Shh! Don't tell Blue Witch about this post!

Heard a great story today.

Went into school to do a "training session" on drama filming with the young IT apprentice (who's actually about to start a proper job - yay, youngster who's got a job, good for him). No, that's me training him, not him training me.  Anyway, clearly a farce, so we ended up chatting about all sorts before we went off to look at the new sound racks which the school has, in its ignorance, bought.

He was telling me that his girlfriend's father, who is probably about the same age as me, used to work at Rolls Royce at Filton, and was on the team testing each new engine.  And one of the tests, to simulate a bird strike at 20,000 feet, was to fire frozen chickens into the blades of the engine.  And they would spend an entire week just firing frozen chickens.  And the whole point was that if any single one of those chickens should cause damage to that engine, then clearly the engine was faulty.  No pressure then.

So towards the end of the week when they were feeling pretty confident that the engine was okay, they went to lunch and when they returned the worst case happened.  They fired the cannon, and the blades of the engine just all snapped off.

They were devastated.  After all, how much was that engine worth?  And once you have that tiny shred of doubt then everything becomes much more tenuous.

They studied the CCTV in minute footage.  Which is when they discovered that whilst they'd been at lunch a cat had strolled in, climbed into the cannon and fallen asleep.  The next shot, once slowed down considerably, showed that the frozen chicken which had been fired was closely followed by a cat.  Which had totally demolished the engine.

So it just goes to show that if you're travelling at 20,000 feet and a flock of birds comes towards you then you'll probably be okay, but just a single cat at that altitude and you should be seriously worried.

Oh, the power of the internet!

Yesterday younger son finally mastered one of life's great skills.

No, it wasn't swimming - which he couldn't do until he was 10.

Not riding a bike - which he couldn't do until he was 11 and the prospect of having to do his cycling proficiency came up (and even then I had to ask them to put him in the last course of the year, just in case).

No, yesterday, faced with the prospect of having to have some really ghastly velcro shoes for school (because by the time you wear size 7 there's not much to choose from with velcro fastenings for boys), he finally learned HOW TO TIE SHOELACES.  And it's taken him till he was 14, well nearly 15. 

And the last ten years or so that I've been trying to persuade him to learn were all a waste of time because in the end a 1-minute YouTube demonstration was how he chose to learn.

So don't give me all that "learning at your mother's knee" bollocks.

On procrastination

I think I've just spent all week procrastinating.  I will find anything to do other than what really should be done.

I'm probably making excuses but I think it all goes back to a fortnight ago when OH called in at his mother's house (she having been consigned to a care home by now) and discovered that her dining table and chairs and her fridge/freezer had gone.

So last Saturday we went down (a mere 40 miles each way) to discover vastly more stuff had gone - to wit, dining table and chairs, fridge/freezer, microwave, kettle, a sewing box, two chairs, freeview box, shredder, kitchen clock, nest of 3 tables, 2 table lamps, a quantity of cutlery, and bizarrely the BT master socket (which is actually the property of BT).

We went out to the care home to confirm that actually none of this lot was out there.  We also discovered that of all the photos of grandchildren the overwhelming majority were of SIL's offspring.

By now OH is panicking that her car is going to suddenly disappear, even though she has technically signed it over to our daughter a year or so ago, but we've left it in her garage so that she can pretend that she could drive it if she wanted to, but she just doesn't want to.  To be honest, her mental ability (lack of) and eyesight (also lack of) mean that she would be an absolute menace by now so a while ago we removed the battery so she couldn't start it anyway.  But she liked the idea of the car being there - just in case.

So on Monday we go down and move the car to a secret location (which obviously I can't tell you where it is) so that it's safe.  After all, once it's gone, it's gone.  No car has ever come back from a breaker's yard, has it?

And now all the Court of Protection stuff is going to have to be changed because OH thinks he can't trust his sister to be joint Deputies.  And it just goes on and on, and takes more and more time.  And I'm still not knuckling down to work.  Which is all very depressing.

Check drain

Red flashing light.  "Check drain".

I have never seen so much grey sludge.  It's never been at all like that before. I'm surprised any water got pumped out at all.  Yuck.

Texts that you don't want to receive

"Can you find out how much it would be to rebook the ferry? we took a wrong turn on the way"

swiftly followed by:

"And not sire if were pn toll roads? :("


Sent by daughter on her way driving back from Leogang in Austria via Dunkirk.  A route that was supposed to go through Germany and Belgium.  She is now in France heading for Luxembourg.  Can't find Dunkirk on satnav.  Has lost road map.

They have to catch the ferry as her friend is at work in Birmingham the next morning.

Will they make it?

A Christmas Outing

Reading the lovely Z's blogs of the last couple of days reminded me of a Christmas time event when I was a youngster.  It must have been between 1962 and 1967 because I know we were living in Surrey at the time.  If you move about enough you can place events with quite a degree of accuracy.

To backtrack a little, my father used to work for EMI (after he'd finished National Service) as some kind of engineer.  This is not EMI Records, but EMI Guided Missile Systems.  I know he was in REME for his National Service and he had been doing (I think) electrical engineering at Brighton College before he was called up. 

When I was young we moved around a lot.  I was born in Surrey, moved to somewhere near Aberystwyth when I was about 3, moved to Lincolnshire when I was 5 - my birthday's in August -  (I didn't start school until after I was 5 because they only spoke Welsh where we were living before and my parents didn't think I could cope starting school in a language I didn't speak - there, see how I've said that without being derogatory at all).

Then we moved back to Surrey and actually bought a house (up until then we'd been renting - well except for when I was born when they lived in a caravan which, thinking about it, they were probably renting as well - this is the early '50s, there weren't that many houses available), but instantly moved to Saltash in Cornwall for a year.

And then we moved to Surrey *sort of permanently*.  Although there was a period when my dad was working at John o'Groats but he went up there on his own for a week or two at a time. Whilst he was away he used to get given a free Crawfords "Family Assortment" box of biscuits every week, presumably to eat in his hotel room, which he always brought home for us.  Gosh, that was luxury - a "Family Assortment"!

I've no idea what my dad actually did for a job because he'd signed the Official Secrets Act but I know it was something to do with Guided Missiles, and that it probably had something to do with analogue computers (because when he left EMI he went to work with English Electric - which later became ICL - and then he was a computer systems analyst - this is still in 1967 so probably still at least half a room's worth per computer!).

Anyhow, I have an abiding memory of going on a kids work's outing when we lived in Surrey and Dad was working in Feltham and I must have been probably about 10, 11, or 12.  We all (the kids) got on a coach and went to an ice rink (possibly at Wembley, I don't know) and saw "Peter Pan On Ice".  This was my first theatrical outing, it was magical and I was hooked.  I remember very little about it, but I knew it was much more thrilling than anything I'd ever seen before.  And then we kids all went off to some hall somewhere and there was a sort of horseshoe of tables with food on for us.  I think my sister Susie went as well, as she would have been about 8 but she might not remember it.

Anyway that was the work's kids' Christmas outing.  And I still have an abiding thought that "works" have a kids' Christmas outing, but I can't actually think of any others.  Have I made this tradition up?

Am I psychic or something?

E-mail received this morning, as acknowledgement of an order and copy of invoice for me to print out included some FAQs including: 


This invoice is not meant for me?

Please notify us immediately if this email has gone out to an incorrect email address. You can do this by forwarding this email to invoicing@companyname.co.uk. Please remember to include the correct email address of the requested recipient.

Erm.... if it's not meant for me, then how am I supposed to know who it is for, and what their email address might be?