Con Trail

Around 50% of YouTube is AI slop, a further 40% angry people shooting off and the remainder (for reasons I can't fathom and this one's garnered over 750 comments in less than a fortnight) footage of aircraft landing when it's windy.

For whatever reason too, their authors feel obliged to embellish the thumbnail, and in this case a contrail has been added to an airliner in the final stage of an approach to Birmingham Airport.

Naturally after a glass of Hock my own comment read:

Think you'll find they're SOMEWHAT BELOW THE 'MINTRA' LEVEL... ROT IN HELL, LOSER!!!

198 LW (Reprise)

In a Hands across the Irish Sea gesture we are indebted to Galway's Tommy Ruddy for the final fifteen minutes of BBC Radio 4's longwave output... and on what looks to be Pye's magnificent 1780 model unless I'm mistaken!

And how easy to operate in contrast to navigating a screen: ON/OFF, volume, tone and band selector besides an auto-tune toggle for wavering FM frequencies.

There again I can't see a means of tuning anywhere... crap these old radios.

Nonetheless let's ignore that for a moment to enjoy 'Sailing By' or the tune that has preceded the late shipping forecast for more than fifty years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxKbOxgMe0Q

Ed. No aerial required for LW reception... stick that up your modulated frequencies.

Flat-Cat #1: Logo

Let's stay in our comfort zone shall we, interspersing reflections on life with periodic builds of the boat?

If you're a young person, you'll know it's not at all easy to get a conventional means of employment these days and while Daddy's in favour of Universal Basic Income, it is unlikely to happen any time soon.

That clever man John Maynard Keynes said in the 1930s that by now we'd all work just three days a week and then only if we wanted to, whereas in what I'm doing driving trucks I have to sign away the 'right' to work no more than a 48-hour week, as indeed I had as an airline pilot.

So what we'll do here is set about putting something together that might elevate our current circs at least, whilst providing us with a little more satisfaction and not a little entertainment. The man who started Linux in this way said that all things stem from military requirements prior moving into commercial spheres and ending up as entertainment. You can sort of see that with drones as you enjoy grainy vids of them blowing up ships and radar installations, can't you!

Well first up we need a name, and whilst I like the idea of TELEDRONE because after all it's me droning away on telly, I prefer the idea of something more generic like flat-cat; because after all it's flat, and its a cat -amaran. You might want to consider a trademark, but this really is 'old-world' stuff that only corporations can afford and trade between themselves. It rarely helps individuals, except perhaps by lightening their wallets.

The oldest trademark is reputedly a simple red triangle that was registered by the Bass brewery in the UK, and they still use it. If we were to trademark our venture we would have the choice of doing so for simply the word viz. flat-cat, else a logo. Patent offices do not tend to approve marks that literally describe what something is and might therefore object to the word itself being applied for, in which event we'd have to revert to a logo.

A benefit of a logo is it's universal and independent of language, which the social network once called 'The Facebook' has achieved with a simple 'F' albeit in a typeface of their own devising.

On that note we need a logo that doubles as a button on a smartphone and below there is one both I and my son like, though we do both prefer cats alive than dead.

I'm not going to register it because I'm done with IP, though it would be difficult for you to do so too now that you've seen it here because technically any piece of art* like that I've drafted here is subject copyright. Technically it means you can't use it for seventy years following my decease, so you'll be maybe a centenarian and past building things unless you're Elon Musk?

So here's hoping this is one pussy he'll never gets his hands on!

* Ed. Or piece of shit, like what's generally promulgated here...

The Liverpool Vicarious

Multi-sheaf document here on the legendary breakfast-bar that will be informing the recycling bin moreso than me and something my insurer expects me to contemplate in lieu of a life.

The story instructive and one that Mrs T herself would have relished, dear reader.

Liverpool's Victoria friendly society was established in 1843 as a means by which a pauper could fund a decent funeral ~ of which it provided over 200 within the first year and a half.

Wind forward a century or more and Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society becomes Liverpool Victoria Financial Services; insurance separate from life sold to German giant Allianz.

Liverpool, not least due its connection to shipping, was once a hub of insurance in the UK, although LV's HQ would be transferred to London in the 1920s and later to Bournemouth on the south coast, doubtless due the costs of being in the capitol. 

(As a result of Liverpool's role in finance and Manchester's in manufacture, it used to be said there were Manchester 'men' and Liverpool 'gentlemen').

As we saw with Alton Towers, it's as ever foreign capital in the driving seat and tho' it's not derived from Wall Street this time, it is likely only because Europe resists ~ as with its airlines ~ broader foreign ownership.

