Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Nearholmer]

13 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

But that's considered normal....

It is normal among men of a wide range of types/classes.

 

I still think the effort devoted to recording railways history is exceptional and bizarre. At least football talk serves as a male bonding thing, the mortar that holds a lot of bricks together. Railway history doesn’t even do that.

[Nearholmer]

27 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Superficiality, to me, implies an 'attitude'.

People are always flipping good at really knowing what they need to know to make a living, and to operate in a social sense in order hold their place or advance it.

 

One might argue that beyond that one actually needs to know nothing, and that a lot of superficial knowledge is actually part of ‘operating in a social sense’, knowing just enough to be able to play a card effectively in the social game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Nearholmer

[MrWolf]

49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

At least football talk serves as a male bonding thing, the mortar that holds a lot of bricks together. Railway history doesn’t even do that.

 

Does it? 

It comes across to me as a p#ssing contest. Mind you, I've seen that amongst railway enthusiasts who have very little else going on in their lives, so there's no doubt other parallels to be drawn.

Unlike railway fans, football fans like to make up for their deficiencies elsewhere by kicking the living sh*t out of each other.

[alastairq]

52 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

One might argue that beyond that one actually needs to know nothing, and that a lot of superficial knowledge is actually part of ‘operating in a social sense’, knowing just enough to be able to play a card effectively in the social game.

 

 

Small talk, in other words?

 

But then, I've long since ceased to play any sort of 'social' game!

[monkeysarefun]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Maybe ‘cross country’ means a different thing in Aus, but how could he follow in a car? Certainly our CC routes were pretty much the same as rural dog walks, narrow footpaths through woods and fields, plus the odd muddy farm track. An all terrain motorcycle might just have made it, but not a car.

Unless it's freshly mowed the golden rule every little Australian learns is "don't go in the long grass!". You just don't in summer, death in the form of Tiger snakes,  Brown snakes, Red Belly Blacks and probably other colours of the rainbow lurks under every clump of grass.

 

Hence all cross country runs are usually running around the local park or in our case along the quieter roads around the school...

[Nearholmer]

P!ssing contests are part of bonding, they help establish  the heirarchy, and a lot of it is banter anyway. 
 

As for violence among football followers, what percentage? Next to nothing. There are some head-bangers, but if you go to almost any match, the stadium is populated by perfectly same and balanced people, who just happen to like watching, and endlessly talking about, football.

 

It ill behoves anyone to cast prejudice in the direction of the adherents of other hobbies, especially if they are themselves some sort of sad-anorak trainspotter.

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

People are always flipping good at really knowing what they need to know to make a living, and to operate in a social sense in order hold their place or advance it.

 

One might argue that beyond that one actually needs to know nothing, and that a lot of superficial knowledge is actually part of ‘operating in a social sense’, knowing just enough to be able to play a card effectively in the social game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course you need to know things outside of work otherwise you're just a drone.

Expanding one's knowledge and skills makes you a more rounded individual.

 

It's character building.

 

There's been plenty of times in my life where I have found that extra skills and knowledge have been beneficial.

It would probably suit some people if we were only able to carry out basic duties, because we'd be easier to control. Like some girl who has to leave school at twelve once she knows how to keep house and bear children? 

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Unless it's freshly mowed the golden rule every little Australian learns is "don't go in the long grass!".

I never thought of snakes! CC here occurs when snakes are snuggly tucked-up in their hibernation-holes for the winter.
 

Although we don’t have your violent variety of vipers, or angry array of adders, where I grew up adders are a serious consideration in summer. Dogs are forever getting bitten by them, and kids occasionally. I’ve stood on one (by mistake), when failing to follow the rule of stomping along if going on paths in the bracken - stomping frightens them away.

[MrWolf]

I know quite a few people who are interested in railways, none of whom wear anoraks, live with their elderly mothers, or have little contact with soap.

 

The point is that it's okay to bash people with weird minority hobbies, but clearly to do the same thing with  the great and holy football, that's clearly a hate crime and people get all defensive and you must be the one with the problem! 

 

It's like being fifteen again.

