No News is Good News

Noting to report on the Sredni front. It is looking as if diet will address his pancreatitis - so I will make no further comment here unless it all goes tits up.

Saturday

So glad to say that Sredni continues to be his normal irritating self. We are hopeful that a controlled diet may well be sufficient to cope with his pancreatitis - although it is but a week since we took him, really ill, to the vet. Already a spoiled little brute, he is now constantly cosseted and pampered, even more than previously.

Up and Down like a whore's drawers on Navy Day

Sredni passed a good night and on this morning's walk not only was he a thorough pain chasing Meg, but he also passed a completely normal stool, something that has not happened since last week. I am hoping that yesterday's vomiting was a one off, but this condition does not relinquish control so easily. Still, this morning is a good sign, for which we must be grateful.

Not so good

Sredni was sick in the mid afternoon. This isn't a good sign, and rather makes us fear for the worst.

Sredni continues to show good signs

Sredni had a normal night and this morning was his usual irritating self. His tail is curled over his back, very nasty, resembling a scorpion somewhat. He was lively on the morning walk and we couldn't really ask for better signs. He is still on his medication and the test will be what happens when he reaches the end of his course - was it a bad infection or is an organ giving trouble? But that is a worry for a few days time: at the moment he couldn't be doing better.

Keith Emerson RIP

Nearly thirty years ago I was with a TV news crew that had been shooting an item in East Sussex and we were having lunch in a rural pub. Keith Emerson came over and introduced himself, as he was curious about what we had been shooting. It ended up with him inviting us over to his nearby house where we spent an hour, and I had the great pleasure of playing a duet with him on the piano  - The Girl from Ipanema as it happens. A real gentleman and a friendly soul. RIP.

Sredni on Monday morning

A good night was passed. Sredni is eating normally and came out on a short walk this morning. It is looking encouraging but there is a long way to go yet.

Sunday - Sredni is home

After his overnight at the vet, Sredni refused to allow himself to be examined, a good sign of his spirit I suppose. He has been allowed home and seems to be grateful. He nibbled a bit of food. I am hoping that his drip and medication while at the vet has had a good effect. Fingers crossed: he is by no means out of the woods yet, but it is so good to have him in the house again.

Sredni is ill

Our little dog Sredni (Vashtar) has become quite ill and has been taken in overnight by the vet. I don't hold out much hope for his recovery - pancreatitis. He is very dear to us and particularly to my wife. If will be hard if he dies, but of course we would want to have him put down if he were in any pain. Oh dear, oh dear. The heartache when you invest so much love in an animal.

Monty Python Sketch

­­Game Show Host (John Cleese) : Good evening and welcome to Stake Your Claim. First this evening we have Mr Norman Voles of Gravesend who claims he wrote all Shakespeare's works. Mr Voles, I understand you claim that you wrote all those plays normally attributed to Shakespeare?

Voles (Michael Palin) : That is correct. I wrote all his plays and my wife and I wrote his sonnets.

Host: Mr Voles, these plays are known to have been performed in the early 17th century. How old are you, Mr Voles?

Voles: 43.

Host: Well, how is it possible for you to have written plays performed over 300 years before you were born?

Voles: Ah well. This is where my claim falls to the ground.

Host: Ah!

Voles: There's no possible way of answering that argument, I'm afraid. I was only hoping you would not make that particular point, but I can see you're more than a match for me!

Host: Mr Voles, thank you very much for coming along.

Voles: My pleasure.

Host: Next we have Mr Bill Wymiss who claims to have built the Taj Mahal.

Vymiss (Eric Idle) : No.

Host: I'm sorry?

Wymiss: No. No.

Host: I thought you cla...

Wymiss: Well I did but I can see I won't last a minute with you.

Host: Next...

Wymiss: I was right!

Host: ... we have Mrs Mittelschmerz of Dundee who cla... Mrs Mittelschmerz, what is your claim?

