Started with Danny and I painting the new pinboards in the front entrance. Pinboards are a pain to paint, they're dusty, textured and rough. Even with well-thinned emulsion and a thick-pile roller it takes for ever. Danny did the cutting-in, I did the roller work.

When we'd finished we stood back and admired our work. It looked great, as it should do—we've spent loads of time, effort and cash over the last few weeks making it so. Getting the War Memorial bronzes/brasses cleaned cost over 2K alone, the oak-framed pinboards weren't cheap either.

Danny and I have got a wee bit Colin & Justin lately, we spent ages agonizing over the exact shade of green that we wanted for the pinboards, Danny has been madly rearranging the trophies in the new display cabinets for over a week. There was still something wrong.

It was the plasma screen, it wasn't on but even if it had been it would have destroyed the symmetry that we'd worked so hard to create. I'm not a geek for nothing, so I created a powerpoint template that matched. For once I lucky, I get perfect colour matches.

Sad old sods that we are, we horizontal-beamed as we did three-sixties[2π] from various vantage points to check out our work. The thing looks lovely. Almost nobody will notice what we have achieved in any conscious sense, they will subliminaly clock that they are in a temple of education.

Then it was off to my topology tutorial.

I'd forgotten that it was festival time, central Edinburgh was stowed with mal-dressed folk. I was beginning to get ratty with them when I ran into Graham in the Grassmarket. He was having a fag, which I'd been in-head planning for some while. So I rolled one as we walked to the tutorial together.

I've had a couple of maths books wasting time on my bookshelves for a while now, so I'd been planning to give them to mates, who would appreciate them. I had two about my person when I met Graham.

His was: the philosophy of maths. He will have much more fun with it that I ever could. I, also, gave Chris my partial differentiation book, it's probably too easy for him but...

Graham and I were early, not the first, so we sat with the others in the reception cafe-typee-thingee [nobody ever eats the free fruit] and talked about t0pology, groups and the online OU life. I'm in an awkward place when it comes to either.

Then we did our topology. Towards the end of which I looked round my wee group of mathos, We were tired. Because I played chess from an early age I know that thinking is as knackering as digging holes.

When we'd finished doing the stuff that none of us understand [well I at least don't], I walked back through an even-more thronged Grassmarket/canal to my school. I did the few bits and pieces that were needed so that tomorrow, when the cleaners come, they won't be in my way. I would have liked to go for a pint with my mates...

When I got home I found my wife toiling in the garden, so I was obliged to help. She bossed me around for about an hour.

I was pecking by this point so, I played the astronomical card—the Perseids are due tonight Babe, I said. We might want to be out walking in the dark for that.

I'm now drinking strong cider, but come dark, if the sky is clear my wife and I will be out in the wild-world looking for the Persiads.

I don't often get days like today. But the fact that I get any days like today shows that I'm on the right track with my life.

Life is an existance theorem when it comes to the joy of it.

We are all entitled to these. Here is the dodgy scaffolding of my main one.

It's difficult to believe that these were the same players from four weeks ago. I suspect that I know what happened.

I used to play a lot of chess: it's a different game when you play as a part of a team. You still play on your lonesome, but when you're part of a team you play 'different'. You must 'maintain the draw', losing early puts pressure onto your team-mates and you have to watch what's going on in the 'meta-game'. If four of your team are winning and you have a better game then you should agree the draw to put the pressure on.

Murray won today because he wasn't playing just for himself—he was playing for the team. Hence the much more agressive attitude.

Hopefully he can carry this attitude into his own game and start winning majors.

After I sent my TMA away this morning, Danny, Dennis and I took down the plaques from the War Memorial so that they can be taken away to be cleaned. We're paying a small fortune to a 'proper' bronze foundary to get this done.

We knew that said plaques were going to be weighty, they were, in an unexpected way. The bronze ones from the second world war weren't too bad, the first world war ones however, that we'd identified as brass, were definitely not brass. They were so heavy that we nearly dropped the first one. My heart nearly stopped—to be remembered as the janny who'd bent the War Memorial!

I'll ask the bronze people what metal it is.

Then we looked at the oak panels that had been behind them. Well I did, and then Dennis and Danny came to see what I was looking at. I had a fair idea of what might be there.

There are places in the school which only jannies visit, or even know about. In these places we leave our initials, a date, and a message. A message across the generations to our successors. Such messages are often behind something.

Sure enough it was there, W.T. taken for cleaning 1962. Fifty years ago, almost half the age of the school. I too send messages to the future, so I got a pencil [always a pencil/or chalk].

NJA taken for cleaning 2012-07-31.

The War Memorial will be coming with us to the new school, the thought occurs that I should identify other bits of the school that should make that journey too.

My successors should be acquainted with my predecessors.

 

upon a time wars stopped for the Olympics.

Then the Olympics stopped for wars.

Then the Olyimpics were a war.

 

night thoughts

I don't listen to music when I'm doing a TMA [mostly] but I always choose a song that I'll play when I've finished one. Loud. Very loud.

My wife claims that I'm, "addicted to torchers". She may be right, for when I've dealt with the wallpaper Paloma is my girl this time. And if that ain't a torch song then this isn't one either. Mind you planet-wide searches for a mate aren't gender-specific, it's just that girls get called torchers and boys get called losers.

