Category: Me

A Rocky Start in Turkey*

Turkey (*now known officially as Türkiye) -a country I know fairly well and have always loved visiting- has been on my mind recently for both good and sad reasons. I’d just finished this piece when word broke about the terrible earthquake in southeast Turkey and the awful loss of life it caused. If you can, please donate to the relief effort via the Red Cross here. And thanks to my “abi” Dave C. for the photos in this piece. For the life of me I have no idea where my photos of Turkey have gone and it’s pissing me off.

Slogging up a steep forested path in northern Türkiye, I was focused on the outcrops along the side of the path, checking for signs of mineralization. It was a dry, crisp mountain morning as my Turkish colleague and I headed on up through the woods toward the tree line, crossing creeks clogged with avalanche debris. I was feeling a bit worse for wear -still on the mend after a 2-day bout of food poisoning I picked up just after I arrived in Ankara- so the walk was a welcome distraction from the aches and pains.

The high Pontide mountains of northeast Türkiye. Dreadful place not worth visiting. Really.

As the new boy in the field office, I was paired with a chain-smoking experienced local geologist. He was a small chap who bore an unsettling resemblance to Hassan Al-Assad, the murderous former president of Syria and I never quite shook the feeling that I was doing field work with a moonlighting genocidal dictator. He smoked a lot -a 40 a day habit- so we were permanently shrouded in a blue cloud of Marlborough smoke which put a bit of a nicotine-scented damper on the fresh forest air. He also ate very little during the day as the nicotine suppressed his appetite. I’d have to insist we stop for lunch: me, a can of tuna and packet of Ulker-brand chocolate biscuits washed down with cherry juice from a box, and him 5 more ciggies. I’d sit there munching on oily fish, praying that he didn’t commit an atrocity while my back was turned.

The Black Sea coast of Türkiye courtesy of the googleizer.
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How Not To Drill A Project Pt 1

I was never really one for keeping a diary; I’m fundamentally too lazy, and not nearly introspective enough to sit down every day after my sausage-and-mash supper to scribble down the day’s events. I tried once when I was working in Turkey and ended up with half a dozen pages of forced, trite, verbal garbage about an ex-girlfriend that made me cringe when I read it back a few weeks later. I binned it. With hindsight, I wish I had kept at it because this blog relies largely on my rapidly fading memories of nearly 40 years in geology and mining. It’s become a sort of “hindsight diary” reliant on my decades-old impressions rather than in-the-moment detail.

This is why I never kept a diary.

The only time I did keep a regular diary, I had no idea that I was doing it. In 1996 I was sent to Iran by Anglo American to supervise a drill program at a gold project called Zarshuran in the north of the country. It didn’t go well. A perfect storm of awful rock conditions and stunningly inept drill company management had our number before we’d even started. We were doomed but we just didn’t realise it yet. The drillers were the most comical I have ever had the misfortune to hire; their lack of talent and common sense was a wonder to behold, and the managers couldn’t be trusted to sit the right way on a toilet. We only drilled 7 holes in 3 long, ball-breaking months of drilling and those holes cost us/me a whole world of pain and frustration, yielding shitty core recoveries and not enough data to make a firm decision on the future of the project.

Arsenic mining at Zarshuran

I faxed a routine daily drill report from our camp camp back to head office in London via a dodgy satellite phone at the camp: I had to lean out of the cabin window and press on a specific point on the antenna while it was operating otherwise it wouldn’t work, and it gave up functioning all together at sub-zero temperatures. As the late Iranian summer dragged into autumn, and we were only getting 1-2m core a day, the water pipes began to freeze overnight, and my daily reports got more and more fraught before the drilling finally ground to a halt in November as winter set it. I can only imagine how much the London team dreaded the daily chronicle of desperation spewing out of the fax machine. Happily, my boss at the time (thanks Dave) had the presence of mind to a) recognise that I was documenting my own slow decline into total lunacy, and b) to keep the daily reports and bind them together into a single document; an ad hoc diary of my misadventures which was presented to me at the office Christmas party later that year in Budapest. This piece is based on the daily faxes which I still have, 25 years later.

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The Beer Quarry

Of Limestone, Quarrymen and Apple Laxative

Today’s news is all thoroughly depressing. The BBC is spouting on about the war in the Ukraine. There’s ongoing chaos on Britain’s rail network. Global warming won’t bloody go away, and -more importantly- why the fuck is Gareth Southgate still picking the human bollard Harry Maguire for England’s centre back? Good God, the misery never ends. To cap it all I was locked in a hotel in Frankfurt recently for a series of dull business meetings, sustained by a diet of luke-warm frisbee-sized schnitzel and soggy potatoes. Yum.

