Diary Of An ADI

Archive for December, 2008

I saw this story in today’s Daily Mirror newspaper.

I nominate headmaster – sorry: headteacher – Richard Sammonds for the 2008 Total and Utter Prat Award. I quote:

But headteacher Richard Sammonds said: “Red pen can be quite demotivating for children.

“It has negative, old school connotations of ‘See me’ and ‘Not good enough’.”

…Mr Sammonds’ Crofton Junior School in Orpington, Kent, is among hundreds to have banned the ink. He added: “We use highlighter pens in all colours of the rainbow – apart from red.”

Erm. I hate to break it to you, Richard, but one of the main aims of learning is to identify when things aren’t good enough so you can improve. Children are not able to determine what is good enough in this context, and that’s why we have teachers. Well, it used to be. It seems that teachers these days are allowed – nay! forced – to do everything except teach. It isn’t hard to imgine the meetings, brainstorming sessions, and other wastes of taxpayers’ money that led to this earth-shattering decision.

Also in the running for the same award is Shirley Clarke from The Institute of Education – an organisation which clearly moulds itself around whatever its members are doing instead of directing them in what they should be doing. Again, I quote:

“When children see every single spelling mistake covered in red they can feel useless and give up.”

The little dears. I’m sure Mr Sammonds and Ms Clarke will be proud to know in their retirement years that they contributed to a generation which doesn’t know right from wrong, or good from bad, and which will no doubt need psychiatric help when it discovers what real life is like once it leaves school – with the ubiquitous fifteen GCSEs (all A**) and the impression that it knows more than the rest of society put together.

This pair of idiots need someone to explain to them that children only react badly to red pen (and loads of other things the politically-correct brigade has jumped on) if they know that it is under scrutiny and they can win a point. And that in itself is because some moron in the past has given children the idea that they can decide what to learn – which is why half of them can’t read, can’t spell, and think that by answering a couple of multiple choice questions about gay civil partnerships they can become X Factor contestants when they leave school (well, it IS a job, isn’t it?).

As well as being a driving instructor I also do a lot of work on my computer (websites, programming, and so on). So being comfortable is very important.

Keep an eye on the Latest Posts menu on the right for updates to my Kneeling Chair project!

NOTE: The Project starts in this post.

I’m not one of those people who likes to lean back – I’d much rather sit up straight. And I hate it when the arm rests catch the table when you swing round, or get in the way of your elbows. So for some years now I’ve been using one of those backless ‘kneeling chairs’. But I’ve had problems with them…

Kneeling Chair

I’ve had two wooden ones, which I deliberately bought from different places. But it seems like there is a worldwide conspiracy, because no matter where you buy them from they seem to be imported from the same place. They’re exactly the same – and they cost over £50!

The initial problem is that all the screws that hold them together – they’re self-assembly – keep coming loose and dropping out (even if you try and glue the threads), and if you’re not careful you’re likely to end up with it suddenly moving. Possibly connected with this repeated loosening, in the later stages the wood starts to split in various places: around the seat pad and on the castor spars. Oh, and it is standard that one of the castors will fall off at some stage – if you’re fairly agile you can avoid being tipped headfirst into the wall or out of the window.

The last one disintegrated completely around one of the castor spars, so I began to look for an alternative supplier. I was building myself up to pay upwards of £120 (some of them are £300-£1,000) for a decent handmade wooden one when I discovered a supplier of steel ones. Well, the word ‘steel’ automatically conjures up visions of ‘only an iceberg will take this baby out’, so I went for it – it cost over £80.

When it arrived I noticed that it was exactly the same basic design as the wooden ones I’d had – it had obviously come from the same supplier/source as the wooden ones - but at least it was metal (albeit thin - the wind could have blown it over). I put it together and started to use it.

Solder Spot schematic

Within a week one of the castors fell off, and on inspection it became clear that the threads that the castors screwed into were like small round nuts welded to the castor spar – but they were welded using just a single arc-weld dab (see diagram to the right): it didn’t go all around to increase strength, and the whole thing had snapped off!

