Brunel's Birthday

From the Guardian: Engineers have tested one of the UK’s most intriguing railway legends: that the rising sun shines through the Box tunnel near Bath on the birthday of the 19th-century genius who created the line.

For many years railway enthusiasts and mathematicians have argued over whether Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the creator of the Great Western mainline, did design the two-mile tunnel with his own birthday in mind.

On Sunday – 211 years after Brunel’s birth – the line was shut because of upgrade work, providing Great Western Railway and Network Rail with a rare chance to observe whether the sun really does shine through the length of the tunnel on 9th April. It does.

The supposed link with Brunel’s birthday was first reported by the Devizes Gazette in 1842. The Daily Telegraph followed the story up some time later but until now, as far as GWR knows, there have been no photographs of the supposed phenomenon.

Matthew Golton (GWR) said the idea of building such a long tunnel between Bath and Chippenham was hugely controversial and was described during a debate in parliament as “dangerous, extraordinary, monstrous and impractical”. Railway pioneer George Stephenson said passengers would be terrified.

The project was over-budget and behind time. At the height of construction, 4,000 people were working on the tunnel and the engineers were getting through a tonne of candle wax and a tonne of explosives every week. One hundred people died during its construction.

It is no surprise that Brunel might had added a mischievous detail to his astounding design. “There are lots of good reasons why Brunel might have wanted to provide a riposte to his critics by not only completing the structure but putting a special architectural signature into the job,” Matthew Golton of GWR said.

Analogue People

Brews and dogs

A sunny spring afternoon so we spent some of it at the international HQ of the Brewdog Brothers in Ellon Aberdeenshire. Not everybody likes Brewdog, they are nontraditional, a bit spiky, pompous and self righteous and the beer is pricy, it's also mostly quite good, but I'm no beer expert. So I managed to visit a brewery, drink no beer and emerge only with a Brewdog dog collar (for an actual dog), a bottle opener and a beer mat. Oh, I ate some pizza and drank some apple juice.

The joy of a new phone

Well it's a kind of joy tinged with confusion, head scratching, questions etc. My favourite question being "why does none of the sparse literature that comes with the phone actually explain anything and when you go on line to download the manual, as per instructions, you find there isn't one after all?" So more trench warfare begins, mostly in my head and a little on line of course. Typical. 

Eventually the new micro SIM card was authorised and it breathed in some non Korean oxygen and so the phone woke up, slightly after the two hours it was supposed to take. By then I'd discovered that there was no memory slot so another means of copying contacts over had to be found. I worked it out after a few minutes of mistakes. Then a barrage of confusing messages mostly saying "such and such has now stopped, configuration in progress and Microsoft Excel has been launched", things I don't want to know but do now. 

What I do want to know is how to set the alarm, that took up most of the time. I'll be waking up to some strange modern bleeping tomorrow and thinking I'm in hospital. Things that are designed to be intuitive never seem to be for me, my intuition is clearly elsewhere and running a different code. The phone's OK anyway.

Nobody understands anything

When it come to broadband, it's performance and actual substance that is, it seems that nobody really understands anything. Who knew that placing a router near a (glass) window, on the floor or beside seemingly benign electrical items can disastrously affect performance? It can cause the poor router to have a seizure or start operating in Japanese. The whole thing (?) is just incredibly flakey and temperamental, like having an Italian film starlet or some conceptual artist at work creating something in your home. The stubborn refusal to operate when most needed; ordering on line, fiddling with bank details or sending that vital email is a pain. It senses your anxiety build and then makes it worse by cranking up the tension, showing some promise and then fading away altogether till only the desolate amber glow of disconnection remains. 

BT of course run their tests to find the cause, "try it in another room", "stand on one leg", "did a bird perhaps fly in and unplug something?",  "what did you have for tea?", "barefoot, socks or rubber soles?", "urine a funny colour perhaps?". So many factors to consider, then mitigate against, then eliminate, then sit down and read a book for a while as the lights of communication change colour or flicker out altogether. 

