Dave Kean

I made it the full month! Through the itching, ridicule and looking like this on a couple of business trips in the last month. I really don’t think this form of facial hair suits me. On the bright side, I was not the only one growing it for the month, thanks to Keith and Rob for keeping me company and not making me feel totally self conscious.

However, it’s come in rather full and I’ve actually had to trim the furry caterpillar under my lip a couple of times. It comes off tomorrow, I’ve raised a little money (and a 100% match from work, thank you) and had some fun tonight at the Movember Beer tasting in Kirkland.

I think I look pretty stupid at the best of times, and this was not helping. In proper Movember style (so I’m told), it goes in the morning. One last reminder, if you are over 40 and have not have 15 foot of hose pipe shoved up your arse in a few years, go make an appointment with your favorite proctologist. It’s really not as bad as all that.

I was listening to a BBC podcast today and they had an excerpt from Thatcher’s 1980 Conference speech, the rather influential “this lady is not for turning” speech.

Here we are thirty years later and last month was David Cameron’s first Tory conference as PM and the most significant theme of his election campaign was carried through to the conference. Big Society and what it means. I’m not a natural Tory and did not vote for them last spring.

It’s difficult to imagine Thatcher using the same words and discussing “new politics” while telling her base that’s she is cutting child benefits for the middle class. The PM said “I know how anxious people are. I wish there was an easier way, but I have to tell you there is no other responsible way.” His first speech as PM was not rewarded with cheers and endless ovations.

I think most people understand what Cameron is talking about in his “big society”, getting rid of the huge central bureaucracy put in place by Labour over the last 13 years and giving power to local authorities and empowering local people to run things as they see fit.

Cameron did not face his critics during his speech, the child benefit cuts are seen as exactly what they are, an attack on the middle classes. The PM and the senior members of the coalition, to a certain extent have to sell the British people the financial pain, hundreds of thousands of public job losses and shrinking public services are going to be worth it. We understand there is little choice, that the road of the last few years is unsustainable and get the doom and gloom both the current and previous governments were very vocal about.

It’s not so much the elimination of child benefit that’s important, it’s that the chancellor announced it at the party conference. He was letting the public know that the conservative base that gave Cameron and the Tories Number 10, will be suffering alongside the rest of us.

The spending review cut some 80 billion pounds of spending, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and at the party conference a few weeks ago the PM and chancellor made it clear everyone is going to take some of the pain. In theory the austerity that is going to go along with the reduction of the bloated, centralized government that emerged during the good times under Blair has been applauded by most. However this was the first contact the Troy faithful have had, and like everyone else, they don’t like it

He said most of the right things, content was fine, but the delivery poor. He lacked the humanity, the down to earthness that he was known for on the opposition benches. Critics have been very vocal about Cameron and Osborne not understanding the British middle class. They come from a place of privilege and don’t get the aspirations people have to move forward.

The main point of Cameron’s speech was his much talked about his vision of “Big Society”.

‘Let’s pull together,’ he said. ‘Let’s work together in the national interest_… The Big Society needs you to give it life… More power to local government and your neighborhood and you… It is a revolution. We are the radicals now.’

All very noble and rather compelling TV in the moment, but I think most people are pretty apathetic about the whole idea. No one has shown how it will help them day-to-day. It’s just politics as usual. Snow, North Korea and England’s performance are far more pressing to most.

There was nothing in the speech to make the electorate sit up and think “he may be onto something here…” The cynical see it as a distraction from the theme of cuts, cuts and more cuts.

You know there is discontent in the party when the leader that gave them government after 13 years in opposition is compared to Thatcher, and the Tory right are not happy. They feel Cameron is making a critical mistake by hitting the people who voted for him. They say (rightly, BTW) Margaret Thatcher would never have done that. Like Blair, she always looked after the people that put her there.

Most people have a number of very separate careers through their lives. I have, I started off life as an aircraft mechanic, which led to a fairly logical step of working on racecars before I finally got round to going to college.

Today I spend most of my working day sitting in a cube and working on a computer or going to meetings. A significant amount of the time it’s not the most stimulating job in the world, but I have been lucky to work for some exceptional managers.

Turning up the right conference room with a working pen is considered a successful day by some.