Does it make any difference to the man at the breakfast-bar?

Not really, no.

Naval Gazing

I'd be the first to admit I'm all talk and no neoprene trousers, but take a walk in my flip-flops if you would?

I visited his exhibitions in London and Brussels and the workshop in Antwerp, and I like to think that I'm standing on the shoulders of a giant in the shape of installation artist Panamarenko. In the end he'd produced nothing practical whatsoever, though inspired any number of us with a glimpse of the possible when it came to motivating us in both literal and figurative ways.

As I survey my designs and patent applications filed over decades, or my empire of dirt as Johnny Cash suggested I call it, I have to remind myself it's brought a lot of joy to at least one of us. That said, as I said to one of the founders of the UK's now fairly-shit NESTA initiative, the reason no-one else is ever going to exert themselves developing any of your ideas is that it is like asking them to bring up your kids for you.

We are, therefore, stuck with it: my efforts to execute unorthodox designs and you laughing at them. If we're going down that route however, we have at least as the first half of 2026 expires to ask ourselves what we hope to get out of it in the long-term?

Well keen followers of the 'blog will have noted a recent craving for a simpler build altogether, and whilst simply building it in my head is as appealing as ever, we're a hands-on community of makers and shakers, aren't we?

Accordingly let's enumerate our very own hierarchy of needs:

(1)    I don't want to build a company, and nor do you, but I do want to build a boat

(2)    It has to be scalable to transport (or rescue) a person, but still inspire drones

(3)    It has to be transferable to places like the Med where circs are more amenable

(4)    It has to be available to aero- and screw-propellers alike, ideally electrified

(5)    It has to be able to hover, plane on water and operate in ground-effect

(6)    It must be flat-packed for assembly and storage

(7)    It has to look so good that others want one too

(8)    It has to be cheaper and faster than any other 

(9)    It has to have less impact on the planet

(10)  It has to make people give me money

I think you will agree that these are noble aims altogether, albeit not those Mother Teresa would be willing to sign off on? Accordingly now's the time to print them off, stick them on the fridge and re-dedicate yourselves to them daily, as I hope to do.

Clauses (8) and (9) are each as good an aim as any, they requiring less material to build fast-moving watercraft and less energy to propel them. Of the 12 million boats registered in the US, for example, any number are (literally) forever boats that are being abandoned in waterways for someone else to clear up when the party's over.

Thus my promise to you for the remaining half of 2026 is that whatever is baptised here in the shitty waters hereabouts will feature that sketch, the whole sketch and nothing but the sketch.

We shall revisit each of those points in turn, though I realise you've had all you can take for one day. Yet with the month of June slipping away, we're holding steady at 60,000 views per month on this hailing frequency alone.

Tail Wags Dog

Am loving this because ~ talking of circles ~ we've come full circle in boating terms.

A company in France, where they still make things, has re-introduced the long-tail outboard in electrical form. You like I will only have been aware of these from either visits to transport museums like those in Berlin or Istanbul, else while being terrified in Thailand at being driven at high-speed along the waterways of Bangkok.

Ironically, tho' it would appear more obvious to put a propeller on a stick as here, the original outboard patent filed by a Frenchman in 1880 featured an upright type; albeit chain-driven instead of requiring a gear-box to turn a perpendicular driveshaft through ninety degrees. This may have been done first by Evinrude in the US, but I can't be bothered with the due diligence.

It had to wait until 1904 before another Frenchman would devise a long-tail like that here. It would flourish however in the Far East, where it was the ideal way to repurpose scrap auto-engines, and where they would not be shut down for mincing small children.

They're asking £1200 for the extendable entry-level prop-on-a-stick and £1800 for a carbon-fibre version: each of which deliver the equivalent of 1.50 horsepower.

Product design tho' it's ever France, Italy, Japan and James Dyson in the play-offs.

Ed. Dog not included. 

Circles of Hell

The ancient Romans often figured that the longer you put decisions off, the better; and the delay in outlining the defence requirements of the UK might be one of the outgoing PM's better decisions, albeit for the wrong reasons. For defence is a pork-barrel, and existing suppliers to the military-industrial complex will ever be looking to push an agenda that effectively supports the status quo... in their favour.

But one of the few benefits of war for those on either end of it is that it does upend the pork-barrel when it comes to altering ways of thinking. There's enough news out there about the Royal Navy abandoning big ships for small; and the Army and RAF will have to follow suit given successive government efforts to abandon an industrial base for a ~ literal ~ welfare state.

