Penguin – Page 24 – Fooyah

August 14 2019August 16 2024

M’era Luna 2019

I guess it takes some commitment to drive 500 miles to get to a music event. This is the fifth time Smith and I have done this. It is possibly going to be the last for a while, we kinda feel we need to seek out new things, but we shall see. M’era Luna does have an excellent atmosphere and I think we’ll be back at some point in the future.

As is now the standard we left on the Thursday and drove to a hotel in Bochum. We should have got there in time to have a meal out and see the town but instead there were power issues with the Eurotunnel that delayed our journey on the train by three hours, that was quite frustrating, but we did walk a couple of miles along the main road and find zero bars. Yep, zero. There were two gambling dens but zero bars. I’m not sure if that’s the Germany I imagined.

Lovely skies above the campsite — Campsite Sky

Friday morning means driving the last two and a half hours to Hildesheim and getting to the festival. This part of the journey went well. The traffic was queueing to get into the car park and so Smith ran to join the queue to get us a decent tent spot. It’s quite amazing how quickly the massive campsite fills up with tents. I got parked and dragged most of the kit to the tent. After that, we chilled and wandered and thought about getting ready for the disco that evening.

Friday Night at M'era Luna — Friday Night at M’era Luna

Tickets for the disco were different from years before, we had to buy a wristband which was the standard 5 Euros. As we arrived in the disco there was some decent heavier music being played and it was DJ’d by a guy from the band Unzucht. After a short while it did change style as someone else took over and the music went a bit shit. Smith and I had drunk quite a bit. He lost his glasses. It was about 0200 when we quit and I went for a shower. That night I wandered back from the showers down the runway to the tent, the air was warm and I was happy.

I guess you haven't lived until you've walked half a runway dressed in only a towel.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) August 10, 2019

Saturday was going to be hard work. There is always one night when there’s a little too much alcohol consumed. Last year it was the Prodigy gig and Saturday night. This time we overdid it on the Friday! Hangover protocols were now in place. But, there were bands to see starting at 1100 and so things had to get ready. I sometimes feel I physically suffer for my art.

Saturday at M'era Luna — Saturday at M’era Luna

Saturday’s theme for me was future-dystopian-cyber outfit. This was pretty much all home-made and I was very happy with the results. Smith had problems with his horns and so I watched the first band by myself.

Null Positive – main stage. Female fronted metal band, bit like Arch Enemy. quite enjoyable. Two female”dancers” on stage, playing with smoke and fire.

The gas mask on my outfit was really pulling into my head and making me experience pain. Plus the hangover wasn’t helping.

Sudenklang – main stage. I didn’t write anything else here so I don’t remember how good or bad they were.

Centhron – hangar stage. Fast beats, bit boring. It was during this set that I decided to go and get rid of the gas mask. It was hurting me and the backpack was annoying. Also, it was a warm day and I had about three layers on. I returned to the tent [about 15 minutes walk away] to get changed into boring normal clothes. I had been photographed and so thought it time to feel comfortable.

Feeling normal but much cooler than earlier. pic.twitter.com/UKhBuhcJ3q
— Ian Parish (@iparish) August 10, 2019

Corvus Corax – main stage. Four bagpipers medieval/folk stuff. It’s basically metal but with bagpipes. It’s not very inspiring stuff and the singer was terrible but the Germans love this shit.

We heard Oomph! while we ate food and I don’t remember being impressed. It’s a terrible band name also!

Agonoize – hangar stage. Bit disappointing really, I had heard some of their stuff and I was hoping for a really “edgy” show. The singer squirted blood three times, he pretended to cut his wrist and let the “blood” spray out for most of the songs. Finished with Breathe as a tribute to Keith, but it was a terrible version.

Agonoize - Hangar Stage, M'era Luna — Agonoize – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna

Lacrimosa – main stage. 1.2 songs. Yeauugh.

SITD – Hangar. solid but only got going after second singers song. Lead singer doesn’t know words to some songs and was reading. The sound at front not great, the system speakers are quite wide and so a lot of the dynamic was missing from being close to the front.

SITD - Hangar Stage, M'era Luna — SITD – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna

Die Krupps – Hangar stage. Saturday headliners. We watched from slightly further back and the sound was much better. This band are really good and their show has been excellent every time I’ve seen them. I’d happily go and see them again. I’d recommend them to anyone.

Die Krupps - Hangar Stage, M'era Luna — Die Krupps – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna

That was the end of the Saturday for us. I think ASP were playing the main stage as we left, I wasn’t bothered at all about seeing him. It had been a long day. We had both had problems with the sun cream running into our eyes and causing massive hayfever type symptoms. Overall the music had been great but I felt dead.

From the above picture you can see I walked quite a bit that day. I also hadn’t slept much, which was going to be the pattern for the whole weekend really.

On the Sunday I woke to the sound of someone calling “Kaffee”. I popped my head out of the tent and had coffee poured freshly for me from one of the festival workers. He had a large backpack with a supply of drink and all the accoutrements on his belt for a perfect coffee and only 3 Euros. Bloody lovely.

It might be time to talk about the pooing situation at festivals. I mean, this shouldn’t be talked about but too make the process as easy as possible it takes planning and hard work. Firstly, eating vegetarian reduces the amount of time required in the portaloos. Next, pick your portaloos carefully. The ones on the runway are very busy and stink. I mean they stink more than others. So, go to the toilets in the car park. Leave the festival site and walk a bit. This needs to be planned for after waking and coffee. Next up, take the portaloo furthest west. The one in the east gets sunshine on it and heats up. This increases smells. So, to sum up, find the least used loos, and use the coolest one.

Getting ready on Sunday was easy, it was an old costume being recycled.

