A little bit of Tam o’ Shanter fun

I almost lost this pic, collected some time ago, as I had planned it to go along with a more serious Tam o’ Shanter piece, but that’s taking forever to get to, so I better use this before I forget altogether.

I have to add, briefly, that I’d never appreciated the Burns’ epic until recently, when I was taken through details of the tale I had not appreciated before – something I suspect was a side effect of having been a regular visitor to Ayr since I was a tiny, and it was assumed I knew the story (wrong).

I had no idea it was so sexy/naughty.

Nor did I realise what a cutty sark was either – I just thought it was a famous clipper ship.

Now I know why the new event venue in Ayr was named The Cutty-Sark Centre 🙂

If you want to more about Tam o’ Shanter, I thoroughly recommend making your way to Rozelle House Museum and Galleries – well worth the effort, especially if you give yourself enough time to look at the exhibits in detail.

I spotted this illustration by chance, as I passed a shop in the High Street, and had to grab it as I was on my way for the bus.

I love the expression on Tam’s face.

If you think the pic is a bit grotty, you’re right, and I found I had to recover it from a bad case of ‘extraneous reflections and haze’, things I hadn’t even noticed at the time, given my haste.

When X77s gather in Ayr

Given how long I’ve been using this coach service to get to Ayr, I’m not sure why I never collected the coach registration numbers.

It’s not as if I didn’t quickly notice their significance, or that there was more than one.

On reflection, I think it was just down to the weather, and it being a stinking cold and wet day the first time the penny dropped on this, and the ‘moment’ was lost.

I’ll have to start the collection.

This first one is probably the best, matching not only the bus/coach number, but also the fact that it’s a bus 🙂

Notable in this pic is the destination, Monkton.

This was a change to the service, previously routed via Fenwick.

I think I preferred the Fenwick route, which had an interesting loop near that stop, and diverted via local slip roads and a roundabout, then returned to the motorway.

That said, Monkton does provide an interesting section, as the coach driver negotiates the narrow village streets with what is a motorway sized coach.

Note the 4 wheel axle at the rear – the trailing pair steer, turning in the opposite direction to the front, thereby reducing the turning circle of this large vehicle.

Don’t bring those dirty wellies in here!

It’s funny finding all the pics that got forgotten, or sidelined for some reason.

From wandering around Ayr’s wellington Square, I don’t think these guys get put out every day, but I was lucky enough to be passing when they were, and it was a decent day too.

Not really much more to say, but I wonder if any of the patrons come up those stairs having perhaps had ‘One too many’, see those wellies – and sign The Pledge?

Oh dear 😦

I wonder if I’ve made a reference that few will understand today?

I know it was well known in my grandparents’ time, but does anybody refer to it now?

Or are they like me, and just think of it as something funny (and ridiculous) from the past?

I always thought of it like this – QUICK! Gimme the damned bottle! 🙂

Seriously?

I dare you to zoom in on some of the faces in the centre of the group.

Pic from around 1870, and the last line of an anonymous poem from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

I make light of it now, but it WAS a serious issue back in the day – and abusers are no better today.

Task Failed Successfully – actually BEAT one today!

It took a week of detailed examination, but I actually BEAT on if my ‘Task Failed Successfully’ Challengers today.

Some years ago, I got lucky and collected a titanium radio-controlled watch. It sat in a local ‘jeweller’ for some time, and I eventually went in and made an offer, asking only a few percent off. I almost got a lecture from the female assistant, and informed “We don’t even get staff discounts” (didn’t really believe that).

Imagine how sweet it was when I said I’d take anyway, and she went to enter the sale in her terminal, only to find she was going to have to come back and tell me there was a 20% discount flagged.

Sadly, I didn’t have it for long before GPS took over from sources such as DCF77 and Rugby for such things and, even though the watch should run for at least 25 years (doesn’t even need a battery), it’s become a decoration for various reasons thanks to my various GPS based devices.

And that leads to mistakes.

In the watch’s case, it shuts down if not used and, although it should wake up and start working, I think I let it sit for too long, and it not only shuts down, but loses all it references – the time goes nuts, all the hands lose their reference positions, and the radio receiver can’t find the right transmitter (it will work almost anywhere populated on the earth, and relies on three time transmitters).

I managed to kill it once before, so long ago I forgot the fine detail of waking it up.

This list is really for me, lest I let this happen again, and will mean I can get it going in less than a week!

1. Leave it out for a few days to ensure it reaches full power
2. Follow procedure to perform a check on the hands to confirm their correct reference positions
3. Follow procedure to manually adjust any hands that did not return to their correct reference positions
4. Ignore all the dials and set the CORRECT digital display (the left one) to the appropriate local ‘Home’ city – MUST be set to tell the watch which time transmitter to tune into
5. Check and ensure that city is set to use automatic DST correction – it will probably have reset itself to manual correction when the watch powered down
6. Align the watch antenna (9 o’clock) to the time transmitted and trigger a manual reception cycle

DO NOT

Miss, skip, avoid, misread, or misinterpret ANY of these steps.

