eBrits

Come with us, do, on an eBike ride through rural Brittany? The legal age for riding a machine of this sort in France being fourteen, we ace the age requirements and set off from a rental facility in the midst of nowhere run by a Dutchman who met a wife and stayed. He has a wooden wheel on the workshop wall, made in ways they used to have to prior the invention of spokes:

The Bretons who occupy the region of Brittany share many cultural norms with the denizens of Cornwall in the UK ~ both culturally annihilated by the capitol and each preferring devolution from the centres of power. They speak a language essentially Celtic, and do stuff like wrestling and folk dancing they'd probably each recognise. Their lands are granitic, the chalk cliffs of the south of England and north of France giving way to igneous types, which explains the preference for stone builds over the use of clay for bricks:

It's a place many Brits retire to, or did so at least until the UK left the EU when it became altogether more complicated. France is wholly more rural than England and not least because it occupies an altogether greater area. It is thus replete with the ideal types of holiday or 'forever' home, offering substantial upgrades to weather and cuisine. The Victorian art critic John Ruskin used grand tours in Europe to pass by abodes you'd imagine living in, knowing that you'd never actually do so... and here is one such, where in fairness they're probably bored senseless:

The overwhelming takeaway from these perambulations around the country lanes of Brittany are the feeling everyone is growing corn (on the cob, as distinct from wheat as the English know corn to be) and that there's a stone cross on every corner and in every village. There used to be many more in Britain too, that disappeared into people's gardens when they ceased to believe in anything beyond IKEA and online gambling:

Put your linens on, however, as we've a wedding to attend...

Brit-ish

Arrive in Brittany for the wedding I promised you back in the day that you could come to as well, which I'm beginning to regret. The French region of Brittany shares a name with Britain itself, stemming from the fact ancient Britons were here as well as there... where they'd be pushed to the margins by Anglo-Saxons. The people of Brittany thus share a language and cultural norms with those of England's most southerly county in the shape of Cornwall.

Arriving at a barn-turned-Airbnb the place is clearly aimed at off-grid nature freaks, being without wi-fi, air-con or TV. It means that until we've found a SIM card we've to communicate as a family, which is horrendous and gets my Bordeaux opened sooner than planned.

After an airless night it's on to Mont Saint-Michel: an upmarket version of Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall, so clearly the guy got around. I won't bore you with postcard pics here, but instead a glimpse of the woodwork that went into the steeple.

Had these medieval carpenters designed a maritime drone like our own, it would ~ as I suggested to a passing abbot ~ have undoubtedly been 'les testicules du chien'.

Few tourists admired the underlying construction of either the steeple, or else the barrel-vaulted roof in the refectory... instead taking selfies with a seagull (inset).

Berry Head VOR

Take time out for a family trip to Berry Head VHF Omnirange navigational beacon on the south coast of England, which I must have traversed once or twice in the cruise, though I cannot recall headed for where... maybe the Canaries via the longer route?

But if you plan a family trip of the sort yourself, recommend looking no further than the Berry Head Hotel, just a walk from the beacon and the sort of place that Agatha Christie (who lived locally) might have used to set a murder. On a summer evening, pink gin on hand, there is no better place on Earth.

Suitably restored, we could set off early for the expedition to the navigation beacon itself, which didn't disappoint: set in a nature reserve and in a clearing among the trees, there is even a nameplate containing a brief description for the benefit of the tourists being irradiated.

Likely combined with a DME and clearly a doppler version, I was able to expound on the benefits of solid state ground-based aids as against the rotating variety... which my son will surely be keen to share with school-friends at the soonest opportunity.

One tho' for the family album, or rotating sequence of images on the breakfast bar!

Ed. The Berry Head Hotel was built in 1847 as a residence for clergy, now likely to occupy an Airbnb instead. It was here the hymn 'Abide with me' was written, sung by crowds at FA Cup finals for decades. In view of the fact no-one remembers the words it is lately sung by celebs, although the FA plan to replace it altogether with The Prodigy's 'Smack My Bitch Up'. 

