The chassis of the kit was two hardboard rectangles, pre-punched with holes and assembled at right angles. The bracing was in the form of brackets that also formed handles so it looked something like a pro radio set. The front panel had a printed paper overlay and you permanently mounted a speaker, a switch or two, a light and a couple of potentiometers. There was also a battery holder also I don’t recall if it fixed to the back or the base.

The base panel consisted of a hole grid and a big bang of springs. For each project you did, a base sheet showed you where everything went. You pushed spring mounting posts through holes then popped springs over them. When you wanted to fit a component you pushed down on a spring forming a loop through the top and pushed the component wire through. It took ages and got very tedious to assemble (& eventually dismantle).

There were lots of projects to assemble but some of them were rather lame. (For example, the morse key sounder project was basically the oscillator project but using the non-latching switch). It did involve careful thought though and an understanding of component identification to assemble the right bits in the right place. All projects also included a circuit diagram in the manual and a basic explanation of how it worked. You also needed to know about the resistor colour code (e.g. a 10k Ohm resistor being brown black orange) which ISTR was illustrated in black and white in the manual!

Moving on from this kit, we had to learn the art of soldering, using tag strips or Veroboard and getting components from Aitken Brothers in High Bridge or pay silly money to the newly opened Tandy Electronics shop. The other alternative was mail order from the adverts in the back of Practical Wireless, Practical Electronics and the then new Elektor (apparently still going). In amongst those adverts was one for a new start-up company in Rayleigh, Essex called Maplin Electronics and I distinctly remember their first mail order component catalogue, about 30 pages with a buff cover sheet illustrated with Concorde. (Rayleigh was going to be near London’s fourth airport at one point).

Flash forward 40 years and how things have changed with David’s new Santa Gift. All the components are pre-formed onto mounting plastics with poppers to link together using a stacking arrangement onto a plastic baseboard. All the parts are numbered and each project is illustrated in colour so assembly is a case of matching the photo with the result. There were no flying wires required (despite the product name!), just bridging rods with between two and seven poppers. It is pretty straight-forward to assemble and shedloads faster than my Philips one of 1970.Of course, it requires thought to work out which components are at base board level to speed assembly and check none of them are in backwards. (Some don’t matter, but many do).

Our first project was a lie detector and it was fast to assemble. On turning it on and touching the pad, we were rewarded by a low purr from the speaker and a damp finger produced a high squeal. My first inquisition question- “Is there really a Santa Claus?”

The second project was simply batteries and a motor, propelling a helicopter blade type disk ferociously up to the ceiling, hitting the plasterwork with an alarming clunk. This amused him for a while, particularly when I howled with anguish when it clouted my hand with a surprisingly painful momentum transfer. OUCH!

We then built an FM radio, one of several radio projects in the book (which used a couple of integrated circuits whilst the others used discrete components). That worked fine and was both load & clear.

The fourth one we tried supposedly made bird type noises but we couldn’t get a peep out of it, I couldn’t see anything wrong so there might be a faulty component, time will tell.

David then returned to the spinner project and we discussed why it worked the way it did. He managed to fool me into thinking the batteries were starting to go when he had sneakily reversed the polarity so that it was blowing upwards instead of down. He also inadvertently discovered gyroscopic properties by tilting the board whilst it was running and having the motor & popper links go flying all over.

So, better or worse than my childhood toy? Both really. Much better to assemble but more about outcomes than methods. The integrated circuits supplied result in some more sophisticated projects but the explanations are rather more simplistic. It certainly sows the seeds of enquiry and this was after all a mass market toy for children 8+. It seems to have lept up from sub £40 to sub £60 recently though, I don’t think it is worth that.

A black tie event last night- incidental music and carols by the West Yorkshire Police Brass Band “Ten Piece Team”.

Then we woke up to a cold house- our boiler was not well. It sounded like a washing machine after being reset and I eventually diagnosed it as a blocked condensate run-off pipe. (It was -8.5 degrees C when we got home last night.) A watering can and a kettle soon sorted it out.

We are now pet-sitting a pair of Finches for relatives. These two little ladies spend a lot of time making a quiet noise, honking away to each other. Sometimes one of them lays eggs as well.

The ability to profile movement speed makes the Leeds Grand system look soulless and sterile when doing flying cues, especially the house tabs.

Meanwhile, up on the grid, something that looks somewhat like a floor polisher is able to be positioned pretty much anywhere. Large yellow spreader plates are used where the lifting weight is going to be over the spot grid limit. The placement of the units was demonstrated for us and the biggest nuisance is in the tidying up of the excess cable from the DC controllers.