Mittelschmerz (Graham Chapman in drag) : That I can burrow through an elephant.

Host: (Pause) Now you've changed your claim, haven't you. You know we haven't got an elephant.

Mittelschmerz: (Insincerely) Oh, haven't you? Oh dear!

Host: You're not fooling anybody, Mrs Mittelschmerz. In your letter you quite clearly claimed that ... er ... you could be thrown off the top of Beachy Head into the English Channel and then be buried.

Mittelschmerz: No, you can't read my writing.

Host: It's typed.

Mittelschmerz: It says 'elephant'.

Host: Mrs Mittelschmerz, this is an entertainment show, and I'm not prepared to simply sit here bickering. Take her away, Heinz!

Mittelschmerz: Here, no, leave me alone!

(Sound of wind and sea)

Mittelschmerz: Oooaaahh! (SPLOSH)

Working in BBC News at Alexandra Palace

                              Memories of Alexandra Palace

                   My first memory of AP is of driving up the hill from Wood Green. This imposing building with the wonderful transmitter mast still in place looked out over London with a confidence that spoke of BBC superiority in all things technical and it was with due humility that I went inside. I had transferred there from Ealing as at the time I was living in Essex and the journey to and from AP was much more convenient – and as the film sound dubbing and transfer departments were a detached exclave of Ealing, we were in theory answerable to nobody for miles and miles!

                   As a Holiday Relief Sound Assistant my position was lowly, but I was made very welcome by my shift partner, John Hills-Harrop. Our job was to man the transfer bay and the recording area of the dubbing theatre. The transfer bay would usually be duplicating 16mm magnetic film for the library, but was able to record the output of the dubbing theatre if necessary. When I was there there were two 16mm channels and a 35mm channel routed through a patch bay and a mixing desk with limited equalisation and (memory is hazy) I think six of those huge pots that you could pull out to clean the contact studs. There was a Leevers-Rich ¼” deck for the very occasional reel of tape that came our way: most location news film sound was recorded on magnetic stripe on the edge of the film in the camera. During the years I was there we never had to try to synchronise the pulse on a tape (if recorded on a sync Nagra), which is just as well, as none of us knew how to do it, and the equipment was missing! One of our constant occupations there was to splice countdown leader onto the front of the 16mm or 35mm mag film stock, so that the magnetic film would be in sync with the film on the projectors.

                   These projectors lived upstairs, manned by a cheerful crew of projectionists or projjies, who were great fun and a constant source of new jokes. One of the projectors was a venerable great lump of metal, festooned with fire extinguishers and designed to run nitrate film. All the projectors and all the mag film recorders could be linked to the Selsyns, which lurked in the basement. I was shown them once, ushered into their presence in a manner similar to that of Howard Carter seeing Tutankhamen’s treasure. There they were, great grey beasts like the engine room of the Queen Mary. When dubbing, projector and recorder were connected to a Selsyn – and you had to make sure that the lock was good by twisting the inching knob, because a false lock would result in a runaway – and having laced up the film so that the Start mark was on the recording head you pressed a button which signalled readiness to the dubbing mixer. He would press a buzzer which asked the projjies to start the process and slowly the Selsyn would start up, with projector and recorder slaved to it. A counter as well as the projected picture would tell the dubbing mixer and gram swinger whereabouts they were and the music, commentary and fx would be played in. Apart from the projectors upstairs there were some mag film players, which had loops of fx which were in almost constant use. “Prov” was one, a contraction of “Provincial Street Atmosphere”, a useful low level background noise that fitted very many pictures. As many news films were shot in those days without sound, even the wretched sound on film effort, dubbing was a necessary process for nearly all news items. Even those which had been shot with  sound had to be smoothed out and music and commentary added. The usual equipment for recording sound on film in the field, with which I became familiar later on, was an amplifier/mixer, usually made by Auricon, which had two mic level and one line level inputs. The output was connected directly to a magnetic head within the camera (sometimes an Auricon, others a CP16) via a multicore cable, which also brought back the audio from the confidence head. The ill-named confidence head! I can remember the first time I listened to it I sent the gear back into maintenance: I couldn’t believe how awful it was. To be fair to the equipment, it had to smooth out the intermittent motion of the film in the camera in only a very short distance. You always had to be aware that if you unplugged the connecting lead to the camera while the amplifier/mixer was switched on, the heads would get magged up and if you saw the cameraman’s hand stray to the plug to free himself of the irksome sound recordist a sharp reprimand had to be issued.