Now, I could – and should – have sent it back. But I needed the chair and couldn’t be arsed (have you ever tried sending something as heavy as a chair back in the post?) so I took the other castors off, jacked it up using the height adjuster, and used it without wheels. To be honest it was actually better like that. And another reason why I didn’t send it back was that I’d taken the precaution when assembling it of supergluing the screws so they wouldn’t easily come undone. I’m sure I’d have got away with it, but I didn’t fancy the argument which would probably have followed had they decided to be arsey about it.

After a few months it started to creak. I checked all the screws and they were still in place and tight. So I didn’t think about it any more. But then I noticed it was wobbling when I sat on it – and after a good examination I realised that the weld which held the main support strut to the seat platter was coming apart, and it had caused the box-section steel to start to tear (both struts: their are two of them side-by-side). Even worse, on closer inspection the original weld didn’t go all the way around the box sections, but only two sides of it! So it was weak to begin with. And add to that the fact that the box section appears to be made of 18 s.w.g. or thinner metal, the whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen.

Kneeling chair schematic

Anyway, like most things I started to puzzle over how to get around the problem. I’d thought about drilling holes and fitting long bolts to act as supports – then I discovered how hard it is to drill holes in mild steel unless you have the right equipment (and a powered handheld drill isn’t it), and if the thing you’re trying to drill isn’t in its component parts any more (and I mean pre-weld, not pre-assembly from flat-pack).

Over the additional months, as the wobble had been getting worse, I was thinking about the possibility of building a kneeling chair from scratch – one that was strong enough to withstand re-entry after being chucked out of a space shuttle. What put me off was that it would cost an absolute fortune to get the necessary equipment to do it. Or so I thought.

I’d need an arc welder, of course, but I’d also need materials. And something which was really putting me off doing it was cutting these materials to length accurately enough – I can remember whole lessons in metalwork class at school cutting through solid bars of steel with a hacksaw to make a medallion (which no one would ever dare wear, and that only Geoff Capes could wear), or screwdrivers (which would bend if the screw it was screwing was more than finger-tight). I could see hard work looming. But then I had a thought: it’s the 21st Century. Surely you don’t have to cut metal using a hacksaw and elbow grease any more?

Black & Decker Angle Grinder

Enter: the angle grinder. It only cost me £20 (plus VAT) from my local Makro. The job was looking more viable already.

I’d been wondering where I’d get the raw materials from – I’d had visions of having to crawl around a load of industrial estates buying far more metal than I needed from fabrication shops. But I found a company on the Internet called Metals4u, and they will supply any quantity of material (there’s no minimum). It was far cheaper than I expected, too, and they did all the standard box sections and plates

But there were still two issues: building a new chair (which would take time) and doing something about this one that was disintegrating more and more each time I got up and sat down again.

I’d noticed when I last went to Makro that they were also selling Fairline Arc Welding Kits for £50 (plus VAT), so I went and got one. It includes a hand-held welding mask and a slag hammer/brush, but nothing else.

Fairline Arc Welding Kit

I nipped into my local Machine Mart to get some welding rods and a few other bits and pieces and I noticed they do a nice line in bench drills and bench grinders. These’ll come in handy when I build the new chair. Another trip, this time to B&Q, and I got a few strips of mild steel (2mm thick).

The next step was to work out how I was going to fix this broken chair. I cut out some strips of paper the same width as the flat steel (30mm – equivalent to the 1 1/8″ box section on the original) and made some templates (the yellow and blue sections in the repair diagram). I traced these on to the metal strip ready for cutting.

Christmas Day 2008 - the day I’d set aside for doing this – dawned. Some hours later, I dawned as well. About midday, actually.

