Brock’s blog

It's hot here. Very hot. I have the fan trying to blow cool(-er) air from outside into my little flat, and I have just spent a happy 20 minutes bashing seven bells of shit out of my drum kit, failing miserably to keep up with Van Halen. But hell, it was fun. I have a blister on my thumb now (I know) and I am as sweaty as hell.

But it was fun.

I am hideously and embarrassingly worse than I used to be. Perhaps I have lost my sense of rhythm. Perhaps I have overestimated my ability to pick it straight back up, perhaps everyone was just being over nice to me when I used to play, although that is unlikely, as I've always had pretty - ie brutally - honest friends. I mean, I know I wasn't necessarily any good as such, but I was pretty sure I could actually play. I think I have isolated the main issue at present* and have come up with a decent and logical plan** to address the issue. The only barrier is that when I come home from work, I am usually knackered and need to eat and sleep and go back to work. This leaves little in the way of regular learning and practicing time. I must make some, I think. The idea of this expensive (and gorgeous) drum kit sitting here getting dusty is bothering me enough that I will do something. Mind you, I've had it since February, and I've spent something like 7 hours at the most on them since then, as I've hardly been here.

From somewhere, deep down, in unchartered territory.... is some drive. I think I will see if I can dig it out.

*I'm shit
**learn how to play them again

This is an old chat screenshot that I found kicking around a while ago. I kept it because it amused me.

I think this pretty much encapsulates a fair part of the reason that Sarah and I get on. Our chats are often more of the same - We have relatively deep and sensible conversations, with stupidity in between that doesn't seem to detract from the content.

Well. more accurately, it's normally her having a proper conversation and me being a dick, with her still finding the shite I type amusing, while refusing to be distracted from the point she is making.

If there were awards for tolerance...

"The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire." -- Pamela Hansford Johnson
Show us a self-taken picture of the sunset.
Submitted by Connie.

If someone tels me I do a lot of these, they are terribly terribly unfair.

Maybe

So another ten day testing trip to the US is over. It has been a trip of much randomness, and where the normal off-track stuff is usually limited to travelling or laundry trips, this time threw up some entirely unexpected bonuses. Here are some things that I didn't expect to happen, but did:

1: Staying in a Huge house/Mansion that is so big, you can see it on Google Earth without even trying. While the town it is in is still all in the frame.

2: I got to shoot 3 handguns. Proper ones.

3: I saw a 3 hour old calf.

4: I went to dinner at a Judge's house.

5: Went to a motorbike museum and was far from bored. I'd even go back.

6: Been within 10 miles of a Tornado (even if I didn't see it).

7: We found the worst food in america (this is actually a trick one. We find this every time we go. But Tulsa, Oklahoma has the current crown. I thought I'd throw this one in, as I'd already typed '7' before thinking of one).

8: Shockingly, there are still people in this world mind-crashingly stupid enough to think that 'being 15 minutes late landing' is a good enough reason to try and make a phone call to the person picking them up at the airport. While still at 30,000 feet. I mean, it's not like they have any constantly updated information services at airports, is it? How would they ever find out about the delay? Best risk crashing the damn plane, then...

Here are some, less random, ones that are also of note:

1: Hotels with 'Econo' anywhere in the title are fucking awful. You will not get any sleep during your stay. Also of no surprise is that this was easily predicted, and could have been easily headed off at the pass.

2: Racing circuits are no fun at all when there is frost on the ground. Especially when you thought it was going to be about 15 degrees or so warmer when you packed your stuff. It's at times like that, I miss my long johns...

3: American food/coffee/beer either tastes of nothing at all, or of mouldy arse scrapings. Middle ground is very hard to find.

4: Italian home cooked food, however, is to.... die.....for. We ate so much we nearly exploded. We also got pretty larupped on wine, liqueurs and the like, too.

5: 0700 is a fucking stupid time to catch a flight. Getting up at just before 5 is all the proof you will ever need.

I have photo's and video of a lot of this. When I get organised, I'll post some. I bet you all can't wait.

This week I am in Alabama. It's been an interesting few days - from the flight being changed from one connection to two (and so a 4-5 hours journey rather than 3) on the way down to having to leave the circuit 3 hours early, dodging torrential rain...