                   Life inside AP was good. There was a bar – of course there was, the place teemed with journalists – and a canteen. I instituted an innovation there. In my opinion the portion of baked beans although low in cost was small in size, so I asked for two portions, which I would of course pay for. This was considered for a little while by the catering hierarchy and then accepted with grudging and suspicious aspect. Somehow, they felt, there was a scam going on, but they couldn’t see it! No scam: I just loved baked beans, and plenty of them.

                   The reader will, I hope, excuse me if I allude briefly to the lavatories at AP. They were kept spotless and were the usual haven of introspection where one could reflect upon the verities of life. But in common with the rest of the BBC they had a very serious shortcoming: the loo paper! I had thought that the shiny, glazed variety had been phased out in all civilised places shortly after the war – in fact, that would have been an excellent reason for going to war. But here, in every cubicle, was not only a plentiful supply of the stuff, but each separate sheet was emblazoned with the BBC coat of arms, in a delicate green, if I remember correctly. To use it smacked of treason, or revenge if one were inclined that way. I am very glad to say that having left AP I never encountered this ghastly invention again, even when I occasionally visited Lime Grove or TVC.

                   As AP was the headquarters of BBC News, and we in film dubbing and the film editors were not under anyone’s control apart from our masters in far away Ealing, we developed some unofficial practices that were convenient. The usual shift pattern was a twelve hour shift, 1000 to 2200 two days on and two days off. Over weekends when the two day shift went over both Saturday and Sunday the two operators split the shift so that one chap would do both jobs of transfer and dubbing on the Saturday and the other chap would do the Sunday. As there was much less library work to do, this was entirely possible, although sometimes you would be whizzing from transfer bay to dubbing area like a demented fly. Each area had a talkback system which connected with everywhere necessary, but the one in the dubbing recording area also had a button labelled QPD. This puzzled me, so I pressed it and asked who was there. A very friendly engineer called Roger Tone (known to his friends as Thousand Cycle) appeared round the corner and took me on a guided tour of QPD, which was a method of recording video images onto film, the intervals between video fields and frames being so short than the Quick Pull Down was necessary to move the film along fast enough. Also in the dubbing recording area was a distortion meter and a wow and flutter meter, both of which provided hours of harmless fun: on a slow day the recorders were measured to within an inch of their lives.

                   Sometimes we would stray out of the transfer and dubbing areas to see what was going on in the editing department. I can remember being sickened by the raw footage coming in from the Biafra War in Nigeria. The Nigerian Army wanted to impress the world’s press by shooting one of its own soldiers who had been caught looting. He was tied to a tree and a firing squad assembled. The order to fire was just about to be given when one cameraman needed to change a battery, so everyone waited. Then a member of the firing squad turned mutinous and was punched and hit with a rifle butt until he fell senseless. Finally, when the officer in charge was assured that all cameras were working the firing squad did its job, but quite badly as for a minute or two the poor chap tied to the tree moaned as he slowly died. To me, a lad barely 20, it was frightening and horrible. It should have been transmitted as is, I think, but of course it couldn’t be.

                   On a happier occasion one of the editors put together a film that he had shot on holiday in Spain of a narrow gauge railway. That fascinated me and I stayed to watch far too long. The dubbing mixer, Digger Shute, was unimpressed by my excuse and gave me a rocket!

