Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.
The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.
I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.
Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.
As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
Poet?
oh. that guy the Red Dirt Girl doesn't like.
Why, I wonder?
Maybe the first poem she read by him gave a bad first impression.
But how can you shrug this one off? listen to it,
Drop into a stanza, live there a while.
I like it. Sun-dappled rooms, brocade, the distant cries of the hunt, listen, a lute, a virginal, singing from somewhere.
Try a dance.
Chance a glance.
It's not profound, no great revelation, I don't suppose it will be taught, 200 years hence. But I like it.
poem by Billy Collins
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Friday, 7 January 2011
Marginalia, or "The Universal Right of Literary Dissent"
I love poetry.
But, there's poetry, and there's poetry.
As I think I may have mentioned once or a hundred times, way back, far back in my distant memory, I set out on a path as a student of english literature, which seemed a good idea at the time. English was my favourite subject at school, i was fascinated by language, words, the ways in which humans have communicated their thoughts and feelings.
Whilst the other kids in our row of caves were learning to shout "Ug!" whilst throwing a rock at pretty much anything that bounded, soared, wriggled or scuttled, I was sitting with the old guys, who were certain some scratches on a bit of rock weren't random.
Well, it seemed there was a wise man in the next valley who had views on this, and one day he came over, and showed us how you could use scratches to keep count of stuff. Like how many rocks you had, even if you couldn't see them.
That was cool. We graduated onto scratching outlines, that, if you squinted a bit, looked like animals seen at a distance. Eventually, we got scratches that we all agreed each had a noise. And every time you saw that scratch.. you made the matching noise! And that was pretty much it. No more cries of UG! ug! ug?, you could have a hunter send a message back saying... "I'm following a mammoth along the side of the stream which smells funny, near the black-burned tree, toward the hill of good rocks for bashing with. Send six hunters with sharp pointy sticks, forthwith. Signed "Og".
Oh yes, writing was a good invention. Pretty soon we had lectures in the big cave, where visiting professors would draw antelope, bison, koala bears, and other stuff we didn't know about. The talks were popular. People used to scratch brief versions onto bark and send them down-river to the marsh-dwellers. We called it texting.
Anyway, a few millenia passed, and i found myself studying Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Dickens, Ted Hughes, T.S.Eliot, Robert Browning, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolfe...
It started out with the pretext that it was all very good stuff, to be revered, because it was written by famous, mostly dead, people.
But then my teachers set about turning all those certainties upside-down, by telling me to challenge, to break down and reconstruct, to try writing it in my own words.
What I wrote, oh how embarassing it would be now if I still had all that stuff.
And to criticise myself, harshly, and my peers. I'll tell you, getting an essay sent back with negative comments from a tutor doesn't hurt a fraction as much as being savaged by your peers. It's a way we learn not to be too precious though. Write it, read it back, try to see it through fresh eyes.
I was a bit thin-skinned then, but I learned that "critics" are not gods. That just because the critics love it, doesn't mean it's good. And vice-versa. History shows us that the critics are often proved wrong, long afterwards.
Charles Dickens, in his day, was immensely popular, a superstar, but the critics pursed their lips and muttered nasty words about penny-dreadfuls, here today and gone tomorrow. Seems old Charlie's had the last laugh.
Shakepeare, oh yes, I had to learn plot, subplot, learn about Elizabethan history, learn how he was dangerous and subversive, satirizing current affairs, I'd learn of Elizabethan views on classics, greek and roman mythology, navigation. Everything Will wrote, i was told, was masterly multilayered subterfuge.
Yet I couldn't help sometimes thinking of Shaksper getting a brief "We want two hours for seven men, two women and a donkey... We can borrow a chariot, and two of the boys look vaguely alike, and the thin guy can sing. Can you have it ready for thursday?"
Sometimes, I think, it's just a story. Stop trying to read hidden messages into it.
This is rambling, isn't it? Blame the medication and lack of sleep. I did go back to work, on the 4th January, but the following day i saw my doctor, who gave me a bucketful of pills and told me to go back to bed for a few days.
Where was I?
Oh yes. What I learned was that my opinion is valid. That I don't need to assume that if it's in print it must be good.
Cue link.
You see, I've been challenging this poem at "Through the Garden Gate", I first read it as a nice but unspecial love-poem, but then, in every line, almost, I found something that annoyed me. Maybe I'm a ratty tempered curmudgeon, but I really think this is one the poet should have screwed up and tossed in the bin.