ALL must be fully satisfied, or the watch will appear to begin a reception cycle, but then abort with nothing more than a NO reception indication for the result.

If the Home city has not been set, the indicator which shows which time reference transmitter is being used will usually begin to move to Japan, but abort and return to power level before it gets there. This is a CLUE!

I spent most of the week failing to notice that while the Home city was correctly set, it had not been shifted into the correct display, hence the reception aborted every time.

Next issue was the DST setting. Normally accounted for by the received signal, this seasonal change was not being taken into account, and the Manual setting for the Home city was not found until the individual details were scrolled, and the setting toggled to automatic.

Only then did the reception cycle set everything to the last second.

PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING!

ASSUME NOTHING IS CORRECT UNTIL YOU SEE IT IS!

Did this last year – it’s great that you don’t have to do it again 🙂

Although you do still have to remember if you did in spring or autumn.

Or maybe have two clocks, and mark one forward, and the other back – then just swap them over as required every six months 😉

Anomaly

I have to wonder why I can buy a clock from somewhere like Aldi, for only a few pounds, throw a battery into it, sit on a shelf (where it can pick up the radio-controlled time signal – NOT always easy in Glasgow Scotland), and it just works.

No fiddling with locations.

No arguing with DST or the like.

Yet I have both radio-controlled AND GPS controlled watches (some of which have absolutely NO manual settings) which ALL require manual correction or intervention of some sort to deal with DST.

Although I don’t use them any more, even my first two GPS handheld map receivers also needed that infuriating hour correction for DST to be made every time it changed, or the display would be out by an hour.

Glasgow has a Whitehall Street – and it has proper murals

My knowledge of Glasgow Street names is woefully lacking, but with my memory, I can get a surprise just from looking at street names from the bus I travel on daily!

That said, there is some excuse for not knowing many street names from the area between Anderston and the river (Clyde). You can’t have street name signs if there are no building to screw them to, and that area has seen almost all of its buildings demolished in the past couple of decades.

There was a huge flour mill somewhere down there, which I only really know because I went there to do a favour for someone. A few years later I was looking at aerial views on Google and couldn’t find it, which I thought was odd – not that odd really, as it had been flattened not long after I was there!

While I was revising my pics of the surviving Graffiti Cat, I happened to notice some new/fresh murals on a nearby wall. I grabbed a couple of long shots, then tried to get closer for some better pics.

Once I’d navigated to the required street (access was easy, but by streets I have never had a reason to travel, and didn’t even know they were there), things did not go so well.

Although pics from a few years ago show the area as clear, now, nearly every deserted street left from demolition and other works has perimeter fencing (handy for graffiti/murals), and the ends have been closed off with portable security fencing to block access – sometimes more than one layer, in order to close gaps.

I managed a couple of shots from the footbridge over the expressway, which is where Graffiti Cat, and friend, can be seen

They matched well, and it was easy to stitch them together to see most of this section of fence.

Unfortunately, there was still a chink missing, thanks to the intrusion of another fence, which can just be seen beginning in the bottom left of this first view.

Hoping to get closer and collect better pics, I went on a tour of the various surrounding streets, which was when I found many of them were blocked by security fencing – all chained together, and also chained to the walls.

The metal fence grid was just too close to avoid, and any street level shots were ruined by its intrusion, like the one below.

Not to be beaten, I collected a few more shots that avoided the wire work, and got rid of by some selective editing and stitching, to get this view all in one pic.

While I was there, I noticed a couple of guys wandering around, eyeing up the walls, and I was most impressed when they suddenly appeared on my side of the fencing blocking the streets.

I wish I’d seen how/where they came through – when I looked at the spot they’d come from, the fence was solidly chained in place, and all the gaps I could see had been filled in with more chain.

I repeat, ‘Task Failed Successfully’ is NOT a challenge!

I did a quick resurrection of a failed clock fix.

Recall this one would just stop at random, with no apparent cause to be found.

Repair Clock No 4

One of my favourites, I persevered at the time, and suspected a temperature effect.

Unfortunately, while using a chilled box to test the idea, a gear simply vanished. No idea how since the box contained everything, but the gear was nowhere to be found.

It had been beside my photo archive boxes, and I decided to unload them, thinking the gear might have mysteriously jumped into that collection. Despite tipping most of them out, no gear fell out.

I’d ‘collected’ a couple of smaller clocks, considered expendable, and wondered if they had the same gear buried inside.

Briefly, the first one had the same mechanism casing, but contained a completely different series of gears. Even the rotor was different! So, that one lives on.