Sunday at M'era Luna — Sunday at M’era Luna

I kept the hood with me as the Sun was warm and I didn’t want to burn my skin.

Fear of Domination – main stage. Finish. Male and female singer. Good bass drop. Good solid set.

Fear Of Domination - Main Stage, M'era Luna — Fear Of Domination – Main Stage, M’era Luna

Yellow Lazarus – hangar stage. Ok. EBM but fast, not great. Two songs. It’s like Aqua (Barbie girl) on speed. Pretty sure we only caught a few of their songs.

Scarlet Dorn – main stage. Slow melodic rock with female singer. Keyboardist is from LOTL. This sort of music is fine in the background but it didn’t really rock.

At some point I went to get changed, again! It was another hot day and I wasn’t enjoying being in my costume. My head was sweating a lot under the gas mask.

Formalin – hangar stage. Live drummer. Keyboards. Singer. Pretty good. Very good crowd interaction. Good song dynamics.

Heldmaschine – hangar stage. Blue LEDs on costumes and drumsticks. Two guitars (one a lefty). Bass. Drums. Singer. Backing track somewhere.

Combichrist – main stage. Fucking amazing.

Combichrist - Main Stage, M'era Luna — Combichrist – Main Stage, M’era Luna

There’s a video of the Combichrist gig. This one was amazing. You can see it here:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/Mera-Luna-2019-Combichrist-spielen-in-Hildesheim,combichrist104.html

I’m in there a few times, as is Smith, I’ll leave you to find it though. After this show I had to keep pouring water over my head to cool down. I think I had over done it. At least I didn’t get a cracked rib from the PIT unlike Smith.

NEED sleep. Worn out. It's 16:30 and #Combichrist killed me. #MeraLuna2019 pic.twitter.com/15k7TobAWR
— Ian Parish (@iparish) August 11, 2019

Goodnight Skies - M'era Luna — Goodnight Skies – M’era Luna

Suicide Commando – hangar stage. Really good but I lefty feeling unwell. Sounds better a distance from stage, speakers too wide at very front. I needed cool air. Spotted the SITD guy in front of SC.

Suicide Commando - Hangar Stage, M'era Luna — Suicide Commando – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna

VNV Nation – main stage for a few songs. Ok, but the gig at the Scala was amazing.

After this it was shower time and a walk down the runway. Then, Monday we just had to drive home. On the way we had planned to stop just into Germany for photos but because of the delays at the tunnel we chose not to. We had plenty of time on the return journey and so we stopped on that:

I couldn’t tell you why we chose to stop here!

The excitement didn’t end in Germany! We got to the Channel Tunnel a few hours before our crossing and so paid a little extra to get home earlier than originally planned. This was good as Smith only had prescription sunglasses left after losing his in the disco and he didn’t want to drive home in the dark. As we approached the Maidstone junction on the M20 one of the front tyres blew and deflated quickly. This was very annoying. We managed to pull off the motorway and put the spare on. We were about three miles from my house.

I’ve had the car looked at and it it probably a tracking issue which caused the insides of the tyre to wear down too far. This will hopefully be fixed on Monday or Tuesday. I’m just glad that it blew where it did rather than 500 miles away in Germany. That would have been quite a shitter.

So, M’era Luna 19 was amazing and fun. It was also hard work and a challenge. Next year, we will see what happens. Maybe I’m too old for this shit?

August 5 2019August 5 2019

EM Warnings

You know how it is. You are having a short break on a motorway drive and pop into the service station for a drink and a comfort break. It is the adverts directly above the urinals which seem to show the worst of mankind. I’ve written about this before in a communication about shaming farts. This time I was at Southwaite Services just south of Carlisle. I saw this advert above the urinals:

You are very welcome to go and read the stuff from the following links if you wish:

I have some things to say about all this. Let’s start off with some science about electro-magnetic radiation. This is a form of energy that extends from long wave radio waves to gamma radiation. It is a very large spectrum and our visible light takes up part of it.

Long wavelengths can travel a long distance and through lots of stuff. We use them for communicating with submarines and ships a long way away. Radio waves we are familiar with and they carry information like TV or audio signals. Infrared we feel as heat radiated from objects. Visible light humans can see, some animals can see higher frequencies but not us. All of the wavelengths/frequencies mentioned so far are called NON-IONISING RADIATION. Each photon doesn’t have enough energy to knock an electron out of its orbit in an atom and so up to violet light can’t caused any molecular changes, they, by definition, can’t cause cancer. They might warm you up a little but that is all.

All the stuff in the ultra-violet and beyond is the nasty stuff. It can cause cancer because each photon contains enough energy to knock electrons out of their orbit and therefore could cause molecular changes. This could cause a DNA change in your cells and, if it happens right/wrong, then could cause cancer. Here’s the easy bit:

UV Rays cause cancer. UV is BAD for you.

When you get an X-Ray at the dentist or hospital the radiographer or dentist will leave the room when the photograph is taken. Why do they do that? Because being exposed to X-Rays is bad for you. Each X-Ray you have increases your chances of cancer by a little. But, the information gathered from the X-Ray can do far more good than the increase in risk of cancer and so we elect to have them done. It’s similar to going somewhere by car – you know you will get there in a short time and in comfort but we balance that with the risk of being involved in an accident, the benefits outweigh the risks.

Right. Point number One. Radio and Micro waves can’t cause cancer. The worst they might do is cause a very slight heating which is less than what you get by exercising and is easily carried away by your blood.

Next, the slightly tougher issue. EM sensitivity. This is the situation where people are convinced that their health is detrimentally affected by EM radiation enough for them to notice. I have to be quite specific in the language I use here because the illness that people feel from this is real. The cause of it is not. I do not want to be dismissive of their illness, they feel what they feel and they blame it on all the EM in their surroundings. People with EM Sensitivity do feel what they report and so the illness is real. It’s just not caused by electro-magnetic radiation.