The drones however are even coming to roost for residents of Moscow, where fuel shortages are beginning to bite now that they've range and wherewithal to target oil storage facilities. Previously it would have required bombs dropped from a great height, most of which would miss: especially ineffective in view of the number of bombers that would be lost in the circs.

That's all gone now, for a reduction in the cost of computing and communication has meant there's a half-dozen different means to guide drones to distant targets at affordable cost and some ~ try it on a three-year old ~ can be taught chimpanzees.

Liquid product has generally to be stored in bottles or tins, because as the Romans discovered, circular structures best withstand internal and external forces. So it is that LPG is transported in pressurised spheres. They're not the easiest to make and so liquids at pressures deriving only from gravity are better made of a cylinder with a lid on top. And as there has still to be an element of pressure for expansion and so forth, that lid best approximates a dome... like that atop St Pauls cathedral.

The problem with this is that for modern aerial drones, it's a game of bubble-wrap. Take a look at Europe's largest storage and refinery facility at Rotterdam and see if your child can spot the dots? And it gets easier as destruction progresses, as drones progressively turn those white dots black.

In terms of computing, it's something Alan Turing could do ~ and likely did ~ before bedtime.

Every LIDL Helps

I get an altogether constructive response from LIDL following my experience in the small hours of Wednesday evening last. In fairness there are good days and bad in haulage as elsewhere, and tho' the latter can be decidedly bad let's not complain as it gets us out of bed each day.

Three reflections though worth are worth contemplating.

Firstly the UK's economy has amongst the worst productivity in the developed world and whilst it's not all my fault, on a daily basis I can see why. We may never know if my two-dozen pallets of produce were binned, but what you should know is we do so to substantial volumes in the UK and not least when all the chillers and freezers in the supermarkets pack up as they do when temperatures exceed 35C. Actually it is turned into ethanol and included in your petrol, but if you think that's sustainable, wait until the Russians arrive.

Secondly I spent much of my life in an airline industry that introduced the concept of SMS or Safety Management Systems, taken up since at places like the National Health Service. It's about replacing a time-worn 'blame the pilot' view of accidents and incidents, with one that features contributory factors. It is still as often a not a case of 'blame the driver' when it comes to logistics, which rarely changes because most need to keep their jobs, whereas I'd be cracking open a bottle.

Thirdly it does not surprise me that a German company ~ albeit in the UK ~ should endeavour to do things in the right way. I'd fly with a one of the smartest people I knew (at the Bank of America) to Germany, where he was totally smitten by their professionalism when it came to fixing issues which needed it. I flew nuclear waste from Wick to Frankfurt and we'd be sent on our way by a guy in tweeds with a pipe, and met at the other end by motor-cycle outriders and an armoured car mounting a machine-gun.

The Heat is On

I write at a time when the June temperature record has been broken three days in succession in the UK, and the reasons are instructive and again something that you study in detail in the class-room ~ or less engagingly online nowadays as ever ~ in preparation for flying airliners.

In fact jetstreams like that in the pic were only discovered circa the 1940s, as either bomber-crews headed for Japan realised they went one way faster than the other or when commercial airliners crashed in the Andes when they figured it must be time to descend when they'd been fighting a headwind all along instead.

Either hemisphere best-viewed as an LP record, you can see that the outside moves faster than the inside and thus a descending column of air incorporates a spin from the surface of the Earth as it does so... clockwise in the northern hemisphere. At the same time descending air produces high pressure, and in doing so it warms and so is less likely to condense to produce either cloud or rain.

Broadly speaking the jets emerge because hot air from the Tropics expands to slide toward the poles, but is transformed into fast-moving rivers of air by a planet that rotates at around 1,000 m.p.h. at the equator. In turn these sinuous rivers produce eddies of rising or descending air, producing the high- and low-pressure systems we enjoy from one week to the next.

Turns out that climate-change, so called because it sounds less like something we caused than global-warming and in the hope it will go away, is affecting the Arctic most of all. Here it is warming at three times the going rate, with Europe at twice the going rate.

This alteration to the status quo at the northern pole apparently allows a jetstream to split as illustrated, which in turn allows for a high-pressure dome to inhabit the continent as shown. Hence temperatures of around 38C in England and 41C in a city once considered delightful to be in during Springtime, or Paris.

I studied (when I could be bothered) what might be called Earth Science nowadays but Geography and Geology back then, and one of the few things that told on me was how the plant loves a positive feedback loop. They often occur over stretches of time, but can be flipped into one or other long-lasting state by, for instance, human interaction or more obvious actors like volcanoes or asteroids.