Now the blogger who posted it is herself a poet, (this one isn't one of hers) her poems are better than this, by far. I'm always a little afraid to criticise anything on the web, and I don't want her to think this is a criticism of her.
No
It's a challenge, a challenge to the idea that a published poem is unassailable.
Get in there! Challenge what you read.
Scratch under the mammoth drawing on the cave wall "Og's crap at drawing trunks!"
Here's a poem, from a man who, it seems, is not afraid to disagree with the printed word.
"Marginalia"
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
Billy Collins
But, there's poetry, and there's poetry.
As I think I may have mentioned once or a hundred times, way back, far back in my distant memory, I set out on a path as a student of english literature, which seemed a good idea at the time. English was my favourite subject at school, i was fascinated by language, words, the ways in which humans have communicated their thoughts and feelings.
Whilst the other kids in our row of caves were learning to shout "Ug!" whilst throwing a rock at pretty much anything that bounded, soared, wriggled or scuttled, I was sitting with the old guys, who were certain some scratches on a bit of rock weren't random.
Well, it seemed there was a wise man in the next valley who had views on this, and one day he came over, and showed us how you could use scratches to keep count of stuff. Like how many rocks you had, even if you couldn't see them.
That was cool. We graduated onto scratching outlines, that, if you squinted a bit, looked like animals seen at a distance. Eventually, we got scratches that we all agreed each had a noise. And every time you saw that scratch.. you made the matching noise! And that was pretty much it. No more cries of UG! ug! ug?, you could have a hunter send a message back saying... "I'm following a mammoth along the side of the stream which smells funny, near the black-burned tree, toward the hill of good rocks for bashing with. Send six hunters with sharp pointy sticks, forthwith. Signed "Og".
Oh yes, writing was a good invention. Pretty soon we had lectures in the big cave, where visiting professors would draw antelope, bison, koala bears, and other stuff we didn't know about. The talks were popular. People used to scratch brief versions onto bark and send them down-river to the marsh-dwellers. We called it texting.
Anyway, a few millenia passed, and i found myself studying Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, Dickens, Ted Hughes, T.S.Eliot, Robert Browning, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolfe...
It started out with the pretext that it was all very good stuff, to be revered, because it was written by famous, mostly dead, people.
But then my teachers set about turning all those certainties upside-down, by telling me to challenge, to break down and reconstruct, to try writing it in my own words.
What I wrote, oh how embarassing it would be now if I still had all that stuff.
And to criticise myself, harshly, and my peers. I'll tell you, getting an essay sent back with negative comments from a tutor doesn't hurt a fraction as much as being savaged by your peers. It's a way we learn not to be too precious though. Write it, read it back, try to see it through fresh eyes.
I was a bit thin-skinned then, but I learned that "critics" are not gods. That just because the critics love it, doesn't mean it's good. And vice-versa. History shows us that the critics are often proved wrong, long afterwards.
Charles Dickens, in his day, was immensely popular, a superstar, but the critics pursed their lips and muttered nasty words about penny-dreadfuls, here today and gone tomorrow. Seems old Charlie's had the last laugh.
Shakepeare, oh yes, I had to learn plot, subplot, learn about Elizabethan history, learn how he was dangerous and subversive, satirizing current affairs, I'd learn of Elizabethan views on classics, greek and roman mythology, navigation. Everything Will wrote, i was told, was masterly multilayered subterfuge.
Yet I couldn't help sometimes thinking of Shaksper getting a brief "We want two hours for seven men, two women and a donkey... We can borrow a chariot, and two of the boys look vaguely alike, and the thin guy can sing. Can you have it ready for thursday?"
Sometimes, I think, it's just a story. Stop trying to read hidden messages into it.
This is rambling, isn't it? Blame the medication and lack of sleep. I did go back to work, on the 4th January, but the following day i saw my doctor, who gave me a bucketful of pills and told me to go back to bed for a few days.
Where was I?
Oh yes. What I learned was that my opinion is valid. That I don't need to assume that if it's in print it must be good.
Cue link.
You see, I've been challenging this poem at "Through the Garden Gate", I first read it as a nice but unspecial love-poem, but then, in every line, almost, I found something that annoyed me. Maybe I'm a ratty tempered curmudgeon, but I really think this is one the poet should have screwed up and tossed in the bin.