There have been studies completed where patients who claim EMS have been put in a shrouded room and then told when a wi-fi transmitter is turned on and off. They then report their symptoms in line with when they know the transmitter is on. Here’s the thing: they report symptoms even when the wi-fi transmitter is NOT turned on but they are told it is. Their symptoms are psychosomatic. This is not to belittle their illness but to point out that the cause is not what they think it is. Read this over at Science Based Medicine.

The people who claim that 5G will ruin lives are wrong. They are scaremongering and therefore adding to a problem that doesn’t exist. They are pushing ideas out to people who are sensitive to suggestion and causing more problems than they can fix.

I am still quite convinced that the amount of EM radiation humans absorb is mostly from natural sources, the sun and radio waves from stellar sources. Being in the home means that you will absorb a certain amount but go outside and this home-based absorption is insignificant. See this page from the World Health Organisation.

If mobile phones and wi-fi caused lots of issues with human health then where is the epidemic? Mobiles phones and wi-fi is everywhere and I don’t see the epidemic anywhere. For around thirty years these technologies have existed and we aren’t getting ill.

5G will be safe.

July 28 2019July 27 2019

Poe’s Law

https://t.co/qsoINefE6L
— Ian Parish (@iparish) July 26, 2019

I keep thinking back to this news item from ITV. I mean ITV is a trusted source isn’t it? It seems ridiculous to me that a new member of the government in our current times would insist on a particular style guide for his staff.

The problem with this news article is that it’s so ridiculous that it could be true. It might have been made up but we all know Rees-Mogg is a prick of the highest order and so this could be true. I’m just not sure. This news article could be a case of Poe’s Law in action.

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

While Poe was talking about creationists being fucking stupid his views have been converted into a law stating that in some cases extreme sarcasm is indistinguishable from the real thing. This is what I think has happened here. Someone has cleverly taken the concept of Rees-Mogg being a fucking prick and gone extreme. Seriously, let’s look at the things he wants done:

All non-titled males are Esq. – fuck you, what a singular stupid fucking thing to say. Jesus Christ, this is fucking entitled bullshit in the highest.

No comma after “and” – of course you use the Oxford comma, it’s there to make sure you have clear intentions in your language. We’ve developed this wonderful thing called language to be able to communicate clearly and we can make our words mean the correct things. For an example – Rees-Mogg is an entitled prick.

Check your work – this man is really telling his staff of professionals to check their work? Really? Does he employ monkeys or something? You would think that people already know how this type of stuff works. Arrrrrgh.

Could someone please stop the planet, I want to get off.

July 27 2019July 26 2019

Men In Black: International

On Thursday I went to see Men In Black: International. I wasn’t that fussed about the film, I was more concerned about getting out of the 36C heat outside. Inside my house it was hitting around 30C and that’s plainly ridiculous and fucking scary. These events are going to become more frequent due to anthropogenic global climate change and that saddens me intensely, I hope I’m dead before the water wars start.

There were zero films I was even slightly tempted with at my usual place, Cineworld Rochester, and so this time I went to the far-flung Bluewater shopping centre. The car was not happy about starting in the heat [36C] and so initially I turned it off straight away, it made sounds I have not heard before. I tried again and the thing seemed reasonably comfortable so I decided to risk driving to near Greenhithe. I managed the air conditioning in the car so it stayed at a cool 24C eventually. I don’t like being that warm in a car, it makes me sleepy, a steady 18C is more normal but it was a special day.

I’m afraid I can’t give you any news about the state of the tide as the Bluewater complex is in a quarry and nowhere near the sea. I mean, the river is a couple of miles away but I wasn’t going to make that detour just to keep some strangely traditional part of these reviews going. The tide report will return.

More tradition: the IMDB rating and tweet. As is custom I rated the film on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings in this communication. You can see all my tweets and things by looking at the menu at the top of this page.

I rated Men in Black: International (2019) 8/10 #IMDb https://t.co/NFD4fHd2lV
— Ian Parish (@iparish) July 25, 2019

So, I rated this film as an 8. That’s quite high really but the film gets two extra points just for the air conditioning available in Bluewater and the theatre. It was glorious to enter the building from the car park and feel the cool air and to feel more human again. I don’t think we were made to sweat constantly. I used the Showcase cinema app on my phone for the electronic ticket on there and it worked well.

The seats in the cinema are lovely and comfortable and I was happy with that but my seat happened to have an EXIT sign nearby and it was too bright. It took my attention too much. So, I snuck into the seat next to mine and was in the shadow of the part-wall and felt much happier. I would not have liked to sit in my original seat for the whole film.

I really enjoyed the film. It looked good and I even chuckled out loud in certain places. The plot was pretty thin, essentially the same as the previous films. But, it was cool in the cinema and the film was fun.

Just one thing though. All the London street scenes seemed to have an EAT restaurant in them. Like there was product placement. The Lexus was obvious but I’m not sure EVERY street in London has an EAT. It might do, I’ve not been that observant every time I go there. Wikipedia says there are 75 EAT locations in London.

July 26 2019July 24 2019

RIAT 2019

I went to RAF Fairford a short while ago to attend the Royal International Air Tattoo. RIAT is a huge airshow which takes place each year at RAF Fairford. I’d never been to this particular airshow before and so I was quite excited. There were also a few aircraft types I had never seen static or flying before:

F35
Su-27
P8
F18 (a friend told me I had seen some at RAF Waddington years ago)
Patrouille de France
Freece Tricolori

Nearly all the other types of aircraft I had seen static or flying before. I have to say now that the very best displays were the F16s and F18. They were both incredibly impressive given how old their design is. The Flanker was amazing, utterly brilliant.

