What Lurks Beneath

A new word has entered my consciousness.

Fatberg. 

It relates to the heaving, sick smelling, rotting mass of filth and faeces all nicely congealed together in cooking oil, fat, grease and lard and to be found collecting in our subterranean drains and sewers.

Householders and businesses have always tended to pour used cooking oils and fats down the sink but this has become an increasingly severe problem where these glutinous materials are trapped and can cool and accumulate by the presence of blockages caused themselves by discarded wet wipes, sanitary products, condoms and other non or slowly degrading everyday domestic products.

Fatbergs build up at pinch points in the ageing sewers under our urban centres and have in some cases grown to huge proportions. 

The London Borough of Kingston upon Thames recently undertook a three week project to disperse a 15 metric tonne fatberg that had taken up 95% of a 2.4 metre diameter sewer pipe. They were alerted to a problem with residents having difficulties flushing their toilets but will not have been expecting the actual cause. Had the solidified grease and oil not been found and removed then the Borough will have been at very real risk of drain back flow and major sewage flooding in the housing stock.

London does have a particular problem because of the density of households and also some of the highest concentrations of food outlets in the country. An estimated 32 to 44 million litres of various oils are used in the various processes and with a high proportion of this, after use,  poured down the drains.

The Thames Water Authority which is responsible for 59,000 miles of sewers has to clear 40,000 blockages every year as a direct consequence of restaurants and residences adopting such practices. Under conventional fat busting clearance by specialist companies using power washers the fatty wastes when reduced to a more manageable size are simply confined to landfill.   It may be difficult to re-educate the offenders and so a more innovative and practical approach is required. 

The global fast food chain, McDonalds, retrieve more than 600,000 litres of its own used cooking fat in London alone and this is converted into bio diesel to run half of its fleet of trucks. 

Local Councils are also interested in this type of initiative and even the former London Mayor, Boris Johnson saw the possibilities of running one fifth of the London Transport bus fleet on bio fuel from discarded oils and fats.

An energy company has plans to burn waste fat, oil and grease in order to generate enough electricity to power 39,000 homes. 

In a pilot scheme one bio fuel company was able to remove 30 tons per week of fatbergs from a water treatment plant in Birmingham which if extrapolated to the 9000 such plants nationwide shows the potential for a sustainable source of raw materials. 

Solidified grease can be harvested from fat traps in hospitals, stadia and from factory kitchens as well as food manufacturers and catering outlets. The process to isolate the valuable fats is not a pleasant one as the fatberg is a combination of typical sewage constituents and general waste. 

Gentle heating of the fatberg under controlled conditions in a purpose built complex is the first step followed by progressive filtering out of the nasty elements before a sawdust layer removes the finer impurities. The end product which can then be converted to bio fuel is actually a sweet scented liquid which is a remarkable outcome considering the steaming and stinking mass which was the starting point. 

In this way just one company hopes to be able to produce 90 million litres of bio fuel per year which by way of illustration of their ambition was the total consumption of that type of fuel in the whole of 2016.

As the clamour for commercial gain increases so will reliable sources of the new “off white oil”. There will have to be a more technological and clinical approach for prediction and exploitation where the fatbergs are likely to form. 

One initiative is the detailed mapping of drains and sewers to identify the volume and frequency of common blockage points beneath our streets so that these can be promptly harvested. 

This would suggest that there may be scope for actual encouragement and even the incentivising of individuals and business to continue dumping their oils, fats and lards down sinks and drains rather than making it into the undesirable and anti-social action that it really is.

That Sinking Feeling

The aircraft of the second world war, once numerous, are now somewhat of a rarity, even more so if still capable of being flown. 

Take the B-17 heavy bomber manufactured by Boeing from the mid 1930’s. 

Approaching 13,000 were manufactured of which around 8000 were lost in combat or active service.

As at 2013 only 46 airframes survived in various condition and of these only 11 are airworthy. I have been fortunate to have seen in flight the only UK based airborne machine, the Sally-B which is one of only two European based planes. 

The source of B-17’s for restoration is therefore finite and perhaps the most interesting story relates to aircraft 41-2446 which because of the place of its discovery has the iconic name of “Swamp Ghost”. 

Delivered to the United States Air Force on the day before the attack on Pearl Harbour the B-17- Type E saw action in the Pacific theatre of war, specifically Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea. 

The nine crew of Captain Fred Eaton, Co-Pilot Harlow, Bombardier Oliver, Navigator Munroe, Engineer Lemieux, Radioman Sorenson, waist and tail gunners Schwartz, Crawford and Hall were on a mission in February 1942 against Japanese military installations at Rabaul which had been captured in that same year and served as the main base for Imperial forces in the South Pacific. 

Although the B-17 typically had an unladen range of 3200 miles the combination of bomb load, evasive manoeuvres, damage from enemy fire and a second run over the target alerted Eaton to the possibility that they would not be able to make it back after the raid to their base in Queensland or even the nearer Port Moresby with depleted fuel levels. 

The terrain included mountains but also flatland areas of low vegetation further inland. 

Eaton chose to try a controlled, gear down landing on what looked like pasture. It went well and the aircraft came to a halt suffering bent propellors but otherwise no significant trauma . Of the crew, only the navigator sustained an injury, in a cut to the head. 

The resting place was not firm ground but in the Agaimbo Swamp and in five feet of murky water amongst overgrown kunai grass. After destroying the Norden bombsite the crew began their trek back to Allied lines which took, in that inhospitable wilderness and harsh climate, six weeks. 

The B-17 was well and truly rooted in the swamp and although the location was known and indeed, overflown on many subsequent missions by Captain Eaton it was gradually overwhelmed by the rapidly growing vegetation and forgotten. 