Now the blogger who posted it is herself a poet, (this one isn't one of hers) her poems are better than this, by far. I'm always a little afraid to criticise anything on the web, and I don't want her to think this is a criticism of her.
No
It's a challenge, a challenge to the idea that a published poem is unassailable.
Get in there! Challenge what you read.
Scratch under the mammoth drawing on the cave wall "Og's crap at drawing trunks!"
Here's a poem, from a man who, it seems, is not afraid to disagree with the printed word.
"Marginalia"
Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.
Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.
Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.
And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.
We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
Billy Collins
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Atom Heart Mother
PINK FLOYD'S ATOM HEART MOTHER
On march 3rd, 2003, a collection of very talented French students performed Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother in its entirety at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP).
That's all I know about this video.
Pink Floyd themselves never had a full performance filmed. Some of this sounds uncannily like the original.
Atom Heart Mother isn't the most approachable Floyd opus, it marked the transition from the very chaotic Pink Floyd of Syd Barrett's day to the later band dominated by Roger Waters. It's hard to imagine bands of today venturing into such ambitious, and risky, territory, yet this album, in 1971 went to number one in the u.k. charts. In America, well, no surprise, it only made number 55, took it until '95 to go gold in the u.s.
All the band, at various times have disowned it or labelled it as a low point in their creative career.
I disagree. The low point to me is their probably best selling album ever, best known... The Wall. Now that's a heap of worthless, badly thought out dross if ever I saw one.
I've never yet figured out to what extent they stand behind the stuff they spout in The Wall, and to what extent it's parody.
A marching cohort of schoolchildren chanting "We don't need no education" rather undermines its own premise.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
And Another, and Yet One More.
A great start to a new year. Not.
Still sick.
Still can't stand up without wobbling.
Been in bed most of the day, trying not to cough, because that's ouchy.
Just got a call to say there's an alarm going at work... Could I get there at warp speed because it may be another sprinkler's thawed and gone bang.
But I had to reply that I can't drive in this condition, so it's somebody else's problem... or at least, until they phone me again to ask how to shut it off. I'll do my best. But concentrating is difficult.
Pardon me whilst I drink some more cough medicine.
Last night I composed a witty blog post in my head, all about me greeting all my readers west of the atlantic, from the future, Because I was in 2011, whilst you were stuck in last year. I was going to tell you all about the future, flying cars, house robots.
I was going to tell you how facebook, twitter, skype... all are now old hat, we use telepathy these days. But the system still overloads. See, an individual like me, or you, has limited range. so, to reach greater distances, we use nodes to retransmit. It seems that there is a point to emo and goth kids after all. All that monochrome seems to do something. Or maybe it's the gloom, or the vampirism . Or the bits of metal they have randomly inserted in body parts. Well, whatever the reason, they seem to work as natural telepathic amplifiers, for the most part without harm or awareness. They can't read the messages passed through them, nor feel them, unless perhaps their piercings buzz a little.
Certain piercings, the nature of which both makes me wince, and blush to contemplate, have rocketed in popularity amongst the black-clad hordes.
The problem is the overloads. See, when a node overloads umm. you might want to skip this bit... When a node overloads. the host's cranium starts to shake, quiver, oscillate, blur... and then K-BOOOM!!!, they explode. Very messy.
Last night, midnight, I attempted to make a cellphone call to America. The cell network was overloaded, no chance.
Outside, the flashes, whizzes, bangs, all started up as rockets shot toward the sky, marking the new year. Except there were a lot of hollow, echoey kabooms too many. And as I looked out of my window, I saw exploding goths. They're done for, can't even come back as zombies, because the brains are gone.
I'd have gone out with emergency tinfoil beanies to save them, but too dangerous, far too dangerous, because of the zombies, roaming the neighbourhood, licking brain-spatter off the roadway, the lamp-posts, and walls. I suppose we should have predicted this tragedy, knowing how other systems overload at new year. Still, look on the bright side, some zombies get caught in the explosions.
That blogpost had a short shelf-life, and I missed it.
Happy New Year!
Still sick.
Still can't stand up without wobbling.
Been in bed most of the day, trying not to cough, because that's ouchy.
Just got a call to say there's an alarm going at work... Could I get there at warp speed because it may be another sprinkler's thawed and gone bang.
