Hooptedoodle #380 - Reasons to Be Cheerful?

Times are difficult, no doubt, but I think we have to hang on to what we can get in the way of better news. This last week or so has seen definite signs of the beginning of the ends of a few pestilences - early days, admittedly, but promising...

 

Hooptedoodle #379a - Landscaping Work Complete - Tweaking Starts Now

 

After a complete washout on Wednesday, Thursday was astonishing - everything happened at once - at one point we had 4 guys on site, and everything was finished by dusk. Wow.

On Wednesday, my 5 tonnes of whin chips arrived. I still don't understand how the lorry driver got from the lane into our driveway. I was scared to watch - I was convinced he was going to convert our gates into a hoop, but he managed very nicely. No damage, no fuss. I guess these guys are good at their jobs, basically.

11am Thursday, Grant the Serious Chainsaw Man arrived from Longformacus. No prisoners were taken, our two tree stumps were quickly converted into manageable blocks of timber, he cut them down to below ground level and the holes were filled with soil. No more trees. What trees?

Once some tidying and graveling had taken place, this is where the trees had been - one on either side of the steps in the centre of the photo. The patches of earth will certainly sink after a bit of rain, so I'll order in a load of composted soil to level things up.

Friday morning. With the site almost completely cleared, this is the new aspect to our driveway - it is now straight, and the overhanging junipers on the right are no more.

We have always been very proud of the splendid blocks of stone, taken from our local beach, which line the drive...

...and we now have some more of these blocks visible; since this section was previously buried underneath the trees, it has not been seen since about 1990 - nice stones - pleased with this.

The whole front garden has changed a lot - big improvements in the drive and the parking areas, but it feels a bit odd at present. Our house is now visible from the lane for the first time in living memory, and the garden seems rather flat and boring. Righto - some plans for planting are required!

 

Hooptedoodle #379 - Meanwhile, back in the Garden, Work Continues

The landscaping work continues, though things have slowed down a little as it becomes obvious that we need some heavier kit.

Barry the Iraq Vet has achieved wonders with the unwanted rhododendron bed. This has now been reshaped, squared off, dug out and dressed with hardcore, which has been tamped with a petrol-driven "whacking plate". The work on this part of the job took about two and a half days, and you can already see the potential improvement in the driveway. Gravel to follow.

Which brings us back to the overgrown juniper trees. This (above) is the state they were in at the start of last week - simple enough job? In fact they've been much tougher than expected - inside the greenery, these things have emerged as real monsters. Thus far, three big truckloads of wood and foliage have been taken to the Council's "green waste" site, and the junipers are now reduced to massive, twisted stumps which will require a far heavier chainsaw to cut up - I reckon we've maybe lost two days on this, not that it matters a lot at the moment. Bear in mind that these trees started life as a variety of juniper which was described as a shrub, expected to reach a height of 6 feet or so. Right.

Tomorrow, five 1-metric-tonne bags of 20mm whin chips are arriving from a builders' merchant in Kelso, in the Border country. It's clear that we aren't going to be ready to use them, but we can line up the bags on a "quiet" part of the site. Tomorrow's main tasks are going to be cutting down the stumps, digging down around them and grinding them to below ground level. After that, there is a lot of digging out of rubbish, leaf mould and a very large amount of sawdust which has accumulated during the deforestation exercise - then there should just be a big clean-up of the area and we are ready to spread the gravel. 

The picture here shows the ruin of the eastern juniper, when it was still about 5 feet tall - this is before we started work on the western one, which is looking pretty much intact in this view.

Some beautiful stone blocks are emerging from under these trees - most of this I've never seen before, since it was last exposed to daylight some years before I moved here. I'll get a photo of this when things are tidied up. The whole area is really opened up; we have to be careful here - last time we removed a tree (reluctantly - we had to - it was dangerous) we rather took a dislike to the garden for about 10 years, so we'll have to have some positive forward plans about what happens next. I need to talk to a proper garden designer. My problem with gardens is that I know when I see something I like, but I seem to have great difficulty in visualizing what layouts will look like - especially when we get into the 3D world of shrubs and bushes. 

I have to say, we've been remarkably lucky with the weather - any serious rain would slow us down a lot.

 

 

Hooptedoodle #378 - No Fun at All, in the End

Yes, yes - I realise it isn't officially finished yet, since we are likely to have to live through the expected false-flag legal challenges, but the US Election is shaping up.

It would be unworthy to enjoy someone else's misfortune - except in very special cases, of course. Around midnight last night I heard that Mr Trump was about to make an unscheduled announcement from the White House.

We don't get to live through too many historic moments, so I thought I should have a listen on the radio. It's not my country, not my election, but the last 4 years have stretched patience and belief more than a little, even from this range. In truth, all I want is for the man to go away, and maybe I shall be spared his whining voice in future. That would do, but I also wanted to see if he could make a good end - perhaps, for once, he might present himself with unaccustomed dignity and maybe a little humility - it is the accepted way to do these things, I understand.

Fat chance. He spoiled the moment completely for me - I was profoundly embarrassed for him, and for his nation and its traditions. 15 minutes of deranged nonsense - incoherent, wild, paranoid, unstructured, fantastic - left me very uncomfortable indeed.

I assume he remains the commander in chief of the American armed services? Goodness me. If an ageing employee of yours exhibited behaviour like that, my guess is that he would be resting at home somewhere shortly afterwards. Unhinged.