It was not rediscovered until 1972 during an exercise by an Australian military helicopter. The plane was remarkably preserved and fully intact including interior equipment, remaining armaments and with minimal corrosion to the airframe. 

It was not until the 1980’s that attempts were made to remove the plane from the swamp although this would take nearly 20 years to do and excited much political controversy. 

In 2007 the Papua New Guinea government claimed that the salvage was illegal on the grounds of the failure of authorities to comply with relevant safeguards of a financial, procedural nature and in the best interests of the nation and interest groups. 

The B-17 was just one of many war wrecks in Papua New Guinea and which served as a major tourist attraction as a means of generating additional income into the local area. In the post war era some 89 aircraft wrecks had been removed illegally in the same way and what was now known as "Swamp Ghost" had attained international status. 

Negotiations saw a deal done involving the donation of a replica fibre glass B-17 to a national museum and the setting up of a Trust Account for landowners of the original site. 

The political and financial aspects of the case had led to the aircraft being embargoed on a quayside for a few years until permission was obtained for export to, initially, California in 2010 before being taken to its current resting place in 2012, in unrestored condition, at the Pacific Aviation Museum at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. 

Swamp Ghost remains as a shell but a very good one given its age and history and with plans for a restoration project pending.  

The last surviving crew member George Munroe died in January 2010 but at least in the knowledge that his plane was on its way home after 70 years.

More than just a game

THERE are football fanatics who can effortlessly recall how many times a South American team other than Brazil has reached the World Cup finals. 

Few, however, could tell you the last time a team of Caucasian separatists defeated the descendants of Chagossian exiles, or how the record stands between Scandinavian indigenous peoples and unrecognised Somali statelets. 

Such were the match-ups in 2016 in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, where a collection of aspiring states, micro-nations and other minority communities staged a “World Football Cup”. The participants are unaffiliated to FIFA.

The tournament, organised by the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (CONIFA), brought together a dozen teams ranging from Northern Cyprus to the United Koreans of Japan.

Founded in 2013, CONIFA provides a platform for the forgotten football associations of the world. It claims to skirt the politics that often plague sports and divide peoples. The first world championship was staged in 2014; this year’s was the second. 

Some competitors, such as Iraqi Kurdistan, were well-organised and expertly trained. Others were endearingly incompetent, but crowds were merciful: the hapless Chagossians were cheered off the field after every loss. The teams included amateurs and a few professionals from their respective homelands (as with Székely Land, an ethnic Hungarian area in Romania) or their diasporas abroad (as with Western Armenia, whose Armenian inhabitants were deported by the Ottomans during the first world war).

Shunned by most of the international community, Abkhazia , which broke off from Georgia in the early 1990s and has been openly backed by Russia since 2008, is hungry for recognition of any kind. Some here hope FIFA’s acceptance of Kosovo (which broke off from Serbia) as a member last month will become a precedent for the Abkhaz national team. 

Other stateless peoples and regions, too, are accepted by FIFA: Palestine has been a member since 1998. The Abkhazian team’s nail-biting win in the tournament championship on Sunday, against Panjab (a team representing the global Punjabi diaspora, whose homeland is split between India and Pakistan), may reinforce its claims to sporting legitimacy.

Whether CONIFA intended it or not, choosing Abkhazia as the host was something of a political decision. Georgia remains furious at any attempt to legitimise the breakaway region. Per-Anders Blind, CONIFA’s head, said Georgian officials had contacted European governments to ask them to discourage their citizens from entering Abkhazia through Russia, which it considers illegal entry onto occupied territory. (A government spokesman said only that his country works with its allies to prevent violations of Georgian law.) The teams traveled through Russia anyway, fearing that if they tried to enter Abkhazia from Georgia, they would be stopped by authorities.

12 teams reached the 2016 Finals although there were withdrawals, suspensions and reinstatements in the weeks running up to the opening fixture. 

The Stateless Nations as well as Abkhazia, the hosts included;

Aymara; an indigenous nation straddling modern Bolivia, Peru and Chile with an ancestry pre-dating the Inca's who enslaved and suppressed them.

Ellan Vannin; representing the Isle of Man

Padania; covering eight regions in the north of Italy

County of Nice; located in  Southern France around the resort of Nice

Raetia; a Province in Roman Times now across parts of the Tirol, Bavaria and Lombardy.

Somaliland in southern Africa

Chagos Islands; actually as uninhabited archipelago in the Indian Ocean apart from the US Base at Diego Garcia

Iraqi Kurdistan

Panjab

United Koreans of Japan

Northern Cyprus

The Romani People

Sapmi; northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia

Western Armenia

Szekely Land; around Transylvania

There are 35 current members of CONIFA. amongst them Heligoland, Tibet and Darfhur.

The tournament also served the political purposes of the teams. 

The Chagossians used it as a platform to voice their anger at the British government for forcing their relatives from the Diego Garcia atoll in the late 1960s. For Abdillahi Mur, who played for Somaliland, a secessionist region of Somalia, it was a chance to prove his ancestral homeland is not as violence-ridden as the stereotypes would have it. “We don’t want to be seen as people who just have wars.” 

It was, by all accounts, a great tournament but somehow bearing in mind the bigger picture the results were not really that important.

(Reproduced with edited sections from The Economist and BBC News sources)

Reel Life Experiences

We were a generation engaged in criminality , those of us who were brought up in the 1970's, and all thanks to the phenomena of the Compact Cassette.

We spent hours and hours with our portable cassette recorders stealing away music in complete and utter disregard but more likely ignorance of the damage we were inflicting on the industry. How many millions of pounds of royalties were denied to struggling and not so struggling musicians and composers by our illegal activity with a magnetic tape sound recording format?