The Olivier is an open stage in an ampitheatre style and the fly tower is more-or-less hexagonal in shape. It was recognised back in the early 1970s that standard flying bars parallel to the proscenium was not appropriate for a venue without a proscenium, so instead, a very flexible point hoist system was installed. There were 170 hooks which can be moved left or right from their home position, connected via a switching matrix to 36 variable frequency controller units known as cyco-converters. It was all controlled via a PDP 11 Mini computer and a custom control desk. The system was clever enough to move any of the hooks at any individual speed in either direction, up to the limit of 35 moving at any one moment (One was a a spare).

The system worked very well for the first three decades but accelerated component failures in recent years now mean that only six controllers work and lots of the winches are unservicable. On that basis, the old system is now relegated to rigging and static flying. Looking at an article written in 1979, it seems that the current control desk is not the original one so there has been an interface refresh at some point.

The theatre has now installed a phase 1 upgrade consisting of 30+ new hauling units, more about the new stuff next time.

With the aid of lots of money, the scheme has been recreated with LED lighting to striking effect.

(I hope to eventually see the first LED restoration  Apollo Victoria scheme, that will be really stunning).

Anyway, in my experience, carriers are generally OK at bog-standard stuff but anything out of the box and if it can go wrong, it will. (To err is human, but to really screw it up you need a Telco).  Now in recent years I have been involved with the UK tier 1 ones & several tier 2′s as well (BT, Kcom, C&W, Virgin, Verizon, O2, Vodafone, Opal,  Fujitsu, Thus, Energis, Eircom et al) and one day, I hope to find one that makes it not like pulling teeth. (I’m still waiting…)

One of the biggest problems with Telecommunications is getting the connections into your premises, whether copper or fibre optics. Getting a simple service in is generally OK, but if you want it to be resilient in the face of adversity then unless you are prepared to pay megabucks &/or put your eggs in the same carrier basket it can be challenging.

At work, we are moving from an ageing 60′s building on the outskirts of town to a brand new office block in the City centre with a wonderful view of the landmark 1873 Town Hall. Unfortunately, however, the area between now known as City Park is currently a construction nightmare and we remain vulnerable to service interruption whilst city centre services get re-jigged around what is going to become the world’s most expensive paddling pool (to rival Leeds’s world’s most expensive patio).  Now we can see the old building from the new one and to protect ourselves from Diggers damaging our incoming links, we have invested in a point to point optical link.

I was involved in the survey but otherwise busy on the day when it was set up, but I went to inspect it over the weekend and the techy in me got very excited.

The system is essentially a fibre optic link but without requiring fibre optic cable as it uses a point to point  (invisible light) laser system. Our particular one runs at 1 Gigabit/second but they are available in various capacities according to distance and reliability required. (For real anoraks, have a look at the manufacturer’s website).

The product is known as TereScope® but I was impressed to find that the assembly had a built in telescope so that you can quickly check that it is in approximate alignment. See the captions on the pictures below for a bit more detail.

We had third row stalls seats in the centre of the stalls in the striking (but run down) Palace theatre, somewhere I had visited twice previously to see Jesus Christ Superstar. Les Mis is a musical and all the lines are sung through, there are no spoken words as such. However, it is sung conventionally rather than in an operatic style, something I’m not too keen on at the best of times. Anyway, from two minutes into the show, I was hooked.

What is so captivating about the show? Everything. Each element of the performance comes together as a wonderful piece of theatricality and the clever set design allows the action to flow in a cinematic way as Jon Valjean relentlessly marches through the revolving stage of life.

I was to see the show two or three times again at the Palace and more recently in its new home at the Queens theatre further up Shaftesbury Avenue. There were two casualties in the move up the road. The first was the musicians- there are a lot less but it sounds the same (something the Musicians Union were not happy about). The second was a stage truck that was used to quickly set up a cafe scene downstage. The truck lived at the back of the stage and could move guided by slots and powered by batteries under radio control. Occasionally, however, it had a mind of its own and several bits of what looked like debris & bricks at the edge of the stage concealed girders to stop the truck plunging into the orchestra pit. (The truck was dispensed with for the UK tour in the ’90s as it was considered problematic).

We went to see the show on tour at the Manchester Palace theatre. Apart from the missing truck, I also felt that the two barricade pieces that so cleverly interlock together looked much less imposing because the stage is so much wider in Manchester than London. Also, the re-staging to dispense with the truck required the barricades to come together earlier than their big moment later in the show so the impact was lessened.

