I opened my curtains this morning to see more snow gently falling. It was a beautiful sight but my heart sank. Not because of the likely GRIDLOCK I would be facing, and the IMPOSSIBLE TASK of getting to work through the RAGING TEMPEST and ADVERSE DRIVING CONDITIONS only EXACERBATED by the INCOMPETENT COUNCIL, because frankly that’s a load of old horses’ doings. The reason my heart sank was that I could already hear the bleating, oinking and squealing of the nation’s media declaring the freak weather conditions and trying to make it sound as exciting as possible in the unhealthiest way possible.
I used to be a Cat person. I could not stand the way that dogs do not seem to have an iota of self-respect. They will do anything you say just for your affection, they bark and yelp and lick and jump up and are, frankly, undignified. Then I saw a TV programme that changed my opinion. The truth of the matter is, we humans keep our dog companions in a state of retarded maturity. Wolf puppies bark. Wolf grown-ups just let out a little “huff” to one another when executing their attack. The program showed a litter of sheepdogs who were raised in the presence of sheep and were given commands en masse by the shepherd. As the litter grew up it became a pack. The dogs sorted out roles for one another and would work as a team to bring the sheep in, merely directed by the shepherd.
I was converted. Dogs are as smart as humans let them be.
To an extent. I imagine literacy is an issue amongst dogs attempting more academic subjects. But I digress.
I wonder whether (that’s a polite way of saying I’m convinced that) this can happen (is happening) with humans. It started with treating children as children only as opposed to adults-in-progress. I agree that children need protection, and I agree that some subjects are too complex or emotionally loaded to approach with small children, but it seems to me we miss many opportunities to help our children grow up and appreciate the challenges in the world around them. The result? Wind forward a few years and you have people living at home in their mid-30s, the nanny state, and b3ta. I didn’t say it was all bad.
Shoelaces are stretchier than clutch cables,
and not as strong.
Gears were a bit hard to operate this morning so when I parked up at the office I had a quick check under the bonnet and the clips seemed to be seated OK. The one that I’d replaced wednesday morning clicked when I pushed it so I guess it wasn’t on 100% correctly. I opened the sunroof to let out all the damp that had accumulated from getting in the car with snowy feet over the last few days, then thought about the weather. The car was parked on a slight downward slope so if it rained the sunroof would tend to catch the water, so I thought I’d turn the car around. Got in, pressed the clutch, couldn’t get it in gear. Pumped the clutch (a habit from driving old Brit cars with hydraulic clutches) and heard an almighty TWANG and the clutch pedal fell to the floor. A rapid exploration with a screwdriver reveals that the clutch cable has snapped off right at the pedal end. It looks easy enough to get to but the haynes manual is at home and I’m not at all sure what the replacement procedure entails.
It’s going to be interesting getting to Riccall tonight crashing the gears all the way. The idea is that if the revs match the speed then the cogs in the gearbox line up and you don’t need the clutch. I can do that in a mini or the spitfire, but the fiat is so free-revving it’ll be … well, interesting.
Oh, and I’m beginning to believe the assertion that FIAT stands for Fix It Again Tomorrow…
The free paper showed up early today. As I headed out for work it shouted
GRIDLOCKED
at me. Underneath was a picture of three cars waiting at a junction for another car to pass. It was quite evocative, but the photographer had failed to conceal that the road in the opposite direction was completely clear. In any case, I wait in queues worse than that at 3 to 5 points on my regular commute.
The Inquest began today into … gritters were out but could not prevent queues and a few accidents
WHAT A PILE OF OLD DONKEY DOOS
Nobody can prevent queues in York while people want to get into, out of, through or around it. It has a city wall, many buildings in and around the centre are listed, the rest of the ground is boggy and/or floods regularly.
As to the accidents, well, it’s unlikely that a workable bill to get idiots and unlucky people off the road will be passed by parliament any time soon.
These problems were presented by nature. I don’t think it’s the Council’s job to guarantee protection from snowstorms of uncharacteristic strength and duration. I think it behoves each and every one of us to take responsibility for not crashing when the roads are icy. What? There was snow everywhere but you assumed the council would have made sure there was not a single patch of ice on the road? Grow up.
Sometimes I half expect mankind’s parents to come down here and bang our heads together.
last night I had a look with a torch and found the problem was that a small clip (about 4cm by 4cm) was missing off the end of a cable, so the cable wasn’t moving the things it should have been moving. I went down the road in the snow with the shakey-torch to see if I could find the clip around the area where the gear had failed and couldn’t see it. So I went to bed, thinking I’d order the part online and fit it on Saturday.
Then, once undressed and a-bed, I realised I have to lead a salsa workshop TONIGHT.
In North Duffield.
And another one TOMORROW NIGHT.
In Terrington.
And the “regular” class in Riccall on Friday.
None of these places is likely to be on the railways, and none is likely to have buses back to York after 9pm, and none is less than 20 miles from my house.
Erk.
So I leaped out of bed at 7:30 this morning and had a look in the daylight. Turned out the clip was resting on a part of the engine and hadn’t gone very far. So I fished it out, clipped it on, and I now have a choice of 5 forward gears, reverse, and the one I never realised was so important: neutral!
