Day 226, expiry date

After a 5.5k run this morning this human felt much closer to expiry date than previously.

My thought was that this looked like death, but as corpses tend to look a lot better than this after being spruced up death operatives my opinion was revised.

So this looks like a knackered old fart pulling a face for comic effect, except only the tongue sticking out bit was for comic effect.

And there really isn't any comic effect...

Otherwise knackered old fart it is.

I'm taking part in the Global Corporate Challenge.  This means uploading steps done each a day to a website where other teams and organisations are competing in a league to "get people moving".

I linked my step counter to the site and steps are added automatically, although cycling and swimming distances have to be entered manually and a conversion is done to convert those distances into steps.

Unfortunately there are no extra bonus steps for running.  So even though a greater distance is covered in a shorter time (and to greater knackering effect as can be witnessed...) there isn't really any point in running other than for fitness reasons.

Hopefully this is doing me some good...

I've still had to march around for the rest of the day to build up a decent step count.  My legs will be worn down to stumps shortly.

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Day 225, Poached egg

Poached eggs, there's a thing.

This is my gourmet effort, all it needs is a few chopped, fresh, bird eye chillies sprinkling over it and life is complete.

Crack your egg into a cup.

Put a large pan of water on to boil.

Drop about a about a cap full (a couple of teaspoons full) of white wine vinegar (or lemon juice) in once the water is boiling.

Turn down to a simmer.

Swirl the water round with a wooden spoon.

Gently pour your egg into the middle of the pan.

Wait 3 minutes for a soft egg, slightly less for a runny one.

Remove your egg with whatever draining device you have.

Put the egg on you cheese on toast.

You did make the cheese on toast didn't you?

Grind some black pepper on, and ketchup if that is your thing.

Eat it.

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Day 224, Fire Exit

There are two things you need to know when you enter any building.

1. Where the toilet is.

2. Where the fire exit is.

Here we have some handy directions to the latter, and even more conveniently those directions are actually visible before entering the building.

Of course this may be a complete misinterpretation of the information on my part.  Although, that would never, ever happen.

In this case even though the fire exit is clearly labelled it is actually less clear how one would exit, and indeed where the exit actually is given that we are already outside.

I'll get back to my knitting.

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Day 223, on the hoof, giant spiders

Went for a run.

Went to the shop.

Went to town.

Went to meet a mate for lunch.

Went home.

Cooked tea.

Two thirds of the day in the life.

And also walked under Western Bank, where there are some enormous spiders lurking.

Take a look at the bigger picture, those old bits of web hang down like shipping rope.

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Day 222, The palmy arts, reading the past and future for International Palmistry Day

As it’s International Palmistry Day then now seems like a good time to take Palmistry up. (no it isn't and no it isn't - Ed)

Here’s my first foray into the line reading art of the palm, or cheiromancy as it is apparently known by hand analysts.

My expertise is naturally gifted but with input from the renowned pioneer in the field, William Benham, who authored what is considered the Palmistry bible, ‘The Scientific Laws of Hand Reading’. With this gift and training I therefore present - The palm, a reading.

And indeed what have we here, what a remarkable hand this is.  Sit back and let my analysis begin.

I see you have suffered heartbreak, this is written in the lines, when a heart is broken the pain is etched in the soul and demonstrated palpably through the many indicators of the palm.

The dermatoglyphics are strong here and not easy to misconstrue.  That is the sign of a character with strong drives and motivations.

You often find that others misunderstand you, your good intentions can often be misinterpreted, this causes you pain, that is revealed by the striations on the Saturn finger of your right hand.

You have lost a loved one, this can be seen by the variations on your life line and your love line. This shows that the loss meant more to you than you allow yourself to show to others.

You have an aura.  Did you know you had an aura?  No, not many people do.  It is pink, yes a pink aura, that indicates that you are a very caring person.  Are you a very caring person?  Yes of course you are, it is clear that the aura is correct. Apologies, my focus is on Palmistry, there will be no additional charge for moments of Clairvoyance.

Do you have a star sign?  Yes I thought so, people with your palm characteristics often do, it is part of your core being, part of your essential identity of self. Hold on to that belief for it will support you when the troubles of life beat at your door, I recommend you seek out the work of Jonathan Cainer.