I set up the portable workbench and set to cutting out the shapes I’d drawn on the metal strip. An angle grinder isn’t what you’d call a precision tool and I made sure I left a few millimetres of excess material next to my lines. I was quite pleased that I avoided severing an artery or something whilst doing all this – there were razor sharp burrs everywhere on the cut pieces. But the coarse grinding disc I’d bought turned out to be ideal for eating down to the lines I’d drawn, removing burrs, and straightening any rough cuts. It could eat away a couple of millimetres of 2mm steel strip in seconds. I wire-brushed all surfaces and edges of the cut pieces to remove protective varnish coatings.

Schematic of Seat Repair

Next step was to use the finer grinding disc to remove as much of the paint on the chair frame as possible so that the cut pieces were lying against bare metal. I had to compromise here – I’d planned to effectively sandwich each of the two main support struts and weld my additional struts either side (so there’d be four new struts in total). However, I couldn’t get between the main struts so I decided just to go with reinforcement on the outer faces of these.

I also had to compromise on elegance – the existing weld made it impossible to have the strut coloured yellow in the diagram lying flush with the main strut’s surface. But I needed the end of the additional strut to butt up to the seat platter, so I just had to go with it not lying flat.

You will notice throughout this that I have not mentioned any concerns over the part of the job which involved welding the parts together. Well, this is where the title of this post comes into it.

Welding is not easy.

Things I discovered:

• Striking the arc is easy
• Maintaining the arc is harder
• Welding rods get used up really quickly
• Getting the welding rod stuck is easy
• Leather welding gloves don’t keep heat out for very long if you hold a hot welded surface
• Ending up with a very messy weld is easy
• Getting black bogeys (or ‘boogers’ if you’re American) is a given

To cut an already long story short, the repair I have done looks a bloody mess. But the chair is now as solid as a rock. I thought I’d got arc-eye, as well, but it turns out I was wrong!

Incidentally, I’m getting  alot of hits from people using the search term ‘welding rod keeps sticking’ or some such. This can happen if you are holding the rod too close to the weld – the current is therefore lower, so I guess the weld is cooler and solidifies more quickly, hence the stuck rod. It is even worse if you’re so close that the rod keeps touching the weld, as this can cause the arc to extinguish – also resulting in a frozen rod. Also make sure you are using the right current setting for the thickness of rod you’re using. I jumped up a thickness when I was building my chair project and couldn’t figure out why the rods were sticking so much (especially when I put a new one in) – I’d forgotten to increase the current accordingly from where it was when I did the repair on the old one, and once I did it was perfect!

Also incidentally, I’m getting a good few hits from the search term ‘welding b&q’. I’m not exactly sure what people are looking for, but I do know that B&Q carry a range of welding equipment with arc welders starting at around the DIY price range going up to large industrial units. It also supplies welding accessories and materials. Take a look at their website here.

And ALSO incidentally, Makro do a full range of Fairline tools – including various size angle grinders (that keeps coming up in the search stats, too).

I will post the result of my complete chair-build project next year. But I will practice welding before I do it, though.

Well done to GP for passing his test yesterday afternoon – the last test of the year for me and the test centre – with just 9 driver faults.

I was listening to the local news on the radio yesterday and there was a ‘top’ story where a certain high-street retailer/pharmacy was urging people to stock up on prescription medicines over the festive period.

Of course, on Saturday it was Big News that retailers were seeing an increase in shoppers but it was still a disastrous year and the sales are starting early to try and drag people in.

Maybe it’s just me, but this is about as cynical as you can get. The same store/pharmacy has previously advised people to throw medicines away if they have finished with them, and it is very big on stating the obvious (because not everything is obvious to a lot of people) – and yet its only defence here could be that it was talking about old medicines before, and now it is thinking of the Christmas shutdown.

Of course, poor recent sales wouldn’t have anything at all to do with it…

Just came home between lessons and started to channel-hop. Channel 4 has T4: McFly’s Greatest Hits Live - it’s 10.55am now and this is on until 11.25am, so I guess the show is at least an hour long!

