The Song of Steel

David asked to go to Magna again today. I thought I had blogged about it before but the search engine suggests no more than a passing reference.

Magna is a science museum with a difference. It is built inside a massive old smelting shed- parts of the former Steel, Peach & Tozer steelworks (known colloquially as Steelos) in Rotherham a few minutes drive from Sheffield Meadowhall. It features four new pavilion structures within the enormous space, devoted to the elements; earth, fire, water and air. On the hour, several times a day, one of the cold rusty furnace behomoths lurches noisily to life in a simulated inferno with the aid of clever lighting, smoke, sparks and special effects.

This building is industrial archeology on an inspiring scale. Massive hooks hang silently in the heavens, enormous crucibles litter the depths and mysterious machinery lurks in the corners of this incredible space even though it is a fraction of its original size.

Magna opened in 2001 and has been one of the more successful Millennium Projects. We were Annual passholders for a couple of years as David liked it so much, although familiarity breeds contempt and we became jaded of the place somewhat as more and more exhibits broke down and didn't get fixed (not kid-proof enough).

Magna has had some success (indoor bungee jumping!) but also some flops, namely the ill-fated Robotics show and the Energy pavilion, now closed with some of the exhibits distributed around the other spaces. However, it does have a huge outside play area which has been repeatedly expanded and now with a very wet area added, called Aqua-Tek. It would be wonderful in Orlando but at Tinsley on a cold, wet, windy squally day in January the padlock is still on the gate...

So, after possibly a two year absence, we returned with reasonable but not too high expectations and we weren't overly disappointed. Lots of construction work going on but mainly to add facilities for corporate hire. Lots more interactive panels on the mainwalkway with a novel searchlight arrangement- you shine it around and certain items trigger a vignette on-screen. We also heard a number of steel songs on these panels, one of which shocked David somewhat as they sang "send the bugger back" in one of them. No, it wasn't Half a Shilling, the racist folk group from the Phoenix Club, but The Song of Steel by BBC Radio Ballads and you can listen to it yourself online here (with a little patience).

So, quite a lot new, but what of the old? well disappointingly, they continue to have maintenance issues*, lots of mainline & lesser displays aren't working properly, are erratic, out of adjustment, or even quietly spirited away. (A display of metallic flares in bunsen flames in the fire pavilion had been welded over so those not in the know wouldn't even know it had been there). The trouble is, it is easy to blag money for capital projects, but not for revenue ones.

One final nail in the coffin- the entrance Cafe let David down badly, no crisps or sugar-free pop, just healthy food and drinks, which the management apparently thought was a good idea. Excuse me? Isn't this a bit hypocritical if you still sell blueberry muffins and Danish pastries? Spare me the bullshit about think of the children until you stop selling ice creams. Healthy choices fine, but no choice is just paternal nannyism. Spare us from that please, we get enough of that from the state already...

We didn't leave empty handed- I bought a CD of The Song of Steel which is full of anecdotes as well as the specially composed songs that we had heard indoors. I'd recommend it if you can find it, here it is on Amazon.


(* During the early years, Magna organised an evening event for Adult passholders only- a chance to find out more and get onto the JCB diggers without having to queue with ankle-biters. The Museum Director made a presentation about the place and invited questions. I raised the matter of the high level of exhibits being out of order and questioned whether they were robust enough. He explained that many of them had been commissioned from other Science Centres who were all too aware of the destructive malevolence of children. He expressed concern that we had such a perception and when I pointed out that many items were off because of consumables such as projector lamps, he made the memorable management-speak comment that it was probably less of a design issue and more of a maintenance issue...)

The facts of life...

David's class were introduced to dictionaries recently. However, during the lesson, the classroom assistant specifically (and perhaps foolishly) told a miscreant not to look up Penis, Vagina or Sex. Not something sensible to say in earshot of an intelligent 9 year old with a thirst for knowledge...

So now, David is starting to get on the clue train of this Boys vs Girls business, although it keeps getting shunted into sidings on the way. Because he watches Disney channel and the like, he thinks that Cooties have something to do with it.

Recently, after explaining about how Miss had used rude words as per above, he asked me if he had been born after Karen and I had "Sexual interface".

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...

"Get some day nurse & night nurse"- was the request from karen, just entering the early stages of a cold that I am beginning to shake off. "Tell them we both have colds so we can buy some to have in- Chemists can be a bit funny these days..." she added.

Indeed.

You can now buy a number of headache-type medicines down at the Supermarket but what may not be quite so obvious is that (certainly at ASDA) you are only allowed to buy a maximum of two packs in one transaction, for your own good, of course. Indeed, I ran foul of this a year or two back at ASDA when I worked out that three packs of something unbranded Ibuprofen-based (packed in 8s) was better value than two of a larger size Nurofen brand (packed in 16s). When I got to the till, "Computer says No...".The idiocy of the rule is that it is a nonsense anyway, apparently 25 Paracetamol is enough to top yourself and someone determined enough to do so is not going to be put off by having to queue up again at another till. Apparently the maximum non-pharmacy size is a pack of 16, at a chemist a pack of 32.

Anyway, down to Morley Boots, and a request for Day Nurse/Night Nurse. The assistant asked me to describe a number of symptoms in tedious detail and then went through what medication I was on. She then consulted with the pharmacist and returned with recommendations. I then had to repeat the whole rigmarole for Karen, despite not being able to accurately describe the symptoms, me not being Karen, of course. Eventually I get exasperated, saying "I can't believe that I can't just buy what I asked for, I can't be arsed, goodbye.", walking out leaving a bemused assistant behind.

I then popped round to the Co-Op pharmacy round the corner, where the inquisition was simply "have you taken this before?" which was much more straight-forward to answer, yes of course, and Karen has as well.

I did ask what the difference was between seperate and combined Day/Night Nurse and it boils down to packaging and price, so now you know.

(When checking out the rules, i came across an interesting article on headaches here. (Its from the Grauniad, but don't let that put you off...)

Summit to shout about

Last Friday's Summit was standing room only down at the Rugby Club. It was front page news on the front cover of our weekly paper but didn't appear on the website until yesterday. Rather than rehash it, you can read the story here.

We were all given a form with six topics on the front and six blank ones on the back (which were chosen from a ballot box in the interval). There was a slight downside- the questions were Yes/No and then a comment field. Consequently, myself and the chap to my right (who is a classical Liberal) sometimes ticked the opposite box followed by a caveat. E.g. for charging in car parks, I put No, but there should be a waiting limit in some areas. Conversely the other bloke put Yes, but only for long stayers. That had to make it tricky to interpret the results.

As ever, there was a collective assumption that local or national government could be the solution to the problem, when in reality, they are generally the cause.

Anyway, the post-event was very social, indeed I didn't leave until after last orders at 1am after much banter and merriment with the regulars. Fortunately I don't visit there too often, I don't think I have the stamina...

Gallows Humour

Back at the Leeds Grand, this noose welcomes visitors to the fly floor. The sign on it says "Feel free!!" The staircase continues onwards and upwards to the Grid.


This is an overhead view of the fly floor, where the two controllers for the flying equipment are. The wall on the left was originally covered with the counterweight frames in which the balancing cradles ran. The weights had to be loaded and unloaded on a gallery higher above. Surprisingly, the flys are as bright as this during shows as the light does not spill onto the stage below.






A view of the grid. The pink walls are where the stage house was raised some six metres or so above the original structural level. Five cables feed to each bar and the numbers of pulleys reduces across the stage as you get further away from the lifting equipment. (Note how they alternate.) The sensors are to detect slack wires, i.e. ones that have snapped or the bar has possibly fouled by hitting an obstruction.


The hauling equipment, note the five sets of steel wire coils on each drum. Yes, that is indeed the manager in-shot who was our group's guide for the afternoon and he certainly knows quite a bit about everything about his theatre.