None of my business, ultimately, but is that really the best he's got? Disappointing. That was no fun at all. 

 ***** Late Edit *****

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Hooptedoodle #377 - The Siege of Chateau Foy

 Further to the reference in my previous post, work continues on the landscaping here. 

The old rhododendron bed has been cut back, and the big edging stones shifted, though the Royal Engineers won't be pleased with the wobbly lines, so some tweaking is in hand. It should all be a lot more OCD-compliant by the end of today. I understand that the big rocks came from our beach - I reckon the driveway was laid when the garage was built, in about 1975, so they've been here a while. There's a lot of earth to be dug out, then hardcore to be put down, and then a few loads of whinstone chips over the whole drive. Should be fine - almost makes me wonder why we didn't do this years ago, though I'd really rather not focus too much on the reasons why. To quote an old coffee mug I used to have when I was working, I guess we finally got a Round Twit - we've needed one for years.

In an experimental mood, Barry, our Iraqi War vet, hacked a hole into one of the juniper trees, to see what would be the best way of attacking these. It's dark in there, man.

Barry is more than capable of shifting any amount of earth with a shovel, but in the interests of speed we also have a very old Italian digging machine on site - known as The Green Shovel (to distinguish it from The Red Shovel - similar naming system to WSS Bavarian grenadiers, apparently). This machine has front and rear wheel steering, and you can, if you so wish, set all the wheels at, say, 45deg and drive along diagonally. Good toy, eh?

Result of this is that we temporarily have cars parked in some imaginative locations - I've given advance warning to neighbours, to minimise the inconvenience. At present rate of progress, work should be finished next week sometime. I'll double-check Vauban's original checklist for estimating timescales.

Hooptedoodle #376 - Erm - Do You Have Anything a Little Stronger?

A friend passed me these scans of some Civil Defence-type posters issued by the UK Women's Voluntary Society in 1951, to help the population survive a nuclear attack. A quick read through suggests that everyone, even the WVS, knew that we were well screwed if there was such an attack. Statements like "you will be told..." - right - by whom? It's not that this wasn't well-intentioned, it's just that its earnest uselessness is a classic example of something whose name escapes me at the moment. Perhaps the WVS could assume responsibility for our current Covid-19 planning? I'm really glad we never had to rely on these instructions. Bless em all.

Hooptedoodle #375 - OCD Holidays with Soss

Portreath Harbour

When I was a kid, my closest relative and friend was a cousin, Dave, who was the same age. I had a pretty gruelling couple of years when I was 11 and 12 - it's a daft age anyway. Most of my friends at school lived some distance away, and I wasn't allowed to invite anyone to our house - this was in case they met my sister, who was mentally handicapped, which is a separate story altogether - my dad wasn't very good with stuff like that.

So I recall a dismal few years when there was a lot of homework and a very small amount of television, and I filled in my spare time by reading in my bedroom, and going for long walks with the dog. I later got some relief when I discovered the pleasures of cross-country running, but for a long time there was pretty much nothing going on. My family didn't talk much.

My cousin, whose parents were separated, got a place as a boarder at Liverpool Bluecoat School. The Bluecoat was an unusual school - it had day pupils - I also knew someone who attended there as a day pupil, but he said he was basically an outcast - the boarding school was very much the heart of the institution. There was a long tradition of places at the school being allocated on a charitable basis, which is how my cousin was accepted. Many of his friends in the boarding house were from military families, frequently British Army people stationed overseas - so he had pals who used to go home to Kenya or Malaya for the Summer holidays. Dave used to go home to sunny Wavertree. *

Liverpool Bluecoat School - I think that's the chapel

He also had a friend called Soss. They were pretty much inseparable. I used to go with Dave's mum to the chapel service at the Bluecoat most Sundays. The boarders all paraded in - very disciplined, full uniform - and there was a full, drawn-out service, organ, choir, proper sermon - the lot. The chapel was dark and cold and grandiose - lots of busts of Lord This and Viscount That, and General The-Other. And very, very hard pews. At the end of the service, the boarders were allowed to meet with any personal visitors - I think I used to get 5 minutes with Dave. Any items passed across had to be approved by a member of staff. I'm sure it was character-building, but my recollection is that it was a bit like a very dignified prison.

Dave was invariably accompanied by Soss, who never had visitors of his own. Soss - short for Sausage (his love of sausages was legendary at the school, apparently), his real name was Danny Burgess - was an odd character. He was quite small, and he never spoke. He would occasionally shrug, or grin nervously when spoken to, and he blinked constantly. He looked like an urchin - he had a pudding-basin haircut, years before the Beatles made such things fashionable, and his blazer was too big, and he always looked uncomfortable, and fidgeted. He was constantly in trouble for not polishing his shoes for the Sunday service.

Soss came from Cornwall. He was at the school as an Army orphan. His dad had been killed during the Suez Crisis. His dad was a driver in a transport section somewhere, and he died in a road accident around Suez time. This gained Soss a lot of contempt from those of his school chums whose families were senior officers in Colonial Places, and it added to his general exclusion. Soss's mother used to come up a couple of times a year for Speech Day, and to meet with his teachers. Her name was Antoinette, and she was a tough, rather battered little lady - very kind and very polite. She was as poor as a church mouse, and used to travel up from Cornwall to Liverpool on a relay of buses, which must have been dreadful. Because she couldn't afford to pay for accommodation, she used to stay with my aunt, and on one occasion, though it seems incredible now, she actually stayed with us. My mother got on very well with her, and they maintained a regular correspondence for some years. My mother was always fascinated by people who had had difficult lives, so I fear Antoinette may have been something of an exhibit.