In many ways the making of recordings was a bit seedy and clandestine, but all the more exciting for it. Crude it was also. The whole house had to be silent if the tape recorder was carefully placed close to a stereo speaker of our parents' music system. The microphone could cope with a low volume output but also picked up the background noise of the washing machine in the kitchen, the doorbell, younger brothers and their toppling lego structures, sisters' hairdryers and even the odd low fly past of a Vulcan bomber or McDonnell Douglas Phantom.

The overall quality was therefore scratchy, hissy and boomy but possession of a recording was a very valuable thing for anyone interested in music and amongst their peer group. Unfortunately my first recordings were of TV theme tunes rather than pop songs. A very stubborn memory is of sitting on the riverbank fishing whilst listening to the borrowed (without permission) family portable cassette player, a posh vinly covered Sony, playing the theme music from 'Bless This House'. In a careless moment the equipment slipped and fell into the river and for a few brief moments I heard the music bubbling and gurgling for attention until too far submerged for the sound waves to penetrate. Retrieved from the riverbed using a landing net the Sony was smuggled home and carefully dismantled before being exposed to the warm air output of a hair dryer. Miraculously it worked and did so for many subsequent years.

The main problem with the actual compact cassettes was their fragility. The outer casing was squashable and in an easily fractured plastic. The tape was prone to snapping. It was possible to do a sellotape splicing repair to re-join the severed ends but only if the shell of the cassette had screw fixings.Very, very tiny fittings.  It was a very tricky operation as splitting the case could allow the miniature spools, felt head, linings and the actual tape to spill out like guts. A successful repair and re-assembly allowed the cassette to continue in use but with a short, silent spot in any music when it reached the patched section.

The actual quality of compact cassettes was very diverse. As teenagers we could argue for hours over whether TDK were better than Maxell or if Scotch ruled because they had the best TV advert, the one with the skeleton. A C60 cassette, therefore 30 minutes each side or a C90 were the most popular and what better Christmas present was there for a youngster than an economy pack of ten shrink wrapped blank tapes. Our family seemed to have a floating pool of cassettes for use so if anyone wanted to prevent over-recording it was necessary to snap off the write protect tab on the narrow top edge. As soon as it was common knowledge that a sliver of sellotape could restore the recording function at the loss of any favourite music nothing was safe ever again. We were a family living on the edge of our nerves, with any trust between members gone.

The dreaded sudden silence of an interrupted song usually meant that the tape was being incessantly chewed by the machine. Worst case was a crimped and squashed brown mash of tape which had to be extracted by a slow pulling process. Many roadside verges were soon festooned with the full contents of  compact cassettes, caught amongst the vegetation and trailing in the breeze. I was told, but did not attempt to validate, that a C90 cassette was actually, unravelled, about 433 feet long.

The compact cassette was a major part of my youth. It persisted in commonplace use from the 1970's and right through until the late 1990's. In many ways it had represented a major technological leap forward to provide a resource for the mass population from the earlier 8 track cartridge and the elitist reel to reel equipment. What was to follow in the form of CD's , mini discs and beyond only served to confine the tape to the category of a museum piece. The ultimate insult was the proposal by the Oxford English Dictionary to remove any reference to 'Cassette Tape' from its 2011 edition.

A Right Angle

It is now nearly 12 weeks since I fell down that hole and a little over 70 days from the operation to re-attach my right leg quad tendon. 

Progress has been slow but sure. 

As I have mentioned before the first few weeks were of complete bed rest but gradually I have been able to move about with the help of a dreaded walking frame and on crutches. 

A breakthrough came just two weeks ago when the Physiotherapist gave me the go ahead to put some weight down on my weakened, wizened limb. This meant that I could stand properly for the first time since the event and therefore do such mundane things as shave, wash up and get back into the kitchen to take up my share of the chores. 

The beard went as quick as you can say “the world’s finest blade”. 

It was a challenge to grow one to fruition but as I tend to mistrust anyone with facial hair (Jesus excepted), especially in business its days were always numbered. I have some photos to prove it and the surprise benefit of very nice, soft and healthy skin after a few weeks out of direct contact with the environment. 

The dial on the side of my leg brace has been adjusted over three phases and just this morning to a tremendous ninety degrees. 

I admit that I have not worked through with my exercises with as much conviction as I should in recent weeks but the Physio measured my current flex and movement at fifty degrees which I feel is not too bad. 

I have renewed confidence in my mobility and so have ventured out to the local Tesco Express on my own although on the first occasion my son was hovering around on the route on his bike to make sure that I was able to master some very rough pavements, cambered ramps to domestic driveways and pedestrian crossing points as well as the usual array of street furniture and littering. 

My adopted walkway through which is the shortest way to the shops has suffered from my enforced immobility in terms of accumulated leaf debris, discarded bottles and cans and I hope to be sufficiently recovered in say 4 weeks to tackle its untidiness with my snow shovel and bin bag. 

The step counting app on my phone bears testament to my improved movement with two feet in that my daily record has increased from an average of about 300 by a factor of 10 and I have no hesitation in taking on some ambitious journeys. 

I even walked part of the distance back from the Physio Department at the City Hospital this morning before calling for vehicle back up. 

My new exercises are intended to get me to that elusive ninety degrees. There is not so much the pain element as the fear of causing damage and risking prolonging my recuperation. 

I do feel that I am down to only a few weeks more before I am able to drive and thereby get back to work but more importantly by way of self motivation, to actually sit on the new road bike that arrived in all its pristine splendour on the day before that hole loomed up and lured me in. 

I have to restrain my ambition in activity terms as was clearly illustrated yesterday when I volunteered to dismantle a large collapsible garden shelter after its use at a friends 100^th birthday bash. 

It had taken three persons to put the gazebo up earlier in morning but it had looked easy and so I took on the after-party work. 

