Blog for March 2024

Okay folks another month has rolled by then.

Where did Ted go in March? How about Newmarket, Wincanton, Ringwood, Shaftesbury, Farnham, Exmouth and Tiverton.

Have you noticed how many “Storms” we have lately? You could almost be forgiven for thinking the Met Office might want to make a name for themselves.

When I was a lad we just had “Weather” and for the winter months that simply meant an extended period of freezing cold and pissing down with rain. Then eventually summer might appear with some boiling hot days when you couldn’t cool down cos nobody could afford a fan. So all things considered, not that much different from today really.

I was thinking of buying a new car recently and almost wandered into the realms of buying a “Hybrid”. Which is a petrol engine, driving a generator, which charges the batteries that drives the motor through an invertor.

Reminds me of the “Little old lady that swallowed a fly”. But the principle is almost exactly that as used in a Diesel-Electric train from the 1960’s.

I still might end up getting one as it may be we end up with very little choice. However, as an engineer I can only see that the more complex we make a system, the more likely it is to break down.

And as for having a car that can lock you out if you upset some fanatic on Facebook, forget it.

Have you ever read the history of Nicola Tesla? The guy was a sheer bloody genius. Some people call him “The Father of AC”, I wouldn’t quite go as far as that, but he was a major, major contributor. He was definitely the inventor of the AC motor as we know it and countless other advances. Some of the things he was working on we struggle to understand even now.

He was much maligned and mis-quoted by an idiotic press (no change there then) when they were obviously trying to fill a few column inches he’d be badgered into giving a quote that could be twisted. He was no businessman and no PR pro either. On one occasion he said he had picked up radio signals in the heavens from the “direction of Mars”. The press immediately bastardised this into “Alien signals from Mars!”.

In fact what he had picked up was the double click from a binary star in the region of Alpha Centauri. Radio astronomers would confirm this as absolutely spot on about fifty years later.

One quote of his that fascinates and haunts me is as something like “The Earth connection is everything, the deeper you can go the better”.

I would love to know what the true objective he hoped to achieve at Wardencliffe was. I don’t think it was just radio.

Anyway, in an earlier post I mentioned writing my own version of James Herriot’s Yorkshire vet series so here’s quick taster.

Names as they say, have been changed to protect the innocent but the story is genuine.

 

The Diary of an Oxfordshire Sparky

By Ted Barrett

Chapter XYZ

Sometime around 1976

It was one of those freezing cold mornings when fog hung in pockets across the countryside.

My first call of the day as I climbed into the old Vauxhall Viva van was to Lord Brindlecombe’s estate somewhere between Bicester and Kidlington.

The M40 link from London to Birmingham was but a dream yet to be realised, along with a straight A34 to correspond.

The sparky I had done my apprenticeship with had a dread fear of crashing on the old “Bicester Straight”. He would frequently say “If I crashes on there boy, don’t let them take me to that Bicester Cottage Hospital cos no bugger comes out of there alive”.

I managed to eventually start the van but had to resort to the starting handle.

So eventually I drove onto Lord Brindlecombe’s estate by way of the gated entrance (complete with traditional stone ball on top of each column).

The estate was really a self-contained village. It was totally contained by a Cotswold dry stone wall that enclosed the whole estate and took up an area pretty much as far as the eye can see.

The manor house itself was a traditional looking stately home very much like that in “Downton Abbey”. The estate contained cottages for workers, a church, staff shop, blacksmith’s and fully functioning stables. It really was a self-contained society. In years gone by inhabitants could be born, raised, wed, worked to the bone and even be buried on the estate without a single interaction with the outside world.

And so it came to pass that I drove onto the estate that morning. I was on my way to install a few sockets and sort out some dodgy wiring in the stable block as I negotiated the long estate road from the entranceway to the stables.

The funny thing was, as I entered the estate something felt a little off. Who knows where we get these feelings from but I can’t deny something felt amiss. On reflection, perhaps it was because it was so quiet.

Whatever, I eventually pulled up in the stable block to be confronted by groups of stable hands (both young boys and girls) who were plainly deeply upset. They were nearly all in floods of tears.

I immediately made my way to the Stable master who was a very attractive young German woman named Mercedes and she was also in tears.

As a regular to the estate I was fairly well known, “What on earth has happened” says I.

Between gulps, Mercedes managed to explain.

“Late yesterday afternoon the horses took part in a practice hunt. This is where the hounds chase a scented rag to prepare for the next hunt meeting”

She blew loudly into a tissue and continued.

“When they returned to the stables, I was not on duty but my junior led the horses straight into their stalls without letting them wind down in the yard. I would not have done this. When they come back from a run they are still very excitable and need to calm down a little  before been put to bed”

She was now sobbing deeply and struggling to breathe. I didn’t know what to do or say but asked her to continue.

“When Angostura went into his stall he couldn’t settle down as he was so jumpy. As a consequence he jumped up, caught his head in a roof support beam and hung himself”

Well that was it. The floodgates opened and the poor girl was wrecked.

The next problem was getting the horse out of the stable as rigor mortis had set in so it was impossible to get the body out the stable door.

At times like this you realise that country folk who live so close to life and death do have very difficult decisions to make. The horse’s body had be removed as soon as possible as the other horses can sense the passing of a fellow animal and it upsets them.

The stable hands were instructed to take all the horses for a trot over to the other side of the estate while the grounds staff attached hefty chains to Angostura from a tractor and broke its frozen legs so they  could get it out of the stable.

I stood and witnessed all of this as this was the stable block I was working in. It often happens that as a sparky you turn up and become involved in an ongoing situation as you are still needed to complete your part.

It’s a curse and a blessing as it does enable us to see that “Rich Tapestry” of life. But I can easily say it was one of the most tragic scenes I have ever witnessed.

But life goes on, at lunchtime we all departed to the local pub to drown our sorrows in front of a roaring fire and salute the noble beast that passed away that day.

I bumped into Mercedes in an Oxford nightclub a few weeks later for a smooch to the Bee Gees and never saw her again.

In later years Brindlecombe manor became headquarters for some quasi-religious group and conference centre. Heigh ho, life does indeed go on.

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End of Chapter

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Well, that could be a sample from my memoirs. What do you reckon? Would you like to read a little more? I have plenty of other adventures to choose from, and not all based in the countryside.

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I suppose I had better saddle up and ride off into the sunset until next month. Until then “Safe Trails”.