We even saw inside the abandoned projection box of the Assembly Room which was known as the Plaza for many years. The Box is that carbuncle on the roof line, Warren's words but we all agreed. It will go one day and in the meantime the remains of two Kalee Projectors with BTH lamphouses continue to rust. Talking of rust, we were advised that the wrought iron staircase which can be seen under the Box was probably not a good idea to venture onto...



And finally, a low tech fire alrm. read the label...(Click on any of the pictures for larger versions).

Shades of Grey(s)

Karen suggested the blog name be tweaked. Our old purple fiesta battlebus has now been replaced by a not quite so old Fabia- official color Stone Grey.

My other car is an Octavia- Dark Blue which isn't a shade of grey of course. However, there are several listeners in the Morley FM area who think I drive a Pink Skoda- a running gag as we had blagged a 4x4 super stretch Limo for the Morley carnival (reprised in 2006- clip 2).

Poppa's taking us to the Zoo tomorrow...

David is absolutely fascinated with animals. It is a strange mixture of fascinated and terrified- he spots every dog on every journey but cowers if they sniff him. He has previously declared that he is going to be a Vet when he grows up, which is a little worrying as apparently vets have hugely high depression and suicide rates. He has also considered working in a zoo but we have made it clear that it is a calling, not a career.

As a birthday treat, we arranged a keeper for the day event for David last October. After looking around the local ones (and being stunned at the prices) we eventually hit upon a one focussed on children and a (comparatively) reasonably priced one at £65 down at Dudley Zoo. (Now £95 due to overwhelming success).

Anyway the weather was good on the day, the keeper chaperone was great with David and he had a whale of a time. She even made the shovelling out of the shit a bit of fun for him down on the petting farm.

Dudley zoo is unusual in that it is a quite compact site but spirals up a hill to an old castle on the top of the hill so getting around involves a lot of steep paths or a ride on the land train.

David's favourite bit was feeding the penguins, although he did say they were rather smelly.


As an aside, I once interviewed some contestants live on-stage for a Miss 18 Plus Area final in the Aston area. On discovering a contestant was a Vet, I asked if she had ever had to put her arm into a cow as per James Herriott. When she replied that she worked in a small animal practice, I immediately (and perhaps not thinking of the reaction) enquired as to whether she had ever had a finger up a Hamster...

This definitely gave us a big Woof and when order was restored, we restarted the interview as if nothing had happened... until she said she was a Vet again, at which point we both corpsed...

Another Grand day out

Despite having lived in the Leeds area for over a decade and being a Theatre Technical obsessive, I haven't been behind the scenes at the remarkable Leeds Grand, discounting a visit to the understage rehearsal room a couple of years ago to see the recording of an interview with Warren Smith, the larger than life General Manager.

Of course, I've seen dozens of shows there, good and bad. However, when I heard that the ABTT had organised a visit, that provided me with the impetus to rejoin and get along to the event.

The event turned out to be very popular so that the party was split in two in order to visit the various spaces without (too much) overcrowding.


Crossing the stage on the way to the new rehearsal workshops, we paused to admire the house. The view from upstage on a big stage is rather odd without an audience, namely a very large wall with hole in, beyond which is another room full of empty seats. I'd particularly felt this once at the Sheffield Lyceum working there for a few days whilst the building was "dark" (i.e. no show in) and the stage stripped of all masking in order to clean the dust out of the grid area above. This view reminded me a little of that experience...

After seeing the new spaces, we were then treated to a ride on their massive lorry lift, which raises 40 Tonne wagons from street to stage, nearly 6m above street level.


This must be an absolute boon for the crew, although it is really just making the best of an awkward job as a modern theatre such as the Lowry will be able to cater for several trucks at once with them simply backing up the way they can at Tescos round the back. The Grand used to have to haul everything up and down with a winch & presumably a block & tackle in the earlier days when the scenery & cloths used to arrive from the train station on a hand cart. Now scenery and props can be stored on the connecting bridge seen in the photo, as well as the comparatively spacious original backstage areas. It is still necessary to brave the weather somewhat, as can be seen by the raised hoods amongst the riders.

A new flying system replaces the old, driven from a computerised panel on the fly floor. The system has a precision of a couple of milimetres so that once a position has been plotted it will reliably return to that setting night after night. As moving heavy scenery above actors can be a dangerous business, the system includes various safety features to detect anything unexpected. A dead man's handle approach on the control panels ensures the brakes will be immediately applied if the operator lets go or the panel is disturbed. It is also designed with performance in mind so that up to four combinations of complex movements can be individually controlled and the speed adjusted to suit slight variation sin performance. (The Grand is the home to Opera North so music sets the pace for most shows).


Up on the grid 70' above the stage, 64 sets of hoists (32 each side) do the actual lifting work. Each assembly has a long drum upon which five sets of steel wire ropes wind and unwind in their allotted grooves. This photo shows the mesh floor and the stage way down below.


We were also given a chance to see Leeds' forgotten theatre, the Assembly Room. There is hope to re-open that as a performance space in phase two, but in the meantime it is used as a rehearsal space, asbestos removal permitting...

(sniff sniff...)

I've been fighting off a cold since the weekend I've been off work these last two days. "Aww Diddums!" I hear you say...

It is hardly a life threatening illness, but coughing fits that make you dizzy, sizzlingly painful ears that feel like they are going to implode and prickly eyeballs that feel as though they have been peeled are not pleasant. I know I'm not well when I can't even be bothered to surf.

Anyway, I'm Lemsipped up and feel ready to take on the cut & thrust of IT Networks again, although I'll probably be wrecked by teatime.

Coffee Stains

I've mentioned coffee stains before, where an otherwise immaculate presentation is marred by lack of attention to detail, e.g. the Coffee Pot ring on the pristine table setting.

Yesterday, the three of us went to a surprise party for an Eighteen Plus old friend down in Leicester. It was being held in an out of town hotel and the afternoon's procedings would include a buffet and a Kaleigh Band. People were attending from North and South as well as from the Midlands. We even had the Lord Mayor of Lichfield join us, in civvies of course...

It was a great do and marred by only one Coffee stain, or more accurately a Chocolate Chip Cookie stain. I had stuck a couple of biscuits in my top pocket for the journey to share with David but forgot about them until late in the journey. At this point they had melted somewhat and my shirt pocket looked as though my Pooper-Pen had leaked. (What do you mean, you don't have a crap Biro? I have loads of them, generally made by Bic...)

Fortunately, I am too thick skinned to worry overly much about what others think and didn't feel it was necessary to scoot along to a retail park to buy an emergency shirt. (this is the Yorkshire influence:- depp pockets, short arms!)Instead, one of the girls tastefully arranged a napkin as a flamboyant Pocket Cravat.

It is nice to mmet up with old friends, especially when it feels just right to drop into the groove again. It is a shame we don't all live in the same place and there is the dawning realisation that as we move from the natural progression of marriages, 40ths, re-marriages and 50ths, sooner or later we will be attending funerals as well. In the meantime, aging Eighteen Plussers are determined to grow older disgracefully...

Fit plug A into socket B

I ordered some replacement water cartridges the other day, Sodastream Filterstreams which look like the blue thing on the left here

(Find out what a Filterstream is here) It is the grown-up version of the Brita water jug filter, where you have a plumbed-in tap for about six months worth of filtered water for drinking & cooking.

Anyway, the filters duly arrived, but they were the wrong ones. Instead of push fit connectors they had a threaded shaft at one end and a plastic mesh at the other.

My first reaction was that I had cocked up- maybe I had clicked on the wrong one. Checking back with the website, the items were the correct code, although the line description matched something else in the catalogue with a different number but correctly described what I had received. I rang up their customer care line and after explaining the situation, Susan$ was tremendously helpful. They would send me a postage paid label with the replacement shipment. A very satisfactory result...