Phil's Spectre

Watch the Netflix doc to learn this was the LA DA's first success in forty years in the prosecution of a celebrity, and how it took two attempts to succeed. On a day the US team's top scorer in FIFA's World Cup benefits from them overturning a decision on a ban in the way they'd done in the run up for Cristiano Ronaldo, son if you ever read this, remember money buys you justice. We have it here in the likes of David Beckham, who pays for the best viz. most corrupt lawyers to get him off speeding prosecutions that the rest of us would accumulate a ban for.

Great British Sell-Off (cont)

News today of the takeover of one of the UK's few remaining independent airlines ~ albeit started by a Greek shipping rich-boy in London ~ to US capital alongside ITV or Independent (ha ha ha) Television Studios.

At the outset of television some Scottish guy invented it, although his system was a bit crap and was rapidly improved upon by GEC in the US, as here. But the British were among the first to public broadcast, albeit with a crappy dancing puppet that no-one in their right mind would watch. Then at the outset of war, we figured radar might be the more useful pursuit.

But the start of TV in the UK was with the wholly-government sanctioned BBC until we decided we ought to have two channels. Yes, you read that right. Independent TV was thus born, and funded by commercials instead of the licence nobody pays for anymore beside me.

It was replete with colourful characters like a fat Jewish man called Lew Grade who we loved for being larger than life. Best joke being someone calls Lew as soon as carphones are introduced to say that they've got one too, so Lew in his limo says he must go as someone's on the other line. Nonetheless his like would go on to give us, for instance, the world's longest-running TV soap viz. Coronation Street.

I used to fly its regulars between London Heathrow and Manchester's studios, its busty barmaid (played by Sally Lindsay) catching a captain's eye across a crowded departure lounge. Reader, as Jane Austen used to write, I could have had those tits.

Cards on table, I watch their remarkable drama content and view the remainder as plebeian shite... which will alienate at least 10% of my followers. Nonetheless it was free-to-air, which Comcast assure us will be so 'til 2030 when it will be up against Netflix.

But you're talking here to a Netflix acolyte who likes nothing more than to watch docs on box-of-frogs Americans shooting neighbours or ripping babies from another's womb, instead of using dolls like normal people.

Ed. Tonight's post was sadly sponsored by Aldi Steffanof Vodka and Coca-Cola Zero. Below, the legendary embonpoint, posted here at considerable risk to the author's testicles. Tho' lager and tits... what's not to like? Sally went on to a successful TV career, Colin drives containers around Liverpool Docks.

Strip Show #7

With both of the lats attached ~ which help support the mighty hydro-skis ~ and a bead of silicone finishing off the buoyancy packs, this baby's good for bed for now.

Foam provides not just buoyancy but the shear-resistance to keeps things in shape. Remember we've yet to fit fasteners to each deck, and as yet it's held together by leftover adhesives that were lying round the 'shop.

You can still smell the pinewood resin off those booms, which is nice, and as things dry off the laterals will come to love the shape their in, as timbers do in time.

We'll be using this mock-up for three separate tasks:

(1)    Tidying up our patent drawing, which is decidedly ropey.

(2)    Undertaking static flotation tests, sadly with my waders.

(3)    Fitting the motors and props for static run-ups in the ARPs*.

Also we need something to look at besides a sketch, to know whether or not we can live together in a loving relationship; for boats are not for Christmas, they're for life.

Jury's out on whether we'll need a tensioner like that spar at the front end, because the lats will want to pull the booms apart. This however will be compensated for by the hydro-skis, which act like joists in the perpendicular plane, and by the fact that the seat will bind the whole together.

Those booms will need trimming too... but that's probably a job for a rabbi.

* Not sure what they are, but used to be quoted a lot in briefings at RAF Finningley.

Strip Show #6

I like to finish things off as I have done here with a wedge or two that has been lying around the garage. Eventually this will be 3D-printed... but not in wood.

There's an argument for extending the size of these at the prow in order to provide buoyancy at the forward end; they would not need much material at all to do so, given the leverage at that distance from the centres of buoyancy and gravity.

We're talking moment arms here, aren't we, beloved by both aviators and mariners?