You have suffered many hardships haven’t you, you have had to struggle through adversity on many occasions.  It can be so difficult to park a 4 by 4 near a school nowadays as there are so many inconsiderate people, you are not inconsiderate, you are protecting your children and that can only be commended.  It is clear from the heart line running from your forefinger across the palm to below your little finger that you are very protective.  That line is very strong, which is admirable.

It is possible to see that you have a strong concern with health and activity, that is denoted by the tell-tale band lines around your wrist.

You will live a long and happy life, although there will be times where there is pain and uncertainty, you must stick with what you believe to be right, and don’t give up playing the guitar.

Well, that was fun, I might do it again next year.

That'll be £125 please. Do remember on future visits to pay in advance, thank you for allowing me the pleasure of this reading.

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Day 221, War graves, Beighton Junction rail disaster

Had not been out for a run for over three weeks until a few days ago.  I'd been laid low by some sort of virus and have been whinging on about it for ages.  Dizziness, aches and pains, exhaustion, gah, what a wuss.  However as I started to feel incrementally better the urge to go for a run increased.  If you run regularly you'll be aware of the effect it has on you, it is absolutely like a drug and the side effects are such that you feel mentally stronger, invigorated, and all round like some sort of super-being.  So the desire to get out again is strong.

So, with the wind in my hair (hair, singular) and the sun at my back, I ran out.  And while out plodding on one of my usual running routes, via Crookes Cemetery, I spotted two war graves right next to each other but standing alone from the rest of the graves.  There was that odd feeling you get when you suddenly spot something that you've never noticed before, something that has always been there in plain sight but somehow escaped ever impinging on our consciousness over how ever many years.  Like leaving the front door of your house one day, high up in the landlocked hills, gong to the corner shop and noticing for the first time a concrete plinth supporting a full sized copy of the Cunard liner the Queen Mary.

I came back later and took the photograph of the graves and then went to see if I could discover what had happened to these people that were both killed on the same day in 1942.

I turns out that they were two of fourteen victims of a local rail disaster, all of them servicemen.  The accident happened at Beighton Junction toward the outskirts of Sheffield.  As it was bad news during wartime it didn't feature in the national press and would only have made cursory mention in the local press.  However, it appears that at least three local newspapers across the country printed quite detailed accounts about what had happened.  A lot of history has been pieced together since, Chris Hobbs has quite a lot of information and there is also a piece from the BBC although now on an archived page.  There is also a detailed report produced for Sir Cyril Hurcomb who at the time was The Director General of the Ministry of War Transport which you can find a link to here at the Railways Archive.

The report, written by J.L.M.Moore, describes how steel plate projecting from the side of a plate-wagon on an adjacent line had come into contact with a number of carriages of a passing troop train.  It details the events leading up to the accident, the working practices in place, and also gives information on the tests carried out and the steps used in reconstruction of how the accident happened.

The responsibility for the accident was placed with one of the workers on the sidings, however Moore is at pains to point out the difficulty of the task in hand and other circumstances and conditions at the time which also played a part.  He states that although the responsibility lies with the worker, a Mr Heliwell, "the blame, if any, must not be judged by the results."  He is clearly saying that the man made a mistake but it was a mistake that of itself would not naturally lead to such a catastrophic sequence of events given the other factors in play.  Further to that he makes recommendations about the working practices with regard to steel plate and that those methods would not secure these types of loads, and suggested the "immediate discontinuance" of this method of working - these changes were advised to be made across the entire LNER network and the other railway companies too.  It was also noted that if the goods yard had had the same clearance that was required for new works then the accident would not have happened.

It appears to me then that this accident was caused by systemic failure, and although the responsibility was placed at the feet of one worker it actually more properly belongs to each of the steps where failure occurred.  Working practices that eventually proved to be dangerous, out of date configuration of the sidings, employee working on an unexpected job beyond shift end, icy conditions and other minor elements combined.  It also appears that this is understood to be the case, and although there was an element of the finger of blame being pointed at Helliwell it was clearly acknowledged in the convoluted and archaic language of the time that this unfortunate incident was not solely his fault.

The comments made in the report suggest that Helliwell wasn't the sharpest of individuals as he was "not over alert either in mind of in body" and that he was over the age of 60 and perhaps a younger, more alert man, would have handled the situation better.  There is no indication of what happened to Helliwell next.

