21
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22
Announcements / Re: We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
« on: December 03, 2018, 09:04:42 PM »Milk shake cold and long, raised.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Soliloquies
« on: November 27, 2018, 09:37:26 PM »
Fuck Sweden, necro-posting, apologies.
So, we end up going out to Lundy again. Only this time the weather has taken it personally, amber warning of wind and rain, a last-minute decision to give it a go in a helicopter the same make as the one that, the week before ended up as a fireball in Leicester city's football club car park, killing all aboard including the chairman, sweet.
I'm on the MET office weather report as it comes in, 30mph wind gusting 45 mph, but he's ex-navy, and after scuttling the herd of sheep (seriously) he drifts it down the field and lands it like a feather.
No problem, they load all the baggage and do that run first, visible with binoculars all the way to the island 12 miles of the point, it's back 20 minutes later, lands, sheep scattered, like a feather, one of the guys in a fire suit comes in and announces a delay, there is an intermittent warning light on the fuel feed, they are investigating! Why not say the pilot has cramp, fuel feed? Fuck off.
10 minutes later, same guy, "Just going to do a test flight to see if it's fixed!" a few of us brave the wind and rain to watch navy guy throw it around the sky. Lands like a feather, sheep getting surly, MET office winds 35mph gusts at 50mph.
We are trip number 4, the waiting room is in a hut that has become steamy and over hot for people dressed for a November landing in Lundy, there is an undercurrent of hysteria, I find a sheltered (relatively) spot round the back of it to smoke and watch for the helicopter coming back, as the birds have largely given up trying to fly, the sheep are in a square formation at the top of the field, executing practice charges against a bale of hay, the aircraft comes in sight, flying at 45 degrees to its heading, MET office winds at 45mph gusting at 55.
There's been a delay, for refuel and the pilot to have a tea (!), sheep have mysteriously disappeared, ground crew looking edgy, some passengers openly praying, last look at MET office, winds at 48mph gusting at 65, island no longer visible.
We are ushered out and into the helicopter, the only discernible difference under the rotors is the wind direction, two of the ground crew are mounted on quad bikes with what look like lances, watching the brow of the hill, the buildings are evocative of Rourke's Drift, the smell inside the passenger compartment would remind Colonel Killgore of victory in the same way it reminds me of immolation.
One passenger in the back (me) is given headphones and mike should the pilot need to convey information of import to us, I say "Breezy" he replies "Yeah wouldn't have started if the winds were as bad then, but all the bags are over there now" This is information I do not pass on, two of the others are hiding behind their hands.
We rise, a leaf in the wind, turning gaining height, swinging level with the cliff edge a surge of wind picks the craft higher, the navy man leans it into the squall and we leave, seven minutes to the island, aboard a bucking bronco, I enjoy it for what it is and the view, others are less sanguine, one woman does not look up or out the whole trip. As the island resolves itself, the whiteness of old light, the stone buildings huddled round the tavern the restored church, navy guy drops us down making us light, clearly enjoying himself, 200yds out from the H he drifts us in sideways and lands, like a feather. Word comes through on the radio, the sheep have taken the helipad.
So, we end up going out to Lundy again. Only this time the weather has taken it personally, amber warning of wind and rain, a last-minute decision to give it a go in a helicopter the same make as the one that, the week before ended up as a fireball in Leicester city's football club car park, killing all aboard including the chairman, sweet.
I'm on the MET office weather report as it comes in, 30mph wind gusting 45 mph, but he's ex-navy, and after scuttling the herd of sheep (seriously) he drifts it down the field and lands it like a feather.
No problem, they load all the baggage and do that run first, visible with binoculars all the way to the island 12 miles of the point, it's back 20 minutes later, lands, sheep scattered, like a feather, one of the guys in a fire suit comes in and announces a delay, there is an intermittent warning light on the fuel feed, they are investigating! Why not say the pilot has cramp, fuel feed? Fuck off.
10 minutes later, same guy, "Just going to do a test flight to see if it's fixed!" a few of us brave the wind and rain to watch navy guy throw it around the sky. Lands like a feather, sheep getting surly, MET office winds 35mph gusts at 50mph.