But I had to reply that I can't drive in this condition, so it's somebody else's problem... or at least, until they phone me again to ask how to shut it off. I'll do my best. But concentrating is difficult.
Pardon me whilst I drink some more cough medicine.
Last night I composed a witty blog post in my head, all about me greeting all my readers west of the atlantic, from the future, Because I was in 2011, whilst you were stuck in last year. I was going to tell you all about the future, flying cars, house robots.
I was going to tell you how facebook, twitter, skype... all are now old hat, we use telepathy these days. But the system still overloads. See, an individual like me, or you, has limited range. so, to reach greater distances, we use nodes to retransmit. It seems that there is a point to emo and goth kids after all. All that monochrome seems to do something. Or maybe it's the gloom, or the vampirism . Or the bits of metal they have randomly inserted in body parts. Well, whatever the reason, they seem to work as natural telepathic amplifiers, for the most part without harm or awareness. They can't read the messages passed through them, nor feel them, unless perhaps their piercings buzz a little.
Certain piercings, the nature of which both makes me wince, and blush to contemplate, have rocketed in popularity amongst the black-clad hordes.
The problem is the overloads. See, when a node overloads umm. you might want to skip this bit... When a node overloads. the host's cranium starts to shake, quiver, oscillate, blur... and then K-BOOOM!!!, they explode. Very messy.
Last night, midnight, I attempted to make a cellphone call to America. The cell network was overloaded, no chance.
Outside, the flashes, whizzes, bangs, all started up as rockets shot toward the sky, marking the new year. Except there were a lot of hollow, echoey kabooms too many. And as I looked out of my window, I saw exploding goths. They're done for, can't even come back as zombies, because the brains are gone.
I'd have gone out with emergency tinfoil beanies to save them, but too dangerous, far too dangerous, because of the zombies, roaming the neighbourhood, licking brain-spatter off the roadway, the lamp-posts, and walls. I suppose we should have predicted this tragedy, knowing how other systems overload at new year. Still, look on the bright side, some zombies get caught in the explosions.
That blogpost had a short shelf-life, and I missed it.
Happy New Year!
Thursday, 30 December 2010
In Which I take a Day Off
Well, if a day of aching limbs, bloody snot, chest full of glue, and inability to stand up without holding on to something counts.
I'm trying to decide whether the 12 year Bowmore single malt will mix better with the Covonia, or the Bell's cough medicine. The Covonia is the most disgusting taste, like something you'd use to paint a ship's bilges. Whereas the bell's, hmm I could develop a taste for that....
Last winter, I bought a cough syrup with menthol and other stuff. It tasted just like a liquid version of the "Victory-V" lozenges of my youth, that tasted of ether....
Oh yes. in 1864, when pharmacist Thomas Fryer first made them as a symptomatic reliever for the common cold, they contained "pulverised sugar, linseed, liquorice, ether, chlorodyne (a soothing mix of cannabis and chloroform) and pure acacia gum".
I think they've dropped the cannabis these days.
When I was little, and had a cough, or snuffly nose, my grandfather would go to a mahogany box on the dresser, and get out a tin of victory vs. With great ceremony, he'd snap one in two with the blade of his clasp-knife, and give me a half to suck- no crunching allowed.
There was a strict limit. They used to be rationed to 1/4lb per customer because they contained chloroform which was used as an anaesthetic, and if you ate too many they could knock you out! Three halves was the most he would ever give us, therefore leading us to believe it was highly potent medicine.
I loved those sweets.... could have become addicted, given half a chance. So.. Cough syrup that tasted just the same? Oh yes. I wanted to try it with Vodka. But I could never find another bottle. Maybe it was withdrawn from sale because too many people had the same reaction as me. So here I am... Midnight, I've slept much of the day. Feeling a bit better now. Still haven't opened the whisky. A cup of hot tea appeals more. Assam, of course.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
The "Holiday" Continues.
Today there was some mending to do. Remember that valve that refused to co-operate? Bad Valve! You annoyed me.
Here come the persuaders, pal!
Oh. And a little tickle of oxy-acetylene. Oh I just love a good destruction of an inanimate enemy.
Hahahahahaha!!!!!! Take that, evil valve. Tomorrow, the spare valve goes in, and eventually I'll strip down the bad one, and see if it's worth repairing. It's probably from about 1923, so I suppose it's due a bit of attention.