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Day 220, Immigration, numbskulls, unsubstantiated, ranty miscellany, tower

If you're first instinct when things go wrong is to look for someone or something to blame then the immigration debate will be right up your street.  Actually the word 'debate' is giving these discussions far more intellectual merit than they deserve.  What we are usually served up with on (insert whichever TV programme is your favourite: Question Time, Leaders Debates, etc, oh for fucks sake not another one of these bozo TV programmes, etc, etc), is an exposition of the points of view of people that can't see beyond the end of their noses.

The arguments that immigration brings huge benefit to this country, not just financial but that alone is immense, are compelling.  Yet we rarely hear anything beyond, "they nicked my job, why don't they piss off", ok, I paraphrased there but only slightly.

It is true that people are concerned that because of the recent economic difficulties then they could end up in worse circumstances.  The concern has been preyed on and stoked up by the politics of the right, it has been noted that these points resonate with a lot of people, or at least the sort of people that make a lot of noise.  This has set up a feedback loop which includes political parties, those that aren't as far to the right as the kippers, and they have decided to make a pitch for this area of political landscape.  We live in a country where the majority of the media is controlled by people that are also happy with this type of argument, after all, they've been fucking us over for years, stealing voicemails, supporting the interest of big business over the public, spinning these things as more important, passing the buck, pointing the finger of blame.  Any argument that tries to point out the facts is swamped by the braying voice of a Farage or the acres of newsprint from millionaire or billionaire press barons.  And anyone raising the voice of an opposing view is painted as though out of touch with reality.

The immigration debate (honestly, do we have to call it that) has focussed and polarised opinion.  It appears easy to understand.  It appeals to self-interest.  It is understood in a very clear cut way, and the right has successfully used it to for divisive purposes, to distract from the real failures caused by the financial crisis and Osborne's dumbass austerity policies.  Another area where the facts point out the lie.

Imagine this building as the prow of a great ocean liner cutting a clean slice through the centre of your tiny rowing boat.  The two sides bob on for a moment and then sink beneath the waves.

This immigration debate serves no purpose but to divide us and distract us.

The subtext of racism in the immigration debate may be denied, but the number of times people say "I'm not racist but" reveals where those people know they are coming from.  I remember as a 13 year old in the late 1970s telling NF skinheads to fuck off when they tried handing me their racist publications on Piccadilly Station approach in Manchester.  I may only be (slightly) less inarticulate about this subject now but it makes me equally as angry as I was then to now see these views being given credibility purely because they are rephrased using language that makes them appear 'reasonable' rather than 'extremist' when being espoused by shaven headed thugs.  These views should be exposed for what they are.

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Day 219, Still life

Here is a plant.

It is a succulent.

It didn't choose to be here, plants don't have that sort of self-determinism.

If it did have it certainly wouldn't have chosen to be in the temperate zone near the edge of western Europe.

I'm quite happy being in Europe, not sure what all the fuss is about having to have a referendum.  Not quite the same thing as the geographic location I know, but I've twisted the sense to mean the EU.

So then, a referendum, what will happen there.

There's a good chance none of the issues will be dealt with in any detail, dog-whistle politics will be used to appeal to prejudice, the right will bang on about immigrants, and nuance and complexity of the consequences of withdrawing or staying in will rarely be raised if at all.

That's what we have to look forward to.  A referendum preceded by shallow argument touching on nothing but the idea that the public want their voice heard, those voices mainly being an ill informed blob of nonsense.

This plant however doesn't give a toss.  How pleasant for it.

Still, life huh.

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Day 218, Embarrassment cliché sausage divertissement rubbish

Incidental to, and in between our scheduled programming, please be prepared for this amusement.

A collection of pens doing a clichéd dance.

While the text on these objects says 'permanent' the reality is different.  Setting aside the wider philosophical meaning of permanence - and indeed the practical reality of permanence in a universe where cosmic events render objects a quintillion times larger than these to a dispersion of subatomic matter - then to what is it they are referring.

I honestly don't give a monkeys, so let's return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Please stand by.

Fruit bat, antiquarian, monastic dilemma, cringeworthy, obsolete, mantra, totemic, vocal fry, turnip.

So, permanent.

But only in a short-term, non-geological manner.

Like humans.

