Category: Me

War Graves Along The Wire Road.

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) might recall a few stories about my time in western Pakistan in the late 1990s. It was bloody amazing; rough country but an extraordinary experience, except for the nasty gut bug I caught which followed me back to Budapest and then set about exhausting the local toilet paper supply.

Would I go back there? No. It’s even more nuts today than the 1990s and back then it was bloody weird, with drug runners, Taliban incursions, nuclear tests and the odd hotel bombing thrown in for good measure.

I prospected for copper on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan; the long, straight east-west stretch in northern Balochistan. It’s an arbitrary frontier created in 1893 in the depths of the Great Game between Britain and Russia, pencilled in on a map of the subcontinent by one Sir Henry Mortimer Durand GCMG, KCSI, KCIE, PC.

Sir Henry & Abdur Rahman getting ready to draw lines on a map.

Sir Mortimer Pencil Line

Sir Mortimer served as the Foreign Secretary of India from 1884 to 1894. He was a stuffy looking British civil servant in the best up-tight Victorian tradition and about as pro-Empire as you could get. His pencil line legacy -originally known as the Durand line- ran for 1,660 miles, cutting through traditional tribal territories and largely ignoring the wishes of the local savages. Its intent was to demarcate the areas of political influence between the British in India and one Abdur Rahman Khan, the Afghan Iron Emir; the man who finally united Afghanistan’s warring tribes. The line still exists although it’s now the modern border between the 2 countries and it still ignores the traditional tribal territories.

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Never Judge A Book

God, I Feel Old.

This is the second of 2 posts on the joys of interviewing & hiring geologists and engineers. See also Arms and the Man.

I’ve finally admitted an awful truth to myself; it’s 40 years since I left high school. In my head, I’m still a spotty 17-year-old idiot, albeit one who’s wondering why he suddenly has moobs, grey hair and a large, malignant bum growth called a mortgage. Give or take the odd break for post graduate studies, I’m now 37 years into my earth science career; 37 wonderful, peripatetic years of travel, strange alcoholic drinks, and disturbing intestinal nasties.

At Grammar School, I excelled in one thing and one thing only. Mediocrity. Sports? Too skinny and uncoordinated. Academics? Nah. I was a shit study and didn’t exactly thrive in the Hogwarts-style red brick school environment I was in; my exam results made the attainment of slightly-below-average-grades look like lofty ambition. Healthy living? Nope. I smoked from 14 years old, and me and my mates were in the pub as soon as we looked old enough and had sufficient moola to buy a pint and a bag of crisps. To paraphrase the great soccer player George Best, most of my money I spent on beer, ciggies and girlfriends and the rest I wasted.

Travel. And lots of strange alcoholic drinks.
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Rude Words & Geology

I was back home in Brexit land in October and again in November. In between moping on the forecourts of sucked-dry gas stations, getting rained on in Wales, and being depressed in downtrodden Stoke on Trent, I had plenty of time to ponder the curious world of British place names (as you do).

So many jokes so little time

The UK is full of wonderfully rude place names; there are so many that one intrepid individual, Paul Taylor, recently embarked on a comprehensive tour of the smuttiest ones perched on a rather dodgy looking 50cc moped.

Bell End. It’s real.

Mr. Taylor started in Shitterton and ended up -fittingly- in the pleasant hamlet of Bell End. Along the way he stopped in The Knob in King’s Sutton, Butthole Lane in Shepshed, Titty Ho, Cockermouth, and Minge Lane. Genius. I’ve been to Cockermouth, and yes, I admit I sniggered as we drove into the village past the name sign.

The disciplines of geology and mining are not without their double entendres, but remember, at best mining people are a beer-swilling puerile bunch not widely known for their intelligent, penetrating humour. True, there are plenty of words that will raise a chuckle from them, but it’s stuff that would make most normal people stare at each other in baffled incomprehension.

