It’s Very Lonely Today
Today would have been our forty-second wedding anniversary. I shall probably see no-one all day except for the postman and the lady who delivers the papers.
I wonder what C would be thinking. She always said that she would hate to be alone and wanted to die first. This was partly because she said she hated her own company, but I suspect she’d be coping with the loneliness better than I am.
Today, there is nothing to do, as it’s not going to be the best weather and I have no driver. And there is no public transport! I simply refuse to take a taxi just to get somewhere, where there are some people!
If I did have some transport, I’d go to Colchester to see England Under-21 play Lithuania. At least there is the football and cricket on the television this evening!
But then, life gets better in the next day or so, as I’m spending a couple of days in London and then it’s off to Portsmouth to see Ipswch play!
The Elusive Boss of Transocean
The phrase isn’t mine, but it was said on the Radio 5, Wake up to Money program this morning. It has always puzzled me, why BP’s drilling company in the Gulf, didn’t take some of the flak over the Gulf Oil Spill. I can’t even remember seeing him on the News either.
It will be interesting to see who foots the bill in the end, after the lawyers get their teeth into the problem.
Self-Repairing Solar Cells
I like this story. It just goes to show that if anything gets the world out of the mess, it will be scientists, engineers and other thinkers, who use science and technology correctly. It will be not be politicians, union leaders or those that believe God is always the solution. These people will just hold back those like the scientists in this story, who might be leading us to salvation from our lack of energy.
The Edgley Optica
The airship photo and the associated comments with Paul, have got me thinking about aviation.
It lways seems, that any alternative approach to replace conventional fixed wing types or helicopters, ends in failure.
Sometimes, this is because the technology doesn’t work, sometimes because there are accidents, but I do feel that sometimes vested interests strangle the new ideas at birth.
I used to be a competent private pilot and I still have over a thousand hours in my log book, if I can find it. It is quite a lot of varied flying in both singles and twins, all around the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States and Australia. I used to follow the aviation press a lot too, so I’m not without knowledge and experience of what has been tried and what works in aviation. Artemis, the project management system, I designed, was also used on a lot of aviation projects.
One of the aviation projects that fascinated me was the Edgley Optica observation aircraft. It was designed as an alternative to a helicopter for low-level surveillance, for use by those such as the Police. In about 1986, the company was in trouble and looking for investors, so I checked them out and actually had a flight in the aircraft as a passenger. I did take control for a few minutes and it was an easy plane to fly.
The company’s troubles were probably in part caused by an unexplained crash of an Optica being flown by Wiltshire Police. It certainly wouldn’t have helped sales.
The pilot had his own theories about the crash but writing over twenty years later, I can’t give any credence to what he said.
However, this doesn’t mean that this unusual concept isn’t worth pursuing. Especially as now we have learned so much more about the lightweight structures that might just make designs like this possible and economic.
I have a personal regret about my trip in an Optica. I didn’t have my camera with me!
How Internet Rumours Start
I was looking down the list of flying exhibits at Duxford today and noticed that the Royal Netherlands Air Force were flying in their Spitfire. So I was curious as to how they acquired their plane and searched the Internet. I found the details on this page at the Spitfire Society.
But there is also this interesting bit on the page under a heading of Dissimilar Combat Exercises.
In 1963 it was thought that the English Electric Lightning might have to be used against P-51 Mustangs in Indonesia, and the Mk XIX PM631 of the BBMF was diverted to Central Fighter Establishment Binbrook to provide an opponent similar to the Mustangs in a dissimilar combat exercise. During this exercise it developed engine troubles, and PS853, which while being a Gate Guardian at CFE Binbrook had also been maintained in flying condition on the orders of the Station CO, took over the role.
Has anyone any information on the story that in the simulator, a Spitfire armed with Sidewinders has a fair chance against a Tornado?
The question has to be asked, as to why need all the expensive military hardware, politicians and those in the armed forces, say we need.
But how many people would take the last part of the extract and believe it to be the truth?
A Spoilt Basset Hound
C would never allowed this and I generally don’t! But some of my guests invite my basset to misbehave!
A Spoilt Basset Hound
Memories of My Grandfather – Henry Millbank
I never met my grandfather, Henry Millbank, as he died a few months before I was born. All I have is a couple of photographs at my parents’ wedding in 1946.
He was an engraver and one of his specialities was to engrave the die by which names and other words were stamped on to pencils. These days nearly all pencils are hexagonal and that according to my mother, is because her father was the last person with the skills to engrave one for a round pencil. Apparently, according to my mother in the last years of his life, people were always asking him to engrave others, as there was no-one else.
Interestingly, you now get engraved round pencils again, but that is because computers and the machines they control can do what few craftsman can.
The Familiar Skirt
As I sat in Carluccio’s in Spitalfields tonight, I realised that the lady on the next table, was wearing a skirt, that was very similar to one that C had sometimes worn in the last couple of years of her life.
I didn’t get emotional, but quietly wished to myself, that the lady didn’t sufer a similar fate to C. Last Thursday would have been C’s sixty-second birthday and next Tuesday would have been our forty-second wedding anniversary.
I could put a cliche in here but I won’t! Add one yourself!
Battersea Power Station
One of the sad sights you see as you approach Victoria is the ruin of Battersea Power Station.
Battersea Power Station
It is such a pity that nothing sensible has been done with such an iconic building, that is actually the largest brick building in Europe!
