Slickly produced with some great music as well.

Check out her blog with more on her musicians and how it is going. You saw it here first!

According to the paper, the ten year lease was due for renewal and Dennis is getting on a bit now. There are Candyman shops in nearby Dewsbury & Batley so there is somewhere to distribute the residual stock, but they won’t be interested in Morley Hall Commemorative mugs, a snip at 50p.

(The Morley Community Archives site has this to say about Morley Hall:

This stone mansion was built in 1683 by Thomas Dawson, a local textile manufacturer. It has a fine vantage but Norrisson Scatcherd who lived in the bigger Georgian Morley House claimed that it was badly planned. Clearly there was rivalry between the families, although the last Morley Scatcherd, Oliver, lived there until his death in 1905. In 1917, it was bought by Sir Charles Scarth and given to the town for use as a Maternity Hospital. This facility closed in 1972. Now, it is a listed building and a private residence.

That simple description hides a lot of latent anger- it was supposedly given to the Town in perpetuity but was flogged off by Leeds once Morley was no longer a Borough. Many Morleians  were born there so it has sentimental value at least.)

Anyway, I resisted the temptation to buy a mug, we have way more than we need anyway, as being involved with Eighteen Plus and Round Table ensured we were never short of them. The Charles and Di ones didn’t appeal either!

The book charted the social and architectural jigsaw of the rise and fall of the Cooperative Society in the town. At its peak there were five distinct sets of adjoining retail premises along with twenty-one branch shops in outlying areas, warehouses and even a pie factory.

The book can be bought at Co-op travel and Co-op pharmacy in town and you can read a review here.

There are still snippets of history around the town un-noticed to most. This photo shows where it all began 141 years ago on the corner of Albion Street and Commercial Street, the premises now belonging to a firm of Solicitors.

On our recent trip to America, we were deceived in various ways three times by enterprising Americans. Each one is worthy of closer analysis.

The first one I’ll call the plausible panhandler. A tall, black lady, smartly dressed, immediately offered to guide us in the right direction less than 10′ from the exit doors of the LAX Airport arrivals hall. Offering no more information than what we had already been given by a Virgin rep as we transitioned from airside (Purple bus stop 200 yards on your right) she floweringly and eloquently expressed it in a friendly and lively manner, seamlessly segueing into a spiel about collecting for a Los Angeles Mission that worked with homeless children, all currency accepted, receipts given. Knowing that we had been somewhat lined up but being polite Brits we reluctantly handed over a note (£10 if my memory serves me) and we were immediately given a receipt, or rather a printed card with the Mission details. On reflection, if she was a member of staff connected to the Airport in some way, the airport wouldn’t have approved of a sideline in chugging (charity mugging). If she wasn’t, then the airport wouldn’t have approved of her operating as a disguised chugger either. Whether she was chugging or simply panhandling, her verbose description of the purple bus stop certainly earned her £1 for entertainment value.

The second I’ll call the employee scammer. Pier 39 at San Francisco is a very entertaining collection of shops, attractions and street theatre, the best free entertainment of all being the resident sea lions honking nearby. There is a small 4D theatre near the end that had three 3D movies with added effects (moving chairs, mist, bubbles etc. hence the 4D). The movies are shown in sequence during the day and over the box office, countdown clocks showed the time to the desired feature. One of the three features was Spongebob Squarepants (a favourite of David’s) and it was only a few minutes away.

Now this show was fairly expensive for what it was ($12.95?) and we debated whether to get triple show offers or just David going in as he was gagging to do it and we knew that we probably had discount coupons back in the hotel room. Anyway, we decided to all three go on for the single show. On offering my Visa travellers debit card (Post office Dollar version) the counter clerk asked if we could possibly pay cash instead, as the credit card reader was playing up. I did so, he gave me three tickets, and in we went.

Now whilst we were waiting inside, I glanced down at the tickets we had been given, then noticing something odd, took a closer look. The top one was indeed for Spongebob Squareparts dated and timed for that showing, but the other two were a little more dog eared and were actually for other movies at earlier times. This appeared to be a scam where a third of the money goes to the business but the other two thirds gets re-distributed. (When the tickets were collected indoors they were simply pocketed rather than torn, after a cursory glance at them that suggested the guy inside may have been in on the scam as well).

Now I didn’t lose out personally on that one, but it did annoy me that they were ripping their Bosses off and it is hard to believe that fairly obvious (practically blatant) dishonesty would not come unstuck sooner or later. I imagine that the credit card reader worked fine, it was just a bit tricky for the ticket clerk to embezzle some of the proceeds when cash was not involved. Similarly, giving dodgy tickets to someone who is obviously a native english speaker is risky. What if I’d been a Cop?