An easy one to remember for those of us living in urban heat-islands (as the bulk of humanity does), is use of air-conditioning units. These (a) consume fossil fuels at a distance to increase warming on a broader scale and (b) dump hot air externally so as to increase it on a local scale. Which persuades more of us to use them... and so on and so forth until the roundabout spins too fast as it did at Blackpool's Funhouse and we all fall off.

Good pub quiz question though for you:

    Q.    Which nation has the highest per-capita energy-use?

    A.    Qatar.

And ladies, gentlemen and the undecided that is because you cannot really function there without moving between air-conditioned homes, shops and workplaces in air-conditioned cars. All of which uses more fossil fuel beside that used to provide water that would otherwise be largely absent.

It's a party, like humanity, that can only go on for so long. Someone I know asked an American ex-pat of the sort who provided the means of extraction from the 1930 on that has allowed for all of this... how it might end?

'Back to the sand from which it came' apparently.

But then we're nothing but dust anyway, are we?

Ed. And you have a good weekend too...

Mention in Vespatches

Celebrations in Rome this very day on the 80th anniversary of the introduction of Piaggio's Vespa scooter. Post-war the roads in Italy were not the best, and airplane manufacturers like Piaggio were largely forbidden from being so. And so they turned instead to manufacturing these, in a place where people were poorer than they had been but as fashion-conscious as ever... and reluctant to see oil or grease anywhere near trouser or skirt.

We'd a scrap 350cc Zundapp from Germany as kids that we tried and failed to get running, but aside from that in the UK in the way you were either Catholic or else Protestant you only ever rode motorbikes or scooters like the Vespa. The division was in fact cemented in the UK by gang-membership of either Mods (scooters) or Rockers (motorbikes), and reinforced by them regularly convening at seaside towns like Brighton in order to hospitalise each other. Rockers did this with chains, unfair in view of the fact scooter-riders didn't need one.

Ed. Goes some way to explaining why Honda's 50cc step-through became the most-produced motorised two-wheeler ever, accepted by each side as a work in progress.

198 Longwave

Another good friend passes away in the form of long-wave broadcast of BBC Radio 4 output, now restricted to frequency-modulated transmission on medium wave; else a Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB); else and altogether more common nowadays, over the internet.

What we do with all technology is to mistake the convenient for the good, however, although that only becomes apparent after the fact.

At the outset of an off-and-on working career in London I shared a flat in a recently gentrified part of Forest Hill in Southeast London. An elderly man occupied the roof-space, which would have been intended for servants when the house was built. I did occasionally visit Mr Newcombe, or 'nuke' as my fellow-flatmates called him, without ever visiting themselves.

As a consequence I inherited a half-bottle of Campari, the sort you bring back from a holiday where it was consumed on the beach but which doesn't quite work on your return back home. And a radio, of the sort with a knob on top to turn it on and after adjust the volume and another to move a linear pointer along the frequency scale in order to tune it to whichever frequency. Between these were a display along which that pointer moved, and buttons for pre-selections besides setting the frequency at whichever broad range of wavelength was required.

I left all of this set to Radio 4, for the singular reason that it could be turned on and the news listened to at six or seven o'clock prior to work or the weekend's activities.

Now this can be done by picking up a phone and if necessary winding things back to the start. But there's no discipline in that, and for centuries Western civilisation ran on a bed-rock of monastic discipline where everything was done to the clock and the routines of work in the fields and workshops were as often as not dictated by church bells.

And it's how we think easier is invariably better, and thus have to invent things like gym classes and parkruns and charity hikes in order to compensate for a life on the sofa watching David Attenborough get out of bed in the morning instead.

The ends of the radio as was done in the 1960s or 1970s were finished in hardwood panels, one of which had come loose and pivoted around the renting fixture at the top end... which only added to the attraction. Life is not perfect, people not perfect, and thus it is that we crave cars and phones that at least appear so.

Radio 4 was known originally as the Home Service, and provided news to the more serious-minded types whilst the Radio 2 had been called the Light and aimed at the plebeian end of the populace who preferred more musical fare. Popular music was only broadcast officially from 1967 on in the UK, with the introduction of Radio 1 to accompany the re-framing of prior output as Radios 2 and 4, with Radio 3 added for classical music that nobody listened to.