Well that was last night. Today I'm sitting in a basin of tepid water with a beanie hat on reading the Broons Book 1967, while a cat munchies Dreamies in the next room, overhead a helicopter is flying by and the radio is playing Planet Rock melodies and I'm considering using the nose flute. I also had a banana and made a to do list of things I might well do some day. Funnily the internet is now working, it's all so simple really, just give it what it wants. Chaos.

Meanwhile here's a nice picture of Shetland seaweed that Tom Morton took, I found it on the internet.

1971

Older age brings with it a certain desire to wallow in the warmth of nostalgia. That complicated but simple lie we tell ourselves that whilst "we've never had it so good" or this is "as good as it gets" the hazy past remains a place of peace and golden perfection where mostly good things happened. Anyway, any recent history that happened during my conscious  life is of interest, if only for me to learn how my opinions or experiences may differ from that of the author. The case for 1971 being the best year in rock history is likely to be a pretty solid one. David Hepworth knows his  cultural onions and at that point in modern time I was but a mere lad of 16, confused, ill informed and advised and with little or no concept of harsh reality or the unique moments in history that I was living through. In other words I was the same as everybody else, passing through, sometimes sad, sometimes blue etc. etc. 

Now it's all gone for a ball of chalk; memory is an unfaithful mistress and forty odd years of living have deeply etched over the vivid images and sounds of those days. Blue skies, grey skies, lots of sky and lots of self indulgence and ignorance mixed with the teenage arrogance that (hopefully) you grow out of by the time your twentieth birthday card hits the mat...I was perhaps a little late in blooming with that attribute. I'll read this, disagree about a few things no doubt and then reflect that if somebody wrote a similar book about 1972 or 1973 their case could be equally strong. None of it matters now, all those bright young creative and influential people are now in their seventies or just plain dead, read and remember, weep maybe but don't look back in anger.

Graphics Interchange Format

For whatever reasons (presumably the rise and rise of the smart phone and the smart arse) the .gif formatting of files and the cottage industry that goes with it must be booming right now. There someplace over the blue horizon in pleasantly decorated sweatshops, craftsmen and carftswomen with their craftrobots craft these marvellous forms of 3 second illusion so that the great (insert suitable country as necessary) public can keep themselves amused and entertained for a small period of time in between visits to coffee shops, bingo parlours and gymnasiums.  

On a more serious note there is that strange stopping of time, the almost hypnotic effect where the loop runs on, like some golden drum beat or bass line that you never want to stop. Slowly you enter the groove, then you're snared and hooked, you're sucked in by the repetition and the mindless state that it produces. Everything; movement, colour, tone and expression runs in the short cycle that is the equivalent of a musical earworm or six McNuggets never being enough and twelve more are then required. A visual sugar hit. As it's an image it sears the mind, and as it's likely to be some impossible or imagined creation that makes no proper sense and doesn't belong in the real world the effect is even more compelling. 

I have however learned to pull myself away, to resist and not to go where the pulsing beat and the flashing picture lead, that poison place of ruin and no return, it's easy you just click on the next one and graze elsewhere a little longer. 

Short Stories for Long Afternoons

Note to self: this is what you get when you Google "Short Stories etc..."

Also "Short Stories for Endless Evenings".

Must try harder

Must try harder: I love this little gem (above), it popped into my Facebook feed, you can almost see the smug, digital index finger wagging. 

"If you'd just made a little more effort, put salt in your porridge and were just a bit more sociable lad, then you'd get to see more videos of cheeky cats, cute puppies and clips of old politicians with new comedy soundtracks added it, but will you? Oh no, not you! You're just not interested or committed enough, you're  not pulling your weight and as result we're certainly going to have to ration the treats and funnies that we provide. You need to make some more friends, get people to join up, work that network! This is a business you know! Oh and by the way you've been deleting and disliking adverts from some of our most loyal and best paying customers, you do realize that you get the privilege of Facebook use for free? We need these insurance company's and car dealer's money to run this and make a healthy tax free profit, so let's see a bit more of that team spirit and enthusiasm you showed back in 2007 when you first joined up.  You liked every fucking purile post then, remember?"