My impeded speed, for the first time without crutches, resulted in my being overwhelmed by the structure as it subsided on its four stanchions. I felt like I was in a Lewis Carroll plot line having just taken a magic cake. 

Of course I realise now that I was foolish in the extreme in trying to do a multi-person task on my own but the surge in adrenalin from the combination of fear and stupidity did, I admit, make me feel more alive than I have felt for the duration of my convalescence.

Floater

To conclude my trilogy of stories on this weekend which marks the 10th anniversary of the widespread surface water flooding of Hull, Yorkshire I recount this epic, based on a true series of events. Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Place; Hull, East Yorkshire, UK
Date;  25.06.07

It started to rain hard at about 2pm on June 24th 2007 and did not cease until well into the following day, a Monday.

The excessive and unprecedented volume of surface water produced under these climatic conditions caused the sewers and domestic drains to become overwhelmed and discharge onto the public highways, footways and around a good proportion of the city housing.

Mrs Bravo, as we will call her, was anxiously watching the weather from her terraced house on Prince Consort Road, Hull.

In the street outside there was a wall of water across the full width of the carriageway and passing cars caused a violent bow wave and tidal type bore which lapped the murky mess at her very doorstep.

Her garden wall provided a barrier against more significant wash and thankfully the clearance from forecourt to the level of the air bricks ventilating under the house ground floors was not breached.

Running through to the rear of her property Mrs Bravo watched as a swell of murky water approached across the rear garden. A solitary air brick, redundant after concreting of the back lobby floor, disappeared under the liquid surface but did not provide any potential for further ingress.

The remainder of the length of wall to the kitchen and rear living room remained free of any inundation to its air bricks.

The hundred year old house had been built sufficiently out of the ground to resist a one in one hundred year flood event. No water entered the property and after conversing with her neighbours Mrs Bravo learnt that they too had escaped any ingress.

It had been a narrow escape. Ten thousand households in Hull had not been so lucky that day.

A few weeks later mould appeared in a kitchen base unit and erring on the cautious side, as was her nature,  Mrs Bravo casually rang her Insurance Company to notify them of this observation.

She was not otherwise too concerned, after all the house had not been flooded. It was an old house. Moisture and mould sometimes happened.

Surprisingly, in early August, a Surveyor arrived. He had been engaged in a roundabout way by a Flood Remediation Company themselves at the beck and call of Loss Adjusters and so on up the paperwork trail to her Insurance Company.

Even more startling was the Surveyor's recommendation for a full strip out of the ground floor and very extensive and comprehensive flood remediation works.

Mrs Bravo respectfully asked why this was necessary given that no water had entered her house.

No satisfactory explanation was given.

Faced with an impending invasion by contractors Mrs Bravo moved upstairs with her possessions including pets. The bathroom became an impromptu kitchenette, the three cats resided in the back bedroom and Mrs Bravo established a bedsit in the front bedroom.

The haste of the builders to attack the job in order to move on to a vast backlog of similar work in the flood stricken City led to their depositing of the larger items of furniture in the back garden along with the carpets which were soon ruined by the open air and by now cold early autumn weather.

Although in no way damaged the casualty list of stripped out items was added to by the removal of the, until then perfectly functioning central heating system and gas fires.

The estimated time of enforced upstairs living was given as no more than 12 weeks, therefore with the inferred prospect of everything to be back to normal well before Christmas.

In January 2008 the ground floor accommodation of the house remained as an empty shell.

The project cost to return the house to habitable condition was running at £40,952.56.

Worryingly there was no apparent co-ordination between the Insurers, Loss Adjusters, Surveyors, Remediation Company and the on site Builders.

Mrs Bravo had suspected this all along from observing the infrequent comings and mostly long on site absences of workers and tradespersons from her first floor vantage point.

A meeting of all parties in late January 2008 was an opportunity to express concerns and apportion blame for fundamental omissions of a Health and Safety nature and not a little shock from some attendees that Mrs Bravo was still in residence when in such projects the policyholder would normally be moved out and found suitable alternative accommodation.

Closer scrutiny by those responsible for issuing payments for work done could not account for invoiced figures for a number of items including replacement joinery, plastering and flooring which simply did not exist.

One individual claimed item was loosely described as "Flood Allocation uplift figure" at £12,720.91.

Works and squabbles dragged on and it was not until July 2008, more than a year after the event, that the Surveyors felt able to certify the project as having been satisfactorily completed.

Mrs Bravo, by now somewhat of an expert herself in the theory of flood remediation was not of the same opinion and added a lengthy list of incomplete items. She reserved the right to express her position that the attendance on site by the original and main building company to attend to snagging issues ( items of incomplete or inadequate work) was not welcome given performance or lack of it to date.

The Loss Adjusters sent to the Insurers a Final Report and a note of costs charged under the claim in the sum of £58,936.

Resuming as much of a normal life as possible Mrs Bravo move downstairs to re-occupy the whole house.

In August 2009 dampness surfaced in the repaired parts of the property.

The Flood Remediation Company, under whom the original builder had been sub contracted, were instructed to carry out any such works as necessary at their own cost as part of Warranty and "after sales service".

Mrs Bravo was increasingly frustrated and distressed by her experiences.

Although to date the repair costs and her incidental expenses had been borne by the Insurers Mrs Bravo then found that her annual Policy Premium upon renewal had increased by a factor of ten from that paid before the flood.

In September 2009 she took action independently by engaging the services of a Claims Consultant Company to try to sort out the whole mess. Ironically the Claims Investigators were a subsidiary company of the original Loss Adjusters but it took a couple of months for them to realise this, declare their vested interest and drop out.

The respected watchdog organisation, The National Flood Forum, was approached by Mrs Bravo, and sent along an impartial Surveyor to inspect and advise.