Then there was the job to do at the tower top... When it was all done someone (not me) decided to try the lift. All was well until it reached the third floor, when a loud bang, a shower of sparks (and molten copper droplets) suggested there might be an electrical problem.
Oh great. And I'm supposed to be at a family meal, which is booked in a fifty mile distant eatery, in a couple of hours.
So I kill the power to the lift motor room, and to the shaft, and unscrew the roof-hatch on the lift. The culprit is eventually tracked down as a piece of "pyro" cable, copper sheathed and mineral insulated, that once fed a "lift arrived" light above the door. When the tower was lined with plasterboard, instead of bare brick, some clever soul had removed the outside light, leaving the old cable still live in a hole in the door-frame, just filled and painted over.
That was fine when everything was dry, and it was all hidden by filler and paint, nobody knew, nobody got hurt, except... Today, that frame was wet, hundreds, maybe a thousand gallons had cascaded down the tower, and, of course, some of that drenched the doors and poured into the shaft.
The cable becomes live only when the lift energises the door interlock. So I had to remove that redundant cable and check it all out for electrical safety.
Don't try this at home kids.
Oh look: a distant glint of water from the swimming pool in the bottom of the shaft.
What's that... reports of a leaking pipe under the gym? I'll go deal with that, shall I?
And a funny burning smell elsewhere?
Happy holidays.
No, I didn't get to the meal.
Next year, maybe?
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
The Holiday Season Proves to be Otherwise
It was not exactly going to be a surprise that my holiday would be interrupted. The company, in its infinite goodness, gave me friday 24th december to monday 3rd january inclusive... But questions were asked as to how far away I'd be, and I've got a heap of contact numbers and a bucketful of keys made ready for emergencies. Last job on thursday was to put together a rapid-response toolkit for quick grabbing, on the workshop table.
First call was on christmas day... A security man had spotted water seeping under a door. I told him where to find a stop-valve, and went briefly the following day, to check, split water pipe, water off, concrete floor, no real damage. Note it down for my return.
Boxing day.. or the day after christmas... My boss calls to say the security guy's called him to report a hissing sound on another site. He's been out there, in the dark, and found what he thinks is a slight leak on a fire-sprinkler, so he's turned the main valve off, and we arrange to meet early on monday morning.
Oh my. Fire sprinklers.
That particular mill has a system that's currently air-filled. That's because of the risk of freezing in unheated areas. The fire sprinklers are little brass things mounted on pipes, high up, all over the place. You'll have seen them, even if you don't know what they are. Factories, supermarkets, hospitals, hotels, airports, schools, all manner of larger buildings have them.
Usually there's a little glass phial visible, filled with liquid (often, but not always, red).
In the event of a fire, that little phial starts to get hot. The liquid in it, usually an alcohol mix, expands as it gets warmer, just as the red alcohol in a thermometer does. There's a bubble of free space to allow a certain amount of expansion, but at a set-point, (for the red bulb, 68 degrees C, or 155 degrees F), the bulb breaks. When in position, the bulb was holding a little brass cone in place, which in turn was holding back the water (or in our case, air)... Ploosh!
In theory, an air-filled system is immune to freezing.
Before winter, we drained the pipework, and filled the system with compressed air. in theory, all the piework is installed sloping toward the drainpoints, so it all empties.
In practice, a few lengths of pipe seem not to have emptied, ice has formed in the pipe and expanded. The weakest part is the brass cone under the sprinkler bulb. Ice forces past it and deforms it.
The sprinkler, thank heavens, does not activate because the pipe is plugged with dirty black ice. (Black? yes, because the iron pipe corrodes a little, but theres not a lot of oxygen available, so the more common form of red iron oxide, Fe2O3, is not found, but black iron oxide, magnetite, Fe3O4 is abundant).
When it becomes a problem is when it melts.
Because then, air in the pipes will hiss out, carrying some filthy water, until the pressure back in the control valves drops below the trigger point... Then, in seconds, a valve will drop, a boost pump will kick in, and about fifty tons of water will all try to race to the break-point.
The ones I photographed were the easy ones, only about 8 feet up, in an office.
The tricky ones are 25 feet up just under the roof. I have to unscrew them, thaw the plug of ice in the hole with a gas torch, then screw a fresh one in, wrapping the threads in ptfe tape to seal them. One hand for the wrench, one hand for the pipe, one hand for the gas torch, and one hand to hang onto the ladder. Oh. I see there's a problem there, then. Oh well.