After a long day of sitting on my arse I like to do something that makes me feel I’ve contributed or achieved something during the day. If not at work, then at home is a great substitution.

Messing around with the car, setting the gears on my bike or perhaps a little DIY is a little like therapy after a day in cubeville. I’m convinced a little manual labour, especially something that needs a little thought or precision, stimulates something deep down in the reptilian-man brain.

Take the last few months; I finally finished rebuilding the back end of my Miata. It got backed into by an SUV a little while ago, the rear end, the diff mount and rear suspension got tweaked rather badly. It turned out to be a bigger job than I expected, in total almost two hundred hours to strip, repair, rebuild and finally tweak the rear end straight. As big a pain in the arse as the job was, working with my hands is rather theaputic.

Today it all paid off when not only did the Miata turn a wheel for the first time in 5 months, but drove in a straight line down the road with none of the clunking from the back end. Rather pleased with all the hard work.

I love mechanical things, stuff I can study or look at and see how it works. Understand the principals and how the parts interact to make it all go. The cam followers or the rear diff on the Miata, Calculating how to trim the laminate flooring to make it all fit around a series of 45 degree corners in a room where nothing is square.

I love my digital camera, I can’t conceive of using a film camera any more, it’s the poster child for instant gratification. But I can’t take it apart and see how it works. Many years ago a friend game me an Olympus manual SLR camera that he broke. I stripped it down, fixed the winder mechanism and I had a perfectly functioning camera.

However, should my digital camera break, all I’m going to be able to do is bang it a couple of times to see if percussive maintenance is going to work, check the batteries and if it’s still not working then throw it away. There is nothing I can fix or play with to get it working again.

Then there is DIY, a friend is so incompetent around the house that he called someone to install a few shelves. This as embarrassing to males in general, not just him.

How long does it take to drill a few holes, install some plugs and screw everything together? 10 or 15 minutes tops, yet he calls in a guy to do it for him.

I’m buying him “Sex in the City – Series 1” for Christmas, it seems fitting for someone that emasculated.

He sees a big job and does not have the knowledge to break it down into the required steps (this is even worse, because he’s a manufacturing engineer in real life) to make the job more manageable.

I grew up generally fiddling and playing with mechanical things. I get it from both dad and granddad, neither would dream of paying someone to do anything for them short of putting a new roof on the house. Both worked in different ways with their hands and brains. By the time I was 12 or 13 I knew what all the tools in dads garage or my grandfathers shed did, and how to use them. By 15 my uncle had shown me how to weld and granddad taught me how to change a head gasket on an Austin A-series engine (a skill that was much used on my Allegro a few years later), set the timing and set up the rockers on an OHV engine.

Growing up this was normal stuff, I did not consider it to be anything special, but I now know it’s maybe a little unusual. Both my brother and I learned trades when we left school, he became an electrician and I ended up with my aircraft mechanics licenses.

I get that now things have changed and that Britain does not actually make much now. In the 80′s at Bishop Reindorp School, I along with every other boy did four years of Craft Design Technology. It consisted of some woodwork, metalwork, technical drawing and learning how to make things from plastic. All great practical skills to have.

The idea of making stuff with your hands seemed normal, in part because when I grew up the UK still had a significant manufacturing base, My dad worked with his hands, as did most of my friends fathers, it’s just what they did. The manufacturing industry has shrunk so much over the last generation. With that reduction (in 1970 manufacturing employed 28% of the workforce, today it’s 9%) the need for, and teaching of the skills like metalworking and reading engineering drawings, skills that’s needed to make stuff has followed the same trend down.

And that’s rather sad. Yes I’ve had my failures, I’ve broken engines, sent myself flying across one of mums friends kitchens because when I discovered that I’d not switched off the power before installing a new light fixture. But I had a go at it. I used my experience to break a seeming complex task down into a number of steps and carefully worked along them. Occasionally I find a gap in my knowledge and learn the hard way (or hit the floor in a hard way).

And next time I installed a light fixture, that hard won experience taught me to switch off power at the breaker coming into the house…

A friend sent me this video today, he also sent it to a couple of Manchester United supporting friends (buy the shirt, bask in the glory and struggle to find Manchester on a map). United have a front line of Best, Law and Charlton.

