Episode: 3076
Title: HPR3076: Keep calm and Virion
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3076/hpr3076.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 16:19:27

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,076 for Monday 18 May 2020.
Today's show is entitled Keep Calm and Virion. It is hosted by Dave Morris
and is about 59 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
a COVID-19 lockdown chat from Scotland.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting
with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello Hacker Public Radio people.
I'm here to talk to my good friend Dave Morris
and we don't really have a very firm agenda ahead of us.
But we are just going to talk about what life is like under these strange COVID-19 lockdown conditions.
So how are you doing Dave?
It's a good idea actually. I've been enjoying the other lockdown series
that Tad Sara has been organizing on HPR.
There's a similar sort of idea.
But it's just something rather nice.
Especially when you spend in good proportion of your day isolated
with various degrees of isolation I suppose.
But it's just nice to hear some people having the chat I think.
Yes, yes, I thought that too.
I'm when he suggested it and whichever medium he suggested,
I forget which whether I see it was either in riot matrix thing
or in the mailing list wherever it was.
I immediately said, yes, that's a great idea. I'll join.
And that was several weeks ago, maybe as much as four weeks ago.
And I have not joined once because unfortunately just a time of day when I'm busy.
I'm almost always busy with food preparations or something like that.
But I have listened to a few and I have enjoyed the chat,
including how other people are talking.
Yes, yes, I've enjoyed listening to them.
I also thought it would be good to join but just haven't managed to take more than eight things.
It's the time difference.
But since we're both in Scotland,
then there's not no significant time difference here.
No, no, there's not.
Although one interesting thing I always think about Scotland
that a lot of people appreciate it is that I can't think of many other places in the world where an accent
will change so fast going with 45 miles to Edinburgh in Glasgow.
At the point where a broad Glasgow accent could be unintelligible to some people in Edinburgh.
I think that's really true.
Yeah, I was quite surprised.
My first came to Edinburgh because there's quite a lot of people who speak with a sort of English-ish type of accent
with a slight Scottish twang to it.
But once I moved out to live in the outskirts of Edinburgh, wow, there's a big difference.
There's lots of people say Ken.
Ken, a lot of the time.
And that took me a while to work out.
Well, it's just an Edinburgh way.
And all sorts of strange expressions and stuff.
Did they say just on that subject?
And I don't want to wander up into random stuff.
But did they say butcher meat in Glasgow?
But true meat.
I think so.
Is that a general Scottish term to me?
What does it think?
What do you think it is?
I think it means fresh meat as opposed to like sort of cooked sliced meat or something, butcher meat.
Oh, possibly.
Actually, there's one of these things where I've never really read.
Just sort of somebody said butcher meat.
I would just take that as meaning meat that came from the butcher's other than supermarket.
So I don't know.
But I tell you the one thing actually is that I did discover this week that we have this fish fan that comes around.
And what the fish fan is, is it's a van that has lots of fish in it and other things like eggs, etc.
But the thing is, it doesn't come from around here.
It comes from the East Coast of Scotland.
Not quite where you are, but a little bit further north.
A five place called Pitten Wiem, which I think would probably mean something to you.
But maybe not too many of our listeners.
Yep, one by, isn't it?
Yes, it still is.
That's where the fish comes from.
And Strother, which is nearby in the five East Coast of Scotland.
Very pretty places if you're ever in this spot of Scotland.
Yes, indeed, yeah.
Definitely a place to visit when there's lockdown is over.
But anyway, so this fish fan comes around and it suits its worn.
And then there's a lot of old folklore around here.
And they come out all the time.
Now, I don't usually bother with the fish fan.
But I have started bothering now because I'm trying to go to the shops less.
And the fish shop is coming to me.
And as I've discovered, it sells lots of things that I can't actually get in real shops.
And it's quick fresh, delicious fish.
I'll go out there.
But what I, my son asked me.
I said to him any request from the fish fan.
And he went, oh, crab.
I like crab.
I went, you know, they might have crab actually.
Freshly caught crab.
You know, it's a game of something you might not find know that easily in the shops.
The supermarket.
So I went up to the fish fan.
I asked the guy said, do you have any crab?
And he went, no, but I have got crab meat.
I went, oh, well, yeah, I wasn't really wanting the shells of the legs.
I didn't see this to him.
But, you know, I was a bit taken aback.
You know, have you got any crab?
No, but I have got crab meat.
Right.
Okay, well, take the crab meat then.
Now, Dave, do you know why he said that?
Because I didn't.
I would, I don't know.
Because I come from north of where crab is very, very common along the coast.
And you get what they call a dressed crab, which is the crab meat in the shell.
But where they crab stick, so any chance?
Well, you're close.
I thought the same thing as you that he was saying, it's not a dressed crab.
It's just a roast.
It's not a roast.
But maybe it's a roast.
I actually had to check when I got home.
It turns out crab meat is not made from crab to all crab meat is made from bits of leftover fish
that are pressed and reshaped.
And put together and sold to make a much cheaper version of a crab that tastes a bit like crab, but isn't crab.
Hence what?
Hence why I asked him if you really crab, and he said, no, but I have got crab meat.
Expected me to know what that meant.
Yes, yes, yes.
There's a secret message in there somewhere isn't it?
Does do you get actual sort of sticks with one side has got a pinkish color to it and the rest is white?
Does it look like that?
No, this came a little tough, but it's the same idea.
Crab sticks, I had discovered, are made from crab meat and are very often nothing to do with crabs as well.
Yeah, that's great.
I've never, I've never really been into them to be honest, because like I say, in Norfolk, there's a place by the sea called Chroma,
which is famous for its crabs.
Whether it is still now, I don't know, because maybe there's not many there anymore.
There used to be crab shops and galore there, you know, and you could get fresh crab.