Smartly moving on: How things can escalate quickly when on a virtual date and learning the Icelandic language. Take care out there in the land of the hot springs.

Read this and weep: So it seems I've lived 62% of my life under the rule of various Conservative governments and by a simple calculation the other 38% under a fair few dodgy Labour governments. When you're down, you're down all the way. 

Matchsticks under the Mircoscope

I've recently been lining up my Super-Pubic Microscope with my regular Samsung phone in order to capture the strange world of used matchsticks, a random Reddit thread took me there and now I'm a buff. All as seen on BBC2's famous thing about stuff to do with physics where some celebs and scientists sit around in a studio in Salford ribbing each other and making jokes and profound statements while you gaze slack jawed at your smart screen supping milky coffee on the couch (catch it on iPlayer any day soon). 

These geometric shapes are really there and are original, along with the carbon stains and burned up sulphur snow flakes. The colours have yet to be given proper names, a team at Leeds University are working on it while we speak, they've received a grant for the research piece. Funding can be an issue. Looking wider and across fields it turns out that there are many such problems in the world. Meanwhile I'm keeping busy un-developing the photographs in a kind of post-industrial post-analogue way. April already, no holidays booked and no cookies to crunch. There are no precise outcomes.

Epiphany Failure

Here I am at the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, captured and distorted by various electronic devices and not really sure what I'm doing except that at one point, probably when staring closely into "the Persistence of Memory" I may have actually had and actual epiphany but I can't quite remember much about it (brushstrokes?).  I did eat steak and eggs on the way home and it rained pretty much all day but that was the summer of 2016.

Failure to have an epiphany: It seems I've managed to avoid any experience of clear, bright guiding light, probably for a number of months. One of those moments when, out of the blue or the golden glow, clarity of thought and a new understanding emerge. I thought I'd maybe hit one a few moments ago when I was trying to reduce the pixels size of a photograph, indeed I did do it but on reflection there was no great buzz of achievement nor satisfaction, I'd just followed some simple instructions. It was the same yesterday as I toasted cheese and anchovies for lunch, for a brief moment I thought I understood the complexity of the selector knob that operates the grill, it was a sham experience it turns out. Also when my phone touch screen froze and I was unable to operate it, I switched it off and on, sure enough it worked but I felt empty and cheated. There has to be more. But then what about the NHS? They've offered me a plumbing repair operation on May 4th (Star Wars Day!), surely this is an omen, a word from the Jedi Lords, a touch of divine mercy and comfort in troubled times, I'm going to be fine ... or just an accident of the calendar. So what about resetting all the clocks for British Summer, including the hard to fathom central heating system and the cooker. Nah! All it seems to be is emptiness and chasing the wind, to quote my one time mentor, the depressed and confused writer known as King Solomon.  

Some feelings are just way too abstract, way too tantalizingly special, they come along but then they let you down with a thump. That moment when you know  you meant to look up something on Wikipedia but can't remember what and then it never actually dawns on you. That decision you make to cancel fucking overpriced Sky subscription but only once Game of Thrones finally concludes, so it goes on. That YouTube clip you fancied watching that now you just can't find anywhere. The chord sequence you discovered that's good but the timing isn't right and it won't fit anywhere else and you write it down on a yellow sticky and lose it. That funny retort you had but failed to post on Facebook because it just might be misconstrued or might be the post that actually kills the whole stream of communication, nobody actually likes it or adds a comment. Not buying the reduced price chunk of salmon in the Tesco "out of date" section and then having fishcakes for tea. Getting a perfect hold on a tuggy bit of fur on the cat but not having pair of scissors handy. Forgetting all the smart-arse things you'd like to list in a blog post but...