In the process, I have learnt a few things about Alabama:

1: It's a fucking shithole.
2: See 1. Add a bit more to your perception.
3: When they say 'we may get a storm later', they actually mean 'in about an hour, we are going to come over and suggest you go over and take cover in the main building because there's a tornado coming'.
4: Everyone seems to eat a lot, regardless of how poor they look. Somehow, they seem to not suffer for a meal.
5: I found it very difficult telling the abandoned houses from the inhabited ones on the way to the track and back.
6: I don't speak Alabaman. I found it pretty hard to understand a damn word they said.
7: Birmingham, Alabama is the one city I have ever been to that you can drive around for nearly an hour on a Saturday afternoon, and the only sign of life is the guys standing outside the homeless centre. Nor can you actually find any sign of a city centre that implies life (but just happens to be closed). Weird.

The only good thing that Alabama? The fact that tomorrow I leave it to drive to Oklahoma.

Yep. That's it.

[Edit. Even worse than all the above, we found out tonight that the state doesn't sell alcohol on a Sunday. SHITHOLE!)

Do you think real love can last throughout any distance, or will long distance end most relationships? 
Submitted by Miss Joy.

The difficulty there, of course, is that people assume that real love is present in 'most relationships'. I think the two are unrelated in the manner the question is posed. Most long distance relationships fail. Most relationships based on real love don't. I don't think the two statements are connected.

If you can't put up with a little bit of distance, then it isn't real love, is it?

What are 10 things you've done that other people probably haven't? 
Submitted by Janette.   

I'm not sure I can come up with ten, but I'll try:

1: Moved on less than 3 days notice to a foreign country for a new job on the strength of a phone call with just two suitcases of possessions to survive with. Twice.

2: Moved on less than 10 days (the last time) notice to a foreign country for a new job on the strength of a phone call.

3: All car related, and so not deserving separate points, but still fairly unusual:
  3.1: Travelled at 177mph in an Aston Martin on a disused runway and not looked where I was going (I was checking data from the telemetry system that was ascertaining how likely the engine was to blow up if we went faster) as we rapidly approached a 40 foot high earth bank.

  3.2: Driven on the public highway at over 150mph in my own car.
 
  3.3: Purchased a car from 2,500 miles away, in a different country, having never seen it in the flesh (er...metal).

  3.4: Travelled across England with a broken speedometer (whilst being blissfully unaware of this) for almost exactly two hours in a 25 year old Ferrari (not mine) and getting out of the car to look at my watch and realise that I must have averaged over a hundred miles an hour to have made the journey in that time. I did think it was noisy for 85mph...

   3.5: Driven a racing car that I have built/Built more racing cars than you've probably seen on the TV in the last 5 years.

   3.6: Driven 1000 miles through 4 European countries in 10 hours (including a ferry crossing) in a ₤600 rust bucket of a car.

  3.7: [Insert a long list of incredibly irresponsible (ie much more so than the above) acts involving cars and speed (and, on occasion sitting on the bonnet at the time) moments over an extended period. Most, if not all, of which were illegal.]

4: Walked 35 miles non-stop over mixed terrain for charity. At night. At the age of 13 (although it did take me 12 hours and cost me several blisters and hypothermia for falling in a ditch full of water in the dark).

5: Driven a 100 mile round trip just to put flowers on my Mum's table for her birthday (by way of making up for all the other years I'd totally forgotten).

6: Willingly parted with over ₤2K just to get my then (psycho) girlfriend 'the fuck out of my house and my life'. No. I didn't have anything like that sort of money to hand at the time. But it was totally fucking worth it.

7: Piloted a two seater aeroplane at 1500 foot over my own house, being powered by an experimental/development engine that I had finished building entirely myself that week and finished installing in the plane (also entirely myself) that morning. And I don't have a pilot's license (although the other bloke in the plane did).

8: Made my (male, 45 year old) boss cry in a meeting involving everyone in the company just by answering his (possibly ill advised) question of "Well, honestly, what do you think I should have done, then?". I kept the job for a further 18 months and outlasted him, for reference, before I handed in my notice.

9: Been within 6 foot of a car when another car crashed into it at about 75mph and its fuel tank exploded. No--one was in it by this stage. I ran away.

10: Been on a beach at almost the very tip of northern Scotland, drunk, at 3 am on New Years day, running across a  beach 12 inches deep in snow chasing seagulls just because it was the most fucking bizarre thing that had occurred to me in weeks.

Yeah, I think that'll do. There are a million more car related ones (especially racing car related) that most people won't have done, and a fair few more not car-related that people won't have done, but that I'm not sure I want to crow about in the open like this. Some filthy, some not so filthy...

Geez. Even Thunderbird thinks it is unlikely that a woman will tell me I am someone special..

I find that a bit harsh. She sounded so nice...

I had a bizarre little episode in Toronto, yesterday. I decided that, as I like boats, I would go to the Toronto International Boat Show. I wanted a nice little wander among the pretty boats, poking things and generally being all technical and looking at fancy bits of kit.