A life one, if you wanted it, you fancy the fight.
Well, it was a common thing to go there as a kid and buy a dress crab and as a kid and bring that one for Sunday tea.
Yeah, Chroma.
Yes, I do know of Chroma.
What about these?
Is that Norfolk?
Yes.
So it's sort of Norfolk is a bulge at the side of the UK from the washed animals, from linking to animals.
And it's in the more northern curvy bit near the top there.
Right.
It's quite an attractive place.
Yeah, I went to Norfolk last year, but we didn't go to Chroma, but that wasn't far away.
So basically for people who are not familiar with geography, you come out of London and you basically drive north and a bit east until you reach the sea.
That's roughly how you get to Chroma.
True, true, true.
It's a long drive.
People who visit the UK always amazed how shortly distances are, but how long the drives are.
It can be a writing to get to somewhere like that from London.
That's true.
Yeah.
So you zip up the motorway, the M11 to Cambridge, and then it's lost on quick considerably off.
So you get into the broads, not the broads, but the fence and then the broads.
Yeah.
You find yourself in a sort of con, con, what's the word convoy?
That's the word behind a tractor.
You know, a tractor chugging along and you can't get past it because the roads are narrow and there you are, you stuck.
Yes.
A very unwilling convoy.
Indeed indeed.
Yeah.
So how have you, so one of our first questioners, have you been out or are you staying pretty much in the house?
Well, from March, I decided to keep hidden from about the 13th, 14th of March,
because then things were just starting to get nasty, but before there was an official lockdown type thing.
And so from then till early April, I've pretty much kept in the, in the house, not gone out at all, except after that I decided, well,
since especially since the weather's getting better, I'm going to go out for a walk as often as I can.
You know, once a day or something like that, but otherwise then that's it.
You know, I'm not going to, not shopping or going anywhere other than walking the streets or staying in the house.
Yeah.
So how are you doing with it?
Well, I'll, I'll, I've, not that different to be honest.
I suppose the main difference is that in the beginning of it, my kids were still at school.
Sorry, the reason I'm laughing is because I got a fright there because my big new PC with, with three fans in the front,
suddenly burst into life unexpectedly, because I rest my foot in the power button by mistake.
Because then my old PC, which used to sit there at the power buttons on the front, but this one, I don't know why, but they put the power button on the top.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, sorry, totally.
Yeah, so at the beginning, my children were at school.
And I thought here in the UK that we, we were a bit slow to lock down to be honest.
I was thinking, and I wasn't really very impressed with the advice that the schools are not, are not significant spreading,
spreading factor in the disease.
I just thought, look, we don't really understand much about this thing that's coming.
You can see it coming.
You can see that, yeah, we weren't in Italy's position.
This is back in March, but you were talking about, we're not in Italy's position, but we are going to be in just two weeks, really, three weeks.
Possibly, if we start to get a finger, and I thought, I think we just spat down the hatches.
And then we can decide to make, you know, once we know a bit more about it, we can decide how to open things back up again.
So that was my big worry, actually.
The beginning was that the children would bring it back now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now for most people, I have to say, I wasn't that worried.
For most people, and I'm in my mid to late 40s.
Most people, my age and younger, the chances of becoming serious are maybe a few percent of cases.
And the chances of actually dying of it are, I would say, well, under one percent.
Even back then, I think that was what you could really confidently product.
And if anything, they were upper estimates, because we didn't know the true number of cases at that time.
And we still don't.
So, but anyway, I thought, let's not take any chances because, you know, we just need to stop this thing overwhelming health system.
Which is the reason why we eventually did lockdown.
So once the children were at home, then the only other way really I felt that we could get it was out when we were up shopping.
So that I do that now, once a week.
And quick, I respect social distancing.
And I can't wear a face mask because I've tried, but then I go blind because all the face masks I've tried.
My grass you up very easily because I've got a, I've got, I've got still got some face masks of the sort that used to buy.
If you were doing woodwork and that type of thing, you know, that sort of.
Yeah, I think it's, it's not as fancy as an N95 mask, but it's a, it's a full nose type type thing.
And it's similar in shape, but not quite as effective.
I cannot, I can't wear that these days very, very long because exactly what you say, your breath goes up top and, and streams at the glasses.
Yeah, it's, I mean, I've had lots of good suggestions.
Now I examine this face, the face mask I've got, which is like you see a DIY one, it's not really meant for this purpose.
But the way I understand it, what we're doing is when we put the face mask on, is if we're a carrier of the disease, we will protect other people from us.
Yeah, more than protect ourselves, maybe there's some protection that we get.
But, but it has got these flaps where you go above your nose.
And, and, and if you get them just in the right position, it directs the exhale breath, which contains all the moisture that misses up your,
you're missed up your glasses, it does direct that downwards and stops getting onto my glasses.
So it does work trouble is, if I turn my head or I move it in any way, it shifts and then it, it's not in the right position anymore.
So I could be halfway through the shop and suddenly it just, you know, it dislodges.
And then, and then I've gone blind and then I can't, you know, I mean, to the extent where I could really can't see for somebody else in the aisle, you know, just a few meters away from me.
So, yeah, so I try to scarf and I've tried various other, these bands, you get these, what do you call them, above somebody called them?
I've experimented and, yeah, none of them really shouldn't get away from my problem with my glasses.
I don't, maybe it's my glasses, because they do have a special anti-reflective coating, which the doctrine once said was more prone to misting up the normal glasses.
And maybe that's it, I don't know.
Yeah, I think mine might have to have the same.
I found if I put some end of my nose, it helps a little bit, but it depends on whether you can get away without or not.
Yeah, I'm sort of, I mean, I'm over 14 diopters in both eyes, so if I put the end of my nose, I might as well, I might as well.