With very little investigation a number of significant and fundamental defects and deficiencies were revealed in the extensive works undertaken under the insurance claim. There had been no ventilation provided in the sleeper walls under the replacement ground floors. The Electrical system was not to Regulations. Dampness persisted in previously stripped out and reinstated areas.

The Loss Adjusters disputed that anything more than minor works were required.

Under further and more detailed inspection the suspicions of the new and impartial Surveyor were confirmed beyond doubt .

The only reasonable course of action, he concluded, was to strip out, again, the whole of the ground floor.

This incurred a further cost of £37,062.55.

The Combined Grand Total ,give or take a few pence, stood at £98,000.

The market value of the property at the time of the original claim was somewhat less.

As part of the inevitable enquiry into the scandalous chain of events the extensive paper trail was scrutinised in fine detail.

Way back in August 2007 it appears that the original Surveyor had made written notes to the effect that water did not appear to have entered the house.

It was estimated by the National Flood Forum that ,to have addressed the initial concerns of Mrs Bravo, a sum of around £4000 would have been sufficient to cover a "worst case" scenario of any and all eventualities.

The closing remarks of the Independent Expert attributed the vast difference in figures to negligence, contempt and greed.

There is no record in the public domain that any sanctions were ever imposed on those involved.

It appears to have been a write off or a whitewash.

Carp Diem

I didn’t hear it myself but during the flooding of Hull, ten years ago this weekend, it is said that an appeal went out on the radio to get down to a local Asda Supermarket. It was not for a bargain clearance or sales promotion but to claim and retrieve a shoal, or whatever the collective name is, of ornamental Koi Carp that had been seen swimming around freely amongst the water filled car park. 

The washing out of garden ponds in the inundation of late June 2007 inadvertently released many a prized and pampered Koi into the streets of Hull along with the wider contents of plant life and vegetation. 

As well as the hardship and stress imposed by the damage to their own homes and possessions by the brackish and sewage polluted flood waters this loss of carefully nurtured fish will have hit hard emotionally and financially. 

Residents in the worst affected areas of the city also reported that when wading calf deep to salvage furniture and fittings or directing traffic so as not to cause an even more destructive bow-wave of water they could regularly see distinctive Koi passing by.

The task of an actual owner to recapture their involuntarily liberated fish, unless confined to their actual waterlogged gardens, will have been near impossible. 

The flood waters did rapidly recede in the majority of residential areas and yet I am not aware of any stories of Koi carcasses being found high and dry in the following days. 

So what happened to those that were never found? 

It is widely thought that the Koi, a non-native species to the UK ,will not have been able to survive in the local rivers and streams. The combination of intolerance to water temperatures, oxygen levels and scarce availability of suitable food may have been too much. The level of contamination from release of sewage into the water will also have been a major threat. 

Natural predators from the voracious Pike to vigilant Heron, rarer Mink and Otter will have enjoyed a welcome variation in their normal boring diets. In shallow pools and puddles the fish may have been devoured by the fox or even domestic cats. Carp is supposed to be quite a tasty fish and although is not widely eaten by the population of this country it is a popular dish in parts of Europe.

A few fish will have found their way into neighbourhood ponds either privately owned or in Corporation Parks and become easily acclimatised although having previously relied on regular feeding a further number will have perished. 

In the recent flood hit city of Carlisle three Koi were found lurking around in the goalmouth of the football stadium and were returned to captivity. 

More hardy species previously safely managed in ponds such as catfish and even the exotic Piranha have been spotted in the wild, or rather their presence has been indicated by the decimation of native fish stocks. In the case of the carnivorous South American Piranha the hooking of one by a local angler must have been an unexpected surprise and a big shock.

As well as the introduction of Koi and other fish breeds into the local ecology another identified problem has been the rapid growth of alien species of pond vegetation in rivers and streams. 

Although controllable in a domestic pond the Environment Agency has issued alerts over thriving plants such as Pygmy Weed, Parrots Feather, Floating Pennywort and the most prolific in terms of speed of spread and choking surface coverage, the Curly Waterweed.

As well as preventing the reaction of sunlight with the flora and fauna of a watercourse the density of the weeds has caused livestock fatalities. Sheep and cattle have mistaken the verdant appearance to be an indication of solid ground and have not been prepared for the reality of the ditch, dyke or waterhole concealed beneath. 

The statistics arising from the Hull flood of 2007 are hard enough to comprehend. Notwithstanding the incalculable tragic loss of a life in West Hull some 6300 of the population were forced into temporary accommodation and a further 1400 took to caravans, mainly in the front or rear gardens of their flooded homes. Many endured a long and difficult time until it was possible to re-occupy. 

The equivalent of two months rainfall fell in a two hour period and across a wider Yorkshire region some 17,000 homes were affected. The cost of insurance reinstatement is estimated to have been around forty one million pounds. 

By comparison, the loss of a few fish may seem trivial.

Hull Floods ten years on

It was 10 years ago to this very weekend that it rained. I can remember it very well for a number of small, trivial reasons and two massive ones.

The day started off with the sighting by me and The Boy of a wild deer which was, with no regard to its own welfare, just grazing and gazing within the excavated bowl of the new road junction about 2 miles from our house. How it had got into the inner sanctum was not clear and after our initial wonderment at just having seen such a timid, sprightly creature, we did express concern about how it might get back into its more natural environment farther up the wooded hillside swopping a forest ride for the busy dual carriageway.

We were on the way to the unreasonably early start of a car boot sale at a new venue for us. It had promised well from chatting with other sellers at our usual recreational field pitch. It was in more affluent catchment area, close to a motorway junction for casual passing buyers, well established and popular or so we had been told. It actually turned out to be well away from any population areas, off the main traffic flows, in an old chicken farm and quite a dead loss in terms of actual trade. We had arrived early and were directed by a toothless old boy, the smallholder, to a narrow, claustrophobic pitch even for one outside, right in the middle of an old strawberry field complete with canes and wires.

