Boundary Cooling

Boundary cooling is where you attempt to halt the spread of fire by cooling the adjacent sides of a compartment (on board a ship in this case).  The three parts to the fire triangle are: heat, fuel and oxygen.  Deny any of these and there is no fire.  So boundary cooling seeks to deny the heat element of the triangle.  What am I on about and what has this to do with anything?  Well not a lot really, but I posted on Facebook recently that I was in need of boundary cooling and so this is my explanation.

I was suggesting that I personally needed boundary cooling and this was my way of saying that there was a raging fire inside me and I wanted to limit the possibility of that spreading anywhere else.  In my case I was really quite annoyed with something and in most cases it is not helpful to vent your frustrations to all and sundry, if often just inflames the situation, if you forgive the pun.

If you don't have boundary cooling in place then the chances are the fire will spread and it can become uncontrollable, a bit like an argument...  At least at work you can walk away and come back later, this is not a great idea when you are on a ship...

Anyway, I thought I would write a quick dit on boundary cooling and the benefits of having it in place!

The Annual Smog Fundraising Event

I am delighted to announce that I was absent from the country when Belgium held it's annual Smog Fundraising Event.  Every year on the same day (I am making that bit up), the authorities decide that the weather conditions will be such that a nationwide restriction will apply to the motorway speed limits.  Normally the maximum speed limit is 120kph but this is reduced to 90kph in a bid to reduce the pollution (the official reason).  The real reason is to raise revenue from the numerous fixed and mobile speed cameras scattered every 15km along the main commuter routes.

Now to be fair they do announce this in advance and give plenty of warning, if you understand French and Dutch of course.  The road signs and electronic messages are set up to remind everyone of the speed limits and the announcements are made on the radio.  This year it would seem that the mobile and fixed cash machines caught a mere 14,000 motorists who, if they are lucky, will only pay a 50 Euro fine.  This is if you are doing slightly more than 10kph over the limit.  If you happen to be banging along at 120+ then you could be looking at maybe three times that much, which makes the bracket somewhere between 700,000 - 2,100,000 euros fleeced from motorists.  Of course you should not be speeding in the first place and the habits of the the commuters change dramatically when the annual event is on, the first time I got caught, yes I have been caught twice during the weather inspired tax raising exercise, I was zooming along past the rest of the unusually tame and steady commuters.  Hey presto, flashed by a small cash machine hidden on a slip road!  The second time was just plain annoying as I had held to the smog speed and had a lapse of concentration, mug!

The added bonus this year is that there is now a treaty between France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands by which they all pass their respective speeding tickets across the borders.  What this means is that being flashed on the way to the Eurotunnel means you can expect the French to post the ticket to you in Belgium.  Bargain, even more money from unsuspecting transient motorists.

Anyway, this year I was glad to be absent for this year's event.  One positive is that the roads seem to be safer this one time of year

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

When I were I young lad.... We used to play out on the street, in gangs of kids, doing quite physical and sometimes risky things.  By that I mean we used to climb onto the roofs of buildings, up trees, set the occasional fire and run away from the odd angry grown up who wanted to spoil our fun. 

Gangs of kids these days tend to spend their time doing drugs, assaulting random members of the public and vandalising property.  The adults now give them a wide berth, unless they happen to be the local psycho nutters who spent their own youth chasing people down with knives and stealing cars.  The new gangs tend to know who the nutters are and are afraid of physical pain so they in turn show 'respect' to them.  Well, that is how it goes in my mind.  I have not seen this in Belgium, where I live in a world where the crime rate appears, at least, to be a bit lower.  I may be deluded of course.

Anyway, I digress.  The point of my post is actually to talk about my recent bathroom installation course where I learnt how to, funny old thing, install a bathroom!  I turn to the title of this post, Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, which is a slightly cleaner way of saying that something is easy to do.  In this case, once I had practised fitting a few pipes together, I gained the confidence that I was somehow competent and that I would not experience the dreaded leaks and floods.  The course I attended was very good, I learnt how to install: a shower, a radiator, a bath, a toilet, a basin and all of the associated pipework.  I did have a few minor leaks which were quickly rectified.

I now cast my 'expert' eye over pipework and heating systems and am able to identify the parts and assess how it is put together.  I already have a number of projects that I would like to undertake, being eager to try my new found skills out!  During the course we learnt about compression joints, soldering pipes and 'push fit' plastic pipes.  It really is quite straightforward.  More to the point I was shown the necessary tools for the job, what a difference that makes, having the right kit!

Going back to my childhood and days spent throwing lumps of soil at each other as we fought battles in the public spaces of the local park.  The council gardeners would come round and turn over the soil which would form 'grenades' of soil that would burst spectacularly on the footpaths and the heads of unlucky kids as we fought pitched battles.  We used to divide the gang into two teams and fight for each end of the shrubbery and planted areas.  The passing adults would give us hell for making such a mess and the battle was often halted as someone took a serious hit to the head and eye, as I did on at least one occasion.  We were lucky not to be blinded. 