[Nearholmer]

19 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Of course you need to know things outside of work otherwise you're just a drone.

I think you’d better go back and read all of what I said, not just the first sentence, and consider the word ‘need’.

 

12 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

The point is that it's okay to bash people with weird minority hobbies

No.

 

The point is that its not okay to bash anyone’s hobby (well, maybe it is if they collect nazi memorabilia, or indulge in something even more vile as a pastime). 

 

I just thought I’d give yours a bashing so you could understand how it feels.

 

Now, it so happens that your hobby is also my hobby. And, football isn’t my hobby, although it is my son’s.

 

Its about walking a mile in the other person’s football boots.

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It is normal among men of a wide range of types/classes.

 

I still think the effort devoted to recording railways history is exceptional and bizarre. At least football talk serves as a male bonding thing, the mortar that holds a lot of bricks together. Railway history doesn’t even do that.

 

 

 

As an outsider looking in to the British railway modelling world got to say that the blind support many modellers there have for their own particular railway company, GWR, LMS, LMFAO and so on and running down of others can take on the appearance of British football supporters - enough for me to  imagine model railway shows are attended by fans in different company scarves all chanting their  own companies songs -  "Theres only one Nigel Gresley!" or whatever and then winding each other  up until the police separate them and make them return home on different trains after all the windows in the streets around are smashed.

 

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I never thought of snakes! CC here occurs when snakes are snuggly tucked-up in their hibernation-holes for the winter.
 

Although we don’t have your violent variety of vipers, or angry array of adders, where I grew up adders are a serious consideration in summer. Dogs are forever getting bitten by them, and kids occasionally. I’ve stood on one (by mistake), when failing to follow the rule of stomping along if going on paths in the bracken - stomping frightens them away.

 

 

Despite being a wide brown land and one person per 1000sq km or whatever, the  thing we don't have here unlike the UK is easy access to cross country style places to run. The concept of rambling along farm tracks is unknown,   public accessible land is either beaches or huge national parks -  most land around towns is owned by "somebody" and therefore private.

 

We don't have any concept of being allowed access across private land, all farmland is fenced off using barbed wire and I have only ever seen one style here, that was down in Tassie and on a track through a national park, not private farm land.  Enter at your own risk and up until the 70's it was ok for local farmers to shoot kids on their land as long as it was done in a humourous way, such as using salt and aimed at your arse. Complain to the cops and they'd give you a further kicking for trespass.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Nearholmer]

35 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

most land around towns is owned by "somebody" and therefore private.

 

I keep getting caught by that. I got caught by it in France, where I didn't quite realise how restictive their concept of a right of way is, and one of the guy's in the cycling thread has been educating me about how much more restricted access is in Ireland (including the bit that is part of the UK), which I'd never spotted, despite having been there many times.

 

The thing here is that most of the land does indeed belong to "somebody", but we have rights of way by specified routes over it. And, when I say specified routes, there are lots of them, not just the odd one here or there.

 

As a random frinstance, here are a load of fields and small woods close to where I live, all private land. We can ride a horse or a bike, or walk, on any of the green dotted routes, and walk on any of the red dotted routes. Not only that, but the landowner is legally obliged to keep the route usable. We are fortunate!

 

PS: a ‘right of way’ is an odd thing, BTW, it’s a right, not a physical thing, so a lot of the least-used of those red and green routes are pretty much invisible on the ground. Half the fun is in trying to follow non-existence paths, often traceable only by gaps in hedges on either side of fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Nearholmer

[colin smith]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

You'd have to travel a long distance to find knowledge more superficial, or perhaps just plain trivial, than that with which we railwsyacs stuff our bonces.

 

I'll raise you historical novelist. Among other things I've learned how to smelt copper, dismantle and clean a flintlock pistol, whether you could buy an ice-cream in 1850s Odessa, and whether in 1860 you could send a telegram from Gravesend to Odessa.

[Compound2632]

I remember talking to a well-known modeller who was involved in the building of a layout based on Liverpool Docks. He had wanted to make sure buses appearing on the layout were correct for the time and place so had been in touch with a bus enthusiasts' group and attended one of their meetings. "Very strange people" he said, shaking his head.