We are trip number 4, the waiting room is in a hut that has become steamy and over hot for people dressed for a November landing in Lundy, there is an undercurrent of hysteria, I find a sheltered (relatively) spot round the back of it to smoke and watch for the helicopter coming back, as the birds have largely given up trying to fly, the sheep are in a square formation at the top of the field, executing practice charges against a bale of hay, the aircraft comes in sight, flying at 45 degrees to its heading, MET office winds at 45mph gusting at 55.
There's been a delay, for refuel and the pilot to have a tea (!), sheep have mysteriously disappeared, ground crew looking edgy, some passengers openly praying, last look at MET office, winds at 48mph gusting at 65, island no longer visible.
We are ushered out and into the helicopter, the only discernible difference under the rotors is the wind direction, two of the ground crew are mounted on quad bikes with what look like lances, watching the brow of the hill, the buildings are evocative of Rourke's Drift, the smell inside the passenger compartment would remind Colonel Killgore of victory in the same way it reminds me of immolation.
One passenger in the back (me) is given headphones and mike should the pilot need to convey information of import to us, I say "Breezy" he replies "Yeah wouldn't have started if the winds were as bad then, but all the bags are over there now" This is information I do not pass on, two of the others are hiding behind their hands.
We rise, a leaf in the wind, turning gaining height, swinging level with the cliff edge a surge of wind picks the craft higher, the navy man leans it into the squall and we leave, seven minutes to the island, aboard a bucking bronco, I enjoy it for what it is and the view, others are less sanguine, one woman does not look up or out the whole trip. As the island resolves itself, the whiteness of old light, the stone buildings huddled round the tavern the restored church, navy guy drops us down making us light, clearly enjoying himself, 200yds out from the H he drifts us in sideways and lands, like a feather. Word comes through on the radio, the sheep have taken the helipad.
24
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Full Moon Impossible on Flat Earth?
« on: July 26, 2018, 11:02:22 AM »
We did this a while ago see (https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6056.msg113954#msg113954) Tom refused to do the zetetic thing then too, Junker did promise to go out and give it a go but never got back to us, Junker did you, will you, try the string test?
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Soliloquies
« on: July 25, 2018, 03:08:55 PM »Next stop Sweden, thinking payback for Edmund.
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Flat Earth Community / Re: NASA going to SUN
« on: July 24, 2018, 01:07:43 PM »Hmm. Shame your attention faltered before you read any of the available information, much easier to go for the video link I suppose, so you missed the cutting edge carbon composite shield with ceramic paint, Tungsten chips, Molybdenum alloy faraday cup and niobium wires in sapphire crystal tubes, and the fact that the deionised water is pressurised so the boiling point is 125 C, and the reason they use this is that water is better at handling the range of temperatures than most chemical coolants.
So quite a few technical triumphs.
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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Soliloquies
« on: July 23, 2018, 08:37:30 PM »
Treks around the Isle 2;
For our wedding anniversary we took a break in another of the Landmark Trusts properties (look them up), a tale of weather and history.
The journey from our home to Purton Green in Suffolk took nearly an hour longer than it should have, but it was in many ways a blessed relief.
You see since I put my shorts on in the last post it hasn't rained, not a drop (on my home at least) and it has been hot, really hot and we don't do air-con in England except in cars, so the probable reason the A14 & M11 was one big slow moving car park is that much of the population had just gone out in their cars to get cool, if the trend continues I predict that the English will evolve into mechanised gypsies.
The property had been billed as remote. Remote means something different in Britain to what it does in the US, Canadia or Aus', there are no vast distances to get lost in here just twists and turns in the landscape, forgotten corners. We drove out of one village and a mile down a narrow road was a footpath sign pointing down a rutted track, we trundled down there for half a mile, over a ford (dried up, see above) until the track ended at a fence with three wheelbarrows lent against it, we loaded one with our stuff and set off up the footpath. Getting out of the car and loading the barrow took a minute, by which time we we were soaked in sweat, it was still hot.
The instructions, the man we had been told to ring before we set off had given, was to follow the track until you come across the house, after 400 yards we were starting to doubt, imagining we were being pranked by one of those hideous TV programs where we are filmed slogging up a hill with a barrow full of crap in the boiling heat until a manic presenter jumps from the hedge with a camera crew shouting surprise! and I punch him in the face and set off back down the hill.