However, they rang back later in the day. Was I confused about it being unbranded and not saying Sodastream, asked Susan? No I said, that didn't bother me, my concern was that it didn't have the right connectors. Hold on, she said, let me transfer you to Vaughan$. Vaughan tried very hard to persuade me that I had the right ones, but eventually had to agree that he didn't have a clue what I was talking about and that I would have to talk to Ken who understood the product. Ken was out that day but would be back the next day.

The following day, I talked to Ken who assured me he packed the order himself and that they should be correct. Had I looked at both of the cartridges? All four of them were the same I replied. That stumped him as he hadn't sent an order for four Sodastreams and he eventually acceded that I did have the wrong ones & someone else must have prepared mine. He didn't feel that that the coincedence of the incorrect description matching my shipped goods were related however, as they all knew the product lines...

This morning, the right onses showed up, with a Freepost shipping label. A satisfactory outcome, despite three phone calls and a lot of explaining. In the world of technical support, this is known as a "Shit sandwich", where the miffle bit is crap.

($ Footnote:-Not their actual names, which were actually Lesley, Dave and Lee)

Vaseline on Toast

I use Vaseline nearly every day and it involves a liberal amount of smearing and then insertion.

Now, if you are of a similar age to me, you might well be sniggering, because Vaseline used to be synonymous with rude goings on in the bedroom, or possibly (and somewhat more sordidly) in a Cottage.

I can recall a bit of a shaggy dog story that Billy Connolly used to tell, revolving around a Vaseline Survey in the centre of Glasgow. The punchline twist was that the parent of the large family used it for sexual purpose: they smeared it on the bedroom door knob so that the Kids couldn't get in...

Now it turns out that vaseline is actually a somewhat third rate sexual lubricant, as being oil based, it dries out mucous membranes and dissolves latex. Water based solutions like KY jelly are the right thing to use on occasions that demand it.

In case you are wondering, I use it every day to block my grommetised ear with a cotton wool ball, in order to keep out soapy water which could apparently have unpleasant consequences.

So, I asked myself, what is petrolium jelly? Ingredients: Petrolatum. You can find out far more than you wanted to know about it on Wikipedia here, including who eats it for breakfast.

Seeing that it is a distillation by-product, I recalled a schoolboy visit to a Rohm & Haas chemical works, where we discovered this very large lump of brown, squidgy plastic on the access platforms of their fractional distillation tower. When asked what it was, we were told it was an unintended by-product, which they referred to as the "embarrassing polymer".

Wow, no hits at all for that in Google, yet...

What six CDs are in your car multi-changer today?

Easy one this,

1) Little Britain Radio Season 1 Disk 1
2) Little Britain Radio Season 1 Disk 2
3) Little Britain Radio Season 1 Disk 3
4) Little Britain Radio Season 2 Disk 1
5) Little Britain Radio Season 2 Disk 2
6) Little Britain Radio Season 2 Disk 3

(It just arrived this morning as the limited edition (3783 or 8000) tin box, picked up as a bargain brand new and still sealed on eBay for £12.50).

That will keep me amused driving too and from work until next Thursday!

The Apple phone is making waves, good story on The First Post and cracking analysis from Martin Geddes.

Blogpowerers, don't think I've forgot about you, I tag Sempiternal Horizons, Greenbanana, The NEWS sUcKs, In search of high places and As a Dodo. (The last one is very strange/clever!

Togetherness in Morley

The Morley Observer & Advertiser comes out on Wednesdays. This week, a few things caught my eye.

On page Five, there is mention that the Town Council precept will remain the same and I would have voted against putting it up anyway (I'd like to see it come down). This is good news for Morleians but it does rely on us drawing from reserves again this year, some £55k. The Reserves are higher than normal for various reasons but the current spending level is not sustainable in the longer term and we will have to cut our coat according to our cloth which means less spending or more local tax. I go for the former, unsurprisingly...

In the letters pages, there is a kerfuffle about some comments made in a letter from a BNP supporter last week, related to the Literature Festival. I have to say that the words went straight over my head as I could not recollect taking offense at them (and can't be arsed to to rooting around in the recycle bin).

I read Letters to the Editor with my Cynic filter engaged, namely- what are they saying, why are they saying it and is there more to this than meets the eye?

Some of my fellow politicians, however, probably more concerned about the forthcoming election battle in May than I am, have their PPS filters engaged (Political point Scoring). The letter headlines are "Shameful attempt at brainwashing", "Approved reading?", "Desperation setting in" (from a different BNP supporter) and "Come to the Forum" about our Leisure Centre. Letters three and four will probably result in further banter next week.

Over on page 12, the news is about "Stewie Mac" (his radio name, or at least that is what I call him). He has announced that he is standing again as a Leeds City Councillor in May, although last Wednesday he told me he was still undecided. He will be cringing at such a lengthly article and a picture of him from his days as a Marxist Bingo caller back in the swinging sixties. (Have you played Marxist Bingo? It is a bit like ordinary Bingo, except that when you win, instead of HOUSE! you shout PROPERTY IS THEFT!) There are some revealing comments on why he is an independent rather than a Morley Borough Independent. I like SMc, he is perceived by some as a loose cannon, exactly what the same people think of me!

Finally, on page 19, there is the "Morley Together" campaign launch, where "...organisations and businesses in Morley are being challenged to sign up to a campaign to tackle racism and xenophobia." Of course the principles of it are exemplary, even if the grammar isn't (there is a comma before an "and", I'm picky about that sort of thing) but it is from Colin Challen our MP and I do wonder if it is a localised Morley thing or a national Labour thing wherever they are losing ground to BNP. I read this with an increasing sense of unease as the tone implies that if you are not with us, you are against us.

I consider the term Racism to now be devalued to the point where Racist is a knee-jerk response to any opinions someone else doesn't agree with, or where the reactor feels that something should not be said out loud based on received wisdom, even though the statement may be patently true. Is it racist to say that in black street culture school isn't cool? Of course not. Is it racist to say Paki shop? it depends on the context, but generally, I would say no, even putting to one side that being Pakistani is not a race but a cultural grouping. Up until relatively recently, it simply referred to a local general store trader open for extended hours ran by a family business originally from the Indian Sub-Continent. It still does of course, but now there is the worry that someone (undefined) might take offense.

(As an aside here, I was in my local Premier Store recently which is ran by a Sikh family. A girl in the queue in front of me was talking on her mobile and as she was about to get served she said "I'll be about five minutes, I'm just buying some Fags in the Paki Shop." She then realised what she had said and looked sheepish. The owner and myself exchanged knowing smiles! I was tempted to tell her that she should have called it a "Sikh Shop" but wouldn't have wanted the owner thinking that I was taking the piss.I also suspect that she wouldn't have known or cared about the cultural differnce between the various Asian groupings...

I'd probably take offence to someone referring to "Pakis" in an offensive or ignorant manner but I much prefer Bigotry as the more accurate term rather than Racism. The other nuisance is that "Paki" is a shortening of "Pakistani" which is a bit of a mouthful with four syllables. (I never got concerned being called a Brit in Saudi, but did get uncomfortable over there on one occasion with a number of Scots (& their Wives) that I had a working relationship with but I didn't know too well, when it became apparent that they rather resented the English and their good natured taunts weren't that good natured).

Back to the campaign. It has wisely stayed clear of a number of Cliches that sound increasingly ridiculous in the political correctness backlash. It doesn't mention issues, it uses tolerance instead of respect and it doesn't emplore us to celebrate diversity.

Personally, my own value system tells me to follow the path of polite indifference. It sounds a bit harsh when said cold but so does "So what?" to cold calling salesmen!
Polite is the tolerance bit. I see no reason to be rude to people because of their own beliefs but it doesn't mean that I have to respect the beliefs they hold. Indifference simply means I'm not really interested in the detail of all of the mumbo jumbo in the baggage people and cultures carry around with them. Indifference does not make someone a racist in the same way that I choose to be indifferent to Opera, Modern Jazz, Football and Dogging. This doesn't mean that I am a cruel heartless bastard, just that I get interested in things, people and culture for some particular trigger reason of my own choice, rather than being told to.