When I was about 14, I suddenly learned we were going on a Summer vacation to Portreath, on the North Cornish coast, for a week, and we were going to stay with Antoinette. Sounds idyllic, but we were going in a car my dad borrowed from a work colleague who repaired cars in his spare time, and the whole spirit of the trip was along the lines of never mind how awful this is, just think of the money we're saving.

Our destination was Portreath, not far from Redruth. The holiday itself was not great. Antoinette had arranged cheap B&B at a friend's house, about a mile from her own home, for my parents and my sister, and I stayed in the village with Soss (I shared Soss's bedroom) and his mum, and her partner, Walter, who was a bit of a problem. Walter was an ex-marine, and covered with tattoos (by the standards of the day, anyway), and he was loud and aggressive, and argumentative, and he drank a great deal.

I found that I had been allocated a camp bed which rocked like a see-saw, so I stuck my suitcase under one end and a box under the other, and that stabilised things a bit. Soss had part of a large room which had been split into two by putting a partition down the middle, and this partition divided a large bay window in half, so that each half-room had a half-window, which made a sort of alcove where my bed was situated. 

I needed to add a simple map here, since the placing of the bed was one of the themes of the holiday. Problems were threefold: 

* the bed was dreadfully uncomfortable, and smelled of having been stored in someone's garage for years

* there was a street lamp right outside the window, which sounds odd, but the street lamp was a normal-sized lamppost, and the lane outside climbed steeply and turned very abruptly, so the lamppost from down the hill illuminated Soss's room quite brightly, even with the curtains closed

* the bed was tucked into the alcove to save as much space as possible, so I was at an angle to the rest of the room. Because I couldn't sleep anyway, I was constantly staring at the edges of the ceiling, which made very odd angles with my bed, which disturbed me greatly - bugged the hell out of me, with those vivid shadows! In the dead of night I got up, shifted the chair from next to the bed, and moved the camp bed so that it lay against the partition. That was better. The world was straight again, I could go to sleep.

I became acquainted with Walter after bedtime, since he came back from the pub very drunk, and started shouting and banging things about. Soss said we mustn't talk any more until the morning, or there might be trouble.

When I got up in the morning, Walter had gone to his work. He worked irregularly, and it seemed to involve a van and people that Antoinette wasn't happy with, and anyway Soss wouldn't talk about it. Fair enough.

It was a lovely day, so after breakfast Soss took me swimming in the harbour. In those days I had a glass face mask, which I got a lot of fun out of, but with hindsight it probably messed up my swimming, because I never swam any distances - I was always looking at the bottom of the pool, or playing around underwater. Whatever, off we went to the harbour. Soss, of course, swam like a tadpole - well out of my league. Because I had my face mask with me, he came up with a great idea that we would dive down, swim under some wooden fishing boats (they were two-abreast) and come up against the ladder on the harbour side. This was pretty good, actually, but on about my 4th turn the bow-wave from another vessel caused the boats to drift against the harbour wall, so that when I came up the gap had closed - I had a few seconds of absolutely blind terror, but I turned around and had enough breath left to swim back under the boats to the clear water on the far side. There was no real danger - in fact, I could have gone forward to the prow of the boat I was under, which was a shorter distance.

Soss laughed like a drain, of course, and I put a brave face on it, but I'd had a bad fright, whether or not it was justified, and I'd had enough underwater swimming for the day, thank you. I can still remember exactly how it looked and felt when I thought I was stuck down there.

We went back to Soss's house, to get rid of our swimming costumes ("cozzies" in both Liverpool and Cornwall, I recall!). My bed had been shifted back to its angled position, and there was a handwritten note:

DO NOT MOVE THE FURNITURE OR THERE WILL BE TRUBBEL. REMEMBER YOU A VISITOR HEAR!

Soss said don't worry, that was how things were in his family. I worried.

This looks about right...

OK - next adventure. Soss seemed to have a gift for targeting my neuroses - or possibly helping me create new ones. We took packets of egg sandwiches with us and went for a walk along the beach, round a couple of headlands, to what Soss called his secret beach. That was really very nice - it was deserted; we played around on the sand and in the water until lunch time, threw about a billion pebbles, and then Soss announced that we would have to get off this beach by climbing the 200-foot cliff behind us, since we were now cut off by the tide and the beach would be underwater soon. Once again, he was completely relaxed, totally in his own element, and had never considered that there might be townies who were pathetic enough to be scared of heights (as I was, and still am!). Up the cliff we went - only fear of letting myself down in front of my cousin's friend kept me going, I think, though I can't imagine what alternatives there were. We made it to the top, and I found that I had been clutching my package of sandwiches in one hand all the way up, which can't have been an advantage. There was a lot of very nervous laughter at the top, I can tell you.

Triumph Mayflower - not one of the British classics

And more of the same. I persevered with the oblique bed, dutifully went into hiding each night before Walter roared back from the pub, enjoyed the peaceful days when Walter went to work, and relished a few walks that did not involve cliffs or drowning in the harbour. I saw very little of my family - they may have been pleased to have got rid of me! To be honest, I am astonished that I can't remember much more about my stay in Portreath, though I do know that the weather changed on about day 4, and after about a day of looking at horizontal rain outside (and, I suspect, an argument between Walter and my dad, which could have left me an orphan as well) we cut our losses, and my family drove back to Liverpool in the borrowed car (which was an old Triumph). That was one occasion I was glad to get home again!