(I’m reminded of a holiday I took to Greece back in 1988 during my transition from the Telecoms industry to the entertainment technology (cottage) industry. I visited a number of archaeology sites in walking distance of the Parthenon and at each one, I exchanged my Drachmas for a rather pleasant souvenir ticket with a coloured image of the treasures within. The last site I visited, however, was slightly different. A wrinkled old Greek man in the kiosk gave me an extremely non-pristine ticket in exchange for my money. Then, when I had finished looking round, he tried to blag it back off me on my way out!)

The third piece of stitching up was of the Corporate variety. Virgin holidays have a partnership with Dollar car hire which I personally feel that they should review as if my experience was typical it involves deception in so many small ways that I can comfortably call them swindlers. We had booked car hire for 11 days, one way rental, drop-off at the Sheraton Fishermans Wharf, SF. We were staying in the nearby Holiday Inn and last time we went to SF, the car stayed in the Hotel garage from the evening we arrived to the day we drove to the airport. As we had been made aware that the hotel charged $40 dollars a day for parking (now actually $41 plus tax) we saw little need to pay so much just to be able to drive to the airport. We pre-paid for something called the Platinum package, all of the death by a thousand cuts that makes sure that you are fully covered for every eventuality.

Whilst flying over, I’d dreamily suggested that an open top convertible would be great for the big drive we needed to do from San Diego up to San Francisco. It wasn’t a very practical suggestion, of course, because small convertables tend to have small luggage space and we had two large suitcases. Last time a Chrysler Neon with two of us and one case had been fine, but now there were three of us, although our “Frequent Virgin” status entitled us to a (minor) updrade. Anyway, on arrival at Dollar at their large off-airport depot, we were given the usual hard sell of paying for an upgrade. We were already a bit grumpy at that point because we had already queued at the counter with the large Virgin sign to be told we had to go to the other main counter which had a large queue (which had got even larger whilst we waited wrongly in the wrong queue). Anyway, we were spun a line about how the car we were allocated didn’t have a trunk so our luggage would be visible (a red herring of course, our luggage would be in the hotel room most of the time). The pictures of the various cars didn’t really indicate what they were like and we hadn’t heard of any of the models. Previously, we have generally just refused the hard sell then found we had a bigger car allocated anyway, as there is a certain amount of pot luck involved. Anyway, after him extolling the benefits of the next class up, I asked him what it would cost us. $9.99 a day, he said with a straight face. Knowing we would have two days with extensive driving, I decided that $110 bucks was probably reasonable for a bit of comfort. Of course, I forgot the cardinal rule of much of North America- the price you see is rarely the price you pay, unless the item is exempt from sales tax. (That probably only applies to Ice cream and Churros).

We then enquired about dropping off the car- would it be OK to terminate the hire one day early if we made good time to SF? Sure, no problem at all. What time would the office close? Airports are 24 hours, city Hotel ones close at round about 10:30pm, he advised. Bizarrely, he let us choose any car we wanted out of two nominated zones outside, and after picking something the size of a Range Rover (with three rows of seats, but the back row folded to form the boot bit) we were ready for the off. Just as I was about to pull off, the car chimed and put on the service light, which was annoying as you expect hire car companies to be on top of service intervals, but there again, most cars start reminding you of this a couple of thousand miles before it is actually due and we couldn’t be bothered to pick and repack another car. Another grumble was the lack of an operating manual in the glovebox, there were numerous dashboard controls which we had no idea what they actually did and had to work them out the hard way, or just not bother with them.

Anyway, the car was fine for the first ten days of the holiday, but after we had set off from San Diego for our long drive to San Francisco, the car chimed again and the engine icon lit orange. Having checked all the levels, we decided to detour slightly to a Dollar office we had noticed opposite our hotel in Anaheim. The guys there owned up that they couldn’t actually do anything for us because they were actually only a concession, but the light was likely to just mean the service was required and we only needed to worry if the icon flashed and it triple-chimed. If we were still concerned though, the office at LAX airport would change the car, or otherwise they highlighed the roadside assistance phone number.

Pressing on, we eventually arrived up in San francisco, but when we found the Dollar office there, it transpired that it closed at 5pm and they wouldn’t accept car drop-offs out of hours. As the parking was even more expensive there and we didn’t want to have to mess about to fit in with free on-street parking (meter hours were 7pm to 7am) we found the cheapest overnight car park nearby, still a substantial $28.

