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SF59 CYP, the latest Aerial Rescue Pump in the Strathclyde Fire & Rescue fleet outside Clydebank College.

© John G. Fender, 2010

Yesterday, just after seeing Autumn, I was heading homewards as dusk was falling when I spotted blue lights heading in my direction.

These belonged to one of Strathclyde Fire & Rescue's Aerial Rescue Pumps that was obviously going somewhere in a hurry. The vehicle turned down the road I had just walked up, so I turned round and followed.

I did not have far to go as the fire appliance pulled up outside Clydebank's new college and the crew climbed out to investigate the cause of the alarm.

Shortly afterwards another appliance arrived, this one being Knightswood's rescue pump SF05 DFC, but it left shortly afterwards as it had been established that there was no fire. Meantime, I was busy taking the photograph of what is, at present the newest fire engine in the Strathclyde fleet.

SF59 CYP is a Mark IV Aerial Rescue Pump allocated to Clydebank. It is a Scania P310 CP14RS with bodywork by John Dennis Coachworks and Vema 282 booms. This vehicle was acquired as a replacement for the first Aerial Rescue Pump that was written off following a road traffic accident not long after it entered service and is normally allocated to the Training school. As Clydebank's own Aerial Rescue Pump is away for repairs, it has been allocated to Clydebank for the time being.

These impressive vehicles are 9.5 metres long and weigh in at 22.5 tonnes. The platform has a working height of 28.5 meters and the appliance also has a 1,500 litre water tank, a 125 litre foam tank and is fitted with a modified Godiva pump. In addition, the appliance carries enough equipment ranging from rescue gear to full fire fighting kit to deal with just about any emergency.

After making sure that there was no fire, the crew returned to the vehicle and headed back to Clydebank Fire Station and I headed home for dinner.

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Autumn...tied up ready to discharge a cargo of petroleum product at Clydebank.

© John G. Fender, 2010

Not long ago I mentioned Summer as summer had arrived. Today it was the turn of Autumn to put in an appearance and I'm not talking about the weather!

Autumn is, like Summer, a tanker and as I live not far from the river Clyde, I could not resist the change to take the photograph and tell friends that Autumn had arrived.

For those interested in the details of the vessel, Autumn is a petroleum products tanker owned by Carmenta Shipholding S.A. of Piraeus and operated by NGM Energy. It was built in June 2008 by the 21 Century Shipbuilding Company Limited of Tongyong in the Republic of Korea and is 129 metres in length with a beam of 23 metres.

The ship has a gross tonnage of 8539 tons and a deadweight tonnage of 13022 tons. Powered by a 6S35 MC-MK7 diesel engine built by the STX Engine Co. Ltd.(B&W) of Changwon and rated at 4440kW, Autumn has a speed of 14 knots.

The ship had arrived shortly before I turned up, camera in hand to record it's presence at Clydebank and the photographs shows a fully laden Autumn getting ready to discharge it's cargo in late afternoon summer sunshine, beneath a cloudless sky. I wonder how long it will take for met to see Winter and Spring!

Now that we are into September and there is an autumn chill in the air in the morning, I began to wonder where did August go. It seems like only yesterday when August arrived, not 31 days ago. I'm not the only one to wonder where August vanished to either. At lunchtime today, a friend and myself were having coffee at one of our regular haunts, this time sitting at a table outside as the weather was reasonable and she said pretty much the same in relation to the now vanished month of August.

Perhaps its a reflection on today's fast paced life style or the fact that we are now cramming so much into a day that we lose track of time. It could simply be a symptom of ageing as it is said that time speeds up as we get older. However, if that's true, there is an interesting anomaly. Time seems to actually slow down when at work and speed up as soon as you head home because before you know it you are back at work.

Weekends seem to flash by, and all those things you intend to do never seem to get done, but when you go to work, time slows down for the day. Perversely though, I've noticed a flexibility about time at work. There are some days when you never seem to get what you need to do done owing to lack of time, but when the network goes down and you are stuck without the means to do anything, time slows down...dramatically.

The definition of time, according to my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (seems ages since I mentioned the OED but is only 3 days - see: The end of the dictionary - Sunday 29th August 2010) time is the "indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future regarded as a whole". Scientifically time is measured in seconds which are defined as "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom".

As time can be measured so precisely and appears to be constant, how come it seems to distort itself? I know Einstein had a theory that time can speed up and slow down and that gravity can affect time, but to the extend a whole month flashes past? Perhaps I'm in a gravitational anomaly or perhaps it's just a perceptional thing, but time does seem to be moving on at quite a pace these days. I am planning to take a few days off in a couple of weeks time and I'll bet that time will slow down the closer I get to those days, then when I get to them, it will speed up dramatically. As they say, only time will tell!