It’s always fun to watch United (the champions from the previous season) get hammered, even if it is from 1965-66, but there are a couple of very well taken goals. The third goal by Jimmy Greaves is just wonderful. Enjoy the video Rob.

It weights over 400 tons fully loaded, carries 415 people 7,000 miles around the world and all this is done 6 miles up in the air at 615 miles an hour.

I get the physics of how it flies and I used to work on the 747 prgram, but it still amazes me what this incredible machine does. And it’s been flying in various versions since 1969. Don’t let anyone tell you machines don’t have souls.

I’ve been thinking about this whole single threaded roots thing. I recently used the example of music. In ‘83 my mate Angus lent me a cassette of Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast Album. I listened to it, said “that’s f#$^& awesome” and have never looked back. There are a number of other placed where one person had a huge influence on me. Swearing is another one.

I’d been to football grounds and thought I knew about swearing. I though I’d heard everything, mostly prefaced with “The referee is…”, but occasionally used as a question “Are you #$&* joking!” and one or twice as a gentle suggestion (“$@#*# Get up you useless $&*#”). By this time I’d been taught there was language that was acceptable on the terrace at Aldershot that was clearly not permissible at home (and lets not tell your mum about this).

First time I heard dad swear was on the terrace. It’s one of those rites if passage, abet a minor one, but a rite of passage none the less. The game was between Woking and Dagenham, being played at Kingfield for a place in the 1980 FA trophy final. This is the biggest non-league trophy and means a huge day out at Wembley for the finalists.

I remember dad swore, very loudly and very clearly and I believe I stood there looking at him trying to process what I’d just heard. He just carried on as if nothing had happened.

I guess if this were a really ironic story (actually my new definition of irony is “Sweet home Alabama” played in a bar in Castro Valley, talk about playing to an audience of one…) I’d share about how I went home and repeated what I’d heard to mum. Dad would get into trouble for using such words in front of me and we’d all laugh about it years later. However that did not happen. While clearly my survival instincts are not the best, but even I got that repeating what I’d heard on the terrace in the house was a really, really bad idea.

A couple of years later the whole swearing thing moved up a notch thanks to my oldest friend Rob. We go back almost 30 years and he was the first of my close friends who had the right mix of foresight and vision to start playing with swear words.

Rob and I on the train heading into London to a computer show at Earls Court (this was maybe 1982, my inner geekdom has deep roots) and Rob threw out some creative swearing, he used two words that in my experience had not been put together before. As teenagers do, we were calling each other names I got hit with a “piss on you asshole” and went whoa I had never heard that combination of words. While yeah I’d heard them individually, but this was different.

I had nothing to return over the net, game to Rob and a whole new world was born. I like to think I’ve made up for lost time, and I’ve been told by multiple people that being English helps when it comes to sounding authoritative with a potty mouth, but I like to think that today my bad language can stand on it’s own two feet.

As I’ve said before, It’s quite a moment when someone knows you well enough to sit you down, say “you are going to like this” and not only be right, but be an influence for decades to come.

I love Italy; I once worked for an Italian company and spent a lot of time in the country. This week I have the chance to spend a couple of days in Rome. As will all good trips I got a little time to play tourist. This is a city I’ll never grow tired of. But I found enough time to walk around, see a couple of old favourites and one new one I really wanted to visit.

Even just wandering along the road from the hotel to the subway is wonderful, there right in front of me is the Coliseum, but that’s not today’s destination. The Rome subway is not terribly convenient for most places, but it does run close to the hotel. It’s a little old, rather scruffy and only has two lines, but it does what I need today.

Does not really need a caption...

I get off at the Spanish steps, from there I a wander to the Trevi fountain and then onto the Parthenon. A just stunning building, it’s a few years since I’ve been there and the initial awe of walking through the three imposing rows of columns into the rotunda is still there.

It’s as inspiring as ever, not just the age, but the effort and labour that went into it. Looking up through the oculus in the centre to the blue sky knowing that people have been looking at exactly the same view for almost 1900 years is rather humbling.

Interior of the Pantheon

I don’t mean to sound like a gushing sycophant (but I am), but this is an amazing city full of wonderful buildings, stories, food, wine and people. I quickly run out of superlatives.