On returning the car in the morning, I was extremely miffed to find that my $9.99 a day charge totalled more than $280 dollars. It seems that they wanted to charge me 11 days of breakdown cover/personal protection at $11.44 a day, more than what the car was costing me, along with some minor taxes here and there. Anyway, I declared them to be charlatans and I’ll take it up with the holiday company first to see if it is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation or simply a legalised swindle.

I see no reason to willingly patrionise Dollar car rental again, along with KPMG and Capital One, my current short list of Companies who have pissed me off enough to stay on my boycott list.

Update: Now I have the bill in front of me, here were the “extras”

State Tax 9.25% $18.68
Tourism Surc 2.5% $2.75
apconrecfee 11.11% $26.19
Upgrade 11 days@ 9.99 $109.89
prsnlprotpla 11 days@ 5.45 $59.95
Roadsafe 11 days@ 5.99 $65.89
TOTAL CHARGES $283.35.

Harumph.

David dressed up as a Keeper and there was a blatant clue with his hat that said Dudley Zoological Gardens. That still didn’t stop several people guessing that he was a gardener though, including one of the teachers.

I’m not sure that monkeys feature as horticultural tools though…

David doesn’t show any inclination to want to go and work in the mobile Telecommunications business, so O2 weren’t overly persuasive. 

I have no recollection as to what I wanted to be when I was at Primary school. Certainly once I became stage-struck in my early teens it was technical theatre that I wanted to do which became refined towards a Degree in Lighting (Engineering, not Theatre) which it was possible to do at South Bank Poly. However, when I went there as part of the milk round, I was stunned to find out that they had dumped the course, despite still being in the prospectus. 

My Dad was quite keen for me to consider the Navy and I did enquire down at the careers office about Officer Cadetships. However when I looked more closely into it, I was barred by nature of my myopia. I am hugely short-sighted after getting German Measles as an infant, with my uncorrected focal distance being about 3″-6″. Being a hormonal teenager, I also found it rather prurient that another possible reason for being barred was Fissure of Anus. 

I stumbled over the video below which is also rather prurient, hat tip Obnoxio for pointing me to the site and hat tip Canucklehead for the video buried deep within the motivational style pictures.

(Not very safe for work or family)

The first gripe with them was actually David’s: when we first opened the account there was some scheme where if you didn’t make any withdrawals in a yar then you got sent a Wallace & Gromit Piggy Bank. We have never made a withdrawal (until today) but we remain pigless. Strike One.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we had a cheque to pay in but we had a road trip so we called there at opening time- except it wasn’t open. We nipped into Morley Market to buy some celery (have you noticed that supermarket celery often doesn’tt actuslly smell of celery some weeks?) but when we came back at eight minutes past nine it still wasn’t open and a queue was forming. Someone inside gestured to suggest five minutes but we didn’t want to wait). Strike two.

Karen managed to pay in OK last week, but she did go into Morley mid morning, I’d have been really worried if they had been closed then!

Meanwhile, in London, David’s Gran gave us a large whisky bottle full of coins to take back up north- and a number of money bags. There was a strong temptation to just take the contents up to ASDA and tip it in the coinstar but they do charge a significant poundage so we* decided to bag them up and take them to a bank.

Unfortunately, we bank with RBS and there isn’t a Branch in Morley, so one or other of us would have to go into one where we work at lunchtime. As the coins are heavy (£45+ worth) it would have involved several journeys, so instead we decided to pay in to the B & B, effectively giving the money to David.

Arriving at the B&B mid morning, there was a small queue and two counters open but some long and complicated transactions. Eventually we were served, but then we were hit with a silly arbitary rule- no more than five bags of coins paid in a day. WTF? Are they not a bank? Well not really, they are a bank in theory from the 2000 demutualisation but they don’t do current accounts, indeed their merchant services are handled by he Co-op Bank. Anyway, I had had enough, that was Strike three, I suggested that I simply closed the account instead and that appeared to be an acceptable outcome to the teller. As it happened, last week’s cheque hadn’t actually cleared so I drew down the account to £20 and we’ll close it off next time we are passing.

Anyway, what to do with a counter cheque and a heavy bag of bagged coins? Find somewhere else to deposit it. David suggested Lloyds Bank- because the logo has a horse in it.

We popped in and talked to the friendly young man on the reception desk. He told us about their various products but got increasingly annoyed with his computer screen. After consulting with someone more senior, we were advised that David would need to produce some form of ID (money laundering and all that) but if we were able to come back slightly later with his passport, we could open the account straight away and pay money in. (Other types of ID needed to be verified so would result in a delayed account opening).

After much fighting with the PC, he managed to book us an appointment at 12:30 and printed us out a detail confirmation. We stood and stared at the printer hopefully but nothing happened… He then told us that they had the worst IT system he had ever come across. Hmm. Strike one.

