'm going to allow her off the lead in these conditions. If you think that this is a bit unsporting, consider this.

A few years ago, a friend of ours was walking his dog along the towpath in similar icy conditions to those that we have at the moment. His dog was off the lead and had run onto the ice to harass the ducks. The ducks took a dim view of this and headed for the open patch of water near a bridge, so the dog followed. When the dog neared the clear patch of water, the progressively thinning ice broke under his weight.
The dog was unable to clamber up through the hole and vanished beneath the frozen surface.
Our friend tried to rescue the dog by breaking the ice, but by the time he had waded into the canal, located the unlucky creature and pulled him from the water, the dog was dead.

I was considering this unhappy tale as we strolled along the path, because on the loose snow lying on the ice covered canal were footprints where people had been walking.

The footprints were of an adult and a small child...

"Shackleton's Voyage"

2010-11-26T11:24:00.000Z

Following the comment from Anonymous on yesterday's post, I thought I'd draw your attention to a rather interesting re-telling of story of The Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition and of Ernest Shackleton's remarkable achievement.

"Eureka" were not a band that I'd come across before, but Amazon suggested that their CD, "Shackleton's Voyage" was something I might consider worth buying. I listened to the short samples of each of the tracks and was impressed enough by what I heard to order it.

If you are totally averse to Prog Rock or the very idea of a "Concept Album", you may well be strongly inclined to dismiss this piece, but as far as these sort of compositions go, I reckon that it is almost too accessible. If I was forced to compare it with any other album, I'd say that some of it was reminiscent of early Mike Oldfield. There are a few short spoken passages which may remind you of "War of the Worlds" and there is a particularly celtic feel to some sections.

I had a quick trawl through YouTube and found several clips from the album, so here is "Going Home".

Let's try not to get caught out...

2010-11-25T14:28:00.000Z

Back in the early days of this blog, I posted about a particularly memorable occasion, when Blight-of-my-life and I were stranded by snow, on the edge of Dartmoor. As the weather forecast is threatening us with the first snowfall of this winter, it's time to check that my Emergency Kit is all packed and ready for any journeys in bad weather.

Now I don't want to give the impression that I'm some kind of survivalist or apocalypse-watcher, but just taking the trouble to carry a few extra things in your vehicle can make a major impact on your comfort and wellbeing if you are unlucky enough to get caught out by freak weather or some other transport disfunction.

The occasions when I have been least well prepared for being stranded have always been when it was cold, so here's what I try to ensure that I've got with me when I'm driving during the winter.

Extra Clothing: The Land Rover heater is notoriously feeble, so I tend to wrap up warm for normal driving, let alone when conditions are at their worst. To supplement this, I carry a spare long-sleeved thermal vest and thermal "long-johns", woolly hat, gloves, spare fleece and a water-proof cagoul. Another wonderful bit of cold weather clothing are salopettes. I wouldn't normally have bought these, as I don't ski, but I picked up a pair of these quilted over-trousers from a charity shop for a couple of quid.

Footwear: The sort of shoes that are comfortable or practical for driving may not be awfully good for trudging about in snow, so I keep my walking boots in the vehicle. If you can find space for a decent pair of wellington boots, they 're also handy if your journey is disrupted by flood water.

Nesting Material: A lot of drivers keep a car-rug or blanket in their vehicle, but I prefer to carry a sleeping bag. If you can't get home and have to sleep in the car or camped on some good samaritan's floor, a decent sleeping bag can make life much more bearable.

Food & Drink: Although it is recommended that you should keep a few energy snacks in your vehicle; dried fruit, nuts or similar, I usually don't carry these. The thing that will really cheer you up if you're stranded in the cold and/or darkness, is a hot drink. Just the act of brewing up will raise your morale, so I carry a small camping stove, methylated spirit fuel and matches. I keep a few tea-bags in a zip-loc bag, a sachet of instant hot-chocolate drink and I also try to pack a tin of soup.
Whatever you choose to drink, don't forget to take something to drink out of and keep a plastic bottle of fresh water in the car; (It's difficult to make tea without water)

Warning: It's a very bad idea to use a camping stove inside a vehicle. They are intended for outdoor use only. If the possibility of accidentally setting fire to your car isn't enough to discourage you, bear in mind that your stove will produce carbon monoxide and this can kill you.

Other Stuff: Rules for what you must carry in your vehicle vary from country to country, but even if it isn't compulsory for you to carry a First Aid Kit, a decent flashlight, a tow rope and a high visibility jacket, all of these are worth considering.

And finally...
Don't forget to keep some toilet paper in your vehicle, sealed in a polythene bag to keep it dry. If you ever need this and you haven't got any, you are heading for misery.
I'll not elaborate, just trust me on this.

An apology to neighbours and fellow road-users

2010-11-18T15:48:00.000Z

Yes folks, it was me... and I'm very sorry.

Driving home on Tuesday evening, I made a bit of a tactical error. I had reckoned that I would have sufficient fuel to get from work to the local Tesco filling station, where I could make use of a "5p Off, per litre" voucher when I filled up with diesel. As you will no doubt have realized, this was wrong. Like an idiot, I chose to not only ignore that little orange fuel light on the dashboard, but I also decided that the increasingly insistent whine from the rear of the vehicle, as the fuel pump struggled to slurp up the dregs in the fuel tank, wasn't a sign of impending trouble.

About half a mile short of the filling station, the inevitable happened. Without a single warning splutter, the engine simply stopped... just as I arrived at a roundabout, in the middle of Macclesfield in evening rush-hour traffic.
Fortunately, once I'd switched on the hazard warning lights, I was able get out and direct the traffic around my stricken vehicle. With the traffic moving (comparatively) freely again, I dug out the 5 litre can of diesel that I carry, and poured the contents into the tank.

Those of you who are familiar with diesel engines will know that putting fuel in isn't normally all that is required to get the motor going again if it has run out. A tedious operation, known as "bleeding", is usually called for. The fuel feed lines to the engine are progressively uncoupled, then fuel is pumped through from the tank until air has been purged from the system and fuel is flowing freely. It's a fiddly and filthy operation, even under the best conditions, so I was very relieved when, after giving the starter motor a serious work-out, the engine burst into life.

So everything was fine again. All I had to do was drive the remaining half mile to Tesco, fill the tank and then trundle home.
That's when the burglar alarm decided to kick off.

I'd just got rolling and had merged into the traffic flow when the piercing, 120 decibel siren began screeching from the engine compartment and my hazard warning lights began pulsing like a demented disco. As I was under the illusion that the burglar alarm system had been disabled some while ago, I was rather surprised at its sudden, miraculous resurrection. I was also wishing that I had kept the little radio transponder that controls the alarm on my key ring, instead of consigning it to the bottom of a drawer in the sideboard at home.
I was forced to drive the final few miles home, accompanied by a ghastly, pulsating din, a frantic lightshow and the puzzled looks of everybody within ear-shot.
I could almost read their lips as I passed. "What does that twat in the Land Rover think he's doing..?"

So, once again. I apologise.
Furthermore, I promise to not to allow myself to run out of fuel and cause traffic mayhem in Macclesfield, and I promise to sort out the burglar alarm system on my vehicle.

Normal service will be resumed, as soon as...

2010-11-15T15:54:00.003Z

In the words of the song, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"

We're suffering from the sudden absence of internet at Cyber Mansions at the moment and it is surprising just how irksome this is. Luckily, I still have access to the web at work, but domestically, we have been hurled back in time to the 1990's. The level of inconvenience varies and is wildly subjective. Blight-of-my-life is probably most put out at being forced to start watching weather forecasts on the TV instead of getting up-to-the-minute local forecasts from the Met Office, whereas I find the severing of contact with "Steam", where I have saved positions in a number of games, pretty annoying.

The cause of our exile from the cyberspace is "Mr Belkin", the wireless modem/router. ...and before you ask, Yes, I have tried turning it off and back on again. The computer can see that it is connected to an unidentified network, but no amount of instruction manual driven behaviour has any effect.
It is bereft of life... an ex-router.

To compound the misery, the offending unit is the heart of our domestic Wi-Fi network, so this has curtailed games of "Carcassonne", which I have been playing on my iPod, against a mate of mine in London. I've also had to reorganise our printer, which would normally be networked wirelessly, so that it is temporarily shackled to the PC with a USB cable.

The one good thing about the demise of Mr Belkin is that it has forced me to make a decision to change over to Virgin Media. I'd been seriously considering changing from our current set-up of BT 'phone line and Orange ISP, but the usual, "Well, it's OK, so why bother changing?" kind of mind-set had prevented any decisive action.

So, now we wait for Sir Richard Branson's elves to come and reconnect us with the internet by the magic of optical fibre...

Sculpture: What's that all about...?

2010-11-05T21:06:00.000Z

It's often tempting to dismiss contemporary art as self-indulgent nonsense. Sometimes it seems that all that an artist has to do, is cobble together a collection of odds and ends, stick it on a plinth and then give it a pretentious name. They then just sit back and wait for some gullible sap to pay them a ludicrous sum of money for it.

In spite of the feeling that in some cases this may well be true, I actually quite enjoy seeing contemporary art.
Even if I can't shake off the suspicion that the artist is just taking the piss, sometimes the thing that they have created can be so visually arresting, beautiful or downright unsettling, that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Actually getting a really close look at a piece often reveals a level of care and detail that isn't obvious from a first impression. Yes, I enjoy looking at some of this stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Blight-of-my-life and I went to Chatsworth House, to the fifth annual "Beyond Limits" exhibition of sculpture. From mid September to the end of October, Sothebys put a selection of sculptures on display in the grounds of this stately home, so for the price of entry to the gardens you can wander around and see some outstanding bits of art in beatiful surroundings. Seeing the works set against the background of the autumn countryside was a particular treat. It didn't do any harm that we picked a brilliantly clear day either.

Here are a just a few of the pieces.

"Leftover" : By Zadok Ben-David

"Butterflies" : By Manolo Valdes

"Eve" : By Richard Hudson

If you fancy a look at some of the others, the Parwich.org site is well worth a visit..

Oh, and by the way...
...if you think that this splendid chunk of bronze looks familiar, then I'm afraid you may be as sad a case as I am.

"Cubo 1" : By Arnaldo Pomodoro

Borg Cube from Star Trek: "Resistance is futile..."

What time is it...?

2010-10-31T14:23:00.001Z

I'd like to make an appeal to all of you lucky folk who have been wallowing in the luxury of an extra hour in bed, this morning.

Spare a thought for shift workers.

Yes, it's that time of year again, when we "put the clocks back" by an hour, taking us from the balmy days of British Summer Time to the dismal gloom of Greenwich Mean Time.

Why am I asking you to consider those of us that do shift work?

Well, here's the thing.
My colleague who was working the night shift last night, began work at 23:45 and would normally finish at 08:15, eight and a half hours later.
Unfortunately for him, at 02:00, he had to put his watch back to 01:00 and do the hour between 01:00 and 02:00 for a second time. Therefore he was expected to work for nine and a half hours instead.
Obviously, if someone always works night shifts, the situation is reversed in Spring, so they work for an hour less on the shift that the clocks are changed.
Our shift pattern is not fixed, however, so there is no guarantee that the person who wins in the Spring, will be the loser in the Autumn.

To help spread the misery (or joy), all of the Jodrell Bank Telescope Controllers have a "Gentleman's Agreement" to split these problematic hours between the two people working the Night Shift and the Day Shift.

It ought to have been simple enough, you'd think.
All I had to do was, get to work in time to let my colleague go home after he had done an extra half hour. It should have been especially easy as I actually didn't have to arrive at work until half an hour later than usual, even though the clock would show it as half an hour earlier.
The trouble was, that a few years ago I had the same set of circumstances and I got it hopelessly wrong.
A miscalculation with the time I was expected to get to work, combined with a mistake setting my alarm clock (a particularly smart model, which automatically resets itself to the correct time by picking up radio signals from an atomic clock somewhere) and the net result was that arrived at work one and a half hours early.
I really didn't want to witness for a second time, the complex and infuriating mixture of glee and pity that passed across my colleague's face when he realized what I'd managed to do.

This time it would be different..
I'd set the clock correctly. I knew when I was supposed to get up. I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. Blight of-my-life had double-checked the calculations. There was no way I was going to get caught out again.

Unfortunately, the brilliantly hi-tech radio-linked, bloody clock failed to pick up the radio signal that should have told it to change to GMT, and it woke me up an hour earlier than I'd intended, at five o'clock.

Next time I need to work out what time it is, I shall ask a man (and I use the term in its loosest sense) who knows.

Ready when you are, Eccles...

Another close call

2010-10-18T20:28:00.003+01:00

It's been an unusually fruitful week for "Good News" stories.

The dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners after ten weeks trapped half a mile underground was as impressive as it was unexpected.

I've lost count of the number of times the news has featured stories of groups of miners, from China to Canada, who have perished following some underground catastrophe. Even when the stranded workers have been detected and are known to be alive, launching any kind of rescue or even establishing an emergency supply of food and water simply takes too long. The signs of life dwindle and the silence grows until all hope fades, the inevitable press statement is delivered and the pit-head crowds disperse.

This time it was different. The men, who I was sure wouldn't survive, confounded expectations and all came back from the darkness.

Somewhat closer to home, I've just found out that my nephew Dan had a rather close call last November.
He's a medic in the Royal Army Medical Corp and has been serving in Afghanistan. While on patrol in Helmand Province, his group were ambushed by insurgents and took some casualties.
I can barely imagine what it must have been like, but in spite of sustained enemy fire, Dan and another of his team were carrying out an emergency tracheotomy on a wounded comrade, attempting to restore his airway. During the course of this technically demanding surgical procedure, Dan's helmet was hit by enemy gunfire.
A bullet punched through the front of his helmet and out through the back. Astonishingly, the bullet passed close enough to the side of his head to scorch a furrow through his hair without breaking the skin.
In spite of this, he carried on with the operation until they were able to get the wounded man airlifted out of the combat zone.

You can read the newspaper article on the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph website

For his courage whilst carrying out emergency surgery under such extraordinarily perilous conditions, Dan has been awarded the Military Cross.
This honour is granted in recognition of "an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land".

There is a sad post-script to this story.
In spite of all Dan's efforts, the injured soldier subsequently died of his wounds.
Sometimes it seems there's just not enough good luck to go round.

...and it was all going so well

2010-10-05T02:08:00.005+01:00

A few days ago, I decided that I'd post an update on the state of my model railway. OK, it's fair to admit that there hasn't been a lot of progress since I last mentioned it, but I had, at long last, got all the track stuck down.