It was the first sale we had participated at that we had not been pounced upon by dealers and scavengers as soon as we had opened the tailgate of the car. That did not promise much for the rest of our confinement in that place because we were now well and truly trapped by the slow build up of other sellers. There would be no possibility of leaving early even if we felt like giving the whole thing up. The first couple of hours dragged by with only a few pounds sterling to show for our endeavours. My best offering of a Champions League Final programme, £8 from WH Smiths, was looking a bit sorry and curling up at the edges in quite a fierce and persistent heat from the sun and with no respite from any shelter or shade.

The Boy first remarked on some quite magnificent towering cloud structures that had sailed from the west into the otherwise powder blue sky. They were like nothing I had ever seen before, and I had always made a point of commenting on such phenomena with the children and so knew what constituted a noteworthy cluster. Billowing, dazzling white. The occasional vapour trails of high flying passenger jets seemed to punch through the meringue-like peaks which again was something I had not seen before. We were certainly witnessing quite an unusual formation.

Such was our concentration on the clouds that our entire stock and the pasting table itself could have been whisked away by unscrupulous car-booters and we would not have noticed. Our meteorological observations made the morning fly by.

Then a gap in our closely packed row opened up as a fellow seller expressed frustration and upped and went and we too made our escape.

That very afternoon was to be at the 90th birthday party of a family friend. Me and the Boy were quite radiant facially from a south facing morning and were expecting to attract attention as a consequence from the other guests.

As we arrived at Clarice's house for a garden party the mountainous Cumulus, which had followed us from the farmyard into town were in freefall. The collapse resembled a slow motion avalanche into a dirty grey full sky cover of rain cloud and with a strong driving wind now developing. The party, momentarily basking in the heat , had to retreat indoors in what became a torrential downpour and with no indications of a reprieve or even a brief sunny interval.

The rain continued for the next 36 hours and developed into the misery of the Hull flood with hundreds of houses inundated in flash flooding and from the complete overwhelming of the foul and surface drainage systems over large parts of the urban and suburban areas.

This weekend, the tenth anniversary of the floods has fortunately, so far, not followed on from a similar spate of weather for much of June. There has been some heavy and persistent rainfall but interspersed with close to 30 degree heat to evaporate any surplus moisture,  The clay soils which underlie much of the low lying Hull have not been able to fill up and unlike 2007 we may have much less to worry about on this anniversary.

Lessons have been learned from the events of  10 years ago.

However, I am definitely taking a cagoule to Clarice's 100th birthday bash just in case those big clouds make an appearance.

Copper bottomed

We all complain about the money in our wallets- either, in my case, not having enough for more than a coffee, or generally because of the weight, feel, texture and appearance of it. 

In the UK in recent years we have seen the replacement of paper notes with plastic ones and a re-designed one pound coin. I accept the need to counter the counterfeiters particularly with what was an astounding number of fake monies in circulation but I have found that the new notes, in particular, just seem to make their own way out of my pocket and are lost on the street. 

I am old enough to remember the solid and heavy pre-decimalisation coinage in which there seemed to be a direct correlation of size and value. There was a certain magic in finding a sixpence in the Christmas Pud, a shilling under the pillow for a tooth and a chunky threepenny bit in your sticky palm on entering the sweet shop. 

Spare a thought then for the monetary dealings of the citizens of Sweden about three to four hundred years ago, a time when they certainly needed very deep and strong pockets indeed.

The 17^th and 18^th Centuries in Sweden saw a chronic shortage of silver and so copper came into use as the most suitable metal for the minting of coins.

The material value of coins was supposed to match their nominal value, and because silver was considerably lighter than copper, this resulted in large, heavy, plate coins. For example a bulky 14.4kg copper plate coin was in 1659 worth the equivalent of 8 silver or Daler coins. This value was validated by a heavy stamped legend in the middle or in each corner.

In addition to those with what was a nominal value of eight silver daler coins, copper plate coins were produced in other denominations, too. These denominations ranged from half a daler to ten daler. The majority of the plate coins were worth between two and four daler. 

Although the copper plates in smaller denominations were not as heavy as the eight daler plate coin , they were still too cumbersome to be used for everyday payments. 

You can imagine merchants, traders and the general public staggering around Swedish towns and villages under the weight of , in 1723, a four daler at just over 3 kg and even  half a daler, minted in 1742, at an impressive 394.65 g. 


For comparative purposes this lower denomination would still equate to  the weight of just over 52 one euro coins.

The sizes of plate coins depended at least partly on the traditional shapes and weights of copper bars. For example, the copper plate coins minted in 1644 with a nominal value of 10 silver daler weighed 19.72 kg, equivalent to exactly 2 lispund and 18 markpund, two commonly used units of weight in early modern Sweden. 

















The plate coins were therefore not just a means of payment, but could also be seen and used as tradeable goods. This dual role was clear to contemporaries and was discussed in 1643 by the Privy Council of Sweden before the first copper plate coins were introduced.

In practice, the way in which plate coins were used during the 17th and 18th centuries depended on the price of copper. If it was so high that the material value exceeded the nominal value of the copper plate coins, it was more lucrative to trade them as goods. Otherwise, they were used as legal tender.