We are seriously screwed up in this country over the whole business of being nice to victim groups, the various minorities having now being calculated to actually add up together as the majority of the population!(see We're (nearly) all victims now). It must make the do-gooders wring their hands in dismay when they realise that many of the victims often hold even more intolerant views than white van man.

I rather like the No prejudice, no preference strapline which I stumbled across recently at UKIPHome. An interesting blog but how mainstream UKIP it actually is I'm not certain. It is parodied here.

So, should any organisation I'm involved in sign up to Morley Together if the letter pops through the Chairman's letterbox? Colin has even said that we can approach him to take the pledge. Sorry Mate, I'm uncertain at this stage and somewhat cynical. I'd like to see the invite and maybe even chat with CC to try and work out his motives, because driving the BNP out of Morley has a big benefit for the Labour vote. For now, I go with polite indifference vergalised as No thanks, I'm not interested. Treat it like a pushy car salesman trying to close an unwanted deal, or a Jehova's Witness wanting to know if you believe that God is your Saviour. Dust down your assertivenes techniques, starting with broken record.

No thanks, I'm not interested...no thanks, I'm not interested...no thanks, I'm not interested...

Sounding better- some of the time...

I see from the news that Apple have launched something called the iPhone, a multi purpose mobile phone device that hopes to do for the Telecoms business what the iPod did for the Minidisc- i.e. gain massive market share and hammer the competition to the benefit of purchasers.

It isn't widely known outside of IT circles that Apple Computer and Apple Records had a bit of a tiff, with the outcome that Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. It terns out that Cisco have the rights to the name iPhone, so expect a new turn-on sound when it goes on sale- "Sosumi2".

My new Freebiephone* (tm) comes with a feature called "Wideband". What this means is that it has much better sonic performance than a regular phone. How good is the sonic performance of a regular phone? Grotty.

We can hear sounds from about 20 Hertz to about 20 KiloHertz, from a very low rumble to a high pitched shriek. A Hertz (Hz) is what used to be called a Cycle and a good analogy is a Rolf Harris Wobble Board- it rattles the air backwards and Forwards at a a low frequency of maybe 2-3Hz. (We don't hear the actual wobble, we hear higher frequency resonances).

At the bottom end, we can feel notes below this range, infrasonics being used to impressive effect on movies like "Earthquake!" where you could feel your seat and your innards rattling when it was switched on.

(Mains power is at 50 Hz, which you can hear as a low hum if you put your ear next to many household power supply devices like Phone chargers)

The high end cutoff varies according to age and circumstance. The younger we are, the higher we can hear (hence the ringtones above 16kHz that teenagers can hear and the teacher can't). Women can hear higher than Men, which strikes me as a Male defence mechanism against Nagshriek!

(When I was in my late teens, I found out at college that my hearing cut off at 14.5kHz, no doubt a side effect of wearing headset intercoms at Rock & Roll gigs.)

CD range is 20Hz to 22kHz (ish) and that is not considered as true HiFi by real audiophine buffs. Whilst we can't hear frequencies higher than our own personal range, the unheard sounds will interact with the heard ones to impact on the sonic experience. (Remember "Is it real, or is it Memorex?" adverts, where they broke a glass by playing a cassette? Yea, right...)

For the phone network, the acceptable range for intelligible speech was decided on donkeys years ago as the band from 300 Hertz to 3,400 Hertz, referred to as "Commercial bandwidth". Transmission equipment generally goes up to 4kHz so the Telcos used to borrow the 600 Hertz of headroom for out-of-band signalling in the days before digital. They also used to borrow inband for setup/calldown, notably 2,600Hz (US) and 2,280Hz (Eu) which you still hear on the telly occasionally to simulate a phone call in drama (the double chirp you hear on the hangup). 300Hz was effectively the roll-off point for the transmitters & receivers in the handset.

Now, my wideband phone can go from 50 Hz to 700Hz so it should certainly sound a lot less tinny. The trouble is that it doesn't. Why not? Because it is the only one. It is like having an HD ready telly but not having Sky HD, it performs exactly the same as the non-HD ones.

BT's 21st century Network promises Wideband, or at least it has been mentioned in presentations, when they described it as "near-CD audio quality)". (This is a bit like saying that a Mondeo is a "Near-Lexus experience" on the basis that you used to drive a Trabant!

New improved marketing techniques

Deep pockets productions presents the Multimedia Shades stunning sonic experience.

Click here and get on down!





(OK, it is recycled, but at least I'm doing my bit to save the planet)

From Udder Creative as part of a cheap as chips community radio sweeper set. Without having even met me, he created this!

Give me Presence- Now!

I was recently given a rather swish IP desktop phone gratis by a supplier to put on my desk at work. Here is a tiny picture of it...

Why did they give me a phone for nothing? Smart Marketing. I'd work out how to get the best out of it and the Green-eyed monster effect would hopefully result in Bosses coveting it. To prevent the bosses coveting it too much to the extent that it would transport itself up to Mahogany Row, it was given to me as a thank-you for working proactively with them on recent installs.

So when I retire, or move on, I can lay claim to the phone as my own and lug in my old one in its place. The only trouble is that I'd need a £100k phone system at home to make it work and by then they will probably be worth 50p on eBay!

Also by then, hopefully they will have gotten the bugs out of it. The old one was a single keypress to activate redirection of my calls to voicemail if I was stepping away from my desk for some reason. The new one takes six key presses to activate it and the feature doesn't actually work anyway...

What i want is the phone to be able to react to my presence according to pre-defined rules. How will it know I'm there? To be automatic, it would need to use RFID on something I had on me, maybe a phone pairing ID card in my wallet or perhaps on my Security pass that I wear on a lanyard all day.

Of course, I don't just want that to apply to my phone- I want my PC to work the same way as well so that it automatically locks when I step away and unlocks again when I return, updating my messaging presence accordingly. It doesn't negate the need for a second authentication factor
but it will make office life so much easier and make communicating much more effective.

Come on Networks Industry, I;m waiting and I'll buy one...

The Morley Summit

I've been invited to a "Summit" next Friday, organised by the City Council Area Committee which gives me "a unique opportunity to contribute to creating a vision for Morley".

It is by invitation only, however anyone can ask to be sent an invitation so it isn't exclusive, just they don't want people turning up unannounced (probably for the catering). Details are at the updated Independents site here.

The new Town Centre Manager is involved and the panel includes our MP, Robert Finnigan, the Town Mayor and an unspecified traders representative, maybe Graham from Happysaks?

There is a keynote address from Doctor Rachel Unsworth from the University who is a highly regarded regeneration expert.

Now, driving home the other evening, I was listening to Thinking Allowed on radio 4 which was discussing regeneration in Liverpool. The sociologists made the moot point that planners generally don't succeed in regenerating places, people do. I also recalled an interesting article about planning failure in an area of Newcastle I knew well in my childhood via a Bradford Blogger.

Morley's problems are fairly typical of what is now a dormitory town- it is on the retail slippery slope to becoming cheap-shop/crap-shop and the leisure opportunities are at best unremarkable in the evenings, unless you like Brass Band Concerts, for which Morley Town Hall is well known in those circles . The town centre has a buzz on saturday mornings but that can't sustain businesses all week, all month, all year. It is remarkable that we don't have a £1 shop yet and Kwik Save pulled out a couple of years ago but at least we haven't made the Crap Towns website yet.

So, what can politicians do? Spend other people's money, of course, distorted by petty party politics, oneupmanship & partisan well meaning but misguided beliefs. The town centre new street furniture was a success in the mid 90s, the pedestrianisation wasn't. Morley peaked with private enterprise and philanthropic investment in the Civic stakes a Century ago, often by the wealthy mill owners vying to out-do each other. During the 20th Century We had a Theatre, a Music Hall, two Cinemas and a skating rink. Morley is bristling with former Chapels and Churches. Alas, there isn't the draw to make it vibrant once again and this is a reflection on Society and the Benefits culture we have foolishly voted ourselves into since the last World War.