                   After a couple of years at AP my time as Holiday Relief came to an end and I went off to another world of feature films, ITV and eventually back full circle working for the BBC, amongst others, as a freelance. I don’t think that I have had happier times than when I was working in Alexandra Palace, though.

French Revolutionary Calendar

Ever wondered how the French Revolutionary Calendar worked?

French Republican Calendar

Began on September 22 1792. Total number of days 365, 12 months of 30 days. The remaining 5 days being devoted to festivals & vacations, fell from September 17 - 22. Leap years retained at same frequency as Gregorian calendar and added to festival days. 1st leap year was year 3 (extra day fell September 22nd 1795). Each 4 year period was known as a Franciade.

                Each 30 day month was divided into 3 periods of 10 days called décades, the last day of each décade being a rest day.

                      Republican - Gregorian Dates

                Months marked * + 1 day Gregorian during leap years: see notes below

                *Vendémiaire (vintage: September 22 - October 21)

                *Brumaire (mist: October 22 - November 20)

                *Frimaire (frost: November 21 - December 20)

                *Nivôse (snow: December 21 - January 19)

                *Pluviôse (rain: January 20 - February 18)

                *Ventôse (wind: February 19 - March 20)

                Germinal (seed-time: March 21 - April19)

                Floréal (blossom: April 20 - May 19)

                Prairial (meadow: May 20 - June 18)

                Messidor (harvest: June 18 - July 18)

                Thermidor (heat: July 19 - August 17)

                Fructidor (fruits: August 18 - September 16)

                Abandoned 1 January 1806

1999/2000 = 207. in Autumn. Care is needed in translating from one system to the other as their leap years were out of synch Year 3 was first leap year = 1794. Republican dates match Gregorian dates as above except in leap years as follows:

                A Republican leap year precedes a Gregorian leap year, and its intercalary is on September 22. Therefore the New Year (1re.Vendémiaire) starts on September 23 and all the dates in the table above are shifted forward one day until Ventôse 10 (February 29 [Gregorian intercalary]). Ventôse 11 will then be March 1st. and everything is back in step again.

                To find whether a Gregorian Year is a leap year: if it divisible by 4 it is a leap year, unless it is a centennial year (xx00) indivisible by 400. Therefore 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, 2000 is. The preceding September 22 will be where the calendars go out of synch, and the Gregorian intercalary restores things once more. 

This appeared in New Scientist

I wrote this shortly after I was made redundant from TVS and thrown into the freelance market again. I was full of bile and I think that this shows through. The piece was heavily sub edited and that is to blame for any infelicities. The layout is a bit odd because I haven't figured out a way to make this blog accept the illustrations that were a part of this essay as published.

new     scientist

FORUM

Never mind the sound, see the pictures Nick Flowers is concerned about some unsound practices A

LMOST   every   month we   hear   of   exciting

r\

' Television sound, like sound in films, has always been an area ignored by the media moguls'

new developments in televi­sion technology. The media and industry regularly debate the merits and demerits of different systems of high-definition TV and specialists explore ways of using digital technology to transmit pictures. Televi­sion companies are already shooting wide-screen pro­grammes and broadcasters are extending NICAM digital stereo sound across Britain. And digital processing has revolutionised the graphics that we now see daily on our screens.

But with all these great improvements in handling and transmitting the signal, it is ironic that at the sharp end, where real life gets turned into electronic impulses by the camera, there has been a major degradation in recent years in the quality of the television programmes that we receive.

Television sound, like sound in films, has always been an area ignored by the media moguls. They seem to take the extraordi­nary attitude that the pictures are the all important part, and that sound can be relegated to the position of a poor relation, a tiresome hanger-on. Yet if the sound breaks down during a programme, pictures alone will not usually suffice to convey what is going on adequately. But if sound remains and the picture goes, you can eas­ily keep up with the plot. Radio is still with us; silent movies went out years ago.