Septic Tank

What really goes on in the world's dark and soft underbelly? There beneath our low profile tyres, flat screens and coffee makers, goings on that are always a bit of a mystery for the modern kind of person. We're happily disconnected from most kinds of routine, household filth, so for Townies sewage goes via some tortuous, invisible route or other, through pipes and channels built by the Romans and Victorians until it hits an industrial plant that converts into it nice, sweet smelling waste paste that we pass onto Norway in used potato sacks. 

Those of us living way off the beaten track however only have a) the septic tank or b) some Commando based woodland solution to rely upon. So when it comes to septic tanks, those with no outlet, they must be emptied from time to time, or a sanitation disaster is likely to occur on a grand scale. A man with wellingtons, gloves, a big tanker and a long hose is therefore required.

Our tank was emptied yesterday, probably just in the nick of time as the photo above shows, though you could describe our actions as being an example of careful, timely planning correctly executed. Actually it's likely that the bacteria in the tank, a vital component in the process, was really working well, had it not been we'd have had to chuck in a dead rabbit or some other piece of roadkill just to kick start the dead system via resurrection. It proves the need for little, useful bugs in things, don't ever be too clean, just be ready to light the blue/brown touch paper and stand well back.

So what's it like to peer into your recent past via the domestic and personal time capsule that is a septic tank? Not as bad as you'd think, strangely it wasn't particularly smelly though the contents were obviously pure shit as was the consistency. The colour speaks for itself (?) becoming darker, more granular and muddier as the tank emptied. Thankfully no dead bodies, dinosaurs or alien space craft were uncovered this time. As an operator once said to me, "after a while you just see it as mince and tatties", fair enough, I've been to a few pop festivals myself. So now it's all hoovered up, removed, pumped into a road tanker and no doubt on it's way to...Norway I suppose.

Sparks

...have a new album out, something about a hippopotamus thereby joining the long line of rock albums named after animals, none of which I can recall right now...err except Animals by Pink Floyd?

Apart from some lengthy conversations most of today (which is by now yesterday) was made up of research into engine warning lights, lambda sensors, the prices of them, refitting them and then resetting the ECU of a car.  All a bit tedious and ultimately leading back to the inevitable practical solution being that maybe my local garage were best placed to carry out a fix. So that was the research done, thankfully (having done research via YouTube) I also now know the correct way to peel a banana and make it taste better, ten dreadful secrets about the Vatican City, ten movie endings that are deliberately confusing, which Australian built SUV I should best avoid, how to correctly apply moisturiser to the skin, what John Lydon said to Piers Morgan recently on some couch, why Richie Blackmore and Ian Gillian split up Deep Purple, why you should never skateboard, ski-do, ski, cycle or generally move on a steep snow covered slope near fir trees and of course the fact that there was a nuclear explosion in what is present day Pakistan some 12000 years ago. Job done.

Footering about

Some days coherent, sensible behaviour seems almost impossible, even when there are important things to do and that need doing. Distractions come along, little time bandits that steal away the moments, pleasantly but suitably wastefully. Some say that's what the internet is all about, not news, gossip or discoveries, not photos of cats, music, movies or recipes, just playing around, pointlessly. I suppose I may have had some better thoughts than if I was engaged in meaningful labour but that's unlikely right now. Here's the questionable distractions from a few moments ago. In the bottom one I quite like the way I've just morphed into the middle of the picture along with everything else.

Images of Pluto

 First of all we have the cartoon dog...

Then the dwarf planet...