You can just explain.
No fair enough, fair enough.
Yeah, but the last thing is a problem, isn't it?
Even if you could, I mean, you wouldn't want to be going around in the fall in 95 miles, anyway, from what I've heard.
They're pretty unpleasant things to wear for a long time, because they tend to get really wet and nasty after a while.
Oh, really?
Really sorry for the medics who have to wear them.
Yeah, yeah, I think they get, because they take all your moisture out of your breath.
So they're going to get pretty damp on the inside and stuff.
And they will also see people with all these marks around the face where these things are sort of quite hard, pressed hard against the face.
So there's that as well.
Yes, indeed, yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.
Take my hat off to all those who are fighting this in the front line in the hospitals and,
not just the doctors and the nurses, but all other people have to keep the hospital's clean and take patients to and from appointments.
And, you know, I mean, it's just when I stopped and been men and shop workers, all the taking greater risks than certainly I am.
In occasion moments, when I feel guilty about how comfy this quarantine to be this for me, you know,
the only thing I can really complain about and I'm not going to complain about is the task of trying to educate my children at home with the school's closed.
But that's a very, very, very, very minor complaint compared to what these other people have to face.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of people in risky positions for sure.
All these guys delivering stuff from the supermarket.
Beautiful, because they're so busy around around these parts.
You're not using one of those that take it.
No, I took the, I mean, I haven't, I used to years ago.
Actually, from the, I think I took part in one of the first trials of that in the UK, which was in the late 90s started.
And it was wait for us at work when I live down in Milton Keynes and I worked in the open university car park.
Sorry, I worked in open university.
And then it's car park, which was huge.
It's a huge place, actually, the open university.
This wait was van would come and I ordered all my stuff online on the website.
And then you would just transfer it from the van into the boot of your car and then drive home with your shopping, which was really convenient.
You know, that's good.
Yeah.
So I used to do it back then.
But since I've.
In my current house, I'm, since I've come back to Glasgow, basically, the shops are so convenient that I just walk to them.
And I still do, actually, even my weekly shop is done on foot.
And it also makes up the fact that I'm not going to the gym anymore because counting up my weekly shopping back to my shop.
Is a bit of a gym workout in itself.
That's very good.
That way.
Well, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not like that in Edinburgh.
It's obviously where you are in relation to sort of the centers of, I guess, old villages and that type of thing.
I live in an area that was a village years ago and then absorbed into into Edinburgh, but a lot of the shops that were here when I first came to Edinburgh in 1981.
Oh, they're about, they've gone pretty much.
There's just just a, just a co-op.
And that's, that's pretty much all there is in the locality.
So that's, you know, it's, it's supermarkets or, or nothing.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'm spot for choice here.
I'm not living in a Philly, actually.
It's a birth of Glasgow.
And so when I live, I have a five minutes.
I've got a scene's breeze, a co-op and a small market and Spencer's in the garage, which has actually quite a lot of stuff.
And then if I walk another few minutes, I get to it.
A big guy has just a supermarket.
And if I walk another few minutes, I can get to another, a bigger market and Spencer's and lots of pictures and stuff.
So it's just for you.
Yeah.
I'm just spot for choice from here.
So that's why I don't use the car.
I'm at, I confess, I use the car the other day for two reasons one, because I needed to get so much shopping that some heavy stuff like liquids, that middle can stuff.
And I didn't think I could carry it all back.
And two, because I was getting concerned that the car battery would go flat because it'd been use so little.
That I decided to take it out for not a long drive, but, you know, just for that 510 mile drive, just to keep that battery charged, which wouldn't ordinarily do.
I felt like, well, sooner or later, that battery is going to go flat.
It will do.
This is used so little.
So that's a really good point actually.
My car sat here in the driveway.
It did get used on Monday.
It got used on Monday.
They had a medical appointment, which they're still honoring if they're sort of long term things.
And so I drove it and I was thinking, will it start?
Yeah, so it's probably a good idea actually.
And it'd be a way of getting away from being so stir crazy in the house as well.
Yeah.
And it is an eminence not breaking the lock down itself, because if you get the windows up in your driving around, you know.
Yeah.
We're not not great for the environment, but, but everyone's driving an awful lot less than used to, of course.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
You can walk in the walk in the street too.
When I go out for a walk, you know, and somebody comes the opposite direction along the pavement,
then the convention seems to be step out in the road and walk in the centre of the road.
And walk across over to the other side, but there's probably somebody over there.
So there's, you know, there's a moderate number of people out doing the exercise.
So yeah.
And of course, if you don't want to cross the road, you can always just start coughing uncontrollably.
That would get them crossing the road quicksmart.
I didn't really see if you're, if you're old and creaky and, oh, it's going to take me,
I used to cross that road and you will people swear brand you anyway.
Yeah.
Well, I take that exactly that attitude.
So if I see somebody that is less nimble than me, then I'll get out there.
We think that's the thing.
And to be just for clarity, I've never done that coughing thing.
I was just joking.
It's, that's, yeah, you probably get shot for that sort of thing before long.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So it's, it's a strange, strange dance one has to go through and walk in the long.
Yeah. The other thing I've been doing is because what I really like is,
I went to the gym and the main thing I like the gym for is doing some cardio exercise
and one of their machines.
Now, some people like running, I've never got one with running.
I'm half Iranian.
And I've got quite a stocky build with big fat calf muscles and thigh muscles.
And, and I think my legs are actually short for my height.
And that's not uncommon in the Iranian males.
You see, I think of those weightlifters, the Iranian weightlifters who usually do well in the Olympics.
Yeah.
So I'm not a weightlifter build, but I'm, I'm obviously a fully stocky type build.
And, and I find running just a very unpleasant experience.
I've never been able to get into it.