* Footnote, nundanket style: One of Dave's great friends at school was Brian Knowles, an exceptional musician, who earned his crust for many years touring as Musical Director with Roger Whittaker (quiet at the back, please), but eventually was established as a composer and performer in his own right. He is now Composer in Residence at the Royal School, Haslemere. I find it hard to imagine him hanging around in cold, dusty corners of the Bluecoat with Dave and Soss. Dave died of prostate cancer when he was only about 50 - Knowlesy played some music at the funeral, in Birkenhead. I have no idea what happened to Soss - my mother's correspondence with Antoinette stopped fairly abruptly!

Hooptedoodle #374 - Tales of Shopping during Lockdown

(1) The international parcel saga - as mentioned a few days ago, I made an online purchase in the USA, and it took 12 days for the parcel to travel from somewhere in Massachusetts to the Global Shipping Center at Erlanger KY. I am astounded to relate that, though the scope for detailed tracking rather dropped out of sight thereafter, the package duly arrived on my doorstep in South-East Scotland bang on the promised date, so the international part of the trip took only 5 days, despite the involvement of Pitney-Bowes [who?] and Hermes at this end.

So, as promised, I have to admit that I am very favourably impressed. Credit where credit is due. Well done, everyone.

(2) A happy coincidence - I was pleased to manage to obtain a pre-owned copy of David Chandler's Marlborough as Military Commander online for only £6 plus P&P, and it duly arrived, promptly and tidily, from a bookshop in Bradford. I was very pleased to find that the book was clean and tight, but was especially happy to find a label on the inner cover revealing that it was previously owned by Charlie Wesencraft, no less. Since I read somewhere that Charlie was a close friend of Dr Chandler, I had a mad idea that I might have got an author's signature for my £6 as well, but alas, no!

I now have a number of books which were previously owned by celebs, as it happens - a set of The Dickson Manuscripts and a set of Sauzey's volumes on French Napoleonic allies, both formerly owned by George Nafziger, and a couple of ECW books once owned by Peter Young. These were all just flukes - there are a couple more, but at present I can't remember what they are, or who they came from. I did once buy a book on eBay which had previously been owned by me, but that is another tale, and rather embarrassing.

(3) An unusually fortunate purchase on eBay [UK]. Someone tipped me off that there was an item which looked like the sort of thing I might be interested in (old toy soldiers of an old-fashioned size). I checked it out and, yes, I was interested. The seller was someone I've dealt with before, and he comes up with some very nice old stuff from time to time. Starting bid was £12. The seller was also open to offers - based on past experience of what these figures typically go for, I made an offer of £16. Rejected.

OK - I upped my offer to £21. Also rejected. This was getting a bit steep for me, so I just placed a normal auction bid of £16 - there were 6 days to go. I reckoned I would be happy if I got them for that, and I would have been fairly priced out of the market if I didn't.

I was out this evening, but got home to find that I had won the item for the £12 starting price. No other bids, no other interest. Obviously we win a few and we lose a few, but it demonstrates the risks of making (or not accepting) offers on an auction item - risks both ways, of course, but I'd have happily paid the £21...

Hooptedoodle #373 - Annie Ross

Sad to learn that the death has occurred of Annie Ross, the singer - mostly known in Scotland as Jimmy Logan's sister, and mostly not known very much at all elsewhere. Annie was a class act - she joined the prestigious American vocal act Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, a move which was almost unknown for a British artist in those days.

Here's a link to (probably) their most famous record - Centrepiece, from 1958. Quality. Love this stuff. The trumpeter, by the way [nerd section], is probably the great Harry Edison, since he is credited as co-composer on the recording. [If the link doesn't play - which is happening to me a lot lately - just click on "Play in Youtube"]

Hooptedoodle #372 - A Modern Epic - Heroism in Very Small Steps

Morning run - the brave boys from USPS set off with another day's deliveries

Recently, I was brave enough to purchase something online from the United States. I used to do this from time to time in the past, but have sort of got out of the habit. Shipping prices and other overheads have become more problematic (various reasons), and I have a faint concern that the handlers will realise that the package is intended for the hostile liberals overseas, and may drive a fork-lift over it, or urinate on it, or similar (call me nervously imaginative if you will).

At the time I made the purchase, a delivery date of 28th-29th July was estimated, which seemed very optimistic, but no matter - I am not in a particular rush, and I am in any case now a veteran of a recent post-lockdown postal experience of air-freight from New Zealand which took a few months, so I have the calm which comes from experience. It's OK - these are tricky times - the brave chaps on the high seas will do their best for me. Whatever. We have to be grateful.

So I was pretty relaxed about my parcel - it will get here, but it might not make it by 28th July. Hey, there are lots of people in the world with real problems, so I can stand to wait a week or two. This morning I received an email message to say that my package had arrived at the courier, and was out for delivery.

Fantastic! - in a state of some excitement, I followed the links to get some tracking details of this miracle of space-age logistics.