Bringing me back to the phrase Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, as kids this was more of a taunt, ie you can easily jump that gap between the garage roofs, it is easy peasy lemon squeezy, kind of a challenge that you could not back down to, not if you wanted to retain any ranking and credibility in the gang.  Usually such a taunt then led to a challenge being undertaken and either a trip to casualty or a victory lap.  Of course, once one of you had done it the rest had to follow up and heaven help you if you were the last or most reluctant to break your neck, it was usually me.  I can honestly say that I spent less time in casualty than my brother who was and still is more of a risk taker than I.

I was thinking recently about some of the games we used to play and one of them that sprang to mind was when we used to go to the baths or swimming pool as posh people would call it.  We usually went as a gang of at least 4 and often when it was raining outside, so not really great for playing out.  One of the games was to stand on the edge of the pool and see who could pretend to die in the most theatrical way, being shot, stabbed etc.  The idea was you fall into the pool as you are 'killed'.  I related this game to a friend of mine aboard a ship one day and he just had to take it a bit too far...  He started saying 'so did you douse yourself in petrol and then set fire to yourself before then leaping into the water?'  Stokers eh?  Funny old crowd.  My mind then went to rather more radical forms such as suicide bombing, but then how would you simulate that?  We did used to play tuggy, which was a kind of tag game where you would be on until you managed to brave the deep end and potential drowning to tag another player.  Often you would get out of the pool to 'run' along the side to catch up, which then meant the lifeguard would shout at you.  Occasionally we would get thrown out if he had had a bad day and was hung over...  We did feign drowning but it never worked, no matter how lifeless you floated beneath the lifeguard, years of experience at spotting fraudulent casualties no doubt.  Every now and again we would try and get into the baby's pool, which was considerably warmer than the main one, if only to defrost for a while.

Anyway, this has gone a bit random.  Nothing much to do with Belgium here this time!

Was I just propositioned?

There are times when you just don't realise what you are saying and how it can be misunderstood, but it is all about the circumstances at the time and putting it into context.

I was having a meal with my mother and aunt at a local bar and, as is my need, I paid a visit to the toilet.  There were two cubicles adjacent to each other in the toilet and the one on the left had only just been taken so I went in the one to the right.  Due to shoddy workmanship or a strange homoerotic desire on the part of the plumber, the actual toilet was sited too close to the separating panel and the adjacent cubicle.  I felt a little closer than I would like to the other gentlemen, now straining in the other cubicle.

To say that he was making a song and dance about it might lead you to the wrong picture.  He was vocal about the efforts he was making to evacuate his bowels, clearly he was not ready for it or he needed to have more fibre in his diet.  I was, discretely, trying to lay my own cable, but I rapidly came to the conclusion that I could not sit by with all the grunting and heaving from my neighbour.  That said, as I halted, mid effort and planning to return at a later stage to complete the exercise, I started to finish up.  My neighbour  had, in the meantime, completed his evolution and was out before I had finished.  I noted on the floor that his wallet had fallen out of his pocket and made the decision not to pick it up whilst I was still in my cubicle, just in case he came back in.  I finished, went into the next cubicle and retrieved the wallet.  I then washed my hands before leaving.

There were a few people in reception, including an older gentleman who was about to leave.  I thought I recognised the throaty voice as he said goodbye to the reception staff and without thinking I called out.  He did not hear me to begin with as he started to leave, so I tapped him on the shoulder, as he turned I asked if he had just been to the toilet.  I mean think about that for a second, what would you say if a bloke asked you that?  Anyway, he replied that he had.  I then held up the wallet and asked him if it belonged to him, for all I knew it could have been his 'calling card'.  I did not think of a means to identify him, I suppose I could have asked him to strain himself and grunt to see if he sounded the same.  I stress that I had not opened the wallet at any point but I could have asked him to identify the contents.  Anyway he introduced himself and asked me his name, adding that he was always dropping his wallet in the toilet...  No, nothing, no alarm bells ringing at all.  He offered to buy me a drink and I said that I had one waiting on the table so it was not necessary, the General Alarm was still silent.  He was extremely grateful to me for returning it, which I accepted in good faith and genuinely felt was sincere.  I felt good for having found the owner and reuniting him with his property.

Only when I returned to the table and explained my encounter with Paul to my mother and aunt did it hit me how it actually looked.  They both found it quite amusing and I wondered what pick up techniques they had used in the past...

Driving With Belgian Plates

There are some advantages to being an Englishman driving a left had drive car with Belgian plates.  I have recently driven from home to my native North East of England, which is quite a drive necessitating a transit through the channel tunnel and then up the Eastern side of the country.  The first thing is that people do assume you are from the same country as the car and plates indicate.  This means that you can 'get away' with making the odd mistake when you don't understand the road system, a bit like driving in London, where the road conventions don't seem to apply and those in charge of planning road systems are rolling dice to decide on the layout that would best suit their mood at the time.  Anyway, I try not to take advantage of this perceived ignorance, preferring to stick to the normal conventions.