So, um, so the bike, my bike.
Luckily, I just had it done up, uh, the big one, back in the last winter.
So in the last year, and my bike done up and serviced because it's 10 years old.
It's a great bike, but it was, it was, it was failed.
It was starting to fail in a number of ways because it did a sort of a rebuild.
So I spent a lot of money getting read on.
I'm so glad I did.
Because every few days I'll tick it on the bike usually early in the morning when it's quiet.
And, uh, I just go off for half an hour.
Um, there's quite a lot of hills around here.
So it's a good workout.
You know, really, um, it's really quite taxing.
Um, it's a good cardio workout that I miss from the gym.
But I haven't encountered some strange problems.
So I, I try to, as far as possible, avoid like the canal towpath, which is new here.
So the canal towpath is, is probably not even two meters wide.
I would say one and a half meters wide.
I'm not sure I've never measured it, but certainly if I was to lie down and across it,
I'm sure my feet would hang off one end of my head the other is that it's not that wide.
So it'd be impossible to respect the two meter distance when you pass somebody.
Of course, when you're cycling, if you're going at full pale and somebody's running,
you're belting all this potentially virus-laden, uh, breath.
So I thought no, I've got to avoid the canal towpath and similar cycle paths are small.
But cycling along deserted suburban back streets, you know, seems to be ideal.
But the one problem I have encountered is that I find, this has happened several times.
I keep encountering older folk in particular, like couples out for their daily exercise,
often in the morning, walking down the middle of the road rather than the pavements.
So they don't have to get all the way people.
That means that I then have to mount the pavement to get around them, which is backwards.
Kind of a thought of that. Yeah, yeah.
I've just got walk in the middle of the road.
No, that's a good point.
I was, I also have a bike and it's about 10 years old, actually.
Yeah, you used it to ride to work and maybe a bit more than 10 years old.
It's a mountain bike and I was just thinking I could really get that out again.
It needs a good clean, probably got punches and stuff that they need dealing with.
I don't know, do you, just on that, I had punches and because mountain bikes got big fat tires,
well, they did bagging those things.
And the way I used to cycle, I used to get punches quite often because it was down a lane.
There's a lane that runs from here down to the university I worked out.
Here it was.
And there every year there would attract, would come along and cut the hedges.
The hedges were all horde horn and it used to think of the flail cutter,
which is just like a lawnmower and a stick sort of thing.
But well, actually, it's not even as smart as that.
I think it just waxed the hedged and knocks the bits of branch off.
And what that does is all of the horde horn pieces fall on the ground.
And they're all like tank traps.
They sit on the, because the clusters of spines,
they sit on like two or three spines and one points up with.
So it's guaranteed after the flail cutter had been through.
And for months afterwards, you ride over it and then you get punched.
So I used, do you ever use that stuff that you can get used to be able to get?
It's probably not very minimal.
You put it through the valve and it seals up the punches.
It's basically a gel with fibers in it that with a pumped up tire that's moving.
It's the fibers block of a hole in the tube.
And you don't get, you don't get it leaking.
But if you leave it, then it leaks.
I'm probably going to go eat the inside of the inner tube.
I don't know.
So.
I'll be honest, I've never had a puncture in my back and only once I've had the burst.
It wasn't a puncture.
It was the inner tube just failed just because it was like 10 years old.
That's why I did the bike in front of service because it wasn't a puncture.
I just took it to the bike shop and the guy said,
this inner tube looks like it belongs in a museum.
You know, and yeah, so I've never had a puncture over a glass.
It's mind still mountain bike.
It's a cross bike, which means it's sort of in between a road bike and a mountain bike.
But yeah, I don't know why I've never had a puncture.
I've just been lucky, I guess.
I have cycled over even broken glass.
Because somebody's broken glass on the road and you're going at speed.
You can't see it until it's too late.
So even then, the shards haven't managed to get through the tire.
So.
That's a bit, that's a bit particularly unlucky with these,
these little wooden tank traps down there.
Well, yeah, I've never faced that.
So that's another thing.
There's no hall-thorn bushes around my way.
That would, yeah, you need to have them or not or not as a case, maybe.
But yeah, the plan is to get the bike out and maybe do a little circle.
I've got an interesting cycle path near me.
The river that runs through Edinburgh called the Water of Leaf originates in the hills,
not far away from my house.
And so it runs down on its way to Edinburgh.
And years and years ago, there was a railway line that ran alongside it.
And it ran from a town called a little village.
It's really called Blurnow into central Edinburgh.
And back it was a great commuter line.
I think it was, it was removed in the 1960s.
And they turned it into a path.
It's the most fantastic cycle way.
It goes through tunnels and stuff.
It's, it's quite cool.
That's so good here.
Actually, round here, not many of the railways have been turned into cycle paths.
So there are some when you get out of the city that have,
but where I am, the old railways have mainly been reopened again as railways.
Which is good.
In fact, one of them hasn't.
I mean, it's got so many railways that were closed.
I don't think people appreciate quite how much more extensive
are railways used to be.
But they have managed to reopen on these two big stretches.
Otherwise, they might have been turned into cycle paths.
But I'd rather that there were railways to be honest,
because we could almost cycle in the roads.
Well, I don't cycle in the middle, because they're too busy.
But yeah, I'd rather have the trains are more useful than cycleways to be in my book.
I agree.
I do agree.
Back in Norfolk, there's a brilliant cycle path that goes from
Norwich where I used to live out into the wild some other.
And I was walking it one time.
And this lovely is all the trees over it.
And it's really good.
And it's an old railway line.
And I discovered through a bit of digging into family history and stuff.
But it went past the little cottage out in the wilds where my grandmother used to live.
And I found that her father had become a railway engineer.
So the thinking is that these guys were building the railways back in the 18,
whatever else they were.