Hmmm. What has happened is that it has arrived at the start of the international bit of its journey. All the previous toil and endeavour appears to have been local bits of USPS handing it on to each other - or maybe putting it back in the bin for tomorrow - or maybe rubber-stamping something [come on - I can't be expected to understand how these things work]. What seems to me like the hard bit has not begun yet, and I have not even mentioned import tax and all the glumph at this end. So I've gone back to my previous assumption that it will not make it by 28th. We have not yet got to tales of aeroplanes flying over the ocean, or Big Tam with the size 12 boots at the depot in Edinburgh.

Mind you, there's still 5 days to go. If it makes it, I promise I shall sing their praises on this very blog. I'm not too worried, to be honest - if it's late it serves me right for being rash - but this view of the innards of the gig economy at work doesn't impress me as much as I had hoped.

***** Late Digression *****

Nothing to do with the above (apart from implications of international shipping, I guess), but I've just got word from Allan at Lancashire Games that they will be stocking Vauban's Wars when it is printed and released. Just thought I should mention it...

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Hooptedoodle #371 - Darwin Is Watching

I'm very nervously watching news of the rapid upturn in Covid infections in a number of Southern and Western States in America, which would appear to be directly related to relaxation (or abandonment) of social distancing and health guidelines. I understand that the President has expressed the view that widespread testing has inflated the figures, and makes things look worse than they are - does this mean that we are best not to know?

Frank exchange of views in Austin TX on the merits of protecting public health - photo borrowed from the BBC

Mr Greg Abbott, the Governor of the State of Texas - a man who is unlikely to be a liberal of any sort, I would have thought, has warned that hospitals may be unable to cope, and is taking steps to increase testing and to ensure there are adequate supplies of PPE. Even the Vice-President, Mr Pence, is now urging the public to obey regulations regarding the wearing of face-masks, "wherever it's indicated", saying, "we know from experience, it will slow the spread of the coronavirus", which appears to be something of a change of policy from a week or two ago.

Very alarming. Obviously, I hope this will stabilise quickly - with luck, some helpful changes of attitude might result - maybe some of them in high places - it remains to be seen. Do current trends mean that Trump's supporters are disproportionately at risk? Can we - all of us - try very hard to learn something here?

Hooptedoodle #370 - A National Initiative on the Phone

Yesterday morning I was sitting typing when my office phone rang. I picked it up, and was surprised to find that someone had obviously put me on hold. After a few seconds, I was connected, and there was a cheerful, though rather nervous, Glasgow girl ready to speak to me.

She addressed me, correctly, by my full name - could I confirm that she was speaking to the right person? - and she would just take up a few minutes of my time, if that was all right.

I asked, to whom am I speaking? - and she seemed to became rather more nervous.

Hi - this is Linsey, from [mumble] Energy [mumble].

She definitely rushed through the bit about who she was, but - as it happens - I've been expecting a courtesy call from SP Networks, who manage the power lines for our local electricity supplier. We had a power outage a week or so ago, and I phoned in to report it - all routine, and it was sorted out very quickly, but the power company always make a follow-up call to see if the customer is happy. I assumed Linsey was from SP Networks, without thinking about it too carefully, but was aware that this is not how she had introduced herself.

I'm sorry, Linsey, I don't think I know who you are - could you say that bit again?

Yes - as I said, I'm from [mumble] Energy Solutions.

I have never heard of you; I'm sorry, I don't have a few minutes to speak to you.

We are a national initiative, we can supply you with a grant to pay for home improvements, to fit double glazing or enhance your home's insulation.

A national initiative? - I think you are a commercial firm, trying to sell me something. You may be able to help me fill in the forms to apply for a grant, but it would be the Government's money, and your only interest is to persuade me to use this grant to buy something from you. I'm not interested, sorry.

No, no - we are not a commercial firm, we are a national initiative.

You mean, like a government department?

Yes - sort of. A national initiative.

I'm very sorry - I've told you I'm not interested, so if you don't mind I'll hang up now.

All right - no problem - I'll ring you again in a couple of days...


Click.

No you won't, Linsey - I just blocked your number.

I checked up on [mumble] Energy Solutions, and they have a proper website, so I guess they are a serious venture, right enough, but I get really very cross when cold-calling sales people pretend they have some sort of official capacity - a lot of gullible folk must get scammed by this. As for me, I'm too miserable to be fooled, especially if there is money involved. I would be happier if the company's logo, a cute cartoon penguin, looked rather less like Feathers McGraw from Wallace and Grommit.

Hooptedoodle #369 - Doomsday Obsession

A number of threads - of childhood nightmares, and of my failed career as a political activist...

This story is partly prompted by a piece of old junk I found when I was clearing my mother's house a few years ago - a sort of souvenir of my early teenage years, from a time of no little uncertainty and personal anxiety.

I've been watching the goings-on in the USA and elsewhere on TV, and, I'm afraid, I've always had a tendency to expect the worst. Usually, over the years, I've turned out to be unnecessarily pessimistic, but I guess I must be a slow learner.

I've always had some kind of Doomsday syndrome, I think. I was born in Liverpool, a city which was very badly smashed up by bombing during WW2. When I was a little kid in the 1950s, on the bus with my mother, travelling into the city centre to buy shoes or something, you could see the damage, still very much in evidence. Liverpool did not have a lot of money to rebuild, and these areas would have been a low priority anyway - there would be plans somewhere to demolish the whole lot for redevelopment as soon as possible, but all I could see were the gaps in the streets - if you travelled from the Dingle to the Pier Head, along Park Road or Mill Lane, which ran parallel to the river, within half a mile or so of the Southern Docks, every 5th, 6th, 8th, 12th house would be missing. These blitz sites gave me the horrors. Real nightmares.

