Out at Green Park just as the scare at Oxford Circus was winding down. Great crowds milling about in the ticket hall, exits and entrances.
To the Goat for our usual aperitif, unusually taken upstairs on this occasion. Lots of bright young things chattering away. But polite at the bar, taking their fair turn. Also a bar which brings on the troops for the evening rush hour, so waiting is rarely a problem.
She was not really a tunnel person, which disappointed some of the engineers in the audience, but it seems that tunnelling accounts for a good chunk of the budget and that the tunnels at Farringdon pioneered a new way to slip form the concrete inner linings - spray-on concrete being the wheeze before that - to the point where they were able to slip form up the tunnels which were to house the escalators. While I remember an innovative slip formed central boiler chimney going up more than fifty years ago at Addenbrookes Hospital. But I am sure she was right that slip-form was innovative in this context. I associated to my stint at the concrete yard next to the young offenders institution at Feltham, at a time when they were making the pre-cast concrete segments used to line the Victoria Line tunnel. At a time when the operatives were lined up by the old-style boss, from time to time, for decimation - he thought it kept everyone on their toes. Luckily I was working for the materials engineers, who were working for the customer, so was beyond his reach.
She was just back from maternity leave and so perhaps had been lumbered with soft issues rather than cutting edge ones - so she knew all about health and safety, quality control, innovation and community relations. She told us that Farringdon was very fierce about the first of these, enforcing a rule for lorries that said no H&S certificate, no entry - however important the load might be. With much surprise all round when the lorry people caved in and complied when they realised that the Farringdon people meant it. Some talk of managing the thousands and thousands of lorry movements needed.
She also managed to convey something of the buzz of working on a large project, a trick which 'Ink' had managed a few weeks earlier, noticed at reference 2. I associated to being told about the buzz at the Microsoft HQ, by the river at Reading, when they were bringing a project for the Home Office to the boil, also (as it happens) showcasing their then new .NET technology. It also showcased their screen design skills, with that part of this particular project being top-notch.
But she rather spoiled things at the end by going on for too long about women in engineering and such like matters. No doubt important, but of no great interest to me. I was reduced, once again, to counting people in the bay far left. A sort of counting, which I am pleased to report, I seem to be getting better at.
I also took time out to wonder about the amount of lobbying that contractors for these big ticket items could afford. How many fancy clubs and restaurants in and around Westminster would a Bechtel be prepared to bankroll if there was a chance of a multi-billion pound tunnel at the end of it? Does it mean that sellers of big ticket items have an edge on the sellers of little ticket items that they should not have? A tilting of the public spending playing field? But I do not see what can easily be done about it. You might bear down on important fact finding missions to the south of France, but it is hard to bear down on lobbying generally. Not least because, it is, up to a point, useful.
Out proper to stop at Raynes Park, to find that the platform library had both vinyl and print media, with my haul being illustrated above. The Melodiya (aka Μелодия) record, mint condition from 1988, is rather bouncy folksy crooning, the work of two quartets, but I don't think it is as simple as one side for each. Plus a arty guide book to Ravenna, interesting for its pictures of churches which were very old by our standards and of stunning mosaics, which I don't think I had seen in colour before. Will we ever get there? Maybe a better idea that the Venice noticed at reference 5. Maybe not so overrun with cruise ships and tourists. In which connection I wonder about lagoons, mosquitos and malaria. We used to have this last in our own fens, so why not in the rather warmer marshes of northern Italy? Or does salt water do for the mosquitos?
Back to the Rifleman for our usual afters, having noticed on the way that the photo booth at Epsom station did indeed come from the Photo Me people noticed at reference 3.
PS: a corner of the volume 21 (properly, according to the collection convention, volume XXI), mentioned in the post before last, is visible at the top of the illustration.
Reference 1: http://www.bechtel.com/. A very large, private company.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/ink.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/new-kid-on-block_23.html.
Reference 4: http://melody.su/en/. The dates don't seem right for the 'su' bit to stand for the Soviet Union, so I admit, once again, to being puzzled.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/stone.html.
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