18, 30s, 20s, some like that.
Whenever the railways would have been coming.
And he sort of signed up with them and became a, became a Navi.
So.
So.
And then they never lived to see them take the railway out again.
And it should have been very, very unpleasant.
But yeah, there's a lot of history to these, these all railway lines.
It's one of the fascinating things about them, I think.
Yes.
Indeed, you know, I do.
I do appreciate the.
I do.
I do.
It's been many a weekend going around hunting down what you could see with these,
these bits of industry or archaeology around Glasgow.
Of which where I used to live, which is a bit further, which actually wasn't,
I don't live in Glasgow.
I live just outside Glasgow where I used to live.
It was just full of this stuff.
When you look at, you see this little abandoned bit of waste ground or something,
but we didn't look at waste ground now.
It looks like trees, but it was waste ground when I was little,
when I grew up nearby.
And now you look at it.
It looks like a nice wood.
In fact, you'll see deer planting about if you look closely.
But they're railway siding and stuff like that.
Quick, quick, large tracks of land.
No doubt horses will appear in them soon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's what's happened here.
When I moved here originally, there was by the water leap,
there was an old factory sort of thing.
And it was actually a paper mill.
It was long closed down, being used by small businesses.
But it's now all houses have been raised, raised from brand.
But there was a water mill that drove the paper water, you know, wheel,
but to drove the paper mill.
So there's a fan, again, I think looking at local history,
and there's pictures of the railway bringing ispartile grass
to the paper mill to make paper whatever ispartile grass.
It's, you make paper with it apparently.
Oh.
And just that's hopefully not boring everybody's death.
Along the water of leaf, there's quite a lot of industrial archaeology
at the same sort, but obviously, there's nowhere near as big as Glasgow
and has less.
But is the thing about the water of leaf was it was used to power all sorts of mills,
flour mills and stuff.
But snuff mills were very, very popular.
There's several places along the way that shows the such snuff mill was cited.
That's a whole different world.
You imagine.
Yeah.
That is funny.
The same is true.
Of course, in Glasgow along the, not the clay, the big river in Glasgow is called the clay,
but more along the Kelvin, which I live near.
In fact, it was exactly what you described.
There was paper mills, flint mills and stuff mills.
And actually, just in case there's any fellow scientists out there,
if Kelvin sounds familiar, it's named, well, indirectly named the unit of temperature,
which is used in physics, because William Thompson, who was a physicist at Glasgow University,
took the title Lord Kelvin, and after the river that ran past the Glasgow University.
So that's the connection.
So the river Kelvin gave its name to that, the temperature scale that's used in physics.
That's very cool.
Yes, yes.
It's all sorts of historical aspects of Glasgow and the fascinating.
I don't know any of that.
I don't know.
I could, yeah.
That's maybe one thing I could spend more time goping at all these.
I do spend a lot of time goping at pictures of Glasgow.
You know, this is just as very weak as somebody posts online a picture of a disused swimming pool.
I've read some disused swimming pool.
Oh, hang on.
That address.
That's right next to the university.
Oh, it must have been knocked down like 50 years ago.
And to my astonishment, the building is not knocked down.
It's still there.
And I've walked past all the time and I've no idea there's a swimming pool inside it.
You know, I just looked at the picture.
I've sanded with that building.
I did not know there was a, you know what I mean?
When I say swimming pool, it's lean dry now for 20 years as the roofs come off.
It's a terrible state.
But it's a very old-fashioned type of Victorian type swimming, swimming baths,
the way they've called them then.
So it's quite a rare building to still be standing, you know.
But look at the pictures.
It's too far going.
But it's kind of thing that I walked past all the time.
I used to walk past for the lockdown all the time.
And there's no idea what was inside that building at all.
Yeah.
That sort of stuff is fascinating.
My son and his girlfriend used to have a flat in,
towards the centre of Edinburgh,
on an area called Morningside.
And they used to go swimming to a place not far.
I can't quite think where it is in relation.
But it is one of those Victorian baths.
It's a building, a Victorian building made in red sandstone and so on.
And it's got one of the old-fashioned style baths there.
I think people used to go there for a wash and stuff,
not in the pool to save it.
I don't know enough about the history of these things,
but they were quite common at one time.
And this one still exists anyway.
Yeah, no, I think in the time before you might have hot water,
maybe even running cold water,
in tenements in Glasgow,
like tenements meaning tall apartment type blocks.
The, this would be where you got washed.
And attached to it in Glasgow,
there was a thing called the steamy,
which, yeah, with a woman at the time,
with washed the clothes.
And there's an expression in Glasgow called the talk of the steamy,
the gossip.
You know, you get your local news
by all the gasping hellsweights on the steamy,
attached to the baths.
I've heard of this.
I don't know if that was an end of the thing,
but certainly, certainly been mentioned in the,
since I've lived in Scotland.
So yeah, that's it.
So how have you been entertaining yourself in the last few weeks?
Well, projects and stuff.
I, well, you know, I like to write,
write up things for, I've got a few years,
so I've been trying to increase my production rate
with the HBO shows,
because it got a bit more time
and the inclinational stuff like that.
I've slowed down in recent years.
I have to say there was a time,
I would do like one a month or something,
but it's not doing quite that great.
But you know, there's, there's, there's things.
You just did one,
just I've already done one yesterday,
which suddenly was a thing sprang into my mind,
and I managed to do it.
Then did it the first day,
I'm not going to do it the second.
So I've been doing that.
Also into electronics a bit.
I'm trying to learn my way around
all these fantastic little devices.
There's a thing called the ESP868266,
which is cost about two or three pounds.
It has the power of an Arduino and Wi-Fi,
and not that particular one,
but it's bigger brother.
The ESP32 has got Bluetooth as well.
