Ken Loach, finally

Ken Loach became famous in the 60s with films like ‘Cathy, come home’ and ‘Kes’. I didn't know about that, of course. I first had to be born. Then I spent the first 12 years of my life not going to the cinema. And even once I started that I didn't really have Loach in my view. But then, in 2009, I moved to Britain, which clearly is Loach Country. 

Since I've lived here, he made five films that I didn't see. I was very aware of ‘I, Daniel Blake’ and ‘Sorry we missed you’, but when he made these I was already living in Wales, and I didn't have a strong cinema habit. The nearest cinema is and was Pontio, and that isn't the most attractive of venues for me, as it is a university building. I go to university every day! It feels much less like an evening out than most cinema evenings would be. And it is not particularly far, but it is far enough to not bother too often. In Plymouth and York the threshold was lower as at least I lived in the very town where the cinema was. And I also didn't really have a film mate to go with. So I saw neither of these films!

Then ‘the Old Oak’ was released. And it is rumoured to be his last film. This was my chance! So I booked tickets for a viewing in Caernarfon. That is much more a night out than Pontio. 

I had seen the trailer, and I figured it wasn't difficult to figure out what the narrative would be. An impoverished pit village where Syrian refugees are being housed, which makes the local community angry. They have nothing; why is this overstretched community expected to deal with even more people who have nothing? But then someone manages to bring the two communities together. I still wanted to see the movie. How did he make it all play out?

You find out that the protagonist is lonely pub landlord who just wants the best for people. He has a bunch of regulars in his pub, which just about keeps the place afloat. But not by much margin. And then he forms a friendship with a young female Syrian refugee. His regulars want to use his pub for a meeting in which they express their anger at the refugee situation, and he refuses. Then the Syrians and sympathetic locals want to use it to bring everyone together; he agrees to that. The events are a success, but the regulars feel utterly betrayed. Why are the Syrians given preference over them? And they sabotage the whole thing.

It ends on a hopeful note, of course. It is not suggested at all that everything is hunky-dory when the credits roll, but at least there is something constructive going on.

I'm glad I've seen one now! And you indeed don't go for the surprises; there were two big plot twists that I saw coming from a mile away. But that's OK! I still enjoyed it. And I think quite a lot of the actors aren’t professional actors. I am one of those people who associate Durham with Durham Cathedral and Durham University. I never have anything to do with the marginalised former mining communities. And it's good to be reminded of that world as well. I suppose that in a way, Bethesda is a bit like that, but with the big downfall in the first years of the 20th century rather than in the 80s thereof. I'm sure some people here have nothing. And I quite like sticking my nose into local community initiatives like that sustainability thing, and, way back, the wholefoods co-op. At a film like this emphasises the importance of such things!

Rest in peace, Alex

The Head of School came into my office. He said he had something important to say. It wasn’t good news. One of our students, and, relevantly, one of my tutees, had died. That was a bit of a shock. 

The family later indicated they welcomed a delegation from the University to the funeral. I saw it as my task to go. My heart was heavy! This young man came to University, in our hands, and he didn’t come back alive. How to face the bereaved? But we took the responsibility onto us to welcome him into our School, and then we should also take the responsibility to bid him goodbye in person. 

Someone from central services organised the logistics. The funeral was in Gateshead, on the other side of the country. A coach was mustered. And I cancelled my engagements for that day. 

I didn’t know who else would be going. The small crowd that gathered at the usual pick-up point was almost entirely students. I recognised two. The chap from central services, and a representative of the Student Union, were coming too. 

When we got to the crematorium, more students were already waiting there. It was a good crowd altogether. That was reassuring. Then the funeral cortège arrived, and everyone went in for the service. 

It was a beautiful service. But hard! He was so young and will be so missed. 

There was a wake in the upstairs room of a nearby pub. There the mood was a bit less stark than in the actual crematorium. And when it came to an end, we went back onto the coach and headed back for the other side of the country. We were back in Bangor at about 11 pm.

It was a long and sad day, but the father assured me he was pleased to see so many people travel so far in honour of his son. So it was totally worth it. This day will stay with me for a long time. And I hope all our students stay safe from now on…

Starting Anglesey geology in Rhoscolyn

When the new academic year starts, we tend to not wait very long until we take the first year students who are doing the Anglesey geology field course into the field. Normally we start in the Precambrian and work our way towards the present day, but that requires starting on Llanddwyn, and if the tide is against you that trip becomes problematic. And the tide was against us. So we need to start somewhere else, and we decided on Rhoscolyn. They are the rock is all Cambrian, so the next best thing.

We went on the second Monday of term, and over the weekend, I received a message from my colleague Dei, who is the module organiser, saying that he was unwell and probably couldn't make the trip. But that's okay; Jaco and I can do what he does. Within limits.

On the day I travelled up in the coach with the students, and we met Jaco by our first stop: South Stack. And we took it from there!

Jaco had actually not been back from sick leave for very long himself, but this whole trip is all about turbidites, and he built an entire blossoming career on the things. He never ceases to stop to have anything to say about that!

I did the general introduction so I would have some input. And then I let Jaco go wild on his turbidites. By the time he was done it was pretty much lunchtime!

