Blue Suede Shoes

Here is an amusing little tale.

Siobhan came into the kitchen with a bottle of my whisky. It’s the one I’m slowly working my way through and was quarter full (or three-quarters empty, if you prefer). “Why have you got that?” I asked. It turns out she wanted it for a still life for the art exam.

“You’re not taking that to school!”  I said. I explained that taking an open whisky bottle to school was bound to be in breach of some school rule or another and that a quarter bottle of whisky was bound to be a temptation to someone.

The question was though, what to do about it. She wanted the bottle. The solution was to decant the whisky into an empty jar. Not a jam jar actually, but a jar which had contained chocolate spread. I washed it out carefully first. Then I replaced the whisky with an equal amount of tea. It’s the standard thing done in the theatre (unless certain actors are playing, when they use the real thing) and looked pretty convincing.   

So there you have it. I’m drinking my own liquor from an old fruit jar!

Another problem with lights

Now you've reminded me of a funny one from even longer ago (creaky voice "we're getting old..."). When I put my NSU (*****, so we were **** and that was **** years ago) in for its initial MOT Bassey failed it on the headlight (Bass failing something!). He then suggested that it would be totally irresponsible to "scrub the metal reflector and cover it with self-adhesive silver tape" and proceeded to sell me a roll of self-adhesive silver tape. Naturally it sailed through the MOT second time around.

Happy, innocent times. Bass wasn't unique either. Mind you, as you know the lights on a Quickly were at best a bit like an anaemic glow-worm, and you had to have the engine running at full revs to get that! I wouldn't suggest attempting anything similar on the Fazer. You know there would be an opportunity for someone if there was a way of refurbishing transparent plastic components like that for a reasonable cost. I don't know of one. Where do you go from here? "Daytime only" and be careful, I suppose. I expect the dodgy reflectors will still get through the MOT. It makes you think. This is not a problem you have with an old glass headlamp assembly, although the silvering at the back does fail sometimes. The really old may outlive the newer and better because of the failure of a small but vital plastic component.

Did I ever tell you the one from over here about "three wheels on my wagon"?

Problem with lights

I'm giving myself an easy day, because I'm getting over a disturbing experience (no harm done though) which I had last night. I'll share it with you, and hope you don't have anything similar, and also hope that I don't have a repeat.

Yesterday evening I went to my course at University College Cork. That kicks out at 21:30, so after a chatter with "the wimmin" I set off home. On the way out of the car park I noticed something odd. Why are the headlights of the car behind me making my car cast a shadow? After a short distance I pulled into a convenient car park and checked my lights. Both dipped beams have failed. That means I have sidelights, main beam and nothing else and I'm 40 miles from home. What do you do? I thought for a moment about kipping in the car (no sleeping bag etc), or finding a B&B (it's 22:00 and I'm not actually standing outside one) and took the typical Irish decision - "oh, it'll be grand" and decided to set off home. The next decision was "which route?" The choices are: "over the mountain", which is the way I normally go, or up the main road (N20). The main road is straighter, and has more lit sections. "Over the mountain" is curvy, through woods, some steep drops, thoroughly scenic. I plump for the N20.

Getting out of town was "grand". The rest wasn't. I had thought that I would have enough light from the sidelights to reflect off cats eyes to keep me on track when I doused main beam. I was wrong. The Irish don't have as many cats eyes as you do in Britain. If I left main beam on, people coming the other way thought "selfish bastard" and I got dazzled, and if I switched it off, I couldn't see the road. This isn't a straight dual carriageway, so this is not a safe situation. There are enough turnings off to make it possible for someone to pull in front of me when my lights are off. I decide that I'm likely to either have an accident or cause one, so I really ought to stop. New problem: there is nowhere to stop between the North side of Cork City and Mallow. Pulling onto any of the side roads will only make matters worse and pulling up on the hard shoulder is positively dangerous. Probably 20-30 of the most stressful miles I have driven in a very long time. Eventually I get to Mallow and pull into The Roundabout Inn (the only roundabout between Cork and Limerick). It's only 10 miles to home but I've had enough and really don't think I could justify driving to a Garda. I ring Noreen, tell her what has happened and check in to the Roundabout.

The room reminds me of some of the places I used to stay when on the road. Even smells the same. I don't mean "it smells", nothing like that. It just has a characteristic odour which evoked memories. The décor in bar is odd. It would have been tasteless in the 70's. Sort-of mock something or another. Fake wooden beams, but wood beams are rarely curved like that, and copper coloured?! Weird! Two pints of Murphy's, good night's sleep, a shower and a full Irish breakfast and the world looks a lot better and I'm Euro 45 poorer.

This morning I took the car into my friendly local mechanic and ask him nicely if he can fix it _now_? He says yes. How many men does it take to change two light bulbs? Answer: three, one who knows what he is doing, and me and another customer watching! The mechanic had to take out the air filter to change one of the bulbs. He needed a socket set and a couple of different screwdrivers. It would have been impossible for anyone other than an AA man at the side of the road. The mechanic said that I had probably had one failed for a while but not noticed. He said that the spread of the beams is such that you can do that, especially as most of the time I'm either in town or on main beam. He said I'd probably have been better off going over the mountain because there would have been very little traffic. He may be right. I'm certainly not going to do the experiment. The car was due a service so I've booked it in for next week. He's going to add the bulbs and some labour to the bill.

Could I have got away with it? Very likely. What should I have done? Definitely stayed down in Cork. Either found somewhere to doss or slept in the car. Having started, I think I did the right thing and I got a couple of beers and a breakfast out of it. The advice for sailing and hill walking used to be "avoid getting into a situation where you have to finish". I came dangerously close to doing that. No harm done, but I'm letting myself wind down for the rest of the day. This is definitely one for "the annals".

"hitch-hiker"

Outline for story "Hitch-hiker"

Start with a character who has the resources to do almost anything he wants - Elon Musk/Richard Branson.
Give him the motivation to do something - Dying of cancer(?) - Iron Man Marvel, but also Black Sabbath Song.

Story
Character has interest in space travel. Discovers that he has x. Decides he would like to "go out with a bang".
At the same time, new comet is identified inbound from the edge of the solar system.

Character decides to marshal his considerable resources because he wants to see the edge of the solar system.

Spacecraft slingshots around sun to catch comet on the outbound journey.
Character lands on comet with limited material but with "3d printer" and lots of designs and uses the comet as raw material.
He builds a reasonable home. A comet nucleus could quite reasonably be an 8 km sphere. As much surface area as a reasonable small island.

You can borrow ideas from "Silent Running", "2001" etc.

Maybe he finds something interesting out in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet#Long_period