So you can, and people are putting it inside
all manner of Internet of Things devices.
So you can build your own stuff,
or you can buy things and subvert into your own needs
and stuff like that.
It's really, really quite exciting,
or it's available there.
I'm way behind the curve with this stuff.
People have been doing this now for three or four years,
possibly, but it's still fascinating.
Yes.
Actually, I remember you introducing me to this device,
I think, old camp last year.
Yes, I was.
Yes.
That's right.
The guy from Edinburgh Linux,
he was a group whose name is Chris.
Chris, we're the, we're the, we're the hard.
Yeah.
He was, he was, he had several in his pocket, and he was then.
Have you used these things?
These are rising.
Well, that's proper geeky having several in your pocket,
just, just an off-chancer.
It might come in useful, you know.
I was, I was thinking, you can make,
remake the modern version of the A team,
where all these geeks and nerds disappear into the garage
and they build this thing out of our advenos and bits and pieces.
The future bad guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These, these things are amazing, you're powerful.
When you consider the people have been using our,
you know, it's a long time, but they're not all that cheap.
You know, you can get knock off clones or some of the low-end
advenos for a few pounds.
But the, the genuine ones are still moderately expensive for a
first sort of kids or people with that and a lot of budget.
And, um, these things of, uh, this, this ESP devices are
very, very good value for money.
They're all right with China, of course.
But there's actually, probably told you this at some point,
there's a whole range of IOT type switches and controllers
and things that you can buy from a Chinese company called
Sonoff, S-O-N-O-D-L-F, and they all, they contain these devices
and there's been a huge movement to strip them down,
put better software in them because, you know,
the manufacturers want to lock you into using their servers
or later goes through their servers, etc.
But you can easily turn it into an IOT device that you control
and stuff.
So, um, yeah, there's, there's, there's, I'm amazed how much
of this stuff has been going on with these.
And I'm not really noticed, you know.
No, no, I haven't.
I mean, I've got an Arduino.
I've played with it a little tiny bit, but I don't know.
I just, uh, just life just seems to fit.
My time seems to fill up with other things.
And it always ends up going to the back of, uh,
back of my list of things to do.
But, uh, things that require quite a lot of time
to work through, don't they?
I mean, it's because you're writing stuff
at quite a low level if you want to get really into it.
And you also need to do the electronics of it.
So, you need to, you need to dedicate a fair bit of time
to it as you're starting up at least.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's essentially it.
I also know my character that when I was younger,
I would just, you know, you stopped fiddling with a bit of
a cold or something.
And then three days later, the sun would rise.
And you think, uh, I thought it was the evening, you know.
And, uh, you know, but now I can't do that, you know,
especially, uh, just, uh, life.
Life is not as it was when I was younger.
But I have, um, I thought I would have a lot of time
to do these kind of things when this lockdown started.
Although I quickly thought, no, hang on a minute.
My wife's going to be working from home, so I'll be denied my study,
um, Monday to Friday during the day.
So I'm actually in my study today because my wife's not
working taking Fridays off at the moment.
And my kids are home from school.
And the younger one, she'll need my attention and the older one.
Well, yeah.
He's supposed to be doing exams, but as exams are cancelled,
I'm not really not thinking what, you know,
thinking I can get him to do anything at all.
So I spend a lot of time trying to get them to do stuff.
And it's not been too bad, actually.
But it does eat up a lot of my time, you know.
I really have to be around, at least to just keep an eye on them,
um, as much as anything else to make sure they're actually doing it
rather than necessarily being hands-on, helping the whole time.
So it's been fine.
But I very quickly learned to recalibrate my expectations
of free time and free space because I've lost my study, essentially.
Um, and so I've just, and, and, you know,
I thought earlier on, look, if I have it,
if my expectations are, I'll be playing film a little gadget
and getting my old BBC, BBC Micro that acquired last year
that we talked about before.
Um, if I started spending time wanting to do my little projects
and fixing my old amigas, whatever,
I'll very quickly become frustrated because
they're all things where I need to get my full concentration,
get, if I get a soldering iron out,
you have to be set up, got it up to temperature,
get everything laid out, and get in the zone, you know,
tracing on the circuit board to do the fixing.
And then the child comes in and wants you to do something.
And I hate having my concentration broken.
I think it's very difficult to get back into it again.
Yeah.
And I have a very even temper.
I do not like being disturbed when I'm in the middle of full concentration.
And the last thing anyone needs is a grumpy person in the house.
So I decided to relax all my expectations,
what I could get done.
And just trying to enjoy my time doing what I could do,
rather than having expectations of doing all these things.
Yes, yes, yes.
They've been picking me up with grumpy hours.
I do know.
I have a situation.
It's, it's, I feel like the, the, the dies out a lot,
a lot shorter.
I think they're going to be as well.
No, you, you start off on doing something and get distracted.
And then, oh, it's time for, just time for dinner,
and soon be time to sleep.
It's all the time.
Go on.
Yeah.
It's, it's difficult.
But one, I'll tell you one highlight.
It's hack a public radio.
I have to thank for this is the dungeons and dragon session,
which for me are Wednesday evening, half past five,
with Kato, it was his instigation.
So I thank him for that.
And also Ken Fallon's son,
and CRVS and myself,
with the players in that session.
And that's just tremendous fun.
It really works well with, with all your own,
I didn't think I've only ever played dungeons and dragons
in person before.
And even then, it's, you know, it's, it's been fairly difficult
because when none of us are regular players,
and if, you know, dungeon master isn't particularly experienced,
where Kato knows this stuff, you know, which is great.
And also, you should say that for him, he's in New Zealand.
So it's half past four a.m. for him when we start.
I know of it.
But as I think as he said to Ken,
one time, one again, try to rearrange the time
because you felt bad for Kato.