I had got power to all sections of the layout and successfully run a locomotive over the whole thing. I'd even been tempted to video this, but had decided to wait until I had all the points wired up so that we wouldn't have "Hand of God" intruding into scene to operate the points when the engine was directed into a siding.

Before fitting the point motors, I realized that if I wasn't going to make it really difficult to route some of the wiring, I needed to make an extra access hole in the baseboard beneath the upper level. So I got out the power drill and a 19mm spade bit to bore some holes that would allow me to get the pad-saw in and cut a nice, hand-sized hole.

When the drill bit broke through on the first hole, I discovered an unpleasant design flaw in my grand scheme.

The drill bit burst through rather abruptly and overshot into the underside of the upper level. If it had just buried itself into the undersurface it wouldn't have been so bad. Instead of that, it simply knocked the whole upper layer off, leaving it dangling by the hideously mangled section of track spanning the gap which will, in due course, have a bridge across it.

This was a bit of a surprise.

I'd made a really good job of glueing the upper level to little wooden pillars and I've never had a problem with Evostick woodworking adhesive before. It sticks like shi... Well, let's just say it's very effective at sticking things together.
The problem wasn't that the glue had failed, it was the wretched MDF board. The surface had simply torn away from the body of the board. The cohesive strength of Medium Density Fibre board must be feeble. It's probably harder to tear the skin off a rice pudding.

I should have used plywood.

So, a bit of a set-back.
I've cut away the wrecked section of track and will be replacing it when I've worked out how to prevent a similar MDF failure happening if I have another visit from Mr Hamfisted.

Where are you now, Isambard Kingdom Brunel?

Woodwork

2010-09-17T18:41:00.000+01:00

When I was a kid, my parents had just one wardrobe. I don't suppose it was particularly large, as wardrobes go, but to me it seemed enormous.
It was a great, looming wooden thing and although it wasn't terribly wide, the single door at the front made it appear somewhat taller than it was.

The wardrobe was covered in a pale, wood veneer and there were some carved bits of decoration framing the door. But the most intriguing thing about this piece of furniture was the curious pattern adorning the slightly curved face of the door. Worked into the veneer was a pale abstract pattern similar to an oak leaf. It was just the sort of pattern that could start to look like anything if you stared at it for long enough; a bird, a face, a monster...

As I grew up, I never really gave a lot of thought to the work that had gone into that pattern, although at some point I must have realized that it hadn't been an original feature and that it must have been something that my Dad had done. The glorious smoothness of the finish was typical of the care that he lavished on any of the wood-work that he produced.
Certainly your eye could be snared by the strangely ragged outline of this pale feature, but your fingertips would never detect any irregularity in the silky surface texture.
So it was clearly his handiwork, but the mystery remained as to why he'd created such an odd pattern.

The truth was that my Dad didn't actually choose the shape that was incised into what should have been an unblemished panel.

In 1940, my parents hadn't been married for very long and they were living in the East End of London. When The Blitz began in September of that year, they were just another couple of Londoners trying to survive the remorseless, nightly bombardments.
When the air-raid sirens sounded they retreated in the darkness to an Anderson Shelter and hoped for the best, as the bombs fell and the fires burned.
They were lucky. The house that they were living in wasn't destroyed, but during one particular night, the blast from a nearby explosion sent a shock wave through the house that toppled that mighty wardrobe onto the rail at the foot of their bed, gouging a huge hole in the pristine surface of its door.

As wartime newlyweds, my parents didn't have lot. That wardrobe was one of the few items of furniture that they owned and there was certainly no way that they could afford to replace it.

So my Dad repaired it.
He patched the hole with wood filler, sanded it smooth and revarnished the door until the whole thing was better than new.

As it's the Seventieth Anniversary of the start of The Blitz, there's quite a lot of stuff in the media commemorating the events that took place and how they shaped our world.
There are countless stories of heroism or folly, of dreadful loss or extraordinary good fortune, and yet to me, the image of my Dad repairing that wardrobe represents the quiet determination of so many of the people who lived through the Second World War.

It's curtains...

2010-09-07T22:52:00.001+01:00

Bearing in mind that I've just returned to work after a couple of weeks holiday, you could be forgiven for expecting me to be relaxed and full of mellow good will. Unfortunately, instead of an uplifting and whimsical post about all the lovely things "wot we did on our holidays", I'm going to subject you to a brief rant about dry cleaning.

[Oh dear... Where's everybody gone?]

We don't normally have much need for the services of dry cleaners, but after a lot of muttering and deliberating about whether to ignore the fabric care label on the living room curtains, Blight-of-my-life decided it would be more sensible to get them dry cleaned than risk bunging them in the washing machine.
After a few 'phone calls, it became clear that there is a surprisingly wide variation in the cost of getting curtains cleaned. To make things slightly more complicated, some shops quote for cleaning by weight of material, while others quote based on the size of the curtains per square metre.

After a only a brief struggle, the curtains were down, weighed and measured. A few calculations on the back of an envelope and it became obvious that the best deal could be had at one particular shop as long as the cleaning was priced by the square metre.

The curtains were duly bundled into the car, then while I suffered the mind numbing tedium of washing all the curtain hooks, runners and rails, Blight sped off to the dry cleaner's.

When she returned, she was not happy.
"Well, that was a complete waste of time."
"Why? What went wrong?"
"I've had to bring 'em back. They're still in the car"
"But why? Why wouldn't they clean them?"
"They couldn't take them because their computer's not working."
"What? I didn't realize that the cleaning was computer controlled..."
"It's nothing to do with the cleaning. It's the computer they use to calculate the cost of cleaning that's faulty."
"Couldn't they just work it out with a pencil and paper, like you did? Or even a calculator... It's only multiplying the area of the curtains by the cost per square metre, isn't it?"
"That's what I told them," she said, "but apparently they have to use the computer to do that. They're incapable of calculating area"
"But that's completely stupid."
"It's worse than that. They said they'd give me a price to clean them by weight. They weighed them and quoted me forty quid more than it would be by area."
"Bloody hell... No wonder you brought them back."

So there you have it.
A shop staffed by people who cannot multiply two lengths together to work out the area of a curtain.

Not all the muppets live on Sesame Street...

A killer in the bushes

2010-08-15T22:38:00.001+01:00

You see this pretty yellow flower?

Lovely isn't it?

It's a plant that grows all year round, but it looks at its best around now when the flowers are fully in bloom. At this time of year you sometimes see quite large clumps of it in fields or decorating the roadside verges.

It's called ragwort...

...and it's very bad news indeed.

Ragwort is poisonous and represents a major health risk to livestock in general and horses in particular. It contains an alkaloid that, once ingested, remains in the body. Sufficient accumulations of this poison can lead to blindness and liver failure. Even if ragwort has been cut down, the poison remains in the dead plant material so it is still toxic. The only safe way to dispose of it is to burn it.

I'm delighted to report that the Highways Department of our County Council (Cheshire East) are very good at dealing with ragwort. Every August they seem to have a blitz on it and you can see them digging it up and taking it away to be burnt. If everyone else made a similar effort, we might stand a better chance of eliminating scenes like this.

This image is from the World Horse Welfare website, where there's more information on how to help eliminate this lethal weed.

Another way to confuse chuggers

2010-07-31T07:39:00.000+01:00

I'm not a great fan of "chuggers". Although they almost always make extraordinary efforts to be polite and cheerful, there is something rather unpleasant about being waylaid by an earnest young person clutching a clip-board, who tries to engage you in a conversation as a prelude to signing up to donate to their good cause.

It is not a job that I would want to do.
I'm sure that spending the day being ignored, avoided or abused must be a soul destroying experience. Not only are these people less welcome on a busy shopping street than that bloke miming getting out of a glass box, but they have to wear a hideous tabard as well.
I don't like what they have to do for a living but I have some sympathy for their situation, so I don't consider it fair to be rude or unpleasant if I get tagged

There are much better ways of making an encounter with a charity mugger a joyful experience, as I discovered yesterday afternoon.

I was strolling along one of the busier pedestrianised streets of Macclesfield.
I had just been to the library and as I had forgotten to take a bag with me, I had an armful of books.
I spotted the chuggers in the distance and as I got closer, it occurred to me that the largest book that I was carrying was a similar size to the clip-boards that the sales team were armed with.
I had an idea.

One of the team was right in front of me, but instead of veering away and using traditional evasive tactics, I caught his eye and headed straight towards him.
Before he had a chance to open his mouth, I stepped up and said,
"Hi.", then pointing at the book I was carrying, said "would you like to buy this?"
He hesitated, taken off-guard.
"Er... No. No thanks."
"OK. Sorry to have bothered you."
I nodded farewell and before he had a chance to work out what had gone wrong, I walked on.

Sometimes it's the little things that make life worth living.

I write like...

2010-07-22T21:27:00.000+01:00

One of the good folk who follow this blog (thanks again, Mean Queen) was very complimentary about my writing style recently, so when East of North drew my attention to the "I Write Like" site, I thought I'd see what it came up with.

"I Write Like" is a site which claims to determine which author's style your own writing most resembles. All you have to do is cut and paste a chunk of text into the space provided, then click on the "Analyze" button for it to give you its verdict.

"Jolly good," I thought, "I'll try my most recent blog post and see what it makes of that."
As you can imagine, I was really pleased to discover that I write like Douglas Adams.

I write like
Douglas Adams

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Naturally, I wondered if it would give the same answer for other samples from the blog so I submitted another post for scrutiny.
This time I was likened to James Joyce.
"James Joyce! Blimey, how cool is that!", I thought.

Then it all went downhill.

A couple more posts were offered up for analysis and to my dismay they revealed that their style matched that of Dan Brown.
My dreams of being a literary giant were well and truly punctured.

Then, just for a laugh, I analyzed a business document that I had written and the result was...
disturbing.

Let me put it this way. If you were a manager and received a document that had been written in the style of the man described by Stephen King as "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.", how do you think you would react?

Yes, I write like H. P. Lovecraft.

Rarer than a Solar Eclipse

2010-07-19T15:30:00.000+01:00

I quite often have to remind people that I am not an astronomer.
This is probably a less familiar disclaimer than "I am not a lawyer..." or "I am not a doctor...", but it is something that I need to say every so often, because there is a reasonable expectation that somebody who sits at the controls of the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank must be an astronomer.
It may surprise you, but employing an astronomer as a Controller to operate the Lovell Radio Telescope has traditionally been discouraged.
The reasoning behind this seemingly bizarre policy, is that you want the people who are operating the telescope to be focussed on the wellbeing of the instrument rather than the research that is being carried out.
For example. Someone who is keen to complete a particular astronomical observation might be reluctant to stop observing even though the strength of the wind has risen to a point where the structure could suffer irreperable damage.

In spite of not being an astronomer I do need to know some astronomy and so I have to refer to "The Astronomical Almanac". This is published each year and contains a vast array of data concerning the behaviour of the Sun, Moon, the Planets and Pluto, as well as coordinates of many different types of stars and galaxies.
Amongst the phenomena that are listed are any eclipses of the Sun or Moon and where they can be observed on the Earth's surface. I used to think that solar eclipses were pretty unusual but since I started working as a Telescope Controller, I've discovered that they happen comparatively often. Two years ago there were two total eclipses of the Sun, last year there was one, and if you were on The Cook Islands, Polynesia or the southern tip of South America just over a week ago you would have been ideally place to experience the phenomenon.

Something that is far rarer than an eclipse is getting all six Telescope Controllers together at the same time. For safe operation of our telescopes it is essential that there is always a Controller on duty, for every hour of every day of the year. This, of course means that on any day, three Controllers will be covering the eight hour shifts while the remaining three will be on rest days or on leave.

In the ten years that I've been doing the job I had never seen more than four Controllers in the same room at the same time, but last Thursday we finally managed to get the full set.

...and here's the proof.

They said it couldn't be done...

The family curse

2010-07-07T04:35:00.001+01:00

Yes. I can reveal that our family is beset by a dreadful curse.

We seem powerless to resist the siren call of the bass guitar.

OK, it can't compete with the Hound of the Baskervilles, but there is something vaguely unsettling about the way it follows us.
It shows no respect for either age or gender and it can strike without warning at any time.

The first victim was the elder of my two brothers. He played bass in a group in Worcestershire around the end of the 1960s. As far as I can remember, they stuck together for a couple of years playing functions and some local clubs, although I never saw them play. I do remember the guitar he had though, a rather pleasing Hofner Blonde semi-acoustic.

It was several years after my brother had stopped playing that I fell under the spell. A friend of mine decided that a smart way to supplement our meagre wages would be to form a dance band. As we were living near Torquay at the time, he reckoned it would be a doddle to get some gigs during the tourist season. I had played acoustic guitar in folk clubs for several years, but I'd never considered playing in a band before, so I was quite surprised when he suggested that I join him. I probably could have resisted if he hadn't said the one thing guaranteed to sucker me in.
"You'd look great playing bass", he said, and I fell for it.

At the end of that summer, the band broke up and we went our separate ways. I moved to Cheshire and although I kept the Fender Jazz copy that had served me so well, it was exiled to the loft.
It seemed that I had shaken off the curse.

Then another member of the family was ensnared. This time it was the daughter of my other brother. The curse had somehow skipped a generation, missing him but catching my niece instead.
To make matters worse, at around this time I was lured out of retirement by a work-mate who was learning to play the guitar and needed someone to play with. I retrieved my bass from the loft and discovered how much I'd missed playing it. I began practicing again. I bought a Rickenbacker 4003. I was invited to join a band. We played a few gigs. We split up. I joined another band...

...and we're still gigging.

A few of days ago, it was my eldest brother's birthday, so I 'phoned him for a bit of a chat.
It turns out that he's just got hold of another bass guitar and has started playing again.
After all these years of lying dormant, the curse has re-awakened and caught up with him.
He's just turned sixty-nine.

Happy Birthday mate!

England Football Team .v. Nightflight

2010-06-24T23:37:00.000+01:00

Well that's a bit unfortunate.

In a major upset, England's abysmally under performing football team have somehow managed not to get eliminated from the next stage of the FIFA World Cup.

Their failure to get beaten by Slovenia yesterday has put them into the knock-out stages of the tournament where their next game will be against Germany at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

This is a cruel bit of scheduling, as it means that the game will take place at the same time as my band will be on stage, playing at the Langley Village Fete...

