Tag Archives: UK

Working tales…

21 Monday Apr 2025

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Having penned a very long-winded story about the UK Government’s distaste for window envelopes last time, I thought I might jot down a few other, largely silly, experiences I had in my thirty-four years of Government employ.

I joined in 1977 as a clerk, taking myself off to the big city (London) to push bits of paper around for the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Now this won’t be a story to match Pete Hesgeth’s security breaches in the US DoD, because although I had worked in some sensitive areas occasionally, most of my time at the MoD I spent pushing bits of innocuous paper around, or pressing buttons on computers, that were as far removed from Government secrets as you could get. Anyway, I have signed the Official Secrets Act, a Government NDA, so it’ll be all very bland.

In the early 1990s, I was working on a computer system that was networked around the UK’s Royal Navy holdings, including some of their ships. It was convenient to put the land-based nodes for this system in underground bunkers, mostly to protect against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), deliberate or otherwise, and it was to one of these holes in the ground in Scotland that we were sent to install a software upgrade. If I tell you we were using reel-to-reel tapes for the magnetic media, you get an idea that this was not a fancy, James Bond type computer, but an old, old system.

Similar, but newer…

The bunker at this site was a WWII construction, quite deep and a veritable rabbit warren of little passages and low-ceilinged rooms. The computer was in a small space, and with extra people working in there, the cooling system began to struggle a bit. Consequently, once we’d mounted the tapes and set the update running, my coworkers and I retired to our beds on the surface for the night.

Oh my! One of the systems we were working on, although not the actual one of course.

At 1am we were paged because the update wasn’t working well and the temperature and humidity in the computer room was causing concern. When we arrived to see what was happening, there was an HVAC guy already there, with his young sidekick. We checked the update, it needed restarting, and just as we had the tapes whirring again, the HVAC guy said he wasn’t happy with the temperature. He asked his sidekick to power-off the cooler so he could check things out, and all of a sudden all the power went off. The computer, complete with updates running, stopped, and the lights went out. We stood in total darkness, in complete silence, for about fifteen seconds before the emergency lights kicked and we wondered what on earth we were going to do. The HVAC guy meanwhile was apoplectic, in a serious rage, because it turned out that his sidekick had hit the emergency power kill switch for the entire computer area rather than the switch for the cooler. What it meant for him was another hour while he reset his cooling system, which was another hour away from his lovely warm bed.

We knew we were in for a long night, but fortunately the power was restored quickly, the cooler ran up smoothly and we were able to get the update restarted for the third time that night.

One of our number stayed while the update ran this time, but the rest of us went back to bed. It was with some trepidation that we went back underground at 8am, but our night watchman was perfectly happy because the update worked. He was even happier because some nice sailors that worked there had found him a nice bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee.

I love a happy ending.

As a postscript, I discovered that the Scottish underground bunker that we’d spent part of night working in had been decommissioned in the early 2000s. Not only that, it had been filled in, and there is now a bunch of new houses sat atop it. I wonder if the owners of the houses know what was once beneath their feet?

Pub Life

30 Thursday Nov 2023

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On our recent trip to England, we enjoyed some British Pub Life.

Pubs in the UK are primarily places to socialise. Yes you can get drunk if you want, and yes you can often sit down to a meal, but you don’t have to do either, because you can simply go to a pub to enjoy a drink and spend time with friends. You don’t even have to sit down, you can remain on your feet and be socially mobile, free of the strictures of sitting in one place.

Pub Life

This kind of pub life doesn’t really exist in Ontario. There are plenty of places that are called pubs, even places that claim to be authentically British, but they do not contain pub life, at least not as I know it.

The first thing an Ontario pub will make you do is sit down. The vast majority are table service, and the clue is in the name, there. Yes, you can go to the bar to order, but you’ll end up sitting on a stool there because in most Ontarian pubs, you don’t pay until it’s time to leave, and they do like to keep track of you until then.

Then you’ll find that most people in an Ontarian pub will be there to eat. Again sitting, obviously, but it’s more restaurant than pub at that point, only the presence of alcoholic drinks will give the game away. Of course there’s nothing wrong in going to a pub to eat, but it doesn’t do much for the socialising aspects of pub life.

There are also the people who go to Ontarian pubs to get drunk. Usually loners, propping up the bar and being a long way from any social situation. There is something called Safe Serve in Ontario, where bar staff are trained, and certified, in dealing with people who drink too much. Safe Serve came about after an individual successfully sued a bar for selling them too much alcohol, after that individual has caused mayhem elsewhere while under the influence of the booze. Most bar staff where we live don’t worry too much about the heavy drinkers, but a place in Waterloo we visited had notices up to say that no one would be served more than two drinks. Again, hardly conducive to a social setting.

Sitting! A pub in Michigan.

There are clubs, with music and dancing, that are far more pub-like that actual Ontarian pubs. But they have a different vibe altogether, and you lose the social aspect when you have to shout to get even the most basic conversation heard. Not pub life, in my view.

We were in a pub in Whitehall, London, on the day of the Cenotaph Remembrance Parade, and it was packed with people who’d been parading. So many were standing in groups, clutching drinks, and enjoying just talking with one another. Drinks were bought and paid for at the bar, and taken to the standing huddle, so that the socialising could continue. Now that’s pub life.

We also visited a pub in Wapping, where most customers were sitting to eat, but there was a group of friends at the bar, standing and drinking, and getting really quite noisy. That, though, was pub life too; people enjoying themselves and their group laughter was infectious. No one was drunk, for sure, but they were all enjoying that social freedom that you can achieve with a couple of drinks – although of course alcohol isn’t necessary if you don’t want it to be.