Gauge against the machine

Who wouldn't get excited about finding out which ancient Greek statue you might resemble? Well a museum in Montreal has solved that for us all; simply upload and unsmiling likeness and they'll pair you with your Greek (Geek?) doppelganger forebear.  I didn't fare as well as I'd have liked, I scored with an anonymous male philosopher then turned up as Aphrodite and then Ahata. I suspect there's a random aspect to this that pulls up and matches anybody with a nose, two eyes and a mouth to any statue or bust that has the same. There may be quite a few of them out there in the museum archives. Secretly I am of course chuffed, there's something of a ego boost that I'm taking from my obvious resemblance to a Greek goddess?

Sage/Age/Gauge/Veg Against the Machine: Reflections on the BBC6 Music festival, old (indie) folks day out as it turns out, did it live up to the hype? I've no idea, but I do like the idea:

1. Very good coverage, sound and length of set. Just what iPlayer was built for because I obviously wisnae there but enjoyed it as a radio/TV experience for a Sunday's background music. I had other stuff to do.

2. Sleaford Mods: Your drunk uncles ranting at a party. Clever and all that but it's just beats, brawn and pub banter really and I struggle to make out the (obviously meaningful, socially scathing) lyrics.

3. Ride: Hmmm, another band load of Fender Jaguars and Jazz Masters resulting in a fairly tuneless noodle fests.

4. Jesus and Mary Chain: I had hoped they'd aged a little better, turns out they haven't. Now looking like a bunch of grumpy social workers leaving Wotherspoons having enjoyed a £5 pint and burger combo. Now they're not so sure what to do with the rest of the evening, game of darts maybe or hit the slots? Not much threat or menace there then, not much of anything.

5. Sparks: Marvellous stuff from a 69 and 71 year old. Ron and Russ are a pair of troopers. Energy and weird enthusiasm as well as a pretty decent celebrity pickup band behind them. Top stuff.

6. Future Islands: One word, dross.

7. Goldfrapp: Well she can really sing and the combination of synths and bass and drums  works well and comes to life with her soaring vocals. That and a real depth and variation in material all the way from the back  catalogue to the new album. Her red booted caped outfit wasn't the best choice however.

8. Shins: OK: Never was into them apart from the song featured in "Garden State", that all seems like long time ago.

9. Warpaint: Another Fender love in but I quite liked them, have heard of them but haven't really heard them. Different for girls you might say.

10. Around about Grandaddy the interweb stalled to the point where it slowed down to the annoying revolving buffering symbol and a fish supper tea arrived - events not connected. The viewing pattern effectively broke. I may catch up again later in the week or at some new point in my life.

Purrfect day

We took the one of the cats (Missy to be precise) to the vet today for a routine check, he kindly shaved under her chin and on her tummy where her long winter coat matts and tangles. We do what we can by way of first aid trimming but you can't beat a professional, it was funny to see her quietly accepting the trim whist being held up with her from paws dangling as the electric clipper did it's work. I did ask about my eyebrows but they're not covered by any Pet Plan. Unfortunately as phones are barred in the vet's consultation room I couldn't get a record of it. Here's two banana dolphins that were spotted in the Forth earlier in the week. Some say it's a sign of the end times, some say it's just a little more fake news.

A lady in the surgery was very upset, her old lady cat had a few serious health issues. She'd not been a cat or pet person before but when this cat arrived in her life in 2004 everything changed. Now she's facing the prospect of the cat not making it through treatment or how much actual care is appropriate and affordable for an older cat. Tough call. I saw her leaving the surgery later without the cat and clearly upset. Oh dear. Maybe it was just an overnighter or an X-ray. Pet people can really suffer sometimes.

Is it OK for the lady receptionist at the vets to proudly show off her massive tiger tattoos on her arms? Answers on a postcard please. 

As it turned out the afternoon was warm and calm, so I did a little outdoors painting, nothing artistic, just touching up garden furniture and spray painting a small set of bathroom steps. All done outdoors and surprisingly without any mishaps, spillages or over spray. I then trudged through the woods, hunting and killing the parasitical ivy that is hell bent on strangling our trees; that is snipping it back near the tree roots so it can't climb the trunk and kill the tree by going for the throat. This really happens! 

