Letter to...

Here's the anonymised text of a letter I wrote today

Xxxxxxx,

Isle of Xxxxxxx

Argyll

Scotland

23^rd November 2012

Dear Aaaaa,

                It’s a different address at the top. I’m up here for a week “chilling”. That’s chilling in both senses of the word! It’s beautiful but my goodness it can be cold.

                I’m staying with my cousin Qqqqq. “Xxxxxxx” is the name of the house where she lives, out in the wilds. It’s pronounced (locally,  so I suppose that must be right) “Cairn-na-xxxxx”. The first bit is obvious enough “Pile of stones of…” but nobody is sure what the rest means. The commonest explanation is that it is “xxxxx’s Cairn”, that fits the pronunciation, but not the spelling, and there is no known association of “xxxxx” with the island. There is general agreement that whatever the name is, it is a slamming together of Gaelic “Cairn-na-” and something else, probably from another language, and that could be English, Scots or Norse.  It’s one of life’s puzzles, and likely to remain so.

                Whatever it’s called, the view from the place is spectacular, in every direction: East and West I can see the sea, North and South Rocky hills. To the west is the island of Mmmm, very mountainous and to the east Kkkk.

                I don’t know whether I shall get this finished, printed and posted before I leave the island, but you will know by looking at the stamp: if it is UK, then it was posted in Scotland; if it is Irish then the letter came back to Ireland with me and was posted there.

                Like I said, I’m up here “chilling”.  I felt like a trip up here to see the relatives, and Qqqqq was happy to have me. She works at a poultry (egg) farm on the mainland. She gets a ferry at around 8 in the morning, drives 10 miles to work and then returns in the evening and gets home a little after 6. She has a car on the mainland and one here. It’s a long day and if the weather delays here on the island she can lose hours (or even a whole day’s pay). I haven’t asked her what will happen if she gets stranded on the mainland, and I’m not going to. It’s certainly not an easy life for a single woman. During the day I am left of my own devices. This is the house which Qqqqq was brought up in, and I can see the Farm which my Grandfather took out a lease on in 1916 (!), so you can see that the family connection with the area is pretty strong. The house is constructed from two stone buildings (one the original house, one a stone barn) joined together by a wooden “covered way” in an “H” shape. The house could really do with some serious maintenance. It isn’t falling down, but it is cold, draughty and damp. Qqqqq does a good job keeping the place clean, tidy and homely, but it must be a struggle. In the house end, the living room and the downstairs bedroom where Qqqqq sleeps are nice (although you have to think about how to keep the places you want to be at the right temperature). The kitchen is an ice-box, and the two bedrooms upstairs have been relegated to attics (even the electrics have been stripped out, and the stairs up there have been covered  at landing level to  keep downstairs warmer). In the barn end, where I sleep, only one of the 3 bedrooms is habitable (and is actually quite nice, if chilly). The bathroom is usable but…

 The work required on the house is real “building”, rather than the DIY and decorating which I’m up to. Qqqqq doesn’t have the money and the island Trust, which is her landlord doesn’t either, so she will just have to wait for things to improve. I had hoped to do a little maintenance work for her, but as it happens things weren’t ready so I’ve been excused that. I’m sorry, and not sorry at the same time. Sorry the work won’t be done (and I would probably have enjoyed doing it), but not sorry that I don’t have to mess about outside in the weather.

If the house was mine, and I had unlimited budget, I would give it a complete refurbishment. Probably hire Kevin McCloud as a consultant and find a local architect. It would make a good Grand Designs. I think the approach I would take is to re-furb each of the stone buildings in turn and then completely replace the covered way with something of similar appearance, but different construction. Given where it is, I would emphasise weather-proofing, insulation and self-sufficiency. The south facing roofs of the stone buildings are not visible from the road, so that gives scope for solar water heating and photovoltaic cells. We’re half-way up a hill, on an island, so a wind-turbine is an obvious possibility. Water is never going to be a problem! The end result would look very similar to way it does now. At the barn end, the ceiling height of the rooms is really way too high. Also the existing internal walls are all stud-work, so I would regard that as completely disposable. There is a wooden floor which I expect was used for levelling, but it isn’t great quality. I would take advice from an architect and consider lowering the ceiling height and creating more bedrooms upstairs. So, at present the house (both bits) has a total of 6 bedrooms, of which only 2 are really habitable. The others I would only give to real hard cases who had arctic, four-seasons sleeping bags and camp beds. I think there is potential for 9 to 12 bedrooms etc. It’s never going to happen that way, but I certainly enjoyed writing about it. Qqqqq has dreams of having a B and B here. The house just isn’t acceptable at the present (except to afore-mentioned hard-cases, and I suppose I may be included among them), but I hope she gets to something like it in the end. She deserves it.

(And it’s 13:35, and there’s the afternoon ferry to Yyyyyy in Xxxx passing)

Meanwhile back in Ireland,  Siobhan and Margaret are doing “work experience” the week I’m away. Siobhan is helping out at the Infant’s school down in the town. On the day I left, she had drawn a giraffe on the wall (the giraffe is holding a measuring tape for “how tall am I”). Margaret is at the garden centre across the road. So far, she has been watering plants in poly-tunnels and has learned how to operate the till. Ironically, I’ve been involved in creating two point-of-sale systems, but I’m not sure I could operate a shop till! Noreen is still working at the school. She seems to be endlessly marking books. They’re all fit and well and I hope they are feeding properly. They should be,  I left the fridge well stocked.

One of the things I’m doing while I’m away in Scotland is writing up a “business plan” for something over in Ireland. I have to confess I’m struggling, but it’s getting done. This is a good place to work. I may push the “go” button this month (for a January start).

As usual, I’ve included some clippings from the local papers:

David Bowie – Has continued to rise in my estimation: weird? yes, but undoubtedly creative and influential. It seems he may have decided to retire, or is this just another “stage persona”?

The Rolling Stones – They’re a good blues band, but I always said Jagger was more of an accountant than a rock star.

Curative Well – Well, what does one say? I hope they didn’t ever dose you with lithium. I always thought that lithium was more of a sedative and anti-psychotic, but maybe it has anti-depressant properties as well. By the way “TG4” is the Irish Language channel.

Fearless Felix -  What does one say? The kind of thing he does only goes wrong once.

Sulky Racing (*2) – What does one say?

Regards,

Old Boar

Interview at Royal Exchange Buildings and 1.5 pints of beer

(7th October 2012 Signing on at 14:21)

My first proper contact with British Steel was before I went to University or sat my A Levels. I can’t remember when exactly it was, although I may be able to work it out. For some reason which isn’t really clear to me, I had decided that I wanted a sponsorship deal for going through University. This may have been because I fancied the money, but I think there was something else going on. Anyway, I wasn’t particularly fussy, so I applied to all the companies I could find who were sponsoring students taking degrees in the subjects I was interested in (that means Chemistry and Chemical Engineering). I know I got a fair number of interviews.

My interview for British Steel was in Middlesborough. Looking back, It was quite an adventure getting the train up there. Tube from Hatton Cross (I expect), train from Kings Cross up to Darlington and change there for the local train to Middlesborough.

I can remember looking out of the window at the industrial landscape from Darlington to Middlesborough. At the time, the buildings seemed huge. Enormous, corrugated iron sheds, with fierce glowing lights visible through gaps.

At that time the British Steel Offices where in Royal Exchange buildings which were very close to Middlesborough station. It was only a short walk.

I don’t remember much about the interview, but a couple of things stand out:

The interview as in two parts: an interview and then an aptitude test. The interview I can’t remember at all! The aptitude test was after lunch, and lunch had not been provided. I went out into town and visited a pub to get lunch. I was only just eighteen. The first pub had no food, neither had the second, and at the third they had pizza. So, that was lunch; three halve of beer (surely not three pints?) and a slice of pizza.

After lunch I had an aptitude test which included what I think was an IQ test, plus things involving doing tasks with both my right and left hands. Whatever the effects of the beer were, they weren’t too detrimental  because I got the job! 

Fifteen Minutes Writing

(Sunday 7^th October 2012 12:17)

I’ve got to put the potatoes on for lunch at 12:30. Okay, that isn’t exactly 15 minutes, but then cooking potatoes isn’t an exact science and neither is writing

.

This is the first time in a little while I’ve tried the “free association” writing exercises. I wonder if a quarter of an hour is long enough for anything interesting to surface.  Last night someone’s name came into my head. Someone I hadn’t had anything to do with for thirty-five years, and I decided to put the name into Google. It is an unusual name and it looks like they wrote a book in 1974! The name is unusual and the location matches. It’s surprising what can surface unexpectedly. It is doubly surprising what you can find when you combine what surfaces from the unconscious with the search power of Google (or the search engine of your choice of course).