On my long journey North, which took on the scenic delights of the M20, M25, Dartford Tunnel, M11, A14 and A1, I was witness to some interesting maneuvers.  I had to remember that my 'safe' distance behind a Belgian car was no longer a 'safe' distance behind a British car,I think I may have annoyed a few people as I made my way up North.  Unfortunately both the A1 and the top end of the M11/A14 are just two lane.  The same habits that afflict Belgian roads are equally prevalent on UK roads, people do not pull in when there is space to do so and allow the faster traffic to pass.

I had the pleasure of being almost rammed off the road by a large white coach, which happened to be full of soldiers and was driven by another soldier.  I can only imagine he thought he was driving his Subaru Impreza and that he had both the acceleration and maneuverability to make the change of lane without trashing my car.  There was nothing behind me and the speed differential between my car and his bus was just a bit too much to be regarded as anything but bloody dangerous.  He did compel me to cross the white solid line next to the central reservation but I held my position and got past, not chuffed.  I have to say I was being rather ruthless with lorries who wished to carry out the same overtaking move as they consistently delayed and slowed the flow of the traffic all the way up.  At least the majority of these lorries has the courtesy to wait until it was either safe or I had passed.

I stopped once on the journey North and was delighted to see that the drivers at the Service Station also lacked the manners to allow a fellow motorist to reverse out of a parking space, despite the fact that they were not going to get anywhere fast.  All I wanted to do was re-align my car to make sure I was parked within my own space.  Just like being in Belgium!

Throwing Ones Toys Out Of The Pram

To throw ones toys from the pram is an expression used to describe someone who has become so upset about something that they, in essence, become quite unreasonable.  Some people are more prone to hurling the toys than others and for some it is just particular instances.  In my case the toys barely leave my pram and only tend to get thrown out when I am driving or when someone is so pig headed and unreasonable that they cannot be reasoned with.  I happen to mention this phrase when I was chatting to An about something and she was quite amused, I think I was relating something about work but I forget now.  I probably said something like, such and such was not happy, he threw his toys out of his pram...  I think the thought of a tantrum and feet stamping session sprang to mind and in reality it is not far from the truth sometimes.

Of course you can apply this sarcastically to someone like myself when engaged in a debate.  It is a humorous way  wind someone up and to exaggerate their frustration to the point where they go in the huff and stomp off.  The huff is the same as sulking or feeling so annoyed that you refuse to even talk about it and you go off and stew in your grumpy mood.

In naval parlance you can say to someone who is getting a bit irate/excited ease to 5 or to exaggerate ease to 20.  These phrases come from the terminology used on the bridge of a ship at sea when making a turn.  The angle of the rudder is measured in degrees and usually ranges from 0 to 30 degrees.  At speed a 30 degree angle is quite severe so often the order would be maybe port 20 and eventually ease to 5 as the ship gets round to it's new course, this is so you don't overshoot the intended course.  The ship will heel over quite a bit when applying 20 or 30 degrees of rudder so when people are irate and you say ease to 5 or ease to 20, the former means calm down and the latter means seriously calm down.  Again, sarcasm can wind up the more placid sailors...

Today I was chatting to one of my team, who happens to come from Canada, and I used the term we are under the cosh.  I thought the term was more commonly understood across the borders but she did not know what it meant.  I was describing the whole team, including myself, and I was saying we have always been under the cosh, there has been no let up.

I must make some effort to learn some Dutch idioms...

Inappropriate Comments

It occurred to me that by including the words "pussy heaven" in my last post that I may end up attracting the wrong clientele.  The thought of naked, overweight and slightly sweating men anticipating this idyllic place, having clicked on a random Google search of the term, leaves me a little concerned to say the least.  I mean my family read this blog from time to time and it just would not be right.

So for those expecting some form of imagery I have included the one below to satisfy the expectations of the perspiring masses.

 

In fact for those seeking moving pictures check this out: Cat Herding

 

Being quite conscientious I did put the aforementioned term into Google and I  saw that the response was much as I would expect, even some had references to "weed".  Happily enough this blog was not there among the top results.  I am of course avoiding the term deliberately now as I would hate to increase the likelihood of the blog being linked to some disreputable website.

 

My idea of cat heaven (note the safer use of the word cat...) is a blazing fire, fur blanket, a personal door opener, stroker and ear masseuse.  Food and toys would be on tap, the place would be hoover free and there would be a fish tank for amusement purposes.  Maybe some plants to chew on and some expensive furniture to strop the claws.  Of course visits to the vet would not be required.

 

Having introduced Gamin to you I think I maybe ought to include a picture, it is normal he just sits like that.  The face is also typical half grumpy, I do have better but this will do for now.