"Nightflight" make a desperate attempt to cheer up disappointed football fans...

...while the sun shines

2010-06-21T03:46:00.001+01:00

We had our hay baled yesterday evening.

The weather has been very cooperative this year, so we haven't had the usual stress of the grass being mowed then watching it laying in the field as a succession of rain storms sweep in and soak it.
Glumly fretting as the sodden crop fails to dry sufficently for it to be baled seems to have become an almost inevitable part of our summer.

This year we've been luckier. The grass was cut in the middle of last week and although we had a bit of a shower on Friday, the sun and a fresh breeze had dried it enough for it to be ready to bale today.

I quite enjoy haymaking.

The weather is generally pretty balmy and because you know you're taking part in a successful harvest, it's a genuinely "feel good" event.
We don't have an enormous amount to gather in, so even though manhandling the bales involves much more physical effort than I'm normally used to these days, it never takes so long that the novelty wears off.

... and as I usually get to drive the Land Rover with the trailer, I cunningly avoid most of the heavy lifting.

"'Ello, I wish to register a complaint..."

2010-06-12T20:33:00.000+01:00

It's funny the things that you take for granted.

There was a time when it was pretty hard work to get satisfaction from a retailer if the goods that you had bought were faulty.
If you took something back to a shop, you could generally expect scepticism and even outright hostility from the shop assistant for daring to return an item that had been unfit for purpose.
Getting your money back was often next to impossible even if you had a receipt, the original packaging and the bag that the assistant had put he wretched thing in when you bought it.

The phrase "The customer is always right", was a hollow sham.

I have a feeling that it was this environment and the recognition of the helplessness of shoppers that made Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch" such a perfect creation.
In those dark days before The Trades Descriptions Act, anyone who had ever bought something that was a dud could sympathise with Mr Praline (John Cleese) as he struggled to get satisfaction from the pet-shop owner (Michael Palin).

Thankfully things are much more sensible these days, so the trip to Tesco's to return a pack of five pairs of underpants, was completely stress-free.
The amount that the first pair had shrunk when they went through the wash was obvious when compared with an unworn pair, so the lady at the Customer Service desk didn't hesitate to offer a refund and an apology for the inconvenience

The only difficulty I had during the encounter, was resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to put on a hilariously amusing, high-pitched voice as I explained the problem.

Oh... all right then.... here's that sketch again.

Heroes with an ASBO... and a BAFTA too

2010-06-07T15:16:00.000+01:00

Last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see that "Misfits", which I quietly raved about a few months back, had not only managed to get a BAFTA nomination but actually won the award for the Best TV Drama Series.

Considering that they were up against such quality, BBC productions as "Spooks", "Being Human" and "The Street", this is not a trivial achievement.

When the series was originally broadcast, it didn't seem to get a lot of attention. I don't know whether this was due to the misconception that, in the wake of "Smallville" and "Heroes", it was just another super-hero series, or simply that it was shown on "E4" and so a little less obvious in the TV schedules. Whatever the reason was for this apparent lack of interest, I started to feel as if I was the only person who was following the exploits of the delinquent characters as they tried to come to terms with the powers that had been inflicted on them.

None of the characters were immediately likeable and some were so abrasive, objectionable or just plain creepy, that it was quite uncomfortable to watch. These were the sort of young people who, if they got onto your bus, you'd want to move to a seat as far from them as possible.

The super-powers that the characters were lumbered with by the deliberately cliche "Strange Electrical Storm" were nothing we hadn't seen before, and yet the way that the bewildered recipients of these unwelcome talents came to terms with them was entirely fresh. Another master stroke was not revealing the nature of some of the abilities, until well into the series.

After each episode I found myself thinking, "Blimey! That was good... they can't possibly keep this up."
But they did keep it up. Right to the very end of the final episode.

...and now I've discovered that there's second series coming in November.

Excellent.

...we certainly were

2010-06-04T11:50:00.000+01:00

I've just noticed the strap line on the poster for "2012"

Yes, we were warned...

...but I still wasted over two hours watching it.

I should have listened to Dr Kermode

2010-05-30T13:50:00.005+01:00

If I was ever deluded enough to think I could become a contestant on 'Mastermind', one of my most likely choices for specialist subject would be "The End Of Civilization As We Know It, as depicted in popular works of fiction".

I've been keen on this type of story ever since I first read a tattered paperback copy of "The Day of The Triffids" that I found in the loft when I was about ten years old. It made me realize that there was a lot about my cosy life that I took for granted and while it was unlikely that we were in imminent danger of being over-run by carnivorous vegetables, "things could go wrong".
Since then, my world has been destroyed many times over, by various agencies. Alien invasion, polar ice-caps melting, global virus pandemic, asteroid impact and nuclear apocalypse. Anything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. And it's all been jolly entertaining too.

...until we get to "2012", which we watched the other night.

"2012" is a film from Roland Emmerich which must have sounded like a wonderful idea when they pitched it.
"Well it's about the end of the world, y'see. The earth's core goes wrong and there's like, earthquakes all over and cities slide into the sea and skyscrapers fall down and trains explode and the US President is very brave (and the Queen of England isn't) and more stuff blows up and planes fly through collapsing office buildings and then some guy saves his family from falling down a crack in the earth and ocean going liners capsize and even more stuff explodes and there's all these tidal waves and...and.....and.... more shit blows up. Oh and did I mention the President being brave?..."

This is a film with everything falling down and blowing up and drowning and burning that somehow manages to be dull. How on earth have they done that?
It is a movie that is so packed with CGI special effects that there's no space for anything else.

Is there a plot? Well, yes there is, but it's barely more than a flimsy thread from which hang an endless sequence of CGI set-pieces.
Are the characters believable? No. The actors in this film are little more than cyphers. Let's see what we've got. Heroic, but estranged father? Check! Russian crime lord? Check! Prostitute with a heart of gold? Check! Doomed scientists who weren't listened to when they warned us about what was going on? Check! Tibetan monks? Check! Plucky pet dog? Check!

Is it possible to care about anyone in the story? No. Once your single-parent family man has saved his children from the umpteenth computer generated and utterly unconvincing earthquake/tidal wave/exploding aircraft/collapsing shopping mall, you get a bit jaded. Even though the world is supposedly falling to bits, it's difficult to work up any sympathy for characters who are so obviously not in any real peril.
I felt that there should have been a disclaimer, similar to that of The American Humane Association at the end of the film , stating "No stunt persons were endangered during the making of this motion picture."
When a CGI aircraft flies through a collapsing CGI building in "2012", absolutely nobody is going to get hurt. When stunt pilot, Frank Tallman flew a twin engined Beechcraft 18 through a roadside advertising billboard in the film "It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world", there was every chance that he was going to get injured. It's a genuinely breathtaking and audacious piece of work.

To sum up. "2012" is a disaster movie and yet the level of disappointment that such an apparently thrilling spectacle actually delivers is well summed up in the BBFC consumer advice : "Contains moderate threat and one use of strong language".
It's supposed to be the end of the world, for crying out loud. I'd expect something more than "moderate threat".

When Mark Kermode reviewed this film, he went into full rant mode about how poor this film is.
I should have listened...

Frank Tallman (1919 - 1978)

The clip, showing this astonishing bit of flying is no longer available through YouTube, as MGM have blocked it.

End to End Frank: Day 10: Wednesday 26th May

2010-05-27T01:50:00.001+01:00

Well, He's done it!

At quarter past nine this evening, Frank reached John O'Groats after a covering a total distance of 925 miles since last Monday

His last day on the road was another outstanding effort.
As he set off, at 6:30 this morning, it was raining. His first message was pretty downbeat: "psng dn! cold wet hungry. Not happy", but half an hour later, things were starting to look up. As he cleared Slochd Summit at 1328 feet above sea-level he could see that there was a break in the clouds ahead of him.

When he reached Inverness, he stoked up with coffee and a big, fatty breakfast in the warmth of the cafe at Morrison's. He admitted that the fat probably wouldn't be helpful, but it certainly felt good.
At a little after 3 pm he passed Dornoch and turned North-East for the final push towards Wick. With the wind almost behind him he was beginning to believe that he could make it to the finish before nightfall.

As Frank forged onwards, I went out to rehearse with my band. While we were setting up the gear, a text arrived from Wick, and at 9:15 the news came through that he had finally made it to John O'Groats.

When I 'phoned him, after our rehearsal had finished, he had already cycled back to Wick!
He was staying at a small hotel and was about to find the bar, so I didn't want to detain him for too long. He sounded understandably happy and thanked everyone who has been following his exploits for their support.

Of course doing the ride was the easy bit.
Now he's got to collect the sponsorship money...

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End to End Frank: Day 9

2010-05-26T01:37:00.001+01:00

Contrary to what the date of this post would have you believe, this concerns Frank's progress on Tuesday 25th May 2010.

I'm working a series of Night Shifts this week, so as I was arriving home from work, Frank will have been doing his stretching excercises and psyching himself up for another day in the saddle. Suffice to say, I was fast asleep when the first of his texts came through from Perth, at about 11:20 am.

His next message marked the completion of 700 miles as follows:
"£7 rs sore! Legs OK. Right ankle going down... no up... no down. Oh yeah, it's on a pedal. Got caught talking to myself in Perth...."

By the time I'd woken up, at about 2:30 this afternoon, a third text had arrived announcing that there was less than 200 miles to go before he reached John O'Groats.

Another five hours and he had reached Aviemore, with views of snow on the mountains.

The last update of the day was from somewhere about 20 miles short of Inverness. He had found a pleasant spot to camp in a forest and was settling in for the night having covered 122miles. The roads had been good, but for a lot of the distance the wind hadn't been too favourable, so it had knocked down has average speed for the day to less than 13 mph.

He sounds as if he is in pretty good shape and with just* 140 miles left, it would take a something pretty serious to prevent him achieving his goal.

To quote Reallyfatbloke, "Franktastic".

* I can't believe I used the phrase "just 140 miles left"

End to End Frank: Day 8

2010-05-25T02:34:00.003+01:00

It was suspiciously quiet this morning.

There were no text messages from our intrepid cyclist and I was starting to wonder whether he'd had some kind of crisis. Even though he's already broken the back of the journey, there are still several hundred miles to go before he gets to John O'Groats.
Certainly it seems increasingly likely that he will complete the challenge, but it cannot be taken for granted.

By late afternoon, there was still no news until, shortly after five o'clock, I got a text to say that he had made it to Edinburgh. It also said that it was raining.
Although it was tempting to tell him how the weather was still warm and sunny down here in England, I decided that this would probably not be terribly welcome.

The last update of the day came through at 7:20 pm, as Frank crossed the Forth Road Bridge. I assume that the rain had stopped as I'm pretty sure he'd have mentioned it, had it still been falling.

It was particularly thoughtful of him to give me the opportunity to include a picture of the two Forth Bridges.
Cheers Mate.

Special Note:

Although this post is dated Tuesday 25th May, it actually refers to Monday 24th.
It's a shift work thing.

End to End Frank: Day 7

2010-05-23T23:32:00.002+01:00

So after a night's rest at the campsite in Scorton, Frank set off again along the A6 near Lancaster.
At just after noon, I got a text informing me that he'd reached Shap and had therefore clocked up five hundred miles. The next message was less encouraging.

When my mobile bleated to announce another incoming text, it read; "Lying in field. Everything hurts. Birds circling overhead. I think they're crows. I've seen too many films not to know I'm doomed!"

I decided that I should adopt a positive motivational tone and responded with, "Errr... Sounds grim. Drink beer."

I think he must have taken my advice, because about three hours later he reported in from a campsite at Ecclefechan, with the news that he'd covered 102 miles today.
The climb at Shap had clearly been a major effort though, and it will have had a significant effect on the average speed for the day, which was a mere 11mph.

These aren't crows...

End to End Frank: Day 6

2010-05-22T23:27:00.000+01:00

Once again, the first text message of the day arrived as I was having breakfast.
Frank was just setting off, but he wasn't expecting to make huge progress, as his ankles had swollen up. This was not encouraging news, because it was trouble with his achilles tendons that put paid to his previous attempt on this route. He reckoned he'd just aim for Preston and see how it went.

By the time I'd driven to Worcestershire and arrived at the rehearsal studio, there were two more messages.
The first was timed at 10:41, marking the passing of the 400 mile point, while the second had been sent from Wigan at 13:22. Not such dreadful progress then.
The drummer I was rehearsing with was very sympathetic, as he'd done the same journey some years ago. He said that he'd never quite got over how when he'd reached Scotland, there was so much further left to go. I decided not to pass this depressing thought on to Frank.

By the time our rehearsal was over and we'd been for some refreshment at "The Plough" in Pershore, Frank had reached the campsite at Scorton where he will be spending tonight.

As I drove the hundred miles homeward, back up the M6, I struggled to get my head round the fact that for the last few days, Frank has been repeatedly covering the same distance on a bike.

Extraordinary.

Scorton

End to End Frank: Day 5

2010-05-21T23:53:00.001+01:00

I got a text message from Frank as I was having breakfast.
The gist of it was that he'd made it to Biddulph Moor and would be having the rest of the day off.
OK, he was going to spend some of the time fettling his bike to make sure it was in tip-top shape for the second (long) half of the expedition, but at least it would be a day out of the saddle and a chance to recover in the comfort of his own home.

I decided to nip into Jodrell and pick up some mail. I had a quick chat with a couple of colleagues in the Control Room, collected my post and headed back to the car park.

Just as I was about to leave, Frank rolled up in his car.
He looked surprisingly fit for someone who's just cycled about 400 miles in 4 days. When I asked him what made him abandon trying to make it home yesterday, he confessed that he'd been getting pretty hungry at about six o'clock, so he'd stopped at a pub for a meal. It would have been rude not to have a beer while he was waiting for his fish pie to arrive, so he had a pint. It was very good. It was so good, in fact that he decided it would be much more sensible to have another beer and camp for the night, rather than over-exert himself.

So tomorrow he's off again, heading towards the wilds of Lancashire.
I, on the other hand, will be driving in the opposite direction, as I'm going to Worcestershire, to spend several hours in a studio in Pershore in "Prog Monster" mode, so the Twitter updates may be a bit few and far between.

End to End Frank: Day 4

2010-05-20T23:33:00.001+01:00

Details of Frank's progress were a bit sketchy today, but the first news that arrived was at about 10:30 this morning, announcing that he was leaving Monmouthshire and heading into Herefordshire.