The Duke of Sussex in Waterloo, one of our pub life stops

I’m never going to find pub life in Ontario because the culture is different, despite claims to the contrary by people who run pubs here. I’m certainly not going to give up my easy North American lifestyle just for a bit of pub life, but when we go back across the Pond, the pub is one of our first ports of call.

Even Charlie like a bit of pub life now and again

England ’23

20 Monday Nov 2023

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Multi-Modal Travel

The first part of the multi-modal journey began with a thrash up Highway 401, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. I say Toronto, but it’s more Mississauga, which works for us because it’s on the western end of the conurbation that forms the metropolis of Toronto. Just two of us, two bags, two backpacks and already checked in, we left super-early and arrived at the airport super-early, given that it was a clear run, if quite busy in parts.

Pearson Terminal 3 was our departure point because we’d opted for British Airways this time. It was nothing to do with love of the mother country, but everything to do with the fares being half of those demanded by Air Canada this time around.

Bag drop and security were quick and efficient, due largely to there being a real person checking in the bags, and Security being very quiet. We whiled away our free time eating our homemade sandwiches and doing a bit of people watching. Indeed, we enjoyed the sandwiches all the more for having seen that a single sandwich in the airport, before tax, was retailing at $14.99! I still get a bit riled up at the airport when I see all the iPad bedecked tables that replaced the regular seating a while back, because the desire to part you from your money at Pearson is all pervading. Sitting at a table and ordering drinks and food on an iPad may be a little bit of fun, but it’s a premium service with premium prices.

Our chariot for the evening was a Boeing 787, the famous plastic aeroplane. Our Premium Economy seats were OK, certainly roomier that those in Economy, but flying in the twenty-first century is never a marvellous experience because of the feeling you get that you’re packed in far too tightly. It may be efficient to do that, but spending six or seven hours in close quarters with strangers isn’t my idea of fun. The 787 is certainly quiet on the inside, comparatively speaking at least, but having to share the cabin with a lot of other people snuffling, sneezing and chomping their way through their in-flight meal isn’t ideal. Still, it was going to be a quick flight (six hours), and overnight, so I could at least sleep through some of it.

I was disappointed by the meal choices, which were too fancy and too curry-based. There should be a bland menu available for people like me. The one non-curry dish was pan-fried Cod on Polenta, surrounded by peppers and Kale, which really isn’t my bag, man. As for the breakfast sandwich, well the less said about that the better. There was just one cup of coffee offered throughout the whole flight, too, which is not great.

The aircraft took a southerly route, flew at 41,000 feet (thank you, Flight Information screen) and arrived in London a full fifteen minutes ahead of the scheduled six hours, due entirely to a wickedly fast Jetstream up high, and Storm Ceiran hitting the UK that very day.

It took a little while for our bags to appear, and a little while for us to find the Sixt Car Rental place in the Sofitel, but we were out on the wet English roads soon enough and enjoying the Audi A3 that the young fellow at Sixt had skillfully upsold us.

Driving along the M4 motorway, I took some time to adjust to English driving again. It’s not the driving on the left, but rather the fairly gentle speeds that most people were keeping. The National Speed Limit is 70 miles per hour, but not many were even close to that. Anything from 55 to 70 seemed to be the general flow, and that was perfect to allow me to settle into things. We did stop off at Reading Services, me for a coffee and a Cornish Pastie, and the missus for a tour of M&S and a couple of Greggs’ vegan sausage rolls. Very, very expensive it all was because of the motorway services premium, but it was all much needed. Oh, and our English bank account cards seemed to be functioning nicely, too.

Driving west along the M4, then south, and south-west, on the M5, the weather worsened but the driving was fine. Another stop, at Sedgemoor services this time, was required for natural purposes, and to buy some sweeties, which are required by law when making any road trip.

We rolled into the Travelodge (very basic, but sensibly priced) Plymouth hotel in good time. The rooms are sparse in these places, but this one was clean and sufficient for our needs. A quick shower was taken, and I hopped into bed to snatch a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

It is at this point, dear reader, that I will close this journal entry. We’re in Plymouth to visit family, and that’s not really the right material for my tales from Blighty. My next volume will begin when we’re setting off for Yorkshire in a day or two’s time, when we tackle one of the main reasons we’re here at all, and that’s delving into the past, specifically my family’s past.

England ’23 – Back Home

19 Sunday Nov 2023

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Or: “That Went Far Too Quickly”

We’re back from our jaunt to our ancestral homeland, and ancestral home in fact. I have returned with a handful of draft blog entries which I will clean up, add photos, and publish, probably in chronological order, although it’s not important if they’re not in time order.

Firstly, though, I wanted to say a word or two about the drivers in Ontario. I drove for ten days in England, and while the traffic is dreadful there, the drivers are generally not. They drive in a co-operative manner, never putting people in danger to maintain a right of way, largely sticking to the speed limit, understanding that the limit is not the minimum, and being aware of what’s going on around them. Of course, in that little country there are far more cars than the whole of Canada, which will make for attentive drivers, but those wide open spaces on this side of the pond make for some pretty awful drivers.

Coming back along the 401 today, we witnessed everyone, and I mean everyone, speeding. The 100kph limit is entirely ignored and 110 seems to be the absolute minimum. US plated cars seemed to be among the worst offenders, too.

Then there are the tailgaters. Seriously, a Hyundai SUV was doing around 120-130, about a car length behind a pick-up truck. The SUV driver couldn’t possibly see anything except the rear of the truck, and if the truck driver had slowed for any reason, the SUV driver wouldn’t have time to even reach the brake pedal before hitting the truck, let alone use it. That scene was played out by countless other vehicles just this morning, on a relatively quiet Sunday.

There were also the lane weavers, attempting to make up some ground, weaving from lane to lane, always at speeds well in excess of the limit. Again, one slight mistake from another driver and they simply would have nowhere to go. It’s craziness.