Month: July 2019

Trouble With Toilets

I spent last weekend lolling around in the sunshine at the Vancouver folk music festival, down at Vancouver’s dusty Jericho Beach Park. It’s a wonderfully scenic spot for a fun weekend of eclectic music, watched by an equally eclectic Pacific Northwest crowd. People who wouldn’t normally be seen dead in a tie-dye T-shirt dose themselves in patchouli oil and let their inner hippies out of the artisan-crafted, organic bamboo box for a couple of days. Unfortunately, on hot weekends there’s nowhere in the festival grounds to hide from the blazing sun, so most sane people eventually gravitate to the beer garden for a cold brew and the safety of the sun umbrellas.

The north side of the beer garden is the business end, lined with grey and blue plastic jiffy johns; on warm days, they turn into scorching hot chemical-scented saunas. God help anyone who’s unfortunate enough to get stuck in one.

Not my finest sartorial moment but at least I had cider.
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The Deep-Level Mine Geologist

Things Geologists Do. Part 2.

Earth scientists are a well-educated bunch, although we don’t always come across as clever when we’re 5 beers in to our cups. Most geologists –other than self-taught prospectors- have some form of university degree. Many of my colleagues were so enamored with the University study-drink-drink-more-study-repeat routine that they did what I did, and went back to university to earn a master’s degrees or doctorate on top of their undergrad’ degrees. Clever bunch, geologists. But eventually, assuming you have no wish to be an academic geologist or a waiter, reality bites and some sort of salaried earth science career is needed to fund the pub breaks.

A pint of beer.
I hate work but I have to fund this somehow.

In June 1984, much to my surprise, I graduated with a decent degree. A few months later I was poking forlornly around the City of London, knocking on doors and handing out a naively-bad resume to any mining company that would take it. I got my break when Anglo American interviewed me minutes after I walked into their head office looking for anyone from HR to talk to. A month later I was on a plane to Jo’burg to start a 3-year contract as a mine geologist in the deep-level gold mines in what was then the Western Transvaal (now Gauteng Province). After 2 days in the city signing paperwork, I was shipped off to the small mining town of Orkney, where I was billeted in the single mineworkers hostel and unceremoniously thrown into the deep end as a shaft geologist on Vaal Reefs 5 Shaft.

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Normal Service Will Be Resumed

at the end of Hadrian’s Wall

For the next week, give or take a day, my wife and I will be hobbling along the full 135km length of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, pork pie in one hand and well-thumbed Ordnance Survey route map in the other.

Anybody seen a wall? I’ve lost my map.

As I’m sure you’ve already spotted, this raises 3 questions. Who was Hadrian? Why did he have a wall? Where is the wall? And why would I want to hike it? OK, that’s 4 questions.

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