Tales From Artemis Times
When I was writing Artemis, I got to meet some very interesting people.
I remember being in Denver at an Artemis Users Conference at the time of the Falklands War. I was talking over drinks with three Americans; a New York banker, the project manager on the US Harrier and the another from Long Beach Naval Shipyard.
The banker with all the naivete of no experience, said that all the Navy needed in the South Atlantic was a big flat-top and some F14s and they’d be able to blow the Argies away.
Then the Harrier guy said that they were getting the weather reports and it was so bad down there, that the only aircraft you could recover to the carrier was a Harrier. The guy from Long Beach compared everything to the Arctic convoys and said it was doubtful which was worst.
The banker didn’t say anything more on the subject.
Another incident was meeting a recently retired US Army or Marine officer. I’m not sure where this was, but it was somewhere in the States. It might even have been at the same conference. On finding I was English, he said that he’d got a lot of respect for the British Army and told this tale.
The Pentagon had wanted to find out how we handled the situation in Northern Ireland from a soldier’s point-of-view and he had been asked to go to the province to observe the British Army at work. So he turned up in Belfast, as a guest of the British Army and was given a briefing by senior officers and a couple of tours around the city in a Land-Rover.
They then asked him, if he’d like to go out on a patrol.
He said he would like to go, so early the next morning he was taken to a barracks and introduced to his patrol. He said that as a white US officer, he was surprised that the patrol would be led by a black corporal. At the time in the US Army, such a patrol would always be led by an officer or at least a sergeant.
They kitted him up, so he looked like the average squaddie and off they went. He didn’t really describe the patrol, except to say that he was impressed by the professionalism and that nothing untoward or unexpected happened.
On returning to barracks and after a good lunch with his patrol, he was taken to a debriefing. There he was shown a film taken by the SAS, who had had a sniper on the roof-tops with a film camera.
He realised that the US forces had a long way to go, if they were to handle urban situations like Northern Ireland.
St. Erth Station And The St. Ives Branch
St. Erth station is the station, where you change for the St. Ives branch.
I think this station is a good example of how we should treat our rural stations.
It was scrupulously clean and has an excellent shop and cafe. I think too, that the bridge is going to be given lifts to improve changes at the station.
The branch itself is one of the most spectacular in the UK, and my train was an immaculate Class 150. I hope that unit is in the queue for the upgrade some of its sisters have received in East Anglia.
The Cornish will certainly look after it.
Around St. Ives
I took these pictures as I walked around St. Ives.
It wasn’t my first visit and C and I had had a brief visit about twenty years ago.
The Tate At St. Ives
The Tate St. Ives is one of those buildings, like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, that make me want to get my camera out.
At the Guggenheim, I photographed the building as the light played with the building in the evening sun.
As these pictures show, the Tate all about the sea.
The Tate is a building totally suited to its surroundings.
Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden
I like sculpture and I spent a pleasant half-an-hour in the garden of the Babara Hepworth Musem in the rain.
We need to get more of our great sculptures out of the sterile museums and into the open air.
I know there’s a security problem with bronzes, but if we choose the locations carefully, we should be able to minimise the theft.
Would This Help People Stop Smoking?
On my bus this morning a young lady was reading a book called How To Stop Smoking.
As I got out I wished her the best of luck. She smiled back and said it was difficult.
So did my encouragement help?
I don’t and never will know! But just as women, who are pregnant often wear a badge saying Baby On Board, would it help to give up smoking, if you wore a badge saying I’m Trying To Give Up.
Perhaps others would offer words of encouragement that helped.
The Best Cafe In Eastfield
Marks and Spencer’s cafes are probably best described as safe, with a boring selection of drinks and pastries, that wouldn’t annoy ladies who drink milky coffee.
But the one on the bridge at their Eastfield store is different.
It’s nice to go to a cafe with proper china and nearly all those in that area of the shopping centre use paper cups.
So it’s a no-brainer as to where I go!
It does mean that if I’m lucky, I have to put up with one of the best views in East London.
As Marks and Spencer now have an extensive range of gluten-free foods in the shop below the cafe, Stratford is an ideal place to break a journey with a pit stop for supplies
Have I Put In Enough Sockets?
We live in an age, where every device we have has a different charger and everything else needs to be connected to the mains.
My phone, broadband and Sky television lines all come in at one end of my living room, whereas the ideal place for the television is at the other end on a bracket that allows the television to either face the room or be visible from the kitchen.
So I decided to put upwards of a dozen plugs at each end of the room and run three HDMI cables along the wall, so that I could feed the signals to the television. I also ran aerial and Ethernet cables along the wall. Note the two plastic trunkings.
Until now, I’ve just used long HDMI cables, which because they have to go into the back of the Sky and BT boxes, they go round the bend a few times and make everything difficult.
The new layout, has also allowed me to move my laptop, so that when I use it, I face directly at the television, which is much more comfortable.
Ovo Signs A Breakthrough Deal
It has been announced in This is Money, that Ovo has joined with Plymouth Council, so the council can be a low energy supplier.
Ovo Energy is set to unveil a ground-breaking deal that could pave the way for local councils across the country to become energy suppliers.
A tie-up with Plymouth council will be endorsed today by Energy Secretary Ed Davey when it is announced at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Glasgow.
I think we’ll be seeing a lot of these deals, as councils get more proactive in helping hard-pressed consumers. Come to think of it, the average council, like my one of Hackney, must be quite large purchasers of energy. So they could be getting a good deal too!
Does this deal also mean that councils are thinking more intelligently about energy issues?
After all my next-door council; Islington, has built the innovative Bunhill Energy Centre to provide district heating and electricity.
So some may well be!
But are we? So many people I talk to haven’t moved away from their large energy supplier.
They’re going to change at some time, so it is best to get the pain over now, as probably like my old supplier, they’ll muck up the change.
But once you have changed, you’ll have a piece of paper with all the relevant details of your supplies and meters, so a second change will be a lot easier.
DownThe Hill In A Sunny Sheffield
I took these pictures as I walked from the Leopold Hotel to the station.
The Winter Garden was a total surprise. In fact, when I saw it, I was rather disappointed that I’d had a morning coffee in a Cafe Nero.
It was a very easy walk with the hill.
As I got to the bottom, it struck me that it might have been an idea to put the odd escalator in the climb to make it easier to walk up. Perugia has a similar problem of getting up the hill and they have used escalators to advantage.
The Anonymous Widower 