On returning home to have an early lunch, Karen enquired as to whether Lloyds had any silly rules about paying in bags of coin and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually asked, so I rang the Branch, or rather rang the 0845 number for the branch and got through to a Scottish lady after having to navigate through a deaf IVR system. I asked her my question and she hunted through various online menus to try and answer the query. She then asked “Are you doing anything this weekend?” which was rather forward of her as whilst she had a nice voice I had no idea if we would be attracted to each other, and anyway, I’m happily married. She then suggested it might be betetr if she connected me directly to the Branch, but failed to find any details for a Lloyds Branch in Morley and did I happen to know what it’s sort code was? WTF? Strike two.

Back to the bank we trotted and were ushered into the inner sanctum. Now then David, have you brought your passport? Good. As David is only 11, we’ll need some ID from you as well, did you happen to bring any for yourself? WTF? Why didn’t you tell me that an hour ago? Strike three.

Tell you what, I’ll go home and research what accounts are available rather than this knee jerk urge to simply open one now in order to offload my sack of coins. Don’t tell anyone I’ve got £45 of mixed copper in the boot…

(*-That is the royal we- Karen with slight assistance from David.)

My Fire Marshall course was much more pragmatic than one that Keith lard would have presented and it was focussed much more on prevention rather than fire fighting. The duties of a Fire Marshall are low impact in day to day working, being aware of exits being kept clear, extinguishers being in-situ & intact etc. When it come to actual fire alarms, the duty is to make sure everyone is out and that you have thoroughly checked the area for anyone left behind.

There was a session on the use of fire extinguishers but the message here was “if in doubt, dont.” There are five main types of extinguisher and they are only really practical for the very early stages of small fires. Use of the wrong type of extinguisher can make a fire worse or put you in danger.

Back in real life, I can only recall tackling two real fires. The first one was when I was about 11 and I had left a chip pan on then got distracted. I came into the kitchen to find three foot flames leaping out of the pan. I knew that the last thing I should do was pour water on it and I thought of something to cover the pan. (I don’t think it had a lid and it was filled with lard which used to harden and hold the basket in place when not in use). In my panic, the only thing I could think of was a large hardback book on Japan that my Auntie from Australia had given me and so I dashed up three half flights of stairs in our split level house to grab the book. Returning downstairs, I gingerly slid the book on top of the pan then realised it would have helped if I’d turned the gas off before I dashed upstairs, rather than now. This put it out and there was no harm done other than a sooty kitchen ceiling and a scorch mark on the back of the book.

The second incident was more than twenty years later and I was living with my parents at the time, prior to a move up to the Nottingham area. They ran a large Off-License in Ealing and had the flat upstairs. (There were further rented flats on the floor above with a seperate entrance). There was an annexe towards the rear consisting of stock rooms and my room was above. I had a good view of the adjacent Pub Beer garden so I could see if anyone I knew was in…

I had gone to bed early for some reason and was awoken by my Mum telling me that we had a fire. I grabbed a dressing gown and as I went dazedly into the kitchen my dad handed me a fire extinguisher and said it was in their bedroom, probably the fan heater. They hurredly exited down the stairs from the kitchen into the shop to dial 999 and I went into the long upstairs corridor of the flat. The bedroom door was closed and it was a substantial one but thick black smoke was already filling the upper levels of the hallway. I scampered to the door and gingerly placed the back of my hand on it. It wasn’t hot but the thick black smoke was already seeping under the door and round the seams. I put my hand on the doorknob and hesitated. Should I risk opening it? I didn’t know what I would find but it was probably full of smoke by now and opening the door might just provide more oxygen to make the fire get worse. Also the smell was acrid and I would be more likely to get myself into trouble trying to tackle it than waiting for the Brigade who were only a short distance away on ealing Broadway. I looked down at the extinguisher and realised it was a water one, not a good idea if it was an electrical fire.

Instead, I took a decision. I would go downstairs into the cellar and turn off the electricity. I did that and joined my parents outside. Looking up at the bedroom windows, the smoke was pouring out around the edges of the frames and the windows were black, so much so that they looked like they had been painted out.

After a couple of minutes the Brigade turned up and we directed them to the stairs. They went upstairs with their breathing gear, bright torches and hoses. After wthey had sorted it out and they had opened the windows to ventilate the room, they allowed us back in to survey the damage. The damage was surprisingly small- a sort of gooey mess on a burnt 12″ circle of rug. It seemed that the fan heater had either malfunctioned or fallen over and set itself alight, along with the rug it stood on. I don’t even recall that the carpet was scorched but of course all of the soft furnishings in the room were ruined by smoke damage. The rest of the flat was also rather sooty and we had to pay for a specialist clean-up company to come in and clean everything that had been exposed to the smoke as best as they could. (All of the wall surfaces needed repainting as well).