But less so.

Cliché then, what about that.

It's the pictures, they're in that manner, like photo shot down a high stairwell, the array of pencils.  Images from photographic books explaining technique.  Techniques dating from before the upsurge in digital photography and a billion images a second being captured, mainly of people propping up the leaning tower of Pisa or holding the Sun/Moon/some other large object between their forefinger and thumb.

Hmm, "be prepared for this amusement".

Still waiting.

The photographer really should have used a plain background, fake wood grain is rubbish.

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Day 217, Stone soup

Who would live in a bowl like this.

A frog, a toad, a misplaced goldfish.

No, it's none of those things, ignore my foolish entreaty to believe such things.  What we have here is a training cap for headstands.  It may be missing the hand tooled leather chin straps but in all other respects it is fully intact.

The trainee-headstander would have placed this on their head whilst standing upright.  A Taraxacum wrangler would have been on hand to assist with the process of attaching the cap and instructing on the correct process for human inversion.  It is thought that the name Taraxacum was drawn from the French use of the word to indicate someone with fluffy hair resembling that of a Dandelion.  

Once the trainee has the cap securely fixed and their body inverted the wrangler may have held the feet, or indeed verbally abused the trainee at appropriate points.

Why or how this device ended up discarded in a field in the backwater city of Sheffield is unknown.  It is not a tradition of the city or indeed the county of South Yorkshire.  Perhaps we will never know the origin or history of this unusual component.

Only one clue remained, on turning over the cap it was noted that the words "Property of Metropolitan Police" were inscribed on the top (or the base as pictured), and "hand tooled."

Mysterious.

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Day 216, Player's No.6

This machine had been out of use for some time even when this picture was taken back in the last 88% of the twentieth century.

Player's

No.6

quality cigarettes

30p for a packet of fags, amazing.  Apparently a packet of 20 cigarettes now cost a similar amount to that of a small city runabout car such as a Fiat 500.

It's possible to see some litter, a receipt or something, poked into the coin return slot.

It's been a while since I looked out for this old machine, but it hasn't gone unnoticed by others.

Here's a more recent image of it although now with parts missing and the wall covered.

screenshot of the website as it was on 21 May 2015

Anyway, smoking is bad for you no matter what the quality, even at 30p a pack.

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Day 215, Pelican park

Spotted out of the corner of my eye, a Pelican in the park.

Distinct it was, a North American White Pelican.

Now, you may say that my perception of events was incorrect.  Perhaps it was something that just looked like a Pelican from that particular angle.

It was a Pelican I tell you.

Really.

It really was.

Here's another thing but this time there's an image capture, yet you may not be able to see what I can see.

Here's a hole in the ground.  However, more than that, on the far side of the hole and just below the surface is a tramline.  The digger of this hole must have been relieved that there was no need to get the grinder out to cut through and remove this short section of steel.

Distinct it is, certainly when seen with the naked eye.

My perception here cannot be doubted, not unless you don't know what a tramline looks like.

It really is a tramline, they are all over the city, with short sections chopped out where holes have been dug.

Now considering the Pelican.

That probably wasn't a Pelican.

My perception of that North American bird was incorrect, it was a frisbee.

Definitely a frisbee.

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Day 214, Mothy's gone

Child object - But mother, what's to do, Mothy's gone, gone forever.

Parental unit - Hush now darling, Mothy was parasitised, and indeed was itself a parasite.

Child object - But mother, I longed for the beat of the little speckled wings against my cheek.

Parental unit - Quiet your mouth child, speak no more this alien language.


And so the conversation continues unabated as the family mourns, or otherwise, the loss of the Hawksmoor Processionary Baguette moth.

A void now occupies the spot where once there was the hope of new life.

The life of the creature sucked out by market forces and the euphemistic language of the selfish pricks, or aspirational families as we have come to know them.  (Ed - er, are you sure this is right?)

Not a sausage left to indicate what was once there, in that spot somewhere slightly to the left.  Now there's a demand for movement towards something called the centre - not sure how this works with moth balance.  This centre appears to be in a completely different place to the centre occupied by the Scottish relative of the Processionary Baguette.  Some tired old entomologists have been dragged out of retirement to insist that this movement is needed.  Whereas as has been shown by the Scots entomologists the positioning should be much further to the left, demonstrably as has been shown by peer reviewed support which marked an X next to a chromosomal scale on a multi-selection, universal indicator litmus paper.

