There are a number of reasons why 1989 was a good year for me but the one to talk about is my trouncing of my ATC squadron for awards. As listed in this communication I won four of the awards that year.
Shooting
Bandsman
Cadet Of The Year
NCO i/c Flight Of The Year
I am very proud of these. I still have the personal trophy for Cadet of the Year.
I recently attended a meal in celebration of thirty five years of 309 squadron and it was a good bash. It was lovely to see lots of faces from the old days. The trophies were on display and although my names are no longer on the prizes given out now – there’s not enough space for the new names and so new trophies were bought – I could see the old trophies around the room along with plenty of clippings in the scrap books.
There was also a presentation on the large screen with plenty of photographs from the old days. A fair few had me in them, mind you I was involved for over ten years.
A Classic Year
The above photograph has John Trant, Lisa Slater, me, Flt Lt Andrew Passfield OC 309, Jamie Hubbard, Dean Willetts and Simon McGarry. We are the ones who won prizes in 1989.
Fife
That’s me playing the fife as the band marched down the town high street.
I’ve been thinking about time. Well, let’s face it I think about lots of things all the time but time is problematic. I was mostly thinking about this at the turn of the year, when 2018 magically turned into 2019 or the start of the nth journey around the sun when starting from an arbitrary point. I mean starting the new year on the day after the shortest day for the northern hemisphere would be more sensible but I guess we could have a war with the southern hemisphere about that.
Midnight is the first moment of the next day. When the clock hits 00:00 that is the start of the next day. The previous day ends at a moment which is the limit of all time before 00:00. Twelve AM is the beginning of that day. Such is the definition.
Now, here’s the problem and it involves language and colloquialisms as is often the case with problems about definitions. Within mathematics there are plenty of words which have specific definitions in the subject and different meanings in casual language, I mean that was designed that way originally to exclude the masses from education.
So, if I said to you I will meet you “at midnight on Thursday” then it is likely that we would be talking about meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday. But, if I said I’d meet you at 12am on Thursday that would probably mean we were still meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday but in reality that time is the boundary between Wednesday and Thursday.
Thinking about this now I think it would be only me having problems with a meeting time of “midnight on Thursday” and in a group discussion I would be the one asking for clarification whereas everyone else would be perfectly happy with the understanding of the meeting time. Oh how I hate language sometimes.
Here’s a boring list of the things I am watching at the moment on the television screen. By at the moment I don’t mean right now or all at once, I mean separately and over a period of time.
Tour Of Duty – current DVD box set. Episodes tweeted when watched.
Brooklyn 99 – it’s OK.
Black Mirror – when new episodes are released.
NFL – all the time until mi-Feb and then I feel lost for eight months.
Cats Does Countdown – just the perfect mix of maths and humour.
Terrible science fiction films – I think I’ve watched all the good ones but I do like a space film.
Star Trek Voyager – I’ve seen plenty of Star Trek but not much of this one. Working my way through before doing TNG or something similar.
Preacher – lovely comic book small screen translation.
Killjoys – when it comes back.
The Expanse – when that comes back also.
Also, here’s a photograph of a building I’ve been to recently:
REM Gillingham
Now, there’s an idea for a series of communications – a picture of the front of each building I enter. Could be fun! But I think I’ll wait until the album review series is complete.
I wandered the White Horse Wood Country Park and didn’t really know what to expect. I was hoping for some decent views from the North Downs over the Greensand Ridge and High Weald. That is what I got. But, I also found a curious structure:
Ash to Ash
This apparently is a sculpture of two ash trees with arrows stuck in them to signify the die-back of the ash tree in this country. A very curious site and at first when I saw them from a distance I expected them to be disguised mobile phone masts.
Also close by is the ruins of Thurnham Castle, a home to rich people using and abusing the poor.
Thurnham Castle Remains
It was not a sunny day, but at least it was bright.
First communication for the new year of 2019 is a couple of pictures from Gran Turismo photographic mode. The first is my Chevvy over-steering around the penultimate bend on the Sainte-Croix Circuit. You can see a list of circuits here.