So, what should be in a vision for Morley? Visions and Missions tend to be full of nonsensical claptrap that sounds good but doesn't mean much. Here are a few, your mileage may vary:-

'To allow the evolution of Ennerdale as a wild valley for the benefit of people, relying more on natural processes to shape its landscape and ecology'.

"Attractive, sustainable and enterprising are words, which describe a successful and caring community. Economic prosperity and a variety of jobs contributes to quality of life, equitable opportunities and a sustainable environment. The city is serviced by a transport system which provides choices both within its boundaries and the balance of the region.

This attractive city celebrates achievement through festivals and events. Its civic spaces, bridges and award winning water features, gardens and centres are venues for people to gather, admire and reflect on the growth and change whilst respecting a rich heritage and past. Ipswich’s national team champions use these streets as the stage to celebrate success. Residents feel safe and this caring city is sought by enterprises seeking a livability for employees and investment growth. Thoughtful provision of infrastructure and services and a culture of ‘on going achievement’ continues to attract investment and new residents." (A small extract from Ipswitch)

“ To shape a welcoming, safe, clean, well-managed and vibrant town
centre, and improve Warrington’s standing and competitiveness within the
sub-region”

"To create an interesting, dynamic, vibrant heart catering for all with a mix of modern uses, amenities and shops to scale appropriate to Exmouth's size, population and status. To maximise the town's advantages of its sea front, estuary side, and level town centre and to promote its environmental assets accordingly."

"We exist to enthusiastically leverage existing timely opportunities in order that we may quickly revolutionize performance based content

It is our job to completely coordinate cutting edge infrastructures to allow us to seamlessly administrate excellent paradigms while promoting personal citizen growth" (Dilbert Mission Generator)

“ For Worthing to be a thriving Borough where people want to live, work and invest”

I like the last one best!

Wot, more bloggers?

The more astute of my readers may have noticed the new armour helmet logo on the right and that my hyperlinks further down to other sites have more than doubled. I have joined a loose alliance of small bloggers, many of them who write very well indeed. If you click on the Blogpower banner you can read more about it.

As some of them will no doubt drop in to suss me out, I'm going to participate in a current blog tag meme and reveal five things about myself not widely known. Tradition then states that I should tag five others, however as most of the sites I visit are all famous in web terms there isn't much point and also I balk at overly collectivist behaviour! In the spirit of co-operation, however, I have plucked five randomly out of the list- Cynical Chatter from the underworld, Onyx Stone, CityUnslicker, Morag the Mindbender and Finding Life Hard.

Having dabbled a bit behind the scenes in showbiz, I shall inulge in a bit of celebrity name dropping here. Every one has a story behind it, some more interesting than others!

1) Lionel Blair once stroked my thigh whilst he was perched on the arm of a Sofa

2) Jerry Lewis proudly showed me the photo in his wallet of his Wife and new Baby

3) I once urinated next to Les McEwan, the lead singer from the Bay City Rollers

4) Lisa Minelli asked me what I thought of some dance steps she and her Sister Lorna Luft were practising

5) Jools Holland insisted on taking my photograph because he had seen me on Telly

Here endeth the list...

Tonsorial tales

Tonight we had a trip to Mr. Gee for an occasional crop. I was beginning to look a little shaggy, or was that more like Doddy?

Sitting getting trimmed, the barbershop dialogue revolved around Christmas Presents. One clipper was surprised to have been given a Safe by her Mum. More sensible than it sounded- she had moved four times in the last year and is now having to fork out to replace mislaid documents.

Another Customer had got a hedge trimmer but had to stop using it due to school home time- he had been turfing the cuttings over the school wall it seems!

David assured me that he wouldn't be doing "Bats" but caught me with a "Bats no revengies", the Geordie celebration of having a haircut not dis-similar to happy-slapping passed down from generation to generation in the playground.

The rules are simple. If you spot someone who has obviously had a haircut, shouting Bats! entitles the observer to gently slap the haircut. The victim can then call revengies! and reciprocate the .

The haircutee can claim No-Bats! in order to prevent the initial bat and the assailant can claim No revengies! to prevent reciprocation, but it is first to speak in order to define precedent.

My standard riposte now is to dash into the house shouting Revengies, No Bats! which entitles me to get my retribution in first. I'd best not try it in the Council Chamber though...

Happy New Year

Morly returns to normal after the festivities. It seems a waste that the Christmas lights are still on, as they are in Bradford as well. It might not be 12th night yet but it seems incongruous as the pre- Xmas consumerism moves into the post-Xmas one.

Chez Grey will be taking down the tinsel at the weekend and consigning them to the loft for the next eleven months.

Books read over the holiday:-

Peter Kay's The Sound of Laughter, entertaining but stops just as his career takes off. All of the plotlines for that Peter Kay thing are seeds sown in these pages. If you have read it and want to know about the Lido mural, click to see it.

The Inside Little Britain inside story was informative, especially when combined with the Little Britain Live DVD commentary & behind the scenes extras. Who is "Miss x?" Who cares!

The Book of general ignorance _not_ by Steven Fry (he wrote the intro) is full of surprising facts debunking lots of accepted wisdom. For example, Historic Scots Tartan was actually a Victorian invention and the smashing orangey bit in a Jaffa Cake is actually Apricot.

Seas ns greetings...

not a mispritt, a localised lamp failure.
(Shome mishtake, shurely?)

A very merry christmas to both of my readers...

You are here...

In the summer, I grumbled about how our new Town Centre maps were something of a disappointment. You can judge for yourself from this photo.
Rummaging through my disk drive to find it, I came across a photo of another town map, this time from a small fishing village in North Wales. Much more interesting, although it does have the benefit of a harbour and coastal history.

Morley's disappearing angels, now you see them, now you don't...

The three angels in the ceremonial entrance of our Town Hall keep coming and going. Every time I drove or walked past by myself, they were there. Whenever I had company or a camera, they had gone.

Finally, they have been there at the same time as me, David and a Camera. I caught them for posterity below. (The Town Hall staff often store a large chair rack in the porch, presumably depending on how the hall is set out. When they do, they push the angels out of the way and unplug the lights).

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

It is now less than five months until May 3rd, when all of Morley town Council get elected, along with two Leeds City Councillors for Morley North and South. In the mind of the local politician, it is time to get writing, so the local rag letters page is somewhat dominated by posturing, slagging off and counter-accusation.

One issue that occasionally emerges locally is the provision of something called yellow buses for schools, generally aimed at sorting out the congestion at the school gate topping or tailing the day. However, I'm not entirely certain what the point of that is. Yellow buses are an American phenomenon, where kids are bussed in to their school if they live more than a mile or so away. I've experienced yellow buses in Saudi Arabia- where I worked they were reserved for the Contractors whilst the regular staff travelled on Greyhound Coaches- the contrast is the number 213 into town ompared to the National express Coach to London.

However, in any transport system, it is based on a hub and spoke arrangement to where people want to come from (many places) to where they want to go (the common target, the city centre, or in our case, one of many schools). It needs multiple pick-up points and routes to get to the central destination within the desired window and possibly the best way is to live near to where you want to get anyway, or not rely on the taxpayer to fund it should you need to travel further afield.

School buses are nothing new- when I went to senior school I used to recall a number of double-deckers near the school gates, all with their rolling cloth signs turned to "scholars". My occasional visits to nearby High Schools in recent years show that there are a number of coaches at home time, routed to suit demand.

What is so special about painting them yellow? And why do the local Labour party keep banging on about it via the letters page according to some sort of rota? Maybe the current political control of Leeds did away with some school routes which is why the local party wants to make a meal of it. There is always a hidden agenda in local politics...

An early Christmas present...