All of the underlying science would be analysed in much greater detail when training for a commercial pilot's licence, and I can summarise it here. The military where I learned to fly were granted UHF radios, literally above and beyond the civilian realm of VHF and its medium waves. Navigation beacons like VOR or the VHF Omnirange still in use shared this space, to the extent illegal FM stations might overstep their territory so that listening in to their 'ident' you'd hear a musical playlist instead.

Over at the long-wave range of VHF meantimes, this was used and I think still is by the rapidly disappearing means of navigation called a Non-Directional Beacon, used nowadays if at all solely as a last-resort aid to confirm you're on the right approach course prior to landing. It was based on the fact that a ring-shaped aerial provided the strongest signal when facing toward transmitter, and these hoops can be seen on any number of vintage ships and aircraft.

It also meant that such navigation receivers could be tuned to long-wave broadcast stations like Atlantic on 252 kHz, which relieved the boredom of longer stretches of the North Sea during night-flights hauling freight.

In later years co-pilots would bring a phone and set their playlist to run during the pre-flight preparations on the flight-deck, and having been trained in the military and brought up with the strictures of long-wave radio broadcasts, I'd say 'Please don't do that' and in the end they'd appreciate me saying so, not least for being in one piece.

Later it was more a case of suggesting that with the take-off roll in view it was as good a time as any to stop messaging your mates; although nowadays looking at YouTube I realise that the flight-crew's number one priority is less your safety and more the highest possible number of views. Which, making money being theirs, the airlines are entirely happy with.

Suzuki MC

Forthcoming, and nobody does it better, Suzuki's 4-wheel drive mini-camper. I'd like to sell up, bid the UK farewell and drive off into the sunset. Except it'll never happen, the sun setting in the West and beyond us only sea.

David Hockney Post, Mortem.

Died recently and what I found most inspiring the fact he'd just two people attend his funeral ~ partner and nephew in his case ~ which I like the idea of for my own.

My favourite tale concerning was the time Billy Connolly and mother, born and bred in Glasgow, visited him and from the patio admired a San Fernando valley sprawled out below under the sort of sky that appeared in his paintings.

Mother's only observation: 'A drying day like this and not a washing-line in sight?'

Faulty Towers (Ref #13374406) Update

Did in fact get back to me a fortnight ago with promise of a refund (thanks Gemma) and free tickets (thanks Stevie), and whilst these are as yet unforthcoming we live in hope... and have promised a blog post with a positive spin greater than Nemesis.

Happy days tho' because chancellor Rachel Reeves has taken time out from kissing prospective PM Andy Burnham's ass to scrap sales tax on kids' meals and theme parks in summer.

It'll benefit VCs in the US bankrolling the rollers more than it may our dear children, but does divert us from the daily shit-show of politics in the UK.

And of course we're still enjoying the ride here on Britain's Best-Loved Blog*.

* Unsuitable for those under four feet in height except Nicola Sturgeon.

AC DC Bus

We wish the Swindon and Cricklade Railway well in their five-year restoration of the AC railcar pictured here.

You likely know little or nothing about railcars, but in the 1950s or 1960s it became clear that railways were being abandoned for roads and reducing cost on the former meant replacing locos and carriages with such as this: a coach that did rails as well as roads.

Some were literally adapted from an original chassis, like that Leyland introduced in the mid-1980s, which were replaced hereabouts just forty years later as part of the UK's effort to build Europe's worst rail service.

Readers in the US will be surprised, as I was, that the example being restored was originally built by AC of Cobra fame. Even more surprising, and this the joy of the internet, learning that AC was best-known until late for the 'Invacars' provided free by the government to those known as invalids until relatively recently.

The people driving them were truly invalided as you'd have no reason for driving it otherwise... though the head-boy had a Messerschmidt scooter that we'd fly around Ormskirk at an altitude of two feet on occasion.

As a part of successive governments efforts to expand the welfare state, people at a rate of a thousand a week are applying for disability benefits that as often as not include a regular car, ex-showroom, on a three-year recurring basis.

Nice work if you can't get it?

I accompanied our good friend Karl, at death's door during Covid, to apply for such a concession viz. PIP or Personal Independence Payments. Most passing through the waiting room appeared compos mentis, although our good friend was refused... and dead inside six months. I'd take him again to see if he qualifies now, but doubt his family would approve.

Carroll Shelby's Invacar led the pack at Le Mans in 1964 and 1965

On the Contrary

An example of how computing is revolutionising flight, here are single-bladed props running in opposite directions that can steer the drone in any direction by the motor being speeded up during one half of each revolution, and slowed in the other half.

Huge amount of sensing, intelligence and signalling to perform; bit then it's where all else is headed these days.

