Thursday, February 28, 2008

IS NOTHING SACRED IN GOD'S HOUSE?

A couple of items ago on 3rd February, I wrote a short piece about York – specifically the Minster and Bettys, feeding (in no particular order) body and soul. A few pictures taken in both places, enlivened, or at least padded out the words.

Lo and behold, last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph (for those of you not in the UK, the Daily Telegraph is the UK’s premier national daily newspaper – unless you are the editor of the Times, in which case, it’s probably the Sun) had a picture which had me checking back to my own photographs. An almost identical image to mine, of the roof of the Chapter House (that’s in the Minster, not Bettys) appeared in the newspaper.

THE TELEGRAPH'S PLAINLY PLAGIARISED, OFF-CENTRE AND POORLY ANGLED VIEW OF THE CHAPTER HOUSE ROOF PUBLISHED ON 23 FEB

MY MASTERPIECE OF THE SAME SUBJECT TAKEN
AND PUBLISHED HERE ON 3 FEBRUARY


Now I took the image by lying flat out on the stone flags with my head at the centre of the circular floor looking vertically upwards. I must have looked, I suspect, very much like the leader of the provisional wing of some Druid Cult in the throes of a rather dark and mystical ceremony that could easily have been mistaken for some preliminary planning for Wicker Man II.

Some few days later, the bemused staff there must have been intrigued by another wierd-o doing exactly the same on the Chapter House floor.

I wonder what they think is going on.

I suspect security there now is a lot tighter.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

THAT'S ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE DOWN MY UNIFORM, MAVERICK

“Good afternoon, Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome aboard the Maiden flight of Cathay Pacific’s new Boeing 777. We hope you are all enjoying the experience. We are currently flying at 300 knots, and our altitude is 28 feet.”

A Glorious piece in the paper yesterday showed a still from a bit of YouTube footage with one of Cathay Pacific’s new Boeing 777s taking the Great and the Good of the Airline up for a jolly. The only problem was that the pilot, one Captain Wilkinson, decided to give the passengers a flight they would remember for the rest of their lives by blasting down the runway, wheels up, at what has been measured at 8.5 metres off the ground. I suspect the passengers’ feelings about this strafing run will be rather dependent upon whether the pilot informed them about what he had planned for them before he did it.

You can’t help but imagine that Captain Wilkinson must be a closet Tom Cruise/Top Gun fan, and, instead of fixating in that film, as any real man should do, on the straightness of Kelly McGillis’s stocking seams, he must have seen a once in a lifetime opportunity to respond to the “Top Gun” line when Cruise asks permission to buzz the Tower - “That’s a Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full”, knowing that he was in a uniquely good position to copy his hero’s subsequent antics.

The airline, as you might rather depressingly expect in today’s environment, did not take too kindly to all this, although it does not seem to be the people on board who whinged about it. Putting a video of it on YouTube seems to have done for him. In an internal review lasting a week (!), the suits in the Airline decided to sack him.

Given the buckets of free publicity he has generated for the airline, I’d have thought they’d have promoted him to Head of Marketing, but maybe I’m missing the point here.

But when you read the Airline’s press release, you start to get that “here we go again feeling”. The spokesman droned out “ …. was dismissed as he had neither sought nor obtained the necessary company approval to undertake such a fly-by.” Actually, looking on the bright side, it doesn’t say that he wouldn’t have got it if he’d asked, so maybe I’m being a bit down on Cathay Pacific, and they may be less stuffy than you’d think.

A Cathay Pacific “insider” who is also interviewed says “He decided to give them a flight they would never forget (I think he’s right there), but why he chose to do it with the chairman on board (whose surname is Pratt, if you’re interested) is anyone’s guess. ….. Maiden flights are treated as a bit of a jolly for executives with lots of champagne flowing, and these fly-bys used to be done for a wheeze in the old days. But they are dangerous, because however good the pilot thinks he is, he isn’t trained for it, and the planes aren’t designed for it.”

Hang on a minute – we’re talking about flying in controlled conditions close to the ground here. Now call me old fashioned, but I want my pilot to have the maximum possible experience in flying feet above the runway. Most of the accidents I read about seem to occur quite close to terra firma. If Cathay Pacific isn’t training its pilots to fly close to the ground, or it’s buying aircraft that are uncomfortable near it, I think a different airline is called for, irrespective of how gorgeous the Stewardesses are. If you want to see why I want these guys to know what they’re about, just look at this landing of a 747 at Hong Kong.

