Flood Driving.

I do have reservations about posting this. Truth is, those police officers were probably on their way to some thing that desperately needed their presence.
But then. What muppetry from the driver. It's a Renault van, not a big truck, or Land Rover. It's a diesel engined vehicle, so although it has no water-fearing HT leads, Renault, in the past, have been a bit notorious for low engine air intakes.
The driver should, of course, be trained to cope. And the first rule of flood driving is to know the water depth. He did not wait long enough to properly gauge that. And he should have proceeded at a gentler pace.
If you get the speed right, you minimise the splashing, and form a bow-wave, which sails along in front of you, leaving a lower trough under the front of the vehicle.
This driver, in all probability wrecked the engine. When a diesel engine ingests a lump of water, the results are not pretty. Very strong things bend or break. The engine does not run again.
At half the speed, they would have driven out the other side. Reason for the stop was incompetent driving, no other.
Any emergency vehicle driver should know the adage, "It's better to get there a little bit late, than not get there at all."

Me? A smartypants? Hmm. Well yes. I do drive through deep water, on a fairly regular basis... rather deeper than that. And I've yet to stuff an engine.

The floods were recent. Judging by the voices, I'd place the incident in South Yorkshire, or maybe just over the border in Derbyshire.

Update...
My estimate, based on the video and examination of a similar van is that the water was between seven and nine inches deep.
I note 11 hits on this site from a Police-Net ISP, resolving to Sheffield.... Comments, guys?

On Not Posting.

Sometimes in my life, I've been a prolific writer. People told me I should write.
I do, constantly, in my head, as I go about my daily life.
But give me a keyboard, and I am often struck dumb. Not for me the discipline of a thousand words before lunchtime, every day. J.K.Rowling, you have nothing to fear from me.
I quite like the idea of inhabiting a lighthouse on an island, or some remote headland.
The Lighthouse at Cape Wrath, the northerlymost point of the Scottish Mainland rather appealed to me. What a beautiful place.
I'm not afraid of solitude, I don't need shopping malls and cinemas, and to be honest.... It might be a good idea to leave behind the broadband connection.
The computer is a great tool for eating up time, and allied to the World Wide Web, oh dear.... I get lost in there. I can wander for hours... Days even.
But Write? this blog was at first, a bit of an experiment, I wondered if it might stimulate me to creativity. So far, that has not often happened, instead, I use it, I think, as a scrapbook, where I place things which I like, things which amuse me, leave them here for you.
You.
The mystery reader.
Some of the regular visitors I know, in a way, I read their blogs, wonder at their creativity, enjoy their stories.
Others come by strange routes.Search engines mostly. Some referrals from other blogs. And that intrigues me too.
Who is the person from Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia, who keeps visiting? I wonder if it was because I posted music by Yat Kha, from Tuva?
Or some other link I don't know?
Recently.
Well, for quite a while, I've not posted anything much, or not anything really requiring much of me. And I'm really busy, and a bad organiser, so I might as well post a few things tonight, in the spirit of..... of.... of?
See, I really still don't have any idea what all this is about. Feel free to enlighten me if you know.

Something or other Shoeday.

A keen blogspot poet and fashionista started something she called 'Fantasy Shoe Day'
I started noticing bizarrities of shoe imagery on my wanderings within the web, and either posted links to her or set them up here.
She, however, for personal reasons stopped blogging, which was a loss to the rest of us, leaving me with a backlog of silly shoe pics....