Here is a selection of some of the photographs I had once I’d returned home. Not all the credit goes to me, the kids took quite a few of the photos and did a good job.

Spanish Harrier
Freece Tricolori
NATO Elephant Walk
Breitling Jets
Patrouille de France
Flanker Landing
A Moody Red Arrows Shot
Min Radius Turn F-16
Flanker
Freece Tricolori
Double Concorde

The weather was a little cloudy at times but we coped. Photographs look better with a mixture of blue sky and fluffy Simpsons clouds.

The noise was amazing and I just loved the sound of the afterburning jets taking off and pulling many G to show off their capabilities. I also met some old friends while at the tattoo and it was lovely to arrange to meet them. I even managed to bump into George who is a colleague from the PAC at Amport, I knew he attended and I was hoping to see him.

I’m not too happy with the media page for the photos as I think the photo is too small on that, so the images link to the actual image file, I might get around to learning how to adjust that one day.

July 25 2019July 24 2019

Bored In The Sky

Just browsing my favourite aircraft tracking website and decided you should know that air-to-air refuelling gets practised off the Norfolk coast. See this Voyager aircraft enjoying the baking weather in this country.

The green box is the area they are allowed to practise. The red planes are military planes, not all of them, but those transmitting ADS-B. I would expect that some Typhoons are over the sea taking on fuel from the Voyager.

July 24 2019July 24 2019

Marginal Error

Aside from the fact that the news this country has a new Prime Minister who is a racist liar I was bothered by the phrasing on BBC News last night. I haven’t really watched TV news for a long time, I find it patronising and reliant on the personal story rather than the facts, I don’t enjoy watching it. I viewed a little on catch up last night just to see what they said about the tory party leadership result.

Boris Johnson won by a MARGIN of two to one.

Now, what the actual fuck does that mean? I mean, I’m not happy Johnson won but that’s the shitty system we have. I’m really asking what does the phrase “by a margin of two to one” mean?

Does it mean that Boris got around 66% of the vote and Hunt 33% [or thereabouts]? In which case the margin is 1/3 of the electorate or you could even say the majority was 100% of Hunt’s vote. What you can’t say is the MARGIN was a ratio of 2:1 without DEFINING what the other side of the ratio is. Fucking hell, people need to understand that maths and words have meanings.

My instinct is that these numbers are the relative share of the vote, but the news chap doesn’t say that. He says MARGIN. The margin is the majority? I don’t know. How is margin defined in this case. A quick inspection of Wikipedia has the definition that MARGIN is the percentage of the difference relative to total turnout.

So, I think it would be best for the BBC and other news outlets to have used the phrase:

Mr Johnson won with a margin of around 33% of the turnout.

July 18 2019July 25 2019

Cold War Jets

In around the year 1988 my friend and I travelled to the back garden of someone in the village of Mildenhall to camp for the weekend. The purpose was to spend the weekend at the Mildenhall airshow, which I had been to before but was important for a few reasons:

Aircraft
Military aircraft
Military might
Blackbird
More planes

When you are a plane nut then airshows are where you get your kicks. I can’t help what I like and planes have troubled me all my life. It’s possibly due to growing up underneath the flight path of Stansted Airport in Essex. It could be because of my dad who was involved in the industry when I was young or it could just be that an aluminium tube filled with people and fuel doesn’t really have any business being six miles up off the ground.

Somehow Alan and I had found the number of someone who lived near a walk-in entrance to RAF Mildenhall [actually a USAF base] and we had booked to camp in her garden. Then, each day of the show we walked in. My memory of the charges is not great but I seem to think we got in for something like £5 each whereas a car for the day was £40. I suspect those prices are wrong given what prices were like in the 80s but I can’t remember. I do know it was dirt cheap to walk in to the show rather than drive.

There’s only a few things I can remember from the airshow. I sort of remember the Blackbird flying, it was a privilidge to see that. I also remember both AB and I watching a helicopter display, possibly an Apache, when it did a form of a wing-over or loop. Both, AB and I were amazed and clapped. There weren’t many who joined in the clapping, only those in the know.

The Red Arrows were there, of course, I I’m not sure if this was before or after I had been to Cyprus, porbably before and so I was still excited by them. The above photograph was beautifully timed by me.

My father must have found the original negatives of these photographs as he has scanned them inot his computer. I suspect there are some more picture lurking in a box somewhere and I’ll have to keep scanning his computer to see what I can find.

Here are some more photographs from those days. They aren’t very good but them photographs weren’t back in the 80s. I wasn’t great with a camera and with only 24 or 36 shots on a reel of film you were very limited in what you could take.

Sea King @ Mildenhall
Harrier, A-10 and A7 [?] @ Mildenhall
F-5, F-16, C141 and AB @ Mildenhall
EF-111 [?] @ Mildenhall
SR-71A @ Mildenhall
Phantom @ Mildenhall

AB and I had a great time at the airshow. It was a really good experience and well worth the camping and entrance fees. I do feel it’s a bit of a shame that the number of airshows has decreased over the years, but these beasts were probably also a show of strength during the cold war. They were interesting times and maybe I should be glad we don’t currently need massive forces to prevent mutual destruction [it feels like it’s heading that was again though].

Addendum: I have had confirmation of aircraft types from a US source:

A7 is indeed an A7D and it will have been a Lynx you saw display rather than an Apache.
— Richard O (@richouss) July 25, 2019

July 15 2019July 14 2019

Forts Position

On Saturday I went to visit the Redsand Forts. There are a couple of things I’d like to note for you.

