Author: Seb Palmer

I haven’t read this book, so this isn’t a book review. Indeed, successfully resisting the temptation to buy any books at this Topping Books author talk was a major achievement!

I have one or two Max Hastings books, such as Overlord and Das Reich (which I haven’t read, as yet). I’m interested enough to have been seriously tempted by Operation Pedestal. But lack of fundage and beaucoup de books means I must resist! Read not spend!

Sir Max Hastings (eugh, I’m not a fan of such class-laden honorifics) being a very establishment journalist – former employer of Bojo the Clown! – raises some issues for me. But most big name military historians, e.g. Anthony Beevor, are cut from the same tweedy public-school cloth.

Still, he proved to be an entertaining public speaker, mixing in some WWII documentary footage (from the IWM archives), and even voicing some of his quotes ‘in character’ (Cockney ratings and Churchill included!).

The story he told tonight, and that he tells in far greater detail in his book was/is fascinating. Basically bringing this particular re-supply of Malta off, and not losing the island, was more about a shot in the arm morale wise than strategic goals.

And it was equally important to prove to the US and Russia that we weren’t as pathetic as some of our misadventures up to that point, from the fate of the BEF to the failed Norway campaign, might make us appear.

I think I will get and read Pedestal at some point. But I’ll wait for a cheap used paperback. Simply ‘cause needs must. I flew solo tonight, as well. Usually Teresa accompanies me that these talks. But not this time!

The talk itself was enjoyable. And the venue, the Lighthouse Auditorium, Ely, was new to me. I’d estimate it was both full and that there must’ve been about 200-250 attending. A fun little evening out.

Soooo… Sunday, and the main vice is looking and working great. I’m very pleased. I sanded off some excess wood-filler (the white stuff!), along some of the seams. The flat work surface is fab!

The side of the bench, or the rear face of jaws that face out towards work/me are less contiguous. But the new insertion is better/truer that the former side of the bench itself was.

I put a nice meaty large-ish jaw on the front/opening face. So hopefully I can clamp up big chunky stuff! Because my bench is made of pine floorboards, it’s not as heavy as might be ideal. And despite all the stuff – five full toolboxes filled with hefty toolage! – certain things can still make the whole bench move a bit. Which is obviously annoying and disappointing. Still, this is my first ever DIY workbench. So it’s hardly surprising it ain’t poifeck!

A second Fuller 3 & 1/2” clamp sits clamped in to the main vise; a useful addition to and extension of what the main vice facilitates.

In other less happy news, my two home-made plane handles have both failed. And both in exactly the same weak spot. What one might want to call the Achilles’ heel of the plane ‘tote’, albeit it’s actually midway between the ‘ankle’ and the ‘toe’! My knob is faring fine tho’!

More Knobs!

Another knob. This one’s from a harder, denser wood. Mind, it’s not my knobs that’ve failed thus far, but my ‘andles. The wood is from a load of evergreen for tree type wood we got off Freecycle, for firewood. I wish I knew exactly what kind of wood it is!

Making these is great fun. Now I’m into the sanding and varnishing stages. Sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, and so on.

Looking for movies on Prime I saw Pacific Rim. It’s not at all the kind of thing I’d normally want to watch. I’m not a fan of Guillermo del Toro, at least not what I’ve seen by him. And modern sci-fi/monster movies? Naaah!

But call it my woman’s intuition, or whatever, I thought let’s try it. It is as dumb as I worried it might be. And it is like a Playstation Game turned into a movie. Another modern trend I’m not very keen on.

But, in its favour, first it’s just good silly old fashioned matinee movie fun. Second, it’s visually stunning enough to make up for its dumb-ass silliness. Too many modern movies like this rely on visuals, and do that quite well, but still fail as films ‘cause they’re so awful in just about every way possible.

This suffers from some of the most egregious of the faults of so much modern film entertainment, with the boneheaded reduction of human culture to a muscle bound masculinity that’s apparently totally unaffected by any form of post-Enlightenment waves of awareness, from Feminism to Woke.

But ironically it’s not regressive, so much as hyper-modern. It’s a complete and bizarre paradox of our times. A form of ultra-contemporary moron-ism, that attempts to shroud itself in anything from allusions to religion (Stacker Pentecost!? A scientist called Gottlieb, German for ‘God-love’!?*) to cyber-spirituality (the whole ‘drift’ thing’). And it’s incredibly infantile

I can’t say exactly why, but in this particular instance I just let my inner child enjoy the spectacle of the film. And that’s ultimately what it is. A spectacle for children (whatever their actual age). And a fairly fun one at that.