The only downside with single-bladed propellers ~ as nature found with sycamore seeds ~ is they require a counterweight and as any cyclist knows, wherever weight is being spun there's a loss of efficiency.

Ed. the sycamore's counterweight is the seed, Nature as ever providing the answer.

Axe to Grind

A British success story in the making, and unusual in so far as failure-redundancy drifts from the norm in not simply having fitted eight contra-rotating motors and propellers. It does have eight motors, though how they drive the propellers is not revealed... the website as so often with eVTOLs being light on technical details.

Nonetheless it is standard practise with helicopters to drive a single rotor from a gearbox connecting to turbine engines: where as here the blades themselves are viewed as the least-likely point of failure. As a pilot and world-renowned influencer I am comfortable with that, not least because this can be glided to a safe landing in extremis.

I'm less comfortable with the £150,000 price tag, although that's wholly reasonable in view of the price inflation affecting general aviation these days.

It does beg the question of how the founder progressed the project under Starmer's regime ~ where you're more likely to get a grant as a collective staging happenings that explore the meaning of gender, and which toilet we should use ~ whose answer is the fact that a pair of angel investors stumped up the required (and substantial) cash. I recall ~ and it won't surprise anyone ~ that they are both based in the US.

Am almost tempted to do a Joe Rogan on their founder, but can't be bothered.

Give a LIDL respect, toooo-oo-oo me...

Been giving the 'blog a lot of thought, and what it is you I might want from it and on reflection aside from boat-building it has to be making fun of the unfortunate, loathing humankind in general and above all, entertaining us (me mostly) over our morning coffee.

So we're going to touch on our lives as the living dead truckers, as we do that from time to time to pay the bills, don't we?

I once took an Indian flight-crew after training them in the simulator for a curry and a beer nearby Gatwick, and suggested to the lady captain it was perhaps not done to snap her fingers whenever she required the waiter's attention. It was however a simple reflection of the caste system, I guessed, in which everyone has their place.

It's as true in every society, not least here in Britain where truckers (a) keep your every need supplied and (b) are rightly viewed as the 'untouchable' caste, not least among the warehouse operatives who ~ being just one rung above ~ will often be determined to make the most of it and especially so at 01:34, as when I arrived in the early hours of the morning of 24th June:

Stark contrast to a pleasant late-evening traverse of the Woodhead Pass, as visits to LIDL's distribution centre rank among least favourite, principally because they expect you to do much of the unloading and rearranging of goods that used ~ and still so often is ~ by warehouses themselves. It's why German supermarkets are able to undercut British... by exploiting suppliers in much the same way.

Thus it is that before going anywhere I'd to scan two dozen pages of invoices from suppliers, so that LIDL didn't need to, before being provided with 'training' on an electric pallet-truck that consisted of a tick-box hand-out that no, I couldn't retain for the purposes of reference because it had to be filed away. I was told through that I would be met at the door of Bay 90 (circled) for training on opening the door and lowering the ramp.

Except they don't let you in. The door marked GOODS INWARD DRIVERS DOOR is no longer in use except for egress, but they don't tell you that, and nor do any of the pushbuttons connect except to an engaged tone. You are expected to use the unmarked door farther along instead, where the pushbuttons are equally ineffective and drivers kick the door hard enough to hope one of their number will let them in.

In view of this: no lady to meet at Bay 90 where, it not being rocket-science, I raise the door and drop the ramp myself. So, health and safety, LIDL O and Colin 1.

I had though been given a driving lesson with the electrified pallet-truck, which are quite entertaining to use except that here in Runcorn (unlike Lutterworth) they're old and rusty, and work only intermittently or left uncharged ~ your problem at 02:00 a.m. and not LIDL's... so shut the fuck up and remember who you are.

Nice ginger-haired lady I do look for, who advises me to leave the (two) pallets of frozen food nearest the bay door. Remember this for later.

I then proceed eventually to unload two-dozen chilled pallets of food from a variety of suppliers who've done their best, although prior the final frozen pallet the pallet-truck that has been sub'd repeatedly dies a death. I'd gone to get gloves meantime to handle goods kept at -22C, but this being LIDL couldn't get back in for a further fifteen minutes. But hey, it's only my time isn't it?

I therefore approach the guy with piercings everywhere ~ nose, ears, tongue and brain ~ and say I'd like to speak to a manager. He wheels out the modern litany of workplace responses, 'I thimply find your attitude not overly helpful, and thlightly confrontational...' before dropping the Newspeak and telling me to fuck off, when I know I'm making progress.