A couple of months ago, we were given tickets to see the 25th anniversary production at the Lowry. This has been re-staged and relit to what I feel are mixed results. (Some wore better, some don’t) The revolve has gone but there is much more use of scenic elements and projection, some of which is visually stunning. The suicide of Javaert the policeman was entirely unexpected and a bit of a gosh moment. Conversely, however, the inability to be able to revolve the barricade meant that Gavroche’s brave attempts to rescue bullets from dead soldiers happened out of view.

Fifteen years ago, there was a 10th anniversary concert at the Albert Hall where performers from around the world came together to give a stunning platform performance and it is happening again this Sunday at the London Dome O2 Arena. We did look into going but the tickets were very expensive. However, for a tenth of the price, we can participate by live satellite at our local Showcase Cinema, which will be a curious experience, live but out of sight. Will we clap and cheer I wonder?

Ironically, we had not been long back from Spain, where our hire car was petrol and I reminded myself “don’t put diesel in” each time I filled up. Something else I noticed about Spain was that the price of Diesel reflected what used to be British reality there- it was generally a few eurocents cheaper than petrol per litre, being cheaper to manufacture and taxed less. (Petrol is to Diesel what Malt Whisky is to Bells in the distillation stakes). Here in rip off Britain though, you now pay several pence more for Diesel as it is priced higher and the tax is the same as petrol.

Back to the car problem and I was shocked to find that Skoda Assistance had no idea that my recently purchased car via via the main dealer should have had 12 months cover. However, the forecourt staff had a contact for a small business that specialised in fuel draining.

Unfortunately, the man in question was on his way to a job so we had to wait a couple of hours but we agreed a sub £200 price. During that time, I was googling articles about misfueling and getting concerned that the costs could end up much more than a couple of hundred pounds, but eventually he turned up in his shiny new van and sorted me out. He was very chatty and he clarified some of the facts and myths about the misfuelling business.

First of all, engine damage; this happens if you contaminate your fuel at more than 10% and continue to drive. (Obviously my contamination level was 90% so it wasn’t possible to drive). It damages the fuel pump which then damages the cylinders with the swarf it produces. The longer you run around with contaminated fuel, the more serious it gets.

If you have only put a little bit in and realise straight away, then provided you fill it up with diesel and it is under 10%, you will get away with it. Where most motorists go wrong is to put several gallons in, realise, top it up with diesel and carry on driving. Apparently drivers will frequently play down how far they have driven or even deny they have started the engine but it is obvious to the technician when he does the emptying.

So, what was the process? Firstly, after doing the safety elf barrier stuff, the existing tank contents were sucked out via a flexible metal hose fed down into the fuel tank. The hose is quite small as it is often necessary to go fishing around the tank due to unusual shapes.

The next thing was to put the front of the car up on blocks to drain the fuel line which is horizontal. (He commented that the crews from the big names don’t even carry car jacks). After that, he disconnected the injectors and used the fuel pump to purge the residual fuel.

After a quick push back to the pumps, I paid for half a tank (again) and we returned to the parking bay for further therapy. Still with the injectors off, he cleaned out the engine and turned it over on the starter. I was surprised to see that a modern sleek turbo diesel engine with the decorative trim off the top shakes and rattles like an old tractor when being turned over.

Eventually, he reconnected everything and the engine started again. He left it to run for a while before pronouncing the operation a success.

So, off he went with his payment and fifty litres or so of smegged up fuel. Apparently it is sold to the processors for 20p a litre and eventually gets refined back into diesel, petrol and plastics.

As a departing remark, he mentioned that the AA fuel crews don’t work Sundays so they couldn’t have helped me anyway. (It turns out that Skoda use the RAC, but their coverage is limited to getting you to a Skoda dealer to do the draining so it would have been an overnight stay).

So, I have now joined the 20% club, one in five motorists have misfueled at least once (and 400 typically do it a day).

In my increasingly age related absent mindedness, I have invested in a gizmo to prevent me doing it again. There are several on the market and they basically stop you putting in the smaller unleaded fuel nozzle which is 21mm, only opening when the 25mm diesel pipe is inserted.

It is a couple of decades since your Shadester held a Tiller but it didn’t take long to get back in the groove. I ended up Skippering most of the time as the first Mate and Billie no-mates seemed to be good at zig-zagging between banks (and occasionally into them).

There were only two locks on the stretch we covered which we locked down through on the Saturday and locked up through again on the Sunday. This meant that it wasn’t too strenuous for the crew.

We headed from our base at Chirk to Llangollen on Saturday afternoon, being on the world famous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct within an hour or so of setting off.

We went up to Llangollen on the Saturday morning, winding there and returning back, cruising steadily through the day and mooring up at Ellesmere. On Sunday we chugged along a bit further to look at some wildlife sanctuaries before returning and mooring up an hour or so south of Chirk (after a brief stop for a late liquid lunch).

