WTF!? – Page 2 – Seb Palmer

8 February 20234 March 2023

MiSC: B1101 Crash Update – First Fatality

I spoke to Mark Raftery, pictured, at the scene.

A few days ago I was driving on the B1101, and I passed the site of the awful crash I witnessed on Dec’ 8th, ‘22. I noticed a floral tribute on the side of the road where the crash occurred.

A bit of ‘Googling’ and I found this, which reveals that the driver of the dark grey VW Golf has died, about three weeks after the actual collision (Dec’ 28th). The man’s name, Mark Raftery, of Elm, Wisbech. Various articles online give his age as either 48 or 49.

I spoke to all three of the victims at the scene. Mark’s cries of pain and anguish were the most harrowing thing about the experience. He even said ‘I’m gonna die’. Which, it now turns out, was prophetic.

Apparently a silver Audi had sped past a van that was heading towards Wisbech, and Mr Raftery attempted to do the same, only to collide head on with a lady who, although she has serious – possibly life changing – injuries has said (via a local Facebook page) that she’s ok.

What was the role of the silver Audi in this appalling crash, and Raftery’s subsequent death? From what little I saw and heard – I only saw the impact itself from a distance; more detail came from the driver of the van, who was so nearly caught up in the collision – it seems that it was Mr Raftery’s overtaking manoeuvre that caused the crash. Was he racing or chasing the mysterious silver Audi?

Raftery’s passenger (30, but unnamed) has also been left with serious ‘life changing’ injuries. And what about the gaffer-taped number plates on the car Raftery was driving? That was weird…

A little bit of online digging revealed this. It seems Mark Raftery has previous for dangerous driving, causing the death of his brother Kevin, in 2008. As a result of which, in 2010, Mark was sentenced to five years in prison.

It must be awful for all involved. Perhaps especially for the Raftery family, who have now lost two brothers. Hopefully all who know about this tragedy will learn to take care whilst driving.

Some time later… Whilst not wishing to speak ill of the dead, as the saying goes, during my ongoing searches for more info’ on this accident online, I first discovered that Mark had killed his brother in the aforementioned 2008 crash, and then read this, which includes the following:

‘The court heard that Raftery had 19 previous convictions for 41 offences. At the time of the crash he was driving at around 90mph whilst around three times over the drink drive limit.’

… sheeit! I just hope the other two victims of this event survive and are ok.

27 January 202327 January 2023

MiSC: Life & Art, Poetry & Depression

Black eyed dog he called at my door
The black eyed dog he called for more
A black eyed dog he knew my name
A black eyed dog he knew my name
A black eyed dog
A black eyed dog
I'm growing old and I wanna go home, I'm growing old and I dont wanna know
I'm growing old and I wanna go home
Black eyed dog he called at my door
The black eyed dog he called for more

Never been a dog person. Much prefer cats! But a little yappy terrier called Insomnia is barking and biting at my heels again. Put the little fucker down, I say.

And in the hallway, in the shadows, his darker more vulpine cousin can be heard, panting and drooling, occasionally pacing the few meagre feet of corridor. Depression is that mutt’s name. I can smell his stink from here.

I’m not listening to it literally. But the words and melodies of Drake’s ‘Black Eyed Dog’ are circling like carrion in my spent and careworn brain.

I'm growing old and I wanna go home, I'm growing old and I dont wanna know

Can I get an a-men? Too right! Ah-bleedin’-men! Can I get a hallelujah? You must be fucking joking! Tired of scrabbling in the dirt and dust in the peripheral shadows. Stop the ride, I’m sick and dizzy, and I want to get off.

26 January 202326 January 2023

CAR: Thievery & Exhuastion

[thievery vid… need to find!]

Some while ago our neighbour alerted me to some footage he’d caught on his home security videos, showing some villains fiddling with several cars on our street, inc. mine!

Rear view; exhaust attached by sensor lead!

At the time we’d concluded – and confirmed with a neighbour further down the road – that these miscreants were thieving catalytic converters. One of the neighbours further down the road had actually arrived home as the bastards were leaving his front drive.

Look how the thieves cut/compressed the pipe!

They were so quickly down and back up again by my car that I assumed they’d decided against bothering to try and take mine. I was wrong! But it took a while for the issue to develop; gradually my exhaust system grew noisier and noisier.

It turns out that some cunts do this ‘professionally’, and use a tool called the jaws of life* (or something like that?) to snip through pipes and noiselessly remove CATs.

Sheets and tools in the road, trying to disconnect the sensor.

Anyway, as I got into my car today, to go to do a delivery route for Amazon, the whole exhaust system was roaring and rattling like an emphysemic dragon. I barely got 10 yards, and had to stop, get out, and look under the car. Almost all of the exhaust between where it exits the engine bay, and the box at the rear of the car, was hanging loose.

