Chester Walls

For a year or two  in the mid seventies Annette exhibited her pictures for sale at a site by the river Dee against Chester Walls on a Sunday afternoon. These were in part the original city walls and allowed a complete circumnavigation on foot of the old city. Looking at a Liverpool outdoor exhibition she found out about the Chester one which suited us much better. Following a successful Saturday exhibition site outside Bluecoat Gallery on their railings in Liverpool artist John Green persuaded Chester council to permit the exhibition on a Sunday The arrangement was that he supervised and collected 10% commission for the council.

The Chester Walls site was led by John Green.. John Green was a former factory worker who had given up his job to become a full time artist. He was an amusing, larger than life character. The exhibition area outside was open to all although in practice there was a core of regular artists. On a nice summer Sunday it was a delightful area  by the river, bustling with people and traders. Conversely in inclement weather it could be a little bleak.

John was busy selling his own work but he would spare the time to come and have a few cheery words. On one of our first visits Annette said she couldn’t decide how much to charge. John offered his own experience. The first time he said he brought 20 pictures priced from £1 to £20 in £1 increments. He then said he sold one at £11 so the next week he priced them all at £11. He then walked off chuckling. I never knew if he was serious.

John was a super salesman. I recall overhearing him with one hesitant customer. She was dithering between two possibilities unable to make up her mind. To break up the impasse John asked the colour of her wallpaper.

Martin was a little baby when we attended.and my main job was to look after him, taking him for a walk in his portable carry cot. This was no problem because it was a delight to walk along the bank of the Dee watching the crowd and the canoeists on the river. I enjoyed being a proud father and I would sometimes stop and let ladies coo over him. Just by our site was a shallow weir so there was no river traffic larger than a canoe. Just upstream there were boat trips. I would walk up to watch the people assembling for a trip. A little further upstream was a footbridge over the river leading to a former military barracks. Just downstream from our pitch the roadway narrowed and curved leading to a narrow vehicle bridge

We built ladder racks to lean against the walls. At our site the walls were 10-12 feet high; massive stone built with a footpath along the top. In front of our pitch was the wide pavement and narrow roadway. Beyond the roadway was another paved area leading down to the river some 30-40 feet away. Ideally we parked nose towards the river opposite our pitch. It was quite an art to fit everything into our car. We were helped by having an Austin Maxi which was one of the first hatchback cars of a type so common today.

The artists were predictably varied. We quite often pitched next to a young man of hippyish appearance. His work was rather strange, like illustrations of nightmares; I don’t recall it was very popular. He would say his ambition was to out Hieronymous Bosch, an 18^th century artist known for his bizarre work..  I always associate Bosch with a fictional detective created by Michael Connally who is named after the artist and shortens Hieronymous to Harry.

The artist who didn’t fit in at all was someone who produced colourful daubs, abstract sunsets and seascapes. He was also someone trying to make a living from his work and he came with a large volume priced very cheaply. The quality was abysmal. As I said the site was for a Sunday afternoon exhibition. The daub producer chose to ignore this and apparently turned up on a Saturday. Eventually the council spotted this and prosecuted. John was pleased but his scathing comment was “Should have done him for depositing litter”

Although it wasn’t an unpleasant way of spending a summer Sunday afternoon we never sold much. With the arrival of Alison we gave up attending.

Remembering the sixties                                                                                                             

I think it was David Frost who said if all the girls in London were laid end to end he wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Mars

The planet Mars is exciting quite a lot of interest right now. Robotic exploration has been underway for about 20 years and our understanding is increasing. What makes Mars particularly interesting is that there is a possibility that extra-terrestrial life will be found there.  Dismiss any thought of little green men immediately; we are talking about very primitive life at the bacterial level. The announcement of the discovery of life in the 1990’s on a meteorite from Mars was made with great hoo-ha by then President Clinton. It is now understood that this was at best very premature and was probably wrong. Essentially it rested on the discovery of what were thought to be micro fossils but are now thought to be likely inorganic in origin.

 Mars is the most earth like planet in the solar system. While it is the most similar this doesn’t mean it is very earth like in in its properties. It is much smaller than earth and is the next planet out from the sun. It is a rocky planet and most planets further away still from the sun are gas giants. Mercury the closest to the sun is too hot as is Venus which has suffered run away climate change . Earth is nearly ideal in the next position  but Mars is further still away. It’s remoteness from the sun means it gets much less sunlight so it is rather cold. Although summer equatorial temperatures are rather similar to earth days mostly the surface temperature of Mars is cold; colder than the Arctic.

Because it is only about 40% the size of earth the surface gravity is also about 40% that of earth. Because Mars rotates only slightly slower than earth a Mars day , called a sol, is only about 25 hours. However because Mars is much further away from the sun its orbit around the sun takes a lot longer and Martian seasons are roughly twice as long as on earth. Mars has a very thin atmosphere; less than 1% of the atmosphere of Earth. It is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide. The very low pressure of the atmosphere means that men would need to live in a pressurised suit or habitat. It is thought that the low pressure is a result of evaporation into space due to the small size and exposure to the solar wind..

Mars lacks the strong magnetic field of Earth which means charged particles of radiation, which are deflected around Earth, hit its surface.  With such a thin atmosphere the radiation which on earth is absorbed by the air also reaches the surface. This means that the surface of Mars is bathed in radiation. Any living organism would need radiation protection on the surface but a metre or two below ground should be alright.

Mars is rather dry at present; most is rather like a very arid Earth desert. The polar regions contain water ice which can sublime ( ie. change straight into water vapour ) in summer. This is very interesting as there is good evidence Mars once contained a lot of water on its surface which over many thousands of years has been lost to space. All the features associated with water on Earth exist even down to surface ripples which are seen on Mars. Generally it is thought that water doesn’t exist on the Martian surface except possibly as very, very briny patches in summer.