Honestly, the positioning of views on this subject being controlled by the more garish Lepidoptera obsessed media has been an immense hindrance to proper discussion.  If only there was decent education on this subject.

If only.

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Day 213, Redmires, 1st World War training trenches

Went out with Dad to look at some archaeology on Sunday.  This involved 75 minutes of wandering about at very low speed over sheep infested high ground near Redmires reservoir.  There were tufty, coarse knots of moorland grass to negotiate but that was about it, other than the wind blowing up the valley over the tundra.  This was a free event organised by The University of Sheffield as part of the Festival of Humanities which was to tour the training trenches from the first world war which are still in evidence around Redmires.

Now I’ve been under the weather recently and at first thought all was ok, but by the end of it I ached liked an unsatisfied desire for a chocolate covered peanut, crisp and cheese sandwich.  Dad appeared fine, and so he should, after all he’s only 78 years old and has a dodgy knee.  Me however, well, when I got home I took to my bed like an Edwardian aunt after the loss of her menfolk in bloody slaughter.  Well, not quite.

The remains of the trenches are very distinct.  I've visited the Somme and there is no sign of trench work there other than that which has been deliberately preserved.  A century of farming there has removed all evidence of the trenches.  But here above Sheffield the fields of rough scrub are not really good enough for farming anything other than growing and harvesting sheep.  And so the signs of the trenches, even though they were backfilled when finished with, are still quite clear.

View of Sheffield looking away from and above the trenches

I didn't take any photographs of the trench outlines.  I've seen dozens of photographs of them and none appears to capture the nuance of detail available to the naked eye so I didn't bother.  What a cop-out.  There are a few pictures here, aerial photographs, but they don't give an impression of how many trenches there were and how close they are together.

There are other interesting features on the hills such as the V shaped cooking trenches and the Mills grenade training areas.  The kitchens are composed of a number of shallow trenches where the fire would be laid, these are aligned similar to a V shape and the join was where a single flue was attached.  One of my relatives was wounded while working in one of these types of kitchen.  Even by reducing the number of visible flues this doesn't make the kitchen invisible and the type of cooking facilities used here were soon replaced by mobile kitchens which were more of a moving target.  There are actually two of these types of kitchen on Redmires, the suggestion is that one of the kitchens was for the higher ranks and the other for the lower ranks.

There would have been four companies training here, A-D.  With A being the higher end of the social scale and D being the general riff-raff and proles.  Dad was in D company when he did his National Service, and he said that all of his relatives in previous conflicts had been in D company.  Most of the Sheffield Battalion were drawn from the professional and middle classes, steel workers were dissuaded from joining up as their work was seen as essential.  It was said that the men in the battalion were very strong from the tip of their forefinger to the tip of their adjacent thumb as they were generally "pen-pushers", but they soon toughened up when digging trenches over the winter months.  Either way there's not a great deal of inequality when lying dying in a foreign field, the sacrifice was as great, and the shit you're lying in smells the same whether it originated with company A, B, C, D or the enemy.


Charming.

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Day 212, More words, not last, and noise, lovely noise

Taken a random stab and dug into the pile of tapes rootled out yesterday.  The first one looked like it was a demo tape rather than one of phone messages.  It turned out it was not only a recording of a jam session but also contained a rhythmic, acoustic guitar tune played over some thematically related voicemail messages.

At some point then I'd compiled selected messages into a tune.  The art reference in blog 211 was already realised, clearly this means that I embody much more dynamism than expected (ahem).

The jam session was a revelation.  I have no memory of it, but then we did play for many hundreds of hours.  And at times we played, making stuff up as we went along, really quite well together.  What surprised me was how good my Hendrix style riffs were and how crap I could be at other times, completely exposed and missing the point and possibilities.  What also surprised me was the controlled feedback, I'd have no chance of doing that now but it was masterful (oh I do love myself, hahaha), if you like squealing and wailing guitar that is.

The message tune is interesting, there must have been an idea behind the selection.  But then again there is the common theme of "you aren't in you arse", which is amusing.  One gem of the messages is, "pick up the phone you pretentious tosser", which is rich given who says it.