As the brigade departed, they gave us a leaflet called “what to do after a fire”. You hear stories of firemen causing more damage than the fire did in order to contain the spread but in our case they didn’t have to do very much at all, it being a very trivial incident in the scheme of things.

That night, my Mum and Dad slept in my room whilst I stayed with a kindly neighbour. I drifted off to sleep thinking what a wimp I’d been in not tackling what was such a small fire. Last week, it occurred to me that I’d made the right decision.

I assume they meant definition number four, but some in Bradford accuse the paper of being the lapdog of the Council.

Anyway, there was mild amusement at their front page website headline today…

Police in appeal to trace two missing men

Police have renewed an appeal for information about a missing man who suffers from schizophrenia…

It turns out they were looking for someone else as well, not double-counting the guy with a split personality.

Here are a couple of contrasting items of street furniture in the City Centre.

During my extended visit I sometimes stayed for the weekend rather than commuting back home via Zurich airport and I did lots of touristy things in the Berne area, notably cable cars and rack railways up in the mountains. Piz Gloria was a breathtaking revolving restaurant at the top of the world with stunning views of the Eiger and the Toblerone Mountain, the Matterhorn (with the aid of a telescope). Many of the Swiss went up there with the intention of walking or skiing down of course but armed with a timetable in a country where transport is super-reliable, I never suffered any transport problems.

Berne is something of an elaborate fake in some ways, with very old looking buildings in the downtown peninsula but much of them modernised behind the old facades. It is still well worth a visit though, with the bear pits (still with Bears), the Cathedral, the colourful statues and the medieval towers complete with performing clocks.

The oldest tower of all in the Town is the Zeitglogge which houses the merchant measurement sticks fixed to the wall at ground level and above the archway is the clock mechanism chamber. You were able to visit for a guided tour at what I seem to remember was 5:40pm most evenings and sometimes the visit coincided with the official clock winder on his rounds.

The clock went through a bit of a performance which was rather twee for the 20th Century but must have drawn the crowds nearly 500 years ago and sometimes still does. From memory the sequence was something like this:

A couple of minutes before the hour, the rooster crowed. The rooster was a kind of mechanical bagpipe and it sounded rather insipid. Then the bell chimes were rung and the parade of characters started, a turntable of figures spinning for a short time in a gothic type stone structure. Then the actual hour was struck, followed by the rooster again to finish off the sequence. The clock face also showed the moon cycle and astronomical information, all picked out in gold leaf on a highly elaborate face.

Above the mechanism chamber was an exhibition room behind the two large clock faces. Carrying on up the tower was the belfry and it was possible to go up another stair and look out on the town from a rooftop dormer window. Depending on the guide, the order of the visit might vary slightly  but you would be near bells or the mechanism when there was stuff going on.

During my stay, several Brits joined the Company team as ex-pats and it was arranged for them to get lessons in Swiss German. (Swiss German doesn’t sound too German but they do write in “High German”). After a few lessons, however, the teacher realised they were all struggling and there was a simple reason for this- they didn’t actually understand the concept of languages with nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. So, to resolve this, they were sent on a crash course in understanding English!

I have to say that I sympathise wuith them, because I can never remember my nouns from my verbs either, having mostly learned by rote.

What I do know, however, is when words get distorted from their original use, especially with the corruption of management speak. Terms such as facilitating, branding and Paradigm Shift give me a wry smile.

When I was a Manager in the late 80s, (before I got off the treadmill and took up my hobby as an alternative career,) there were a number of buzzword bingo phrases that used to come up in meetings. Eventually, they became ironic and it was a challenge to use them in the most unlikely scenarios, whilst trying to keep a straight face. Three that spring to mind were “Vertical marketing”, “Cooking on gas” and “Throwing the baby out with the bathwater“.

Every now and then, I read a technical white paper that isn’t really very technical at all (as it is aimed at Board Members) and a sentence makes me squirm. here is one I encountered yesterday.

As enterprises evaluate technologies to connect geographically dispersed locations, their choice is increasingly driven by the networking requirements of the various applications that they use in conducting their business and the ease with which they can leverage the talents and resources of their service provider.

I have to say as a rather cynical jaded older  telecommunications manager that getting any form of talents and resources out of any service provider I have encountered over the last thirty years where it involves anything outside of the box have generally failed miserably. If nothing else, they will be victims of their billing systems and be totally incapable of charging you properly for the service.