There’s a book called “Bangernomics”, all about the trade-offs inherent in running old crap cars. I’ve always driven bangers. My fallback is: For the amount of money your spangly new car depreciates over 2 years, I can buy 5 bangers.
You just have to not mind having to walk from time to time.
Most people (presumably because they are jessies) do mind.
Anyhow, this is not about that. This is about Bangerology, which is the unscientific, superstitious side of owning and running bangers. I’ve long suspected that the golden rule of bangerology is this:
- There must be one thing wrong with your banger at all times
You need proof? What about yesterday? I’d taken off the door trim weeks ago to clean it, and lost a screw somewhere. Two nights ago I found the screw under the sofa, so screwed all the trim back and stood back and admired a car with no outstanding jobs needing done.
The rest is recent history.
So recent in fact, that it’s continuing. Faced with the prospect of reversing all the way to the garage or getting a tow but having to hold the clutch in for the whole way, I thought I’d have a go at it meself. I’ve had the gear linkage off a mini before, so I reckoned it was probably just a split pin that had snapped and fallen out or the like.
“Step 1: refer to chapter 4 and remove the exhaust system”
Uh oh, this could be a long, cold, dark repair.
In accordance with the First Rule, I’d better make sure I smash the rear-view mirror or something before I start.
I knew it would be “interestin” getting into work this morning as last night’s snow had called for reinforcements and there were a good few inches of it covering the car and the street. I noted the results of my experiment to see whether newspaper kept your windscreen from freezing up (”not applicable in snowy situations as it turns to mushy crap”) hopped in the car and set off with 13 minutes to do the trip which on average takes about 14 but can vary from 10 to 25.
At the bottom of the street, I stopped for the gap in traffic, then let the clutch out and didn’t go anywhere. The ice must be worse than I thought. I popped it in reverse and backed up a little to get out of the icy patch. Then I had a bit of trouble finding 1st. Or 2nd. Or indeed any forward gear.
Or neutral.
I spent a moment stirring the gearstick in H shapes, small circles, figure-8s, and finally in large sweeping circles that took up most of the interior space of the car, and eventually conceded that the car had chosen reverse and was happy with it.
So I carefully retraced my steps by reversing all the way back up the hill to my house, parked up, stuck post-its on the steering wheel and gear stick (cos I’m bound to forget and reverse straight into my neighbor) kitted up and rode in on my bicycle.
Which was certainly “interestin”.
Having posted a blog for this morning, then seen the date stamp on the resulting front page, I have to rescind my post and yell at the top of my lungs
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!”
Yes, the diseased mind that brought you works such as
- SimonG conveys An Emotion
- The Death Of Crazyfrog
- Happy Bear
- Rainbox Redux (you NEED to get hold of the original Atari ST version if possible)
- The hallway turntable
- Custardy Battles
… has been observing, digesting and twisting this unsuspecting world to its own nefarious ends for 30 years!
Congrats, and see you tomorrow!
Went to B&Q yesterday lunchtime and came across a guy in the electrical aisle who had two shopping trolleys full of small cardboard boxes that he’d been taking sockets and things out of. These would be perfect for my junk room for keeping small collections of stuff like screws, cables, etc. in. I asked what happened to those boxes next.
“They go for re-CYcling” he said, proudly toeing the company line.
“Can I have a few?”
“No” said he “they get flat-packed and go for re-CYcling”
O good then. That’s MUCH MORE eco-friendly than just re-using them.
I wandered on, and found that B&Q sell cardboard boxes, too big for my purpose, for £5! £5 for a carboard box!
Drummers are famous for their hot tempers, and also for being good dancers. Here’s my theory.
The key to good improvised drumming is the precise moment the sound comes out. When you are improvising drumming, you are tracking the structure of the music, anticipating changes, thinking of repertoire and making judgements on creative ideas, but while you are doing all this, there is a sort of fast track conduit from your ears to your hands. In here is a really fast pathway where you are adjusting your physical actions to reflect fluctuations in the tempo, unexpected changes by other musicians, and other emergencies like loss of grip on a drumstick, starting to fall off your seat, or the drum working loose from its position.
Here are the possible outcomes of intending to hit a drum:
- You hit the drum at the right time for your intended pattern
- You hit the drum at the wrong time for your intended pattern, but still on the beat
- You don’t hit the drum
- You hit the drum completely out of time.
Of these, 1 is the best and 4 should be avoided at all costs. The order of 2 and 3 is a matter of preference.
It’s the same with dancing:
- Do a move, great.
- Don’t do a move, fine.
- Half-do a move? Terrible.
The key thing about this is that you get into the routine of making snap decisions. If you hesitate even a moment to reflect, then you end up hitting the drum at the wrong time.
I was in the band for 4 years and we were pretty committed. At a rough guess, 4 years x 50 weeks x 2 rehearsals x 3 hrs x 1/3 of the time playing x 60 minutes per hour x 120 beats a minute x (2 for left hand + 1 for right hand + 1 for left foot) comes to 11,520,000 instances of that decision. Considering every time you do something mentally your mind subtly re-arranges itself to be able to do that thing better, and that I made that call on average nearly a thousand times a day for my whole life so far, that’s got to have done something with the way my brain works.
Unfortunately, this isn’t ideal in some social situations. Irritating oik grabs your bum for the nth time? I feel like pun… oops I seem to have punched him.