Fair enough I suppose.

I've just read this at WTF. [For non-nerds the trick is that it will run constantly making the CPU throw out heat, but as it runs as low priority so it doesn't slow things down when you are working.]

One of my more-fraught duties is to ensure the the building is at a comfortable temperature for the inmates to go about their business. People hate me.

I've been doing this for over twenty-five years now so I know that it isn't possible; no two people are comfortable at the same temperature. Or at the same temperature, if the weather outside looks different.

People will complain on grey windy days about being cold, these same people will complain the next day about being hot because it's sunny outside. The temperature inside the room will be exactly the same; I know that it's the same temperature because I have a whirling thermometer that I use to prove it. Well, I used to prove it to them, nowadays I know that this is a waste of my time: people are funny about heat, logic and reason will not sway them.

The crux is control—the feeling of having it. The ironic thing is that although everyone thinks that I control the heating system I don't. My job is to try and persuade people that they are in control, when they aren't.

Unless you have a brand-new school you're going to have a mix of legacy, out-dated, misconceived and state-of-the art.

My main boiler house [I have three] is the size of a two-storey cottage. There are three huge boilers, a DHW boiler [Domestic Hot Water], two extracts [extractor fan systems] and three calorifiers [hot water tanks that double as immersion heaters.]

There are three control panels: two eighties pieces-of-rubbish controlled from who-knows-where through a phone-modem, that I'm not sure works, and a modern computer-controlled panel where it appears that I have control.

There are twenty pumps, ranging from much bigger than the one you have at home, to the much-much-much bigger, and they're all paired.

There are seven heating zones all controlled by three-port-valves [actuators really] by something that nobody from the heating engineers, through the control guys to the high up engineers in the council don't know what. I'm assured that it all works off sensors, I know my school, I've never seen one of these fabled sensors.

My feeling is that it's all controlled by the temperature difference between the flow and return. It's pretty telling that none of the professionals have ever told me that I'm an idiot.

My fear is that this is all controlled by a clock that is essentially the same as the one you use to set your central heating.

This wouldn't be so bad, if I could turn it off and on. I can't, I have to make a phone call, which may, or may not do anything.

Then there's the problem that I have hospital radiators. Hospital radiators are big old beasts; once they're hot they are hot. You can't take heat out of the system once it is in. Also you can't put heat into system at any speed.

When I arrive at work I'm usually wrapped up really warm; peons like me don't require heat. When I arrive the heating hasn't cut in or is cutting out. I know to dress for the weather. Which makes me a bad judge of when said heating should go off/on. Never mind that I'm not sure if it is possible.

So I have no control over the heating.

Still, I, and the people who work with me aren't complete idiots; we installed dummy controls in every room. These controls don't do anything, they aren't connected to anything. I guess that complaints are ninety-nine per down.

All problems are problems with people. Tackle those first.

I will never willingly leave Edinburgh again in my allotted span. The only thing that might tempt me to leave is the coming home. I’ve walked, car-red, flown, boated and, best of all, trained into my city. It has always been fantastic. There’s something about the way that Edinburgh works that will cosh your head as you enter it. Either you get that strange-straight division of town and country, or you are in town looking at something geological or you walk up so-so-many stairs to appear in a place that Disney would love to copyright.

Before

I suppose I was about eleven years old, I know that it was a Friday night. It was a Friday night because that was the night we were scouts.

I think that the idea was that we were always scouts, it just never felt like that. Unless we were camping, or playing wide games, or doing something that required us to don the dark green-shirts and the neckerchief and woggle, we belonged to some other group: our class, our school, our team, the kids we played with in our street…

For the most part we were only scouts on Friday night.

In that day-and-age you were either a scout or a BB—a member of the boy’s brigade. I suspect that it was more or less the same experience, except they had drill and we played wide games; a form of glorified night-time hide-and-seek. I’ve always loved hide-and-seek and hated drill—so I was a scout.

A major part of being a scout were the badges. There were badges for everything and there was a lot of kudos about having the stupid things. The odd thing was that you didn’t need to do much more then attend a process to get them—an actual knowledge/skill wasn’t required. I had a sewing [haberdashiary?] badge that my granny sewed onto the sleeve of my uniform because I couldn’t. Anyway, it was badge-hunting that first got me inside the door.

This, or that, Friday we were going to achieve the yellow-triangle that was a level two science badge. This involved us in watching people mess up a few experiments. It was the first time I ever went inside my school.

I knew that the school was there—I went to a primary school round the corner but it had never featured largely in my then life-map. My visit didn’t alter that life-map; it was only much later, when I was inspecting my memories, that I understood what had happened to me.

I vaguely remember the stupid chemistry demonstration that I’ve since seen messed up too-too many times. I have two clear recollections of import—pulling on the door that needs to be pushed and the line of jannies.

The pull/push conundrum is caused by a borked metaphor—you are meant to push but you are presented by the most beautiful handle that screams, "Pull!". Thirty-odd years I’ve been going in and out of that door, I still get it wrong sometimes.

The line of jannies contained my future boss and was a something that I was a future to part of, and a something that when I aquired the power I ended.