Strike Two

Inside a week there've been two reports of possible collisions with drones by airlines operating out of Houston (at around 8000') and into San Diego (at around 3000'). In the first inst the aircraft returned to base... inconvenient for the airline and PAX.

What we used to hit on a fairly regular basis was birds, an incident called 'birdstrike' although no equivalent name as been devised for the newer form of collision, Russia having trademarked 'dronestrike' for what it is doing with Ukraine.

Once saw one whilst departing Manchester, badgering ATC to drop the speed and grant an early turn. Spotted something below us out of the lefthand window as we climbed through 8500' and close enough for its colour ~ red and black ~ to be seen.

With a drone of the same colour also reported by a Virgin flight around the time, it would appear the plane-spotting had been elevated to new levels by someone who may or may not have been after that best possible shot on video.

Nothing much further heard, possibly because the same sort of geek would be able to listen in to ATC, but expect many more such events as drones begin to fill every corner of the sky.

And see how the roads in Houston both radiate and form a natural grid? We've none of that in the UK and I blame the Romans.

Big Macs

Bring it home: Wigan's Hayley McCauley defends her World Flatpack Championship title, here interviewed by Grand Designs' Kevin McCloud. Contestants at London's Excel centre are required to assemble a BILLY bookcase before moving on to do the same with a bedside table before a live audience. Hayley smashed it, as I generally do when assembling IKEA but with a hammer, doing so in eight minutes and twenty seconds and shaving a minute off her previous record of 2025. She was awarded a golden Allen key and a lifetime's free horse meatballs by the store.

Ed. Note to IKEA, he made me do it Sir.

Colin's Cut-Out Container Guide

Nobody really should live life without an intimate knowledge of containers, as ninety percent or more of what we needlessly buy arrives in one. Accordingly let me take you by the digital hand to walk you through what that says on the back whilst you whisper "Captain, oh my captain".

I hope you recognised this mighty 45G1 straightway: the most numerous on Earth. The original container, invented by a US haulier to ship down the Eastern seaboard, measured 20' by 8' by 8'6" though why the extra height? Maybe to get a handle on which way is up? This one is twice the length though, and stretches to 9'6" in height so as to be known as a 'high cube'.

Max Gross is not a wrestler as I first thought, but a measure of how much the entire container should weigh including contents. Among the heaviest I have known have been marble kitchen worktops, several hundred off. TARE derives from Arabic (and later French) for 'that which can be ignored' in any sale, like the carrier bag used to contain what you pay for by weight like potatoes i.e. weight of container, here four metric tonnes.

Finally volumetric capacity, which is vast and a reason they may make apartments. The floor though is not metal but wood, usually bamboo, that is stretched over metal joists. Meanwhile the numbering is preceded by the lessor's code, and runs to six digits plus a form of check-digit at the end. With this it can be tracked around the world, which is exciting and something I organise for the family to pass the time on holiday weekends... a gentler pastime than dragging women out of cars and shooting them in GTA, as I tell my son.

Stickers on the side warn firefighters what's inside, in this case a mildly flammable resin, so that they can dig out extinguishers marked 'For mildly flammable resins and inflammation in adults'. That's a problem with containers, what is inside them unknown and provided with a manifest often so vague as to be pointless, like 'rolls' of either sausage or steel.

Another problem being there is no knowing how or indeed whether the load is secure. Rounding a bend once in the turn onto the M57 motorway I was interested to feel the steering lighten and see the container start to roll at a precipitous angle in the mirror. Whether all off-side wheels cleared the tarmac the way Red Bull steer cars down narrow passages I do not know, though it stopped the truck on the inside dead in its tracks. Hashtag gosh... roll on a car and it's road-kill.

One tale of note includes wine, which you may think arrives in bottles from across the world but is more sensibly bottled locally. In some cases the container would be filled with a giant plastic bag in which 2700 cubic feet could be transported for decanting on arrival. Drivers at Liverpool's docks would gladly take it home later to hang on the line and decant the litre or two remaining.

Alma Gantry

Great excitement over at my philanthropic arm the Colin and Gromit Foundation, for my alma mater has ~ in recognition of the fifty quid toward students not needing to dumpster-dive for a living ~ invited me to an evening of canapés and cocktails with the great and the good.

Commenting the chairman (me) said: I am delighted that the tireless work of our foundation in alleviating student poverty with generous grants, and with tackling the scourge of mosquitoes with rolled-up newspapers has finally been recognised. Were he here alongside me today, I am sure that Gromit himself would say 'Woof'.

Readers of the blog will know that during finals in 1980 I took a punt on a reunited Germany in an essay that I was marked down for... the Germans dicking around for ten more years before getting in done. But I'm not a bitter man, merely pounding a pillow every night in frustration, and this could well be an opportunity for amending past hurts and grievances?

Accordingly I shall wheel the dinner-jacket out of the wardrobe if anyone out there be discreet enough to let them know that a doctorate would be gratefully received on the night?

Or failing that, a Nobel Peace Prize.

Ed. Brace yourselves, as there could be another 'Big Day Out:' in the series.

Run. Forest. Run.

For a long life though I recommend nothing better than a Parkrun, sandwiched as it is between Belgian beers at Wetherspoon's on a Friday evening and a croissant with manchego and Serrano ham on Saturday morning. I do a local one, which follows a wooded vale fought over during the English Civil War and by Vikings beyond that.

Inside the first kilometre there's a guy behind with a Garmin that's saying "You got this! Pace is 5:06, looking good!" in a Valley accent. I'd design one to a British spec for which I provide the voice-over, and which says the following at key intervals:

1k.    Give up now, you sad bastard.