On Monday morning, an early start gave us a clear run through the Chirk aquaduct & tunnel before returning the boat to Black Prince, intact other than a broken glass from the washing up and a few extra scratches on the hull (& a light coating of brick dust on the roof- those tunnels & bridges are tight…)

As a budding DJ, I had a twin deck console from about 1975, using Goldring Lenco turntables (which were about £10 cheaper than Garrard SP25s from Comet) but it was by no means a Hi-Fi.

When I moved to Coventry, I saved up my weekly wage to buy a music centre in a briefcase, made by Sanyo. It was Ok, but again, by no means a Hi-Fi. (I found a photo of one online, here).

I bought my first “proper” turntable in 1981, a Technics SL-10 from the Windows Music shop sale in Newcastle. It was slightly damaged (with a scratch on the top front edge) so was a little cheaper but otherwise OK. From memory, it was about £200 which sounds a lot of money for the time (and it was!) but this was genuine Hi-Fi, although purists (like my mate Leslie) poo-pooed it for more traditional lower-tech designs like the Linn  Sondek LP12 (still being made and one sold for £2k on ebay recently).

My Technics was innovative in several ways. Firstly, the SL-10 was rotated by a direct drive precision motor than than by a belt drive (like the Linn) or a little rubber idler wheel (like the Goldrings). Secondly, the pickup arm moved tangentially to the record by means of servos, ensuring no tracking errors. Thirdly, as the record was clamped onto the spindle, you could play records with the player fixed to the wall, should you so desire. Finally, it had optical sensors to check there was a record on the platter and to judge the size & speed.  (If you had a 33.3 7″ EP you could manually pre-set the speed as well).

As picture discs were becoming prevalent, the player came with two black paper circles that you could orient to manually set the size and it even had a pop-up large centre should you have a dinked single to play.

Anyway, as it has spent the last decade or so put away, I thought it might be time to dust it down and sell it so I duly put the camera into auction mode and took some snaps. Unfortunately, when I tested it, I was disappointed to find that the tangential movement was not moving any more. It might simply be seized up in which case it can easily be sorted out, or it could be more expensive…

Anyway, I bought one of those USB turntables a while back so I can still play records with a bit of fiddling about.

(Someone might want it for spares)

I was asked to write this Obituary which might possibly appear in The Stage next week.

I knew him for more than twenty years and admired him without knowing him for nearly as long before that from his widely published writings on technical theatre.

Mervyn Stockbridge Gould (14/12/1946 – 29/10/2009)

Having  been fascinated in technical theatre from his early teens, Mervyn landed his first paid backstage job  aged 17 in 1963 as A.S.M. (& Props) for a two week run of Babes in the Wood at Boston Regal, touring into Crewe, Buxton and Leek. He remained a casual showman at the venue (and #2 Lime Boy) until moving to London in 1965 to study History at Marjons in Chelsea. Having had the foresight to join NATTKE he was able to get work in numerous West End theatres although it impacted on his Degree, just scraping through the Finals. After several years of touring, residences & even walking Schnorbitz (A period he described as “the painful death throes of Variety”), he spent three seasons at Sunderland Empire as CD Operator then a year as Deputy Chief Engineer at The Palace Theatre during the run of Jesus Christ Superstar.

He joined Loughborough University English & Drama Department in 1979 as technical tutor which gave him the opportunity to gain an M.A. and still work occasional summer seasons or Pantos. He remained there for seventeen years before taking early retirement due to ill health.

Mervyn was a Historian, researcher and avid collector of backstage ephemera; his doorbell was a house telephone and his dining chairs were former Box seats.

He was very active in the SMA whilst still working and in retirement became heavily involved in the Mercia Cinema Society.

As an author, he wrote four books on cinema history as well as numerous articles for the theatrical Press including Tabs, The Stage, Cue & Cueline.

In 2007, he was interviewed for the Theatre Archive Project and his colourful memories are online at http://www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/gouldm.html

He died peacefully at home in Loughborough, aged 62.

Ian Grey, November 2009

Mervyn was a real character and I can’t believe how much I miss him despite only seeing him 2-3 times a year. I hope to expand this 300 word distillation into a longer blogpost worthy of his memory when I feel ready.