Despite this, the television companies decided a few years back to phase out the sound recordist on the majority of news-gathering operations. Instead of there being a skilled technician operating sensitive and sophisticated equipment, all the while monitoring the quality of sound on head­phones, it now became the job of the reporter to hold a primitive, robust micro­phone, while the recording of the audio signal onto the tape was done automati­cally within the camera, with no one to check that all was well.

The results were immediately obvious— and irritating, especially to those who had bought NICAM television sets in the hope of enjoying improved sound. NICAM will demonstrate the flaws in a soundtrack just as faithfully as the perfection. If the reporter uses his or her microphone inex­pertly, the voice of the interviewee is dis­tant or distorted. Lapel microphones are so mispositioned that the speaker's voice appears muffled. But the chief fault is the sound of wind in the background.

A microphone will respond to a moving current of air, as opposed to pressure waves in still air, by producing a rumbling sound which becomes worse as the velocity of the

air increases. The recordist can improve matters by putting a properly designed foam protector over the microphone, and by filtering out some of the low frequencies in which the rumbling lies, but this works only in light winds.

As soon as the speed of the air current increases to more than 20 kilometres an hour, what is needed is a windgag: a cylin­der made of a plastic mesh and covered by a thin fabric, within which the microphone is placed. The moving cur­rent   of  air   is   diverted smoothly around the sur­face of the fabric, leaving still air surrounding the microphone.   The   larger the windgag, the smoother is the airflow over its sur­face and thus the less is the turbulence. The effect is improved even more by a jacket  of long  fibres, which   is   known   as   a Dougal after the shaggy character   in   The   Magic Roundabout. This absorbs the energy in the windflow along the sur­face of the windgag.

A windgag with a Dougal works remark­ably well, even in gale-force winds, although if it becomes wet, other problems begin to appear, such as loss of the higher frequencies. But its effectiveness is related to its size, and reporters or camera opera­tor just cannot cope with such a bulky object as well as discharging their other duties. So viewers see, and hear, a com­promise; a microphone with a little bit of foam on top, or a small windgag. Everyone hopes that the wind will not blow too strongly, but it does and viewers hear it. And because it is "only" sound which is suffering, that is considered acceptable by those who make the decisions.

It will not surprise the more cynical among us to see that the rot is now spread­ing further. Having convinced themselves

that it is all right to save money by not em­ploying sound technicians, the Great and the Good are looking for other ways to make savings and have come up with an answer: the use of amateur video cameras. Although manufacturers have greatly improved amateur video in recent times, there is still an obvious difference between the picture quality of such equipment and that of professional cameras. This has not stopped news editors using amateur video on news stories where a dramatic event was cap­tured by a passer-by, and that is, of course, fine. But in some recent pro­grammes on holiday and consumer matters, pro­ducers have given jour­nalists an amateur camcorder and sent them off to record an item. Perhaps the producers think that the result has a raw punchiness that bites through to the viewer; more likely they rub their hands over the money saved in not using a professional crew. Whatever the reason, we see wobbly, burnt-out pictures and hear distant, broken sound.

News organisations make no secret of
their intention to issue their journalists with
camcorders, so we can look forward to a
proliferation of programmes with the qual­
ity of a home-movie on our TV sets. But TV
sets today are designed, and priced, around
a constantly improving transmission tech­
nology. Unthinkably large sums of money
are being spent to develop methods of
bringing the output of the TV stations
increasingly faithfully to our homes. What
a pity then that more thought and money
are not being expended in halting the
decline of technical standards further back
along the chain.                                          n

Nick Flowers is a sound recordist

8 May 1993

47

An Admission

For those kind readers who exclaimed in admiration at my originality and creativity, when they read the first post on this blog, the diary of the Ropley Station Master; here is where I stole the idea from.

Squire Haggard's Journal

As you will see, Michael Green is very brilliant and funny and I ought to be ashamed at having ripped off his idea and style. But I reckoned that the source was sufficiently obscure that I could get away with it...and perhaps that was the case with the Ropley Newsletter, but not here.