However as we get to the top we turn to our right and there it is.
There's a narrow path mown through a vast bank of thistle, dock and Willowherb to a lawn with a Walnut tree, the key the man said, is under a stone, it is. The huge oak door creaks open, this is the door you hear in all those old films where a creaky door is requisite, undoubtedly.
The hall runs from where the thatch fans out on the right to just past the big door on the left, all the way up to the roof and is beautifully cool, a stone floor and one small window at the back, simple air-con.
The original house was built in the 1250's , a minor lords house and what makes it special is the beams that support the roof, at this time they used simple cross beams that could only span the width you see, the outer walls as they are now were actually open supports in a broader hall which was six foot wider, the thatch would have come down to head height. When better methods capable of holding bigger spans were introduced instead of ripping this out and rebuilding they built another further up the road (now gone) and this was downgraded in status and ended up as three cottages for farmworkers, plastered over, bricked up, chimneys and hearths and more doors added, when they bought this in the sixties they ripped it back to the skeleton replacing like for like where the wood had degraded too much. Anyway it's grand, not for arachnophobes though, the bare thatch in the hall is home to hundreds of spider webs.
Oh, there were several ponds surrounding, remnants of the moat (there were wolves back then) and I got bit to fuck by mosquitos watching bats at dusk.
Now the English flag showing the cross of St. George was much in evidence during our trip, we were due to play Sweden in the world cup (another story). George being our patron saint is a strange one, as he was a Turkish or Palestinian member of the Roman army who was killed for his beliefs, so he never graced our shores.
We went to Bury St Edmunds where the first patron saint (of England) St Edmund, (yes you guessed it) is interred, somewhere, probably beneath the tennis courts if the slightly dotty lady who got talking to us in the cathedral there is right, little is known about Eddy other than he was in all likelihood, a local king/chieftain chopped up when the Vikings (Ivar the Boneless?) swept through East Anglia in the late 800's, whatever had been written about him at the time was destroyed in the sacking, burning and high jinx, the Vikings were not big on books.
So we made him a saint as we didn't like the Vikings, he was a Christian (probably) and he came to a sticky end, at least he was English.
For our wedding anniversary we took a break in another of the Landmark Trusts properties (look them up), a tale of weather and history.
The journey from our home to Purton Green in Suffolk took nearly an hour longer than it should have, but it was in many ways a blessed relief.
You see since I put my shorts on in the last post it hasn't rained, not a drop (on my home at least) and it has been hot, really hot and we don't do air-con in England except in cars, so the probable reason the A14 & M11 was one big slow moving car park is that much of the population had just gone out in their cars to get cool, if the trend continues I predict that the English will evolve into mechanised gypsies.
The property had been billed as remote. Remote means something different in Britain to what it does in the US, Canadia or Aus', there are no vast distances to get lost in here just twists and turns in the landscape, forgotten corners. We drove out of one village and a mile down a narrow road was a footpath sign pointing down a rutted track, we trundled down there for half a mile, over a ford (dried up, see above) until the track ended at a fence with three wheelbarrows lent against it, we loaded one with our stuff and set off up the footpath. Getting out of the car and loading the barrow took a minute, by which time we we were soaked in sweat, it was still hot.
The instructions, the man we had been told to ring before we set off had given, was to follow the track until you come across the house, after 400 yards we were starting to doubt, imagining we were being pranked by one of those hideous TV programs where we are filmed slogging up a hill with a barrow full of crap in the boiling heat until a manic presenter jumps from the hedge with a camera crew shouting surprise! and I punch him in the face and set off back down the hill.
However as we get to the top we turn to our right and there it is.
There's a narrow path mown through a vast bank of thistle, dock and Willowherb to a lawn with a Walnut tree, the key the man said, is under a stone, it is. The huge oak door creaks open, this is the door you hear in all those old films where a creaky door is requisite, undoubtedly.
The hall runs from where the thatch fans out on the right to just past the big door on the left, all the way up to the roof and is beautifully cool, a stone floor and one small window at the back, simple air-con.