A GREAT VIEW OUT OF THE PORT WINDOWS!

It’s things like that make me admit I’m not the greatest fan of flying. I can’t rid myself of the nagging thought, when I’m up there, that every single component of the aeroplane I’m flying in was purchased from the supplier offering the lowest cost. And, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I’ve got a Degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I’m still not totally convinced that the reason planes get off the ground has got anything to do with Aerodynamics – I think it’s all to do with the exponentially increasing collective focus of every passenger on board willing the plane into the air after its acceleration along the runway.

The real clue to this story is in what the “insider” said. These things go on all the time, and the freedom we now have to put everything on the internet has here resulted in a case of The Law of Unintended Consequences taking its toll.

If you want a classic example of the ways of the past, look up the following link to find the doyen of test pilots, Boeing’s Tex Johnson http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm, who during the test programme of the original Boeing 707, performed a barrel roll in one at a sales demonstration. There’s a grainy video of it happening, with a great still picture of the aeroplane flying upside down over Lake Washington, as well as a beautifully underplayed commentary from the great man in his laconic American drawl. The boss asks him on the Monday after the event, what he thought he was doing. “Selling aeroplanes” was Johnson’s classic answer.

He kept his job, and they immediately stated to sell shed-loads of 707s.

Simple really.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME - No. 21

My daughter's new chickens, who are now keeping their side of the bargain by producing some truly excellent eggs are about to move into their second home. This is being protected against the weather by a couple of coats of paint and varnish.

This is the pot of varnish being used -


- And this is the disclaimer on the back.


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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A SHOT IN THE DARK - NORFOLK FASHION

Up with the lark this morning. There’s something creepily virtuous about getting up on a Sunday in the dark when you don’t have to, and you could be having a lie in instead.

The weather forecast here in Norfolk was very good, the tide was right, so off to take some pictures. Wandering around the estuary at Morston, a small sailing village, as the sharp, morning light spread slowly across the water and climbed its way up the sides of the boats moored there, was one of those magical moments which make you feel good to be alive.

Having taken a few shots, I drove into Wells to wander along the front, and find some breakfast. I ended up with the Anglo-Italian fusion of Toasted All Day Breakfast Panini, and a large Espresso, from the local Deli. As I chomped my way through this, a Police Car appeared and parked on the open space next to the quay. It was quickly followed by an ambulance, which in turn was followed by a Fire engine.


THE CLANS GATHER

The crews all got out, quite relaxed and chatting away. I know life in this part of the world is a bit Manana-ish, but your first thought was that with what was clearly quite a sizeable emergency unfolding, a bit of zip wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Then the Coastguard boat, fully manned, “Shipshape and Bristol fashion” chugged around the channel and moored, followed by the fully kitted-out Lifeboat crews ambling up to have a chat with each other.


THE WELLS LIFEBOAT AND CREW

Then the local Community Police girl (disarmingly pretty, I have to say) on her designer bike, and her equally disarmingly unpretty male colleagues on their machines. Then a shoal (don’t know collective noun for) of Flood Wardens arrived, one wearing a very rakish Bush-Wacker hat, at the same time as a large orange and professionally equipped Rubber Dinghy.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL COMMUNITY POLICING


By which time it dawned on me that all this was in all probability not the result of a local resident’s emergency call. Especially when a guy erected a ladder at one end of the quay, climbed up it and got out a loud-hailer and a camera.

CREATING ORDER FROM CHAOS


As the minutes passed, a massed gathering of the Norfolk Rescue Clans came together, increasingly obviously now to have their pickie taken. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, and if the chaotic way they milled around as the poor photographer tried spectacularly unsuccessfully to create at least a veneer of order is anything to go by, then having your accident in the next county would seem to be a prudent self-help strategy. I suspect though, that when it’s serious, and they move into action properly, you’d see a very different side to it all, but on a lazy Sunday Morning, it all seemed like someone trying to herd cats.