So apologies to M. Green and I hope you enjoy the real thing.

Dear Gladys - 3 (I am running out of pre written stuff. I may soon have to compose anew)

Dear Gladys

A monthly advice column

Dear Gladys, I am of a naturally sour and taciturn disposition and to my certain knowledge the last time I smiled was during the winter of 1947. Have you any advice to give me which might make it easier to find friends? Loner of Dummer.

Dear Loner of Dummer, while I think that your nature is now too settled to be altered in any way, might I suggest that you join the locomotive department of the Mid Hants Railway where you will at least find yourself feeling quite at home.

Dear Gladys, I enjoy being shouted at and having my faults pointed out in no uncertain terms. As I am extremely ugly and poor, I am unlikely to marry and so to have a wife to carry out these duties. Can you suggest another way in which I can be corrected in a terse and unambiguous manner? Nomates of Four Marks.

Dear Nomates of Four Marks, You could try joining the Mid Hants Railway and turning up for Platform Duty in white trainers and a Hi-Vis anorak when Stewart Legg is about.

Dear Gladys - No. 2

Dear Gladys

A monthly advice column

Dear Gladys,

                    Our little boy of eight recently received a low mark in his history exam when he wrote that Lord Nelson fell at Wadebridge. When we asked him why he had written that instead of The Battle of Trafalgar, he told us that he had mixed up his history with a recent visit to the Mid Hants Railway, where he saw the locomotives ‘Lord Nelson’ and ‘Wadebridge’ running. We all had a laugh at his being so muddled!

Doris of Alresford.

Dear Doris of Alresford,

                                                Muddled and unlucky! Who would have thought that two such unreliable locomotives would manage to struggle out of Ropley Yard long enough to provide a service?

Dear Gladys,

                   I am a natural born pain in the neck. Could you advise me on the best way to irritate the platform staff, please?

Dumbo of No Fixed Abode.

Dear Dumbo,

                             A good way to irritate the platform staff is to assemble a party of at least four ill behaved children and no less than two bulky buggies. Try to board the train before people have got off it, ignoring advice to use the guard’s van. Having held up the train for five minutes while you scream ineffectually at the children, when you finally get everybody on board, change your mind and begin to get them all off again. Drop something valuable between the platform edge and the carriage. Lose a child.

               But please make sure to do all this on the Bluebell Railway.

Dear Gladys Number One

This is the first in a series of advice columns that appeared in the Ropley Newsletter, part of the Mid Hants Railway.

Dear Gladys

A monthly advice column

Dear Gladys,

                   My husband is a volunteer on the Mid Hants Railway and seems to be spending more and more of his time and attention there, rather than at home with me. For example, last week when he was away helping with the new signalling at Ropley, a pipe burst in the kitchen flooding the floor, the electricity went off, the school phoned to say that our son had been found in possession of Class A drugs, our daughter of 18 announced that she was six months gone and running away with the father (a roundabout attendant at a travelling Fun Fair), and the council wrote to say that the new by-pass is routed through our living room. What do you think of all this, Gladys? Worried of Dummer.

Dear Worried of Dummer,

                                         The new signalling arrangement at Ropley will indeed be good news for all concerned as it will allow down trains to wait at Platform 2 while waiting for the up train from Alresford to arrive.

Holocaust 2000 - a dreadful film

When I was working in feature films, one movie I worked on was released as Holocaust 2000. It was a rip-off of The Omen-type films and had Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quayle in it. K. Douglas appeared to be slightly demented and describing his antics will be reserved for another blog in which I may dilate upon the behaviour of well known people with whom I have worked. However, it is my dear, departed friend Trevor Rutherford who was on the sound crew with me on Holocaust 2000 that is the subject of this next piece.