That’s better! I can feel the muscles or pathways inside my mind starting to loosen up. It is getting easier to write. I know I have only allowed myself 15 minutes now, of which only five remain, but I will continue this in the afternoon. After a little while of stuck-ness, things are starting to move again. I shouldn’t expect things to be easy. Even small amounts of movement help. That is why I do these exercises. Write and write. There does not have to be a subject or a reason. Simply write to get it out of my system (whatever “it” is). I’m not sure if I even have a reader in mind. The reader does not have to be me, it does not have to be anybody. Keep going, keep writing. Something may emerge from the depths. Already I find the most surprising things. Some are good, some are less so. Just now, without warning or planning I managed to correct a little problem with had been irritating me for days. Now it is fixed. The mental energy it was using can be directed to something more useful.

(signing off 12:30)  

(signing on 13:28)

Okay, it’s no longer going to be fifteen minutes but it is going to be writing. Let’s see what happens. I just distracted myself by looking up Herman Miller chairs. They may be ergonomic and comfortable, but they are also very expensive. I don’t think I will be buying one of those for a while. Back to the writing, but thinking about ergonomics; I think I will take a bit more action about getting a footrest. I find that my posture is better when I have a footrest. That means that I write more easily even using the fairly basic (but fundamentally comfortable) chair that I’m using at the moment. On my next maintenance trip to Feltham I may collect the office chair that was left there. It was comfortable too. Even when new, I doubt it cost as much as a Herman Miller, and I bought it very second (or third) hand, many years ago.

The little bit of tidying I did in the kitchen was a real surprise. It came out of the blue. To one side of the hob there used to be an accumulation of spice bottles. It’s nice to have them handy, but even the most complicated recipe only ever used one or three. For no particular reason I looked in the cupboard beneath that section of the worktop. It was empty. A quick rummage upstairs and I found a plastic basket which fitted nicely into the cupboard. Now the spice bottles are in the basket in the cupboard and the work-surface is clear. It was only ever a minor irritation, but now it is gone and I feel good about it. Similarly, I’ve moved a laminator with has been sitting abandoned on the landing for months to a shelf in my study. A tiny change, but again it makes me feel good. I’m not a particularly tidy person but I like tidiness. It makes me feel comfortable. I don’t like clutter or noise. I’ve liked noise less since I became hard-of-hearing and I think that perhaps the dislike of auditory noise has spilled across into my dislike of visual clutter.

(pausing, to do the washing up: 13:46)

(Washing up done, restarting: 14:05)

While doing the washing up I started thinking about how one thing, or thought, leads to another. Better be careful about names. I’m not going to write down the name I looked up. It is too recognisable, if you recognise it! I don’t know why it came into my head. It certainly wasn’t really connected to anything I was doing or thinking about. That in turn has made me start to think about what I did when I was working for British Steel, in particular at Lakenby and Redcar. That is a period in my life when I was quite optimistic and excited by the prospects for the future. I liked the work I was doing and I liked the people I was working with. I was ambitious. I also liked where I was living. Yarm was, and is, an attractive little village. It’s not too far from the Teesside towns either. The only cloud on my horizon at that time was the economic situation (rather like now). It was clear that, right or wrong, British Steel was no longer going to receive the support it had been receiving and that meant that it was going to contract.  I have set aside titles elsewhere to write about things to do with British Steel. Perhaps I should go there now. Yes, that is what I will do. Continuing elsewhere.

(Ending 14:15 950 words, 1.5 pages)

Rambling on. Relaxation and space.

(Monday 17^th September 2012 18:38)

Here we go. Let’s see what comes up. There is nothing in my mind in particular. There is no subject that I have in mind. Then I thought of the “Stay Puff Mallow man” from Ghostbusters. Don’t think of that!

I’m going to try thinking of nothing. Nothing can be emptiness and I can think of that. But can I think of nothing a write at the same time? Even if I am writing about nothing, I am also thinking about the writing, therefore, maybe I’m not thinking about nothing! What a load of non-sense. Still, the exercise is amusing me.

I want to wash my mind free of the day’s activities. It was quite productive, but I want to think of something else now.

In the last couple of days I have cleared a number of small things away. None of it was particularly earth shattering, but I feel the benefit of looking at the clear space on the shelf I just glanced over at. I also like the fact that there is more clear space on my desk. When I have done the current batch of administrative tasks I am going to get myself a small filing cabinet and use that to conceal the papers that I do not need immediate access to. This is a sort of spiritual Feng Shui. I am creating space in my physical environment as a way of creating space in my inner environment. I am creating space in my mind. I am creating space for my unconscious to work in.

When I have written this piece I am going to look up Feng Shui on the internet. I know that it has principles but I don’t really know what those principles are. I would like to know. I don’t expect I will follow the principles slavishly, but I would like to know what they are.

I’ve just paused to put a CD in the computer. It’s “Another Day on Earth” by Brian Eno. I like it as background. I’m listening on headphones, so nobody else can hear. I’ve also lit an incense stick (Joss-stick), so that is filling my nostrils with scent.

This exercise is proving a little harder this evening than I expected. I had expected to shoot off at a tangent, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead, this evening, I’m having to prod the thoughts from time to time.

Yesterday I listened to a recording of a BBC presentation of JRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”. Actually I listened to it over a number of the previous days because it is 4 hours of recording. I have “The Lord of the Rings” as well. That is 13 hours! I am looking forward to “The Hobbit” film(s). I will go and watch them when they come out.

Now there is one of Eno’s songs in the background (“And then so clear”). The words have a strange quality; part non-sense, part poetic.  The evoke an emotional response in me but I don’t know what they mean:

“And then so clear to wonder, to wake with open eyes, like the snow across the tundra or the rain across the sky.”

It is interesting that words like that should produce any response at all. I’ve only managed to type a page so far. This evening it seems to be a struggle to write. But that is a good reason for persisting with it. Keep on keeping on. I want to write a little more.

What have I done today? I made good progress with an admin task that I want to get completed by the end of the month. I will review what I have done tomorrow and then complete the forms. That will mean that I have the whole of Wednesday to prepare for the course session on Thursday evening. If I get that all done on Wednesday, then I can move on to the next admin task on Thursday, during the day and get ahead of myself for the course session in the evening.

Hmm. It is starting to flow a little better now. Shall I set myself a target of pages or time? If I set pages, and set the target too high it becomes a blockage. If I set a page target too low, then it isn’t really a target. Similarly, time targets can encourage me to “cheat”. But is it really cheating? After all, the rules are mine, therefore I can change them if I wish. The point is, that I want to train myself to “write” a certain amount.

I am going to get myself a better footrest some time. I find it is more comfortable to have something to rest my feet on when I am writing. I suppose the ideal would be one of those proper typist’s footrests. They are adjustable and I expect they are very comfortable. I could make one but I can’t really be bothered and I suspect that if I did that I would be using it as an excuse to not do something else. I think that a simple wedge of firm foam would be more than adequate. Ideally I would like to cover it in some kind of fabric. Where could I buy a wedge of foam from? If I was still in London, I can think of at least one place which would probably be able to supply such a thing (providing of course that they are still trading).

I have got a certain amount of pleasure from writing letters. As I didn’t receive a confirmation that my note to Max and Christine had been read, I will have to assume that they have not received it. Alan said that Max led quite a cloistered life these days. I can quite believe that. I shall write to Max before the end of the month. I will do the admin tasks first, so that I’m not using it as a distraction.

I’m developing a slight ache in my right side. That suggests to me that I’m not sitting properly at the desk. So, body is giving me further encouragement to get the footrest (and maybe, if I can find a new source of income, a good chair to sit on). But I’m not going to let myself use that as an excuse to stop immediately. I’m not going to force myself to type so much that it causes me real pain and possibly injury but I am going to push on a little further. Just a little more.  I’ve passed the thousand word mark.

One thing that continues to surprise me is that most of what I write is reasonably grammatically correct. Or at least, it is correct according to the checker in Word! Maybe I shouldn’t trust the machine quite so much!  

There! For all practical purposes, that is the bottom of the second page. I’m going to write a few more sentences to fill in the remaining space and then do a little research on the internet: two authors and Feng Shui to look up. One of the authors was one of the “beat generation” and the other is a young woman who has been publishing her work on the internet.