His manager, driving a long-fork truck deigns to step down from his or her mount, as 'they' look like an effeminate Andy Burnham and I wonder what the biological sex might be. Tourette's Colin is asking, 'You a girly bloke, or a fucking ugly girl?' and being ugly myself, I forgive him it.

I invite him/her/they to take a look at both pallet-trucks and warehouse means of ingress, but she refuses. I mean, who takes time out to respond to complaints from a greasy trucker?

Meantimes piercings-man ~ definitely a man ~ interrupts looking at his phone from time to time with telling people what to do and directs me to move the frozen pallet to the far end of the line, whereupon I let him know at a distance of twenty metres that that is not what LIDL previously requested.

Previously he'd relished the oppo to tell me too ~ seeing I'd nothing better to do ~ to split some of the pallets of food by supplier onto separate pallets, and here's me wondering why it wouldn't be simpler just to take a warehouse job instead?

It's why the bulk of warehouse operatives and drivers are East European, because capital (or should I say Das Capital?) knows they're wholly expendable. Well they're drifting back to the places set to overtake the UK in terms of per capita wealth, so what will LIDL customers do when ageing British drivers (average fifty-five) figure out it'd be easier to join everyone else on benefits instead?

Things getting a little heated now at the refrigerated warehouse, so I suggest 'they' give me the keys as it's GAME OVER. Am told this is not possible without me placing a 999 call to say I'm being detained against my will here at Cold-itz... and you see the thought flicker momentarily across the face. So instead I'm told that I can go, and that they'll instead trash all twenty-five remaining pallets of food.

So, Ryan McDonnell, CEO of LIDL's GB operation, we'd all like to know whether you or your staff really are bloody-minded enough to have ditched thousands of pounds worth of food instead of splitting a few pallets on a night-shift (when to be fair you could be watching YouTube instead)?

The pic's of Ryan taking tea on the terrace at Westminster, as per his LinkedIn blog. 

No cream teas for us, eh Ryan?

Ed. The URL has been provided Ryan, whose response to contact ref #134554601 is to appear here. To androgynous or pierced warehouse operatives everywhere, we salute you getting out of bed to pursue what's a fairly shit job. And for reasons of transparency, Colin does enjoy a cream tea.

Re: Iteration

And this the advantage of learning by doing, improving the speed and efficacy with which things can be manufactured. Here's the 6mm laminate, and I notice that if I score just one side without an incision that spans both, the material can be folded relatively intact and filleted with adhesive along the inside joint.

In fact you could go one further and arrange for all four sides to be foldable like an origami kit, with the three sides set as here and the fourth separately so prior to the addition of the two end-caps that support the assembly between the pontoons.

From the Sublime...

... to the rigidcoolness.

We'll stick with the outline we have after all, after something of a 'long dark night of the soul' on June 21st, which was more of a long light day it having been a solstice.

What we have though in 20mm laminated foam is sufficient to support the 79 kilos I am trying to reduce in an effort to fit into a suit in time for a wedding. That's twelve and a half stone, on someone who for decades hovered around ten and a half.

Backing-board foams now come, as we saw lately, in 6mm, 10mm, 12.50mm and this one here; so let's build in the thinnest of these to see what we'll get away with.

S'kier Starmer

A politician's but a walking shadow,

A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Apologies to Shakespeare but as good a description of the state of democracy as any.

Ed. Kier Starter resigns as Prime Minister, the sixth to do so in barely more years.

Cloud Appreciation Society

High pressure sits over northwest Europe and much of the UK, resulting in ~ if any at all ~ clouds like these outside my front door this morning.

The society boasts over 60,000 members and could only have been conceived in a country like Britain, which has a society for anything you could think of... the notion of naming types of cloud at all could only really have sprung from hereabouts too.

I've read the book, but have yet to join not ever having been much of a joiner. I do know though that these are cirrocumulus, forming what's known as a mackerel sky.

Gary Robert Gress

Was at the GoFly challenge finals with us and a dozen others, and unlike us goes on to the GoAero challenge currently underway; each focused on scaling drone science to transport humans from one place or circumstance to another.

What I like about this man is that aside from being at an age when, like me, he may be forgiven for life of quiet contemplation: is instead still designing eVTOLs, artwork and tee-shirts.

Current focus appears to be on two-motored means of aerial support using motors that can be tilted in order to provide three-dimensional control throughout hovering and forward flight.