South Stack lighthouse 

We drove to Rhoscolyn and had lunch by the church. Then we walked to the coast watch outlook post. There I said some more about the stratigraphy of the area, and Jaco mentioned Dennis Wood, who has a memorial stone there. And then we went down to the cliff to look at more turbidites. 

Impressive cliff

From that cliff face we walked to a last one. That has a big quartzite lump exposed; how did that get there? And from there we normally walk the scenic route back, past some rock arches, but it had started raining, so we decided to skip that and go back to the vehicle. I think we made the right call; I didn't stop raining for a long time after that. So we just went home! And reported back to Dei that we thought we had delivered a successful day in the field. He was glad to hear it.

Let's hope next time we can actually go to the Precambrian! Although I haven't checked the tides yet…

Chasing helicopters

It was going to be a weekend with a lot of cave rescue activity! On the Saturday we had a rigging session, and on Sunday I was booked in for helicopter training. The idea is that it can happen that there is an emergency at a remote location, and the police decides it is best to drop our team off from the air. In my time this happened once; there was an emergency at the far end of the Llyn peninsula, and that is far away from everything. I didn't attend that rescue; a callout came, saying that you should only deploy if you could get to Porthmadog in a limited amount of time. I would not have made that. And it was from Porthmadog the helicopter would leave.

There are, obviously, some safety issues with helicopters. Especially if it can't land, and it has to winch the team down to the ground. So they want us to all be familiar with that. I had been trained on that before; some 11 years ago, with the Devon Cave Rescue Organisation. But the powers that be had decided that that was outdated, and I had to do it again. Hence that I now ended up getting ready with my helmet, gloves and goggles, the day after having already been underground with a small selection of the rescue team.

We were expected to gather in Llanberis a bit before 9 am. From our team it was me, and our equipment officer Tom. It has been organised by the Llanberis team. And getting there I found out that there were also delegates from the Aberglaslyn and Anglesey teams. (The latter is, obviously, lowland rescue.)

I was still at the base when I heard and saw the helicopter come over. A good sign! Soon we were right by it, greeted by the crew. They first wanted to do a bit of a spiel. After that, they would start winching.

The helicopter in Nant Peris

When they were done with the introductions one of them received a phone call. Bad news! It was a callout. They had to go. Serious business! But we had a backup slot at 2 pm. The lady from the Llanberis team checked who of us were available for that; several of us were. So slightly disappointed we all left. But not all was lost.

I got home and did chores, until I received a phone call. It was the lady from the Llanberis team again. The helicopter had struggled to land in Caernarfon, where it is based. Could we perhaps come to it, instead of it coming to us? And I could. So I did.

It was quite sunny when I arrived. Typical! The clouds that had hindered the helicopter were nowhere to be seen. We waited for everyone to appear (just 5 in total now) and then we got going again with the new crew. This crew extended the initial brief a bit; the first crew had only talked about winching us and our luggage, but this crew also wanted to practice winching a stretcher up and down. That requires people on the ground to help keep it stable.

When that was done we went to a helicopter that was running stationary. It drove us to a grassy bit (I think they didn't want to drop us on the hard runway) and then we were all winched out and back in. That got us ready for the real deal! So it took off.

Inside

Instead of then winching us out from a height, it returned to the runway. They had received another callout! Again, they were more needed elsewhere. We had got so close! But no cigar.

We were quite swiftly guided to the exit. We had a little chat in the sun, and then we each went our separate ways. I suppose this isn't enough to consider us trained up. We will probably have to do a day like this again! And maybe again. All the way until we finally manage to finalise the training. I can think of better ways to spend my time, but I can see why they want us to go through this. So I'll be resigned.

I was actually quite tired at the end of all that, in spite of in effect having done pretty much nothing! Oh well. I've shown my good intentions…

First pallet fire

I had spent a lot of time over summer demolishing pallets. And one of my wood storage racks was pretty much entirely full of pallet-based wood. My worry was a bit that that would burn really quick. So I figured I should use that pallet wood (the planks, that is) mainly to start fires, and then use lumpier bits of firewood once the fire is properly going. So after building the pile up for months, I now finally started to take it down again.

After our session underground I felt like a fire, and I made it happen. This was the first pallet wood I burnt! And indeed it burns quickly. But also easily. I think I can make use of this wood. And if you are sitting right by it, it doesn't matter if you have to regularly refuel.

Abstract art, or a close-up of a fire of pallet wood?

I suppose autumn has officially started now! I had already lit a fire before, but that was because Jaco and Marjan were visiting, and Marjan feels the cold a lot more than me. This was the first time I felt like a fire on my own. And this will be the first one of very many!

Rigging protocols

Our old training officer thought we should have some proper protocols about how to best rig for a certain number of possible situations we might encounter in actual rescues. And he wanted to do a session to go through at least one. When it came to it, not many people were available. But I was! I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I am not a rigger and I'm not of a mind at all to become one.