However, as we don’t go out boozing and scoffing very much, that didn’t really leave that much in the repertoire. Karen wasn’t tempted by Spearmint Rhino, or indeed a trip to Morley Working Mens Club with the occasional beer-mates. We did take in a 15 film (The taking of Pelham 123) and we had a trip to Leeds Gala Bingo, somewhere we haven’t been since before the smoking ban. When we were there, we noticed three things that were different. Firstly, it didn’t smell of smoke any more, other than outside the front doors where the snoutcasts congregated. Secondly, it wasn’t as busy as it used to be, no doubt a combination of the smoking ban and the recession. Thirdly, they had gone hi-tech, with the availability of wedge shaped electronic bingo player machines, called “Gala Wiz”. We had bought traditional paper tickets by then, but being a gadget man, I was keen to investigate the technology on a subsequent occasion.

Big club bingo isn’t like seaside prize bingo, by the way. There is none of the “two fat ladies” banter and the punters just want the numbers. Bingo is a regulated recreation and is considered on the lower rungs of the gambling ladder. It is based totally on chance, although a lack of skill in marking off the numbers will scupper your chances somewhat! The numbers do come fast and if you haven’t done it before, you will struggle.

At a typical Bingo session, several hundred people will lob their money into an imaginary bucket and then try to win back more than they lobbed in. Of course, there is a saying that in a Casino the House always wins and at the races the bookie always wins. Bingo Halls are heavily regulated on the size of the House take and there is a near-illegible set of tables near the entrance that the club is obliged to display, summarising ticket sales and pot size. (This information is also flashed up on the large screens for certain other games involving more than one club. Needless to say, no-one is interested in this information).

So, when you are sitting there with your ninety numbers spread across six tickets you have statistically the same odds as everyone else of winning a line, two lines or a full house. The more people playing and the more combinations of tickets though, the faster the wins get called by players because statistically life is like that, as are numbers. Indeed as numbers get called, they tend over time to more-or-less evenly distribute themselves across all six tickets and even if you are only waiting for one number to come up, the odds are exactly the same as any other uncalled number coming up. (This is known as the Bingo Buzz, waiting for the one number that wins you a big prize, or, more likely, not!)

Our session at Gala Leeds was to win us the grand total of zilch, although it was interesting to notice a couple of changes to the way things worked. Previously, there were two sets of big prize games, the Link games (where many clubs play together linked up via audio-conference & integrated calling) and the National game (not played linked but the numbers are distributed electronically to the clubs) where there is a House winner for a small prize, a regional winner for a medium prize and a national winner for a big prize.

Now, at Gala, the national game has gone; it has been replaced by a big Link game (called High 5) that ups the odds by introducing a bookie gamble. There are two games played in the book, the first one being linked, the second one in the hall only (with much smaller winnings, of course).

As well as four (or five) figure prizes for lines and full house, if the caller calls House with the number ending in 5, then they win 10% of a substantial pot that rolls over each week if not claimed. (It was getting on for £200k when we were there). If the winner calls on the actual number 5, then they win 50% of the pot, and the other 50% is distributed amongst everyone else in that Bingo Hall playing. (They actually write you a cheque the following week, they don’t have that sort of money in the Safe!).

Now I imagine that Gala have a small team of highly paid gambling Actuaries who actually work out the statistical odds of these types of games not making them go bust, so it is probably a fairly safe bet on their part, provided that the odds don’t come up too much at the fringes as they reset the pot to a minimum figure each win. They have now introduced a bit of vertical marketing called the “side bet” where for an extra pound on certain games, if you happen to win within fifty numbers then you get double the prize money. (This type of incentive was entirely illegal not too long ago, when you had to join a club at least 24 hours before you played. Now you can roll up, register and start playing. (You do have to prove you are over eighteen though, we can’t have married children gambling, can we?))

Anyway, a Bingo Hall is a strange mixture of tension and boredom. It requires a fair bit of concentration to pick out the numbers called on your ticket and if your mind wanders, you are scuppered as you have to claim a win there and then, i.e. the last number called has to be on the winning line. Every time someone makes a claim, there is a small babble of conversation where everyone exchanges banalities “Eeh, I was only one away”, “I wasn’t even close”, etc.  (Not as much fun as the Galway Races Primal Scream I blogged about previously though). It is supposedly a social club as well and the bar is certainly keenly priced, but there is the constant drone of the Parti Bingo between sessions, a game even harder to play as the numbers come fast and furious, even if there are only eighty of them. (Parti Bingo is like a fairground barker trying to make you part with your money in bigger and better games, just another pound in the slot, go on, you know you want to…)

Anyway, in the spirit of blogger investigative research, I’ve now tried out three different Bingo Hall automated systems over the last couple of months and I am consolidating a report. In the meantime, here is a musical interlude…

Now, the room has been totally transformed. The 1923 interior has gone, revealing the original ceiling. The balcony has gone and the stage has swapped ends. The windows have all been uncovered and a small wrap-around balcony has been inserted.