Firstly I use the opportunity to calibrate the altitude on my Garmin Instinct watch. I usually give it a go each month, just to make sure it’s working properly. While out near the forts I used the calibrate with GPS option and I got an altitude of -2m. Initially this confused me but then I realised that I was close to the sea but during low tide, therefore I was likely negative AMSL, so -2m seemed about right.

The above picture is my position as saved by the Garmin Instinct. I didn’t even know that was an option but I noticed it while I was calibrating the altitude. I saved the position and then was able to display it on my phone. There’s a Garmin app called Explore and I like the functionality.

While out on the sea I also used Google Maps to see where I was.

I took this screen shot a bit before the Garmin one and so you can see I am slightly further east than the previous picture. I don’t think either of these was taken at the Redsands Forts complex as I was too busy watching.

July 14 2019July 14 2019

Cranes On Boats

While walking along the wharf before I went to the cinema to see The Matrix I happened upon some cranes on boats. Now, I know technology and science stuff but cranes on boats still amaze me. They shouldn’t but they do.

Above is a crane on a boat. That’s pretty impressive. What could be better than a crane on a boat? Well, surely a boat being held by a crane on a boat:

Also, as a bonus there are two cranes on two boats. I think this could turn into a minor fascination along with my occasional series on safes! Having glanced through these esteemed communications I can see that my series on safes didn’t even mage these pages. I’ll try and correct that.

July 14 2019July 15 2019

Sand Castles

Yesterday I sailed out from Queenborough into the Thames Estuary to see the Redsand Forts. My ship fo rthe journey was the X-Pilot captained by Captain Chris, they weren’t worried with formalities. It was meant to be a four hour trip to see these abandoned aircraft defenses.

After a safety brief the four passengers including me boarded the vessel and made ourselves at home. What really happened was we dumped our bags in the crew room and sat outside for the journey. The tide was waning, there was little wind, the skies looked kinda moody and the seas were slight. To make it a slightly more perfect trip it would have been nice to have glimses of sunlight for the photography but I was happy.

The boat departed Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey and headed out past Sheerness to the Redsand Forts. These were built in the second world war to aid the anti-aircraft defenses of London. There are a few sets of Maunsell Forts in the estuary but I was booked on a trip to see just the Redsand ones.

These forts were designed by Maunsell and towed out to the different sand banks in the Thames and sunk. They were crewed by over two hundred members of the army. There are pages about them on Wikipedia and the general Web. I won’t go into too much detail about their history in this communication because you’ll find much more information elsewhere, this is a good page.

These beasts spring up out of the shallow waters and tower over the flowing sea to impress. They are such incredible structures. Four reinforced concrete legs followed by the I-pattern beams and metal walls. I do wonder how cold these were in winter! Most of the walkways are gone, can you imagine having to move from one to another?

In the above photograph you can see the two story structure and the roof. One of the towers is further away from the centre and I wonder if that’s where they kept the ammunition. It would be fascintating to see movie footage of these in use.

Above is my favourite photograph, I love the way the water looks so still and the towers look like little toys. I think we were lucky with the seas. As I said earlier, a few rays of sunsine breaking through would have made this a perfect photography day.

On the way back to port we passed around the SS Richard Montgomery. We had made good time out of the Medway because of the waning tide and so we had the chance to add to our excursion which meant a chance to encompass the ticking-time-bomb that is the Liberty Ship Richard Montgomery.

You have to love a sign that says:

Danger. Unexploded Ammunition. Do Not Approach or Board This Wreck. By Order.

If it goes up there will be a massive bang, a huge cloud and plenty of water heading to the shores on both sides of the estuary. There are plenty of warnings around this wreck including yellow bouys, red bouys, signs and an exclusion zone on the charts.

This trip was great fun, a wonderful experience and very good value. I really enjoyed it.

Here’s how they were planned:

July 14 2019July 14 2019

The Matrix : 20th Anniversary

Yesterday I took an evening trip to see The Matrix at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I had spent a good portion of the day already aware of the tides as I visited the Redsand Forts and while it was high-ish tide when the trip started it was half tide on the way out when we returned to port. The tide at Rochester was about half again I think when I got to the cinema.

The showing was at 20:00 and I got there about twenty minutes before then. I went for a walk along the wharf. It’s that or buy sweets to eat and so I opted for the healthy option. I’m in a bit of a healthy phase and hoping, once again, to adjust my routines to be more healthy. I’ll probably write stuff here someday about that, I’ll see how it goes first. At the other end of the wharf there was a new development of houses along the river’s edge. They look nice and had lovely balconies and views but I couldn’t help thinking that in less than one hundred years they will either have been destroyed in the Water Wars or flooded by rising ocean levels. I am not optimistic about anthropogenic global climate change.

After seeing a movie at the cinema I rate it on IMDB and I was looking forward to rating this film until I watched it. There will be more about my battle with memory below the embedded tweet. If you read through the movie reviews on this site you will be able to spot the time I learnt how to embed tweets!

I rated The Matrix (1999) 7/10 #IMDb https://t.co/jbmrKSwBpa
— Ian Parish (@iparish) July 14, 2019

Hmmm, WordPress, my website editing software had a update about a month ago and I am learning the new features. I’m not sure if that embedding will work. I’ll wait and see once this page is published. [It worked fine, no need to edit anything]

The scoring of this film as a SEVEN is controversial, I know. Especially if you read my guidance communication on the rating system but I guess I’m trying to break the Matrix [ha fucking ha]. The thing is I was hoping I would love this film. The 27 year old me loved this movie, I bought it on DVD and I’m sure I watched it a few times, I even went to see the sequels and they were fucking terrible films, really terrible. I mean they were really really bad. I went with friends to see them at the Odeon in Maidstone.

Right, here we go.