(signing off 19:27 Words: 1218, Pages: 2)

I’m doing this to relax and I’m multi-tasking

(Tuesday 11^th September 2012 Signed on 19:04)

Now that was a productive day! Let’s enumerate and tabulate what I’ve done:

First of all, I’ve done a whole load of chores. I’m please to say that I didn’t let them get in the way of the project work, but I managed to get a load of little things done. Funny thing was: yesterday wasn’t such a good day, but started well; today was a good day, but started badly. Anyway, I’ve done the shopping, changed the bedclothes, done the laundry, cooked the evening meal.

I’ve sent two personal eMails. I’ve sent an eMail to do with a course and I’ve sent an eMail which is an enquiry. I may have done more. I don’t keep a tally of every eMail I send. I know the computer does, but I can’t be bothered to look.

I’ve done the preparation I need to do for the start of the course tomorrow. That involved assembling some bits of background work into a document and filling in a form. So far so good.

I’ve started a tape transcription project. Someone gave me some old audio tapes and I’m reading off the old contents and saving it as digital files (initially as .wav) if anyone cares. I know the original recordings may be a bit suspect. Once I have the material in digital form I will process the sound files to remove any particularly bad imperfections. After that I will resave them in whatever form the customer wants them. The longest part of the job is “digitising” the original tracks, because with the equipment I have, I have to do it real-time. That means that 1 hour’s recording takes 1 hour to do. I don’t have to sit with it the whole time, but I do have to be around, to set the initial recording levels and to load and turn the tape when required. The whole project is going to take a little while. I have 18 tapes with both sides recorded on each tape. That has the potential to be 27 hours of recording, and that’s before I do the technical bits. I know it is not going to be quite that long, because the first 4 tapes are on C90s (45 minutes per side), but only 35 minutes per side has been recorded. It isn’t sensible   to check all the others, because mounting and checking them will just add to the work-load. Better to estimate high and then adjust the estimate downwards as I become aware of the characteristics of each batch (There are batches within the project).

Five minutes to go before the next tape change.  I have an alarm set but I’m aware of the time. That’s strange. Because I’ve set the alarm, I’m not concerned that I will forget and I can concentrate on what I am writing. But I am also aware of the time and that I am going to break off in a moment to go and change the tape. It’s like my subconscious has spun off a little something which is doing the monitoring, but I’m not worried about it. And now I’m watching the watcher! And now I’m waiting for the alarm and watching the watcher. I really have distracted myself now. Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting alarm!

(breaking off 19:30 resumed 19:35)

New tape loaded and started. I will turn this one and then stop for the evening. I prefer not to leave the machines running overnight. If they were doing something useful it would be a good thing to do, but the maximum amount of “work” I can get is one side or 30 to 45 minutes. For that I have to leave the computer running overnight. And if the autostop doesn’t work on the tape deck then there is the possibility of stretching the tape. No, I’m going to finish now. Load this onto the blog and then go downstairs and read.

(Signed off 19:39 671 Words, barely over 1 page)

Relax, think of nothing and then write.

(Saturday 8^th September 2012 Signed on 10:13)

Ok. I’m going to try this “Free Association, Stream-of-consciousness” trick again. No objective, no real purpose except the process. Keep moving forwards. Write the stuff that comes to the surface. As the surface becomes exhausted, we get that little bit deeper. With each scraping we go deeper still, peeling the layers off the onion. The metaphor is slightly wrong. “Peeling the layers off the onion”, sort of implies that we are getting closer to the centre. That is not correct. True, we are delving deeper into the unconscious, but there is no centre. There is no single place that represents the “real” centre. Instead there are lots of different centres, at different levels. Some gain control for a short time while others are usually in control and some others are dormant at present.

Every centre had an origin. Every centre can be activated and modified.

This week I was sent a photograph of a motorcycle that someone had built. It wasn’t an especially artistic creation. It was more what a manufacturer might make as an engineering feasibility study.  Take parts which you have in stock for existing models and assemble them differently to produce something new. I used to find that kind of thing exciting. This picture reminded me of the way I used to think about possibilities. How I used to think about combining things in new ways. Perhaps there is something here that is more important than the memory. The picture reminded me of a “feeling”.

As I write, I’m trying to understand and intensify that feeling. I am trying to access it. I am trying to feel it more completely. What does that feeling remind me of? When did I feel it? Where was I when I felt it? Who was I with when I felt it?

Those questions seem like good stepping-off points to examine and feel the feeling. I want to feel it because it feels like possibilities. It encourages me to experiment. It makes me want to try new things. It is an optimistic feeling. I can try new things and recombine old things in new ways.  It doesn’t matter that the results will not be perfect. The results will be a stepping stone to something else. Changing, changing, changing!

What does the feeling remind me of; It reminds me of living in Cleveland, the first year after I left university. I was living in the cottage off the yard. I got there through a narrow, arched passageway through the building. There was a wrought iron gate across the passageway.  The yard was paved with cobbles.

There was a row of cottages. Mrs and Mrs Smithard lived in the cottage which was accessed by a door actually in the passageway. Next there was a retired lady who lived alone and whose name I have forgotten. Next was the cottage which I occupied with Les. Then there were Mr and Mrs Mallaby. Mr Mallaby had had a stroke. His right side was slightly paralysed.  He held his right hand as a fist, with the lower arm tensed.

I bought myself a small portable drawing board. When I wasn’t working I drew things; speculations about ways to build motorcycles. I had fun. I played.

That is the feeling I want to access now. I need to work but I need to play as well. I need to do repeated, sometimes even boring things. Things I would rather not need to do, but I need to make time to play as well.

What did I do when I lived in that cottage? I remember going for a long walk across the moors. I route I chose was about 6 miles. I remember that the route involved crossing a stream by a ford. When I got to the ford it was deeper and the stream was wider than I had expected. I took my boots and socks off and waded through the water bare-foot. The water was so cold! After the stream I walked into a small village. I remember drinking beer in a pub in the village, but I don’t remember how much I drank or whether I ate anything.

(Pausing 10:51 – 11:00)

I’m back! I went looking at the route on Google Maps. I didn’t find the village at one end of the route, but I found a farm nearby. I remember it was a very small place and the pub was marked on the Ordinance Survey map. Perhaps it wasn’t really a “village” after all. I don’t have a very clear memory of it.

I felt possibility and optimism. The day of the walk was sunny. It was the weekend. It was probably a Sunday.

I’ve already “cleared out one thing today”. That is a good feeling. Try and create more free-space. Reduce the amount of visual, physical and mental clutter. Reduce the amount of noise.

I still have to get on with my admin task. There is only a little more to do and it will be finished. Maybe not today, but this weekend, I will take the next step. Always the first steps. Every journey is a succession of first steps. Keep taking the next step, which is the next step on the journey. Each step only a single step. It only requires the effort required for a single step. So long as it is a step in the right direction, then each step takes me closer to reaching my goal, however far away that goal may be. The admin task is nearly done. There is only a short distance left to go. Imagine the feeling of satisfaction I will feel when I achieve the goal.

Having got the goal achieved then I can rest in the achievement for a short while. And then, having created more free-space and rested, I can embark on the next journey. Set off towards the next goal, which will be something even more satisfying.

I think I’ve done enough of this exercise for now. There is something else which I could be doing, something which uses different skills and a different part of my mind. I’m breaking off now to do that!   

(Signed off 11:13)

Suggestions from others

<Mike>
Paddy and Mick - were the names changed to protect the . . . innocent?
That was one severely stuffed VW. I was already wondering if the telegraph pole provided a take-off ramp before I read your thoughts along the same lines - why are you unconvinced that is a plausible explanation?
The Garda sound somewhat better than the alleged upholders of the law provided by both Thames Valley and the Manx Constabulary.

As I've only just got back from the Isle of Man (Having missed the last two years. Aarrrgggghhhhh!) I'll start with the Manx Constabulary.

Not this year - 2008? - we were going down Bray Hill when the sound of two-tones made me look in the mirror to see blue lights a fraction of a second before a police bike went by at high speed. 200 yards later, as we ascended Ago's Leap, the process was repeated. Another 200 yards further on, as we descended towards Quarter Bridge, a police car took over the role. While we queued to turn right at Quarter Bridge two more police cars came screaming through from the direction of their HQ a few hundred yards to our left.
By then I was convinced there had been a major incident of some sort, particularly when two more came howling by on the straight between Quarter and Braddan Bridges. Had a plane crashed coming into Ronaldsway, I wondered as I was passed by another one between Braddan Bridge and Union Mills and two more between Union Mills and Glen Vine. Surely nothing else could explain a police response of that magnitude?