However, not only are Swedish copper plate coins an important part of the history of money in and of themselves, they are also part of the early history of paper money in Europe. The logistical difficulties of paying with the heavy and cumbersome copper plate coins were one of the reasons, if not the most important, that Sweden was the first European country to introduce paper money as early as 1661. 
Even with this far sighted and much more conveniently portable currency the value was still backed by copper plate money deposited in the note-issuing bank. To their credit the Europeans had now also invented paper money – albeit several hundred years later than the Chinese.Sweden's experiment with paper money lasted just a few years after a credit policy that was too relaxed had brought too many banknotes into circulation in relation to the reserves of copper plate money. It was however enough to show what modern banking could look like and the heavy copper slabs were superceded by conventional coinage. The distinctive former currency units are still very desirable and are regularly found in the catalogues of coin auctions. There is also a very enthusiastic band of collectors. 

You can usually make them out from the crowd by the strange sagging appearance of their trouser pockets and a steely upper body which is a consequence of lugging around such a dead weight of base metal.

North West Frontier

A simple three letter word and a question mark got me beaten up.

I was a secondary school student from a small town on a field trip for a few days based in Manchester. What I lacked in streetwise traits I more than adequately made up for in manners, or so I thought.

So, when waiting in a queue outside a Mancunian fish and chip shop I responded to a direct question from a tough looking youth (probably backed up by a gang) with the common “huh?”

I felt that was a sufficient answer to a mumbled gravelly toned question without giving away that I was not from that city or a bit of a geeky wimp.

I was wrong and “huh?” rather than prompt the same question in a clearer voice was seen as an act of aggression and so was established a not so fond memory of the English North West.

A recent academic study should, I suppose, give me some comfort and closure in that after a systematic comparison of 10 spoken languages from 5 continents it was found that a word like ‘Huh?’ is a universal word.

I could therefore have been beaten up in not just Manchester but also in Milan, Munich, Marseille and just about every country in the world.

In technical linguistic terms “huh?” is used as a ‘repair initiator’ when someone has not clearly heard what someone else just said.

The study by academics funded through the European Research Council essentially defined that Huh? is a word in that it meets the criteria of being a conventional lexical sign which must be learnt.

“Huh?” is linguistic in nature rather than being a mere grunt or non-lexical sound.

It is fascinating from the research that all languages should have such a word as “Huh?” and why its form should be so similar across languages. It was observed that the word fulfilled a crucial need shared by all languages in the efficient signalling of problems of hearing and understanding.

In thirty-one languages around the world, the interjection for other-initiated repair appeared to be strongly similar. However, written sources were rarely explicit about the precise form, meaning, and use of interjections.

The most reliable way to study a conversational interjection was by examining cases of actual use. 

Therefore the study collected data from recordings of naturally occurring informal conversations in a sample of 10 languages from 5 continents, varying fundamentally in terms of phonology, word structure, and grammar. The languages were Siwu (a minority language spoken in Ghana), Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Cha’palaa (a minority language spoken in Ecuador), Icelandic, Lao (spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia), Dutch, and Murriny Patha (an Australian Aboriginal language).

A truly comparative basis for research was the exact same conversational environment across languages that of other-initiated repair where:

A)   one participant produces a turn at talk,

B)   the other then signals some trouble with this turn, and  

C)   finally the first produces a next turn which aims to solve the trouble, usually by means of repetition and/or modification.

In some languages the interjection was also found for instance to mark surprise or to pursue a response.

Conversation moves along quickly making reliable ways of signalling potential misheard or misunderstood speech vital. Without such linguistic tools we would constantly fail to stay ‘on the same page’ in social interaction.

“Huh? “ is a small word but an essential part of our everyday communication. 

I find some comfort from that. 

I am not so sure, however, if the youth who beat me up all of those 35 years ago will have experienced the same warm and fuzzy feeling.

Bobby Dazzler

Like most car drivers I despair at the antics of others on the roads. 

Poor driving could be down to mischief, ignorance or just downright badness. 

There is, I feel, some truth in the assumption that the more expensive the car, the higher likelihood of discourteous driving in both practice and manners. In my experience it all comes down to the one-upmanship of brands and driver profiles. 

In any survey of motorists the most common gripes aimed at others are lane hogging, not indicating, cutting in, parking badly and excessive speed. 

There is legislation in place to sanction the worst offences but failing that it is down to our sense of common decency towards each other. 

There is scope for creativity in dealing with some lower but nevertheless persistent and annoying driving traits and one particular Police Force, that in the Chinese city of Shenzhen to the north of Hong Kong has some expertise and success on this front. 

In the past initiatives have included making jaywalkers wear green hats and vests while directing pedestrian traffic, mounting dummy traffic police on the highway and issuing sword-shaped batons to officers. 

In addressing the problem of mis-use of full beam headlights which can dazzle or distract other motorists the Shenzhen Police have the usual powers to hand being a fine of 300 yuan, which is about £35, penalty points on the offenders licence and to make them recite regulations on the proper use of headlights. 

This has obviously not been enough and so dangerous drivers who don’t dip their lights around other traffic will be forced to stare into the full beam headlights of a police car for one minute whilst sitting on a specially designed chair in the roadway.

The rather drastic action was originally introduced by Shenzhen officers in 2014, but was quickly stopped amid accusations that it was a violation of human rights. Concerns were expressed about potential eye damage, and on what grounds the Police could force drivers to stare into the bright lights, when the tactic is not mentioned in the law.

Moves to reintroduce it just recently have met with broad public approval and several other local police forces are considering adopting this initiative.

The following opinions have been representative.

“Traffic police comrades, I believe this kind of punishment is not right, it’s inhumane, they should have to look for 5 minutes” and “The whole country should implement this immediately,”

I am all for this type of positive reinforcement by the Police as an means ,albeit somewhat unconventional, to tackle unsociable and careless driving. 