During a three week stay in Rome, while we were shooting a truly appalling film starring Kirk Douglas called Holocaust 2000, we had made friends with the Italian camera crew. Through their good offices we, that is Peter the mixer, David the boom operator and Susie, his wife, Trevor the sound camera operator and I, had gained temporary admittance to a very exclusive club, which had a pool and damn good food. So one weekend we decided to avail ourselves of this opportunity and trooped there, in a mob. As it was a beautifully warm day, we descended upon a table on the lawn and looked around us. We saw a wide selection of obviously very wealthy Italians, all tanned and fit, all wearing stylish clothes. It was as if we had entered the world of a very up market fashion catalogue and didn’t we stand out? While some of us were a trifle disconcerted at being like a band of pikeys having strayed into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, Trevor and I, with English pride and certainty in our cultural superiority, took a perverse pleasure in being so down at heel. But while our reactions to being so out of place differed, our need for a good cup of tea was unanimous. Trevor was elected to go and get some, as he possessed least Italian but most front.

                   He was a little while returning, but eventually I spotted him. He had undergone a slight transformation during his absence. To underline his apartness from the sleek and wealthy Romans through which he picked his way, he had placed a knotted handkerchief upon his head and rolled up his trouser legs. While this was entirely suitable for Blackpool beach, the looks he was getting from the exquisites through whom he navigated his course with the occasional “’Scuse me, Thank you, Mind yer backs, Comin’ through” suggested that such a sight had never been seen here. I was helpless with laughter, Peter was wide eyed with amazement and David and Susie were covering their eyes.

Richard works on a film in Egypt

My friend Richard managed to get some work on a film that was shooting in Egypt. I wrote him this note of encouragement.

Congratulations! You have decided to spend two months in WogWorld©, the

exciting, exotic land where you can rub shoulders with hundreds of thousands

of shifty, perverted, criminal and positively dangerous towel-heads who will

be delighted to rob you, cheat you, pass on to you all manner of disgusting

diseases and finally to murder you, so that they can reach paradise at an

early date. You can amuse yourself while you are there by trying to spot

just one honest face: try to eat any meal without becoming an unwitting host

to a countless horde of parasites; join in the fun of the local 'Spot the

Westerner' competition, where a young catamite/suicide bomber will suck your

cock before shoving a stick of Semtex© up your arse. Or visit the pyramids

on one of the three days off you will get in the two months you are working.

Ride there on a camel, who will pass on to you a fine collection of

ectoparasites to match the endoparasites you have already acquired. Those

who appreciate fine wines with a meal or a refreshing, cool beer after work

will be entertained by the local custom of the bar staff secretly urinating

in any alcoholic beverage consumed by Unbelievers. Your hotel room will be

ritually cursed every morning by freelance mullahs (and don't think that

your last name will do you any favours) and the chambermaids (either hirsute

harridans who will wipe your pillows with menstrual effluent - or young,

overweight simpletons with a cleft palate and a wicked cast in one eye who

will be confused by your sexual overtures) will do their level best to hide

religious objects that will hasten your trip to Satan. You are advised that

the singing of The Stars & Stripes, Ave Maria or Soldiers of the Queen may

cause offence and the permanent loss of an eye or limb. Try not to look your

local fellow workers on the set straight in the eye; this can cause more

offence as their guilty minds think that you have found them out in their

latest filthy deed. Do not be tempted by the offers of your focus puller to

pull more than focus, or your clapper/loader to introduce you to his sister

or mother. Intimacy with fallaheen can lead to loss of wallet, dignity,

health or life.

Have a nice stay.

Casey Jones

Casey Jones

T

hose of us who are of a Certain Age will remember the American television series ‘Casey Jones’, about the adventures of the railroad engineer (in English: engine driver), his son, Casey Junior, and the rest of his crew. I found it always to be something of a disappointment as the action centred on the rather tiresome Casey Junior and his predictable antics, not the locomotive or the railroad. Instead of being an instructional film of USA rural railroad practices and a practical illustration of driving a classic USA 4-4-0 on the Illinois Central Railroad, the series tended to show criminals being thwarted and accidents being avoided thanks to Casey Junior and, perhaps, his dog....although I may be mixing it up with Lassie on this point. Nevertheless, there was the occasional glimpse of the footplate and the sight of the locomotives underway was always a stirring sight.