Chevrolet
This second picture is of my two favourite cars on GT Sport. Both have a really good balanced feel and I’ve raced over 500 miles in the Porsche.
A little while ago Sony Entertainment made a video giving a run down of my time on the PS4 and you can see that in this communication. I guess these types of videos don’t take a huge amount of effort to produce and they might even have started on Faceshit, I don’t know. However, the other day Strava came up with one for me. I use Strava to track my running and other exercise. This year I’ve also done some rowing on the erg and a little swimming.
The other day I went to see the Michael Bay film Bumblebee at Rochester Cinema. On the way to the cinema the tide was low, but was lower on the way out, possibly at a minimum, all the mud banks were showing. Out in the river there’s a crane on a barge! A proper crane with wheels and stuff, just sitting on a large barge. I do love the big stuff we make. So, I started looking for a satellite picture of the mud flats at the edge of the river and ended up getting excited about the historical photographs available in Google Earth. I probably owe them something for using these clips.
1940 Pre Motorway
If you move slightly further east from this picture you can see the Shorts Brothers Flying Boats resting on the river Medway, that must’ve been such an amazing sight. Sunderlands taking off from the Medway before Shorts was relocated to Northern Ireland.
1940 Shorts Flying Boats
Next up are the 60s decade of sex and drugs and rock and roll. No motorway though.
1960 No Motorway Yet
The original Medway motorway bridge opened in 1963 and on closer inspection I think the construction work in the photograph is the building of the supports.
1990 M2 Bridge
By 1990 you can see the bridge and then the area that will be reclaimed for the entertainment complex.
2003 New Bridges
In this photograph the cinema and nightclub are there, along with the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link bridge for the high speed train network and another road bridge. I think the original is also being “beefed up”.
2006 Bridges Complete
The bridges are complete and it looks like there is a trail bike track the other side of the railway.
2015 Medway Gate Houses
This last picture has the new housing estate in the Medway Gate. I’m not sure what their sunlight is like as they live in the bottom of a pit.
Back to the process of writing this film review. I rated the film on IMDB, as usual, and there’s a communication buried in this site to explain the rating process. I tweeted this result, because it makes this site look prettier than me just writing the result.
Well, this film was the usual mess of a Michael Bay film. It starts somewhere and leads us in the knowledge of how Bumblebee and the others got to Earth along with some stuff about saving the world. It really wasn’t an interesting film and I got bored with the middle hour. Worth a watch if you want to complete your set of Transformers movies. But much like the very first movie the transformers were too “busy and quick”.
Would robots fight each other the same way that humans do? Would they try to hit each other about the head until they pass out? Would they have a voice module in the same place as a human? Would they have independently developed bullets and missiles that look like our Earth weapons?
Fleisch were the main band in the venue Fire last night. They are an industrial metal band from somewhere up north. The first band though were called AlterRed.
I honestly can’t remember a huge deal about AlterRed! I don’t remember hating it but I don’t remember being incredibly impressed. It was watchable. I think Smith and I gave it about a 3/10 score, although the grading system for watching bands isn’t as rigorous as the cinema review section of this site.
I didn’t take any photos during the gig, it wasn’t that sort of place so I have found a music video and you can judge for yourself:
The only other band playing that night were Fleisch. There were better and rated at about a 5/10 by Smith and me. I’m not sure the sound was super brilliant and I certainly didn’t get a Rammstein feel, which they claim but it was a good performance. What I don’t understand is the need for separate bass tracks in the backing track and also a bass player, one or the other folks. Your sound doesn’t need two lots of deep sounds, one will do.
Although these weren’t taken on Newtonmass Day they were taken in the 2018 season and in the area of the Medway Valley. Not sure what they say about this area though.
M20 Bridge and Medway
Illegal Biking Monument
Old Barracks Remains
Medway Low Tide
Actually, two of them do point to the idea that the Medway valley area is rough as fuck.