What i really twitch at, though, is the word leverage. Now I was taught that lever is both a noun and a verb , a lever being a method of mechanical advantage and also the action of levering something. So to my mind, you apply leverage to a wooden plank under a boulder to shift it but you don’t actually leverage it. Indeed if you simply replace the word with “use” it makes more sense.in the above sentence.

Wikipedia has an amusing explanation of the suffix:

-age- this suffix is appended to mundane words to create a more official tone, as in, “I noticed some breakage on that item. We might want to facilitate signage so there’s some verbage out there as to proper usage.”

Let us consider another mechanical advantage device, a hammer. A hammer is an implement for applying force to something and to hammer is hammering someting such as a nail. I could even say that the art of knocking nails into a think plank is hammerage, so I will refer to the ease with which we can hammerage the talents and resources of our account manager.

By the way, I have a hammer at home in a cheap toolkit, the sort you buy for £3.99 at the garage. (You get lots of tools, but they aren’t exactly tempered steel). The upper shaft of the hammer has a safety warning that the operator and bystanders must wear eye protection whilst utilising the implement. Thanks for telling us Nanny.

Story over, let the rooster crow.

Did you used to play knocky-nine-doors as a kid? Where you rang the bell then ran away and hid giggling? It stil goes on, although these days it’s called Parcelforce…

I have a love/hate relationship with the Royal Mail. All of the people I come into contact with in Morley sorting office are great, but the system sucks big time. From a reliable predictable service, it has deteriorated to the point where the delivery can happen at any time of the day and if you aren’t in then sometimes you can’t collect it until 48 hours later. (The excuse I was given was that the Postie doesn’t finish his round until the sorting office is shut again. The other version of this is that sometimes packages are reposted in post boxes and they have to go back to Leeds again to be re-sorted).

Last time I was in, I read this notice with bemusement.  It seems that the card they leave you isn’t good enough any more, they can demand other bits of proof to prove you are who you say you are. Why the hell is this? If I’m in, they don’t demand proof when I sign for something and unless I am a perticularly stupid burglar who goes round breaking in to steal red parcel cards then I remain who I would have been if I was standing on my doorstep.

Now the reality is that they only ask for ID to people who need to sign for something and their response to me is frequently “Hello Ian, I think there is something else for you in the back” and it looks a bit silly asking me for ID when they have just greeted me by name!

I do wonder, however, if they will be told to tighten the thumb screws once the “voluntary” national ID card scheme is rolled out? After all, a small plastic card is so much more convenient than many of these scrappy bits of paper.

There are two routes served by P&O North Sea Ferries out of Kingston, Zeebrugge in Belgium and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The former is good for heading south into France, whilst the latter is great for Amsterdam (or Efteling theme park) and onwards to Germany.

The two newest ships are the ones serving the Rotterdam route and they are very smart indeed. The Zeebrugge ones used to be on the Rotterdam route and our ship used to be known as the Norsun, now renamed Pride of Bruges.

We were on a works social club cheap trip which entitled us to a two bed inside cabin (i.e. no window). It also excluded food so as soon as we got on board we scurried round to the Pursers Office to buy our meal tickets and see if there were any upgrades available. Being a Saturday night the ship wasn’t too full (Friday night is the busiest, I gather) we were offered a full range of cabins, from £10 extra to £50 extra for a Club Cabin with mini-bar. We plumped for the latter, it being a treat for the pair of us.

The Club cabins are a decent size with a double bed, a sofa that can be used as a bed and a fold down bed above the sofa, so they sleep four. They also have a reasonably sized shower/toilet (for a ferry) and a telly above the bed. To add a touch of luxury, towel robes are provided along with reasonable sized bath towels & hand towels. There was a good assortment of lotions and potions as well as a kettle for teas & coffees.

The min-bar, however, was a bit of a disappointment. Gone were the bottles of beer, thirds of wine and miniatures of whisky that used to sustains us on previous crossings. The fridge was entirely teetotal, although it did have sachets of milk in a saucer.

All the cabins have forced air ventilation and you can choose warm or cool air. Even the warm was a bit nippy for Karen, so here she is in bed, fully clothed, watching X Factor.

On our return, although there was a Club cabin available, we opted just for a £20 upgrade to a 4 berth outside cabin and regretted it. Not much room, tiny shower, paper bath mat, small towels, minimal bathroom stuff in foil packages rather than plastic pots. Passable, but not a place to linger. One small mercy though- no PA speaker in the cabin so the myriad of announcements in the evening and the morning were not too loud through the door from the corridor outside.