Then I crested the hump that follows Glen Vine and found the dip through Crosby village filled from wall to wall with this vast sea of flashing blue lights.
All traffic was diverted around Crosby and when we finally made it back onto the Douglas to Peel road on the other side of Crosby there were yet more Police vehicles almost tailgating each other as they "headed towards" at high speed from the Peel direction.

It turned out a car driver hadn't bothered to either indicate or look in his mirror before turning right, taking out a motorcyclist who'd been overtaking him. The biker was killed, but even so . . .

That happen during practice week. About ten days later, towards the end of race week, we were sat in a Douglas pub, unobtrusively eavesdropping the conversation at the next table as a bemused thirty-something told his parents about what was clearly an extremely minor bump that he'd had on his drive to work that morning. "The entire Manx police force turned up" he told them with an incredulous shake of his head.
As Irene remarked later as we walked back to our hotel "If you want to rob a bank in Douglas, stage a road accident in Ramsey".

And as for Thames Valley Police!
To give you just one of many possible examples, a couple of years ago a mouthy chav in a flashy sports car ran up the back of a young couple right outside my house. It was very quickly established that the mouthy chav was not insured, whereupon the local Rozzers were called.
Ten minutes after their arrival the chav was sent on his way, laughing his head off, while the Plod proceeded to give the young couple an extremely hard time that went on for quite a while.
I later learned that the mouthy chav is one of the areas more prominent drug dealers. It's hard to prevent the word "corruption" coming to mind . . .
</Mike>

<Jeff>
I have two events which build into your senerio ...one Sunday lunchtime we were crossing over to the valley to the west. The road here is fast and was unrestircted. It had one junction on it and at ~ 1pm on a Sunday the junction had a car on it's roof with all 4 doors open and no one inside or in sight....we guess someone had a pint or two before lunch and was late for his dinner...put the car on it's roof ....did a runner and was going to report his car stolen later in the day. Two..... a mate of mind was returning for Xmas from his first part of officier training with the RAF. On ice he managed to slide the car sideways through a telegraph pole ..the VW Golf was writen but he was amused that the insurance company paid the bt bill for the repair. The bill included the itemised "credit "of money from selling remains of telegraph pole.... 65p!!. My mate's father had been a recon Spitfire pilot during WWII and had finished the RAF as an instructor at RAF thorney island..unfortunately my mate hurt his ribs while doing his pole smashing activity and the RAF wanted to re-course him when he failed the next part of the course. Chris didn't agree with them and he and the RAF parted. About 4-5 years ago I heard of a robot solar plane made by DERA at Farnborough .....and who was the lead engineer on the project...my pole smashing mate CK
</Jeff>

Oops! What happened to the internet?

I thought I’d share this story with a few of you. When I’m not doing anything more useful, I write for fun. Something interesting happened so I thought I would share it. This is not intended to be a piece of polished prose. It’s being written pretty much on the fly, without much revision. I’m sending it by several different methods (some eMail, some;  other  internet, one by “snail mail”). This is the story of what happened on Thursday (30^th August 2012). Enjoy!

Thursday 30^th August

K is a peaceful place. Not that much happens here. We have drunkenness at the weekends and we have had incidents of arson, but compared to London, this is a haven of tranquillity. The people of K would probably regard Feltham as being like a suburb of Beirut (or these days, Aleppo). They would be wrong to think that, but that the grass is almost always greener or scorched somewhere else, never “similar but just a little different”.

If K is tranquil, then F Road is quiter still and the little hamlet where I live, up beyond the cemetery (how appropriate) is completely still. The gentle stream, becomes sluggish. The backwater is like a mill pond and the water reflects the sky. Nothing ever happens, but all that can change quite suddenly! I know you’ve all been here, so it will help of you if you can picture my house and the stretch of road between the house and the cemetery.

On Thursday afternoon I was, as they say “going about my business”.  I’d eaten a sandwich for lunch, and  prepared dinner for the troops so they could eat when they got in from school. A home-made cottage pie was sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to be popped into the oven. Dinner could be ready in less than half-an-hour. It was time to get on with some business related chores upstairs.

Since any of you have been here I have furnished “Bedroom Number Six” as an office. You should be jealous. Even I am jealous! You wouldn’t call it palatial, but it is reasonably tidy (in a male kind of way), the books I want are arranged in an orderly fashion on shelves, I have a desk (home-made), a chair to sit on when I’m typing and an easy chair to sit in and ponder. It’s bliss!

The chores for Thursday afternoon were: do a little job hunting, clear the job-hunting-related-spam and do some “writing”. I’ve been trying to do the Graham Greene thing of having a quota of words to write per day (of course, what you are reading is part of today’s quota). Most of it is rubbish. I’ve been experimenting with different subjects and different writing styles. This is another experiment. Before I settled down to do the writing, I was going to check something on the internet and check my mail. The internet wasn’t working. Oh expletive!

 The internet at my place is pretty reliable. The last time it failed for more than a few minutes was a couple of winters ago when the outside temperature plummeted to an indicated -12 deg C. At those temperatures lots of things stopped working, including the water mains.

The message on the browser said that “my router was unable to connect to the exchange”. Actually, one of the most sensible messages I have read on a computer.  I went downstairs to reset the router – no improvement. The obvious next thing to do is ring up Eircom (the Irish equivalent of BT) and tell them there is a fault with my internet service. I looked up the number and picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. The internet and the phone share the same wires, so absence of dial-tone would explain why the internet isn’t working. For no particular reason, I decided that before I phoned Eircom with the mobile, I would take a look outside, after all, if I could see something obviously wrong, like a wire down, I could tell Eircom and that would speed up the repairs.

I went out to the front gate wearing my carpet slippers. A quick look up and down the road told me that something was going on, because about 70 yards towards K a group of my neighbours was milling about in the road. I waved to them and then I went inside to change into my boots and then joined them to find out exactly what was going on.  

The first thing I noticed was that there were a couple of cars parked in the entrance to the Council yard and the next thing I noticed was that there was a car “parked” on the grass in front of the COPE building. I didn’t take much deduction to work out that there had been a car accident. The strange thing was that nobody seemed to be injured.

The first person I spoke to was my neighbour Lilly. I asked her if there was anyone injured (all those years in the Scouts has had some effect). She said that everyone was alright but that “they” had left on foot! “They” were the driver and passenger of the car. The crashed car was probably stolen. I then saw that Dennie (Lilly’s husband) was pulling some wires out of the road. Not only had “they” crashed the car, but they had demolished a telegraph pole in the process! The car crash was the cause of my internet failure, and I had arrived on the scene probably not more than 15 minutes after the actual incident. I asked around and they said that the criminals had escaped, the Garda had been called, but that nobody had got round to calling Eircom. That seemed fair enough, so while they waited at the scene of the crime, I said I would make it my job to contact Eircom.

I went back inside and phoned Eircom on my mobile (I’d left the number inside). I got through to the fault reporting service immediately. It was a machine. There were times that I felt like screaming, but I went through with the procedure: Machine “I’m going to run a line test on your line”, Me (mentally) “and you’re going to find it’s broken” etc. I knew exactly where the line-fault was and could tell them to within a few yards exactly where to find it. In fact, I could have given them a grid reference which would have go them to within 70 yards of the fault. Still, procedures are procedures, especially if you’re a recording, and it was undoubtedly the quickest way of getting the message into Eircom. Irritated but satisfied that I had done my bit I went back outside to find out if anything interesting had happened in the meanwhile. 

Back outside, K’s finest had arrived in force. There were two police cars, one pulled up at the side of the road, and the other pulled up in the road while they had a quick conference. The car in the road, which was facing away from K, set off, blue light flashing, but without any siren. The man-hunt was on! After exchanging a few more words with the neighbours, I went back indoors. I had things to do, providing they didn’t involve the internet! Shortly after this, N and the girls arrived from school. By that time, the crowd (crowd?) had dispersed, and there was only a single Garda, with an unmarked car parked in the access to the council yard, so they didn’t even register that something significant had happened until I told them.

After dinner, I went back outside to see if anything significant had happened. I guess by this time it would be a little after 5 o’clock. The Garda was still there, taking photographs and measuring things and now there were two women who hadn’t been there before. I wandered over, surveyed the scene and asked if they were involved. The younger woman said that it was her husband’s car (so it was stolen). I told her that if she needed anything she (and her companion) were welcome to come along to my house. They said thanks, but no thanks. Then the Garda asked me if I was a witness. I explained that I wasn’t really. All I could tell him was what he could gather from his own observations; the rest would be me repeating what other people had told me. He seemed satisfied with that and made note in his notebook. I expect he was relieved that he didn’t have to take another witness statement.