* God-Love’s ‘other half’ – mind-meld in ‘the Drift’! – is Newton; so science and religion can resolve their troublesome real world issues in the dark and watery neon-lit imaginarium of cinematic CGI!!! Nuts…

Damn, it’s hard to be patient! I had to refrain from hanging guitars on these for about 24 hours, as last time I wasn’t patient it caused the fixture to work itself loose. So I had to do the whole job all over again!

This time I achieved patience. And patience was rewarded! the guitar pictured above was one I recently bought locally, for about – if I recall aright? – £13!!! And with a gig bag! It’s a smaller sized classical, handy for taking into schools.

The room as a whole is way too cluttered. Plus the back wall these guitars are hanging on needs a lick o’ paint! But it’s great to have hit these guitars off the floor, where we’re forever having to move them, or worry about knocking and damaging them.

I’ve spent a good chunk of today working on my workbench. First I had to clear everything off it; both the top, with the clutter that accumulates on that, and the base shelf, where I now store wood and several tool boxes.

Once cleared, I up-ended the bench and had a couple of goes at finding a new position for the vice. Formerly the vice was dreadfully out of square. On my second attempt of today, after a failed first try, I decided to radically rework the cutaway I’d made on my original attempt at mounting the vice, yonks ago.

Rather annoyingly I didn’t document the various stages. A pity, as quite a lot of effort and work was entailed. I used the layered or laminated nature of the workbench top to work back to a complete new plank, hoping as a result of achieve a squarer mounting. And it seems to have worked.

Next I need to ‘build back’ to use a modern political. 1 catchphrase, simultaneously filling in the excess I cut away, and providing the clamp with a wooden back face. I’ll also attach a wooden front face as well. But that might have to wait till tomorrow.

The floorboard timber I used to make the rear face of the clamp is the same stock of timber the whole bench is built from, out of an old Victorian town house. I cut it to size, routed out a recess to accept the rear face of the vice. Drilled two holes to screw it in place. And finally planed it flush to the bench surface.

As anyone who knows me well will realise, I’m a man of many vices. As well as the nice old blue Record vice, I have the red Fuller one pictured above. That’ll most likely get bolted to a block of wood, for use clamped into the Record vice. Compounding my vices!

And a bit later… after watching Pacific Rim, I couldn’t stay away. And went back and added a wooden (ply wood, in fact) front jaw. see pics below!

Tragically all my plane handles I made recently l – I used both my Handyman planes, flattening stuff on the bench/vice – have broken. The dark wood one was too dry and brittle, and snapped off and was re-glued repeatedly. The soft pine wood one was always going to be too weak. I need to start over with these bits, and do them in a much denser stronger wood.

“What happens if people discover the greatest story ever told is a lie?” *

Well, duh… plenty of people have known this all along. And it doesn’t require a preposterously Byzantine conspiracy, predicated on the notion that there’s any sense in the gumbo of nonsense that is Christianity in the first place, to get there.

The Life of Brian is sooo much better in how it deals with the whole Christianity thing, rightly lampooning humanity’s bizarrely persistent gullibility: ‘Blessed are the cheese-makers’; ‘We’re the People’s Front of Judea, not the Judean People’s Front’, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ etc.

‘Seek the truth’, says the strap-line in the poster/DVD cover above. Not here, f-f-f-folks!

But first, let’s go back to that opening quote: I assumed that by ‘the greatest story ever told’ this film is referring to the same story sold under that name by George Stevens et al, in the 1965 ‘sword and sandal’ epic. Just like the awful religion we’re skirting around here, all of this is freighted with unexamined assumptions.

My route out of this blind-alley rabbit hole, an increasingly common one, perhaps especially since the 1700s, or thereabouts (but actually from a wellspring of scepticism as old as humanity, gullibility, and active questioning minds themselves), was rational free thinking, and evidence based reasoning.

One doesn’t need a cornball conspiracy theory movie – or do we? – to debunk blatant preposterousness-ness-ness… I really cannot be arsed wasting my time critiquing a movie that not even the powerful talent and charisma of Tom Hanks and other decent actors can rescue.

And poor Max Von Sydow. From Ingmar Bergman to Conan, Minority Report and this. How the mighty are fallen.

Like religion itself, this movie is, in my opinion, 1) at best, a pointless waste of time, best avoided, and 2) at worst, a cynical exercise in making money from the ignorant masses by feeding them a toxic mix of baloney and conspiracy.

Nothing to see here. Move right along.

* I believe this is a quote I lifted from the movie. I forget who says it.