Exploration of Mars is by robotic survey. Firstly there are artificial satellites around Mars. These not only give information about Mars but also act as radio relay stations between surface robots and Earth. There have been 3 main robotic wheeled surveyors. The first, Mars Pathfinder was quite small, not much larger than a wheeled garden stool. The importance of Pathfinder was more that it landed successfully and explored. Space launches to Mars until then had been very problematic with a high failure rate. Pathfinder pioneered a new type of landing where the spacecraft hit the surface still falling at fair speed but surrounded by balloon type air bags so that it is bounced around cushioned against the fall. After Pathfinder came Spirit and Opportunity; two identical but larger rovers now wheelbarrow sized. These two were extremely successful. Rather than the few months life expected this became years and one is has only just stopped functioning. It was expected that the solar arrays providing power would become dusty and eventually cease. However it was found that there is sufficient Martian wind to blow away the dust. This does mean that gigantic dust storms can arise and it was one such which ended the life of Opportunity although it had survived for 15 years to succumb recently. Spirit became stuck in sand in 2010.

The latest Rover, Curiosity, a small car sized vehicle carrying many experiments had to land by retro rockets because of its size and weight. It is at present continuing Martian exploration.  The most recent fixed lander is Insite which has seen the first Mars earthquake.

The search for Martian life continues with some tantalising clues emerging but nothing definite as yet.

Human visits to Mars are planned by several groups. Space X has the most ambitious with mid to late 2020’s timing and NASA is talking 2030-5. It remains to be seen whether robotic exploration will decide the existence or not of life before then.

There are a lot of jokes along the lines of why are computers male/female such as in order to get their attention you have to turn them on.

Not quite in this genre-

How does a woman stop her husband from reading her emails

Rename the file “Instruction Manuals”

Mini

I’m referring to the car launched in 1959 which has become a motoring icon. I recently was able to tour the plant making it. This tour was organised by a local garden centre who also do a range of coach trips. Roughly every month these are organised for members of their gardening club. We joined for the discounts and this was the first of their trips we have been on.

The Mini plant is at Cowley  in Oxford. This modern factory is built on the site of the body works of the Morris factory. Morris cars were assembled at an adjacent factory on the other side of the ring road. A covered bridge used to connect the two plants. Morris merged with Austin before WW11 to form BMC which then swept up many other companies becoming British Leyland. BL began a long slide not helped by the awful strike record particularly at the key Longbridge plant. Through a series of changes the Cowley plant is now owned by BMW.

It has to be said that BMW have worked wonders for the Mini. A tired model it was revitalised with a new design which has been successfully extended over the years to embrace a wide variety of variants. Recently these have included hybrid electric models with all electric soon for launch.

Our trip started with mini breakfast and coffee at the garden centre We gathered far too early and suffered the first of several long periods of waiting. After travelling via the M40 and A34 we arrived at the tour assembly point at the plant. This had a small shop selling Mini related items and three holding rooms. The coach load was split into three groups for the tour. I say holding advisedly as we waited for some time for the previous group to conclude their tour.

After a health and safety briefing we were all issued with safety glasses, high visibility tabard colour coded for our group and a radio with earpiece to listen to the tour guide.

Essentially the tour was divided into two parts. The first was the “body in white”; this is the steel shell. The plant is very dramatic. Fully automated the robots are in large cells surrounded by a tall mesh fence. There are few staff ( called associates ) to be seen just the huge robots moving , cutting and welding steel. The robots were orange monsters and dramatic as they moved large body parts around. The most dramatic was the floor assembly. The plant is on two levels and the part completed floors come down on automatic lifts, are picked up and transported  with floors held high then turned and placed for the next series of operations. As far as I could see the robots were Swedish and Japanese and their controls which were outside the cell were German.

The only workers which could be seen were feeding parts into the cell from outside. Access to the cells is dangerous and strictly limited. The robotic cells were working all the time and the worker feeding in components had the minimum aperture necessary to feed parts into the cell. A part of the body shop was given over to stock of various necessary parts called the “supermarket”.

We then re-embarked on our coach and after a long wait were driven to the assembly plant.  We only saw part of the line; some pre-assemblies such as the dashboard instruments and heater were inserted as one. All is done to ensure the minimum of effort so that a powered tool picks up and places the cluster. Components are moved around by automatic trolleys following set routes. These trolleys are rather charming in that they stop for any obstruction such as stepping in front of them and gently beep asking you to move out of their way. Some parts are fed from the upper floor such as wheels., Unlike some factories I have seen the assembly line doesn’t move continuously  but rather stops at each station for a predetermined time.

The exception in the continuous final assembly line. Doors are painted with the body but not assembled, held on the upper floor and then drop down to be fitted. Every effort is made to present the work in the easiest way for associates including fixtures which roll the car on its side or upside down.

Engines are made separately at the Hams Hall plant near Birmingham and then merged on a subframe with suspension before mating with the body shell. The final stages check the electrics, fill with fluids and check on a rolling road. Acceptable cars are driven to storage while defects are put on one side for rectification.

We were told the plant produces about a 1000 vehicles a day  on a 3 shift, 5 day week. Each shift is 7.5 hours to give a 1.5hr maintenance period late in the night. Export cars go by rail at the rate of 350 per train, twice a day to the exporting dock at Southampton.

After further waiting on the coach we returned our gear, rescued our coats and phones and left the plant about 6 pm. There was a time when I visited a lot of car plants with Castrol and the big change was the degree of automation at the body in white stage. It is now far more widespread and integrated so all the body work manufacture is automated.

How do you get a one armed Essex girl out of a tree?

Wave to her