The Indoor Mobile Phone Problem
I have an office where mobile phones don’t work. This is because the building is so insulated that the signals just don’t get through. So you walk outside and immediately you get voicemail messages, which you have to return.
So I bought a system from Cell Antenna, that puts one aerial outside and one inside with an amplifier in between.
The Outside Aerial
The Indoor Aerial
The installation was fairly easy and would have been much easier, if I hadn’t wanted to hide the wires.
Incidentally the indoor aerial was mounted upside down but the system still works very well.
Forty-One Years Ago
The seventh of September in 1968 was the day we got married. It was perhaps the one sunny Saturday in a summer of rain. Last year, I wanted to do something different to get away from the day. The reason was for the last few years the seventh was a day where we ate a great meal at somewhere like The River Cafe and then went on holiday for ten days or so. So in the end, I went to the Grand Prix at Spa.
At least it cured me of ever wanting to go to a Grand Prix again!
I had planned to go somewhere for a good meal for myself, but in the end I just cooked myself a rabbit casserole. However, this time using chicken instead. I had worried that the Waitrose rabbit was packed in flour, but I have since checked and they were just pure unadulterated bunny! They were just rock hard in the freezer.
All those years ago, we had got married in Christ Church, Cockfosters. I remember little of the day and we don’t even have any photographs, as the album got lost when my mother-in-law died. There is just one photo on the side.
In some ways that is sad, but then we had a very happy forty years together. There were ups and downs, but we did have a lot more ups and downs.
The Halifax Explosion
I usually read the obituaries in The Times. Even if it’s just to check that I’m still here. But then I wouldn’t be in that esteemed organ!
Today there was an obituary of Marcus Chambers. He was not a man I’d heard of, but I do remember the triumph of Andrew Cowan driving a Hillman Hunter in the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon. He was the brains behind it all. One thing that is not in the obituary was that the car was tuned to run on the very low grade petrol, that would be all that was obtainable on much of the route.
Sad to think, that such a race would not be possible today, as you just can’t drive all the way. Well not safely, as the route included Tehran and Kabul.
But what caught my eye in the obituary is the Halifax Explosion, which Marcus Chamber’s parents survived. Two thousand people died, when an ammunition ship blew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in “The Narrows” section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured. This is still the world’s largest man-made accidental explosion.
That was a terrible tragedy.
Conservation is Dangerous
I’m watching Stephen’s Fry program called “The Last Chance to See” on BBC2. One of the people in the program told how six enviromentalists had been killed in Cambodia and hos the Amazon and it’s famed piranhas was much less dangerous.
A couple of tales illustrate this.
Perhaps ten or twelves years ago, my late wife and myself were staying in the Datai on Langkawi. This hotel regularly makes the top two or three in the world and having stayed there for a week, you know why.
The hotel organised tours with two local wildlife experts. One was Malaysian and the other was the son of a British squaddie and his Nepalese wife. To say he had the air of a hard bastard was probably an understatement. But he needed to be as poachers and collectors were always trying to either shoot or dig up something. At the time, they’d just taken on the Malaysian government about preserving the last piece of rainforset on Langkawi. They’d won at the time and my son has confirmed in the last few weeks that it is still there.
So perhaps to get things done, you not only need good economic arguments as they did, but you also need a touch of the Rambos.
It must have been about 1988 and I was in San Francisco. I needed to get to San Jose, so I took a shared limousine as one does. Or did! Hopefully, they’ve built a more affordable rail system. But I doubt it! I hadn’t hired a car as someone was driving me around.
Two of us got in first and like me, the other was something in computers. We were then joined by a tall, slim man about fifty or so, with a long grey ponytail. He had a powerful bearing and looked extremely fit under a linen suit.
I thought for a moment he might be into something like drugs, but he told a tale about how he had been in US Special Forces in Viet Nam. He’d retired as an officer and was now working protecting World Bank projects in the Amazon rainforest. He talked about how if you harvested plants and trees very selectively, you could give the people an income about ten times more than they got from subsistence agriculture where you burned the forest.