As I was walking back home, I met another neighbour. She had come along with her children to view the entertainment and they were all looking at the wreck. We were constantly telling the children to pay attention to the road. Mobile phone cameras have the unfortunate side-effect of making people, especially children, feel remote from their surroundings. They were quite likely to wander into the road while in search of a better shot. None of us wanted to add a secondary accident to the one that we had already! As we talked, it was clear that one thing which had us all a bit puzzled was how the car had got to where it was. It was the right way up and facing in the right direction, but the lawn on which it was standing was between two and three feet higher than the road, and there was no great damage to the surrounding retaining wall. Had it flow there? Even now I don’t know the answer, though I do have a possible, partial explanation but more of that later.

Over the course of the evening I popped out from time to time to see what was happening. First the Eircom engineer turned up. He seemed to spend quite a while on his mobile phone. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I would guess. When I went and looked later on, he had tied some marker tape on various things to flag the work-site for the follow-up crew. This was a good idea. Large as it is, a horizontal telegraph pole lying along the ditch at the side of the road is easy to miss.

The next person to turn up was the man with the wrecking truck. He too spent a while on the phone, probably explaining to someone back at base:  the car was a write-off, and that he didn’t know how he was going to get the wreck from where it was without doing damage to the COPE’s property. I didn’t know either. He had one of those flat-bed trucks where the flat back can tilt and extend down to the road. Great for picking something up from ground level, but I would have thought it would be hopeless for something “up there”. I thought that he would have to abandon the attempt until he got a crane. I was wrong. I came out a little later and he had got the wreck down onto the road and was in the process of winching it onto the truck. He didn’t cause any additional damage either. Good job!

It was about this time that I finally got round to checking my eMail. I had an enquiry from an agent! That’s the first enquiry I’ve had in ages, and I wasn’t able to reply. Neither I nor any of my immediate neighbours had any internet or phone, and of course the agent hadn’t given me a phone number anyway (all you have to do is reply to the eMail!). Disgusted, I decided that beer was the only solution. I went to the pub.

In the pub, I bumped into B, one of my neighbours who I hadn’t seen so far that day. B had been drinking, he has a thick North Cork accent and I’m deaf. I like B but sometimes we have problems communicating. I asked him if he knew about the incident up at home. He said that he did, and that what’s more, those responsible had been caught. He mentioned the name of a notorious local family of ne’er-do-wells. Someone else came over and B and I had to provide details of the bits of the story which we knew.

Friday 31st August

I got up a bit late (but still before 8) and more in hope than expectation, texted someone I know down in town and asked if I could borrow his internet connection for a few minutes. He was amenable to this, so I set off to do the daily chores of shopping and stuff early and at the same time send a message to employment agency. As I set off for town, the men from Eircom had already arrived. They had a truck with a pile of telegraph poles on the back and a huge auger thing attached to the end of a hydraulic jib.

My acquaintance A runs a small computer maintenance business out of a shed in his parents garden (yes, really). He’s a one man business and he gives really good service. When I explained what I wanted he said that was completely ok. When I explained that the car which did the damage had been stolen, he swore loudly. I think maybe he has had some trouble with car-thieves in He hooked me up to his network and did something else while I typed my note.

Just as I finished my sending my note and collecting the stuff waiting in my inbox, another customer came in carrying a laptop which needed something done to it. The inside of A’s office is a real Alladin’s cave, benches on all three sides with servers under the counter and around the back and it gets a bit “friendly” with three people in there. We all shared the time of day and complaints about the problems of the world, and I went on my way.

Back at home, the men from Eircom were working away. I really can find no fault with them. I don’t say that they were working hard, but they were working steadily. Different people came and went. First there were the pole erecting crew, then there were the people who strung the wires, and finally there was the poor soul (or maybe there were two of them) who was left behind to do the myriad of connections.  I saw no sign of anyone loafing around supping tea. Instead, throughout the day, every time I could be bothered to look, there was something going on. It is quite a shock to discover how much damage taking out just one telegraph pole does. First they had to dig a hole with the auger and erect a new pole. Then they had to string the wires. And finally, as I said there were all the connections to make. My phone made its first chirrup a little before 4 o’clock. Then the phone was working. I know because I checked incoming and outgoing calls with my mobile. Finally the internet connected up. It seemed to be unstable for half-an- hour and it has been normal since. People (including me) tend to criticise the service they get from telecoms companies but this time I can’t find anything to criticise, except perhaps the impersonal nature of the fault reporting process. From incident to fix was barely over 24 hours, and this was a completely random occurrence. The only simplifying factor was that “the fault” was about as simple (if dramatic) as they come.

And when I finally got round to checking my eMail, I found that; yes, you’ve guessed it, the employment agency had sent me an eMail and hadn’t phoned me. That’s after me telling them “I have no landline and I have no internet because some eejit has demolished the telegraph pole which serves me and my neighbours.”  Some people! I’ve sent them a CV, so we’ll see if anything comes of it.     

Saturday 1^st September

There is a rather odd addendum to the factual part of the story. As usual, we went to the “vigil” mass on Saturday evening. During the service the priest made an apology. He said he was sorry if there were any notices missing from the weekly news sheet. The church has a box where people can deposit slips of paper requesting things that they want included in the news sheet. That box had been stolen on Thursday! As the priest said, presumably whoever had taken it had it had thought that there might be money in it. The box and some slips had been found in the cemetery adjoining the church on Friday but this was after the news sheets had been printed and of course the priest could have no idea if any slips were missing.

As N pointed out our way out of the car park on the way home; was it a coincidence that the theft had occurred on the same day, and close to the time that the car was stolen? It is only a short distance, over a pedestrian footbridge from the church to the place where the car was taken from. It is certainly tempting to think that there might be some connection.

Conclusions

The whole affair made me pause for thought. Here are my conclusions:

I went out and paced out the distances involved with the accident (I’ll give the measurements in Imperial, but they were taken by paces, so just substitute metres for yards if you prefer):

• ·         The distance from my house that the car finally finished up is 70 yards.
• ·         I can identify the point where the car first touched the verge from a gouge mark.
• ·         The distance from the gouge mark to the telegraph pole is 15 yards.
• ·         The telegraph pole was snapped off, close to ground level.
• ·         The car finished up on a lawn which is raised about the road level by 2 to 3 feet and surrounded by a dry stone retaining wall.
• ·         The distance from the telegraph pole to where the car finished up is 40 yards.
• ·         The car involved was a Volkswagen Passat.

My conclusions:

• ·         The car must have been travelling at a fair speed.
• ·         I’m not entirely sure how it got up the vertical 2 to 3 feet, but my thoughts are; the driver lost control, careered along the verge, hit the pole which snapped off. As the pole was falling, the car slid up the pole, as if it was a ramp, and flew the last few yards before landing pretty much pancake style on the lawn. I’m not entirely satisfied with the explanation, but it explains most of the facts.
• ·         If anyone had been walking on the road, or even on the lawn, then we would have had a real calamity on our hands.
• ·         Volkswagen Passats are tough. It may have been written off but those inside were in a sufficiently good state that they were able to run away. They do say: “any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!”
• ·         The Garda Siochanna can run a man-hunt and get their man. They did have some advantages, like the fugitives were on foot and in a state of shock, but the Garda got their men.
• ·         Eircom can fix major damage quickly and efficiently.
• ·         Employment agencies don’t read what you send them. 

On an even lighter note…

As it sometimes says at the start of a movie: “this is based (loosely) on real events which really, REALLY took place.”

Paddy and Mick were short of cash so Paddy suggested that they help themselves to the poor-box at the Church. Mick thought there wouldn’t be much in it (“the people round here are too stingy”), but it might get them a couple of pints.

Paddy went into the Church while Mick kept watch. A few minutes later Paddy came out with the box stuffed under his coat. They went into the graveyard to break it open. Mick got out the screw-driver he kept in his pocket and wrenched off the poxy little padlock in a trice. They looked once, they looked twice, there was nothing inside but little bits of notepaper. Mick looked at the outside of the box again. “You eejit!” he said. “You’re after taking the wrong fecking box!”.

Just then, Paddy saw, or thought he saw, some movement. In an instant he had vaulted the fence and was off like a hare. Mick dropped the box and was after him, still clutching the screwdriver in his hand.