I wanted this movie to be amazing, I wanted it to blow my mind and when I was 27 it did. Bullet-time was a filming style invented for this movie. The whole look and feel of this film was ground-breaking. It was an amazing action film along with the philosophical grandness of wondering what if we are in a dreamworld or the product of other people’s dreams or in a computer simulation – each of those is equivalent I think.

The things I remembered about this film were:

Trinity being amazing at the beginning
“I know Kung Fu”
The lobby scene
Dodging bullets

The things I had clearly forgotten were how fucking dull some of the philosophical bullshit scenes were. God, there were times in this movie when I just wanted it to finish. I think that’s the problem with nearly every genre now taking lessons from the Matrix and how to make films, the Grandmaster gets killed by those he trains.

Looking at the film now there were lots of things that don’t work in the plot and timing. I will admit though that 1999 was a pretty good time to be alive, just think:

No 9/11
No Iraq war
No Afghan war
No GW Bush
No 7/7
No Brexit
No Trump

To get around the “dying in the Matrix” problem the writers just said that if you die there your mind dies and your body can’t live without a mind. Which is bullshit. They could have just used another excuse, they could have said that you become metally unstable and we kill your body. Similarly getting injured in the Matrix means that you get the same injuries in real life, this is poor writing but I guess you need to have some form of risk involved once you are in the Matrix. I think that just entering a different world would be managed perfectly well by the mind, we do it every night. Unplugging the link into the Matrix shouldn’t kill you either.

The action scenes were pretty good but the Lobby scene seemed much shorter than I remember. I wasn’t that impressed. This is mostly to do with me having watched another twenty years worth of films in an age of computer graphics and near photorealistic graphics. It isn’t really a problem with the Matrix but it just looked slow and I was unimpressed. This is a shame and more a problem with me than the movie.

Fuuuck films with an oracle or wise old woman or man. What a lazy crock of shit those plot devices are. I hate it. Of course, that person needs to be black or they wouldn’t have the same credibility. What I sugest you do is look through all movies with wise old people and see what their current role in society is.

More fuuuck films which use a prophecy. I’ve been reading books recently that have a theme of a prophecy and it’s lazy fucking bullshit. Our species seems to live with the idea that we can predict the future and so some wanker somewhere will have written down what is going to happen. We love the concept of agency and we can’t cope as individuals if we understand that the shit is just random. Nope, we have to have prophecy. We have to have a way of explaining the world and how some people become the heroes or gods. Fuck that shit. It annoys me so much.

“Neo – you are the one”. Fuck you.

How about just Neo being a hacker and then considered someone who can cope with being out of the Matrix. Then he could just develop into an amazing leader. All this destiny bollocks makes me want to cry. It’s a throw back to the days when we didn’t understand how stuff works. It’s a way of giving the human race hope for a future that won’t happen. It’s calming to the global psyche. It’s fucking bullshit that’s what it is.

I hope that now I’ve alerted you to this prophecy shit you will spot it in future and start to downgrade those stories. I do know they are popular. I do know that most of the world relies on that shit but it’s time for reality. All this pophecy shit does is reinforce the idea that some people are born better than others. It keeps the poor poor and the rich/powerful wankers. Our entire societal structure is formed so that only some will be in charge and they will do all they can to stay there. They love this prophecy chosen-one bullshit. Just look at Boris Johnson and tell me he doesn’t believe he should run this country. You see what these stories do to people?

I do note that the Matrix had many scenes without music and I admire that. It was nice to have the stark contrast so that when the action happened the music worked pretty well. I was struck by the idea that people who dress in black and look “alternative” are the dangerous ones. As someone who lives in that world I don’t think it’s right for society to cast those people aside and see them as dangerous but things will change slowly. At least I hope they will, it seems that the world is getting more intolerant recently due to the leading politicians of our time.

I don’t know whether it was the soundtrack or the cinema or where I was sitting in the cinema but some of the scenes’ sound seemed balanced poorly. There were a couple of times I couldn’t hear the speech because of the music and I couldn’t hear the music at the beginning of the Lobby scene. This was a shame because those are important parts in my memory of this film. Along with sound issues fuck the person who seemed to be wrestling with a loud plastic bag during all the quiet bits of the film. Obviously they have no empathy or they would have waited before making that much noise.

Overall this film left me slightly sad that it didn’t meet my memories of it. I saw it as a tired slow film full of philosophical-bull. I understand that it was mind-blowing and ground breaking when it was released but not all groundbreaking films remain amazing, some slowly go away and get remembered for their effects rather than their plot.

On the way out I overheard someone mention they might watch the two sequels. Jesus, that’s beyond the call of duty. I will NOT be seeing them. They were worse than shit.

July 8 2019July 13 2019

Rammstein – MK Stadium

Last Saturday I went to see Rammstein play their current set at the MK Stadium in Milton Keynes. It was bloody amazeballs.

I had spent the previous week at RAF Shawbury with a cadet camp which was already a brilliant week and I then topped it off with this brilliant show. I drove down from the West Midlands to Milton Keynes and met with Smith in a supermarket car park. This gig is an important one because he had brought his kids along, their first major gig. You could tell that there was a slight trepidation from the eldest [around 14] but the youngest displayed nothing but sheer excitement [around 12].

The support band were two women who played pianos on a stage just in front of our seats. It was nice but I didn’t really pay attention. I was suffering with the effects of being tired and so I read a book on the development of the pressure suit for high altitude flying published by Nasa. It wasn’t bad but I needed to rest!

Rammstein themselves were amazing. Absolutely amazing. The show they put on is remarkable and worth every penny of the 7500 for the cost of a ticket. There were the normal theatrics with lots of fire. And I mean lots of fire. There were black clouds bellowing over the stadium at certain points during the show and I wondered what it must look like to someone outside the stadium.