But this didn’t work because to do this you needed to built tracks into the jungle, which allowed the cut and burners to do their damage easily and also because by giving the people a good income, you broke the power of the loan sharks who preyed on them.
Hence the need for men like him to protect the projects and those that worked on them.
Just as Stephen Fry’s film showed, to get conservation to work, you must get the economics right and make sure you control those violent men, whose interests you destroy.
Fun and Games at the Fourth Plinth
This morning I went to London to support an Internet friend who was appearing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. I took a lot of video at seven in the morning and it will be going up soon.
But the twist was, that someone had called off at the last minute, so they went looking for volunteers. As Sir Arnold Bax once said, “One should try everything once, except incest and folk dancing”.
So I accepted and you can see the result here.
I shall post my video in the next couple of days.
The Australian Diamond Dealer
This is a tale that I am pretty sure is true. But on the other hand it might just be one of those tales that passes down from teller to teller gathering more and more embellishments as time goes on.
In the 1970s, I used to work as a consultant to a clearing bank. I’m not going to say which, but it probably can be ascertained by those who know me. In that case, you’re wrong, as either it’s another bank or the tale was about another.
On the computing side banks went through a lot of changes at that time. Remember that D-day when we went from £sd to £p was the 15th February 1971 and also computers were starting to replace manual systems. So there was a large scope for mistakes and possible fraud.
This Australian, who claimed he was a diamond dealer turned up at a Central London branch, saying that he’d like to open an account. He had a reference from an Australian bank and backed it with a substantial cash deposit. He said that he was spending a few months in “the old country” and when he returned, he would take all the money out of his account in cash to purchase diamonds to take back.
It all sounded feasible and over the months, nothing raised any suspicion in the bank. Money came into the account and just as quickly came out in cash to buy diamonds. But never at any time did the account go into the red.
Then, the Australian announced that he was going back to Oz and on a particular day he would draw the money out of his account in cash and close it. He left a forwarding account for any charges or extra payments that might accrue.
It was only noticed later that the date he would leave was a few days after the branch was computersied. And someone went in and changed the paying-in slips in the branch for ones where the account number had helpfully already been filled in.
You’ve guessed it, but it was the Australian’s account.
I heard this tale twice and let’s say that a very nice six figure sum disappeared.
In one version, he wasn’t even Australian!
French Road Chaos
We tend to think that the French are a law abiding lot, what with the way they have treated British farm imports, how they keep Franglais out of French, how de Gaulle used the N-word lots of times, how they are fining people with designer goods and how their farmers are so creative with EU subsidies.
But this latest story shows them at their best!
Vive la France!
Sir Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport
Sir Nicholas is 100 and over seventy years ago, he organised the rescue of nearly seven hundred children from under the noses of the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. He was so modest about his role, that it didn’t come to light until 1988.
The BBC’s Robert Hall will be following the route of the Kindertransport over the next few days on Breakfast Time.
Perhaps I Should Get a Sewing Machine
They’ve just announced that the “Make Do and Mend” culture is returning, with John Lewis reporting an increase in the sale of sewing machines. The department store has also brought out a guide with the same name.
You may ask, why a sixty-two year old man would buy a sewing machine. I probably won’t, but I used to be very handy with one, having been taught how to sew by my mother.
When we were first married, I used to make some of my wife’s clothes. I can remember making several dresses and a long brown coat. In fact, somewhere in this house is a short maternity dress, that I made in 1969 out of some red Dorcas fabric.
My father also taught me how to do proper carpentry, service cars, hang wallpaper and of course everything there is to know about real letterpress printing.
I don’t think we taught our children such a wide range of skills. And I think that these days kids learn even less from their parents.
The Price of Repeats
Christopher Biggins used to play Lukewarm in Porridge.
He has just revealed on radio, that he got £90 an episode all those years ago. Now if an episode is repeated he gets over a £1,000.
Interesting!
The Anonymous Widower 