They ran over the iron footbridge, straight through the park and past the Doctor’s surgery. When they got to the main road Paddy paused for a moment to let Mick catch up. They ran across the road, and then left up F Road. There were always cars parked there, outside the Gym.

In a trice, Mick had spotted a likely car. He tried the handle. He was in luck. A few seconds later, they were inside and Mick was fiddling under the dashboard. They were off.

Off up the road they sped. It’s a winding road, but Mick put his foot down. The police weren’t going to get him. Oh, no.  All the time Paddy kept looking out the back window and yelling at Mick to go faster.

Suddenly the car touched the kerb, and then, in slow-motion, it was in the air, flying like something out of “The Dukes of Hazzard”. Bang! It hit the deck. The airbags went off. Everything was pandemonium. Mick pulled himself together he was out of the car and Paddy was after him. They just kept running .

When he glanced back, Mick could see the locals gathering round the car. Some of them had pitchforks, some of them had blazing torches.

Mick and Paddy kept on running, and then they heard the sound of the bloodhounds…

 

    

Stories my Father told me…

(29th August 2012 Signing on at 18:33)

…about Flying Training at Hanworth Airpark.

Arriving from Glasgow

I do not know what year this was, but presumably it was the Christmas either immediately after, or immediately before, the Britain’s declaring a state of war with Germany. My father had been fired from a job assembling Sunderland flying boats in Glasgow (or maybe Dumbarton) but that is another story.

He arrived at Feltham station on the Greenline bus from Victoria Bus Station, having taken the bus down from Glasgow. He says that he had the clothes he stood up in, a small suitcase and his toolbox. He had been told that he had a job with General Aircraft on Hanworth Airpark. He had nowhere to stay. As this was the late 30’s, the journey down from Glasgow must have taken some time. He said that he arrived in Feltham late in the evening. He checked his toolbox into the left-luggage office at Feltham Station and enquired about somewhere to stay for the night. I don’t know how effective such an enquiry would be now, but then it got him the suggestion of an address down Hanworth Road. This was a time before even land-line phones were common, so he would have had no choice but to walk to the address and ask. Fortunately they had room for him. In fact it at was even better than that.

The house where he had been directed and where he eventually stayed for a while made him very welcome. The “man of the house” had lost his job, and so they were very short of money. The money from his rent made all the difference. It was just before Christmas and my dad said that the wife said to her daughter “now we can have Christmas”. The pair of them went on a shopping expedition to Bentall’s in Kingston a day or so later.

The day after he arrived my Dad went to General Aircraft. He was told that he had a job, but that news of his dismissal had come down from Glasgow. He had a bad reputation and he what going to be watched.

What I don’t understand is how my Father moved from General Aircraft to Flying Training Ltd, but he did!   

Defending the Airpark, with few guns and no ammunition

The war was either under way or just about to start. This could be the period which I believe was called “The Phoney War”.

Hanworth Airpark was a military base. All the instructors in Flying Training had been drafted into the Airforce and the ground maintenance personnel, like my Father were under military orders but continued to be employed by Flying Training. As the Airpark was a real military objective, some means had to be put in place to defend it from attack for the air or the ground. To put this on a formal basis, my Father and all the other members of the staff became members of the Home Guard (or whatever its predecessor organisation was). From some source unspecified they were issued with guns (probably ancient rifles). They were even issued with a small number of machine guns, one of which was mounted onto the back of a truck. In my mind I have a picture of an earlier version of “the technicals” in warring African states, where a machine gun is mounted on a frame behind the cab of a Toyota pick-up truck.

There was just one problem, but it was a significant one. Whoever had organised the artillery had forgotten about munitions! There was no ammunition for either the rifles or especially the machine guns. However impressive it all looked, it was completely useless! As my Father said, thank goodness there was never any question of using the weapons, because it would have been hopeless.

There were some garbles stories about defence exercises at night. It all sounded good fun and chaotic, but I wonder if it really felt like that at the time?

Leaving for Stoke on Trent (Mere?)

At some point it was decided that Hanworth Airpark was not a suitable base for a training squadron, and the decision was made to move the whole organisation to Stoke-on-Trent. I think the destination was “Mere” but I’m not sure. The aircraft were flown up and everything else went up as a number of convoys.

Alan Lavender’s first wife’s parents lived in Victoria Road. Alan had a three-wheeled Morgan sports car. Because the moving was government business, he had fuel to drive it up in one of the convoys. Looking back, I can’t remember my Father ever mentioning how he travelled up to Stoke-on-Trent.

Piss-pot up the flagpole

The pilot students at Hanworth were like many students. They got up to all sorts of wild things. Many of their escapades were fuelled by drink. The officers’ mess for the flying school was located in Hanworth Park House. Behind the house, naturally, there was a flag-pole.

One night, probably after an evening in the pub, an unidentified student climbed up the flag-pole and placed a chamber-pot on the top.

When the time came to hoist the flag the following day, the Commanding Officer was furious when he saw the chamber pot. He immediately ordered someone (presumably Airforce personnel) to climb the flagpole and retrieve the pot. Inspection showed that the flagpole was rotten, and although it had apparently withstood the weight of a student the previous night, nobody was prepared to climb it sober and in the cold light of day!

Not to be defeated, the Commanding Officer then ordered the guard to shoot the pot down. Apparently they had found at least some ammunition by this stage. When the chosen marksman shot the pot they discovered the flaw in this plan: it was an enamelled steel chamber pot! Shooting it made a noise and ruined the pot, but it wasn’t likely to bring it down.

I would like to say that the story had some funny or surprising ending. Unfortunately, it has no ending at all. I don’t remember my Father saying how the chamber pot came down, if it ever did. Of course it must have come down in the end, because there is no flag pole at Hanworth Park House!

Stealing a fire engine

Several of the trainee pilots were a little eccentric. One of them habitually wore a red huntsman’s jacket. I believe it is called “Hunting Pink”. This fellow (I suppose he must have been in his early twenties) took a fancy to one of the barmaids in the Airman public house. The feeling was not reciprocated. This barmaid either lived on the premises or very nearby.

One evening, when drunk the “huntsman” proposed to the barmaid and asked her to run away with him to Gretna Green. He was obviously a romantic. She told him that she would, on sole condition that he drove her there in a fire engine. She thought that would be an end of the matter.

The following day, she was wakened early by the sound of a bell outside her bedroom window. When she looked outside she saw that the huntsman had stolen a fire engine from the local fire station (I presume the one which used to be under the railway bridge at Bridge House). She told him that he was an idiot and that he should go away.

I don’t know what happened to the huntsman or what happened to the fire engine. I have to suppose that the fire engine was returned undamaged and that this kind of madness was exactly what the airforce was looking for in its fighter pilots.

Joe Tollow’s dog

I know almost nothing about “Joe Tollow” except that he was one of my Father’s mates, and that he had a dog.

At that time, The Airman public house had three bars: Public, Saloon and Private Bar or snug. My Father and his colleagues had sort-of taken over the Private Bar. They had no right to do this and the publican didn’t approve, but they regarded it as their territory.

The Private Bar was furnished with small tables (I don’t know what shape, but I imagine little round tables. The important thing is that between the legs of these tables was a small shelf at about “dog height”. I think it was intended for putting glasses on when the top of the table was being used for playing cards or dominos.

Anyway, Joe Tollow’s dog (I know less about the dog than I do about his master) enjoyed having his back scratched. He just couldn’t get enough of it. If someone else had invaded the Private Bar, and my Father and his mates were there, they would sit around one of the tables and scratch the dog’s back. The would also sit with their legs under the table so that the dog could not get under their table. When they stopped scratching the dog, it would look for somewhere else to scratch its back. If it could get under the shelf of one of the adjoining tables then it would scratch it’s back and probably upset the drinks (and the other customers)!

Floyd Buttle

Floyd (Bud) Buttle was one of my Father’s friends. His wife Madeline’s parents lived in Victoria Road. I have seen a photograph of Bud. He had a moustache. I know that after (and possibly during) the war, he worked for Airworks in the Arabian Gulf. He died of lung cancer.

Madeline re-married and moved to the Isle of Wight. I met her there many years later.

Crash

Flying Training mostly used Hawker Hart and Hind Aircraft. I am not sure if it was them, but one type of aircraft was supposed to be very difficult to spin, even if it stalled. This made it an ideal early trainer. However, some of the aircraft were re-engined which changed their handling characteristics. One of them spun out of control and crashed (An electricity sub-station near Cromwell Road) killing the trainee and the instructor.