No, no, no.
This is how I like to start my day.
Why not, you know?
That's amazing.
That's really amazing.
That's dedication, isn't it?
It's not just one.
I think he offered two time slots, Wednesdays and Thursdays,
and we got enough takers for both.
So he ran both.
So I'm only, only present at one of these two.
I think the one Thursdays are running out.
I didn't think from that.
But it's just tremendous fun to have to say.
I don't know if you fancy it, Dave.
I don't know if you can be a late addition to our party.
You're certainly be welcome as far as I'm concerned.
That's a nice thought.
I'm not really, I don't know.
I don't have the mind for that sort of thing.
It's a, it's, I'm not, it's not that I'm anti-social or anything.
I'm just not very sociable in the sense of being particularly good
at being social.
Yes.
And it's it.
Oh, did you hear that noise, by the way?
I did, yes.
You know what that is?
What is that?
It's like a fish fan.
Oh, fish fan.
Yeah.
Oh, rude.
Sounds like an ice cream fan.
The fish come from pit and wean.
I wouldn't be surprised.
You know, it could be the, it could be.
Right.
But yeah, my one doesn't have it.
That's a little like a sort of Philly nice tone.
My one just tutors were in several things.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Some sort of fancy, a fancy horn or something on his land.
But it's a popular thing actually.
It doesn't come past my house.
Maybe there's not many fishy people around this way.
I'm just running out from one town and I could grab something often.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what you do.
I mean, if I let one of mine, because the fish fan doesn't stop outside.
My house, it goes from the corner.
And I just go on the corner.
But there's an older guy who's two doors up.
And he is about getting it easy.
Yeah.
He's a bit slower now.
And obviously doesn't want to leave his end of his driveway in the current conditions.
So the fish fan actually nicely stops right off.
Okay.
I'll see you just host at the end of his drive.
Just for him.
Which is nice.
Very good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's cool.
It's cool.
I.
That particular van.
I think it's been going around this particular estate for maybe as long as I've been here,
which is 30 plus years.
So, and I've never passed taken so.
That's a few.
You've prompted me to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, my fish fan also has vegetables and cakes and eggs and biscuits.
And that most prized of things recently, flower.
So you could bake with.
Yeah.
They had actually had flower because it's like toilet roll and flower.
The problem, the shortages of those two items.
More have understood it.
I've realized it's nothing to do with panic buying is.
Maybe slightly elevated levels of people buying, but it's not panic buying.
What it is, I've discovered in both those items is there's two ways of delivering these
items.
One is through, especially toilet roll.
One is through the shops where you would buy it for a household.
And the other, of course, is through places of work.
So, like, if you are, if you work somewhere that I've toilet and they'll have toilet roll.
So that whole supply chain and the problem was, is that suddenly everyone worked from home.
And that meant, of course, households were consuming a lot more toilet roll at home than they
were at work because kids would have been at school, parents might be not at work, you know, all that kind of thing.
Another all at home, that put the, that shifted the demand from the whole sales side the toilet roll market to the supermarket shelf.
And it took a while for that to adapt.
So it wasn't, it was slightly elevated.
I think there was a bit of panic buying, wasn't it?
People following one another and, why is that guy got so much toilet roll?
I need to do the same.
Yeah.
That sort of thing.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's definitely, the video was, I mean, there was definitely some, you know, fights broke out in supermarkets.
Definitely.
But that, but that was a minority of it, you know, I think most people were just thinking right.
Well, we, you know, better stock up a little bit or, you know, or just, well, we're using up faster.
Now we're all locked in the home and can get out.
That makes sense.
I suppose there's, there's, there's an opening there for somebody to buy the office supplies and then produce it.
Have a 3D printed device.
Really, they've got one, one of domestic size roll off multiple domestic size pieces off it was something.
And so then more use them or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Think, think with the handle and the, and gears and the guillotine that they stand on it and then it cuts the world.
You know, there's, there's an opening there for somebody.
Definitely.
Yes.
I have lots of ingenious solutions.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
So that's one thing of, not quite a little bit.
The, the, the, the engines and the drivers.
The other thing I've been doing is because we've had just amazing weather of the last beach sunny days.
If, if it hasn't rained for a week now, I think we should be in Glasgow.
It's just unheard of at any time of the year.
It's been sunny.
It's 20 degrees today, which is really quite unusual for April.
But what I've been doing is spending a lot of time when the kids don't need me.
Or, but so I'm available.
I've got a small balcony at the front of my house.
I sit in that in the, in the sunshine.
And read book and the book I'm reading is Dracula by Bram Stroker, which I've always wanted to read but never have.
Very good.
How are you enjoying it?
Yeah.
I'm loving it.
I think it's brilliant.
Yeah.
I have to say that there is something like in this unpleasant virus situation that we're in.
I think before I started reading it, I was following the news.
And then I came a point where and, and some stuff in social media.
And then it was just all becoming very frustrating.
I think a lot of false reporting of stuff.
And people that I knew and liked.
And some people that I would have thought would know better sharing stuff that was to know to be bogus.
So that was really frustrating me.
So somehow switching to redracula was a good way of
escaping that.
Yeah.
So bloodthirsty vampires.
It was my way of escaping all of that.
Well, yeah, but it's a, it's a valid thing to do with it.
It's a fascinating book.
I've read it years and years ago and were you read it in the past?
I don't know, four or five years or something.
Just because you know, when you, when you read books when you're younger,
you maybe get an impression that then gets mangled by your,
your brain out of your tongue.
And then you go and read it again.
Wow.
I never realized it was like this.
And that's what I did.
And it was, it was great.
It's, it's a very strange, strange book out that I'd love to know more about
where the ideas for it came from.
There are some sort of folklore associations with it,
but I've never, never really come across much.