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Drillholes, Magma & Megawatts

I bloody love Iceland

It’s full of rocks and puffins and volcanoes and ponies and geysers and more volcanoes and stuff. And it’s a geologist’s wet dream, although I don’t count sedimentologists as real geologists so you lot can stop nodding in agreement.

What right-minded nose comber can resist active volcanoes and recent lava flows still warm under foot? The Fagradalsfjall volcano, which has been erupting for a while now, haunts my erotic dreams at night – orange, fiery, sinuous rivers of lovely lava filmed in pornographic close-up slo-mo by kamakazi drones.

Oh yeah baby…
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Expansionist Tripe

Social media is full of idiots. Doesn’t matter what topic you’re following -astronomy, koala bears, aliens or cross-dressing nuns – someone has a stupid fringe opinion that they’re going to try to ram down your throat.

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I’m a intellectual, innit?

In a moment of rashness a few years back, I joined some Facebook geology groups. Learning Geology Community (53k members), Geology and Geologists (123k members), and Fossils Rocks & Minerals (27k members). I wanted to spread the word to all those lucky people about my blog (ha, ha, good plan), and maybe mentor a few newbie geologists. Thanks for the help Uncle Ralph!

It didn’t take long before I was filtering out posts from lazy students trying to get their homework done for free, and lots of “please tell me what is value?” posts with fuzzy photos of grubby little grey chunks they found in a field and think is a meteorite and not a grubby little grey chunk.

And I wasn’t the only one hoping to educate the masses. Pseudoscience posts soon started appearing in my feed; so-called geologists lurking on the dodgy fringes of our fair science, pushing an alternate version of geological reality. Flat-earthers, creationists, climate change deniers- it’s a long list- but one flavour pops up far too often for my liking.

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The Heart of The Matter

Adventures with A Fib

It’s been a few months since I published anything on my motley blog. I’ve been distracted by on going health issues that bullied their way into the tranquility of the Urbancrows e-rookery.

Almost one year ago, I walked into my doctor’s surgery with a sinus infection and came out with a heart problem. It was a Friday toward the end of October, and I was definitely not a happy camper. I was sweating. My skin was an attractive shade of corpse grey, and I was breathing hard -all of which I put down to the rivers of goop coming out of my sinuses, wending their merry way to my lungs.

Cough please.

My doctor, who’s Russian, was listening to my chest to see if the sinus infection had spread to my lungs. She took a listen with the stethoscope, then listened again all the while looking more and more worried. The cold end of the stethoscope was moving rapidly across my back as I breathed in an out, accompanied by the ominous sound of anxious tutting. Bloody hell, I thought, my lungs must be bad -my head flooded with images of a murky swamp full of mucus and bacteria.  She sat up, took a long look at my pallid, sweaty face and muttered:

“Listen to me carefully. You must go to hospital right now.”

The sinus infection was obviously worse than I thought.

“Isn’t hospital a bit drastic? Can’t you just give me some antibiotics? Last time I had an infection you gave me Amoxicillin.” I said, coughing and hacking and sweating a bit more for good measure.

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My Wartime Roots

My maternal ancestors were ethnic Germans, deported from Czechoslovakia in 1946. This is my mother’s story.

In a departure from the usual mining-related sarcastic drivel, here is a short story about my mother’s dim and distant origins -and hence mine too- which are rooted in one of the key historical events of the 20th Century; the onset of World War 2. Anyone raised in Europe, with parents or grandparents in their 80s who are still alive, has a link to the war because directly or indirectly, it affected everybody on the continent.

The Catholic church in Graslitz where most of my ancestors live today.

I should note that this is a very superficial backward glance at a critical period in European history. I deliberately make no judgements on the horrific events of that period -my aim in writing this down was simply to document the family’s experiences for my 2 sons while I still have access to real memories from the time. To be fair, my mum was very small – only 6 when the war ended and 7 when the family was deported- so the stories are patchy and remembered through the eyes of a child but enriched with details gleaned from her parents and historical archives available on the internet.