When I texted my congratulations at escaping from Wales, his response was that he hadn't escaped, but had been thrown out of the country for smelling like he'd been sleeping in the corner of a field.

I was in the Stockport branch of PC World when his next meassage arrived, and it was a request to check the distance from Shrewsbury to Biddulph Moor. I made a quick 'phone call home and after a swift bit of Googling, Blight-of-my-life had the information Frank needed.
If he was going to make it home to the luxury of a night's sleep in his own bed, he would need to do about 20 miles to get to Shrewsbury and then a further 50 miles to Biddulph Moor. This seemed like a bit of a tall order to me, but he reckoned that he'd give it try.

Half an hour later, I received another text message that simply said "£3", to inform anyone who is sponsoring him at a penny a mile, that they now owe three quid. (I make that 300 miles, mathematics fans)

The final message of the day was just before 9:00 pm, announcing that he'd run out of steam at Hopton near Stafford and was camping in yet another field.

Sleep well...

End to End Frank: Day 3

2010-05-19T21:55:00.000+01:00

First I need to tell you that neither of the alternatives I had given for Frank's fate at the end of yesterday were correct. The good news is that he wasn't eaten by the Beast of Bodmin Moor, but the bad news is that the campsite that I had suggested was so far off his route that it was completely inappropriate.
Rather than traipse off into the wilds of East Worlington, he found a secluded spot in a field somewher near Crediton and did a bit of "stealth camping".

According to his first message of the day, it started raining at about three in the morning, so it was pretty wet until around about eleven o'clock and progress along the A361 was comparatively slow. To make matters worse, all the campsites that he had failed to find the night before seemed to have maliciously re-located themselves.
He passed dozens of them before he'd reached Bridgewater.

At around about four o'clock in the afternoon, he was still close to Weston super Mare, so I fully expected him to find somewhere suitable to camp just South of Bristol.

Yet again I was wrong.
Shortly before nine o'clock, I got a text announcing his arrival at Chepstow, so he has not only blown through Bristol, but he has crossed the mighty Severn Estuary.
I am very impressed.

End to End Frank: Day 2

2010-05-18T23:53:00.002+01:00

Well it appears that today has gone rather well.

I've no idea what time it was when Frank set off from his campsite this morning, but his first text message came in at shortly after 9:30 as he passed Camborne.
By 1:30pm, he had made it as far as Bodmin Moor, but the best news was just a couple of hours later, when a text arrived announcing that the first hundred miles had been completed.

As he approached Okehampton, he began looking for a suitable campsite for the night but was thwarted several times by misleading signposts, so he decided that a better approach would be to nip into the Tourist Information Office in the town and see if they could direct him to a suitable site. Rather predictably, he arrived at the Office shortly after it had closed for the day.

Luckily the "Cyberkim Tourist Advisory Service" was still open for business, so he 'phoned me and asked if I could have a quick look on-line for somewhere suitable to stop for the night. I found what looks like a reasonable place in East Worlington, near Crediton and gave him their telephone number. As I've heard nothing else since then, I am assuming that the campsite was suitable and that he is now safely tucked up in his tent, dreaming of the next 900 miles.

...unless he's been eaten by the Beast of Bodmin Moor.

End to End Frank: Day 1

2010-05-17T23:47:00.002+01:00

Frank has texted a couple of progress reports today as he started his attempt to ride from Lands End to John O'Groats.
It doesn't sound as if the endeavour has started terribly well.

At some point during the train journey down to Penzance, some kids fell onto the enormous parcel that contained the component parts of his bicycle and some kind of damage was inflicted on the lever that operates the rear gear mechanism.
Although Frank is carrying the tools he expected to need to re-assemble and maintain the bike, it sounds as if the damage would have been easier to sort out with a more comprehensive toolkit.

Nevertheless, it seems that after a couple of hours of bodging, the gear change mechanism "sort of works" and Frank has made it from Penzance down to the tip of the country. Hopefully, he'll be getting a good night's sleep at the campsite somewhere near Sennan.

View Larger Map

On yer bike, Frank!... again.

2010-05-14T12:58:00.003+01:00

Around about this time last year Frank, one of our electricians at Jodrell Bank, made an attempt at cycling from Lands End to John O'Groats. Unfortunately, it didn't go well.

At something like a thousand miles, this ride from one end of the country to the other is an ambitious undertaking. It's not for the faint-hearted, the unfit or the under-prepared and even then, things can conspire to make what is already a difficult challenge into an impossible one. I don't know what the final straw was that ultimately made Frank admit defeat somewhere near Bristol, but he was clearly pretty dejected by the experience when he returned to work, muttering about rain, wind and achilles tendons.

This year, he's having another crack at it.

Once again, as if it wasn't already a seriously tough proposition, he's doing it solo with no support crew and carrying a tent and camping equipment.

He's travelling to Penzance by train this Monday, carrying a large parcel that is absolutely not a bicycle and he expects to arrive at about tea time.
Once he's assembled his bike from the kit of parts that are in the large cardboard box, he'll head down to the starting point at Lands End, take the obligatory photograph and then get back onto the A30 and begin the long trek northwards.
Once he leaves Cornwall, his planned route is as follows:

A30 to Tedburn St Mary (just shy of Exeter)
North to Crediton
Tiverton
Taunton
Bridgewater
Bristol
M48 Severn Bridge
Chepstow
Monmouth
Hereford
Leominster
Ludlow
Shrewsbury
Market Drayton
Newcastle under Lyme
Biddulph Moor - for night at home and reorganise luggage in preparation for long days in Scottish mountains without supplies.
Congleton
Jodrell Bank - to allow work colleagues to make encouraging and supportive comments (unlikely) or to make tasteless remarks about his lycra shorts and attempt to hide bricks in his saddle-bag (much more likely)
Knutsford
Warrington
Wigan
Preston
Lancaster
Kendal
Penrith
Carlisle
Lockerbie
Moffat
Biggar
Penicuik
Edinburgh
A90 Forth Road Bridge
Dunfermline
Kinross
Perth
Pitlochry (unless he's feeling really good in which case Blaigowrie and A93 through Caingorms)
A9 Inverness
Tain
A9 to John O'Groats

Just to apply a bit more pressure, Frank is off on this jaunt to raise money through sponsorship, for the Douglas Macmillan Hospice; a local, independent, registered charity who care for people (and their families) suffering from cancer and other terminal illnesses.
You can learn more about them at www.dmhospice.org.uk

So, if you should see him as he wends his way up the country, please give him a cheery wave and try not to knock him off his bike.

I'm going to suggest that if he want's to make it even more difficult he could try doing it on this bike.

Western Digital Passport: Let's really annoy our customers

2010-05-11T12:13:00.000+01:00

It's very tempting to go off into a massive rant about this, but I'll do my best to stay calm...

I've just bought an external hard drive to use as a backup for data files.
I decided to get a Western Digital Passport.
It looked like it would be ideal. At 640Gb, it has a reasonable capacity for our requirements and it simply plugs into a USB socket on the PC. As far as the PC is concerned, it just looks like another hard disc drive, so you can just transfer the files you want to back up across to it with Explorer.
So far so good.

I plugged it in, the PC did all the "looking for suitable driver" business and everything was proceeding swimmingly.
Then it installed the "WD Smartware"...

WD Smartware is the Western Digital software that manages the backing up of files and, as such, it is a fine concept. As far as I can tell, it monitors the files on your PC and backs up any that have changed since they were last backed up. Even if the Passport isn't plugged into the PC, the software lurks in the background somehow and carries on looking for stuff that is overdue for saving.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to this seemingly sensible data security scheme. The WD Smartware appears to have clobbered the performance of my PC.
Bearing in mind that I didn't want a foolproof backup regime, simply needing an external drive where I could save data independent of the main computer, this is really very annoying.
If I'd wanted to have software on my computer that slows everything down and prevents me from getting the performance I expect, I'm sure there are hordes of miscreants who would be only too happy to infect my machine with a helpful virus or other malware. I didn't need to pay Western Digital for the privelege of having them cripple my PC.

I'm not the only person that is suffering with this.
The Western Digital Community Forum is seething with posts from angry customers demanding that there should be a way of removing the offending software. Whether anybody at WD will be inclined to give the customers what they want rather than what WD think is good for them remains to be seen.
Until that time (should it ever happen) I'm stuck with what is undoubtedly an excellent bit of hardware that I cannot use thanks to software that crushes the performance of the very machine that said hardware was bought to protect.

...yes, this is just how I'm feeling

What lies beneath

2010-05-08T04:06:00.003+01:00

I reckon that there's always something intriguing about the stuff that lurks behind the scenes at any workplace. I suppose that this may be one of the reasons why fly-on-the-wall documentaries are so popular.
What self-respecting nosey so-and-so wouldn't want to get a sneaky peek at the inner workings of an aircraft carrier or the back-stage business at a major theatre.

When I was a very small boy I was fascinated by those small doors that could be seen in wooden hoardings that surrounded building sites. Trailing along behind my Mum on a trip to the shops, I always wanted to linger in the hope of catching a glimpse of the exciting things that were going on behind those blank plywood facades. Occasionally these doors would be tantalisingly open and the wonderland could be seen. Cement mixers, piles of bricks, pneumatic drills and all the other paraphernalia of construction were briefly fully revealed.

I hadn't realized just how much I had been captivated by the mystery of what lay behind the door to the World of The Building Site until one day, nearly twenty years later, I actually stepped through one such door.
I was working on the redevelopment of the shopping centre in the middle of Stratford on Avon and my mates and I had just been for breakfast at "The Hatch" Cafe. As we clumped along Wood Street in our cement-crusted boots, up to the blank blue door, I noticed that we were being watched by a small boy, as his mother hurried him along the pavement. It was like travelling back in time and seeing myself. I could imagine him thinking, "I wish I could go through that door..."
I've never really had any grand scheme or a life plan, but at that moment I knew that I'd fulfilled some kind of ambition.

It's probably just as well that I've never had a Life Plan, because there is no way that I would have ended up doing my present job if I'd tried to follow any sensible career strategy. I think I just got very lucky
So here's a special behind the scenes picture of a part of Jodrell Bank that not too many people get to see.

This is the tunnel that runs from the Basement of the Main Building to the Annular Lab, under the Lovell Telescope. It lies beneath the concrete path you can see leading away from the foreground of the picture at the top of this post.

This tunnel is the main service duct for cables that supply electrical power for the telescope motors and the many control and data feeds that run from the receivers to the instrument racks in the Observing Room. It also provides a convenient subterranean route for our staff to get to the telescope structure.

One of the best things about this tunnel is that it wouldn't look out of place in many computer games.
Anybody who has played "Half Life 2" or "Deus Ex" will know what I'm on about.
It's also the kind of location that you find in the sort of film where someone always says, "I'll just go down and check the tunnel...", shortly before dying horribly.

If zombies ever invade Jodrell Bank, I know where they'll be coming in...

Steve "Interesting" Davis

2010-04-29T13:26:00.000+01:00

I've always been a bit sceptical about snooker being classed as a sport. For me, sport should always involve some kind of obvious physical exertion and/or a risk to life and limb. The fact that a snooker player considers a bow tie as 'sports kit' doesn't help either.

Nevertheless, it is a sport and the professionals who play it have won my respect, for whatever that's worth.

Generally I don't have a lot of time for most sports. Football, rugby, athletics etc. all leave me un-moved, and as for tennis... That's completely insane; how can you have a game that can theoretically last for ever? Even when the matches don't continue until eternity, it certainly seems like they do.
But I digress...

I quite like watching snooker.
I've never played or even had any desire to play it, but it is a game I can understand and it is played at a pace which I can follow. Everything about the way the balls move across the table and the trajectories they take following a collision is so satisfyingly predictable. Every shot that a player takes becomes a demonstration of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion.
The players are studiously calm and generally well behaved as they take their turn at the table, carefully chalking their cue as they analyse the probable outcome of the next shot. There is never any sense of unnecessary haste or urgency, just a measured concentration culminating in a single stroke of the cue and that wonderful sound as the balls collide and ricochet across the soothing surface of the table to their predestined new resting places.
The player seldom exhibits any satisfaction or dismay at the success or failure of a shot, The audience may be applauding or groaning, but the player seems oblivious. They either set about the business of taking the next shot, or make their way back to their seat at the edge of the arena to watch and wait as their opponent takes their turn at the table.

The World Championships are being played at The Crucible in Sheffield at the moment, so there's been plenty of coverage on TV, and one of the best things about it has been the surprising performance by Steve Davis.

At the age of 52, he beat the defending World Champion John Higgins, before being knocked out in the quarter-finals by Neil Robertson.

Go Steve!!! All of us old buggers salute you!

The waiting game

2010-04-23T04:47:00.001+01:00

As you know, I don't do gardening.
Anything that is vaguely green in our house has been nurtured by Blight-of-my-life. It will only have survived through her efforts and in spite of my malign influence.

The stuff that I do in the garden isn't horticulture, it's civil engineering.

Recently. I've also been doing what is best described as 'rough carpentry', at the allotment. I've been hammering in pegs and nailing together bits of wood to surround the various vegetable plots, to accompany the posts and wires that will support the raspberries.
I was really looking forward to the raspberries. They are probably my favourite pie filling, so I needed very little encouragement to make the necessary preparations for their arrival. Unfortunately, due to some kind of clerical malfunction, our order for the plants got lost so we've missed this season's delivery.
Ah well....

One of the other plots is for asparagus. This is not a vegetable for the impatient, as it takes about three years to get anything like a sensible crop from the plants, but if the taste of a fresh-from-the-soil, home grown asparagus spear outclasses that of shop-bought it may be worth the wait. Last season's spuds from the allotment were an order of magnitude tastier than anything from Tesco's, so I'm hopeful.

Knowing how slow asparagus is to develop, there was considerable excitement the other day, when the first green shoots were detected. Well, actually they're a sort of purple rather than green, but you can't keep a good cliche down.

Surely, there's some mistake...

2010-04-14T18:11:00.000+01:00

I really don't know what to make of this.

A friend of mine works for a Emmaus, a charity for homeless people.
At one of their shops, in Gloucester, they have received a rather odd donation.

It's a small casket of ashes and it bears the inscription "In loving memory, Imogen".

What can possibly have led to this?

The staff at the shop are, not surprisingly, a bit perplexed about how to deal with this item. They are reluctant to simply sell it in case it has been handed in by accident, so they are trying to find out who has donated it, just to minimize any upset or embarrassment.
Long running family feuds have originated in far less dramatic circumstances than the unfortunate loss of a much-loved relative's mortal remains, so for the sake of the friends and family of 'Imogen', I hope that the folks at Emmaus in Gloucester can find the donor.