There were many highlights. Every song had its own act. The keyboardist being burnt in a massive cauldron, the burning to death of a giant baby, the massive riding cock for the song “Pussy”, and flames shooting from guitars.

This might seem odd but the dance track halfway through made my night. That was the moment I thought “this is the best show ever”. One of the guitarists DJd while being lifted high above the stage and the other members of the band came on with suits that lit up along the limbs. They then performed a dance routine to an electronic version of thier own song. What balls, to make 30,000 metal fans listen and dance to electronic music. This band have it all.

This was the best show I have ever seen and is the third best gig I have been to. The Prodigy last year at M’era Luna may have been an excellent show, I don’t know I can’t remember any of it. This concert would have been top of the list had I been in the pit. You have to take whatever you can from a gig and I loved this but part of me hankered to be in the mild violence of the circle. I still had a great time. My top three gigs are: Combichrist Old School, The Prodigy and Rammstien – this one.

This is the thrid time I have seen Rammstein and it was bloody brilliant.

“Did I mention? I’m seeing Rammstein in Milton Keynes this weekend.”

July 7 2019July 7 2019

CCF Camp SHY

It’s the end of a great week and tiring week at RAF Shawbury. I spent a week there with the CCF RAF cadets and I’m pretty sure everyone had a great time. I’m struggling today with being super tired [fault of seeing Rammstein last night] and so have decided to write this instead of doing some pressing work badly.

RAF Shawbury is home to the helicopter flying school for the three services and there is a mixture of uniforms walking around.

On the Sunday we had some time on a high ropes course in Telford and then went to fly some birds of prey along with seeing owls close up. I got some excellent photographs and I endeavour to show them on here at some point.

Monday was the first day of section visits and we had the RAF Police tell us about their job and demonstrate restraining an adult volunteer [me]. One of the Midlands ARVs also came along to show us what kit they have and what they do. In the afternoon we had talks about training Air Traffic Controllers and we saw the simulators they use covering RAF Cottom. We had a tour around the dry helo training area run by the Ascent military contractors.

Tuesday brought a trip to nearly RAF Cosford and involvement in training the Midlands police how to cope with public demonstrations and protests. The cadets also learnt how to use riot shields correctly.

Wednesday for me was time spent at the DCCT block and then on the range in the afternoon. It was a little disconcerting that we had to stop often as there was a helicopter taxi way just behind bullet catcher. The last thing we needed was a stray round to kiss a Juno flying ten feet above the ground.

Thursday meant a visit to Air Traffic Control and a drive across the airfield. Then we nearly all had a helicopter flight in the afternoon piloted by an Army major. In the evening we had a camp meal out at The Red Lion in Shrewsbury.

On Friday I had a very short visit to the RAF Museum at RAF Cosford and then another afternoon on the range. It was very hot and there was a lot of aircraft activity including a visit from an Apache and two Pumas. We managed to get a tour around the Pumas. In the evening an ex-SAS member gave us a talk on motivation. This was followed by the traditional ceremony of the plates.

The final day meant tidying rooms, packing and then a journey home. Mind you, I had to stop at Milton Keynes to see Rammstein burn gallons of fuel during their concert. The review should follow shortly.

June 11 2019December 5 2019

Old Television

There’s a big news story around at the moment that the over 75s in this country are going to have to pay for a TV licence. I’ve got some thoughts on this matter which I will communicate here.

In the UK the TV Licence pays for some of the BBC along with some of Channel 4 and, I think, channel 5. It used to be more of a licence to operate receiving equipment which just happened to be used to pay for public broadcasting. I think nowadays it is considered to be a tax by people which goes directly to the BBC.

The reason the BBC are going to charge the over 75s is because the GOVERNMENT has chosen to withdraw that part of the funding for the BBC. It seems amazing to me that the majority of the anger is placed at the BBC where it should be placed directly at the government. The media which isn’t funded by the government has a massive issue with the BBC funding and targets it a lot about everything.

Much like the anger placed at immigrants or the NHS or housing or local councils the real anger should be directed at the GOVERNMENT because they set the fucking rules. Annoyed with people dodging tax? Then moan at the government, they set the rules, they produce the law. It’s the government’s fault. The fact that the anger is deliberately directed away from the government is astonishing.

Local councils get their funding from two main sources, the national government and the taxes, council tax, placed on those who live in the area. The national government has spent years reducing the amount it sends to the local councils and so the only way to make up the shortfall is to charge more to locals. Where does the anger go? To the local council, not to the national government.

I don’t see that just because you are old you shouldn’t have to pay for a service that you use. It should probably be means tested. There are plenty of old folk out there who can afford this and they should pay slightly more to allow those who struggle to have access to services. It’s how society should work. Some parts of society struggle and the rest of us should help, it’s the morally correct thing to do.

There seems to be a perception that poor people or people who struggle through life deserve it. Their failure must be because they haven’t worked hard enough, that they have made poor choices. This is incorrect. The poor work hard, those who struggle work hard. It’s the way our current society works that produces parts of the population who struggle and always will. We must change society to make it work for all people.

June 10 2019June 10 2019

Late Night

Yesterday was a little busy but it was one of those good-busy days where everything seemed positive and fulfilling. In the morning the collektive known as DBL-MF went on a photoshoot. It was pretty good fun. In the afternoon I traveled to see this film at Rochester cinema and in the evening I had a run.

I did note that as I drove to the cinema the tide was quite high, I couldn’t see the edges of the inlet which was dredged just over a year ago, and when I returned home the tide was about at its highest.

After the film I rated it on the IMDB site, there’s a section here about rules concerning rating films and you can see that communication here. I then tweeted the result, through the wrong account initially, but I corrected that this morning.

