Monday, December 21, 2009
Signals
In my last post, following problems at Earlsfield, I suggested transferring staff from the in-car announcement project to the on-platform announcement project. I forgot to mention that TUPE conditions would apply and I completely failed to foresee that a much more important problem was developing under the sleeve (as the French are apt to call what we should call the channel). Mr G. found me near identical pieces from the BBC from the Guardian, but I still completely fail to see how you can get five trains stuck in a tunnel and for it to take the best part of a day to get everybody out. Item 1, what sort of signalling and communications do they have in this thing that a stricken train cannot tell the control centre, one way or another, that maybe not a good idea to poke any more trains down the hole? Item 2, has the operator not heard of disaster recovery and rehearsals of same? Even that well known dysfunctional department of state known as the Home Office gets around to practising disaster recovery on some of its computer systems. There are procedures, processes, manuals, training and all the rest of it in place. So why are people stuck in a train for hours when as far as I can make out, they could have walked out in three or four hours? Are the on-board team, as they grandly call themselves, completely without the grey cells needed to read the fat ring binders containing the bumpf telling them what to do? Or perhaps they left them at home to make room for a bit more duty free. Perhaps I will be moved to apologise to them if I ever get around to reading the full story.
Meanwhile, yesterday evening, following our recent visit to a mosque (not during service hours) and to Westminster Cathedral (during service hours), and it being far too frosty to chance driving to Guildford Cathedral, we visited our local church for a spot of Christmas carols. On entry reminded that stained glass only works from the outside when it is dark and the lights are on in the church. Which, oddly for such a major occasion in the calendar, was nowhere near full, although there was a token infant who made a lot of noise with his toy car through most of the proceedings. Very splendid high Victorian rood screen shutting off the chancel to profane access. Much larger than expected choir arranged in front of the screen: a mixed choir of men and mainly younger women with a lady director of music (as choirmasters seem to style themselves these days). Including a visiting Canadian medical student with a very strong voice and who did a good job on a couple of solos.
So what we got was arranged rather like the nine lessons and carols you get from King's College on Christmas Eve. A service with prayers and readings interspersed with carols from the choir and carols from all; an arrangement which retains something of the sacred (including much emphasis on virgin births and wombs - a feature which always used to amuse my mother) and which I much prefer to the Christmas medleys which are also on offer at this time of year. Some of the carols were a bit ambitious for the choir but, in the round, they did very well. The public carols were the sort of thing I used to thump out as a child so that was all right too. Although my voice took a while to warm up and apart from trouble hitting the right note, there was trouble hitting the first word of the verse. Most of the time I wasn't under way until half way through the first line. Clearly very out of practise.
To close on a properly culinary note, we find last week that to feed on sirloin steak costs about at much as feeding on oxtail stew, which one might have thought was the poor man's option. So an excellent sirloin steak for one cost me about £5. Grilled spot on, eaten with brussels sprouts and soft white rolls as before. Two small ox tails, enough for three of us, clocked in at near £15. So cost per head about the same, not counting the additional vegetables and cooking energy. Varied the cooking in that I boiled the tails up with carrots, onions and swede for a couple of hours. Then removed the meat and left the balance to stand in the cold for a bit. Spooned off some of the fat and liquidised what was left. Pour the now thickish pale brown broth back over meat and simmer for a further hour. Add some very coarsely chopped but unpeeled carrots maybe 15 before the end. Much superior arrangement to having well boiled vegetables floating around in fatty water: scores on all three fronts: appearance, texture and taste.
# posted by Jim @ 1:39 AM 