Something you don't normally see at the pub...

2010-04-13T19:42:00.003+01:00

We went along to our local SciBar last night. If you've never come across the concept before, it sounds a bit unlikely.
Basically, it's science in a pub.

A guest speaker is invited to give a talk about their particular branch of science at a suitably enlightened drinking establishment and anyone who's interested can come along and listen, ask questions and drink beer.
Our local SciBar is held once a month at "The Vale Inn" and since it started, last year, we have had speakers covering such widely diverse topics as "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life", "Body Clocks", "Nuclear Fusion" and "Anti-matter". It is astonishingly popular, to the extent that if you don't get to the pub by 6pm, you'll probably struggle to find anywhere to sit.

Last night we were lucky enough to see Herpetologist and Amphibian Conservationist, Andrew Gray, from The Manchester Museum. As you would expect, anyone who is willing to go out and talk about their work to a bar full of complete strangers needs to be a bit of an enthusiast and this is a man who clearly loves his work. With his tales of crawling about in caves and climbing trees in the jungles of South America, simply to observe frogs I was left with no doubt that he had found his dream job.
The talk was full of good stuff. I didn't know that frogs don't drink, but absorb moisture through their skin and that a frog's eyes help it to swallow, but the undoubted highlight was when we were introduced to a couple of live tree frogs that he had brought along.

They are almost unbearably cute.

Have a look at "Frog Blog Manchester" if you want to see the sort of things Andrew Gray gets up to.

Here's a bit of a diversion

2010-04-09T15:27:00.001+01:00

You've probably realised by now, that I'm a bit of a sucker for games and similar time-wasting, so the accidental discovery of a multi-player browser game set in the American Wild West was a particular delight.

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a Wyatt Earp, you may find "The West" of interest.

You don't have to download anything, as the game runs on your web-browser. All you need to do is register a valid email address, a name for your character and a password and you're up and running. There are currently twelve servers, or "Worlds" in game parlance. It seems to be OK to have characters on more than one World, as they all operate in isolation from each other, but as your character has the same name in each world this could get confusing.
You can play the game for free, but if you get hooked and want to play more intensively you can buy extra features.

As a new player, you begin your adventure with no cash or skills, so your first priority is to head to the local saloon for odd jobs to earn a living. There's a helpful tutorial which will guide you through duelling, picking tobacco, and making sense of the interface. Progression is through doing Quests which provide additional cash and experience points that allow you to customize your character. Most of the Quests seem to involve doing suitably 'western' jobs; Mending Fences, Branding Cattle, Tending Sheep etc.
Once you have set your character to work, all you have to do is wait until the time you have allocated to the task has elapsed, when you discover whether you have found anything useful or sustained some injury. (I have managed to lose varying numbers of Hit Points by "getting sunburned" whilst picking beans, banging a nail through my hand when I was mending fences and being bitten by a sheep) This 'real time' aspect of the game ensures that you don't spend hours at the keyboard, although some players may find the waiting too much of a disincentive.
It doesn't seem to take too long to attain Level 10, when you can choose between four class types to suit your particular style of play. It also allows you to select an appropriate, new avatar. This is a relief, because quite frankly, the 'Greenhorn' avatar that you start with, looks a bit bonkers.

As this is a multi-player game, you are encouraged to interact with other like-minded souls by getting yourself invited to join a town. Towns are set up by players and they provide places to trade things you have earned, a bank to safeguard your cash and a hotel where you can recover energy after all that hard work toiling in the fields.
Towns are also where you can get into duels with other players who have a character at a similar level of competence. There's probably some amusement to be had there.

You can find a review of "The West" at MMO Hut, amongst other places.

At present you can find me in 'World 1' or 'World 12', as "Rock Lobster".

Now, where did I put my sombrero?...

Goodbye 'Stealthy Ninja'

2010-03-18T02:05:00.002Z

Yesterday, a small group of us from work, went to the funeral of Rob Kemp, who worked here at Jodrell Bank as a security guard.

Of the people who have patrolled this site over the years, Rob was one of the few who actively enjoyed the amount of walking it entailed.
Having to make several circuits of the site during a shift gave him ample opportunity to observe all the wildlife that we have here. He said that being able to keep tabs on the rabbits, stoats, buzzards, owls and peregrine falcons, made every day less like work and more like a nature ramble.

Rob's sudden and untimely death came as a great shock to all of us who worked alongside him, but our deepest sympathies are with his partner and his family.

Robert Kemp: 1960 to 2010

If Michael Schumacher isn't retiring, neither am I

2010-03-11T14:59:00.003Z

After the utterly dismal performance by my Fantasy Formula One Team last year, you might have expected that I'd have given up in disgust and retired from the cut and thrust of motor sport.

I suppose it could have been worse...

Well actually it couldn't.

Yes, I came last.

The early season misfortunes were not, as I had hoped, "a blip".
The failure of my racing drivers to achieve anything better than mediocrity sent the team slithering remorselessly down the leaderboard, like a car on slick tyres aquaplaning in a rainstorm.
OK, I picked the team, so I'm not entirely blameless, but my failure is mostly one of misplaced confidence in the abilities of my drivers.
Buemi was next to useless, whilst Nakajima and Bourdais were so lack-lustre that they failed to impress anybody enough to get re-hired for the new season. The only consistently good performance came from Barrichello, but as I had underestimated the quality of the Brawn car that he was to drive, I'd picked him as a reserve driver, so I rarely benefitted from the points he scored.

This year will be different.

This year I'm pinning my F1 hopes on Hamilton, Trulli, Sutil, Kobayashi, Kubica and Glock.
I reckon that with these guys I can reasonably to expect to do better than last year, but more importantly, I hope to do better than Blight-of-my-life.
Our Fantasy League is run by one of the guys at work, so it is supposed to be for Jodrell Bank staff only, but Blight has once again negotiated a deal with one of my work colleagues who has no interest in motor racing, where he is fronting a team of drivers that she has selected.
Last year she finished around halfway down the rankings, so she is hoping to do better this year and rather keen to finish well ahead of me again.

The first race of the season is on Sunday, in Bahrain.

"Gentlemen...! Start your engines!"

Stirling Moss

Chuffed

2010-03-08T03:56:00.002Z

I decided that as the local model railway society were having their annual exhibition at the weekend, I'd go along and get a bit if inspiration for my own railway modelling activities.

It never ceases to amaze me how much care and attention to detail people will lavish on their layouts, so a couple of hours wandering around the various stands was well worth it.

There were some excellent examples of layouts in various scales from 'O' to 'N' modelled on prototypes from most eras of rail development, run with studied concentration by individuals or, on the more extensive set-ups, by teams of dedicated operators.

Hopefully, these pictures will give you some idea of the workmanship on show.

I particularly liked this small scene of industrial confusion.
It must have been based on a true story...

Nostalgia: It's not what it used to be...

2010-03-05T18:18:00.001Z

I've had my first "Verbal Warning" that I'm subjecting the good folk of the blogosphere to an overdose of nostalgia.

She was about half way through the reminiscences about my late lamented Austin A40, when Blight-of-my-life enquired,
"Why do so many of your blog posts start with the words 'I remember when...' and 'back in the seventies...' eh?"

She has a point.
I always knew that there was a risk of this happening, but I thought it was a temptation that I'd be able to control. It appears that I was wrong.
It's starting to sound like I don't actually exist in the present, so I need to get a grip and be a bit more "now".

So here's the pledge.

"I will not refer to the 1970s or use the phrase 'I remember when' (or anything similarly nostalgic) for at least six months"

This will probably be tougher than I expect.

Dick Francis: Thank you.

2010-03-04T17:40:00.002Z

There was a time when just about the only books that I read were Science Fiction with a smattering of Fantasy and the odd thriller. Then, one day shortly after Blight-of-my-life and I had moved in together, I happened to pick up a battered paperback by Dick Francis. Blight had read quite a few of his books, but I had always been put off by the idea that, although these were thrillers, they were "all about horse racing". There was nothing else in the house that I'd either not read at all or fancied re-reading, so I thought I'd give it a try.

It was a revelation.

Certainly the story was set in the world of Horse Racing; the hero owned several race horses. And yet there was so much more to the tale and it was so deftly plotted that background never got in the way of a first class tale.

I went on to read many more of his books over the years and he has seldom let me down. His books draw you in and are pretty hard to put down. In fact, if I pick one up, even if I've read it several times before, I'll still read it yet again.

When I heard that Dick Francis had died, last month, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to enjoy one of his books again. After a quick search along the shelves in the spare room, I found that same battered copy of "High Stakes" that I'd first read over twenty years ago.

I've just finished it, and it is still a cracking good read.

Dick Francis : 31st October 1920 to 14th February 2010

That Jack Kerouac has a lot to answer for

2010-03-01T12:25:00.002Z

The demise of Blight-of-my-life's Vauxhall Corsa has thrust us into looking for a replacement car.

For many people, the prospect of going shopping for a car will be a source of joy and excitement. We are less enthusiastic. It's just like most other shopping; time consuming and irritating, but with the added bitterness of being expensive.
Furthermore, it all seems to be a much more long-winded exercise nowadays too. All the trawling through magazines, brochures and websites, then traipsing round various dealerships asking the same set of questions and getting the same sorts of answers from the weary looking sales people.
Perhaps things used to be simpler back in the 1970s. I can remember when...

...my first car had finally gone for scrap.
I was working as a self employed steel-fixer and living back with my parents. Money was pretty tight. I was earning a reasonable wage, but I had no savings whatsoever, so my search for a replacement car was severely constrained by my budget. In those days, the concept of readily available credit was unheard of. Unless you were prepared to tie yourself down to a 3 year "Hire Purchase" agreement, you didn't buy something unless you could pay for it there and then.

I went through the local newspaper and optimistically circled a few adverts, then walked to the nearest 'phone box to see if any of them sounded like they'd be worth seeing. The short list got a bit shorter and I arranged to see the likeliest candidates.
After a couple of false starts, including a decrepit Volkswagen covered in chicken droppings in a farmer's barn, I ended up, on a sunny Saturday morning, at a small garage where there were two cars that I could afford. I dismissed one as too shabby even for my limited resources and had a test drive in the other. It was OK. I paid the man £125, he gave me a receipt, the log book and the keys and I drove it away. I was the proud owner of a 1964 Austin A40.

On the way home, I called in at a local broker and a got an insurance cover-note. Then I went around to see my friend Ian and show off the new wheels.

Ian had been one of my best mates since we'd been at school. We had both underachieved companionably for several years. He had been one of the first of my friends to pass his driving test and thanks to his Dad, who somewhat rashly allowed Ian to borrow his Riley Elf, our horizons had expanded. Visits to friends or concerts in Birmingham had become that bit easier.

Ian was suitably impressed.

"Let's go and see Julie", he suggested.
"Yeah. Great idea...", I had a sudden thought, "Hang on, she's not at her folks anymore. Where's she living now?"
"Liverpool."
"Blimey, that's more than a hundred miles away."
"You could treat it as a proving run... You can see if everything works properly."
I was still a bit dubious.
Then he said, "She's having a party tonight..."
That did it.
We bundled Ian's travelling bag into the back, nipped back to my house for my stuff and we were off.
It was the first of many trips up the M6 in that car and it set the standard. We were barely at Birmingham before a hole opened up in the exhaust system that threatened to gas us, as the fumes found their way through the not entirely complete floor. We bought an exhaust bandage, mended the leak and continued. Another thirty miles and the exhaust was beginning to sound a bit throaty again. We bought some Gun-Gum and plugged up a fresh hole that had appeared in the silencer. We carried on until the first repair gave up the ghost somewhere near Manchester. More exhaust bandage was wound around the exhaust pipe, but this time we reinforced the repair by wrapping a butchered Coca-Cola tin around it too.

That got us to Liverpool.

The return trip on the following day was mostly uneventful until, thirty miles from home, with a tortured graunching sound, the horribly abused exhaust pipe broke in half and sagged feebly onto the tarmac. It was probably the extra weight of all that exhaust bandage, repair putty and soft drink cans that did it.
As I surveyed the damage from my, by now increasingly familiar position under the car, it was clear that the exhaust was wrecked, but if we removed the broken section completely, the noise would attract the interest of every police officer in the West Midlands. A final heroic repair was accomplished by removing the metal rod that normally supports the bonnet when you need to check the engine, and using it as a splint for the fractured pipe.

When I got home, my Dad came outside to cast a parental eye over the Austin.
"How was the trip?", he asked.
"Not too bad. Why?"
"I just thought the exhaust sounds a bit rough..."

"Moon": More good news

2010-02-23T14:47:00.001Z

I was chuffed to see that Duncan Jones got a Bafta for "Moon", the other night.

Having enjoyed the film enough to post about it last month, it was a pleasant surprise when I heard that Jones had got the award for "Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer".

If you want to see the video clip of him getting His Bafta, you'll find it at this link.

As the child of a famous parent (David Bowie), Duncan Jones seems refreshingly sensible. If you watch the DVD of his film, amongst the extras there's a "making of the movie" feature where you get an opportunity to see him at work. This is a worthwhile bonus as it not only shows the mechanism of film-making, but it also gives an idea of the atmosphere within the working environment. Jones comes across as leader rather than a tyrant, and it seems that this style has paid off handsomely.

I suppose it should not be a surprise that he comes over as unpretentious. He was, after all, sensible enough to change his name to Duncan Jones, having been lumbered at birth with the wince-inducing Zowie Bowie.

I blame the parents...

This will upset Dr Beeching

2010-02-21T16:45:00.002Z

About a year ago, I mentioned that I'd rescued my abortive attempt to build a model railway layout, from the spidery gloom of our loft. Over the last week I've finally got around to starting the rebuild.

The image of railway modelling is not good. If ever there was a pastime that seems to epitomise nerdy geekness, building and running model railways would probably only be second to train-spotting. At any gathering there are few quicker ways of committing social suicide than to let slip that you've been re-wiring the signalling on your model of Boghampstead Junction. Even if you try to redefine the hobby as model engineering, as soon as you admit that the particular engineering that you are modelling is a Great Western Railways Castle Class locomotive, you might as well put on your anorak and leave by the nearest exit.

