VIC32

Is this about computers? Well no, not really, but it may be a chance to say something of them. Actually, I don’t imagine there ever was a VIC32 but Commodore’s VIC-20 was said to be the first computer to sell a million units.

My first experience of a computer was when the school I worked in bought one. I was horribly unimpressed but then we got a BBC model B and I was told to take it home and learn how to use it. I guess it was 1981 and in those days a computer did not include any display – you used your own TV for that. Nor did it have any bulk storage. You used your own cassette tape recorder for that. People who remember those days will recall that there was a real problem getting the computer and the tape recorder to ‘talk’ to each other. I could not load the Welcome Cassette which came with the BBC B and I felt very fraught and frustrated. But then some determination set in. ‘Hang it’, I thought. ‘I’ll write my own program’.

I was thoroughly proud of my first effort in which I got the computer to draw the outline shape of a church and then made the bells ring. And wonder of wonders – I could save this little program off on my tape recorder AND reload it. The trouble was, I was hooked. Writing little programs became a passion – but I had to pass the BBC B on to some other user. I needed my own computer.

But the BBC model B at £400 was out of my price range. I got its baby brother, the Acorn Electron. The programs I had written all worked on it.

For a while, in the mid 1980s, I was making money writing programs and writing for computer magazines. Sometimes my monthly income from the computer matched my teacher’s salary. But I was caught in that trap of being a youngish dad with wife, children and mortgage. I didn’t have the nerve to chuck in the steady job and that was probably just as well.

Whoops! Let’s get back to VIC32. She’s a boat and I saw her at Crinnan in Scotland back in 2001. I liked her. And here she is.

She’s a Clyde Puffer and was built in 1943 – a coal fired steam ship which, as I write is 70 years old. She may be the last of her kind of ship still to be in service. She certainly has an impressive front end!

She was moored alongside Duke of Normandy II – the pair of them make a lovely picture.

Looking at 2013 web sites it seems VIC32 steams on – and takes fare paying holiday makers. She could almost tempt me to go cruising!

Sharpness

Sharpness is, or was, the site of quite a major dock. It’s sited in Gloucestershire, quite well up the River Severn about 20 miles from Bristol and about 15 from Gloucester.

I think I am telling a tale of a lost world here. It is lost because I don’t think the commercial dock sees much traffic. If you find Sharpness on an on-line aerial photo it seems devoid of shipping. But the lost world also includes a world where trust and openness have been lost. Back in the early 70s there seemed to be open access at the dockside.

Well maybe it was the end of the line for Sharpness Docks. Another railway had come to the end of its life in in 1960. There had been a rail bridge across the river just to the north of the docks. In thick fog, some river barges missed the docks and smashed into the bridge, knocking part of it down. The bridge was never rebuilt. In fact it was demolished. In the photo above you can see the bridge piers either side of the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal – probably the intended route of the barges.

But back to the docks. You really got in amongst the shipping back in the 70s.

That’s a plimsoll mark showing when a boat is safely laden.  The LR stands for Lloyd’s Register. The other lines show the loading level for different sea conditions. If you loaded the ship so that TF was level with the water in tropical fresh water, then it would have risen to WNA in the more buoyant ‘winter – North Atlantic.  The mark is named after Samuel Plimsoll who was concerned about shipping safety in the 1860s.

Forgive me for liking dredgers. No doubt they were essential on the River Severn, to keep a shipping channel deep enough. There didn’t seem to be anybody else about. Had I chosen to, I could have wandered all over that dredger, but I was trusted, so I didn’t.

These ships by the dockside were really quite large. They tower over my wife. Aha! It was the maxi-coat era. That one was made by my wife.

Crossrail is all the thing in London. Sharpness had it years ago. The timber, unloaded from ships seemed quite unsecured.

I love that signal even if I’m not sure what might have been controlled by it.

I’m so glad we took this wander at Sharpness some 40 or more years ago.  I’ve not been back, but I bet you can’t do it now.

The S S Great Britain – Then and Now

Yes, this is a ship – a ship in very poor condition but then it was some 130 years old and had spent some of those years sunk. She had been used as a warehouse in the Falkland Islands and was scuttled in 1937.

In 1970 she was brought back to her building place in Bristol. I visited in about 1974 and took the photo.

Now it just happens that I took a very similar view in 2007. By then I had forgotten my old colour slide and that re-emerged in a bit of slide copying this year (2013). Thirty three years have gone by between the two photos. It is, I suppose, quite a long time, but by heck there have been changes.

This is the deck of the SS Great Britain, Brunel’s iron hulled, screw driven ship of 1843. In 1974 she was a rusted hulk not long back from her watery ‘grave’ in the Falkland Islands. In 2007 she’s restored and resplendent. Not only is the top deck perfect, all of the under decks are ‘done’ as well. On the day we were there we couldn’t visit the dining room because a sumptuous wedding feast was in preparation. But all of the cabins and berths are done up and look much as they would have done back in Brunel’s day. SS Great Britain is a wonderful living museum and well worth a visit

And then note the houses on the hill beyond. Well what a difference some paint makes. In 1974 they looked tawdry and run down. The same buildings now (or in 2007) look vibrant and cared for. I guess it’s a bit of simple city transformation.

The then and now aspect of these pictures really is pure chance. The 1974 image was taken on my old Canon Demi using Agfachrome film. The 2007 picture was taken with a 6mpixel Olympus digital camera.