Who among us is a mechanical engineer, or a motor enthusiast, or maybe even just someone with a keen interest in things that make a noise? Well not me that's for sure. I don't know my arse from my elbow when it comes to anything motor driven. And I admit to being part of the throw away generation. You know, if it doesn't work throw it out and get a new one. Oh sure I'll give a broken thing a bit of a slap about and maybe turn it off and on a couple of times and maybe then drop it from a small height, but if it is still not working then it hits the wheelie bin, cos well it's bloody broken.
And I am not a tinkerer. I have never pulled a motor apart and tried to shove it back together and have never saved a thing with a broken motor so I could use it for parts. I mean how would that work anyway? A broken down sewing machine is resurrected by fitting pieces from a blender? I guess it's possible I just don't know.
And my life is not the poorer for this info void. So long as the things I want to work, actually do work then I am happy, and if there is a new toy I fancy having a go at, I'll teach myself how it works, like techno theatre stuff and sometimes a bit of film editing or maybe how to operate a new sewing machine. But I put my hand up and admit that I do not curl up on the couch and dive into an encyclopedia about motors or watch You Tube videos about how to fix ANYTHING. Sure You Tube is a fun way to spend a while and I have watched 'how to' demos but only Nigella cooking easy meringues cos well she's NIGELLA after all.
Horses for courses though. I know not many people want to spend time splashing paint onto a canvas, and playing with children leaves a lot of people cold, and most people just don't get my tapping tapping away here, so I get it that people do weird shit in their spare time.
But my weird got truly weird last night.
There are not many among us who would figure driving their wee car into position as 'Stop Right There Thank You Very Much' - are you singing? would be a good way to spend the evening. Let me paint a picture for you. My car is a wee Mazda 2. I love it cos it's small and easy to park, front in, back in, it's easy peasey. It's short and low to the ground like me and not the least bit intimidating. Suffice to say that road rage wars would never be won by a Mazda 2 driver, unless they had left it at home and were out and about in their truck. So it's not the sort of thing generally first thought of as a weapon.
But last night me and my trusty Mazda put ourselves in harms way in a protest about the fucking noise.
As if the usual noise - I can't believe I am calling it USUAL, cos let's face it there's fuck all USUAL about 100 DB puncturing the evening calm, wasn't enough, last night they thought it a good idea to rev the shit out of 3 industrial machines right outside our house.
Now if this was those fools on Top Gear or whatever it's called now BBC have stopped funding it, were lining up for a race in these machines then some revving would be in order, maybe even a few minutes of it so that the film crews could get enough footage from enough angles, but then the race would begin and the chaos would ensue and probably one or more of the machines would end up, up-side-down in a ditch, cos it's the doing not the idling that most impresses the TV punters. And people in general I find. People prefer to see some outcome rather than just hear the noise, unless you are sitting behind the enormous amps in the cheap seats at a heavy metal concert, then the noise is all you've got.
I get it that sometimes machines need to warmed up. I get it. But how warmed up do you reckon a machine would be after 90 minutes? If footballers warmed up at top speed for 90 minutes there'd be no game. If I warmed my Mazda up for 90 minutes before taking to the road, I'd very soon run out of petrol, and if I warmed myself up for 90 minutes before going hard at something like the packing of boxes, then every single thing we own would still be in the cupboards, cos I'd be fucked and no packing at all would be done.
A 90 minute warm up? No amount of suspension of disbelief is helping me here.
But do you know what's heartening? PC PLOD, the TMR paid body guard with a gun, well when he arrived with his possie of machine drivers, who were not as you might have thought overseeing the revving of their steers, he did so with the full weight of all his years of extra- curricular attention to the mechanations of large rolling machines. Isn't it good to know that not only are the TMR Body guards in the QPS uniforms, willing and able to issue meaningless 'Move On Orders' and organise towing of cars and threaten the arrest of law abiding people, but they also know ALL ABOUT INDUSTRIAL MACHINES. Yep Plod knew that machines had to be warmed up, and that 90 minutes was the accepted norm. Yep he knew this because he was an expert, or else some other dick on the road further away told him to say that, and he, being the gormless fuck that he is, just parroted it off.
Now if an expert wants to let me know that in fact 90 minutes is the standard time it takes for these machines to reach peak performance then I will apologise to Plod. But it all seems unlikely especially if you consider the ambient temperature last night must have been in the high 20s - no snow possible for, oh maybe a century.
These 3 machines were all idling away, spewing out fumes and noise for an hour and half - not in an industrial zone, but in a quiet residential street. And they are all lined up again for tonight!
And if just once in more than a fucking YEAR someone from the work zone actually admitted that it was pretty extreme and unnecessary and fucking apologise, it would go a long way to soothing the irrits.
'They have work to do'
'They will be finished soon'
'There is no other way'
One more night, and as TMR pays someone to keep track of my posts I can only imagine that they will really ramp up the noise tonight as a final farewell to 'That bitch from number 11'. I truly hope that Karma bites 'em all on the arse and that at the very least they suffer permanent deafness and that no-one will ever have sex with 'em again cos they stink of diesel and the sweat produced from counting all the ill gotten cash from the public purse.
And did I mention that they opened the road yesterday? Not fucking finished by a long way, but by all means do open it. An 8 month job overruns by 5 months, and it's still not finished. Only on a government job! They must all be so fucking proud!
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