Small wonder then if my mind drifts back to a time when the world was gentler and kinder, and life moved more slowly, unspoiled by the daily horrors of the internet. Back to a time of golden wheat fields framed by hawthorn hedgerows, of windy cliff tops with endless azure ocean views, country villages and welcoming pubs. Yes, I’m talking last July when I spent 2 weeks hiking through the glorious English countryside with not a care in the world other than where the next Cornish pastie was coming from, and could I really smell that bad after 7 hours of walking? (A. Yes.)

West Bay. I want to go back.
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Gin & Geologists Don’t Mix Well.

Most earth scientists are deeply passionate about their science, treating it as a vocation -a true calling- and not just any old degree. And they tend to feel the same way about beer, applying just as much discipline and passion to the task of finding a well-pulled pint as they do to ferreting around for a nice trilobite specimen in the local quarry. I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in Merrie Olde England all geology students possess a mental map of the country based on 2 priorities: rocks and pubs. We know which pubs to visit in any town that’s close to an important geological location, and no college field trip is complete without at least one solid session in a well-known local watering hole.

Geologists drinking beer (good) not gin (bad)

In my formative high-school years, pre-geology, when we wanted to get really trashed we tended to eschew beer in favour of cheap gin or vodka. And if you’ve ever had a proper gin drunk, you’ll know that’s a really stupid teenage thing to do, inevitably ending with a couple of hours crawling-on-the-bathroom-floor-begging-for-death and then a cataclysmic hangover the next day. I vaguely remember a teenage episode involving me, my friends, and a bottle of gin, followed by a long sojourn down the side of the house, where I lay on the cold path head down in a drain, talking to myself until my parents carried me in doors.

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The last shift.

My last shift working as an underground geologist wasn’t planned. It just sort of happened. In October 1987, I had 1 month left on a 3-year contract in South Africa. I was looking forward to a change of scene: 3 years in Apartheid-era Transvaal was enough and I needed to get out. I was feeling disconnected from the UK and needed a London fix. I’d already applied to the University of Alberta to enrol for a master’s degree program and the signs were good that I was heading to Canada so mentally I was checked out.

I had the first 2 months of the rest-of-my-life all planned out. Young and stupid with an interest in history, I was off on a once-in-a-lifetime five-week trip backpacking around Egypt and Israel. And then it would be back to London to hang out with my girlfriend for a few months of beer, concerts, and fun! fun! fun! But first I had to negotiate the perils of the Last Shift.

Me in Egypt. Honest.

There was a lot of superstition surrounding the last underground shift. People didn’t telegraph their last one; they tended to keep it quiet. No need to tempt fate and encourage the Rockburst Gods or the Demons-who-make-shit-fall-on-your-head by blabbing about how it would all soon be over, right?

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A Cornish BroMoon

Four sweaty men and a few pints of cider.

Two years ago, in a moment of remarkable prescience for yours truly, I had an idea. Good ideas don’t come often to me so I had to act fast. Figuring (correctly) that COVID was going to last a while, I decided I needed something to look forward to other than a) pandemic weight gain and b) the weekly Okanagan doorstep wine delivery which was becoming a little too regular and comfortable. A walking trip would be ideal I thought, but when, where and who with?

Cornwall gives England the finger.

I contacted three good friends, all geologists like me, over WhatsApp.

Chaps, I said. We need to something to look forward to other than a) our pandemic weight gain b) and the weekly doorstep wine delivery.

Agreed, they said in a WhatsApp-in-unison sort of way.

So, says I, why don’t we book a walking trip in the UK for the summer of 2022? How about a week or two hiking along the Cornwall / Devon coast? If we book now we can pick the optimum window for a good old-fashioned sunburn, like mid-July to early August.

Oh yes. We’re in if you book it! they replied somewhat cryptically.

Righty ho. I replied. Will do.

We’re leaving (hopefully) on an Air Canada jet plane
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Impressions of PDAC 2022

Line Ups, Cut Outs & Simulcasts

In this brave new COVID world, the threat of infectious diseases is everywhere. So, when Father’s Day weekend came around just post-PDAC I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I was sleeping in a partly finished bedroom, smelling slightly of ammonia, my face and hands covered with white spots. In a moment of rashness I’d told my wife -the mother of my 2 wonderful boys- I’d do anything for her so she sent me to Home Depot to buy a gallon of Pearl White Matt paint to freshen up the dreary basement bedrooms. A father’s work is never done.

Painting this gave me spots

PDAC is over for another year and the rigours of yet another 5 day trip to Toronto are finally behind me. It was good(ish) to get back in person to the concrete wasteland of Front Street: My colleagues and I skipped the on-line version in March 2021. Zoom fatigue was really beginning to bite so the thought of “standing” in a virtual booth for hours (which in reality meant sitting in my home office in boxers and a wrinkly shirt) waiting for e-Investors to google their way down Aisle 6 didn’t appeal.