                   Recently it occurred to me that this series and the vaguely remembered songs about Casey Jones must have a basis in fact, so I went to where all superficial searchers after knowledge go – Wikipedia. There is a wonderful article there –

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Jones

 which gives you all the detail you could wish for. For the present, this is a much shortened version.

                   Casey’s name was given to him when he was in lodgings with other railroad men. When asked where he was from, he replied that he was from the town of Cayce, so he was referred to afterwards as Casey Jones. He showed unusual skill and diligence and made it to being engineer relatively quickly, when he made a name for himself as a demon for keeping to time. He had a particular way of sounding a locomotive whistle that always identified him as the driver – a feature that is highlighted in some of the songs about him.

                   His final trip ended in a collision with another train that was too long for the loop it was in. Jones was driving very fast indeed, as much as 75 mph, as he had been trying to make up 95 minutes which had been lost earlier. As he came round the curve he saw the rear lights of the caboose of the train blocking his way, and told his fireman to jump. He pulled back the johnson bar (reversing lever), reversed the engine and applied the air brakes. His action saved the passengers, but cost him his life as he stayed with the locomotive until the end.

                   This is an early recording (on wax cylinder) commemorating his bravery, and the somewhat ambivalent attitude of his wife, in the final verse, where she comforts the children that “they’ve got another papa on the Salt Lake Line”!

 http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/0000/0636/cusb-cyl0636d.mp3

Beneath the Ice in the North West Passage

Since I wrote this, the wreck of HMS Erebus has been discovered.

A Present for Archaeologists of the Future

A

s global warming raises the mean temperature in the Arctic glaciers melt and the sea ice recedes. What will be revealed when this happens? One possibility is that in the shallow depths of newly thawed seas, puzzled explorers may well see the remains of a nineteenth century railway locomotive. How can this be? Did the Victorians attempt to build a Grand North Western Passage Railway? No; the answer is a little more prosaic. It lies in a cost cutting exercise by the Admiralty when it was setting up the Franklin Expedition to discover the Northwest Passage.

               It was suggested at quite a late stage that the two ships selected, Erebus and Terror, should be fitted with engines. The idea was not that they should operate as ice breakers, but just to manoeuvre in the tight spaces that opened up in the ice. Rather than buy new engines for the purpose, some bean counter at the Admiralty suggested that a couple of old railway locomotive should be bought and placed in the aft hold of each ship. Incredibly, this idea was adopted and carried out. The locomotives, from the London and Greenwich Railway and the London & Birmingham Railway, were mounted athwartships, that is facing across the width of the ship, and the propeller shaft was connected directly to the driving wheels.

H.M.S. Terror seems to have been fitted with the locomotive from the London & Birmingham Railway, as this letter written to his sister by Lieutenant Irving shows:

H.M.S. Terror,

Greenhithe

May 16^th. 1845

My Dear Katie,

               ....We tried our screws and went four miles an hour. Our engine once ran somewhat faster on the Birmingham line. It is placed athwart ships in our afterhold and merely has its axle extended aft, so as to become the shaft of the screw. It has a funnel the same size and height as it had on the railway, and makes the same dreadful puffings and screamings, and will astonish the Esquimaux not a little. We can carry 12 days coal for it; but it will never be used when we can make progress at all by other means.

               “London’s First Railway” by RHG Thomas goes on to say: “Each ship carried an engineer, three stokers and a copy of Gregory’s book on locomotives; but whether the engines were ever used is not known, and what eventually became of the ships has also remained a mystery”.

               The boilers of the locomotives required fresh water from which to raise steam and to provide this from sea water distillation equipment was installed on both ships. It has been suggested that the fresh water may well have been contaminated with lead by this machinery and that this could have contributed to the crew’s suffering from lead poisoning.