We met up on the parking lot. There were only four of us! But that’s ok. We distributed the kit and walked to the entrance. There is a pitch not far in that we’ve used before. There was a group of punters coming past, so we first got out of the way and started thinking of some ways of distributing force over a rig. We always try to rig in a way that every component part in itself is redundant; every single point should be able to fail and the rig should still hold. If you get several points of failure, things can really go wrong, of course! But you want to avoid failure as well, so we were thinking of how to distribute tension over ropes and kit in the best possible way. A knot weakens a rope, but it can result in one point of failure not leading to catastrophe, which without the knot could happen. Two carabiners is stronger than one, but if they end up rubbing against each other, you might be better off with one after all. That sort of questions!

Then we put it all to the test. We rigged a fairly simple haul. A Z-rig (which uses pulleys or a similar to make sure you in effect haul only about a third of the weight you pull up) with a releasable deviation. The idea is that you want to stand on level ground and pull the rope in horizontally, but of course this rope has to go through pulleys fastened close to the ceiling, so you might pull the rope horizontally, but you are are lifting the casualty vertically. Once the casualty has reached these pulleys, though, you need to be able to lower these pulleys, otherwise you can't pull the casualty into the level. 

We had a good look at how we were going to do it. We also wanted to make sure that one person would be able to lower the casualty down, if necessary. And we had incorporated some tension meters, so we could check how much force would actually be exerted on several components of our rig.

Then it was time to put it to the test. I was going to be the casualty, and Gethin would be suspended from the ceiling so he could work the releasable deviation. That worked fine. And the forces we exerted on the whole set-up were quite modest. There is a bit of a risk of strong forces when you are having a weight on a sub-horizontal rope. And that is the situation once you are starting to pull the casualty into the level. But it was all perfectly fine! All the kit is guaranteed to several times this force. That was good to know. And necessary, of course; casualties can be a lot heavier than I am, and they may well come with the added weight of a stretcher.

All the rope work by the ceiling; I think it shows we have everything double… and notice the tension meter.

We also tried it with someone else suspended from the ceiling. And we tried it with nobody suspended from the ceiling; could the same work not be done from a distance? And the answer was: yes it can! Which is good, as being suspended isn't very comfortable.

Me being hauled into the level. Notice as well the iPad on the rocks; this is giving a read-out of one of the tension meters…

We also had lunch somewhere in between our experiments. But when we had tried all this, we decided to de-rig and call it a day. That wasn't even trivial! Some of the knots we had been using are a bit of a pain to undo. And removing the kit from the ceiling there is only simple if you are quite tall and you have contempt for heights. 

I think it was a useful session! As I said; I do not aim to become a rigger. If I am at some point in control of a rescue, I will delegate. But if I would be in control I would have to make sure the rig is as good as it can be. And being able to quickly and skilfully put the thing in position, is quite a different skill from being able to look at it from an angle of pure physics, and spot if there are any weak points in the system. I really think I have practised that second skill.

When we were done I politely asked the men if they were okay to carry the kit down from the entrance. I knew Miles was in his underground accommodation, and he had suggested I pop down for a cup of tea at the end of our session. And that seemed too good an opportunity to miss. And the men were okay with that (I did carry my share up to the entrance, and from there it is downhill all the way) so at the gate I said goodbye.

I then went back down, as far down as you can get without needing diving equipment, and indeed found Miles, in the process of repairing a light switch. It was good to see him! We had a lovely panad together. But I didn't linger; a bit more than half an hour later I was on my way again. I went back the other way around. It had been a long time since I had been in these recesses of the mine!

The Deep Sleep; notice Miles in the corner making me a cup of tea

If this sort of situation crops up more often, maybe I should sometimes schedule some time to just wander around. I pretty much forgot how the whole mine hangs together. And it is still an amazing place to explore. I could imagine we want to go back in to practice more plausible scenarios! And then we have documented Best Practice for all of them…

A bench for the saw

Quite a while ago, I had bought a vice. I had wanted a vice for a long time! And I knew I really needed a workbench with that. But I thought that, for now, my workmate would do the job. Spoiler alert: it doesn't.

Then I bought myself a big saw. That was when the lack of workbench really became acute! I needed to act. And I decided to buy one; just off the shelf with metal legs and surfaces made of some engineered wood-adjacent material. That's not a beautiful solution and I have a lot of wood in the garage with which I could in theory make my own, but this clearly was the most practical solution.

One day I came home and found a delivery van in front of the door. The delivery man had just delivered the bench to my neighbour! Bad timing. Together the neighbour and I brought it to the garage. Later that day I made a bit of space in the garage so that at least I could put the deconstructed workbench in there, but obviously I would have to eventually make so much space I could actually put it together. I know that was going to take a bit of a while.

Temporary configuration 

I  find myself in a slight catch 22 at the moment. There is quite a lot of uncut firewood in my garage getting in the way, and of course once I would have the big saw in position I could really speed up the processing of that wood. But where am I going to put the workbench if all that wood is still in the way? I will probably have to shove it all to the side and then improvise a bit.

This is a bit of a long project, but I'm sure I'll get there! It is a bit of a logical follow-up of the cupboard under the stairs. That was also something I had been thinking about for years. Finally I got it done. This may be the next thing that I might have procrastinated about for five years, but that doesn't mean it will never happen!