STAND STILL OR I'LL SHOOT YOU

The photographer had me totally transfixed – he moved everyone backwards, forwards, sideways and back again. He seemed to have them putting their helmets on, taking them off again, turning sideways, looking to the front, not picking their noses and generally trying, without any visible success, to get them to behave like honourable, grown-up members of the county’s accident and recovery structure system. But as time went on, the cast showed a slowly collapsing level of interest (actually not very much at all), and when he announced that “the helicopter” would arrive in 15 minutes, there was a communal groan and he lost them completely. They had 10 minutes at least where they could simply chat to their mates or try to get off with the female Police Officer by asking her intense, searching technical questions about her bike.


UNDIVIDED ATTENTION AND .....


..... TOTAL COMMITMENT


After the 15 minutes, exactly on time, the helicopter appeared, very “Apocalypse Now”, low on the horizon, and all we needed was a decent military band to strike up “The Ride of the Valkyries”, and, in my eyes at least, the day would have been complete. But Ford Coppola he was not. The photographer raised his loud-hailer to try to tell the helicopter pilot what he wanted to do, and suddenly dropped it, realising the pointlessness of what he had just done and clearly hoping that no-one had noticed.

The helicopter could only fly slowly past, since hovering at the most appropriate spot was apparently not allowed, so the photographer only had one go at getting his picture. With exquisite timing, we now had the glorious sight of some slightly disorganised old gent, who clearly had no idea of what was going on, deciding to walk slowly and painfully with his stick across the front of all the carefully orchestrated groups. He’d got halfway across before our snapper noticed him, and a couple of helpers tackled him to try to bundle him off the set before the helicopter arrived a few seconds later. He did a pretty good “Mr Bean” impression, except in this case you knew that he really didn’t know what was going on.

THE INTRUDER DEPARTS


It probably reflects very badly on my image as a nice, caring person, but I found all this utterly hysterical. The frantic jibbering of our man on his ladder when he saw the intruder was an utter joy to see.

The rest was, in all honesty, a bit of an anti-climax. The helicopter swung its way past, our man pressed the shutter, and he asked a henchman, who, one assumes had “Walkie-Talkie” contact with the helicopter pilot, to get him to go round again, which he did. Everyone said a communal “Cheese”, and our intrepid snapper had the luxury of two bites at this particular cherry.

I have to say that, when it was all finished, they all looked very professionaI, and gave a real sense of comfort that if you got into difficulties, there was a real team waiting to help you out. As far as the photographer was concerned, I
only hope he’d remembered to put a new Memory Card in his camera, and charge the battery.

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Sunday, February 03, 2008

FEEDING THE INNER MAN IN YORK

York is a terrific city to visit. I should know – I spent about two hours there last week. The weather was awful, the wind was blowing a gale, it snowed, and then rained. So my visit consisted of a whistle stop blast round the Minster, followed by lunch at Bettys.

If you’ve never been to either, take my advice and go. The Minster is awesome, and I do mean awesome, and Bettys takes an awful lot of beating for an excellent meal.

The Minster itself is the second largest Gothic Cathedral in Northern Europe, with an outstandingly beautiful set of Stained glass windows, the East Window being the largest in the World. The church there dates back to c 300 AD, but the present building was started in 1220, and “declared complete” and consecrated in 1472.


YORK MINSTER - THE CENTRAL NAVE

Admiring the building through my untutored eyes, it is incomprehensible to imagine what an average person from Rural England must have thought the first time he saw it in the Early Middle Ages. Even today, the size is intimidating.

The other immediate impression is the quality and quantity of the detailing. It is all of the highest quality, and ranges from 13th Century effigies to a magnificent Astronomical Clock installed in 1956, commemorating the Airforce Crew who were stationed around the area in the Second World War.

STAINED GLASS WINDOWS AND VAULTING - CHAPTER HOUSE

VERTICAL VIEW OF THE CHAPTER HOUSE ROOF


DETAIL OF THE CHOIR SCREEN

DETAIL CARVING - ONE OF LITERALLY HUNDREDS!

This remembrance of the Second World War jumps out again in Bettys, where the inner man benefited from a Seafood Linguini, a steamed Ginger Pudding, and a cold lager.


BETTYS - INTERIOR SHOT

Downstairs, a large mirror is covered with signatures from airmen who were stationed at the surrounding airfields in the early 1940s. Bettys in York was the unofficial “Ops Room” for these men, and those that survived and have returned to York in the last 60 years are invited to sign the mirror with an engraving pen.


THE AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPHING THE MIRROR IN BETTYS

There are 600 names there. Quite moving.




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