The second was no better, and yet again had a completely different gear train.

Interestingly, it did NOT have the usual clock mechanism box, but the inside of the case was a single moulding, with all the bearings, electronics, switches, and alarm sounder being mounted on moulded positions.

This one was the real fail though, as the previously working clock refused to run when reassembled. At first, it seemed to stall, then reached a point where it juddered, and even ran backwards a few times!

Nothing obvious to be seen at first, although I noticed the gears would jump out of their bearings as the case parts clicked back into place, so I had to hold the parts to avoid the jarring caused by the clips springing into position.

Eventually, I removed all the gears and checked them under magnification, which revealed the cause of THIS failure.

Three of the teeth on one gear were misshapen. My guess is that on one reassembly the jumping gears failed to align, and were slightly damaged as the case halves snapped into place.

Fortunately, these gears are so small, and their teeth so tiny, they deformed rather than broke.

It was possible to reform them back to their intended profile and, avoiding the violent snapping of the case halves back into place, reassemble the mechanism in working condition.

A nasty surprise though, and something to watch out for in future, since many of these mechanisms have the same four clips to hold the cases together.

The gears SHOULD slide into their pivot points, guided by cones moulded into the casing, around the holes forming the pivots, but it would seem to be worth the effort of confirming the gears are well aligned before completing the process.

Looks like spring (but I still hate my weather)

It looks like it’s finally safe to use the immortal phrase ‘Spring has Sprung’.

So why am I still grumpy?

Well, it’s almost as if we got ONE day of spring – then jumped straight into summer.

It may not be obvious from the graphs, which have properly screened temperatures sensors, but if you go out into the direct sun – the temperature can easily rise to more than +30°C where it strikes. And that’s pretty warm, especially if you’ve been shuffling around where you were lucky to reach even +16°C only a few days ago.

Motor racing tracks in England are recording sunny track surface temperatures up in the 40s!

Wind – still fires up with gusts during the day, but less than before. Not so bad for cycling, but can STILL be a surprise.

Temperature – chart LOOKS better than it is in reality as cold air is still being blown in by the wind, especially if north or east.

Rain – while it has relaxed, we had thunder and lighting last night! I was almost heading out, but it was kind enough to start before I reached the door.

Note the max/min chart – suddenly no more chilly nights.

About time too – it is the middle of MAY!

Ayr’s Carnegie library – an interesting place to study

If you miss the terrible pun – I don’t just mean to study ‘in’.

The building has some attractions for fans of the slightly odd – here’s one of them.

While I’d LIKE to claim this was something I noticed, I can’t, and have to confess to being told about it a long, long time ago – but only recently stopped to look, and collect pics to prove it.

Referring to the area of the library’s facade seen below, look below each of the four windows.

Roundels.

Apparently identical roundels.

But, they’re not!

With the best will in the world, a wide, long distance pic from the opposite side of the road isn’t going to show much detail (unless you have the huge original) other than location and shape, so here are the close up, starting with the one on the left.

For reference, I’ll refer to this one as ‘rotating’ clockwise, a distinction which will become relevant.

Not much to add other than that clockwise note, and the fact that it has weathered more than 100 years, as the library was built around 1893, after Carnegie donated £10,000 with his usual conditions, requiring the elected officials (the local government) to:

• demonstrate the need for a public library
• provide the building site
• pay staff and maintain the library
• draw from public funds to run the library – not use only private donations
• annually provide ten percent of the cost of the library’s construction to support its operation
• provide free service to all

The second roundel just to the left of the entrance, has weathered as well as the first, but…

Apparently ‘rotates’ in a counterclockwise direction, opposite to the first.

On to the third, to the right of the entrance.

Apparently rotating counterclockwise.

Sadly, seems to have been carved from a different piece of sandstone, and badly weathered. Much of the detail has been dissolved and washed away by the rain. The centre and lower areas are almost gone, with only the top part showing any structure, probably thanks to the slight overhanging surround above.

And finally, the fourth and final roundel, which is the gem of the collection.

Notice anything different?

It LOOKS as if it’s rotating counterclockwise and has no detail left.

But, that’s not the case if you stop for a moment, and look closer.

It’s been installed BACK TO FRONT!

That the smooth flat back of the roundel that we are looking at, not a face that has been weather over the years, and become smooth.

So, it should actually appear to rotate CLOCKWISE – making two pairs, one clockwise, and one anticlockwise,

Presumably the architect had intended these to appear symmetrical on the facade, with one side showing a clockwise pair, and the other a mirror image, with a counterclockwise pair.

Impossible to say, as they’ve been completely jumbled during their installation.

The only way to know what went where would be to dig up the original plans/drawings, if they are filed anywhere.

Maybe someone local knows where, and would let us know 🙂

‘Task Failed Successfully’ – was not meant as an invitation!