The original house was built in the 1250's , a minor lords house and what makes it special is the beams that support the roof, at this time they used simple cross beams that could only span the width you see, the outer walls as they are now were actually open supports in a broader hall which was six foot wider, the thatch would have come down to head height. When better methods capable of holding bigger spans were introduced instead of ripping this out and rebuilding they built another further up the road (now gone) and this was downgraded in status and ended up as three cottages for farmworkers, plastered over, bricked up, chimneys and hearths and more doors added, when they bought this in the sixties they ripped it back to the skeleton replacing like for like where the wood had degraded too much. Anyway it's grand, not for arachnophobes though, the bare thatch in the hall is home to hundreds of spider webs.
Oh, there were several ponds surrounding, remnants of the moat (there were wolves back then) and I got bit to fuck by mosquitos watching bats at dusk.
Now the English flag showing the cross of St. George was much in evidence during our trip, we were due to play Sweden in the world cup (another story). George being our patron saint is a strange one, as he was a Turkish or Palestinian member of the Roman army who was killed for his beliefs, so he never graced our shores.
We went to Bury St Edmunds where the first patron saint (of England) St Edmund, (yes you guessed it) is interred, somewhere, probably beneath the tennis courts if the slightly dotty lady who got talking to us in the cathedral there is right, little is known about Eddy other than he was in all likelihood, a local king/chieftain chopped up when the Vikings (Ivar the Boneless?) swept through East Anglia in the late 800's, whatever had been written about him at the time was destroyed in the sacking, burning and high jinx, the Vikings were not big on books.
So we made him a saint as we didn't like the Vikings, he was a Christian (probably) and he came to a sticky end, at least he was English.
28
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 16, 2018, 08:45:14 PM »I'm not sure jumping on the beds in Ikea is quite the same as firebombing and looting shops in Paris, Lyon and Toulouse.
That was the semi-final. England would have gone up in flames had they actually managed to win the whole thing (lol).
A fitting pointless end, England burning and listing horribly drifts off into the sunset, never to be seen again, to the fading chorus of “two world cups and to world wars doo dah, doo dah” sang in a mockney accent to the tune of camptown races.
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Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 11, 2018, 09:34:44 PM »Fucking useless!
Southgate gambled that the donkeys that hadn't turned up (Young, Ali, Rashford and the bastard Stirling) would come good, and the gamble failed.
We crawled to the semi's on a good draw some inspired actions by a few (McGuire, Tripier, Pickford deserve a mention) and luck, and then crawled out, bollocks.
30
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 09, 2018, 09:59:16 PM »Sup Junker.
De Bruyne scored a beauty to put the nail in Lady-boy neymar's coffin, and for that I will be eternally thankful.
31
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 09, 2018, 09:22:26 PM »Guess what muppet booked a holiday (about 6 months ago tbh) where they were completely cut off, no signal and no TV, had to drive to a town and sit in a pub car park watching a small tele' on a stage with a bunch of southern cro-magnons and their feral offspring, but England won, Harry from Leicester City scored and I still don't see the point in Stirling, now we are home and can watch Wednesday in peace.
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Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 03, 2018, 09:46:22 PM »England, doing things the hard way.
34
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 03, 2018, 07:31:43 AM »No fully understand Rama, I hate the England he represents.
Junker! Not Brazil, not after Neymars histrionics no amount of skill is compensation for having that brat on the field.
35
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: July 02, 2018, 08:57:00 PM »I have to say I felt sorry for the Japanese, I thought they had it for a while but Belgium are through.
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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing
« on: June 30, 2018, 10:02:44 PM »My boyfriend's band just released their new album.
But that was very nice.
38
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: June 30, 2018, 09:06:43 PM »Still stoked?
Messi and Ronaldo, going home.
39
Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: June 29, 2018, 07:21:25 AM »I’m Afraid I do.
In a carrot and stick world, I think we spare the stick on our footballers. They are paid vast amounts and given the treatment only available to dim royals but when they fail at a task they have trained all their lives for, carrying our hopes, we bitch a bit.
If, since the last debacle/world cup, Rooney had been walking around with Cunt seared into his forehead with a branding iron, this current crop might have a little more focus.
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Arts & Entertainment / Re: World Cup 2018
« on: June 28, 2018, 09:35:21 PM »Ignore him Rama.
It was a bit shit, Dier lived up to his anagram but Alexander Arnold was decent.
Comedy moment; https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44649247