Yes.
I don't, I mean, I think the stories do come out of Eastern Europe,
which is why Transylvania is where it starts off.
And the other reason was two reasons why I ended up reading it.
The first is the last couple of years we've gone last three years.
In fact, we've gone and spent new year with my sister's family in a little seaside village
called, or town called Whitby, where Dracula is, in fact,
that's where he lands in the book.
When he arrives on these shores,
it's literally, he gets washed up on into Whitby.
And the other nice little piece of history,
then it is explicitly mentioned in the book,
is that if you sit and Whitby is strange, because it's the seaside,
but it's a little bit of the English coast that doesn't run north south,
because it's most of England and Scotland, roughly,
runs north south, but there's a kink there.
So Whitby sits in a bit of coast that actually faces north.
And there's a river, there's about ESC, I think, splits the town in half.
Apparently, Bram Stoker was sad facing east,
looking across this like a valley down to the estuary of the river ESC.
And another half the town's another side.
And the other side of the river, there's this great old church called St Mary's.
And it has two windows, and the two windows were reflecting the setting sun, which was red.
And so it gave the impression of two eyes.
And that is where the Dracula's two red eyes comes from.
Yeah, and there's actually a bench that's on,
which is said to be the one, or not the bench,
but the bench is in the exact location of the one that Bram Stoker was said to have sat on when he saw this.
So yeah, I thought that was, and then in the book, that very,
it's almost explicitly mentioned at one point, you know,
that's one of the characters have seen this.
And they've seen this reflection in these church windows.
So yeah, so there's lots of connections, a lot of local connections with Whitby,
in particular, that I can make.
The other reason that I was interested in it is that after I was spent the last New Year in Whitby,
came back home, and then BBC had a dramatization of Dracula in three parts.
Which was, I thought was very good.
The only in the first part was faithful to the book.
The second and third part was interesting,
but no, I think it was good in the first part.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's good.
I told you, I think that my daughter had been out to Transylvania a few years ago.
Yeah, I don't know how many years.
Between school and universities took the year out,
which she got a volunteer place out working in Romania,
and ended up in Borussia, which is in Transylvania.
And they went to what is supposed to be Dracula's castle.
I thought some of the volunteers went there for a weekend trip.
But she's not really into Dracula thing,
but she said that there's not really anything there.
The Romania's have not really made much of the whole Dracula thing.
I don't know if it was in other countries,
but you wouldn't be able to move for Dracula things.
It's hardly anything there.
She was looking to buy some from Transylvania.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, certainly.
Whitby's absolutely stuffed with Dracula related stuff.
And to be honest, he actually even gets a bit tacky in places
with Dracula experience and stuff like that.
But it's a very atmospheric little town.
So it's certainly worth visiting.
Yeah.
It's certain times of the year.
Maybe that usually at this time of the year, perhaps.
I'm not sure exactly when it is.
But Goths is in like, I say young folk,
but might not just be young folk, but people who dress in black
that like Goth type music,
the day to send and that upon the tone.
And then you get people who come to see the Goths.
So it's certainly developing to quite a nice tourist earner
in normal times for Whitby.
Wow, that's very good.
Whitby has not really been that part of Yorkshire at all.
Into York and around.
That's OK.
And I lived in Lancashire for many years.
But yeah, if you live in Lancashire,
you don't go York much Yorkshire very much.
That's not true.
But this is all these sorts of,
oh, you're from Lancashire.
I don't want to talk to you.
It's not true.
It's not true.
It's a joke.
But yeah, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a,
but I'm a list of places to visit sometime.
Yeah, absolutely recommend it.
Yeah, that's good.
That's good.
Sure.
Well, you can just say what I'm just about to say,
but really an hour we've been talking.
Yes, indeed.
And I'm thinking that I've left my daughter for,
I think my wife has gone out while we've been talking.
And now I'm normally supposed to go in there.
Look, I think she's finished her school day.
But I'm conscious that there is lots of crisps in chocolate
in the kitchen that's within her reach.
Yeah.
This is a, we post script.
I've discovered that there is no place,
even if I stand on my toes and put the crisps in chocolate,
my, my daughter, who's, well, when she's eight,
so she's not that, you know,
she's not coming up to my shoulders yet.
She finds a way of getting it.
I thought even though she does it sometimes,
I assume she must climb up there or something.
So that is somewhere in the house.
Don't go back.
Yes.
Sorry.
It's a nightmare.
And you don't want to be getting into locking cupboards of
and that sort of thing.
No, no.
I mean, it's be fair to her.
She only really does it to, to wind me up.
You know, she doesn't do it out of that of greed.
It's not really, but really just because she,
she lets herself be caught, you know,
or lets me see that she's caught it.
Just because, you know,
I, then I'm incredibly just like, how did you get that?
You know, I suspect her brother.
Because her brother is now taller than me.
So her brother could be getting it for her,
but he's inclined to do nothing that would help
as little sister or vice versa.
So I don't.
Yes.
Yes.
I know those family dynamics.
Yes.
My daughter's due to turn 25 on Sunday.
So, so.
But the brothers,
the dynamics are still there in different forms.
So, even at that age.
Yeah.
Oh, well, I'll have to.
Can believe it.
It's all good.
Yeah.
Well, it was lovely talking to you, Dave.
And maybe we could do this, do this again
and see how things develop.
And coming weeks.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's nice to, nice to have a chat.
Yeah, we must, I think mumble to do it is a good way forward.
So, and we get to record things and share.
So that's good.
Yeah.
Thanks, Andrew, for the suggestion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was good.
Well, stay safe.
Everyone is listening.
Stay safe.
Hopefully this will see you at some late end of the tunnel at some point.
Yeah.
Same message from me.
Okay, then.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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