[Flying Fox 34F]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It is normal among men of a wide range of types/classes.

 

I still think the effort devoted to recording railways history is exceptional and bizarre. At least football talk serves as a male bonding thing, the mortar that holds a lot of bricks together. Railway history doesn’t even do that.

My knowledge of Recorded railway history kept several sections of Railtrack and Network Rail out of the Sh#t on more occasions than I can remember. 
Unfortunately, at Privatisation many of the Engineers Offices were handed over to the Contracting Companies, who promptly cleared out many archives to the detriment of future Engineers.

The most notable incident was when the Sea Wall was undermined at Dover, Shakespeare Cliff.  NR published an article where an Engineer exclaimed their disgust that they found a Timber Viaduct under the Running Lines and what a poor decision it was.  I contacted the individual direct providing evidence of the railway at this location prior to the 1927 Sea Wall, pointing out it was common practice to bury a Timber Viaduct in an embankment. 

Paul

[Flying Fox 34F]

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I remember talking to a well-known modeller who was involved in the building of a layout based on Liverpool Docks. He had wanted to make sure buses appearing on the layout were correct for the time and place so had been in touch with a bus enthusiasts' group and attended one of their meetings. "Very strange people" he said, shaking his head.

There are two types of enthusiast. One’s who chase them and go weak at the knees when they find an interesting subject.

The others repair, restore and operate them!

 

Paul

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

Unfortunately, at Privatisation many of the Engineers Offices were handed over to the Contracting Companies

One the better decisions of my life was to leave BR(S) a few years prior to privatisation, thereby missing out a great deal of grief an insanity that my erstwhile colleagues had to put up with when the department was sold-off.

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I think you’d better go back and read all of what I said, not just the first sentence, and consider the word ‘need’.

 

I did read all of what you said, I was countering the "need" part of your statement, because I do believe that we all need to know more than just enough to function within the machine, otherwise a big part of what sets us apart from other animals is stifled.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

No.

 

The point is that its not okay to bash anyone’s hobby (well, maybe it is if they collect nazi memorabilia, or indulge in something even more vile as a pastime). 

 

But there, whether you agree with it or not, you are bashing someone else's hobby. I don't have any such items, but if I did, I'd sell it to a collector and spend the money on my own interests. As I type this, I'm thinking that someone may post a plaster Saint response and say they'd throw it away.

Although international football does bring out a level of nationalistic tribal violence like nothing else. The British newspapers used that to good effect in WWI, recruiting the Pals battalions outside football grounds. Perhaps Adolf missed a trick there, but he wasn't a fan either.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I just thought I’d give yours a bashing so you could understand how it feels.

 

Perhaps you should go back and read through my previous posts. I've got a good forty years experience in knowing what it's like to have my interests and lifestyle choices bashed.

Almost entirely by the football obsessed mob.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Now, it so happens that your hobby is also my hobby. And, football isn’t my hobby, although it is my son’s.

 

Its about walking a mile in the other person’s football boots.

 

I  did say that I enjoyed playing, even though I didn't particularly excel at any of the sports that school offered.

What irked me was the assumption that if you weren't obsessed with football, you were somehow a lesser being.

Psychologists have suggested that the obsessive act of living one's life through another's sporting achievements is a form of compensating for one's own disappointments.

 

I wouldn't deny your son his interest, any more than I would my own, that wasn't my point at all. 

[Nearholmer]

19 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

What irked me was the assumption that if you weren't obsessed with football, you were somehow a lesser being.

 

Why be irked by it?

 

You know its b@ll@x; I know its b@ll@x; any person who pauses to think for a second knows its b@ll@x.

 

Just do your thing.

 

But, dont fall into the trap of applying negative stereotypes to another hobby, because someone applied negative stereotypes to yours.

 

And, yes, I'm very happy to bash the hobby of collecting Nazi memorobilia. Some things are beyond the pale, and that is one. The proper place for such stuff is in the collection of a museum, where, if it is displayed, it can be displayed with contextual information. Or, in a scrap recycling system. The problem with it in general circulation is that it attracts pro-nazi sympathisers like flies to a dog turd.