I can't understand why there is such a willingness to sneer at this sort of endeavour.
What is the difference between somebody painting a landscape to hang on their living room wall and someone painting the scenic background for a railway layout? Why is it deemed "peculiar" for somebody to spend many hours building a tiny, working replica of a diesel locomotive and yet if the same person was to spend the same time crafting jewelry it would be seen as "artistic"?
Even computer geeks are less derided than railway modellers.

...but I digress...

The good news is that my model railway layout has finally got off the drawing board and I have even managed to get some of the track stuck down onto the baseboard.
OK, the speed of development is laughable, but it is only slightly slower than that of the proposed West Coast High Speed Rail link from London to Glasgow.

For those who aren't too embarrassed to be interested:

The baseboard is a 4ft. by 2ft. piece of MDF, glued to a simple wooden framework of 2"x1".
The track is mostly Peco Code 80 Flextrack with Medium Radius electrofrog points, although I've used some lengths of Set-track on the sections that will be "behind the scenes".
I've glued down the track onto cork sheeting.
The small wooden pillars are to support the upper level of track, which will be the next thing to be added.
The rectangular hole is to allow access to the underside of the upper level when it is in position.
The curved hole at the lower left of the picture is where the incline to the upper layer begins.

For anyone too young to remember Dr Beeching and his impact on the British rail network, this link will take you to his Wikipedia page.

I can't believe I hadn't noticed...

2010-02-15T18:56:00.001Z

I'm sure most of us are familiar with those wierd little pictures where you are asked, "What can you see here?"
Quite what the answer that you give is supposed to say about you or your state of mind, I've no idea, but I'm not a psychiatrist... Well, I believe I'm not a psychiatrist.

Apparently this image is either two people looking at each other, or it's a vase... or two people looking at a vase, I suppose.

So what has brought this on?

I listen to quite a lot of music and although I've nattered on about Prog Rock in several posts, I'm also very keen on female vocal artists. With iTunes set to 'Shuffle', the pomp complexities of Pink Floyd, Spock's Beard, Porcupine Tree and all the other unusual suspects are offset by the simpler clarity of Sandy Denny, Kirsty MacColl, Kate Rusby and Judie Tzuke.

...and then there's Joni Mitchell.
I think the first time I became aware of her was in 1969, when a bunch of us went to the local cinema to see "Alice's Restuarant". As this was the first "18" rated film that I'd managed to get to see, it was always going to have a disproportionate impact on me, but although all the subversive-hippie-free-love-commune-anarchy action was heady stuff indeed for this seventeen year-old, it was "Songs to ageing children", sung by Joni Mitchell that really moved me.

Since then, I've bought most of her albums and was even lucky enough to see her play live at Wembley Stadium in the 1970s, so I guess that makes me a fan.

She can paint a bit as well.
Many Joni Mitchell albums have cover artwork that are reproductions of her paintings, including "Both Sides Now", which was released in 2000.
This is an unusual album, comprising mostly cover versions of jazz standards and a couple from her own back catalogue, with full orchestral arrangements. The individual songs are strung together to tell the story of a love affair, from the enfatuation of "You're my thrill", through the doubts of "You've changed" and the despair of "Stormy weather", to the hopefulness of "I wish I were in love again" and the resigned philosophy of "Both sides now".

Even though it's a fairly melancholy selection, I was pleased to hear a track come on today as I was idling at the PC. I glanced at the image of the album cover on the iTunes display and suddenly noticed something I had never seen before.

I cannot believe that I'm the first person to see that she is wearing her heart on her sleeve.

Things break...

2010-02-02T19:57:00.000Z

We seem to be going through one of those periods when stuff starts breaking down or falling to bits. The latest addition to the remorselessly lengthening list of casualties is Blight-of-my-life's car.

As she removed the oil-filler cap to give the engine a top-up earlier today, she discovered that there was a rather unpleasant custardy sludge around the filler.

I was called out of the house to look under the little, blue Vauxhall's bonnet.
"That's not very good, is it", she said
My heart didn't actually sink, but it was certainly holed below the water-line.
I've seen this puss-like glop before. It's the sort of emulsion you get when oil and water are vigourously mixed by an engine that generally indicates that cooling water is finding a way into the engine's oil system. It usually means that the cylinder head gasket has failed.
"Err, no. That's not very good at all..."
"Should I stop driving it then?"
"I dunno," I said, wondering just how long it had been since the oil was last checked, "You're having it MOT'd soon. Have a word with the garage blokes and see what they say."

One 'phone call later...
"They said don't drive it and take it down for them to look at on Friday."
I was unable to stop myself from pointing out the inconsistency of this advice, but once our uncontrollable mirth had subsided, we started trying to decide how much we would be prepared to fork out for a repair before it would be more sensible to start thinking about a replacement car.
With a bit of luck, the chaps at the garage will come up with a bearable quotation. They have earned our respect over the years and kept several of our vehicles soldiering on well beyond the point that I'd have given up hope of any possibility of economic repair. So even though our finances are bound to take a hit, we have some cause for optimism.

One cheering aspect of this situation is that Blight is having to use the Land Rover.
Now, I'll be able to blame the Mystery Smell on something horse related that will inevitably get transferred from the farm into the driver's footwell.

A cunning plan indeed.

Edge of darkness

2010-01-31T07:39:00.004Z

There are trailers on TV at the moment for the latest Mel Gibson film, a remake of "Edge of Darkness".

I heard a review of it on "Front Row", the daily arts show on BBC Radio 4, a couple of days ago. It sounded as if it could be reasonable, but throughout the piece, the reviewer couldn't help but compare it with the original and the general impression was one of disappointment.

As luck would have it, I was at the library the day after I heard this review and was delighted to discover that they had the DVD of the original, award-winning 1985 TV series.
I grabbed it.
For a drama that was made twenty-five years ago, it is amazing how well it has aged.

I remember being thoroughly gripped by the series when it was first broadcast and what an outstandingly unusual drama it was for its time. The story, written by Troy Kennedy Martin, follows Craven, a detective, as he tries to come to terms with the murder of his daughter. He is drawn into a dangerous covert struggle between the burgeoning nuclear power industry and organised environmental activists. The quality of the cast, the writing and the production values set this series apart from anything else that was around at the time; it didn't do it any harm to have theme music by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen either.

I'm not about to suggest that you don't go and watch the new version of "Edge of Darkness", but I'd definitely encourage you to get hold of the DVD of the original.

...and if you want to hear what the music was like, have a listen to this...

What IS that smell?

2010-01-25T22:19:00.001Z

I have a pretty good sense of smell and most of the time I'm perfectly happy that way.

As senses go, it seems to be comparatively under-rated. If you asked most people which of the five senses they'd least like to lose, I doubt whether many would choose smell.
Even so, the sense of smell is a strange and fabulous thing that seems to operate at a more basic level than sight and hearing for example. It is so much closer to 'animal' and can trigger memories and emotional responses with an extraordinary precision.
The less primitive senses just haven't got that sort of gut instinctive immediacy.

I'm fond of many of those popular 'good' aromas; freshly ground coffee, just-baked bread, freshly cut grass etc. but there are other, less universally acknowledged, yet equally delightful smells that will stop me in my tracks every time.
So, allow me to introduce:

Car or motorcycle exhaust fumes bearing the unmistakeable hint of "Castrol R".
"Rozalex" industrial barrier cream.
The combination of cigar smoke and orange peel that will always say "Christmas Day" to me.
Misty November evenings.
Fairgrounds, particularly that weird firework/electrical Dodgem car smell.
The piano showroom at "Sounds Great" in Heald Green.

Yes, I'm quite happy to have a sensitive nose... well, mostly.

Sometime it's not so great.

At the moment, there's a rather unpleasant smell in the Land Rover. It's sort of musty with a vaguely vegetable undertone and yet I can't find any trace of escaped vegetables in the vehicle.
It's like driving around in a compost heap. If the weather wasn't so unremittingly grey and chilly at present I'd drive with the windows permanently open to try and clear the air.

I'll keep you posted.

Return of the Prog-monster

2010-01-17T13:24:00.004Z

I've got myself involved in a slightly unusual musical project.

When Blight-of-my-life had her birthday party, last April, I was approached by three of the folks who I shared a house with, back in the dim'n'distant, to play a bit of bass with them.
Well, I say "approached", but what with all of them clustering around me and bouncing up and down with enthusiam, it was actually more like being mugged by the some of the world's oldest puppies.

As these were some of the people who shared the Christmas meal I posted about last month, you'll appreciate that we've got some history.

I was fairly reticent about getting involved to be honest, as I'm a believer in the philosophy that you should "never go back". The memory is a dangerously selective beast and if you aren't careful it'll conveniently edit out all the stuff that, if you're brutally honest, you're glad to have grown out of.
I said "I'll think about it...", and left it at that.

As the months went by, I decided that although it would undoubtedly be a bit odd, it wouldn't represent a true musical reunion, as I was never actually a player in the old band.
As such, getting involved wouldn't mean that I was "going back".
Having squared it with my conscience, when a second invitation to participate arrived in amongst the Christmas cards, I accepted.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove down to Pershore to see what we can do.

After three hours in the rehearsal room at Tower Studios, things were a bit clearer.
I had a pretty good idea of how the piece should go, although some reservations about how easy it will be to get desired end result.
Musically it shouldn't be too problematic, but the difference in compositional style from the way we work in Nightflight is quite unsettling.

In spite of this it's good fun, and that, for me, is what playing music with other people is all about.

A sudden change of plan

2010-01-12T12:28:00.004Z

I was intending to have a bit of a rant about some of the mean-spirited behaviour that I've seen during the recent snowy conditions.

You know the sort of thing.

People clearing the snow from their drive and piling it onto the nearest pavement, allowing them to get their car out, but creating a treacherous barrier for the luckless pedestrians.
Or how about the folks in vehicles with 4-wheel drive who don't make allowances for people in 2-wheel drive cars, bullying them into slithering out of the way as they barrel past; as someone who drives a 4-wheel drive vehicle, I find this kind of "I'm alright Jack-ism" particularly disappointing.

Fortunately, I decided that I wasn't going to start banging on about such things and decided to show you this instead.

It's one of the "5 Second Films" which were brought to my attention by Reallyfatbloke.

You can find more like this at "5 Second Films"

Rising to the challenge

2010-01-08T07:04:00.001Z

Guess what...

We've just got our first Christmas card.

Greeting Reads: Merry Christmas for 2010 from Ray & Angie (Beat this Cousin Maureen)

OK, a bit of explanation is required.

At the tail end of the 1970s (Yes, it's that decade again) I was driving a van for a living, delivering industrial fastenings across Devon. From a small warehouse on the edge of Dartmoor, I distributed nuts, bolts, washers and screws to factories, shops, building sites and boat yards across much of the South-West tip of the country.
I even had to make deliveries inside Dartmoor Prison. You can probably imagine how amused the prison warders were when I arrived and they asked me what I was delivering and I replied, "Screws..."

It was a really enjoyable job. As is so often the case, it was the people that made all the difference. Even if it had been a difficult day out on the road, simply getting back to the depot and getting the van loaded for the following day was almost always good fun thanks to the warehouse guys in general and Ray, the warehouse manager, in particular.
Even after all the years since I left Devon, we're still in touch. Each Christmas, the first card to arrive generally has a Devon postmark and our address written in Ray's distinctive, looping handwriting. 2009 was one of the rare years when somebody elses card put Ray and Angie into second place. When I sent our card, I mentioned that my cousin Maureen had pipped them at the post and it seems to have touched a competitive nerve. Clearly, second place is not an option.

Hopefully things will calm down now.

...as long as Maureen doesn't decide to put in a pre-emptive strike for Christmas 2011.

Moon

2010-01-07T00:41:00.000Z

I don't go to the cinema very often these days.
I used to go a couple of times a month, but when the privately owned, independent cinema in our nearest town was closed down it became so much less convenient.
I also can't stomach the overwhelming reek of popcorn and burgers that seems to be unavoidable at most multi-screens.
...and don't get me started on the noise. The sound of people nattering and munching is so loud, that you can't hear the soundtrack during the quiet parts unless they turn up the volume to such a level that when there's a loud bit on screen, your ear drums implode from the sound pressure.
In short, going to see a film just isn't enjoyable these days.

Fortunately, our local library has a good selection of recent DVD releases, so I can catch up with stuff that I've missed fairly smartly. One of last year's films that I was keen to see was "Moon", so when I spotted it on the shelves, I decided to give it a go.

This excellent movie stars Sam Rockwell. It's a real pleasure to watch some science fiction where the setting, an isolated lunar mining facility, is fundamental to the story rather than just an excuse for a load of flashy special effects baloney. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the sole human inhabitant of the place as he nears the end of his three year contract. Direct communication with Earth has been lost, so Sam is reduced to sending and receiving recorded messages from home or talking to GERTY, the facility's computer. Given this isolation, it is unsurprising that Sam becomes increasingly unsettled until, distracted by the appearance of a woman who cannot possibly be there, he has an accident out on the lunar surface.
As Sam recovers, he makes a disturbing discovery that feeds his paranoia and sense of dislocation as the mystery develops.
This is a first class thriller.

Science fiction is often a convenient way to present a well-worn idea in a new guise. With 'Moon' we have a story that isn't just a re-tread of a plot that we've seen before in a thousand westerns or detective stories; the time and the place that it takes place are intrinsic to the drama.

On a more personal note, I found it easy to empathise with Sam.
When I'm alone in the Control Building in the early hours of the morning, watching the Lovell Telescope scan the stars, it sometimes feels like I'm the last man on Earth.

The ghost of Christmas Past

2009-12-31T18:18:00.005Z

We've had a pretty quiet Christmas. Apart from the festive cards and the occasional box of Thornton's chocolate coated ginger, there's not much evidence at Cyber Mansions to indicate the season of feasting and family feuds.
It suits us just fine.

Of course, there was a time when the idea of such a seemingly dull and boring apology for a Christmas, without turkey and all the trimmings would have been unthinkable.

Probably the most extraordinary Christmas meal I've ever had was when I was sharing a house with some friends, back in the 1970s.
A couple of my friends had formed the nucleus of a band and over a number of months, they'd gradually accumulated the remaining musicians and sundry road-crew that were going to propel us all to the rock and roll lifestyle we so obviously deserved. We had rented a farm-workers cottage in the middle of an orchard in Worcestershire and when the number of people had become too big for the house, had put a couple of caravans in the back garden for extra living space.
The band rehearsed in a barn at the nearby farm.
We didn't have a lot of money, and until the band were gig-fit there was no real prospect of income from that quarter. For a lot of the time we lived there, most of us didn't have proper jobs. There was usually at least one person earning, but a lot of the work was casual stuff on the farm so we were always running on a ridiculously tight budget.

