About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

B is for Bridge

Bridges are good things, they ease our passage on any journey, whether to the shops or through life and carry us over obstacles; real or imagined. Here's one what I built in the woods the other day, Tesco's is now 15 minutes nearer and not one more car has been put on the roads.

When I joined the Army in 1984, my ambition was to be a Plant Op-Mech (Operator Mechanic) in the combat engineers, however; although I got technician grade on four of the joining tests (spelling, dominoes, logic puzzles and IQ thingies) I kept failing the [basic] maths paper, so the MOD would only offer me Infantry, Artillery and Pioneer Corps...

...now I knew from my Father that the peacetime Pioneer Corps spent most of their time digging latrines and making wooden floats for civic KAPE type events, and in wartime spent most of their time digging latrines, trenches and graves (sometimes probably using the same hole for all three in sequence!), so they were out, likewise the Artillery seemed to have to hump a lot of heavy kit about and then wait for counter-battery fire to ruin their day, so the Infantry it was.

I kept putting in for a driving cadre, and kept being promised the next one by company commanders who's Sgt. Major's had no intention of giving me the ammo I needed to apply for a transfer, so in the end I 'did my bit' and got out, pity as I think I'd have a made a half-reasonable engineer?

Yes...it's just a pile of logs!!!! Maybe it should have been the Pioneer Corps!