I used to be an occasional frequenter of a rather good chip shop called Peel Street Fisheries. It was ran by a middle-aged couple and we were on "hello luv" terms, a smile of recognition on the way in and some extra scraps on the product on the way out. Their particular speciality was a Corned-beef Cake, a potato cake made with Argentina's finest. (Yorkshire Fish Cakes tend to be battered layered potato & fish, rather than the breadcrumbed pureed innards from the Supermarket).

Occasionally, I would really push the boat out and have a spam fritter. I am rather fond of them for unknown reasons and the expectation is always better than the outcome!

About a year or so ago, the chip shop changed hands and became a combination Chip shop and Chinese takeaway. This became an opportunity to indulge in another of my irrational food fads, the special curry with fried rice. Their early offerings included a free fortune cookie and they generally include prawn crackers, although they are a little oily to my taste. The staff are very friendly, although I get the impression they don't speak too much English.

I visited on Monday as Karen was working late and included in the meal was a rectangular package that was obviously a Christmas present. On opening it I initially assumed that it was a pair of chopsticks and a reeded place mat, however on unfurling it, David was delighted to find that it was actually a 2007 Calendar which included all of the Chinese New Year definitions. Whilst basically a promotional giveaway, it delighted David who wants to put it on his wall next year.

Another satisfied Customer!

The law is no longer blind...

Have a read of this remarkable piece of law passed in Scotland.

It is particularly aimed at one Company and is a rather disgraceful piece of EU interference which appears to be unjustified and spiteful. The full story is in the online Telegraph here.

Hat tip to Englishman's Castle for the story.

The Government is not your friend, the EU particularly so.

Carols with the Mayor

Today is the Mayor's carol service organised by the Salvation Army. We went to one of these shows a couple of years ago and rather enjoyed it. It was presented theatrically with stage lighting and included some mini performances in amongst the Brass Band music (including a rather unexpected tamborine dance by some of the Salvationesses).

I'm rather fond of Salvationists. They have a very down to earth pragmatic approach to their worship, they get to wear a uniform, they enjoy a good tune and are generally amiable when not selling you the War Cry. One the down side, however, they are evangelical and like all evangelists are looking for an opportunity to lead you astray from the one true path of individualism. They also take the pledge and refrain from lifes little indulgences such as smoking, gambling and the demon drink.

I have it on good authority that fornication is still widely practised, however. Their bodies may be temples to god, although occasionally they let Eros in as does any closely knit community.

Will we be going today? Depends on the family mood- the last show was very long and really should have had an interval!

A little bit of politics...

Both of our likely prospective Labour MPs have come within the radar of Guido Fawkes, the blog of plots, rumours and conspiracy.

Firstly, MP Colin Challen has been accused of telling porkies about his recent bike accident in Trafalgar Square.

Now, Ed Balls has the whiff of Browngate about him with suspicious payments from charities & a rather unflattering picture of what the City really thinks of him.

What a dilemma for the local Labour party, a Watermelon or a Backroom Bruiser?

(Watermelon- green on the outside, red on the inside...)

The winds of change

I visited our local B&Q recently to get a new light switch after one of ours went a bit flaky. When there, I noticed that they are now selling domestic turbines which can be fully fitted for £1,495 including VAT. I took home a leaflet and thought about the economics of doing such a thing. It generates 1kW worth of power whilst the wind is blowing and from this article it can produce up to 2,000 kW/hours of electricity a year. As there are 8,760 hours a year then this suggests a usable wind about 25% of the time. (The rest oof the time, there is insufficient wind or too much and the unit goes into bypass).

As a Kilowatt/hour costs me approximately 10p then I can save a potential £200 a year with a wind turbine and the payback is under 8 years. The safe design life of the device is 10 years, so superficially, it seems viable. However, I strongly suspect that there will be an annual safety inspecion required after year three (at least £40?) and unless electric prices spiral upwards out of control then economics can't justify a purchase. Of course, it doesn't generate any carbon dioxide but what was the environmental cost of manufacture I wonder? The planning application costs certainly tip it over the edge.

There is also the issue of fitting a 1.7m wind turbine onto a modern quasi-semi in a fairly densely packed housing estate. Is the thing going to wail like a banshee and transfer groans and rattles through the brickwork?

It seems that there are 30% grants available that might make it notionally cost-effective, but spending someone else's money doesn't make sense with market forces, the viability still remains suspect.

I await the first turbine application to Morley Town Council Planning Committee with interest!

Christmas Angels- behind bars

I have frequently bemoaned the rather sad Christmas trees outside morley Town Hall. They are a decent size but they are unlit and only the top half is decorated, i.e. above scratter reaching height.

There was a snippet in the local paper a few weeks ago mentioning that the trees were going to be enhanced by one of the High Schools. I've now worked out what they have done, there are three angel type sculptures (from assorted recycled material) placed within the ceremonial entrance of the Town Hall at the top of the colonnade stairs. As it has locked gates at the entrance, it looks like the Angels are banged up in some particularly ornate prison cell!

There are a couple of discharge floodlights there but they aren't on a timeclock, they are lit at the whim of the staff. We passed on Friday at just before 10pm and it was dark within the vestibule so I imagine many passers-by don't even know they are there.

I'd loan you a £5 timeclock fellas, but the Safety Elf would want it PAT tested after a risk assessment on the consequences of plugging it in...

Tis the season to be jolly...

Thursday night, Morley lights were switched on. I was surprised to be interviewed as part of the proceedings, although it was mainly to fill in due to the lateness of some Panto performers. Morley FM's Charlie Keith was Compere, referred to as "Charlie Chuckles from Chorley FM" by Guy from Real Radio!

Friday, we went to see Annie at the Grand. A good show, a bit of a "chick flick" judging by the audience make up, but not one to be talked about for months afterwards, unlike Saturday, when we saw "Little Britain Live" at Manchester Apollo. There were a lot of children there, somewhat inappropriate considering how rude it was.

A kick in the balls...

Our local MP Colin Challen must be alarmed to discover that Ed Balls, the current MP for Normanton, intends to become the next MP for Morley and Outwood, the new seat after forthcoming boundary Commission changes. (It was in the Morley observer & Advertiser today but it is also in the Telegraph Online.).

Now if I was Mr. Challen, I'd be feeling a little uncomfortable. Ed Balls is Gordon Brown's best buddy, whilst Colin Challen is regarded as a sad, anorak wearing, climate-change obsessive greenie fruitloop who drives a sewing machine. (At least, according to Jeremy Clarkson!)

A little bit of politics...

I once came across something called a leftist lexicon not too long ago that gave realistic definitions of big sounding processes & behaviours (the Private Eye does something similar called EUphemisms). The one that particularly stuck in my mind was something to the effect of Consultation: a method of ignoring people while simultaneously patronising them. This immediately sprang to mind when I read the front cover of the Morley obtiser. It seems that the world and his dog want to consult stakeholders about our leisure centre. It was built in a hurry just before the 1974 reorganisation (at thich point the Borough had to hand over everything to Leeds City Council) and popular opinion was that it was built on the cheap. I'd rather think that it was well constructed to a price but has been wantonly neglected in the intervening thirty years despite being extended and with a massive Gym investment. It gets patched up and redecorated but another euphemism for that is known as "turd polishing". The pool was closed for most of the summer holidays to repair the rather dilapidated false ceiling and once it re-opened it didn't look that much different (apart from the wayward metal strips no longer hanging on by friction and rust). It turns out that there are serious concerns about the consequences of draining the pool (involving structural failure, i.e. the side walls end up on the bottom of the pool) so most of the closure time involved a very elaborate scaffolding operation in-situ.

There is potentially PFI money available for a new centre but the building may be entirely rebuilt which would involve extended closure and the "stakeholders" are restless.

Local authorities appear to be particularly bad at running leisure centres and this is probably due to education and social services gobbling up most of the budget so the development plans are more focussed on all of the staff make-work endemic in the public sector rather than catering for what the users want. I don't like PFI deals. Not because I object to the private sector making an homnest buck, more so that it is like buying stuff on the never never with no scope to take the goods back if they aren't up to scratch. Yes sir, I know this Mobile Phone is expensive, but it is very desirable. don't worry about the money, just pay us £5 a week for the rest of your life...