During that December, most of us had decided that although we could have scuttled back to our respective families for Christmas dinner, if not the whole festive season, it would be much better to have Christmas 'at home' together.

I can't remember if it had snowed that Christmas Day, but I have a vague memory of there being snow on the ground on the night we "acquired" our Christmas tree from a nearby wood.
The tree had been decorated by our bass player and it had pride of place in the living room; decked out in red and gold cardboard astrological symbols, it was bit unorthodox to those of us that were brought up with tinsel and fairylights, but it was the closest thing to normal festive decoration that we had.
There was an open fire, with an enormous log sullenly smouldering away, with just the occasional burst of more enthusiastic flame. Above the fireplace, the chimney breast was covered by a large temporary mural that I had drawn, with merry, seasonal caricatures of each of the housemates.
The crowning glory of the decorations, however, was created by the drummer.
He had connected up various coloured lights and electrical appliances to an industrial cam-operated, multiple switch. These were strategically placed around the room and activated by a concealed pressure pad under one of the sofa cushions. When somebody sat on the sofa, a sequence of bulbs lit up across the room as a concealed vacuum cleaner whirred into life, an electric fan set all the tree ornaments dancing and a pair of disco turntables burst into life both playing The Move's "Blackberry Way" slightly out of step with each other.
I'm not sure if it was awfully Christmassy, but it did have a sort of weird, magical quality.

As lunch-time came closer, and the smell of roasting turkey wafted through the house, we hauled a pair of trestle tables into the living room, and set out the cutlery, glasses and crackers.
And then the food was served. It was a magnificent feast.

OK, there was a small problem with the wine.
We'd bought a couple of bottles of wine, but we hadn't got a corkscrew. We couldn't normally afford to buy beer, let alone bottles of wine, so it's hardly surprising that nobody had even thought about how to open it. We rummaged through the kitchen drawers to no avail. It was hopeless, we hadn't even got a Swiss Army Knife.
We sat, scowling at the bottles...
Then someone had a brainwave

A quick visit to the tool shed produced a suitable bottle opener.
There can't be many Christmas meals where the sound of festive cheer is interrupted by the gutteral whine of a Black and Decker electric drill.

Incidentally, this was also the only time I'd seen somebody ensure that the Christmas pudding caught fire when the brandy was poured onto it, by giving it encouragement with a gas blowlamp.

Happy New Year Everyone!

A message from our sponsor

2009-12-25T12:23:00.006Z

It's been nearly a year since I started this blog, so as it's Christmas Day, I'd like to thank everybody who has been following it.

Your comments and support have made it even more fun than I ever expected it would be.

At last! The perfect excuse to not do anything in the garden.

The view from my window

2009-12-20T01:16:00.006Z

I was talking to one of my brothers the other evening, on the 'phone, and he asked me,
"Just how high off the ground are you in the telescope control room?"
When I told him that the Control Room is in a building at ground level, and not actually on the telescope itself, he seemed quite disappointed.
If he'd been the first person to ask this question, I might have been tempted to give him a hard time, but it's not uncommon for people to think that we drive the telescope from a control cabin, perched high up on the structure like the operator of a building-site tower crane.

The working environment is a lot less spartan than that and although the view from the Control Room windows is dominated by the dish, we are a couple of hundred metres away from it.

In the Google-map view below, you can see the Control Building down and to the right of the Lovell Telescope, at the end of the straight path.

View Larger Map

For any astronomers out there, the position of the dish in the Google image would be typical for pulsar observations; generally South and close to the horizon.

Re-reading an old book in a new way

2009-12-15T19:04:00.011Z

Unusually for me, I'm reading two books at the same time.
I know there are some people who will quite happily have several books on the go at once, but I prefer to stick with one at a time.

It happened by accident.
I've been reading "Stealing Light" by Gary Gibson, for about a week, but a couple of days ago, I was trying to remember a particular book I'd read many years ago. I'd been thinking about some of the worst names for characters in books and I had remembered Billy Danger. He was the hero of a story by Keith Laumer, so I did a bit of Googling, and spotted it in the list of his work in Wikipeadia. It was "Galactic Odyssey". I then discovered that the entire book is now available to read online.

As you will probably gather from the somewhat lurid cover, this was never going to be seen as a work to rival "Pride and Prejudice", but if you like straightforward, no nonsense space-opera, you could do a lot worse. Before I realized what was happening, I'd read the first couple of chapters.

It's the first time I've ever read a book online.

I doubt whether the experience will make me consider getting one of the various e-books that are appearing though. Real, paper books are still the most convenient way of reading a story.
When they produce an e-book that weighs less than a slim paperback, needs no battery and is robust enough to withstand falling onto the floor when it slips from your fingers as you doze off to sleep, maybe then I'll get one.

If anyone wants to suggest candidates for "The Most Crap Character Name in Fiction", I'll be delighted to read them.
Mind you, I reckon you'll need to do well to beat Angus Thermopyle and Marc Vestabule who appear in Stephen Donaldson's 'Gap' series.

Rent-a-Dog

2009-12-13T17:21:00.007Z

Every so often, Blight-of-my-life and I try to decide whether or not we should get a dog.

Up until quite recently, we didn't consider that it would be sensible as we were both working full-time, so the unlucky perisher would have been stuck at home on its own for great chunks of the day. Now that Blight has retired, we are in a better position to provide a good home for an unsuspecting animal.

Even though we have a couple of horses which live at a nearby farm where we own some land, we've never had domestic pets here at Cyber Mansions.
OK, we did have to look after the enormous jar of stick insects during the school holidays when Blight was teaching, but they are pretty low down on the "loveable companion" scale.
Even assuming you could figure out which was a stick insect rather than just a stick, they all tended to look a bit similar. It wasn't made any easier when I asked Blight if any of them had names.
"Oh yes." she said, "They've all got names."
"OK. What's this one called then?" I asked, pointing at what I hoped wasn't simply a dead twig.
"That one's called 'Sticky'."
"That's not awfully original... so what about this one?"
"That one's called 'Sticky' as well."
"Hang on a minute, are they all, by an chance, called 'Sticky'?..."
"Well... yes."

Stick insects were a bit of a disappointment.

But what about getting a dog?
What we need is to try one out from some sort of Rent-a-Dog service.
Fortunately, our next-door neighbour has gone away for the weekend, so we've volunteered to look after his dog, Kiera, for a few days.
Kiera is a springer spaniel. She's getting on a bit now, so she's not as barmy as she used to be, but she is still pretty enthusiastic about going for walks, so I'm getting more exercise than I've become accustomed to.
This must be 'a good thing'.

I've never really doubted that we will get a dog, but I expect that this weekend will make it sooner rather than later.

All I'll need to do then is talk Blight out of naming it 'Sticky'.

Sometimes you just get lucky

2009-12-08T10:23:00.006Z

The weather was pretty miserable here yesterday; no sun at all, 10mm of rain and horrible squally winds. When you get a duff day like that, it makes you appreciate it when you have one like today.
OK, it is December in Northern England, so you can't expect miracles, but at about 8:30 this morning, when I was scheduling a run of pulsar observations, the low winter sunlight striking the Lovell Telescope looked lovely.

Then I noticed the vapour-trail...

I'm really glad I had my camera with me.

"Misfits": You wouldn't want to be these super-heroes

2009-12-06T19:52:00.009Z

I'm not going to push too hard to encourage you to watch this series, because I don't want my enthusiasm to put you off.

All I'll say is that I'm really impressed by it and I'll be very sorry when it finishes.

It's showing on "E4" at present, and all of the first four episodes are still available on the "4OD" website, so you should have time to catch it before it's gone.

(Apologies to anybody who reads this too late, or who is outside the UK. Hopefully you'll be able to see it on DVD)

Cobblers!

2009-12-03T11:52:00.006Z

Here's something that I hadn't realised that I take for granted.
Shoes that don't let in water.

I've had these "Clarks Active Air" for a few years now and although they took a while to become really comfortable, they've been good shoes; black, shiny, sensibly smart. During hot weather, they haven't become intolerable and during the winter they've been warm, snug and, most importantly, dry.

So today, as I ventured outside to do the meteorology checks, I became aware of a most unwelcome, chilly squishiness under the sole of my left foot. There was that unambiguous wet sock feeling that I'd almost forgotten. It brought back the memories of every leaky wellington boot and accidentally submerged plimsoll that I'd ever had.
Sure enough, when I got back indoors and took off my shoes, the problem was immediately obvious. There was a hole, worn through the sole of one shoe.

Then I noticed something a bit odd (at this point, Horatio "CSI:Miami" Caine would be taking off his sunglasses and looking off to one side with that infuriating expression.)
The left shoe was much more worn than the right. This was a bit puzzling.
At first, I couldn't think of any reason why the wear was so obviously uneven.
I don't walk with a limp, run around in circles or do anything unorthodox with my feet.

Then I realized what had almost certainly caused it.

The clutch pedal on the Land Rover is extraordinarily stiff. It is so much harder to depress than the brake, that I've had to replace the pedal rubber three times since I've owned it. The brake pedal rubber is hardly worn at all. If the clutch pedal is taking that much wear, it's not so surprising that the shoe that operates the pedal also gets a disproportionately high degree of wear.

I guess it's just another variable to factor into the Cost of Ownership Equation for a Land Rover Defender.

Where's Captain Pugwash when you need him?

2009-11-29T13:17:00.005Z

Has anybody got any idea how to classify this musical offering from "Alestorm"?

I've tried, but every time I get as far as "completely bonkers", I just start humming the chorus again. Absolutely marvellous.

"Arrrr!!"

Thanks to Wyrdwhorl, for posting it at Wyrdsongs.
(Albus Dumbledore was right about music)

Here's a good tip... Ow!!

2009-11-25T06:11:00.008Z

"Oooh, I don't think you wanted to do that..."
If there's a statement of the (literally) bleeding obvious, that must be it.

Without dwelling on the full, gory details, yesterday I made a fundamental mistake while using a Stanley knife to cut a sheet of cardboard; I failed to ensure that the tip of my fore-finger was behind the steel ruler that I was using as a straight-edge for cutting.
It bled very convincingly and even now, twenty-four hours later, it still stings like an utter bastard.

I haven't done something quite so gormless for a long while, but I suppose that it's one of those things that has to happen every so often to remind us that if we don't take care, inanimate objects will bite. Learning how to use tools safely is something that can be achieved without actual injury, as successful chain-saw operatives will confirm, but there's really nothing like pain for ensuring the lesson is properly reinforced.

I sometimes wonder what it must be like for parents. Just how can they bear to watch their children learn that fire, broken glass and all those other everyday hazards cause blood, pain and tears when they are not treated with the respect that they deserve.
I can't remember my Dad ever preventing me from using any of the tools in his workshop, but he must have had nerves of steel to allow me to use the electric drill when I was less than ten years old. I guess he must have shown me how to use it safely, but I was never aware of "being taught"; I just watched him do stuff and then he would go away and leave me to it.
When Reallyfatbloke acquired his table saw a few months ago, I asked him when he was going to teach his kids how to use it, because the fascination of the spinning teeth of a circular saw has a hypnotic attraction to the enquiring mind.
He went a bit quiet

So, to return to my lapse of concentration.
Blight-of-my-life was surprisingly sympathetic,
"Oh, that's really painful isn't it."
Unfortunately, she then went and spoilt it by saying it was my own fault for messing about with model railway stuff. (Yes, that's what I was cutting cardboard for. The model railway layout is back on course... Oh do stop sniggering and making 'anorak' jokes.)

I wonder if she'd have been a bit less callous if I'd done it whilst cutting a mount for one of her photographs...

This is not an obituary

2009-11-17T17:01:00.011Z

Some while ago, I was reading a blog posting about the uncertainty that arises when people "disappear" from their online environments and how anybody who spends time in the virtual realms should have a plan to allow their online friends know if they are going to be AFK* for a protracted period, in case their absence is assumed to be an indication of their Real World death.

The post had been prompted by the actual death of someone who, amongst other things, was a resident of "Second Life". They had been missed by their friends in Second Life, but it had taken some time before the news of their real-world death filtered into the digital domain. It had been difficult to verify the bad news as the use of avatars and pseudonyms creates a disconnect between the real and virtual worlds.

The conclusion of the post suggested that anybody who has a significant digital presence owes it to the people they know purely through online activity, to warn them if they are going to be intentionally off-line so that their absence isn't cause for undue concern.
To deal with the flip-side of the issue, cyber-folk are encouraged to arrange some type of "Digital Will" which ensures that in the event of their death, the news is circulated to all the various realms that they inhabit in cyberspace.

I think the idea has some merit, so if you are sociable online and run blogs, MySpace, Facebook etc. or you are a resident of SL or similar, it might be worth thinking about.

* Away From Keyboard

In the light of the foregoing, Id like to pass on the good news that, although Reallyfatbloke has dismantled his blog, he is still very much alive in the real world.
Mind you, his 'Wifey' has taken up playing the saxophone, so I'll keep you informed...

As if there weren't enough distractions already...

2009-11-12T14:21:00.005Z

Here's a bit of a diversion that one of my esteemed colleagues drew to my attention.

Thank you, Scubamanders.
(He seemed so sensible when he started working here...)

It's a web-browser game called "Crush the Castle", where you control a trebuchet to hurl rocks at various castles until they fall down and squash the hapless inhabitants.

There is no limit to the amount of ammunition you can use, but you are awarded medals for demolishing castles with just a few shots.

It isn't "World of Warcraft", but it's good for a laugh... and it is free

OK, the "Father Ted" reference was a bit misleading

2009-11-05T18:49:00.000Z

I was told by a work colleague, that the title of yesterday's posting was "confusing".

So for Mr Who-shall-remain-nameless and anybody else who has no idea what I was on about, here's the moment...

With apologies to Father Ted

2009-11-04T11:33:00.009Z

Here's a splendid thing that might make you say, "Cor blimey, that's smart" or something similar.
Follow this link, and then simply drag the slider beneath the image.

It's on the University of Utah website and there's no way I'd have normally come across it, so thanks to Tateru Nino for bringing it to my attention.

"Life" : Another neglected gem.

2009-10-31T10:27:00.008Z

I've just finished watching the second, sadly final, series of the rather wonderful "Life". If you've not come across it, this is an American police drama, starring Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews.