A letter from M&S Money arrived today advising that customer accounts are regularly reviewed and "that unused accounts are not kept open unnecessarily" to avoid risks such as identity theft and fraud. As a result of the latest review, it has been noted that I have not been using the credit card I have with them and if I wish to keep it I should use it within the next few weeks.

A long time ago, Marks and Spencer (the store) would not accept anything other than cash or it's own store card and most people who shopped there had the store card. Then the company decided to convert the store card into a credit card and credit cards were issued whether you wanted one or not. As I already had a credit card, this was just another piece of plastic that I did not really need. M&S Money is now owned by HSBC bank plc and the M&S is used under licence from Marks & Spencer.

The letter emphasized the "benefits" of keeping the card and looking at the "benefits" listed, I did not see any that really made me think "I need this card". Rather, the thought was "why do I need this card?" I do not need the "valuable M&S points" nor do I want the "chance to become a M&S Premium Club member". There was nothing else that made holding on to the card worthwhile listed. As I already have a credit card that I do use regularly, I'll be letting this one run out and the account will be closed. That's one less piece of plastinc in the wallet!

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Street entertainment...standing on his head in a bucket...

© John G. Fender, 2010

Today, whilst making my way long Princes Street in Edinburgh (yes, I was there again on business) I spotted something unusual in the way of street theatre. At this time of year, Edinburgh is full of strange things that are part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and tourists seem to find the strange interesting.

Today, the unusual was a man standing on his head. That itself is not that unusual, but the fact that his head was in a bucket at the time was more unusual than might otherwise be the case.

Judging by the amount of tourists that were taking photographs of the inverted man and putting money into the other bucket that was placed strategically nearby, they thought it was unusual too and worthy of a financial contribution. In the short time I watched the goings on, he certainly made a fair bit of money and all he had to do was stand motionless on his head!

If you are going to do something as daft as this, then this time of year is quite a good time to do it as you are almost certainly guaranteed to make money as tourists will part with cash. Edinburgh at this time of year is full of tourists and they seem to photograph everything whether or not it moves, stands still, is planted in the ground or is just there.

As I was watching the tourists photographing the castle and other sights, the thought struck me that an awful lot of electricity was being used up in capturing all those photons with digital sensors. Changed days from those of traditional film indeed. In the pre-digital days, most people contented themselves with one or two carefully composed photographs. Now, people just click away photographing anything and everything.

Not only that but instead of the one or two photographs, people seem to take copious quantities of photographs now and use up large quantities of disk space storing images that will never see the light of day again. I wonder how many photographs of the man with his head in the bucket were taken and I wonder how many of those will ever be seen again. At least the single photograph I took has a wider audience as it is here for the world to see.

According to the Oxford University Press, publisher of the world famous 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive guide to the English language, it appears that it is unlikely that another edition will be printed. This is due to the online version being more popular and making more money than the print version. Subscribers pay for access to the online version of the dictionary, currently set at £240 or $295 in the USA. If you want the full 20 volume print version that will cost you £750.

The problem with the 20 volume dictionary is having enough shelf space to store it as you get 21,728 pages for your money and the thing weights in at around 60kg. That's an awful lot of paper. You would do better buying the CD-ROM version as this takes up far less space and costs a lot less, currently only £195.00. Better still, it will fit on any shelf without the need to reinforce it. Given the advantages, it is not surprising that there is unlikely to be a third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary on paper.

However, the convenience of the online version seems to be something that people are willing to pay for and in time it looks like the full size dictionary will become an electronic media only publication. The single volume version will still be available and having one of these myself, I have over the years, found it very useful and despite being a rather hefty tome, it sill has a certain "feel" about it that you just do not get with electronic versions.

However, it's the way of the world to go electronic and I recently acquired a complete set of every issue of one of the magazines I get regularly. As these go back 120 years, the DVD version certainly saves a vast amount of space and I can look up any thing easily, so I can see the attraction of this format. Perhaps in the not too distant future I might just get an CD version of the dictionary.

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The misspelt word "boundary" on the back of a bus.

© John G. Fender, 2010

Today's photograph shows the back of a bus. It's one of the small buses operated by a small independent bus company operating on the south side of Glasgow. Can you spot why I took the photograph? No, well here's a clue - Look at the lower half of the back of the bus. Now do you see it?

If you spotted the spelling error, well done. The advert that adorns the rear of the vehicle has been painted on by a signwriter and on this bus whoever it was managed to spell the word "boundary" as "boundery".

In my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, it tells me that "boundary" means "a line that marks the limits of an area; a dividing line". I looked for the word "boundery" but is does not exist in the dictionary, but obviously exists on the back of the bus.

This is another example of the falling standards of literacy that I've noticed of late, especially with spelling but the interesting thing is that there is another bus with the same advert on the back, but that one has the correct spelling, so perhaps this is a genuine spelling error. Still, it's another spelling error that I have added to the collection that I'm slowly building up.