Posts by JPeasmould

What went wrong?

I was interviewed for a technician job at an English University a few (20) years ago. The interview panel was the head of the department, the person who would be my manager and an idiot from HR.

All seemed to go well until the HR guy, who had been glaring, silently at me the whole time, said "I see from your CV you did well at school. What went wrong after that?" (I had been chucked out of university after first year).

I thought my answer of "I discovered drink and drugs" would ensure me not getting the job but the idiot had pissed me off.

Both the head of the department and the manager grinned and the HR guy looked incredibly angry.

Two hours later I got a phone call to offer me the job.

Two months later the HR guy lost his.

I loved that job and the people I worked with (even some of the more annoying academics).

P.S. I still work in a University but in a completely different role.

So they try to use a foreign law that doesn't even apply in the country in which it was written.

Article 61 was removed a year after Magna Carta was given the royal seal. Even if it had applied to the general population, which it didn't, it's been null and void for over 800 years.

This is almost as funny as the protestors against the BBC trying to occupy a building the BBC disposed of 8 years ago.

Someone should teach these people that research involves more than visiting websites that reinforce their absurd beliefs.

But it is funny. I wonder what's next....

Qlock

The only bit of "computer" controlled kit I ever really wanted to smash to pieces was a Qlock synchroniser.

If you've ever had to go through the manuals making up cables for different tape machines and then spend ages tweeking pots, locating, noting the time taken to get the machines in synch and then repeating the process until it was acceptable to fussy clients, you'd understand.

Of course after the session had started they would decide they had to slave the audio machines to a Umatic, demanding frame synch and wanting two video monitors.

Then some confused tape-op or balance engineer (I might be showing my age here) would turn the audio master reel over to record a backward guitar on track 1.

Thinking about it, maybe the clients would have benefited from a hammering too.

International Recognition

When I was younger I thought it strange that the UK didn't recognise Scots as a language when it was recognised internationally.

It was also thrashed out of schoolkids as English had to be used or the tawse came out. I well remember the pain. One particular sadist in my school made sure your hands were a couple of inches above his desk when he struck head-on rather than from the side, making sure your knuckles were bleeding as well as stripping the skin from your wrist.

The older I have become, the more I realise that the difference between a dialect and a language is mainly about power and politics.

Sheep on the overhead lines

A few years ago (just after privatisation) I got a wee job counting computers for a Scottish power supplier. They seemed to have lost their entire IT asset register.

Anyway, I arrived at a small engineering station on South Uist, took a note of the ports on the one PC they had and was about to leave when a crew arrived from repairing overhead cables, laughing as they came in, stinking of burnt mutton.

They had just removed a sheep that had blown off the hill onto the overhead cables.

Apparently it wasn't that unusual in winter.

As the wind had got up again, my flight back was cancelled so I booked into a local hotel. I arrived and was about to get out of the car when the barman ran out and shouted at me to turn the car around. I did as he suggested and found I couldn't open the driver's door. I climbed out the other side into a blast of wind that nearly took me off my feet. He told me he had recognised the hire-company number plate and new the insurance didn't cover doors being ripped off by the wind (something that had happened to another guest the previous week).

I loved camping in the Outer Hebrides last year - but wouldn't want to do it in winter.

Walcott Nation Day

I used to love the annual declaration of independence by the traders of Walcott Street in Bath.

Proudly carrying my passport, I would get wonderfully pissed on fantastic ale at the Bell's open-air bar, listening to bands and, later on in the day, watching people suck balloons until they walked into walls laughing.

That was when the Hat and Feather was a real (if disreputable) music pub instead of a wine bar/restaurant.

I'm getting old...

Recording studios

I used to work for recording studios in and around London in the eighties.

Cleaning the console faders in the mix room at Trident every month would give me at least a joint's worth out of every 8 faders or I would feel cheated (the amount of white powder was astounding after some sessions).

The best call I had to the mix room was a rhythmic "clonk" happening when the 24tr A80 was in play. I pulled the top off the tach idler and found the previous client had stashed a quarter and forgotten to take it with him - it was falling over every time the idler rotated.

The worst call was at Jacob's in Farnham. The desk in studio 2 had developed sticky group faders. I didn't think about it much and was happily cleaning the faders when I overheard what Francis Rossi had been doing with his girlfriend in the control room the previous night. I told them they could clean their own sodding faders next time.

Braveheart?

I'd love to see the figures for the use of the Braveheart image and harking back to history used by the two sides during the independence debate.

I have seen it used most by the unionists but that's maybe just my experience.

I had an interview at an English university for an AV Tech job. The head of dept. and the head technician seemed to like me but the dick from HR didn't.

"You did very well at school. What happened" was what he came out with. I was pissed off at him so I told the truth: I discovered booze and drugs. (I did point out that more then thirty years had passed and I didn't have any long term problems).

I was offered the job by phone before I got home and the HR person was "let go" not long afterwards