It begs the question as to what happens should one motor fail, but the problem with aviation regulation in this century is its undue reliance on failure redundancy. If you are flying to Australia I can understand you wanting to arrive in one piece, whilst in contrast the chances of one of these falling from the sky and doing you any sort of damage is on a par with your winning the Euromillions jackpot.

You're probably a billion times more likely to be mugged for your phone in Paris or London as you have being struck by an errant electrical flying machine, and nobody appears to be doing anything about that or the electrical scooter used in its pursuit.

The diminishing power of politicians and civil servants however does mean that that which is most easily regulated ~ flying machines ~ is so obsessively in the way that cancer becomes the preoccupying pathology of a mortal frame facing certain death.

Ed. Sorry that couldn't be more upbeat, Gary.

Kit Cat?

Drafted a sizeable model of this same day, and came to wish I hadn't: it's intriguing and stupid at the same time.

Wickes-epedia

Friday evening last returning from work swung by Wickes where I find the range of laminated foams growing by the month; and help myself to these quarter-inch viz. 6mm sheets. They are aimed at under-flooring heating, but provide a perfect means of modelling boats.

Long-term prisoners of the blog will recall how there was a time when we'd jump in the car and drive for an hour in search of super-thin laminated hardwood sheets to use as a waterproof backing for foam... and now it's been done for us. So all things really do come to those who wait.

We must however stick to the knitting and get back to designing and building boats, which is after all what we're here for. Been in the slough of despond ~ distinct from the Slough of Berkshire where once I worked ~ as to which direction to steer a blog in, and the conclusion I came too was that the world has too many opinions, but too few flat-pack catamarans.

The Cat and Financial Fiddle

We interrupt this blog with an urgent message for the Cat and Fiddle, late of Macclesfield... 

This last bank holiday in the UK, the vast readership of this weblog joined us in a visit to the Peak District of Derbyshire and its surrounds, a visit only marred for us by (a) the power failing at the family's beloved Alton Towers and (b) a fine local ale proving more bitter than expected by a request for £100 for the privilege of parking at your historic hostelry between the hours of 14:09 and 14:31, whilst proceeding in a westerly direction.

I understand this operation has been contracted out to an outfit best described as Ozzies-on-the-Make, and am sure that a mutual love of the amber nectar stands me in good favour in relation to this matter?

On the day in question I was wholly unaware throughout the visit that charges were levied against free-riders there for less wholesome pursuits like hiking. In fact if we look at Exhibit A in the illustration (ringed in red), you will appreciate that it's wholly possible to arrive ~ and leave worse the wear ~ at the spot without cognisance of the signs provided. As indeed, your lordship, would happen to us on this occasion.

In fact looking again at the handout, I have located our own vehicle (captured here by your own camera and framed in yellow) at the spot I think it occupied. Imagine yourselves if you would, walking from thereabouts and whether you too might miss the signage provided?

Happily however examination of Google's own photographic record, provided here by their little orange man, shows how customers of the facility ought not suffer a charge should they register a vehicle upon arrival. Might the barman in your opinion not put that to customers in order that they do not end up paying £110 for a round? I think so... as I may you, members of the jury.

For indeed, there it is... the 'smoking gun' in the form of evidence framed in blue that I did in fact purchase a pint of ale (and shandy for a fourteen-year old who was only there to drive me home in the circs).

Ed. The Cat and Fiddle was among the highest pubs in England, located on a pass beloved of bikers. The above is a heartfelt appeal for withdrawl of Parking Charge No. SP60807464 and has been forwarded to the proprietors in the shape of Forest Distilleries, besides those thieving Ozzy bar stewards. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this post, don't bother me.

Bit of a Wall-y

Captain Geoff Wall has been removed from operations at Air Canada after flying for seventeen years without a licence.

The airline has said that he's not a captain, he's a very naughty boy.

In my considered opinion as a one-time airline training captain, I should like to say that the lack of a licence matters not a bit; with two pilots up front it's soon obvious to their opposite number if either's short of the full ticket.

I'd a friend who joined the A330 operation servicing an RAF transport requirement... as a captain, despite never having been one. After a period I recall of some three weeks, closer examination showed that the reference on his CV was Jabba Desilijic Tiure ~ better known for appearing in Star Wars than for his exploits in airliners*.

Occasionally people walk around in white coats and get to become surgeons, and as with people like Geoff Wall, they're usually more motivated than the average NHS employee instead of less.

One was even tasked to operate on my own brain, which is why this blog is as it is.

* My friend made The Sun newspaper under the headline 'Jobba the Hutt' and later went on to infiltrate the KGB dressed as Darth Vader.