[MrWolf]

It's not boll0cks at all. It's only boll0x if you havent been through it. I recall plenty of people who quit doing what they enjoyed or were good at because they couldn't handle the amount of stick that they got for doing it. 

 

 

I've always done my thing regardless and despite of the level of derision I received, continue to do so.

 

Whilst I agree with you completely about museum pieces, most of the people who I have come across  who do have nazi items have them as part of a broader collection of WWII German artefacts and part of a collection of WWII militia in general. They don't show it off, partly because of its commercial value and partly because they dont wish to be condemned as neos.

Most of whom in the UK seem to gloss over the fact that we're a mix of people from every European country.

I actually got into a bar brawl with some clown not because I was chatting up his girlfriend (which I was) but because I had a good tan from a recent African trip, he thought that I might be Italian, or maybe Greek.

I probably am, maybe my ancestors rolled up with the Roman army?

[Nearholmer]

16 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

It's not boll0cks at all.

 

The assumption that a person is a lesser being because they aren't a footy fan is b@ll@x. Utter, pure, and complete. The fact that people said otherwise, and bullied you and others accordingly, doesn't alter that.

 

What is utterly central is that the people who said or implied that not being a footy fan makes a person a lesser being were wrong.

 

But then, I guess you've known that since it happened.

 

 

 

 

 

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

What is utterly central is that the people who said or implied that not being a footy fan makes a person a lesser being were wrong.

 

My teenage ignorance of and disdain for football were seen as manifestations of my supposed obnoxious superiority.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, people can get very nasty when they decide that something that you do, or don't do, is you "acting superior".

 

I had an episode of it when I was a trainee, on placement at a London depot where a couple of guys decided that the fact that I didn't drink "railway tea", but drank black coffee instead was a sign of me "getting above myself", and using that as an excuse for a bit of persecution.

 

Struck me afterwards that there was probably some poor s@d at an SNCF depot in Paris getting a hard time because he chose to quaff Earl Grey, while all the rest had "stand your spoon up in it" black coffee.

 

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by Nearholmer

[MrWolf]

24 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

The assumption that a person is a lesser being because they aren't a footy fan is b@ll@x. Utter, pure, and complete. The fact that people said otherwise, and bullied you and others accordingly, doesn't alter that.

 

What is utterly central is that the people who said or implied that not being a footy fan makes a person a lesser being were wrong.

 

But then, I guess you've known that since it happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I know that. That's what makes it annoying.

It also doesn't make life less difficult growing up and such dismissive attitudes don't make it any easier or less damaging for those kids in the out crowd. I spent quite a bit of time defending myself and others who couldn't as a youngster because nobody else would.

 

Let's try a different tack. Same situation, different reason.

 

Would you tell someone that it's all boll0x if they put up with years of verbal and physical abuse because of the colour of their skin? 

 

Of course you wouldn't.

 

But it is boll0x, we all know it, we're all human, but it doesn't make it any better for those on the receiving end.

[MrWolf]

18 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Yes, people can get very nasty when they decide that something that you do, or don't do, is you "acting superior".

 

I had an episode of it when I was a trainee, on placement at a London depot where a couple of guys decided that the fact that I didn't drink "railway tea", but drank black coffee instead was a sign of me "getting above myself", and using that as an excuse for a bit of persecution.

 

Struck me afterwards that there was probably some poor s@d at an SNCF depot in Paris getting a hard time because he chose to quaff Earl Grey, while all the rest had "stand your spoon up in it" black coffee.

 

 

 

Completely agree there. A lot of adults carry on the five year olds game of find a little "fault" and make that then hold it up for ridicule.

 

My other half was born with the last bone in her thumbs a little shorter than they should be and got tormented for that. Add to that her being musically talented a science boffin and having a "posh" accent didn't do her any favours with the in crowd. But, like me, she wouldn't bend. She's now working on her Phd, so stubbornness can pay off.