rockershovel's Blog

Aberdeen is one of the few British cities I've never been to, so can't really comment. My son was there a few weeks ago on a valve training course (he works in the oil & gas industry) and reckoned it was "a bit boring" (nightlife that is).

 

Not invited to the Christmas do in the canteen ? - that would not do at all - everyone including visitors was welcome to our Christmas canteen "feasts" (!!) at the "Gas Board" in Warrington many moons ago. A good turkey meal was always put on, but strictly no alcohol,

 

In a way I miss Christmas at work. The canteen meal, the evening do's (we all split over a couple of evenings so there would always be cover), Christmas eve, all the lads in a certain pub at 2pm (boss looked the other way as long as the emergency teams weren't there), The tree in the office foyer (with the top 4' missing as the janitor had cut the wrong end off !!) and we always got plenty of overtime leading up to Christmas clearing up outstanding jobs etc, a bit extra in the Xmas pay slip - we had thoughtful management back then.

 

Happy days.

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

"It seemed odd, seeing the big names absent - all second and third-tier operators working small fields and decommissioning works, now. Definite feeling of the good times having left town for the last time. "

 

Which is not how the Scottish Parliament would have you see it, they would have you believe the best times are still to come.

 

Did the UK really waste all the oil and gas?  

I was surprised at the number of pubs which seem to have closed. You might think that selling alcohol to oil  workers in Scotland was a life’s work, but apparently not.

 

I never had a great opinion of The Granite City, least if all its hoteliers (I particularly remember an attempt to charge me £3 for The Scotsman, distributed free to hotels in those days). Being shoo’d out of the office to save the cost of a couple of slices of turkey seems, somehow, par for the course. 

 

Dull? I could believe it. It increasingly reminds me of the fading former boom towns of Texas and Louisiana. 

Edited December 11, 2019 by rockershovel

To be fair, many of the UK cities could be described in a similar vein once you step outside of the (shopping) centres

Also to be fair, almost every town in Britain has its share of "carp" reviews.

There's even a website that specialises in the worst of them.

https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/

 

It's the antithesis of Trip Advisor. It seems like every town takes its turn in being the worst or most dismal.

Here's Aberdeen's turn:

https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/aberdeen-voted-the-dismal-town-scotland.html

 

I’d actually regard that as a pretty fair comment on Aberdeen. Union Street, these days, IS a nondescript stretch of low-cost shops and fast food chains. Aberdeen’s rush hour gridlock has been notorious for many years. The local authorities HAVE received very large sums in essentially unearned income over several decades, and what use they have made of it, is far from obvious. It IS cold and wet most if the year, and (like most East Coast Scottish towns, is largely monochrome in appearance. There ARE sizeable segments of the local population who don’t appear to have benefitted from the oil years. 

 

Oil towns don’t tend to age well, and Aberdeen is typical. 

 

I visited Aberdeen before the oil boom.  My most vivid childhood memory is of seeing ice floes grinding on the beach!