If I can dig out the right combination of cables I'll transfer it from tape to the digital realm.

Bought this four track device after I'd got a decent job which was some time after the recordings and was purely for being able to access the stack of the jam tapes.  Digital multitrackers had become affordable at that time so this machine is right at the end of production of tape devices, and as a consequence of that it was a bargain.

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Day 211, Last words

This pile of cassette tapes contain over 24 hours worth of answering machine messages.

There is no reason behind why these answering machine tapes were replaced when they were full rather than just overwriting the same tape repeatedly, other than there was a plentiful supply of old tapes.  Perhaps it’s an indicator of an obsessive compulsive nature, not wanting to delete.  The messages were never listened to again. And although they were kept there was never an intention to keep them forever.

When my telephone provider introduced their own voicemail service the tape machine was relegated to a box.  The machine went eventually, perhaps thrown out.  The tapes remained.  And there they are, retrieved from a Gemsoft bag around twenty years after they last recorded human voices.

But there are no last words.

The last words I heard my Mum speak, from 2000 miles away in the Mediterranean, were on the voicemail of my telephone provider.  They were deleted automatically somewhere 10 to 14 days after recorded in mid 2005.

What were the last words.

They made no sense at the time.  It was only later that understanding was pieced together, but by then there was nothing that could be done.  The brief opportunity for clarification had long passed.

The words.

They expressed care and concern.

The words are gone, retained only in human memory.

Does modern technology detract from this, who normally would have a recording of last words.

Would there have been value in continuing recording voicemail forever. Would retaining this type of information help.  There are friends and relatives contained in a moment in time in those tapes, but for what purpose.  Photographs don’t bring a person back but is there something more we would find from hearing the voice of someone loved and lost.  Would it have more resonance or would it be a foolish thing to try to cling on to moments of the past.

Many of these old tapes would have become answering machine fodder, there was a large supply

Are there answers to those questions.

What next.

The tapes may be listened to to see what they reveal, if anything. Perhaps they'll get incorporated into some recorded work as background sound. Or maybe used as a performance art work, or as an installation, or a mixed media melange of historical artefacts cobbled together in some pseudo-intellectual style.

Who knows, perhaps nothing will happen.

Then silence.

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Day 210, archaeological investigation

You may on occasion find yourself standing in a field with archaeologists.

Stay calm.

They will not harm you.

Well, generally they will not harm you.

Typically the aim of the archaeologist is the study of the recent and ancient human past through material remains.  As part of this study they will sometimes embark upon wild flights of fancy, and construct entire fully featured scenarios with finely detailed curtain edging and filigree work.  Don't let this terrific use of the imagination put you off, it's just there to add a little colour.

Here are some archaeologists in Graves Park in Sheffield.

As can be ascertained from the image above the male ones tend to be quite hairy.

They are often also found in the vicinity of the outdoors, alcohol, and other relaxants.

This is a top quality electronic instrument from the mid 1990s, beloved of archaeologists.  To clarify, both the electronic instrument and the 1990s are beloved of archaeologists. (is this right? - Ed)

An impressive tool by the standards of the day.  Just point the Chronolite, for that is what it is, at a feature of the landscape and it will scan the area for historical data.

Once in the vicinity of a computer, let's say an IBM 360 series, the data could be downloaded and analysed.  A decent mainframe of the day could compose a fifteen thousand word treatise giving a breakdown of the land usage, the architectural structures that had previously existed, the colour of the ancient curtains and possibly even the material they were made from.

Who knows what incredible discoveries would be revealed if this data was being crunched by the latest IBM System z9 machines.  Unfortunately we can only speculate on this as all archaeologists are now banned from handling technology constructed after the year 2000.  This is due to complex interactions between peculiarities of post millennium bug software, fabrication of modern computational elements, and archaeologists proximity to silicon in its more basic form.

We grind our knees in anticipation of these minor setbacks being resolved by a bug fix, better sealant, and the protagonists getting a good wash.

A discovery made on this expedition can be seen quite clearly in the image below.

A giant hopscotch board revealed by the use of the prongy-proddy tool held by the be-jumpered gentleman to the left.  Believed to have been used in ancient fertility rites these huge tape squares have stood the test of time remarkably well, however I fear the jumper will now have been consumed by parasitic wasps.






Please give generously.

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