Bridges over Muddied Waters

Ennerdale Link Bridges	1997	On 22nd September 2017 – the autumnal equinox when day and night are equal – all the bridges over the River Hull will be raised simultaneously for the first time in the city's history creating a symbolic wall denying the freedom of movement across the city, east or west, splitting the city in two.  This can only happen in Hull as no other city has so many opening bridges over such a short distance of navigable river. Here is a basic annotated guide to the River Hull Bridges within the city boundary. ............................................................................................................................. Twin bascule bridges.These completed the Ennerdale Link bypass construction which started in 1992 to open up the Kingswood district for its huge and still ongoing expansion as a city suburb. The river crossing was originally intended to be a tunnel but fairly advanced work was halted in 1994 after difficulties with the ground conditions were encountered,or in plainspeak,it filled up with water. Frankly, a small child will have advised against a tunnel under a river!! I hesitate to think how much public money was wasted by that fiasco. Bridges designed by Rendel Palmer and Tritton were based on those installed at Stoneferry almost a decade earlier. The bridges each with 250ft bridge decks have a total weight of 800tons, in including the 600ton counterbalance.
Sutton Road Bridge	1939	A Scherzer type rolling lift bridge built by the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co, with elegant Art Deco/Neo-Georgian style operating houses. The bridge will have benefitted from much reduced traffic flow after construction of the Ennerdale Link Road.
Stoneferry Bridge	1988–91	Twin bascule bridges with 105-foot (32 m) carriageways, one for each direction of traffic. Designed by Rendel Palmer and Tritton, and built by Cementation Construction. They replaced a 1905 swing bridge, and earlier ferry although historically there may have been a ford crossing at this point.
Hull Bridge	1885	A classic Steel bowstring span swing bridge. Grade II Listed 1994.  Built by the Hull and Barnsley Railway in 1885 and still used by freight trains. This is difficult to see from what is a narrow winding road through the old Bank Side district but is a rare beauty.
Wilmington Swing Bridge	1907	A Grade II Listed railway swing bridge, built by the North Eastern Railway to serve the Victoria Dock and East Docks. It opened on 7 May 1907, and replaced the original 1853 bridge which had been the work of Thomas Cabry.  Railway use ceased in 1968, and it is now used as part of Hull's footpath and cycleway network. It is my favourite bridge and I regularly use it on the route by bike to Hornsea and back.
Sculcoates Bridge	1874	Sculcoates bridge on Chapman Street is a wrought iron swing bridge, opened in 1875. The bridge consists of a fixed span on the east bank of 27 feet (8.2 m) and a counterbalanced swing span made of 113 feet (34 m) girders, with a river span of 56 feet (17 m). The design was by J. Fox Sharp engineer, the bridge was constructed by the Iron Bridge and Roofing Company. of Darlaston, West Midlands. Total cost was £18,000. The roadway is quite narrow for modern vehicles and voluntary contraflow use is often necessary if confronted by a lorry. It was Grade II listed in 1994. This is the oldest river bridge in the city, and connects the areas of Wilmington, Kingston upon Hull and Sculcoates.
Scott Street Bridge	1901	Construction of the bridge connecting Scott Street in the west with Lime and Jenning streets in the east began October 1901, with an estimated cost of £20,000. A double bascule bridge. The bridge, bridgemasters hut, railings and lamps were Grade II listed in 1994. It has been permanently raised (and probably corroded in that position) since 1994 as the structure is too weak to carry traffic, and repair has been estimated at £5 million. It often figures in the popular list of Hull’s most useless things.
North Bridge	1928–32	There has been a bridge at this point (close to the North Gate of the city walls) since 1541, before which there was a ferry. The bridge here has been modified, rebuilt and enlarged several times. A hydraulically operated horizontal drawbridge was constructed in 1870 connecting Charlotte Street and Witham. In 1925 plans were submitted for a new bridge; of which one costed at £275,000 with a straightened approach road approximately 30 yards (27 m) north of the 1870 bridge was accepted. The bridge was contracted in 1927 for £86,100 by the Widnes Foundry (1295) Ltd who constructed it as a Scherzer rolling lift bridge (or "Walking lift bridge"). The bridge was Grade II listed in 1994.
Drypool Bridge	1961	Twinned with North Bridge in terms of Scherzer rolling lift bridge operation. The relatively modern structure replaced an earlier swing bridge, also known as Drypool bridge or Salthouse Lane bridge, sanctioned 1885, with construction beginning 1887, and opening 1889, at a cost of £18,550. The main ironwork was assembled by J. Butler and Co., of Stanningley, Leeds; the river walls and approaches by T.B Mather of Hull. The bridge was hydraulically powered by the Hull Hydraulic Power Company, the first urban facility of its kind in the UK.
Scale Lane Bridge	2011–13	A pedestrian swing bridge between Scale Lane (west) and Tower Street (east). and an award-winning design by the Canadian Renato Benedetti at McDowell Benedetti. The bridge was officially opened in June 2013 although work had begun in 2010 only to be shelved due to the recession of the late 2000's. Its unique characteristic is that pedestrians can stay on the bridge whilst it is in motion. It is a great feat of design and engineering. The shop unit intended for a cafe has not yet attracted a tenant.
Myton Bridge	1981	An elegant but very functional asymmetric cable stayed box girder steel swing bridge on the extremely busy A63 Garrison Road, with spans of 182.2 and 93.4 feet (55.5 and 28.5 m). The bridge does bounce a bit it if you find yourself stationary in a typical traffic jam. It does get stuck on occasion. If operating for usual low barge type river traffic all you get to see for your 10 minute holdup is a masthead light heading to or from the Humber.
Millennium Bridge	2001	A pedestrian swing bridge giving access to The Deep, with a span of 102 feet (31 m). A minimalist design classic and a great asset for pedestrian access in this very popular revitalised area of Hull waterfront. The location is a main focus for events for Hull's 2017 City of Culture. Source: Wikipedia and Hull Daily Mail