Michelangelo felt the Parthenon was the work of angels, not men. According to Roman legend, it is the location is where Romulus, the founder of Rome, died and was carried off to the heavens by an eagle to be with the gods.

The city has enough legends, stories and history to keep people busy for a lifetime.

My father visited it in 1952 as an 18 year old leaving Greenock, unfortunately he was not up to visiting this time. When I was in England last spring we talked about how it was when he visited. It was only 7 years after the end of the war and while Rome itself was not the scene of fighting, you did not have to go far. It would have been fun to share a visit with dad, but it’s just not going to happen this time, maybe in the spring.

The same view for almost 1900 years...

Next stop was a new sight for me, the Museo dell’ Ara Pacis. The building was opened in 2006 and was the first building constructed in the old city in almost 70 years. It’s design is modernist, controversial and the contains the Ara Pacis Augustae. This was the Emperor Augustus great monument to the (relative) peace Rome had brought to its empire. It’s a stunning marble altar with massive marble frescoes and is quite something to see close up. It’s a little out the way, but so worth the effort.

The altar is mostly complete, unfortunately about half the frescoes are scattered all over the world, and parts are in London, Washington and Paris. Sitting here I see the other side of the Elgin Marbles argument. A section of the frescoes are in the British Museum in London. The “Elgin Marbles” question is are they better off in the big museums of the world, or here as part of the original piece of work?

It’s a tough argument and I’ve mostly sided with the British Museum/Louvre up to now. They claim that important works should be shared with as many people as possible in a way that best preserves them. Perhaps it’s time to rethink that argument, or at least look at the other side.

For a long time it was about preservation, the Elgin Marbles is probably the most controversial of the items pilfered by the British Empire. For a long time the argument for them staying in England was that the Greeks had nowhere to put them and they would deteriorate in the pollution of Athens. Then the Greeks built the Acropolis Museum, and the argument changed to more people would see them in London that Greece. Reality is possession is 9/10 of the law with most of these things, so they stay in London.

This is what makes Rome so unique

The Museo dell’ Ara Pacis is not that big and is very focused on the one item. It presents the history, the discovery, restoration and most importantly the meaning to Rome and Augustus in some depth. It gives it more meaning that just another fresco in the British Museum and perhaps should be reunited in a place like this that can do it justice. It’s an interesting argument.

Of course, I could not miss at least a wander across to St Peters Square. I did not have time to visit either St Peters Basilica of the Vatican museums; I’ll find time when I’m back in the spring.

Piazza San Pietro

For dinner a couple of options were put forward, Hard Rock Café (for the picky eaters) or head out a find a place. No choice, as nice as I’m sure the HRC is, it’s not exactly Roman. We ended up in a little place off the Piazza Campo di Fiori. The food was exceptional, the wine wonderful and free flowing. I get it’s a stereotype, but the piazza really was full of Vespers buzzing around despite the cool weather.

Rome is a city best appreciated on foot, it’s not too big. I was lucky and got to wander for a few hours, while the big sights are great, it’s the details and little things that give a city character. It could be the graffiti on the South Bank in London, random patches of green in New York or another piece of the Roman Empire standing by the side of the road. Each place has a character that makes finding time to play tourist so much fun.

In the last few weeks there has been a number of dramatic footage of Mount Merapi on Java erupting. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated and st last count a couple of hundred killed.

I was going through some stuff a couple of nights ago, looking for a text book and came across a diary I kept in the early 90’s while I was away travelling for a few months. I was travelling through South East Asia with a Swiss girl, Lili. This was a truly great time with many, many highlights and just the sort of thing people in their 20’s should be doing.

I’ve kept a diary on and off for decades, it’s moments like this the reason why is driven home and the English teacher that first started me doing this will always have my gratitude.

Indonesia is a wonderful place with lots to see, wonderful people and in the early 90’s rather cheap. This particular time we were traveling together from Yogyakarta on Java, to Kuta Beach on Bali. We broke this particular trip up with a stop in Tumpang high up in the mountains of Eastern Java. The reason to stop at a little guest house in a little town was to see the sun rise over an active volcano, this one was Mount Bromo.

Bromo is about 250KM east of the current eruption on Merapi, but Yogyakarta is affected by the eruption, I assume it’s done a lot of damage to  the tourist trade in central Java.