And of course, I lose track of where I found them, the whys and wherefores.
Here are a few.
There might be more, sometime.

freddy the rat perishes

By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

listen to me there have
been some doings here since last
i wrote there has been a battle
behind that rusty typewriter cover
in the corner
you remember freddy the rat well
freddy is no more but
he died game the other
day a stranger with a lot of
legs came into our
little circle a tough looking kid
he was with a bad eye

who are you said a thousand legs
if i bite you once
said the stranger you won t ask
again he he little poison tongue said
the thousand legs who gave you hydrophobia
i got it by biting myself said
the stranger i m bad keep away
from me where i step a weed dies
if i was to walk on your forehead it would
raise measles and if
you give me any lip i ll do it

they mixed it then
and the thousand legs succumbed
well we found out this fellow
was a tarantula he had come up from
south america in a bunch of bananas
for days he bossed us life
was not worth living he would stand in
the middle of the floor and taunt
us ha ha he would say where i
step a weed dies do
you want any of my game i was
raised on red pepper and blood i am
so hot if you scratch me i will light
like a match you better
dodge me when i m feeling mean and
i don t feel any other way i was nursed
on a tabasco bottle if i was to slap
your wrist in kindness you
would boil over like job and heaven
help you if i get angry give me
room i feel a wicked spell coming on

last night he made a break at freddy
the rat keep your distance
little one said freddy i m not
feeling well myself somebody poisoned some
cheese for me im as full of
death as a drug store i
feel that i am going to die anyhow
come on little torpedo don t stop
to visit and search then they
went at it and both are no more please
throw a late edition on the floor i want to
keep up with china we dropped freddy
off the fire escape into the alley with
military honors

archy

Rainy Days and Mondays

The Coming of Archy, by Don Marquis 1878-1937

Years ago, after I left school, before university, I took a year out.
The main reason was that I had been severely ill in the period leading to my final exams, missing a lot of school, revising time, in hospital for six weeks, hooked up to oxygen, and coming close to death a few times.
So when I was released to take those vital exams, I was definitely not at my best, and confidently expected to fail them, and go back to school to retake my final year.
So I didn't apply to further education, I was too busy just staying alive. In fact I passed them all, comfortably, including an extra one thrown in by my headmaster, for which I had not studied at all. That's a story in itself.
So then I had a year to fill, before further education. And not for me, the resources so often taken for granted now, to go travelling around the world, no gap year for me, a work year was predicated.
I did a short stint in the social security office, posting envelopes deliberately late to miss the post.
My boss required this.
There was a legal ruling that social security claimants be notified of an inspector's visit, so cards had to be sent out...
However, my boss required those cards miss the last post collection, and thus arrive after the inspector.
If say, you were a single woman, and the inspector saw a man's shirt in your home, your claim for rent payment would be disallowed, as it would be deemed evidence you were cohabiting with a man, and therefore he could pay your rent.
The whole aethos of the Department of Health and Social Security (or Stealth and Total Obscurity as we called it) was confrontational, its mission was to withhold , pay nobody, and generally obstruct claimants. I obstructed the department by altering the case notes of my school mates, ticking boxes and passing claims.... and warning them of intended visits. I hated being a part of that machine, so i asked around for other jobs. A friend said he'd heard that the library was hiring.
The Library-
The National Lending Library For Science and Technology. A vast unlibrary-like place, situated in a wartime munitions factory, full of clanking conveyors, shelves of secrets, not open to the public, although there was a reading room.
I applied
Signed the Official Secrets Act, became an Assistant Scientific Officer (unestablished), and gained entry to a treasure chest.
I'll write more of that later, in my usual way, I've digressed hugely from my original course, and I'm going out now to the newly refurbished City Art Gallery, to see old friends on its walls.

Suffice to say, that it was at the NLLST somewhere in the 140 miles or so of shelving I found a copy of Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis. A little bit of which I share with you now.

The first Appearance of Archy

Don Marquis was a newspaperman.
One morning he arrived in his office to find the following message on his typewriter, all in lower case. Archy, a cockroach reincarnated from a poet, had laboriously typed the message to Don by climbing upon the typewriter and jumping on the keys, one at a time. The message is all in lower case, because Archy could not operate the shift key.

The Coming of Archy:

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went
into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook on life

i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i can't eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why don't she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay

most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it

i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems
showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he won't be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then

don't you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i havent had a crumb of bread
for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy

Loituma: Ievan Polka.

Ha! It's my blog and I can repost if I want to! No apologies...

By Popular Request.- Shaun.