The rear of the car, and the other break.

Even worse, it transpired that it was solely connected to the car by the wiring of a lambda oxygen sensor. After several hours spent getting the car up on jacks, with thoughts of zip-tying it back in place, which didn’t work, I tried to remove the sensor, where it joins the exhaust.

But that was seized solid; so, no dice! It then became a question of finding out how to disconnect the other end of the sensor wiring. This, it turned out, disappeared up into the bodywork of the car. It took a lot of hard work, both on the car and researching online, to finally crack that conundrum.

And all of this in very cold, muddy, drizzly conditions, with the car protruding several feet into a busy road. Gaaargh!!! I had to cancel the Amazon delivery shift, and forego any lunch. And I spent literally three or four hours doing all this. It’s the sort of thing one ought to be able to do in minutes if, A) one knows the anatomy of the vehicle intimately, and B) has the right tools.

The clip end of the sensor cable. Inaccessible!

Once I’d finally and mercifully got the damaged and broken section of exhaust off, I stuck it in the passenger side of the car. Doing all of this did teach me more about the motor. And I took the photos that illustrate this post, which I sent to various MX5 parts folk, and potential repair garages.

A YouTuber’s vid’ located the sensor clip junction, inside the passenger side interior.

It was thanks to the photographic evidence that I learned my CAT definitely had been stolen. The most damning and conclusive evidence was how the exhaust had clearly been snipped, and compressed, just around where the CAT ought to have been.

So not only do I have to replace 80% of the exhaust assembly. I also have to get a new catalytic converter. I got some quotes on parts and work. And it’s a nightmare, frankly. Because, as ever, I’m stone broke.

Finally! Unclipped. Allowing exhaust removal.

Still, in the past we’ve always battled through and found a way, even if – as with the cam-belt episode – I had to do the sourcing, buying and fitting of everything myself. This time I can’t see myself doing the installation. Partly this is due to the time of year; having to try and do such work out in the front drive or the main road? It’s just too cold and wet!

* As used by fire crews to rescue passengers trapped in crash-damaged vehicles.

PS – This is the YouTube video that enabled me to finally locate and uncouple the sensor:

26 January 202326 January 2023

MEDiA: Beach Boys, Get Around Shred

A friend and neighbour, of many years past, Denis, first showed me this video. Many, many moons ago. And I wept tears of laughter. It totally slew me. So funny!

And watching it again now, probably at least a decade later, it still makes me laugh and smile. It’s clearly a labour of love, by whoever originated it. I’s actually really very well done.

But what I think I like best about it, and it’s rather timely right now, is the hipster in the sports car that bookends the Beach Boys studio mime performance. The cat in the shades, top down in the palm-lined Hollywood boulevards, is clearly a major dude.

Yeah, man. One slick cruising’ stud. (Gurgle, splutter!)

But just dig that gurgling drain of an engine! It sets up the video perfectly, and the attention to changing timbres and nuances, in the final segment? Genius! Comedy gold.

It’s very apt for me right now, as a jaded and disappointed middle-aged man, driving a convertible car whose exhaust has just literally fallen off (this very day!). My dear little MX5 sounds rather like this hipster’s ride. Not as comedically chortling a chariot, admittedly. But close.

I tried to find out who made this video, and my best guess so far is Total Shreds. Here are a few more. Some, like this Elvis one, subtract the music, to great comic effect:

And this ABBA one shows the degree of dedication to the art of making these. The Smoke On The Water guitar moment is priceless.

14 January 202315 January 2023

MiSC: Sore Throat, Tough Work, Crap Snooker… What a Day!

I’ve had a sore throat for a few days now. Symptoms are very Strep A like, and I believe that’s running amok in the UK. Teaching in schools, I guess, may make me more likely to be exposed? It seems more virulent amongst the very young. And I teach in two primary schools.

But I can’t find any particularly helpful maps of known cases. Something I thought might shed light on whether this might be Strep A or something else. And then there’s the various varieties: Strep A, Scarlet Fever and IGAS may all be caused by the same bacteria, but (I believe?) each manifests in slightly differing ways. So, for example, I don’t have any rashes, so I don’t have Scarlet Fever.

But without proper medical advice – ironically I had an over-50s NHS health check last Monday, before I got this damned sore throat – which is increasingly hard to get as the Tories grind the NGS into the ground, how do I know what’s causing it, or indeed even what ‘it’ is!?

BTW, the info-graphic map images I’ve used here are from my researches, and usually the webpage (if not always the image itself) adds more info, such as when the statistics were gathered, or the time period they cover, etc.