And it was going well, until one of the high-level ones started to hiss very ominously. And then a sound of rushing thunder... "But valve number two's turned off... even if the valve's dropped it can't fill, surely...."
"Oh shit!" yells my boss, abandoning his ladder-footing position and setting off at a run to the sprinkler house, where armageddon has kicked in.
My ladder's leaning on nothing, really. Just a three-inch piece of roof truss. And the foot's on a fairly slick concrete floor. And there was nowhere to attach a safety harness. And my safety man's left at a run. Just as the water gets there, in my face. Boom! 100 gallons per minute is the design rate. Out of a tank that had 9" of ice on the top. And black too. And it's trying to pluck me off the ladder, and I can feel the ladder moving...
I have never, ever, gone so fast down a ladder. Apart from being drenched to the skin in freezing black water, and the temperature being still below freezing, and the snow falling outside... I felt quite lucky, considering the other possibility.
I go open the big drain valves, and a fire door to outside, and gradually the water slows.
My fingers don't work.
I set off outside and up to the sprinkler house, where bells are jangling and a siren warbling, my boss is busy turning valves, as I shut down the alarms and the boost pump.
He's swearing and just a bit agitated.
Why? Because the sprinkler layout plan, kept in the sprinkler house, as required by the fire authorities and the insurance, clearly states that valve-set two covers the area in which we are working. Valve set two was off, and no water was flowing.
But valve-set one was at full blast.
Just a few weeks ago the system had its annual check and service. How is it that for YEARS, since their installation, perhaps, the valves have been labelled wrongly? Why haven't the pros who do our alterations, and maintenance pointed it out? because the only way we're ever going to find out is at the wrong end of an emergency.
So the job that was to take a couple of hours of my holiday became a full day. With wet clothes, and below freezing temperatures. Yes, I have waterproofs, and no, they were on another site. as were my dry clothes.
Do you want to hear about today?
6" pipe, 150 pounds per square inch pressure, at the top of the tower, boom!......
Waterfall down six flights of stairs.... And I'm going uphill in the dark, because the water's blown all the lights. All I can see in my head-torch's beam is falling water... Up to the top of the stairs, then up a steel ladder, in a waterfall. Toward the thunder.
This time, though, I'm in waterproofs.
It was a problem that required me to return to ground level, and try turn a valve in a basement off. But the valve's stiff, rusted up, ancient. It has been off earlier this year though, I know it works. I just need more leverage, a wrench, maybe.
Although I hate carrying it, my 48" "Record" wrench comes into its own at a time like this.
Good thing too, or I'd have had to use a bigger one.
I think the biggest I've got is the seven foot chain-wrench. and you can slip a few extra feet of scaffold pole on the end if you really need to be brutal. The downside of that chain wrench is that I can just carry it, but not without cursing.
Tomorrow? still officially on holiday, I'll be in at work by eight. I suppose I'll get paid, or get a few days off in lieu.
First call was on christmas day... A security man had spotted water seeping under a door. I told him where to find a stop-valve, and went briefly the following day, to check, split water pipe, water off, concrete floor, no real damage. Note it down for my return.
Boxing day.. or the day after christmas... My boss calls to say the security guy's called him to report a hissing sound on another site. He's been out there, in the dark, and found what he thinks is a slight leak on a fire-sprinkler, so he's turned the main valve off, and we arrange to meet early on monday morning.
Oh my. Fire sprinklers.
That particular mill has a system that's currently air-filled. That's because of the risk of freezing in unheated areas. The fire sprinklers are little brass things mounted on pipes, high up, all over the place. You'll have seen them, even if you don't know what they are. Factories, supermarkets, hospitals, hotels, airports, schools, all manner of larger buildings have them.
Usually there's a little glass phial visible, filled with liquid (often, but not always, red).
In the event of a fire, that little phial starts to get hot. The liquid in it, usually an alcohol mix, expands as it gets warmer, just as the red alcohol in a thermometer does. There's a bubble of free space to allow a certain amount of expansion, but at a set-point, (for the red bulb, 68 degrees C, or 155 degrees F), the bulb breaks. When in position, the bulb was holding a little brass cone in place, which in turn was holding back the water (or in our case, air)... Ploosh!