More on Brugge itself in further postings. In the meantime, here is a little teaser video of something slightly unexpected in a shop window. (A photo wouldn’t do it justice, as you will see).

I really thought this story was a joke when I read it in the Mail on Sunday. A scaffolder was asked how he disposed of his industrial waste. On pointing out that a scaffolding business doesn’t produce any waste as it simply erects and removes scaffolding, he was advised that he was committing a criminal offence for taking his sandwich wrappings back home.

Just in case you think it is a Daily Mail-ism, here is the same story in the Telegraph.)

Now, I’m not going to come over all nanny state, as there are far too many examples of this type of b*ll*cks and not enough hours in the day, so I’m going to go off at a tangent here.

Have you ever wondered why scaffolding is the size it is?

The answer is gas. Gas piping used to come in 1 & 7/8″ outside diameter size cast iron tubes, internal size 1.5″. (It came in lots of sizes, of course, depending on the requirement). This was/is also widely used for lighting bars in the theatre, known as gas barrel in the UK, pipes elsewhere. When metric came along it became 48mm. Aluminium is the material of choice for theatres but steel is typical for scaffolding systems.

Thank you very much…

As I rounded the corner on the road leading to our office, I was relieved to see that our headquarters building looked intact. Looking out of our office windows though, the devastation was apparent. Where once stood a proud if somewhat jaded mill building, there was now a silhouette of walls with bits missing and stubbled tops, like an ancient cathedral ruin in the mist. The site was surrounded by fire tenders with their telescopic ladders hosing water, a real ten pumper. There were no longer flames visible, but the wreckage was belching toxic fumes into the sky.

The story can be found here and here.

This building was, surprisingly enough, still a working woollen mill. Bradford made its fortune on wool, but now one more of the remaining traders has bitten the dust.

The Police are treating the fire as suspicious: it was possibly started by a burnt out stolen car. The business was a going concern and the owners had rebutted offers from developers to sell their site in what is otherwise a declining area but ripe for demolition and redevelopment. Having a fire like this is convenient fore somebody. Quack quack?

During the day of the fire, we would occasionally peep out of the window, to see what was going on. By hometime, the smoke had abated somewhat but there were still tenders pumping into the wreckage.

On Friday, the demolition Contractors arrived to make the site safe, pushing down the remains with big articulated arms, but still the site smouldered and two hoses remained.

Today, the site is just a large pile of rubble with the recoverable metalwork being seperated off for scrap. As you can imagine, a Victorian Mill has a lot of cast iron columns and girders to recycle but they will probably have to be smelted first.

Reading about this after the event, the Fire Brigade said that it burnt so ferociously because there were 3,000 bales of wool stored in the factory and the flooring was heavily impregnated with Lanolin, otherwise known as wool wax or wool grease. Whilst both wool and lanolin are considered fire resistant in normal use, in an inferno they will burn ferociously.

Reading this, I recall my early days at GEC Coventry where we were based at an old pre-war factory in Spon Street. This was the 2nd biggest fire risk in the City Centre as it had been the original Rudge Whitworth motorbike Factory and all of the floors were impregnated with engine oil. It then became the biggest fire risk after the previous number one risk burnt down!

It was a rather ugly factory, being constructed of early concrete columns and brick cladding/Rittal industrial windows with what could best be described as a large shed on the roof of the main six story block (the Canteen). However, it was listed as being of special architectural interest because of its post-iron column design. It survived the blitz (despite all around being bombed) but eventually succombed to the developer’s wrecking ball when the site became a large retail development and Coventry skydome arena.

Coventry had some very strict byelaws about inflammable materials within the city centre core, presumably based on the carpet bombings of the fateful night in 1941 when much of the City Centre was destroyed. I can remember needing some meths for a Mamod steam engine once and was bemused to find that boots only sold it in metal containers, not the normal glass ones. (I was even more surprised that if you wanted it in Norway, you had to go to the State off-license to buy it, “Rødspirit”). I once went and stood on the highest point I could access in the City Centre and tried to imagine what it could have been like during the blitz. Despite how many war films or shocking photos you have seen, the reality cannot really sink in. I did the same in Bradford last week, seeking a high viewpoint and wondering how one solitary fire could bring the tinge of destruction to such a large area. Every fire tender in the area was in attendance and they were calling in other fire response teams from elsewhere in west Yorkshire. How would the emergency response teams cope in a major calamity if there had been ten fires, or a hundred? The answer is of course that they couldn’t.

Let us hope that they never have to.

This year, Easter was particularly early, shortening the season somewhat, so I wasn’t overly surprised to see something in the shops, called Twisted. It is basically a long, thin, twisted Cadburys Creme Egg and it tastes just as gooey!