We had no fixed itinerary and the time to do whatever grabs our fancy. It’s a fun way to travel and I was lucky to have the opportunity to do so. If you want to go to Toronto because Scotland is playing then go, it’s OK to travel 200 miles out of your route to see an exhibition by Magnum photographic agency. Bromo was a last minute decision. We took a bus from Yogyakarta to Malang, then a jeep to the guest house in Tumpeng.

Here is an excerpt from my journal entry for that day

“One of the luxuries in the guest house was a warm shower, it had been almost two months since Chang Mai in northern Thailand”

[I make a note in my journal of how awesome it was. When it’s 80-90 degrees every day cold showers are not too much of a hardship, but in places like Tumpeng and Chang Mai that are high in the mountains where it gets cold it’s a little different story].

“At 3 in the morning we were woken by gentle Indonesian music played in the hotel and left about 3:30 on a jeep for the rim of the volcano. There were maybe 30 or 40 jeeps parked at the rim and about as many people offering to take us on a horse into the crater. From the carpark we descended down a steep path onto the crater floor, the walk from there to the caldera from where we watched the sun rise was about 3 miles in darkness. The sky was clear and the night cold. The stars were extraordinary and gave plenty of light to follow the white painted stones by.”

“Across the crater floor we climb up a steep path and finally a staircase to the rim of the active cone. Looking down into the cone there is a slight red glow and the strong smell of sulphur. When we got to the top the sky was just starting to brighten in the east.”

“we sat with maybe 60  others watching the stars give way to the rapidly approaching dawn. As it brightens a mist started rolling over the outer rim of the volcano filling the large crater, obscuring the ground we just walked across.”

“As the sun rises we started to grasp the scale of the volcano, it’s miles across the outer rim. In the center of the crater is three smaller cones, two of which are spewing smoke, including the one we were sitting on. It was truly spectacular.”

I need to get a slide scanner so I can add some photos of Mount Bromo. The pictures really are very cool to look at, but like my words unable to do what that morning justice.

This was a spectacular time in my life, making a living racing, great travelling companion and time to enjoy it. Everyone should have a chance at the freedom at some time on their lives. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day and forget how trips like this really do alter the way you look at the world.

The last week has been an interesting week, and I get I’m going to piss some people off today, but my ex had had no problem doing the same to me this week so like for like…

My ex keeps score with money, while that’s a general statement and there are exceptions, I also (and have had recent conformation with what she feels she is owed) believe it to be true. It goes back a few years when (and I quote) ”I’m high maintenance, but I earn XXX and can support”. My role in the supporting was once again minimized and that particular statement turned out not be true when we financially separated.

At this point I do want to separate value from money, she was always looking for, and was very good at finding value for money. I learned many lessons about where and how to shop for value. I’m a guy, I just want to get in and out, shopping for extended periods is not my thing.

One of the problems with keeping score with $ is that it tends to distort how you see it. Take this week, at the beginning of the month my ex was unable to pay her share of the mortgage. When I questioned why she told me that if I don’t pay it it’s my problem (and again I have the email to back all this up) and I need to look after it.

I had an e-mail promising that I’d see the money by the 15^th of November. I went ahead and covered the mortgage.

Of course the 15^th comes around and nothing, not even an e-mail to say it’s not going to happen, no reason, just nothing. This is not the first time she’s broken a written commitment about money. I’ve given her a week and I’ve had enough of the feet dragging and bullshit she is talking.

Take the interrogatories for example, they were due on the 20^th of September, and I had mine submitted on that date, I’ve updated them since, but today is the 20^th of November and after talking to my lawyer yesterday she is still not ready.

A mutual friend shared a couple of theories and tried to give some context. I’m paying her bills, the mortgage, medical insurance and so on. I get that, she is scared because it took her five months to find a job, I hope she enjoys what she is doing now. But ultimately she expected to find a job quickly and she did not. The second is because she feels “I owe her”. I’ve paid well over half the joint bills for the last five years and have the report to prove it. This is “empirical evidence”, not someone’s public claims on the wild west of the internet.

Like every story, there is my side, her side and the truth.

I’ve never discussed her financial details with anyone other than my lawyer, yet she feels that sharing details of my finances to be  perfectly acceptable. I’m tired and I’m pissed off…