Liverpool took a pasting in May 1941, when the Luftwaffe had bases near enough to put on massed raids - destruction of the port and the docks would have been a big strategic blow against the UK as a whole. The local defence chaps did their best, with searchlights and barrage balloons and AA guns and all the toys, but they stood little chance. The bomber crews would fly in over Warrington, and on a clear night they could see exactly where the targets were, as the river reflected the moonlight; they just flew along the East bank of the Mersey. Easy.

The actual air-raids were years before my time, but that whole story made a big impact on me - I guess I was a rather insecure child anyway, but the idea that some outside force could turn up and drop bombs on your house - I mean your kitchen, your toys, your mum, all the comfort in the known world - that was just devastating. I was really very obsessed with this stuff for years.

When we moved to Mossley Hill, a little further out into the suburbs, Saturday morning trips to the shops in Rose Lane now took us past the district Civil Defence HQ next to the railway station, and they had signs up on the walls telling you what you would have to do when the nuclear alert came - where to go, what position to assume, what you should take with you, what would happen. Not "if" the alert came - "when". This was like the WW2 blitz on an even more nightmarish scale. And there was no end of public information films on TV - all my school pals knew how near to the blast you would have to be to be vapourised, and we all knew that if you were not vapourised then things would be particularly grim thereafter. No wonder some of us grew up a little strange?

I remember going on holiday with my family - my dad hired a motor car, a real treat for us (it was a Morris!) - and we went down through the towns on the Welsh border, spending a week in Cornwall. At that time, I wasn't interested in anything - there was no point - we were all going to be vapourised anyway, so what could possibly be the point? My schoolwork was suffering, I had given up all my hobbies. On the holiday, at one point we reached a key moment - we were in the car park at Land's End. It was blowing a gale, it was cold and there was horizontal rain. My dad told me that for goodness sake I should cheer up a bit - this was a famous place, and I should enjoy being there - I might never have the chance again (in fact I've never been back). I was unimpressed - I knew that, like everywhere else, one day soon there would be a big flash in the sky (it might be over there, or it might be over there) and everything would be vapour and rocks.

Eventually I got over it, but I've always been a staunch pacifist, given the chance. I was at school when the Cuban missile crisis boiled up, I was at school when Kennedy was assassinated - I always had a good idea what was going to happen next...

At one point I took advantage of a free period at school, sagged off, took the bus into town, and visited Progressive Books in Mount Pleasant, up the hill from the Adelphi, towards the old University, and bought a small supply of CND badges for me and some fellow pacifists at school. I believe they were one shilling and sixpence each, by the way. The badges disappeared like the proverbial hot cakes, and I was commissioned to return to the "Commie Bookshop" for a further supply. No school uniform this time, either - anarchists didn't wear school uniform. The people in the bookshop were very kind to me, and obviously tried not to embarrass me, but they produced some leaflets (political - oooh...), and asked would I like to take some of these for my friends, and they were having a meeting the following Saturday if we would all like to come. I imagine I left at a good, brisk trot, without the leaflets. I delivered my load of CND badges, and the world moved on.

Not quite - I've always had that ability to see the Apocalypse coming over the hill - yet again - here it comes - 3rd time this week. That's why, when everyone was excited, watching the Berlin Wall come down, I was watching through my fingers, waiting for the shooting to start.

That's also why, when the fat fools who are in charge of the USA and North Korea were threatening each other with extermination recently, I felt that old, familiar sinking of the heart, and wondered why they couldn't get some grown-ups to do these jobs. I do hope Mr Trump doesn't frighten any little children in the world - being a child is scary enough as it is.

That's not much of a story, probably, but a lot of the shaping of my views is captured right there, however silly it may seem. That is how we were brought up - maybe I was a good boy, and reacted the right way. Maybe not. Whatever, I've always been a mug for any casual Doomsday story.

In passing, many years later, when I was married, with a young family, and striving to make ends meet, one birthday time I was given my Annual Appraisal at work by my boss of the day, who was a nice old boy - I liked him. As we finished the discussion of what I hoped to achieve, and how the professional exams were going, he said to me, "You're not still involved in the political stuff, are you?".

I was completely bewildered - I assured him I was not the slightest bit interested in politics, never had been, and he made a brief note on my file. I forgot all about it.

Many more years later, by which time I was a rather more important member of staff than I had been, something happened (was it the start of Data Protection?) and I was given the opportunity to see my personal staff file, by the same employer. I took the chance, and didn't think much about it, but in the miscellaneous section at the end was a handwritten note:

Active member of Communist Club at University and possibly a party affiliate of some sort - started at school?

I was dumbfounded - no basis for this at all. Untrue, in fact - not even close. Next to the note, in red ballpoint pen, my old boss, Bill (who had subsequently retired and was probably dead by then) had written: no evidence of this now, and that seemed to be the end of it.

Red Herring

 It doesn't matter now, but I have sometimes wondered where that came from - what on earth was it about? I guess I'll never know - probably a mistake. Yes - let's assume it was a mistake. At least they haven't vapourised me yet, though I suspect they are working on it at this very moment.