It apparently launches on Monday, but we picked some up in ASDA last Tuesday and saw more on the counter of our “Premier Shop” so it must be on soft launch in Yorkshire.

I found the Press Release online, reproduced below. It is always interesting to read these sorts of things to see a different slant on the world.

Cadbury Trebor Bassett (CTB), the UK’s No.1 confectionery manufacturer, will be providing the Creme Egg experience all year round with the launch of Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted.

For POS or more information about Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted, please call the Cadbury Trebor Bassett hotline on 0870 191 7343.

The new product has Creme Egg “goo” twisted in a chocolate tube and has an RRP of £0.46.

Launching on 19th May, Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted is CTB’s biggest chocolate innovation this year. There will also be a brand new TV advertising campaign airing on 21st May to promote the bar.

A £2 million marketing spend will support the launch, including TV advertising, digital, PR and dedicated point of sale (POS). Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted, which replaces the Cadbury Dairy Milk variant, reflects the personality of the Creme Egg brand in a fun and novel way, delivering the same great taste in an innovative bar.

Twisted is the perfect solution for on–the-go consumption and the success and popularity of the Creme Egg brand offers a unique opportunity for retailers to capitalise on the all year round sales.

The TV advertising campaign will carry the strapline, “It’s no Creme Egg… it’s Twisted!” and picks up where the recent ‘Here today, Goo tomorrow’ ads for Cadbury Creme Egg left off.

Out of the wreckage of an exploded Creme Egg the new Twisted bar – the evil cousin of the Creme Egg – comes to life in a sinister, horror-style transformation and begins causing mayhem.

As with the Cadbury Creme Egg adverts in which the eggs embark on a series of amusing missions to ‘release their goo’, the Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted adverts will have a similarly light-hearted tone, showcasing the mischievous personality of the new bar.

The first screening of the ad is scheduled to take place on 21st May during the high profile Champions League final. There will be two adverts, both 30 seconds in length beginning with a top and tail format for first few days only, showing 10 seconds at the start of the break and the last 20 seconds at the end.

Research from CTB revealed that 90% of consumers would like the Creme Egg experience throughout the year and as the “goo”, not the egg shape, is the key driver for consumption, the new format will appeal to both existing consumers and promote new trial.
Kate Harding, Trade Communications Manager at Cadbury Trebor Bassett comments: “Cadbury Creme Egg is the number one selling chocolate single in Spring and we are very excited about the launch of Cadbury Creme Egg Twisted which we hope will prove extremely popular with consumers.

“Twisted reflects the Cadbury Creme Egg personality in a convenient to eat and exciting format that will become part of shoppers repertoire all year round. Retailers should take advantage of the dedicated POS and use it in-store to drive trial at launch.”

(Source: Cadbury Trebor Bassett, via Talkingretail.com)

It is in a fairly small building near the Telephone Exchange and is a family run business. They only open four days a week, from 5pm to Midnight. They are very successful but known to close down when they go away on holidays. (Such is their brand reputation that they are better off not trading than getting others in).

It is interesting to watch them in action on a busy evening. Two men make the Pizzas, mostly thin base but occasionally deep pan and those folded Calzone ones that look like huge Cornish pasties. A third man tends to the big kebab machine, skillfully slicing the revolving meat & frying burgers as required. Meanwhile the Matriarch tends to the cash desk, taking phone orders & slicing the Pizzas. I was struck by how well she knew her customers and the orders passing through, like an air traffic controller with their “big picture” of where the planes are in their sector.

I have to say that the Pizza was very good, it was a Hot Shot consisting of mozzarrella, tomato, green peppers, red onions, pepperoni and green chilli . The best one I ever had was what I christened a Mapperley Mighty Meaty when I used to live in Nottingham. Maybe I’ll try the Bello Meat Feast on my Birthday.

We went to Salou last Summer with Thomson, a large British package holiday Company brand, part of the German TUI Group. There wasn’t anything in particular about choosing them over the competition, just the right mix of hotel, flights and pricing. Anyway, Thomson are big on keeping Customers engaged, with frequent email offers of teasers.

Last week, a personalised mini-brochure arrived which featured our last holiday and suggestions for future ones. This was a rather clever hook- it had a few recognisable photos of Salou in it and had the family name woven into the body text all over the place.

This has to be a rather expensive marketing tool though, as to personalise an eight page full colour stapled brochure must be expensive on computer processing as well as the individual printing.

As it happens, all of our 2008 holidays are sorted and our long haul carrier of choice is Virgin Atlantic for 2009. (We are frequent Virgins, a contradiction in terms of course).