I guess I was after this sort of thing, for our area.

What I really wanted was a map with ‘pins’, something rather like the above image, but showing cases in my living/teaching zones. Maybe then it’d be easier to see if there were recorded cases where I’m teaching, for example? Anyhoo, calling 111 has (so far) got me nowhere.

Teresa and I are back to childminding at my sister’s. And we’ve been roped into an extra night over, as my mum backed out of her usual Sunday commitment. She did so partly due to dad having Covid (so I hear!?), and me having this sore throat.

I also booked two Amazon delivery shifts: one today, another tomorrow. Todays was a real nightmare. First off they had approx 30% more stuff to deliver – 30 bags as opposed to he usual 20 or so – than I normally have, and yet supposedly to be delivered in the same (two hour) time frame!

On top of this, even before I’d left, the scanning and naming/numbering of the deliveries didn’t tally correctly. There were extra bags, numbers/names/codes didn’t match, and, well, more on this later…

I’d also very much like to opt out of making any deliveries to Cambridge. Most trips to Cambridge involve dropping deliveries to at least one ‘block of flats’ or student halls of residence. In theory I can contact the customer. In practice this doesn’t always work. Today I had a whole slew of Chinese students in multiple occupancy residences , none of which had sufficient info to locate the customer, that made the entire shift a total nightmare.

Supposedly 2-4pm, I didn’t finish till 5pm. And when I did I had two bags of undelivered stuff left over! I had to call the Flex driver support line several times. To their credit, they do try to help, and sometimes they even actually sort things out. But, as ever in modern life, there’s far too much interacting with automated robotic systems. And they can’t always resolve stuff satisfactorily.

I anticipate negative feedback from Amazon on this delivery run. One particular order initially took over 45 minutes to ‘complete’ (or so I thought), putting me seriously behind schedule. And in the end this was – or so it seems – the order to which the two extra mystery bags that were left over belonged to. So adding that in, as well, at the end, means that one stop accounted for about an hours work!

Add to this my sore throat, the bigger than usual load, that for much of the shift it was cold and very rainy, and, nearly all of it being in town, there was heavy traffic congestion to negotiate… Bah! Not fun at all. For the most part I do enjoy doing Amazon Flex deliveries. Not so today! As already mentioned, I’d like to decline any further delivery trips to Cambridge.

Back ‘home’, at Hannah’s in Northstowe, I’m mainly staying in bed, as I don’t feel at all well. The right hand gland in my neck is swollen and painful, swallowing hurts, and I’m on a diet of liquids, paracetamol and lozenges.

Thought a bit of snooker might help. So I watched the Trump vs Bingham Masters semi-final. Trump won, 6-1. But, my sweet lard, was it ropey! It was excruciating at times. I like fast heavy scoring snooker. This was low breaks, tactical grinding (and wailing and gnashing of teeth), and, frankly, quite boring . Both players playing well below their best.

What a day!

13 January 202313 January 2023

Protected: WORK: Amazon Flex Delivery Driving

5 January 20235 January 2023

MUSiC: Iron Maiden Go Postal!

Iron Maiden didn’t trouble my recent top five post. But back in my mid-teens I was listening to them a lot. And I still do, occasionally. Power Slave was my favourite album back then, with Piece of Mind coming next. I’m not so keen on their pre Nicko/Dickinson stuff, and I haven’t followed their later releases. By which I mean everything after Live After Death!

Still, though I’m not their biggest fan, it’s nice to see them being honoured by the Royal Mail. They have their beers as well. So they’ve really gotten into the bloodstream of the nation, and now the postal service as well!

Well done fellas! You’ve earned it. Read more about this here.

PS – Not that I give a sh*t for anything to do with royalty/monarchy. Butt… shouldn’t it be Charles’ head in profile on stamps now?

30 December 202230 December 2022

MEDiA: Royalist Propaganda Overload

I’d like to know who this brave lady is.

Teresa, having dined royally, so to speak, on Versailles, is now watching Marie Antoinette. As she does so it strikes me that in the last few decades we’ve seen not just a rising tide, but a veritable tsunami of royalist propaganda.

These two shows are about past French Royalty, admittedly. But the almost universal chorus of abjectly sycophantic bootlicking around the recent passing of Liz II really shocked and upset me. This toadying, far more than the passing of one elderly and obscenely overprivileged woman, is what I find deeply saddening.

We had a brief period, post WWII, in which, for a while, there was a semblance of some move towards real progressive and enlightened change in the UK. The creation of the NHS, a growth in the ambitions of the BBC. But all these things seems now to be under the very real threat of Tory vandalism and dissolution.