The moon on a stick...

Driving home yesterday, I heard an interesting Vignette on Radio 4 about the strange business of the moon looking much bigger when near the horizon. It was on More or Less and can be heard again about 20 minutes in here (while it lasts). Whilst I listened to a range of theories (& no satisfactory conclusion) the moon hung large in the sky over Morley. Towards the end of the feature, the presenter suggested that we look at the moon upside down between our legs- and to explain that... (The host, Andrew Dilnot, warned us to take care if we tried it at home).

Later that evening, passers by would have been amused by the sight of a thin boy and a fat man looking at the moon by bending down and peering between our legs. Apart from making me slightly dizzy, the elusive big surprise passed me by, and David as well. A t'internet search brought up this which didn't tell me much and left me mostly none the wiser.

Maybe the morley Moon is less subject to misleading perception by us down to earth Yorkshire folk, where we call a spade anything but an earth inverting horticultural implement.

Strange but compelling...

The Theremin is probably one of the strangest musical instruments around and was a mainstay of Music Halls for those who could play it well (who are few and far between).

At last... it's Mike Elliott!

Mike & I have shared a Pint or two together. He was a regular at the Lindisfarne Christmas shows & I played Mastermind with him once backstage at the Coventry Theatre. We also booked him for an 18 plus ANC (unbenownst to me) & after sharing several beers after his set, he was asked to do an unexpected second half!

He briefly had his own TV show and even released two albums, "Out of the brown" and "At last...".

Last I heard he was a Radio DJ in the north East. The band on this clip is a Lindisfarne pre-reforming. They were called Pakamax, but Mike referred to them on air as the "Dole Wallahs".

Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

YouTube is a window on the world. Once you wipe off the flies & roadkill, you see some sights.

This song reminds me of seeing "10" in an open air cinema in Saudi Arabia. I probably missed lots of it due to the censor's scissors though.

Song title features in blog post title shock!

I've mentioned this video before...

Possibly one of the greatest funky instrumental breaks ever... 2 minutes 20 seconds onwards. (Longer on the album though).

It is Steely Dan... My old school.

Common as muck...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 4 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Into the valley...

We've had a couple of days off as it is half term. Yesterday, we went up to Lightwater Valley, near Ripon. It describes itself as the ultimate family day out but what what you get in amongst a couple of gems is a selection of moderately clapped out fairground rides and fast food that arguably contravenes the Trades description Act (as far as the word fast applies).

The oddest ride there is something called Toad Hole which is a sort of watersplash from inside a cave down into a pond below on a rope tethered carriage. It wasn't working yesterday though...

My favourite ride of the day was the Twister, a spinning wild mouse style ride very similar to the one on the end of the South Pier at Blackpool and which was bought new a couple of years back. Their headline ride is called the Ultimate and is a very long coaster that used to be the longest in the world. It looks like a Woodie with two large wooden lift hills but is actually of steel construction. The lift hills are excruciatingly slow, particularly the 2mph chug round the top of the second hill. It then enters a very fast undulating run curving & banking fiercely through trees , swooping through two tunnels and giving you a good bone rattle until eventually sauntering back into the station some seven minutes or so after you set off. Consequently the throughput on the ride is very poor, with only six trains an hour and some of the back seats not available/water ballasted yesterday (apparently due to the lap bars being faulty). The ride didn't open until mid-day (we queued from 11:55 and boarded at 12:28). It had what looked like 40 minute queues every time we walked past the station so we couldn't be bothered to ride a second time. They can run two trains but the crew would have to work twice as hard and why should they bother? They have your gate money already...

They have an in-the-dark coaster called the Sewer Rat that has a particularly well themed entrance route where you walk through sewer pipes and down rusty stairs surrounded by the sound (& sight) of rushing water. The Coaster itself is rather mediocre and would look particularly unimpressive with the lights on in its underground bunker but the inability to tell what is about to happen next does bring the element of surprise when you suddenly find yourself dropping like a stone.

They were promoting a ride called the skyrider as being new for 2006. It is a giant swing ride where the chained seats spin as the central support rises then it swoops as the upper structure tilts and counter-rotates. I'm sure the ride itself isn't new and was there last time we visited. What is new is the theming- it has been painted with musical motifs and the control hut is covered in Feux posters for Rock groups. Previous to this there was another swing ride which was much bigger but somewhat simpler, not having the swoop motion. What it did have, however, was an enormous moon-like structure which counter-rotated so that it looked interesting. It was all painted green and there were a couple of rectangular hatches missing on the surface of the moon to give it that uniquely British look of negligence.

A large yellow swing ride looked interesting- the Eagles's Claw. This was a circle of 24 inward facing seats on the end of a pendulum, a smaller version of Drayton Manor's Maelstrom and apparently an earlier design. Regrettably, I was too big to ride, but David got a go (and didn't like it as he didn't realise why I couldn't).

Is it worth a trip there? Yes, if you don't go with high expectations of it being Disneyland or a major league Uk theme park. Also, be on the lookout for discount vouchers, we managed to get in for £5.95 each with a coupon out of the Manchester Evening News that a Gran had supplied. Don't bother if it is raining though, most of the park is out of doors and the grass was very squelchy. The shops are worth a look at the exit (which can be visited without having to enter the park) and the home made fudge in the courtyard gift shop is sensationally sticky!

Christmas is coming...

You know that Christmas is on the way when the annuals, selection boxes and Terrys Chocolate Oranges start to appear in ASDA. I don't think that they are bringing the season earlier in particular, it is just that since they expanded the store the warehouse ended up correspondingly smaller so we now have visible storage areas in the seasonal aisles. There is about 50 yards worth of Halloween tat which will no doubt disappear very quickly on November 1st, to be replaced by Xmas tat.

The Morley Christmas lights are up but fortunately not yet lit. I imagine that the Council gets Morley out of the way before tackling the much more ambitious Leeds Lights, a sort of mini-blackpool round the City Centre without the smell of candy floss and sick (apart from Giro day, of course).

Top tip for enjoying the Blackpool Illuminations- Park in the South big car park and catch a tram from near the Pleasure Beach or the Sandcastle at about 45 minutes before the published switch-on time. You want to travel to the Cabin, but if you arrive with time to spare get off at Bispham and walk back past the Tableaux to where they start (just slightly after the Cabin.)

The lights will start more-or-less at the appointed time and you will be travelling in the opposite direction to the crowds. Once you have enjoyed all of the tableaux, hop on a near-empty tram and enjoy the lights all the way back to the Pleasure Beach. (The LED sphere light tree on a real tree in the centre of the Gynn Square roundabout is particularly pretty). This has worked on both occasions in recent years, any other deviation from this plan will be somewhat fraught, e.g. driving along the Prom or trying to board a tram anywhere along the route in the first few hours after switch-on.

This year was slightly marred by the double decker tram windows being absolutely filthy and also some Burberry Boy behind us assuming that we all shared his taste in mobile phone music. (It might have sounded fine through a hi-fi rather than a half inch piezo speaker but I still wasn't interested in being subjected to it without discussion). However, the mood was lifted when we saw the Green Machine tableau complete with solar panels and windmill working overtime- a fountain effect at the top right became instantly recognisable as a MacDonalds Golden Arch as it went through the sequence, something the Greenies would have been aghast about had they spotted the symbolism. It wasn't yellow but even david spotted it!

Back to Yorkshire, I have heard that the Morley Switch-on is on November 23rd at 7pm which is a little over four weeks away so that we can start working ourselves up to a frenzy in anticipation. Hopefully Morley FM will be involved again, we understand that our very own Charlie Keith may be hosting it but there are conflicting reports about whether Real radio will be participating again.

Another sign of an impending Christmas- Spam starts to turn up about Santa!

By the way, Morley had another Continental Market at the start of October but I don't think anyone noticed...

