I Stole This Picture from the Interwebs

I'd love to pass the pic off as mine, but it's not.  The place? Wasdale, in Britain's Lake District, as seen from Great Gable. If you were to zoom in on the green bump a bit to the left of centre, you'd see a few tiny black specks, people. Down further away in that wonderfully green valley, those filigree dark lines are stone field-walls. The white blob on the right of the green is the Wasdale Head Inn, which, if you've made it to the top of Great Gable from the far side, is probably your destination. The last time I was up there  was quite a few years ago. We were planning a spot of ice-climbing, me having bought my little brother a book on ice-climbing for christmas. So, between xmas and new-year, off we went for the weekend.When we were up on the top, the clouds came in, and the snow. brrrr.
It took quite a while to get down in zero visibility, and to get to the pub.
The pub was vital, because my pal had told his wife he'd call at a certain time, and if an hour passed beyond that time, with no call, she was to call the fell-rescue team (he was a team leader in a different region).
How we cursed him as we scrambled and rolled down a scree-slope in the dark.
The pub was so welcome, the beer too. The landlord, seeing us scraping snow off ourselves, evicted a group of people from the table by the fire, saying we needed it more than they did.
And he was right, because we had tents to pitch, and had to store enough heat for a fifteen-below night.

Happy days.

Blackberry's Messaging System

....was down for three days following a major equipment failure in the U.K. "Email, Messenger and internet functions were unavailable to users in the Middle East, Africa and Europe after a crucial link in the BlackBerry network failed."

"ABU DHABI // A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.
In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents."

Four days later, they were back to normal. That same police force which was urging drivers to eschew the use of messaging devices whilst at the wheel used Twitter to warn drivers of hazardous fog.


"DUBAI // Police used Twitter to broadcast basic safety rules for driving in fog yesterday when speeding drivers caused a 32-car pile-up."

(That 32 vehicle pile-up occurred in ten metre/30 ft visibility at 120 kph/75mph)


Source:  The National via The New Shelton Wet/Dry

Um. That's odd.

I dreamed a little too long this morning. The framework of the skyscraper kept flexing as it grew, it had started as steel, but was becoming organic. And I was trapped on the eighty-fifth floor and there was something desperately important that I needed to get down to ground level for. All the lifts had jammed as their shafts distorted, the concrete stairs were crumbling, exploding into dust as the immense forces of the shifting building chewed at them. I was going out, the window-cleaning cradle on its suspension ropes was my only chance... 

Then the alarm went off and I hit snooze a couple of times, then I thought "F***! it's not saturday!", and leapt into getting-up mode.  Ten minutes to get out of the house... I thought I'd done well, rolled through the gate at work just as the 8 a.m. news started on the radio. It wasn't until I was on my way home, nine hours later, that I wondered why my left foot felt less cushioned on the heel than the right.

D'oh!

That, however, is one of the good things about being male. Going to work wearing odd shoes is not a disaster. And nobody notices, and if they had, we'd both have laughed about it.

Usually, though, my asymmetry is confined to socks.

Tasteful Products for Halloween

On my american travels, I was impressed by the high quality of consumer goods, so well designed for every need, including all manner of things you will never need. Here's an item designed to cater for a need I can't imagine anybody ever having.

This was on sale in August. I think Halloween is at the far end of October.

Here in britain, I'm sad to report, our retailers are learning from their american counterparts, and selling utter crap too. When I was a kid, etc... the most we ever did was to carve turnip lanterns, and tell scary stories for halloween. Pumpkins are not widely grown in my part of the world, but, mysteriously, they're turning up in baskets in the supermarket about now.

Oh.- And Halloween was one night only.

Not a season.

Peter Green: Man of the World

(Updated edit: if you came by earlier, you might have noticed the first piece of music was missing. Oops. I blame it on posting too long after bedtime.)

I'm in a bluesy sort of mood, been listening to old blues, Peter Green and Danny Kirwan...
Peter Green  founded Fleetwood Mac. He wanted to start his own band , and recruited Mick Fleetwood and John MacVie, who he'd come to know when he took over Eric Clapton's place in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.



However, this song was almost his last before he left his own band, which later became something else altogether.
The Fleetwood Mac of "Albatross" is Peter Green's, the Fleetwood Mac of "Rumours" is altogether a different creature. Peter Green, unfortunately, was shipwrecked by LSD, he became unreliable, disappeared for days at a time, tried to give all the band's money away, and at the height of his success, left the band, and music altogether.
Recently, he's returned. He doesn't want to be a star, but he still loves the music.

From Long Ago

Curved Air were a prog-rock band of the late sixties/early seventies.
Here's lead singer Sonja Kristina singing 'Melinda (More or Less)'.

"Come Back Later, the Ship's Still Asleep"

The ship in question, back in 1942, was the atlantic liner, SS Normandie, or by then, USS AP-53 Lafayette. When the war started, Normandie was docked in New York.  Her owners were scared of the german navy, so they just tied her up and transferred their passengers to the SS Aquitania, of the British Cunard Line, whose liners continued sailing.

Eventually, when America entered the war, she was requisitioned by the U.S Navy, and work commenced to turn her from being a luxurious ocean liner to a humble troopship.  It's generally agreed that a worker with a gas cutting torch failed to use an asbestos safety curtain, and fire broke out. 

Amidst arguments about who was in charge of fire-fighting, the fire got out of control. The ship's designer told the authorities that by opening the sea-cocks he could sink her safely upright onto the mud below, but he was ignored by the 'experts'.

As a result, the watertight bulkheads were sealed, thousands of tons of firefighting water were pumped into the upper decks, and the inevitable happened. The fastest steam-turbine-electric ship ever built rolled over into the icy dock.

By the time she was righted, she was only scrap-metal, too expensive to refit.

Where Next?

"But it says we have to go into THAT door next... or is it upside down?"

The tree which shades our intrepid explorer, is Lady Anne's Yew, planted here in Conduit Court,  Skipton Castle, in 1659, to shade future visitors, and allegedly, as a symbol of Lady Anne's belief in the longevity of her castle. Yews are sacred trees, from long before christianity, they're seen as protection, of the warding away of evil. 

Back in the 1600s,  there was a bloody civil war in England. 

Skipton castle, royalist, held out in a three-year siege by Cromwell's parliamentarian army.  There followed a negotiated surrender.

The garrison was allowed to surrender the castle, and march out in full military order, whilst retaining their arms. This was significant, the defenders were not to be taken prisoner, but to be allowed to march unhindered and unmolested, to another town of their choosing, which remained in the hands of the Royalists. Many, however, acknowledged that for them, the war was over, and returned to heir homes.

Skipton was the last great castle in the north to fall. Part of the surrender treaty agreed that the parliamentary army would respect and take care of the property of Lady Anne.

Cromwell ordered that all those castles which had stood against him should be 'slighted', that is, their walls should be broken down, their power destroyed. In Skipton, however, unlike in most other castles of the north, it seemed that respect for its countess, the only woman to have defied Cromwell for so long, protected it. the roofs and upper battlements were torn off, but much of the fabric remained. Lady Anne petitioned parliament for the right to restore her castle, and was granted it, with the proviso that the roofs were not to be remade strong enough to ever again support cannon.

Those interested in this history might find it here.

More on Lady Anne Clifford.