Out Of Graslitz / Kraslice

For most of my adult life I’ve been aware that my mother’s roots are German-Czech, and that the family ended up in Germany in 1946 but some of the detail was lacking (for me at least.) She was born in 1939, a tiny hamlet called Silberbach on the outskirts of a small town called Graslitz in the far west of Czechoslovakia, 5km from the German border. Now known as Kraslice, it’s nestled in wooded hills and valleys; the town name may derive from the medieval German word “Graz”, a pine forest, which fits the countryside, but it may also mean small castle. The family were affluent ethnic Germans, with a thriving business making lace and musical instruments.

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A Crow Update

There’s Been A Death In The Family

The name of this blog is Urban Crows; a name I picked for its obvious links to earth science. Ha ha.

Three years ago, as a distraction from work, I started blogging purely for my own enjoyment. Could I write? Did I have the discipline to write regularly? Could I write anything remotely engaging that anyone would read other than my mum?

I had the naive goal of churning out lots of fascinating essays about the crows that visit my urban back yard, pushing back the frontiers of corvid behavioural science along the way. What a compelling subject, thought I.

One of my urban crows. I call it Blackie

But despite my best efforts to keep the blog a geology-free zone, it was hijacked, tied up and unceremoniously thrown head first back into the familiar world of mining and exploration by a couple of pieces on the industry. Much to my amazement, the mining stuff gained me a lot of subscribers, so the crows were quickly banished back to the roost. Know your audience is a key rule; go where the readers are. So be it. From then on I wrote about mining and geology with the odd piece on my musical diversions.

Crow Poo

Having said that, it’s well past time for a crow update. Things have moved on. Crows have come and gone -although they’re all black, the same size and sound the same so I can’t really be sure that this statement holds water- but more recently a slow moving tragedy has played itself out on my garage roof.

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Please pass the salt.

They Thought They’d Get Away With It.

Names, dates, locations have been excised from this story to protect anyone who needs protecting -yes, even the guilty parties. People and companies have come and gone since it happened, but other than that, it’s a true tail of mineral malfeasance. This piece would have failed miserably without the crucial input from 2 good industry friends. They know who they are. A big thank you to both of you.

“When markets are hot, scoundrels come out of the woodwork.” Northern Miner, June 1996

For every major gold discovery, there are dozens of failed projects. The exploration business is actually very adept at not finding viable mineral deposits. Most projects fail for want of enough tons to make an economic mine. Some may be big, but they lack the metal grade needed to justify extraction. Others fail because of local politics or remoteness. But a few, a special few, fail because they were never real in the first place. They were simply fictions created by crooked management or a scoundrel out to make a quick buck.

Field geologists actively failing to find anything in Yemen, 1990s.

The history of mining is littered with scams. The ones that happened a hundred years ago have become mining lore, acquiring a patina of wild west romanticism with time. Back then, it was a world of snake oil salesmen – Mark Twain’s liar in a hole snaring unsuspecting patsies. Fast forward to the present day, and we rightly regard more recent deceptions as criminal and decidedly unromantic. It’s worse living in Vancouver, because we – or maybe someone we know- could well have a direct personal connection with the perpetrator(s); junior mining is a small world with few places to hide if you’re found out.

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Superstition & Mining

It all spells trouble.

Miners have more than their fair share of superstitions. The nasty, smelly bowels of the earth aren’t kind to those who choose to grub around down there, and the more you dig into the old lore, the more you realise how hard a job it was. Death was everywhere. Most miners were lucky to live past the ripe old age of 40. If rockfalls or dead air didn’t get them, silicosis was waiting in line, so it’s no surprise that they looked for signs to warn them away from danger and protect what scant longevity they had.

No way am I going in there… Nope.

I’m a scientist at heart and not generally a believer in the supernatural. Even so, I do hold a few superstitions; ones that I like to think are grounded in common sense. For example, never stick your head in a honey wagon tank. It’s really unlucky and your friends will stop inviting you to the pub. Or, another one that’s seen me safely through to a ripe old middle age: don’t smoke huge cigars in fiery coal mines.

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