Hooptedoodle #368 - Beyond Parody

My dad was not a tough man. He would have liked to have been, but he didn't cut it - not even a bit. He used to like to watch movies about tough-guys. Sometimes he tried to adopt some of their lingo, which was potentially bizarre - James Cagney in 1950s Liverpool would have been a poor fit, and also would have had his head kicked in very quickly. Such is the ugly side of evolution, I guess, but in the long run it's a safeguard.

I did once catch my dad, when I was about 6, maybe, practising his Robert Mitchum expression in the mirror, cheeks sucked in, eyes half closed. He stopped pretty quickly, of course, and pretended he was checking a pimple on his nose, but I saw it, and I didn't forget. Very odd - after all these years it makes me laugh, but it was very odd.

There is something uncomfortably familiar about a photo I saw yesterday on the internet. What, in God's name, is this?

I guess this man is not actually weeping. More likely the picture is supposed to be intimidating. The teams of image manipulators and psychologists behind the throne have obviously decided this is The Look, and these are, let's face it, very clever people,

Fair enough. One way or another, I suppose I am impressed. I leave you to make up your own mind about this, and about what it is intended to achieve. Do you think the pedal-bin hair adds much to the overall impact?

Hooptedoodle #367 - Variants on Social Distancing

Photo by Reuters

 I saw this on the BBC website - distancing system laid out at a college in Brussels. There's a lot of useful creativity being applied to some big social problems at present. What worries me is that this particular arrangement, if it follows my house rules for the WSS, requires everyone to face a vertex, and, though it will allow anyone entering a new hex to turn up to 60deg either way without penalty, any larger turn or any stationary turn needs an extra move.

That could be complicated for the students. We'll suspend judgement on this one, for the moment. Might be better if everyone just had their own tape-measure. Old School - yes, that would be more convenient all round, I can see that.

***** Late Edit *****

I found an ancient photo from the 1955 sci-fi movie, Quatermass II, of the scene in which some picnickers are taken away when they have accidentally got too close to the mysterious factory. I'm quite pleased to have found it, just for nostalgia - there is some very loose mention of this episode in the Comments below...

Are you the bloke who asked about the possibility of an amnesty...?

***** Late Edit 2 *****

I knew you would want to see it. If you haven't seen it before, here's Peter Gabriel let loose in his giant plastic ball - this was live, in Milan, during his 2003 tour. I agree - I wasn't sure whether it was me that was insane or him...

Whatever, I wouldn't mind a shot in one of these.

******************* 

Hooptedoodle #366 - Happy Birthday John Cruickshank

I recently put up a post about John Cruickshank, the son of a one-time neighbour of mine in Edinburgh, who flew with Coastal Command in WW2 and was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1944 when he sank a U-Boat, bringing his Catalina home safely despite being seriously wounded in the attack.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Mr Cruickshank is still alive, and I think he lives in Aberdeen; tomorrow (20th May) will be his 100th birhday and, though I never met the man, I have left myself a diary reminder to drink a toast to him tomorrow. I'd be pleased and honoured if anyone would care to join me (figuratively speaking, of course).

Photo borrowed from The Scotsman

Every possible good wish, John - wherever you are - congratulations, and thanks for your gallant efforts all those years ago!

I found the following movie on Youtube - I'm sorry about the running numbers in the centre of the picture, but I thought it was pretty good - a dramatised documentary from 1943 about Coastal Command, with a musical score by Vaughan Williams, no less. Much use is made of real Coastal Command personnel, so the acting is fairly lumpy, but it's OK - some good shots of a Sunderland in action, and there are Catalinas and other planes later on. Some of the action shots were filmed on actual missions.

Hooptedoodle #365 - Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden

Inspired by Jon's very fine photos, I went out to check on our white lilac, which is coming along nicely.

Syringa vulgaris "Madame Lemoine" - regular as clockwork, but blink and you miss it. Some way to go yet, but if the rain stays off it should be good.

I also observe that we have an unusually good show of blossom on the whitebeam trees, in the wood behind our house. Not very spectacular, to be sure, but pleasing, and I usually manage to fail to notice them altogether. The whitebeam (sorbus aria) is a relative of the rowan tree, and produces red berries which are much prized by our local wood-pigeons; I understand these berries can be eaten by humans as well, but the pink pebbledashing of my car each Autumn by the pigeons rather puts me off the idea.

This, of course, is really a photo to show off our clothes dryer, but in the background you might just make out the whitebeam trees in the wood, swamped by the big sycamores behind, but bravely showing off their blossom. Two years ago they produced a remarkable crop of red berries in September, so maybe we'll get that again.

I enjoyed my afternoon in the sunshine - I must work on that (mental note). I can manage to keep busy during lockdown with no problem at all, but sometimes whole days go past and I hardly notice.

Looks like the Spring is unaware of the problems we are having!

 

Hooptedoodle #364 - R-Nowt

I promised myself that I wouldn't upset anyone by airing my petty little thoughts on the global pandemic - after all, everyone is trying hard, doing their best, and some people are really performing absolute heroics in the public interest. And, of course, we have the top brains in the world concentrating on the problem, and surely we can be confident of the wisdom and the organising abilities of our elected leaders?

You may harbour some concerns about whether the leaders can actually hear the top brains, but I would hesitate to be unconstructive about the state of play.

Since I am starting to believe there is a very good chance that I may not survive this episode of world history, I'm beginning to lose touch with the reasons why I should keep quiet about it, but I shall avoid being rude about anyone in particular. This note is merely the musings of the sad little soul of an old mathematician, and I don't expect anyone to agree with me, nor be concerned about what I have to say - it's OK.

