Saying goodbye to Mike and Barry

This week is a sad one in two ways; we have to say goodbye to two good friends.

Mike was one of the porters here at the 'fun factory' He was big and loud and fun. Wednesday morning he came in, sat in his familiar place outside the sports hall and just quietly died. When a big rough rugby player of a guy dies, it is quite surprising to hear such an outpouring of affection for him. Although he had some sort of embolism in his brain about seven years ago, he had seemed in good health these days so his passing still came as a great shock. People are quite stunned. He was the same age as quite a few of us here, just 52, so it seems a bit uncomfortably close too. I shall miss him, a kind man who never complained, liked by all.

We lose Barry this week too, well, next week to be accurate. He is taking early retirement from his job in charge of 'X-ray spectroscopy', amongst other things. He is another man we shall miss more than we can know. I have been able to talk to Barry about any subject at any time over the whole 27 years that I have known him. He is never too busy for you, never judges you (not out loud anyway!) and I have never been let down by him. Although he is religious he does not sermonise or preach and he keeps a broad mind about other peoples' beliefs. I shall miss his advice whether personal, professional or musical. I hope to see him again on many occasions.

Pyrenean walkies

Had a good trip to France and Spain. I stayed in Toulouse with Lesley (and Alan) where Alan works on the A380 (one of my workmates thought it was a road - the idea of Al spreading the black-stuff out for a living is wonderful.) Alan is plane-mad (Unlike me. I am just plain mad) He has a share in a plane which they keep at Staverton near Cheltenham but during the week when I visited he was doing a week of aerobatic training in the town of Jaca in Spain in someone else's plane (if you are going into steep dives and flying upside down, do it in someone else's plane - then if you hit the ground at 400mph it won't cost you a penny) Of course Lesley was faced with a week of sitting in an airfield watching them 'faff around' with their little planes, so she called on me to go walking in the Pyrenees with her. That took a lot of deciding. Er um er....about half a second!
Had a good walk five days in a row though we were badly hampered by the lack of good mapping in the mountains and never once completed our walk on any day. The last day was the nearest but even that involve some spoofing it. I'd never walked at that altitude before and it was a bit of a learning curve. The map was crap, the compass behaved a bit oddly in the hills, you get very disorientated and the paths marked on the map haven't existed for years! ( All of that in good weather - if we had had bad weather we would have really struggled - I watched it like a hawk) We were walking on top of deep snow for some of the walks. I knew for a fact that sometimes the snow was more than 12 feet thick. No need to worry; I have big feet! More worrying was having the water running under it as we crossed some quite sizeable streams which ran straight under our feet. That was very unnerving. Every now and then you would fall through the surface of the snow up to your knees or on occasions up to your waist. And of course having struggled through the snow you'd discover that you weren't where you thought that you were so you would have to retrace and fall through the same drifts again. On one walk we got up to about 8000 feet on a ridge between two valleys and were faced with descending down a snow slope which we couldn't see the bottom of. Of course it could have gone down a hundred metres to a cliff, something I wasn't prepared to risk so not for the first time we 'bottled' it. Several of our walks were like that including a similar one in trees which seemed to drop towards a cliff. Took us two hours to do about a mile but at least we got back.
Saw some gorgeous wildlife, everything except the bears which are 'smaller than grizzlys and rather timid' Yeah right. One place we saw a flock of 50 vultures! Loads of orchids and other flowers, tons of good birds, slow-worms, red deer and chamois and some marvellous close ups of marmots.
Lesley surprised me by being a really tough walker. Just once she was clearly very tired and I had to make allowances I suspect that I was more tired than Lesley most of the time - not a problem as our excellent and very cheap digs sold the vital hop-medicine.
The digs were on the Camino Santiago, the pilgrims trail that the devout follow to get to Santiago do Compostela and all day there is a stream of walkers tramping through Jaca and Santa Cilia where we were staying. They literally walked over our doorstep on their route.
Another highlight was going through the Somport tunnel - about the same length as the northern line but huge in diameter. About a 30 mph limit in there so it takes a long time to get through - My mate Roger would freak out but then I'd have never persuaded him onto the Sleazy Jet to get there.
Forgot to mention the air show we went to on the first day in France at Alan's home air base. It was not bad at all and cost the grand total of....nothing! The only cost was that all three of us got roasted in the South of France sun and Al and I got quite burnt. Added interest as Al knew a lot of the pilots. We were right in the thick of it when all these restored WW2 planes etc. were being revved up etc. Brilliant!

Weary of today...

1st blog...no idea what to say or why I am saying it!

Another frustrating day at the World Centre for Disastrous Career Decisions. Our optical table (weight about 3/4 tonne) won't go in the lift no matter which way we push or shove. 9 guys (8 guys + 1 gal) turned up to help shift it but they don't have the permission to stretch the lift. It fails to clear the door opening by about 1 millimetre. Now tell me there's no such thing as Sod's Law!

Then I decided to get on with my real job - a simple matter of machining some gauge plate to length. Didn't fancy sawing my way through a piece of tough steel 40mmx20mm so I put it in the cut off machine, an abrasive wheel gismo with an automatic feed. Went off quickly to the loo and came back to smoke, vibration and a ruined piece of steel. I'm really not very good at this job at times. Now I'm convinced the milling machine is clapped out so I am a bit weary of the whole thing. Can't wait to get home and get into my running kit. Out there on the road, no-one can hear you scream - at least they do, but Wiltshire people are too polite to ask...