I rated Late Night (2019) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/B0LOGwD7I9

— Ian Parish (@iparish) June 10, 2019

I pretty much enjoyed this film. I even laughed out loud in the cinema and that is quite a rare thing. I would have liked to have seen a more political push in the discussions about the monologue but that’ probably wouldn’t have kept the humour at the correct level. I enjoyed this film although it was very much a feelgood movie. It made me laugh and really enjoy watching the characters develop.

John Lithgow’s performance was fantastic. He’s such an amazing actor and it’s strange to see him looking old he’s always much younger in my head. I think I remember that one of the first films I saw him in was called Raising Cain. I think he played a twin or person with multiple personality disorder. It was spooky and amazing. Then he appeared as a baddie in Cliffhanger, I think and also played an astronaut/scientist in 2010. He’s always been there in the background.

I know he had a long run on TV with 3rd Rock From The Sun, which was very good fun, and I watched quite a lot of those but I always felt as though he was an actor I discovered and tracked over the ages. He was brilliant.

June 2 2019

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I went to the cinema at Rochester to watch Godzilla: King of the Monsters. There are customary parts to get through here I guess. The tide, I noticed, was neither high nor low and when I came out of this film it was lower so I guess it was waning.

I have rated films I have watched at the cinema for a long time now and I rated this one, although I had to check this communication covering the rules I apply to the rating system.

I rated Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/nxiWZhJARN

— Ian Parish (@iparish) June 1, 2019

This film was shit, what a waste of about $200 million.

I don’t want to go into all the details of why I thought it was shit. But I hated it all and considered leaving three times, especially once I realised there was another round of battles to go. MV-22Bs do not a good movie make.

June 1 2019June 1 2019

Not 4WD

One of the laces on my running shoes died just over a week ago. I’d been thinking of getting new ones as I was sure these were now two years old and running out of steam. I also know I had written about the new trainers when I got them as a way of keeping tabs on when I bought them. It turns out that was just about three years ago! Here’s what they looked like new:

This is what they look like now:

You can see they are worn, with holes appearing, there’s almost no tread on the soles. So, I took a trip to a local running shop and went for blue this time:

I guess we’ll see how long these ones last.

By the way, this is the 1501 communication published on this site. Keep an eye out for more over the next few years!

May 30 2019

Untruth

There’s been quite a bit of moral outrage recently at the Jeremy Kyle show and that it should be removed from television permanently. I haven’t really paid attention to what has happened, as I understand it someone died and the show has been stopped from broadcasting for a while. Newspapers and social media have been very loud about how the show should be pulled completely.

Why does it take something bad to happen for people to be open about what they think is right and wrong? All of this moral outrage wasn’t there two weeks ago when the Kyle show was still on television. There wasn’t anyone loudly calling for it to be stopped. It took the death of someone for the media to declare that they thought it was a bit shit all the time. They did fuck all for many years.

This is strange. This effect that it takes a large news cycle for the media and opinion makers to declare something as bad even though it’s been around for years. What sort of behaviour is this? Where was all the complaining before something terrible happened? I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t bad enough for the media t give a shit, but that someone died before they spoke was terrible.

I have, in the past, watched a lot of Jeremy Kyle. I used to think it did some good. I thought that it helped people to talk to each other in a safe space when the rest of the world didn’t give a shit. It allowed the chance for people to communicate. I was probably wrong to think this. We shouldn’t forget that Kyle is a television show. It’s there to entertain and make money at a basic level and it probably did little to help its stars.

My biggest problem with the Kyle show was the use of a lie detector. Here was have a television show with a purported “helping people” theme and they relied on the utter bullshit that is a lie detector. The polygraph doesn’t work. It’s incredibly difficult to tell when people are lying. The TV show used the lie detector to try and solve family issues, people’s future relationships relied on the results of a flawed piece of equipment. Families will have been broken up because of the reliance on the polygraph and its results.

The idea that the show declared the truth or lies as fact was an appalling use of a bullshit piece of theatre – the polygraph. It doesn’t work. I guess the show tried to disclaimer the use of the detector with an on-screen caption saying that “it doesn’t work but some people believe it”. That’s what religion does. It’s horrific the hurt and separation using this device caused.

Do you know why polygraph results aren’t permitted in UK courts? It’s because they don’t work. It’s incredibly difficult for humans to tell when other humans are lying. I’ll let you into my reasoning.

Humans learn from toddler age that lying works. The individual will receive rewards for lying, as long as they can keep that lie going. Humans have spent their entire lives lying at times. This behaviour is learnt and used almost constantly. Little lies are easy. Larger lies are more difficult but they get easier with time. It’s amazingly easy to convince yourself that something happened when it didn’t. Human memory is terrible. Eye witnesses shouldn’t be allowed in courts but that is for another time.

I’ll give you an anecdote, which isn’t evidence, but it personalises the story and allows you to connect rather than just concentrate on the plain facts.

Years ago I ran over a pothole on a bend in the road near my village. The weather had been incredibly poor and there were potholes all over the place. The sudden compression on my left front suspension broke the spring and by the time I got to work the other spring had broken through excessive weight on it.

I tried to make a claim through the local council for the damage, claiming that the road was in poor condition. However, I didn’t want to take photographs in the road where the pothole was, it would not be safe to take measurements on that corner. So, I took photographs of a pothole just inside the village, it was of a similar size and depth and along a route that I drive. To ensure that, if questioned, I referred to the nearer pothole I kept going over the story in my head. I also visualised my driving the car over that pothole over and over. I talked through the story while walking the dog and basically formed a memory of me breaking the car by driving over the pothole near the village.

Even now, after more than ten years, if asked I would immediately respond that the pothole was in the village. I would then question myself and remember what had actually happened. With just a little understanding of human memory it is easy to adjust what we “know”. Memory is fascinating and terrible. Humans are terrible.