At the start of the first season, Crews is released from prison after serving twelve years of a life sentence. He had been wrongfully convicted of a multiple murder, but thanks to the efforts of his lawyer, DNA evidence cleared him of the crime. Having lost his job, his wife, his friends and nearly all contact with the outside world, he emerges from prison enlightened by the philosophy of Zen which has helped sustain him during his sentence. After successfully suing the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD, he is reinstated to the police department and receives about fifty million dollars in compensation.

OK. It all sounds pretty contrived, but there is so much scope within the somewhat peculiar boundaries that the whole thing works.

Each week there's a crime to solve, while the season story arc follows Crews as he tries to discover who was actually behind the murders that put him behind bars.
Throughout the series, Crews calmly navigates a world that has changed while he has been out of circulation. Mind you, even his Zen outlook is shaken by the perplexities of mobile 'phone technology. He's also obsessed with fresh fruit; "See this apple... you couldn't get an apple like this in prison... or any other fresh fruit."

They only made two seasons of "Life", so although I'm disappointed to see it finish, at least it has ended before the inevitable decline of the TV series that is past it's sell-by date.

I got hold of the first season as a boxed DVD set from my local library and as I was carrying it home, Andy from over the road saw it.
"Oh, 'Life'. We watched that when it was on. It's a bit weird though."
"Is it any good?"
"Yeah, but quirky..."
He paused for a moment, then continued, "but you'll like it."

He was right.

Did somebody say, "Let's rock"?

2009-10-25T13:03:00.011Z

Playing at a venue for the first time is always a bit of a worry, so I was a little apprehensive about last night's gig at "The Old Millstone".
We'd never played there before and to make things slightly more alarming, Dave was on holiday, so we'd drafted in Corin from "Amandla" to play drums.

As is so often the case, I should not have been worried. It was a smashing night out.

The Millstone is probably one of the busiest pubs in Macclesfield and is sufficiently large to allow a band to play to a good size audience while allowing other, less musically inclined, patrons to drink in relative peace and quiet.

It was a bit of a novelty for us to have so much space to set up the gear. Usually with a pub gig, it's a major challenge to shoe-horn the drum-kit, bass stack, keyboard, PA, mixing desk, guitar gubbins, monitors and mic-stands etc. into the corner of a room that the landlord assures you is "where the bands usually set up".
Here we had the space that would normally have been occupied by a couple of pool tables. Luxury! Not only does it make it more fun to play on an adequate stage, but having a sensible amount of space makes it a hell of a lot easier to set up the equipment; you aren't perpetually falling over your band mates and trying to avoid getting poked in the ear with a cymbal stand.

The acoustics of the room were fairly easy to work with, so we didn't have any problems with getting the sound sorted out; we just played the stuff and had a good time. We all played our socks off and this was clearly well received by the crowd, if the enthusiastic applause and demands for an encore are anything to go by.
I'm definitely looking forward to playing there again.

As for any qualms about playing with a 'dep' drummer, I should have known better. Corin was, as always, a joy to play with. So special thanks to him for helping us out. I think he's far too sensible to be a drummer; they're all supposed to be raving bonkers.

Bunker mentality

2009-10-11T14:17:00.015+01:00

I've never been terribly interested in History.

I seem to remember enjoying the really early stuff, when it was all about molten lava, dinosaurs and stone-age blokes living in caves and bashing each other with clubs etc. but once the school curriculum got past the Romans (Chariots and fighting) and the Greeks (Galleys and fighting), it just stopped being fun.

As the focus of the subject shifted from whole societies and how the general population lived their lives, to the way the leaders of our country governed the people, I couldn't get excited about it at all.

(I hope that 'Good King Hal' doesn't take this too personally.)

Now, of course, I'm old enough that I've actually lived through quite a lot of historical stuff.

I can remember John F Kennedy being shot; I was still at Junior school, but my mum made me wear a black tie.

I saw the grainy, black and white pictures as Neil Armstrong took 'that' step and yes, I did go out into the garden and look up at the Moon expecting to see something had changed.

I met guys who had fought in the Vietnam War and also guys who had dodged the draft to stay out of it.

What I didn't know I'd lived through, however, was several decades when we had secret nuclear fall-out shelters built in strategic parts of the country.

We went to visit one on Tuesday.

Blight-of-my-life and I had been down to Essex for a party.

My cousin Maureen was celebrating her 80th Birthday and, quite rightly, felt that a bit of a knees-up was required, so we'd trundled down to drink beer and try to recognise various cousins and second cousins that I hadn't seen for many years.

Rather than drive straight back home the following morning, we decided to do the tourist thing for a couple of days. While we were looking for suitable places to visit, we came across a leaflet about "The Secret Nuclear Bunker" at Kelvedon Hatch.

I think it is one of the strangest outings I've ever been on.

The strangeness started well before we got anywhere near the place, when we saw the helpful road-sign, directing us to the "Secret Nuclear Bunker".

Following the directions, we wound our way down a twisting farm road to a large, virtually empty, parking area at the edge of some woods. We left the Land Rover and followed a footpath through the trees until we arrived at a large brick bungalow.

The building looked a bit shabby. There was no sign of a pay kiosk or anybody to take our entry money and apart from a couple of dog-eared signs pointing to an open door in the front of the building, there was little to confirm that we were at the right place.

We went in.

There was still no sign of anywhere to pay, but there was an enormous rack of those audio guide hand-sets that look like oversized mobile 'phones, with a notice instructing all visitors to take one and follow the audio guide instructions. Other signs explained that we should pay at the end of the tour and that although we would not see any staff, we would be constantly monitored by concealed TV cameras.

We smiled for the hidden cameras, picked up our guides and set off down the long concrete passage into the bunker.

We probably spent nearly three hours exploring. The atmosphere of the place is extraordinary. At first we thought that there were no staff in the entire facility, but then we spotted one bloke dusting the exhibits and another who disappeared through a door marked "No Admittance" into a room with a bunch of TV monitors flickering in the gloom.

Even the Cafeteria and Gift Shop at the end of the tour was unstaffed. There was simply a place to return the audio guides, and an 'Honesty Box' to pay for the tour and anything you might buy in the cafe.

We almost had the place to ourselves, as we wandered through rooms filled with generators and air conditioning equipment, the dormitories, communal bathrooms, communications centres, sick bay and mortuary.

The audio guide talked us through the construction and early years of operation in the 1950s, followed by the change of use to a Regional Government HQ that would be used in the event of a nuclear attack on Britain, until it was decommissioned in the 1990s.

It seems extraordinary, but when it was decommissioned, they simply closed the (blast) doors and left all the equipment exactly where it was; desks, phones, waste-bins... the lot.

As well as the original equipment, there are video displays running some fascinating films. Some of these were actual government films that would have been broadcast to the general public, explaining how we were supposed to make our homes secure enough to survive after a nuclear attack, although our hand-held audio guide made it pretty clear that all the filling of sandbags and collecting enough food and water for 14 days per person was probably less about protection and survival, and more about keeping the population busy while the government waited for us to die.

"The Secret Nuclear Bunker" is a seriously interesting place to visit, but it is not Disneyland.

It is very shabby, with an air of threadbare seediness that is somehow entirely appropriate.

To give an impression of how life would have been in the bunker, there are recorded voices and tannoy announcements and a motley collection of mannequins posed in various parts of the facility.

These mannequins are not for the faint-hearted. Often missing limbs, they are slumped behind dead computer terminals or sprawled in dormitory bunks, with their chipped and scabrous faces peering out from beneath hideous, ill-fitting wigs.

There's even a dummy Margaret Thatcher in the BBC Radio Studio; now that is scary.

The place has musty smell, which is not so surprising for a concrete tomb under a hundred feet of Essex hillside. I struggle to imagine what it would have smelt like if it had ever been used in deadly earnest. The thought of 600 traumatized people shut up in a hole in the ground for weeks, waiting for the food and water to run out is not a cheery one.

This particular bunker is one of a whole network of similar installations throughout the UK, so if you get the chance to visit this, or any of the others, I'd strongly recommend it.

"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?"

Set List

2009-10-02T01:14:00.007+01:00

I've just read an email of the set list for the gig we're playing tomorrow night...

No. Wait a minute..., it's tonight.

Writing stuff in the early hours of the morning is always confusing.

So, whenever it is, 'Nightflight' will be playing at "The Hollins" in beautiful downtown Macclesfield and, now that I've got the set list, I know which songs we'll be doing.

When I joined 'Nightflight', four years ago, I was a bit surprised by the set list policy. Every other band that I'd been associated with had tended to have a fixed list of songs which were played in pretty much the same order at every gig. This band never does exactly the same set twice running and to add further uncertainty, the choice of songs is left until the day before the gig.

The main reason for this fuzzy arrangement is the number of songs that we actually know. Dennis and Sue have been playing for decades and have an extensive back catalogue of standard covers as well as a load of original compositions. At every change of line-up, the band's repertoire has been influenced by the differing tastes and styles of the various musicians. As time passes, some songs fall out of favour and new songs take their place but, rather like a comfy pair of old shoes, you can't bear to chuck them away. These songs remain in the repertoire's equivalent of the attic, waiting to be rediscovered, dusted off and perhaps given another outing.

So let's have a look at what we're going to play.

First Set:

"Werewolves of London" (Warren Zevon) An unusual song concept, but a comparatively stress-free opener.
"Ghost Train" (Nightflight) The first of several songs from the recent CD. It's got a slightly tricky arrangement which nearly caught us out last time we played it at "The Hollins".
"It's a start" (Nightflight) A bit of ska.
"Don't stop believing" (Journey) This song gained some new fans when it was played during the final episode of "The Sopranos".
"One last summer" (Nightflight) Anthemic ballad.
"Dancing in the dark" (Bruce Springsteen) We've only recently rediscovered this one and it makes a good opening song. We'll see how it fares in the middle of the first set.
"Ton of love" (Nightflight) I've always enjoyed playing this. It was the first original song for which I'd had to create my own bass line.
"Parisienne walkways" (Gary Moore) Simply a lovely song.
"Go your own way" (Fleetwood Mac) Although I think we do this rather well, I personally don't enjoy playing it; relentlessly fiddly bass line which is a nightmare to recover if you lose your place.
"My generation" (The Who) You can't fault the irony of "hope I die before I get old..."
"The Chain" (Fleetwood Mac) Another 'bass player's benefit'. Formula 1 Motor Racing fans always like this too.
"Auberge" (Chris Rea) A good solid finish to the first half.

Second Set:

"Don't forget me" (Nightflight) A bit of reggae with some saxophone from Sue.
"Dancing in the streets" (Martha Reeves) We've only been doing this one for a couple of months, so it's pretty lively.
"Comfortably numb" (Pink Floyd) This always seems to go down well and I love playing it.
"The racers" (Nightflight) This is heads-down-no-nonsense-rock'n'roll, and it's a bit of a killer for me with an almost relentless assault of sixteenths (Many notes in a short space of time). The smell of scorching flesh will be my finger-tips.
"Nothing else matters" (Nightflight) This is a beautiful little song that Dennis wrote years ago. We've only gigged it a couple of times and it's still improving.
"Sweet home Alabama" (Lynrd Skynrd) Very popular with the punters, but Dennis enjoys it about as much as I like "Go your own way" i.e. not bloody much.
"Waltzer song" (Nightflight) I always think that this has a bit of a Dire Straits vibe to it.
"A bad case of lovin' you" (Robert Palmer) Crash-Bang-Wallop! Wailing guitar and loads of pointing.
"I saw her standing there" (Beatles) We tend to do this slightly faster than 'The Fab Four', so it has a bit of a punk sensibility and so it's even more of a giggle to play.

If anybody wants us to play for a bit longer, we'll probably do "Black night" (Deep Purple) and/or "Whole lotta love" (Led Zeppelin).

There's even an outside chance that we might sneak in "Holding out for a hero" (Bonnie Tyler). It's complete and utter cheese as well as being Dave's least favourite song, so it's always funny trying to cajole him into doing it.

Altogether it should be a fairly silly way spend a Friday evening.

See you there...

"There ain't no cure for the Glummertime blues..."

2009-09-23T10:22:00.011+01:00

A couple of days ago we passed the Autumn Equinox and although our days have been getting steadily shorter for some time, we are now into the period when there's less day than night. I've always found this slightly depressing, but now, as someone who spends quite a bit of time working night shifts, the diminishing supply of daytime has become more significant. So it's, "Roll on Winter Solstice" when we can start to claw our way back into the sunlight.

As you'll expect, Blight-of-my-life and I employ completely different strategies to combat the onset of Glummertime.

Blight is a much more outdoors sort of person than me, so she has been getting stuck into preparing the new raspberry bed at her allotment, digging up the remaining potatoes and harvesting the tomatoes. I've been only peripherally involved with these activities. I've had to set out some boards for the raspberry bed and put up support wires, but most of my energy has gone into eating the fruit and veg that she has so lovingly grown. The tomatoes have been brilliant again, so all the aggro with the new greenhouse was worth it, but the melons were somewhat less successful; there was only one melon and we didn't realize it was ripe enough to eat until it had become too ripe to eat. Bum!

The potatoes have also been a revelation. People say it's not worth growing your own, but the flavour of a really fresh spud is impossible to deny. Grow some yourself next year and you'll become a believer too.

Another good result in the greenhouse were the Physalis (aka. Cape Gooseberry). It's the second year that we've had these weird things. If you've not come across them before, they look like a very small yellow tomato that has grown inside its own, tiny paper bag. The flavour is so subtle that I can't begin to describe it; it's not really like anything else. This isn't too helpful I know, but the best way to find out what they taste like is to try one. The variety which Blight grew this year had smaller fruit than last year's, so she decided to try making then into jam.

I don't think she'd done any sort of jam making before, so even without using an exotic fruit, this was already going to be a bit of an experiment. I have some dim memories of my Dad making rhubarb and ginger jam many years ago, so I was expecting the kitchen to become a no-go area, while it filled up with mashed fruit, vats of boiling sugar, steam and red hot jam jars.

This did not happen.

There wasn't a huge quantity of fruit, so everything was carried out at a much less industrial scale and after a few hours and very little anguish, the jam was declared "A Success".

It tastes excellent. If you want the recipe, it's at www.celtnet.org.uk

My method for counteracting the pre-winter blues is less practical. I simply spend even more time huddled over the computer.

I'm currently playing "Champions Online", which was released earlier this month. If you fancy yourself as bit of a super-hero but haven't got the physique to wear spandex convincingly, you too may find it as uplifting as gardening and jam making.