(Lack of) Pleasure Beach

Blackpool Pleasure Beach continues to pull in the crowds but it is now horribly expensive- £29 for a wristband, £72 for a family of three. When we went recently, the Big One was closed (probably due to high winds) and the Spin Doctor & Flying Machines were also posted as out of action, possibly for similar reasons.

The Plesh isn't too big on background maintenance. I don't mean that they compromise safety, only that lots of trivial things often don't work. The noah's Ark walk-through ride has a bit where stepping on a floor area sends a blast of cold air down your neck. This time, however, it was blowing all the time at reduced pressure. A bouncing staircase didn't bounce, an infinity mirror effect was spoiled by a large amount of accumulated grime. Animatronics didn't animate, wooden horses were wrapped in hazard tape, roller coaster seats had sandbags in them. The Valhalla water ride is full of disappointments- effects still there but rarely working. (Talking Norse Head, snow machines, pop-up monster, rotating tunnels, water vortex, gas flame effects, even the flakey lame lightning van der graff generator (which has now been replaced by a rather lame strobe light that flashes in the cage where the generator used to be).

What really takes the pleasure out of the pleasure beach, though, is the creeping health & safety mentality. Rides which spent the first fifty years without any restraints whatsoever have gradually acquired lap bars and now, sadly, seat belts. The rides are perfectly safe if riders hold on and act responsibly. However, due to the risk of people frigging about (standing up, leaning out etc.) the rest of us have to endure being strapped and clamped in to the detriment of the ride experience. The Grand National now has individual seat belts, high seat dividers and clamp-in lap pads that swap the joys of woodie airtime for the unpleasantness of being bashed about whilst clamped with a vice like grip. Even that most gentle of rides the Roller Coaster has a shared seatbelt, although it doesn't impact too much on the ride. The Big Dipper still has its shared lapbars of old but I'll give it another season or two before that too falls to the gods of 'elfansafety.

The other impact of these new safety features, of course, is that it knackers the ride throughput. It takes much longer to check all of the cars on the train and even running two trains, the despatch is worse than what it used to be with one train, or it certainly feels it as your train has to sit there waiting until the old train has arrived back at the station. The Nash doesn't have any blocking areas after despatch, there are only final approach trim brakes and two sets of platform brakes. The Big One gets round this by having intermediate brake zones & being able to stop trains on the lift hill (& of course, starting them again with the pullup chain). The Nash now has modern fin brakes to replace the original wooden side brakes, but even that comes at a price. Our train was definitely winning the race (being several car lengthjs ahead) but as we swept under the final approach bridge and hit the trims, they burned off our excess speed & the other train overtook us and pipped us to the post as their braking wasn't as fierce. Bah, humbug!

Putting on the Ritz

I took a trip over to the Ritz Brighouse on Sunday to attend an Organ Concert. The Ritz is a former Cinema which is now a ballroom. It also stars a large Wurlitzer- a 10 ranker formerly in the Oldham gaumont amongst other places (even as close as Pudsey).

Organ concerts are slightly odd events. They tend to attract the silver haired brigade (who generally remember the organs in their original cinema homes) and all over the Country people go along to hear a number of accomplished players do the rounds. Some of the audience play themselves, some are organ anoraks. Many simply go to enjoy an hour or two of gentle light entertainment and indulge in nostalgia.

Well, now, with the aid of a PC and a simple sound card, you can have your very own Mighty Wurlitzer emulator in your own house. You don't need three phase supplies, several rooms of pipe ranks, electro-mechanics, blowers, toy shelves, percussions and swell shutters. You don't have to store your massive organ console in the conservatory or garage or even excavate a pit lift to make it rise and fall. With Miditzer, you can download a free program and practice till the cows come home without having to worry about the caretaker wanting to lock up or noise complaints from the bowling alley.

Download the software and enjoy yourself. You can fiddle about using your keyboard but to make music properly you really neead a Midi Keyboard, a piano like device you hook up to the PC. The hard bit is in making it sound good like an accomplished player is able to. However, you can have fun with the bird whistles, kettle drums & klaxons. If you download their trial version of the three manual nineteen rank Miditzer, a real monster of an Organ. You even get tuned sleigh bells and a swanee whistle!

Flying the flag

I've put up a link to 18 Doughty Street in the toolbar. It is an interesting new venture which is intended to offer an alternative to the mainstream media, free of the nonsensical shackles of OfCom which say that broadcast news has to be balanced and can't have a point of view. Tell that to the Biased BBC crew...

They launch on October the 10th and I'm looking forward to it.

Morley Literature Festival

Well, it has been and gone and can best be described as a "partial success"- lots of events but not so many bums on seats other than for Gervaise Phinn.

Perhaps people didn't quite grasp what it was all about- someone referred to it as the "Morley Literacy Festival".

Maybe next year, we should concentrate on numeracy and invite Carol Vorderman?

School in Crisis - days 3-5

On Wednesday morning, I noticed on my mobile that I had been left a voice mail the previous evening. I rang in and was stunned to hear that the school was going to remain closed until further notice. Despite the power being back on, the fire alarm remained unserviceable and the batteries had expired on it. The staff were uncomfortable with reopening the school without a fire alarm as they would have to set up fire wardens to patrol the building and it would increase the risk to the children. Karen was extremely unhappy with this and expressed the term "lightweight" several times. After all, every classroom has an exit directly to the outdoors, the fire evacuations happen very quickly and what was wrong with bells & whistles? That got me thinking to my primary in the 60s, I don't recall that having bells, they just used to use the playtime handbell for fire drills. (I once recall traipsing downstairs during a drill to find a chair at the bottom with the word "fire" on it and we all had to go up, across and down the other staircase).

So, Karen managed to organise two days holiday but both of us had meetings on for the Friday. They tried unsuccessfully to go swimming that day but during term time, baths are either closed for school children, or in the case of Wakefield Lightwaves- randomly closed anyway. They resolved that by a trip to Blackpool Sandcastle on the Thursday and they both came back bruised & scraped from the "MasterBlaster", a rather manic roller coaster in rubber rings.

On Thursday afternoon, Karen rang the school and talked to the Head who still didn't know the score abour Friday opening. A new alarm had been fitted but it was incompatible with the detectors so they were still on the case. Karen was very firm about this being very difficult for working parents, especially this time of year when they may be low on remaining holiday. Thursday evening, we rang the school ansafone to be informed that the school was still closed on Friday but for working parents it would be possible to bring their children in on the understanding that they would all be in one part of the school and... (the other Ts & Cs were not passed on as the message cut off abruptly. The school phone system is an odd beast- it answers the line and plays strange ringing noises to your for quite a while before it deigns to answer your call with a greeting. It is possibly something to do with fax detection but it is rather shite at it- most fax detectors do so in a few seconds and many can start to play an announcement whilst listening for fax beeps.

So, we took david in to school on Friday via the normal childcare. However it transpired that a number of parents were told they had to collect their children at lunch time and David told us that there were about 10 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon. We weren't contacted (or didn't appear to be). Could that be down to me being a Governor and Karen standing no nonsense?

He enjoyed himself playing Internet games most of the day and as we had packed him a lunch that morning in case the Kitchen was closed he was told he had to eat it even though other children were fed.

The school re-opened on Monday as normal and there was a very apologetic letter from the acting Head explaining the kerfuffle. There was a training day scheduled for the Friday and they decided to continue with it as it was a Morley Family of Schools joint event- if it had been internal to the school they would have had no hesitation in cancelling it. Of course, teachers are obliged to hold five non-contact days a year so it still would have gone ahead on another occasion.

What surprised us most of all about the whole debacle was that there didn't seem to be any obvious form of crisis management plans in place, either by the school or the local authority. It was also a classic creeping disaster where it always seemed to be close to being resolved and hours turned into days. If the place had burnt down then no doubt the council disaster recovery team dust down their Portakabin contact sheet, or maybe they don't...