In theory, an air-filled system is immune to freezing.
Before winter, we drained the pipework, and filled the system with compressed air. in theory, all the piework is installed sloping toward the drainpoints, so it all empties.
In practice, a few lengths of pipe seem not to have emptied, ice has formed in the pipe and expanded. The weakest part is the brass cone under the sprinkler bulb. Ice forces past it and deforms it.
The sprinkler, thank heavens, does not activate because the pipe is plugged with dirty black ice. (Black? yes, because the iron pipe corrodes a little, but theres not a lot of oxygen available, so the more common form of red iron oxide, Fe2O3, is not found, but black iron oxide, magnetite, Fe3O4 is abundant).
When it becomes a problem is when it melts.
Because then, air in the pipes will hiss out, carrying some filthy water, until the pressure back in the control valves drops below the trigger point... Then, in seconds, a valve will drop, a boost pump will kick in, and about fifty tons of water will all try to race to the break-point.
The ones I photographed were the easy ones, only about 8 feet up, in an office.
The tricky ones are 25 feet up just under the roof. I have to unscrew them, thaw the plug of ice in the hole with a gas torch, then screw a fresh one in, wrapping the threads in ptfe tape to seal them. One hand for the wrench, one hand for the pipe, one hand for the gas torch, and one hand to hang onto the ladder. Oh. I see there's a problem there, then. Oh well.
And it was going well, until one of the high-level ones started to hiss very ominously. And then a sound of rushing thunder... "But valve number two's turned off... even if the valve's dropped it can't fill, surely...."
"Oh shit!" yells my boss, abandoning his ladder-footing position and setting off at a run to the sprinkler house, where armageddon has kicked in.
My ladder's leaning on nothing, really. Just a three-inch piece of roof truss. And the foot's on a fairly slick concrete floor. And there was nowhere to attach a safety harness. And my safety man's left at a run. Just as the water gets there, in my face. Boom! 100 gallons per minute is the design rate. Out of a tank that had 9" of ice on the top. And black too. And it's trying to pluck me off the ladder, and I can feel the ladder moving...
I have never, ever, gone so fast down a ladder. Apart from being drenched to the skin in freezing black water, and the temperature being still below freezing, and the snow falling outside... I felt quite lucky, considering the other possibility.
I go open the big drain valves, and a fire door to outside, and gradually the water slows.
My fingers don't work.
I set off outside and up to the sprinkler house, where bells are jangling and a siren warbling, my boss is busy turning valves, as I shut down the alarms and the boost pump.
He's swearing and just a bit agitated.
Why? Because the sprinkler layout plan, kept in the sprinkler house, as required by the fire authorities and the insurance, clearly states that valve-set two covers the area in which we are working. Valve set two was off, and no water was flowing.
But valve-set one was at full blast.
Just a few weeks ago the system had its annual check and service. How is it that for YEARS, since their installation, perhaps, the valves have been labelled wrongly? Why haven't the pros who do our alterations, and maintenance pointed it out? because the only way we're ever going to find out is at the wrong end of an emergency.
So the job that was to take a couple of hours of my holiday became a full day. With wet clothes, and below freezing temperatures. Yes, I have waterproofs, and no, they were on another site. as were my dry clothes.
Do you want to hear about today?
6" pipe, 150 pounds per square inch pressure, at the top of the tower, boom!......
Waterfall down six flights of stairs.... And I'm going uphill in the dark, because the water's blown all the lights. All I can see in my head-torch's beam is falling water... Up to the top of the stairs, then up a steel ladder, in a waterfall. Toward the thunder.
This time, though, I'm in waterproofs.
Best pic I could get, looking up at the bottom of the sprinkler tank, the joint by the bend had failed, and this was after I'd shut the water off. I've never tried to calculate how many tons of water are up there, the other side of that inch or so of iron. um....
Quick calculation gives me about sixty tons
Although I hate carrying it, my 48" "Record" wrench comes into its own at a time like this.
Good thing too, or I'd have had to use a bigger one.
I think the biggest I've got is the seven foot chain-wrench. and you can slip a few extra feet of scaffold pole on the end if you really need to be brutal. The downside of that chain wrench is that I can just carry it, but not without cursing.
Tomorrow? still officially on holiday, I'll be in at work by eight. I suppose I'll get paid, or get a few days off in lieu.
Monday, 27 December 2010
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