When something bad happens, reaction to it calls upon a lot of things. Some of these things will have needed some kind of investment of funds and effort before the event - preventative stuff. Identifying potential risks, putting in place rules and regulations to minimise the likelihood of a disaster; if we focus loosely on catastrophic building fires, as an obvious example, we might have implemented strict control of design and construction standards, of the safety of materials used, sufficiency of emergency exits and lighting, documented procedures for  using all these - and I mean maintained, tested procedures. We need to ensure that people who are at risk know what they need to do, or at the very least know where to find out quickly. There should be a good level of awareness of how to cope with an emergency, plenty of guidance information, and sufficient investment in rescue services and equipment is essential, obviously. The plans should be as complete as they can be, and should, if possible, be reviewed as part of the normal routine of making changes, and - if at all possible - they should be tested periodically. There's lots of this - far more than I can think of off the top of my head - things that have to be done in advance, just in case, procedures that have to be followed, if it happens, and trained, fully equipped rescuers who will turn up promptly and do the business in the regrettable circumstance of the bad thing happening.

All pretty obvious, really. I believe that in the UK we tend to concentrate on the end of the chain - we pride ourselves on our ability to perform well in an emergency, rather than in our talent for planning in advance to avoid problems happening at all, which is traditionally seen as rather unrewarding and maybe a bit negative. If the disaster comes, we film the heroes from the rescue services in action, we have a victory parade, we award medals, we may have a day of national mourning if we really have to. It's cheaper that way.

(1) it probably won't happen - let's hope not

(2) if it does, we'll make a huge splash about the heroics of the rescuers (quite rightly so, by the way - absolutely right on) - that's better politically and for uniting public support. The Daily Express loves that stuff.

(3) if there's a public enquiry afterwards, with a bit of luck we will no longer be in office to be held accountable or have to stump up with the money, or we may be able to spin it somehow to get off the hook

OK - that's all theory, and there's nothing particularly clever about it. That should be reassuring - we don't know for sure, of course, but we would certainly expect that things will be handled as well as possible by the people in charge.

I follow the daily bulletins in the UK media about the progress of our pandemic lockdown. It's been very harrowing, but thus far the course of action has been pretty much forced by events. We have been reacting - that's the bit we think we are good at. The next bit is going to be scaling the thing back, which will require decisions to get life going again, being careful not to have a new wave of infections as a result. This will take judgement - at which point my confidence in the leaders starts to leak - and, let's face it, we haven't done this before, so there is no manifesto to act out.

Like everyone else, I have to watch all this with as much hope as I can muster. A lot of faith seems now to be pinned on the Reproduction Number - R0, as it is termed, as an indicator. Sometimes, I find, mathematics can be reassuring - if you can measure something you can understand it - maybe even control it - so I spent a little time reading about this. Crudely speaking, as you will certainly know, it is a number which compares the number of new infections in a unit time with the number of people in the population who were already infected during the same interval. If you can get the value to less than unity, then that's good. We're not exactly sure what the consequences of R0 = 1 would be, but they would sure as hell be better than R0 = 10.

OK - it's not quite like this - we are considering rates of change here, so there is some calculus in there, and since we are considering variations in exponential growth functions there are a few natural logarithms too, but the spirit of the thing is that we have to divide one number by another, and try to get as small an answer as possible. This is obviously important, so I am paying attention.

The number on the top of this fraction - the new infections - is it known, then? How accurate is it?

Well, we only started widespread testing some weeks into the pandemic. We know about people who are in hospital, and we now know more about other categories - health workers, some other key workers, we are starting on residents and staff in care homes for the elderly (at this point I know more about the current situation in Scotland rather than the entire UK, but Scotland is normally the same as the rest of the country, maybe a few weeks behind). There are a whole pile of other people of whom we have no record at all:

* people who caught the virus and, as is very common, never knew - showed no symptoms at all, though they might well still be a source of infection to others
* people who became ill, and thought they might have Covid-19, but did not become sufficiently unwell to contact their doctor or go into hospital - they just quietly recovered, and thought they might have had it

The total of these two categories is certainly considerably larger than the people who have tested positive, so we have, at best, a measure of the size of the very small tip of an unknown iceberg.

Righto - what about the divisor, the number on the bottom of the fraction? - do we know how many people were already infected during the study period? Well no - of course we don't - given the tiny coverage provided by general testing, and the lack of understanding of how this virus behaves - how long are affected individuals infectious? - what is the true nature of the immunity which comes from recovery? We don't really know.

There are other details about what statistics we have on people who leave the infected population by either recovering or dying, but that is, once again, going to be a small number compared with people we can't identify and don't count. Let's not fuss about the details - the truth is that R0 is based on a mathematical function involving the comparison of one number we do not really know and another number which we also do not know. I do not find that comforting. We will be able to see if the number of people who die in hospital drops, and we can make some estimates of what has contributed to any change in that, but R0 looks like a dead duck to me, unless we know a whole lot more than we possibly can at present.

Overall, I'd be happier if someone would admit that R0 is no real help to us at the moment, and explain what else we can use. Next time the day's government spokesman makes a big deal about R0 dropping I shall be quietly confident that he is bluffing - there may be some number that he and his colleagues refer to as R0, but I don't believe it is anything which is of any real application to the public at large.

How about the entrails of a goat?