Most geeksome. Great.

I wandered around looking at sailing boats and sailing dinghys, pausing at this interesting little toy and talking about the cool, penguin flipper style paddles it uses for extra motive power. Very interesting, actually, Clever stuff. I moved along to talking to a nice old bloke (there were, er, more than a couple of 'nice old blokes' there, to be honest. Not too many skimpy hotties) and we were talking about changing boat design (most of my sailing and boat knowledge is 20 or more years out of date in technology), moving on to changing areas of boating expertise.

We were talking about how Germany was one of the stronger boat manufacturers, but (as the boat we were discussing was Polish) the guy was telling me how big boat building has become in the last few years in Poland, and the depth of expertise has made Germany really "sit up and take notice of what's over the border" (Which amused me) and also try and poach some technology and expertise, as "Poland is in danger of taking over Germany's boat industry".

This made me smile. "Well, that shows a somewhat pleasing sense of irony, doesn't it?"

The guy took a second and then chuckled away. "Yes. Why yes it does, doesn't it?" And he toddled off to a real customer who may actually buy something from him. Which seemed fair enough to me.

So I carry on bimbling about, not feeling moved (I realised later) to take any pictures as they would all be too full of people rather than boats, pausing to have a long, in depth discussion with a jetboat guy. The topic ranged from the amazingly shallow two inches of water these 20 foot boats could travel across while under power to various applications for decent automotive turbo diesels in marine applications. I am toying with the idea of trying to see if there is any mileage (Urf!) in moving into installations for boats when I get tired of racing so tried to work our how far behind automotive it is (10-15 years was our assessment). May be worth investigating for later, I reckon. Good excuse to live on a lake and play with boats, I think...

I moved on to an interesting device for automatically steering a sailing boat without any electrical requirement. It uses wind power alone and is really rather clever, and was being demonstrated by a nice old (see?) German guy. he explained to me how it worked, and we chatted about some of the materials and mechanisms involved and I expressed my admiration at the simplicity of it all:

Old Guy: "Well, it is also a rather old design, I guess you can't improve on elegant simplicity... it is made in England and was actually designed by an English man forty years ago, you know."

Me: "Really? That's great. I like to hear that we're still turning out such clever things every now and then."

Old Guy: "Well, the English produce many very good things. very clever engineers, the English"

Me: "Well, I suppose so, yes.." (not really sure where this was going as he'd already established I wasn't going to buy one) "but it's nice to hear a product doing so well after such a time"

Old Guy: "Its true though. After all, you won the war. You beat us, you know"

Me: (thrown a bit) "Well, er, well yes. I mean, we had help and all that..."

Old Guy "Even so..... anyway, this bearing here is made with......"

Bizarre. Came out of nowhere, and I really wasn't sure if he was taking the piss, or if he thought I was. He seemed to think it was a perfectly sensible conversational derailment, and carried on happily like before, pointing out things and explaining.

I blame the long show. It had been on for over a week, and was closing inside the hour, so I suspect that they were all going slightly mad. I've done a few shows, in my time, and they've nearly tipped me over the edge and I was only there for three days. I think ten would have left my gibbering like a fool and bringing up 60 year old history...

Maybe.

Still, the boats were nice and all that.

My flat is on the top floor of a three floor building. The lower two floors are for businesses, so there are only two residential areas - my flat, and the one across the hall, where my neighbour lives alone. The doors are about 3 foot apart.

All of this is necessary detail, you see, so you can understand why I heard rather clearly the argument and shouting match between my neighbour and our landlady today. When I came back from one of my many trips, he had a notice on his door saying that he was three months behind on his rent, and so was being evicted. Clearly he managed to wriggle out of that, but I think being late with January's rent (now 12 days overdue) as he is every month he does pay has been the last straw, apparently. Our Landlady had brought someone with her (I'm guessing her son, from his slightly over aggressive attitude, and the fact her husband' English is poor) who was getting pretty shouty about wanting the flat emptied. Apparently, my neighbour had already arranged to meet the Landlady in town one day with the money, but had stood her up and refused to answer his phone already this month. Genius.

So it looks like I may be getting a new neighbour soon. While she has threatened to kick the guy out before, I can't see him wriggling past this one much longer. I think his business is in dire straits (he's an interior designer) and clearly ridiculously short on cash.

Ho hum. I turned the music off so I could listen. He did a pretty good job of grovelling, actually, but she stormed off, unconvinced and left an eviction notice on his door again. Excitement, people!