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Tour Guides Gone Bad

A Thames Odyssey

Billy Beefeater. He’s funny and he knows it.

A good tour guide who can educate, amuse and engage all at once is a rare beast. Take Billy Beefeater, for example, a former combat medic with the Royal Army Medical Corp. who insults large groups of tourists at various scenic spots around the Tower of London. The man is a comic genius. He knows his audience; he knows his subject inside out -lopped off heads and disembowelled traitors- and his delivery is split-second. He’s so good, I’m guessing he could make a useful living as an in-demand after-dinner speaker if he ever decided that professional tourist-abuse was losing its lustre. If you ever decide to visit the Tower, find out what time his tour starts. You won’t regret it.

*Serves you right for being pro-Brexit.*

A bad tour guide can turn any tourist attraction into 30 minutes of living hell. Fascinating history can be rendered anemically dull, and amazing architecture becomes mere detail, lost in the background as you’re herded from one boring stop to another, learning nothing in the process. But every so often, I’ve come across guides who are so spectacularly bad, so completely uninformed, you can’t help but admire them for trying, even though you know full well it’s going to go hideously wrong at some point.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The 80s

Hands up if you’ve ever hitch hiked anywhere? You know, the old-fashioned thumb up, side-of-the-road-have-back-pack-will-travel way? We’ve all thumbed a last-minute ride into town to go drinking, but that’s not what I mean. No, I mean long distance stuff, going hundreds of miles, at the mercy of truck drivers, motorway service stations, and dodgy slip roads.

In the early eighties, I was hard up geology student in Portsmouth and I hitch hiked regularly. It was a rite of passage for a lot of fellow students who were strapped for cash. Train ticket, or beer and food?

The Things Geologists Do.

Last week, a regular Urbancrows reader emailed me to suggest I write about what minerals geologists actually do. Not a bad idea thinks I, from up high on my perch in the Urbancrows e-rookery. So I’ve decided to take him up on the idea with an informal series of blog posts, starting soon, loosely themed “The Things Geologists Do”. It’ll be based largely on my own experiences since I graduated in 1984, but I’d welcome suggestions or questions from non-geologists who might find themselves puzzled by the activities of their rock-hound cousins.

*Hi tech geology style. My well-worn Estwing. And a rock.*

Enchanted April.

Stock picking club update.

What follows is an edited version of my monthly junior mining update to the members of the steak-eating-red-wine-drinking stock picking club informally known as the “Get Rich Short Our Picks Club”. All names of members have been removed and some of my more abusive comments have been diplomatically edited out too. Which is a shame really. I’d love to leave them in so you can all see how bad this motley collection of mining experts is at choosing winners. Anyhoo, here’s the table, dateline end of April.

*The “Get Rich Short Our Stocks” portfolio in gory smell-o-vision.*

When Turkey Meets Italy.

I’m a wannabe classical guitar player. The trouble is, I’m too bloody old to practice enough to get to the standard I’d like to reach. So, I lied. I’m not really a guitar player. But I do listen to a lot of classical guitar and have, over time, convinced myself that I’m a talented-albeit-vicarious musician. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, I know.

What is a Geologist?

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in April, known as Geologists’ Day, and rightly celebrated around the world by millions of people. It was originally designated a holiday by the Soviet Union under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, a notoriously jolly chap with unbelievably big eye brows. I hope, wherever you live, you tracked down your closest geologist, and gave them a big hug and a giant sloppy kiss. We deserve it because we add so much to your lives, if only you knew.

*Brezhnev once said:*
*Да, я люблю геологов*

I Signed A Tortoise.

Actually I autographed more than one.

See, if you thrash around in the bush in the warmer parts of Turkey and Iran for long enough, you’ll eventually find wild tortoises. Shy creatures, they mind their own business -as you’d expect- crawling languidly around, looking like rocks with legs, although rocks move a bit faster going downhill. They can’t exactly run away quickly, so once you spot one, you’ll definitely catch it. I found them all the time, particularly in Iran.

They don’t much like people, but their only active defence mechanism, other than retreating in to their shell and making some unbelievably non-terrifying hissing sounds, is to wee all over anything that tries to pick them up. Which for a while was me, until I learned my lesson.

Impressions of PDAC, Part 2

The presence or absence of PDAC crowds is something of a bell-weather for the state of our industry. It correlates, in part, to how much money we’ve collectively raised in the last 12 months, and also how the coming year of global mineral exploration activity is going to look. Attendance matches the global exploration financing figures quite closely, albeit with about a one year lag. Which doesn’t bode well for the business of discovery in 2019. PDAC compile convention attendance figures on their website, which I’ve graphed below for 2010 to 2019, alongside the global exploration financing stats from 2011 to 2017.

*PDAC attendees, 2009 to 2019. Mass delusion in action.*
*Source: PDAC website.*

Best Not To Hang Around.

My Iranian sojourn in the mid-1990s has become a rich source of travel stories for me. I spent the best part of a year in the country, over about a 3-year period, travelling extensively in the north, based in the small farming hub of Takab in West Azerbaijan province, 5-6 hours drive northwest of Tehran. The people of Takab are Turkic and Kurdish. The Kurds are easy people to spot, dressing far more colourfully than the Turkic or Persian people. There is also a small minority of Zoroastrians, one of the oldest known religions, who worship at fire temples and sometimes still leave the bodies of their dead in high places for scavenging birds to eat.

*A “volcano” close to the Unesco site, Takht-e-Soleyman.*

Hormonal kebabs

Tehran, dateline mid-1990s. I was ensconced in the not-totally-fabulous Esteghlal International Hotel, biding my time, waiting for a drill rig to be released from customs clearance which was taking weeks. Fact is, there wasn’t a great deal to do in Tehran if you don’t speak the language, and you’re not in to strolling around the polluted streets or drinking tea in one of the many tea houses. I’d been to the carpet bazaar a few times and bought some antique rugs. I’d seen the crown jewels (they make the British crown jewels look like baubles). I’d visited the Shah’s palaces and the incredible carpet museum. The only thing left was to get to know the amazing food and try to get drunk, which is possible in Tehran with the right contacts.

Category: Me

Tour Guides Gone Bad

A Thames Odyssey

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A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The 80s

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The Things Geologists Do.

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Enchanted April.

Stock picking club update.

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When Turkey Meets Italy.

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What is a Geologist?

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I Signed A Tortoise.

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Impressions of PDAC, Part 2

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Best Not To Hang Around.

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Hormonal kebabs

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A Thames Odyssey

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Stock picking club update.

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