 (Pages 4+, words 1,690, signing off at 19:37 )

Woops! No internet

(30th August 2012 Signing on at 17:36)

A little earlier today, at about 15:30, I finished preparing tea, and so I came upstairs to do a little “writing.” I can’t remember why, but I went to check something on the internet. The internet wasn’t working. For a change, the error message was absolutely unequivocal; the problem is between the router and the exchange. I went downstairs to look at the router. The indicator lights agreed with the status report. I restarted the router, this did not bring about any improvement. OK, it looked like I was going to have to talk to Eircom. It had all been working perfectly earlier in the day. I wondered what had gone wrong? I picked up the phone, and there was no dialling tone. I thought that was significant. I wondered if I might be able to see anything so I went to the front gate, and looked down the road in the direction of the exchange. There was a small knot of people, some of whom I recognised as my immediate next door neighbours. It was obvious that something had happened or was still in the process of happening. As I was wearing carpet slippers I went back inside and changed my footwear for boots.

When I walked down to the group of people it became clear what had happened: there had been a car crash and the car had demolished a telephone pole before coming to rest in the grounds of the COPE foundation. To get there it had vaulted a two-foot high wall. It must have been travelling at a fair speed. I’m glad I wasn’t walking out there when it happened!

It appears that the car had been stolen and the driver (and at least one other person) left the scene on foot. I’m glad that nobody (especially innocent passers by) has been injured, but I hope that those responsible are caught and punished.

As there was nothing useful to do at the scene I said that I would go and report the problem to Eircom. Their problem logging system is automated, so it was a bit frustrating going through the problem determination procedure when I knew that the problem was broken wires in the road outside (and could even tell them exactly where the pole was down).

Since then the Gards have been. The scene has been photographed and measured. The wife of the owner of the car has been and viewed the carnage and the car has been collected by a wrecking truck. I have even seen an Eircom engineer looking at the damaged pole (which is horizontal). The automated machine said that the normal standard of service was three days. I don’t know how long it will take them to erect a new pole and do whatever is necessary to the wires.

I have a small problem which I will try and sort out tomorrow. Where can I find an internet connection? This is important, because I have been contacted about work, but I can’t reply (eMail) the inquirer, because I don’t have any connection to the internet. What a nuisance!  Still, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate my resilience.

(Signing off  538 words, 1 page)

Characters

(29th August 2012 Signing on at 18:33)

This is something new. I’m going to try writing some descriptions of characters some are real(ish) some are not.

Fionnuala Goggin: The girl in the phone shop. Long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, piercing blue eyes, light blue uniform shirt and dark blue slacks.

Finbar 1: Short and squat, a powerhouse of a man, with a low forehead topped with a tousled shock of black hair. He has swarthy features to go with his calling. His eyebrows are bushy and meet above his nose, creating a single stroke underlining his brow. He wears a dirty dark blue boiler suit and black steel toe-capped boots. Finbar’s main business is sweeping chimneys but he also does external painting work and works as a volunteer fireman, so perhaps as a sweep he prevents some of the fires he would otherwise have to put out.

Finbar 2: A rotund, unshaved publican wearing a flat cap and round glasses. He is usually seen in a grubby round-neck sweater of indeterminate colour. He has greying brindled hair to match his two wolfhounds. His pub has no till, instead he has a row of plastic tubs containing coins and notes on the back shelf behind the bar. This is the only pub I know which combines the business of a coal-merchant with that of a publican. As a result it is also the only pub I know which has a sticker advertising “Calor Gas” on the mirror behind the spirit optics. I haven’t heard anyone ask for a nip of Calor yet, but maybe someday someone will get that desperate!

Pauline: A large elderly lady with her own little pub. She has a rare gift of getting her customers to talk to one-another. There are no strangers in Pauline’s bar, if they come in strangers they do not remain so for long. She has curly hair which is dyed dark brown. As a result nobody (except for her immediate family) is sure of her age and nobody is impolite enough to ask. She wears a floral dress underneath an apron. As well as running the bar, she sells sacks of potatoes grown on the family farm.

Archie: Tall and lean. Rarely seen with a jacket on during the day. Instead he wears a collarless striped shirt beneath a charcoal grey waistcoat. Across his belly he has a silver watch chain. In one waistcoat pocket is his steel hunter watch, in the other, when it is not clenched between his teeth, is his short stubby pipe. On his head is a dark grey cap. He has a grey boot-brush moustache. He wears his shirt sleeves  rolled up above the elbows showing the muscles of his, still powerful, arms. He wears his trousers short with the turn-ups stopping short of his black, mud-caked boots.

When Archie was a young man he was a farrier.  He was the son of the blacksmith. He used to work stripped to the waist in the forge. In the semi darkness the light of the forge fire reflected on his sweaty torso. That was many years ago. The forge is long gone and Archie hasn’t shoed a horse in fifty years.

Neil: Neil is tall and muscular. He wears a blue nylon boiler suite beneath a shabby, olive-green topcoat. He wears his cap at a jaunty angle. His cheeks are polished and he wears eau-de-cologne.

Willy: Willy is a bear of a man. His huge beard is now streaked with grey, which only intensifies his piratical appearance. He wears a dark Breton seaman’s cap on his head.

Liam: Liam is a big man with a barrel chest. He has greying black hair and big muscular hands. He works as a forester and it is easy to imagine him swinging an axe. He smokes a briar pipe which he fills with fragrant aromatic tobacco.

Len:  A wizened little man. Small built with quick gestures and movements. He is bald except for some tufts of grey above his ears and a little around the dark. His eyes are grey and his eyeballs protrude from their sockets, giving him the appearance of a startled frog. He wears the waistcoat and trousers from a light grey check suit but has never been seen to wear the jacket. He toils away in his garden, still wearing a tie. When gardening he wears leather gardening gloves.

The Doctor: Tall and broad shouldered. His skin has a peculiar complexion, dark olive with an underlying, and surprising, hint of green! The whites of his eyes are bloodshot with an unhealthy looking yellow tint. His hairline is receding increasing the apparent height of his already striking forehead. His hair is completely white, contrasting shockingly with his skin.      

 (Pages 1.5, words 803, signing off at 19:37 ) 

Pressure, friction and resistance

(28th August 2012 Signing on at 14:57)

I tried to do something today and I encountered resistance. As it happens I decided to avoid the resistance and do something entirely different which achieved another long term objective. The “thing” and the nature of the “resistance” are not that important, but it got me thinking about resistance in principle. Resistance in this case means resistance to change or to movement. Other similar words are “friction” and “inertia”, which imply a physical, or physics metaphor. Both “friction” and “inertia” will be felt at resistance to movement. You push against something and you can feel it pushing back. It doesn’t move. Friction and inertia are different though. Once you have got movement, then inertia will tend to continue the movement, whereas friction will bring the movement to an end.

Another possibility is that you are dealing with a mechanism which is jammed. Now this is a difficult problem, because from the outside, it is difficult to tell what the cause of the resistance is. If you apply sufficient force to a mechanism which is stiff with friction, then you will get it to move. If you apply increasing force to a mechanism which is jammed or seized then you may eventually cause movement but you may also break the mechanism.

This brings us on to the means of dealing with resistance. There are a number of techniques which can be used, either independently or in combination: the first and most obvious is the one already referred to, steadily increasing force; the second is shock, the classic “hit it with a hammer” (and maybe progressively bigger hammers!); then we have lubrication, adding oil to a mechanism or perhaps mounting an object on rollers; another approach is to “jiggle it”, if there is any movement at all, then “jiggling”, especially rhythmic jiggling, can create opportunities to  exploit both inertia and lubrication; a last  technique (or maybe rather a pair of techniques) is the application of hot and cold with a blowlamp or ice.

Let’s imagine specific cases where I have encountered resistance in the past. One which springs to mind is undoing nuts and bolts which have become seized with corrosion. In addition to the techniques for undoing them described above, I have also used destructive techniques to remove them. The destructive techniques I have used are: splitting the nut with either a nut-splitter or a chisel, cutting the head of the bolt off with a chisel, removing the head of the bolt or the nut by drilling it or grinding it, and of course, everyone’s  favourite; cutting the head of the bolt with an oxy-acetylene cutter! This last one is best suited to relatively large nuts and bolts in relatively exposed situations.