2k.    You got this! Oh, let me check... you haven't.

3k.    You're not fit to wear the shirt mate!

4k.    Miles to go, concentrate on the croissant!

5k.    Look over there, isn't that a McDonalds?

In the run itself I imagine Michael Collins saying 'We're watching a masterclass here on how to run a 31:00 parkrun... if he stays tucked in behind Sawe and Kiplimo it's in the bag!" yet it's a woman pushing a stroller and a man with a Yorkshire terrier that I'm actually tucked in behind.

Being a 'stat' Sat I mail slides to staff on my time and viewership, exhorting them to 'Meet and exceed, people, meet and exceed!' whilst eating another croissant.

And who gave Parkrun permission to call me Colin?

Slide 1: Physical Wellbeing!

Slide 2: Mental Wellbeing!

The Big 'C'

Try and say it. Can't, can you? I can, because I'm only typing it and you get a hall pass for that.

Thing is people around here don't like to mention Clatterbridge either because that's where you went to get treated for cancer. It's across the river on the Wirral Peninsula and grew from workhouse into hospital treating infectious diseases, of which there must have been many focused on the Rivers Dee and Mersey, which are both fairly stinky at best of times ~ place names like Black(pool) and Liver(pool) originate in how the water looked, although with United Utilities operating sewerage they could as well be called Blackshite and Livershite.

Now though they've a branch of the treatment centre that would have saved my old mum a long drive to see my old dad: at the centre of Liverpool's university district, itself featuring a teaching hospital. Delighted to see they'd a bespoke Lego model of the building, before catching myself for enjoying a trip to see someone expected to last only days. Funerals though, and it must be the Irish in me, I've always enjoyed as just another excuse for a party: travel that may include a picnic, drink to excess and working the room over a buffet in the way Oscar Wilde or Lord Byron might do. The latter's house I visited when under training at British Midland Airways and it had goblets scattered round made from human skulls. Fantastic!

But as the two women with me ~ I rarely travel without them ~ rolled the guy over and held tea to his lips, all I could do it was stand around commenting "Nice rooms, though!". I was the last person my ex father-in-law had to listen to on Earth, and it must have been a form of release. But it was Garrison Keiller who wrote how at funerals in the US, while women wail guys stand round comparing whose truck gets the better mileage.

(It also reminds of the time at a training course in Toulouse, where it being France no one ever works a weekend. I borrowed the company hack and with two Northern Irishmen and an Aussie we drove down the Pyrenees, gatecrashed a hunter's yearly lunch jamboree and got wasted in a club on tequila slammers... great course. But in NI they've a wicked sense of humour and Ed Boggs told me about a guy who went to Lourdes for a miracle cure and was disappointed until his mates said, "You're kidding, look at the shiny new wheels on your chair!".

Does make you think whether any of it is worthwhile: life, maritime drones. It was Blaise Pascal who wrote how you will never be more alone than at the point of death, and what he meant was that as you stand ankle-bound at the precipice of the world's highest bungee-jump, no matter who's watching from the balcony it is only you who's about to take a leap into the unknown; although all those NDE vids on YouTube are a bit of a spoiler these days.

But as my old Latin teacher used to say ~ manically in view of Miss Whats-her-name suffering hyperthyroidism beside us ~ ours is not to question why, ours is just to do and die.

Dramatic way to describe homework, but then "Ibi est..." as we Romans say?

Ed. "There you go..."  tho' Google like Mindboggler provides varying answers.

Mill Post

Not often you get a peek at the mill but light's perfect today. Rigs in Europe called 'overcabs' as they sit over the engine so as to shorten the vehicle to manoeuvre its narrower streets... some of which still date to the Middle Ages in their layout. Note the cab is pivoted at the front and is provided suspension at the rear and that with the release of a catch it can be tipped over for open access.

This will be a cookin' six with a capacity am guessing of maybe thirteen litres, tho' they never really advertise the figure; though they do the horses, which are usually between 450 and 550 H.P. They are therefore no slouch at the lights minus a trailer, and they are also invariably automatic nowadays and provided with twelve gears. I've driven manuals, which eventually feel just like a car, though greybeards used to have to double-de clutch too... which I've only done in a tractor or dropping down to first gear in the days there was no synchromesh.

There is likely a turbo prior that exhaust pipe, which feeds the box am leaning upon. This is off-side so as not to discharge exhaust in the direction of pedestrians, with the fuel tanks near-side where they're more accessible should you ever run dry.

Note the chassis is a wholly traditional ladder and sets the block at an incline to suit the drive-shaft to the rear axle. The axle in the middle on units is a lift-axle that is only used to spread the load and reduce an axle-weight that otherwise demolishes manhole-covers.

Fuel injected diesel as you can see too, with the clutch and gearbox inline too. The likes of Scania do a V8 that produces 800 H.P. and the guys seem to have found a way to amend the cruise-control to leave you in no doubt they're kings of the road. I hope you've enjoyed this brief tour as much as I have, as my container here is unloaded of its plywood flooring from the Far East?

The trucks a DAF though I've driven all others available in the UK, which curiously do not include the Fords you see on the continent. The most interesting think is how slow-revving diesels get at size: this one motoring at a little over 1000 r.p.m. in the cruise, and 'cathedrals' on ships turning at less than a tenth of that and on a par with the sound and feel of those steam-engines running the cotton mills hereabouts.

The gear-shift mechanism and brakes rely on reserves of compressed air, without which you're going nowhere. The latter is a fail-safe system that applies the brakes should ever the air escape, something Westinghouse began to patent for railroads at the tender age of twenty-two.