A great but rare sight. The ‘other’ view in public sight.*

And the orgy of misty-eyed revisionist veneration for royalty that we’re living through now is a stark reminder of the degree to which we are now an increasingly enslaved and backward looking nation.

I wondered if anyone in the UK shared my feelings, and googled the theme using numerous selections of search terms. And what I found most of was the very same obsequious royalist garbage that so disturbs me. It took quite some digging to begin to uncover what one might call such things as republican or anti-royalist stuff.

Here is one of the few things I found. And it’s very good. I think I might try and use this and future similar posts to try and gather together such thoughts/links, etc.

Interesting to note that I can not, so far, find the names of either the ‘not my king’ lady, nor the ‘f*ck imperialism’ protestor. The former was allowed to continue her protest, whilst the latter was removed and charged with a ‘breach of peace‘.

A truly scary sign of our times…

In a previous post that touches on this theme I was able to find the identity of another protestor. That individual was Paul Powlesland, above, a barrister who said around the time:

‘One of the many things that makes me proud to be British is our freedom of speech. It’s one of our most precious and sacred rights and it’s far more precious to me than the royal family is.’

Amen to that! But is the idea of free speech in the UK now no more than an illusion? It’s starting to look that way.

* The most recent Jubilee was, for the most part, a horrifying display of forelock tugging idiocy. I didn’t encounter any anti-Royal views in the media at the time. Even allusions to other viewpoints were rare. And, of course, the vast propaganda machine supporting royalty steamrolled over any neutered opposition. So Liz wasn’t the last of her ilk. Alas…

25 December 20228 February 2024

FiLM REViEW: Little Shop of Horrors, 1986

I’m not a big fan of musicals. But this one is bonkers. Based on a film made by Roger Corman, which in turn was made into a musical, and directed by Muppeteer Frank Oz, it’s truly gonzo.

Audrey II is an amazing piece of work (requiring a team of twenty-two puppeteers!), voiced wonderfully by head honcho of The Four Tops, Levi Stubbs.

And not only is Audrey II a mighty (pre-CGI) achievement, so too is the entire Skid Row set, which was constructed as an indoor studio environment, at Pinewood Studios, in England.

There are some terrific cameos. My favourites being Steve Martin’s sadistic rockabilly biker dentist, Orin Scrivello (DDS!), addicted to laughing gas, and his Planes Trains & Automobiles co-star, John Candy, as manic DJ ‘Weird’ Wink Wilkinson.

The movie was produced by music mogul David Geffen, subject of Joni Mitchell’s terrific song Free Man Paris.

A bonkers thing, and one of the few musicals I can bear – though enduring the ‘numbers’ is an issue – to watch all the way through.

18 December 20228 February 2024

DAYS iN: Home – F-F-F-flippin’ F-F-F-freezin’!

I put all this lot on upon *entering* our home!

We just got back home, from childminding duties at my sister’s. As we occasionally do, we stayed a second night. I was exhausted after an evening shift delivering for Amazon, and then sharing a bottle of wine with Teresa and Hannah.

Amazon were taking the piss royally yesterday, on two fronts: first I arrived a few minutes late (2-3, or thereabouts) for a midday shift. The crappy Flex app then proceed to load so slowly that by the time it was up and running I’d ‘missed your [my!] slot’!

So I returned later the same day, and did an evening sesh. I try not to do these, on account of it being harder and more stressful in the dark of winter evenings/nights. And herein was the second Amazon piss-take:

Actually this was a double-barrelled piss fest: first I had an order ‘to be delivered no later than 4pm’. Yet it was the second delivery of about eight or so, and I didn’t start collecting the items, never mind delivering them, until 4pm, when my shift officially commenced!

I told the recipient that I’d have bent the laws of physics to deliver to him by 4pm, if it lay within my powers. And, if he was unhappy – fortunately he was a jovial and understanding chap, and was absolutely fine – please take it up with Amazon, and don’t blame me!

But the real piss take the second, was the sheer distances they had me travelling. I started in Cambourne, then went to Royston, then Potton, then Sandy, then home. I reckon that the fuel costs of this run will prob’ have accounted for half my earnings.

Lobster, a very hirsute, handsome and charming chap!

But my main prompt for this post was returning to our frigidarium home. Our car was plenty warm en-route home. With two of us in the the confines of a little MX5, plus the car heating, we were very cosy. The house was 8°C, according to our wall mounted central-heating doodad (thermostat/controller?).

The pic atop this post is how I got myself up to brave a trip to our littlest room! Which used to be an outside privy, when the house was built. And today feels like it still is! I was worried my bowels would refuse to open, so damn chilly was it!

I’m now enjoying that most plebeian of pleasures, a pot noodle. Pornography for the palette, granted. But warm and flavoursome. It maketh me happy!