I’m not going to be able to write quite so much today. I have an task I have to start in about ten minutes time, so the “resistance” and the other things I have had to do today have rather got in the way. But this does not matter that much. I have still managed to make some progress with everything and that is something I find encouraging. If resistance does not bring things to a complete halt, then we must still be moving in the right direction. So long as we are moving in the right direction, we will get to the destination in the end providing the movement can be sustained for long enough,

And that made me thing of calculus and differentiation: distance travelled, velocity and acceleration. For a journey we should not expect to maintain the same velocity for the whole of the journey. An ideal journey would start off relatively slowly, accelerate to an efficient cruising velocity and then decelerate to come to rest at the destination. “Come to rest” that’s a nice phrase in the context. It has given me the idea of completing a journey and coming to rest. Most journeys are not ideal, they involve dealing with obstacles with reduce speed by introducing additional resistance and may even bring us to a standstill for a time. A real journey will have to deal with all sorts of things.       

 (Pages 1 plus, words 708, signing off at 15:28 ) 

The grindstone

(27th August 2012 Signing on at 13:32)

OK. Here we go again. This time I don’t really have a starting point. Let’s see what happens. Yesterday, I started to read “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by TE Lawrence again. I read it the first time many years ago. The copy I have is a rip-off republication of an out-of-copyright edition. I’m not sure which edition it was, but it looks like it is photo-typeset using the old text. The typeface used looks a little old-fashioned. Anyway, it may by more than 20 years since I read it.  My eye was drawn to it on the shelf, so I thought “why not?”  Picking up a recent catchphrase: “I can and I will!”

I’ve just made a discovery. I think I may have found the solution to the keyboard problem I had encountered recently. Up to now I had been “fixing it” by restarting the computer. Just now I tried restarting Word only and, what do you know? Problem fixed! That would seem to suggest that leaving Word on for a long while (like several hours) may not be a good thing to do. It also suggests that somewhere deep inside of the version of Word I have there is some insidious little bug. Not my problem. I expect Microsoft know all about it and can’t be bothered to fix it.

Back to the Seven Pillars: I was struck by some of the language Lawrence uses at the beginning; beautiful, dense, poetic prose. It sounds to me like a man at the end of his tether, which I believe he was.

As well as reading Lawrence, I’ve started another self-help hypnotherapy course. There is nothing quite like working on yourself.

As an aside, were you aware that the idea of “self-help” originated with Samuel Smiles? (here is a link to a free version http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935). Maybe I will add that to my Kindle some time. I have more than enough reading to do at the moment, what with hypnotherapy, sociology and Lawrence!

Still, on we go! I will need to set myself an alarm to stop writing so that I can get tea cooked for the workers returning home. OK. Just done that.

I’ve noticed one or two small changes as a result of the hypnotherapy course I’ve started. I’ve already skip-read the book and I recognise techniques being used. Actually, I have done this course before and I found it helpful last time. If “The Artist’s Way” is for breaking the log-jam of being a “stuck” creative, this is more directed towards achieving a particular goal.

Achieving a goal is challenge. The difficult thing can be to decide on what it is you want to do. I have to confess that I find that difficult from time to time.  Right now I feel like I am ready to make some changes. I feel restless and I feel energy. But what am I going to do? I think I know, and this writing is part of it, but I am going to work on the details of the change for a while. There is a great deal written about carefully crafting the way you phrase the goal for an affirmation. I’m sure many of you will have come across SMART:

• ·         Specific
• ·         Measurable
• ·         Achievable
• ·         Realistic
• ·         Timely

And there are several other variations. I am fully in favour of setting the goal in that way, but that is not all. Before I get to the stage of setting the goal (and the inevitable sub-goals which represent milestones along the way) I want to be sure that I have the right goal for me. This needs to be something that I can commit to. Commitment is an important part of the process. However laudable the goal is, if I am not committed to it, then in the end I am likely to make excuses and find a way of wriggling out of it.

What do I mean by commitment? First of all, I need to be doing it for me. Other people may be involved, but the commitment is being made by me, the pain will be felt by me and therefore it needs to be me that makes the commitment. This means that this new goal I am developing is not there just to please other people. If that sounds selfish, then I suppose it is but I’m not going to apologise for that!

Here is an extract from Lawrence, taken out of context, which captures a feeling that I want to use:

We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man’s creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.

I’ve read it. I’ve written it. Quite honestly, I’m not sure I know what it means. Maybe even Lawrence did not really know exactly what it meant. What I want to communicate to myself is emotion. The passage contains some seeds which I feel are important: “self-centred” and “freedom”, I want to be free; and I want the goal to be “ravenous” and “transcendent”. I want this goal to consume me. In the bible the Old Testament repeatedly uses words for sacrifice which are intended to mean “Wholly consumed” (I think the correct Greek rendering is “Holocaust” – holo = whole, caust = fire). That is what I mean.  I what my goal to contain the idea of brightness. (I slipped into editing what I was writing then for just a moment. That is something I do not want to do. I do not want to polish these words. I want to write them. The time for polishing comes later.)

Here is an image: Look back to the Steel-works at Lackenby: imagine that you are standing on the gantry on the West side of the convertor building. This is above the 30 metre level where the convertors are gimballed, but below the 60 metre level where the crane tracks run. Now imagine that one of the vessels has just been blown. Pure oxygen has been blown onto the surface of molten iron. Phosphorus has already been removed from the iron by the Polyseus Plant outside. Here, carbon  has been burnt out of the hot metal from the blast-furnace and the temperature of the mixture in the vessel has risen to approaching 1700 deg C. Imaging the vessel is tilted towards you. Fumes pour from the open mouth of the vessel as the metal and slag are sampled. The vessel remains in the tilted position while the operators await the lab test results and instructions of exactly what quantities of alloy metal and carbon to add. Remember the heat of the metal! Remember looking into the glowing heart of the vessel. The mouth of the vessel is approaching a black body. The surface of the slag is visible in the vessel and through the convection shimmer the hexagonal convection cells are visible on the surface of the slag. The convection currents churn the slag and the metal below it. Remember the heat! Remember the intensity. Remember the brightness in the darkness. Remember the contrast.

I remember polishing metal. Words can be polished like metal. Now is the time for making metal, but the time for polishing will come in the future. Today is a time for creation. Not all that is created will be perfect. Some will not even be good. That is not the point. The point for the time being is to create. The objective of creation is to quieten the inner critic. There will be time to criticise in the future. Shape the stone, first with the gavel, then with the chisel. Knock off all superfluities and then prepare the work for the hands of the more experienced workman.

Polishing! Imagine aluminium freshly polished, buffed with a buffing mop. Imagine metal polished so brightly that it reflects the light. Imagine the different shades you can see when metals are polished brightly: aluminium, stainless steel, carbon steel. Imagine all the different shades.

As well as creating new stuff, I want to tidy old stuff. Each day I am going to make my working environment tidier. Some days the change will be big and some days the change will be small. Today there were some small changes. Tidying will include the physical and the mental environment. Every day I will do some creative work and some tidying. Also each day I will move forward a little and consolidate my position a little. I can and I will!

I do not have to do a lot of everything each day. I can do more of one thing one day, and then more of something else the next. The road is the thing! The journey is the thing! I am establishing habits. Establishing habits can be painful and it can be hard work. Never-the-less the effort is worth it, because once the habits are established, I can use more of my energy on the truly creative.

The process I am undergoing at the present is letting my creativity out. What are the things I want to be doing? I have embryo ideas in mind, but I want to order them and prioritise them. Trying to do too many things at once is counter-productive. It is best to do one thing at a time. It is rarely possible to do one thing exclusively, but if I have one thing which is my priority then that one thing can get my attention.

I like the way that doing the writing is quietening my mind. There is less room for rumination when I am concentrating on writing. Although the writing process is useful at the moment, what I am writing is not as useful as it might be. That will change. As I get more used to writing, as I get back into the habit of writing, I will be able to focus more attention on the content.

Already, I like the fact that I can write continuously. For me it is more productive to split writing into a number of distinct steps. First, plan what I am going to write. At present I am not doing that at all. This is purely stream of consciousness (and therefore, I suppose also free-association in some respects). Second, do the writing. That is what I am doing at the present. That is what I am practising and I am enjoying the process. I am also pleased with the results. I am not editing what I am writing, but even so a great deal of this is coming out in reasonable sentences. At some time in the future I may try doing this step using Dragon. Then, thirdly, there is the editing step. I have spent so much of my life editing things that I tend to interrupt myself to do the editing as I go along. That is what I am going to stop doing.

I look after the quantity. God looks after the quality.

And he does! This is working so much better than I expected. I am going to keep writing until the alarm goes and then copy this text into the blog along with a word count and a number of pages. Based on the three different blogs and other stuff, I must have written more than 5 thousand words today. That is amazing. I time to go. The alarm just went off!

(Pages 3 plus, words 1932, signing off at 15:02 )