A lot of wind on Friday afternoon

Friday afternoon was odd because we had a guest speaker coming to address us in the canteen about “Changing Energy”. He blamed privatisation and the early running down of the coalmining industry. He mentioned alternative sources of energy, which would be many years away. A new nuclear power plant would take fifteen years to get up and running. Then he spoke against wind energy because he wanted to know where we would get our energy from when it wasn’t windy.

This brings me on to later in the afternoon. That was always Windy Miller’s problem wasn’t it, waiting for the wind.
George, Eric, Andy and one of the Steve’s were sitting around discussing the old TV programmes they watched as kids. Bod, Starfleet, Masters of the Universe, Captain Scarlet, Trumpton, Buck Rogers, Roger Ramjet Hong Kong Phooey they all got a mention. We’d got onto this through talking about how much money the bosses were on, so they could pay for their fuel without a worry. By the time the shortages and power-cuts come they’ll be emigrated to some beach somewhere without civil war breaking out. Jersey was mentioned, because that was where all the millionaires go to live. In fact you have to get a license to live there, and they don’t take any riff-raff. The only scum on the island are the ones who were born there and do all the work. This got us on to Bergerac, which leads us on to Midsomer Murders, and finally the declining state of television in general. Dan had never heard of Bergerac, so we said that we would have to see if Nige can get hold of it on DVD.

Andy: “I sit in bed on Saturday mornings having a flick about.”
Eric: “Too much information.” (smirking all round, so Andy repeats it).
Andy: “I have a flick about on Saturday morning….and I discovered the old Batman series. Eh? Biff!, Ker-pow!!”
Eric: “The Adam West one?”
Andy: “Yes.”
Eric: “What was the bloke who played Robin called…?”
Me: “Burt Ward.”
Eric: “That’s right. Didn’t he end up doing porn films?”
Me: “I don’t know about that.”
Steve (almost simultaneously fast): “Yes he did.”
Eric: “There was something worrying about the authority with which you told us that.”
Me: “He’s got the complete set on DVD.”

Alan's lego fun

Alan was telling us about yesterday’s conference jolly. They’d done some team building exercises, one of which involved building a bridge out of lego which had to be strong enough to stand the weight of a toy truck and a toy horse, but also had to be tall enough for both of the toys to pass underneath. However all the bricks were priced by colour and they had to work out a quote for the job before they could start building. Alan was quite pleased with his coming in under budget at £1,250. All the other teams had quoted around £4,000.