Then I made chilli, we ate some but there was way too much so the beef mince I removed from the freezer to free up space has been replaced by two cartons of a rice and chilli mix on the same shelf. The freezer just groans now, in some low, mechanical way. Eating chilli and the great outdoors tired me out so I retired upstairs to check the web and do other pointless things. I got stuck in David Hepworth's music blog for a while, 1971 and all that, and then got stuck some more in his Platterday pages. Browsing carelessly I let out a series of internal groans from some far away place in my neurons. Clearly nostalgia is an uncredited killer, like a slow acting drug that creeps up on your lazy systems, it smothers the old, every one of them and they expire, drooling and clicking on the next image. So here's a few faded snaps from those rose tinted and dog eared pages.

And some proof that it was a sunny day, even in our garden...

Thirds / Fourths

Owning up to a lifetime of weakness on the distorted creative processes and the unwritten law of thirds and of fourths: 

Much of yesterday was spent putting together a couple of song demos. First a drum and rhythm guitar part as an anchor, then a vocal track, then either a bass or a second guitar and so on. Laying down the drum and rhythm track is easily the most problematical. Using a drum machine there are multiple choices for type, pattern, sound and tempo, then breaks and intros and endings have to be added. I do this using a double switch stomp box on the drum machine whilst playing and recording the guitar part accurately and in time. 

My coordination in these tasks is suspect. Too many things going on and not helped by my general rule of getting it right on the fourth pass if not the third. Well that wasn't to be, I spent four hours rattling out the basic tracks for one song, recording and deleting it as the mistakes and confusion flourished. My error was that I had not fully planned out the arrangement or the song construction so I kept making stupid mistakes, falling into holes I'd dug myself. I should of course learn valuable lessons here, and I just might. Still the third/fourth rule grips me and the need to be quick, spontaneous and super creative shouts down the sensible advice from the whispers of common sense i.e. plan, take your time, practice. In the end I got there but it was painful and wasteful. Learn up or die. 

Step lightly into the dark

Some people bow before statues, some before piles of money, some to royalty, some to jackbooted authority, some to the barrel of a gun, some to a bag of rice, some to a holy book written by idiots, some bow before an image of themselves, some bow to their own ideas and dreams, some bow to their torturer, some to an evil temptress or a cruel master, some to ideas and the hope that things will change, some bow to the faint spirits and demons that their own imagination has created, some to animal gods and wooden totems, many to potions, drugs and phoney stimulants, some before the great vacuum of the unknown space above their hanging heads. Once you bow to anything your are forever it's slave and you can be sure it doesn't care a single fig, a tinkers 'cuss or anything else for you. Unless you ...

Boardwalk Beach Club

Sampling another kind of BBC down at this cafe on the waterfront near Crammond on the fringes of Edinburgh's battered road network yesterday afternoon. Cold and blustery but defiant of the west winds and freezing gales slapping the faces of the Lothian coast. It aspires to be in St Tropez or Hawaii with a load of  jokey, plastic beach themed tat and basket chairs but that's OK, and at this time of year only the faithful multiple dog walkers and intrepid cyclists make it here anyway. Everyone else is sensibly tucked up in the far away city missing the delights of it's slightly ramshackle fare, Buddha themed artworks, coded unisex toilets and decent if slightly expensive coffee. 

Is it me or are the cups containing simple flat whites getting smaller by the day? Anyway the hot dog, slightly shorter than the brioche bun it was bedded into was good and the minestrone soup looked colourfully tasty and the staff were smiley/friendly happy at waking up today and then serving up snacks in a cafe. For some reason the hot dog, when it appeared came from somewhere outside but that didn't affect the flavour. Apparently it's very busy at weekends and on those odd days when the sun actually comes out. I will return but I'll choose the timing of my next visit carefully to avoid the crowds. A eclectic 8 out of 10.