I was

Already collecting various failures BEFORE applying the above catchphrase. Now, things are getting ridiculous.

For example, I just picked up a no-name battery analogue wall clock, because its case/surround allowed it to be stood on a shelf or mantle – not usually possible if they’re round. Just some old stock, covered in thick dust and, with a ticking second hand, not sweep.

The case had wood top and bottom with open sides supported by metal rods, and a silver face.

All it needed was a clean and polish, particularly the face, which some idiot had splashed tea or coffee through the open side, and it had dried there.

What could go wrong?

Quote a lot, cosmetically at least.

The face was made of thin aluminium sheet laminated onto a hardboard backing. No numbers, just radial lines marking the 12 hours.

From its appearance, I had no reason to suspect anything, and made a first pass with water to remove the tea/coffee, then applied a cleaning wax.

This did not go well.

Although all I had used was a microfibre cloth, the aluminium turned out to be some sort of soft alloy. The surface was covered with random scratches – the alloy was so soft it couldn’t even be polished to remove the scratches.

No idea what this stuff is made of, although I have come across it before. Not sure what it was for, but it came on a roll, like a thin tape, which was malleable and could be used to conceal gaps.

This is a stainless steel one – you can hit it with a hammer (gently) and it won’t care!

Not sure what to do – replacing the dial is simple, but not really economic – unless I have a suitable one in stock, but mine are all round, and this one is square, to suit the case.

Subterfuge may be the solution – I can use the cloth to lay on a ‘brushed metal’ finish, and depend on the clock being mounted far away on a wall, where the detail cannot be seen, and it looks original.

Then again, I’ve got a REAL aluminium clock face (just kidding, it’s stainless steel and can be cleaned and waxed without ‘melting’) liberated from a failed movement. Only problem with that one is that it’s round, and thick, having been intended to be hung on a wall with no surround or case.

I STILL can’t really believe this one.

After all, who in their right mind makes a clock face out of what amounts to little more than toffee?

All this hassle from a quick ‘Dismantle and Clean’ 10-minute task!

It will drag on for DAYS!

Knock on the door, “OPEN UP – TOURISM ENFORCEMENT!”

I miss the videos I used to see posted a few hours after being shot in various Far Eastern location, mainly Korea (South), Japan, and China.

I don’t know what’s changed, but they seem to have, and I don’t see the crazy colourful night scenes they used to feature. Instead, there’s a load of glum material.

Whatever, there are still occasional gems, such as this grab from Hongyadong.

Not sure how ‘enforcement’ is applied to something like tourism.

I tend to think of ‘traffic enforcement’ or ‘parking enforcement’, with appropriately licensed officers, in uniform, with the authority to issue penalties for non-compliance, and compel compliance with rules and regulations.

On the other hand, if you caught the video of Chinese party officials (not tourists as many reports stated) ordering people NOT to video them in a UK train station – maybe ‘tourism enforcement’ is not such a strange concept.

I now have a mental image of enforcement officers knocking on doors in the middle of the night, pulling dazed people/families from their beds and telling them to pack and be ready to leave in ten minutes as their flight to China is waiting.

If that sounds familiar, I was going to use the word ‘Gestapo’ in this post, but decided not to.

Good news, Graffiti Cat survived the works

Last time, back in June 2023, I noted this little piece of graffiti was, I thought, about to be lost as the adjacent land was being filled with various lumps of concrete and associated plant and machinery.

I thought someone had acquired the land, and something was about to appear on it.

Not so, back here for the first time since then (it’s now May 2024), the site/land is once again derelict and deserted, and one of my favourite character is back in the open, as good as before.

Not sure if the original post was correct now, as it referred to Graffiti Cat 2020 – Catch it while you can (it has CATBUTT!)

From other catches featuring this character, I’ve found its companion is actually a dog, NOT another cat, although in this case, the angle makes it less obvious. However, the devil is in the detail, and the cat has a rounded connection between its ears, while the dog has straight lines for its ears.

Obvious when you know, but I hadn’t come across this back then.

Even MORE graffiti

While there’s always graffiti around this ground, most of it is rubbish, mainly just ‘Word Graffiti’ and not worth the effort of even looking at.

However, I noticed a few more imaginative murals and images had appeared since I was last there (what had been there already was weathering and fading), and tried to catch some, hopefully useable in another post.

Problem was it was late and getting dark (as usual for me, it seems) and when I tried to get to the images, I found that a lot of contractor’s perimeter security fencing had been tied across the streets to prevent access, so I was forced to work from a distance.

I noticed a couple of guys wandering around while I was there (they were graffiti artist spying their next location), but don’t tell anybody.

Not sure where they found gaps to get into the streets, I couldn’t see any, although some of the walls do have breaks and gaps to be found when you get closer to them.