Line Ups and More Damn Line Ups

In the week leading up to this year’s show, the Canadian press was replete with stories about the chaos at Lester Pearson airport in Toronto. Massive lines ups, lost luggage, absentee staff – CBC’s website would have us believe civilization was falling apart starting with Gate A36. Pierre Pollywotsit, the erstwhile conservative (the small c is deliberate) Prime Minister of Canada, even filmed himself striding purposefully -nay, manfully- through Lester Pearson pronouncing loudly and totally apolitically that it was the worst airport in the world. To which I can only say he’s never been to Karachi, Tehran, Newark, Leeds / Bradford, large chunks of Frankfurt airport, Manchester, Kabul and any one of a couple of hundred others. The man should get out more. Personally, I had no issues on arrival until that is we got to the baggage carousel and the de rigueur 50-minute wait for bags kicked in.

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The Conference Circuit

Normal service is resumed on the Urbancrows Blog. Lucky you.

October 2021 – the last day of the New Orleans Investment Conference. After 3 long days in the Hilton hotel on Poydrass Street I was into the home stretch. One more day and I’d be heading back to Raincouver and my relentlessly leaky kitchen roof. To maintain my laser focus on the job at hand -promoting my modest silver company- I decided fuzzily through drooping eye lids that a bucket of extremely strong coffee was called for. Off I went to the coffee shop.

The Hilton on Poydras Street in NO. A design classic.

Everything was going swimmingly. I’d been in the slow-moving java line for 30 minutes, sipping from a bottle of water, propped up at an alarming angle against a counter full of herbal tea boxes, chocolate covered beans and refillable mugs. I was drifting off into a terminal coma, convinced my time at the front of the line would never come when the man in front of me finally got to the counter. Leaning in close to the perspex-walled counter he uttered the words:

“I’d like a caramel frappacino with soy milk and no caramel. My wife doesn’t like the slimy feeling of the syrup.”

I snorted, narrowly avoiding spitting iced water all over his flabby, sweat-soaked back.

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Amber Alert

Along the edge of the tideline.

Shuffling along the winter tideline, layered in strata of sweaters and a damp anorak, I finally spotted what I was looking for; a small, rounded translucent orange pebble maybe 1cm across. It winked seductively at me from a pungent bed of rotting seaweed. I was thrilled. It was my first piece of North Sea amber.

I didn’t find amber often, just regularly enough to keep me coming back to the beach near my home in all weathers, stumbling along -eyes to the ground- oblivious to the cold and rain.

Portrait of the geologist as a young man about to get nerdy

It was one of my nerdier phases as a kid -and God knows I had some really sad ones. When my teenage buddies were leafing through torn copies of girly magazines and puffing on illicit ciggies down the alley behind Woolworths in Ramsgate, I could be found grubbing about on the beach looking for fossils and amber. (Yeah, well, mildly inaccurate. I did have a well-thumbed magazine stuffed under the mattress and I had started smoking at 14, so all is not lost.)

Guess What This Is?
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Local Justice, Bulgarian Style

It’s Bloody Grim

By the start of 1995, I’d been working as a geologist for Rio Tinto *boo hiss* in Turkey for about 18 months. I was unhappy with the terms of my employment -which were rubbish- and to top it off, Rio decided that year to “localise” a lot of expat contracts. This meant slashing salaries and generally being dicks to anyone who wasn’t a full-time expat employee under an existing contract. Hence, I was feeling less than 100% devoted to them.

And then the cavalry arrived. Some drinking buddies who ran Anglo American’s Turkish office *Yay! Huzzah!* offered me a job in Bulgaria. The offer was substantially higher than my my pitiful Rio salary, so after a quick nose scratch and some judicious chin rubbing -it would’ve been impolite to say yes immediately- I signed the contract and enjoyed a jolly nice dinner with my new boss Owen and his wife. A few weeks later I was across the border in Sofia, renting a grotty communist-era 3rd floor apartment. It was tastefully decorated, painted Moscow-approved peppermint green, offset by bright orange tiles in the bathroom.

Anglo’s eastern European team, mid 1990s. Many of these people no longer have hair. I do.

Post-communism Sofia was grim. It was grey and shabby, full of miserable people who’s social system had collapsed. There was no produce in the shops in the winter and only a handful of semi-decent pubs and restaurants to take the edge off the cold grimness. The gorillas of organised crime were everywhere; muscle-bound pricks in black leather jackets and heavy gold necklaces, driving shiny new western sports cars in a city full of ratty Trabbies.

Sweaty Geologists

Late that summer, our small team headed to the southwest of the country close to the borders with Greece and Macedonia to explore for sediment-hosted gold. We rented a house in the town of Ognyanovo, owned by the local mayor. An interesting character in the Borat style, he would show up at odd times in the evening with a couple of local prostitutes in tow who were offered to us gratis. His treat. There were regular heated but polite discussions between him and my Bulgarian colleagues as we declined the entertainment, but I will admit we were more than happy to accept his home-made slivovitz (plum schnapps.)

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