You’d think that anything involving McFly’s greatest hits would be right up there with Great Swiss Naval Victories and Wars That France Didn’t Lose. Very short.

There’s a new page (see the top button bar). I love curry, and it has been a lifelong ambition to be able to make them like they do in resturants and takeaways.

A lot of so-called ‘Indian’ restaurants are crap. They’re not ‘Indian’ (and by that I also mean they’re not ‘Bangladeshi’ or ‘Pakistani’, etc. either) and they don’t make their own food. The worst ones I’ve found are those which advertise ‘currys (sic), pizzas, SFC, kebabs, burgers’. The curry comes in a plastic tray with a heat-sealed plastic film, just like those you buy in the supermarket freezer chests, and it tastes like the stuff you get in works canteens – boiled and creamy. Other restaurants are genuine, but they just cook awful food. One of the problems is the stupid modern idea that any salt at all is bad for you – salt is a flavour enhancer and taking it out of food means the food tastes bland (Mini Cheddars – those little cheese biscuits - are a good example: taking the salt out means they taste horrible; and the same is true of crisps (potato chips), and McDonald’s fries).

Over the last couple of months I’ve been to four Nottingham restaurants which in the past have provided good food: The Curry Lounge, Sapna, the Mogal e-Azam, and The Laguna.

The Curry Lounge was featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (a UK TV series about failing restaurants, which Ramsay was trying to help). I’d not been before until about a month ago (my friend had, and reported that it was good), and I will never go again. Apart from being stupidly overpriced the curry was completely tasteless. It was just as if the chef had forgotten to put any curry powder/spices in (and I’m not exaggerating). We mentioned it to the waiter and he said: “I can see you know about curry. Next time you are in just ask for it to be made a little more tasty. Some people don’t like it too spicy”. Well, let them go and buy fish & chips, then. And don’t get me started on the Gulab Jamun – you got two Gulabs, a scoop of ice-cream about the size of a walnut, and an extra £5 on the bill!

I’ve been to the Sapna a lot of times. It’s cheap and cheerful – plastic tablecloths, peeling plaster and wallpaper in the corners (well, it is in a basement) – but the food has always been good enough for after a concert or few drinks. The added benefit is that it is open until around 4am (one year we’d been out celebrating New Year and we went for a curry in here at about 3am on New Years Day morning). This time is was awful, though. My friend had Mulligatawny Soup as a starter and it was like a mousse rather than a soup. He commented that they appeared to have used their basic curry gravy to make everything. His daughter’s Vindaloo looked and tasted like my Chicken Methi. Both were creamy.

The Mogal e-Azam always seems to be hit and miss. It’s right next to Rock City, so it is convenient, but I find that if there aren’t many people in the food is rubbish. Last time we went in my mate, who’d come down from Leeds, eventually (I could kill him over how long it takes him to decide to order something which usually isn’t on the menu) went for a tandoori lamb starter. It was basically several lamb chops coated in tandoori spices and cooked, presumably, in a Tandoor - although I think a more appropriate description would have been geriatric mutton coated in Superglue, dipped in tandoori spices bought at Tesco, and incinerated using an industrial blowtorch. It was tough.

I used to know someone who was almost violently of the opinion that The Laguna was the best Indian restaurant in Nottingham. Well, I’ve been in a few times and although it has not been what you would call bad, it certainly isn’t the best one I’ve been to. This time was no exception. The first thing that struck me was that you couldn’t smell anything that reminded you you were in a curry house – and there were quite a few people in. The lack of smell, combined with the fact that the waiter who greeted us was Oriental, made me think it wasn’t an Indian any more! The curry was passable, though definitely lacking a bit in flavour. But the naan breads were a joke – my garlic naan was only slightly larger than a DVD disk, and you know how much you pay for sundries when you are eating-in.

Although I haven’t been in for ages, one which used to be excellent was The Jewel In The Crown in West Bridgford (now called The Jewel). It used to be classic: subdued lighting, flock wallpaper, Indian music in the background, heavy wooden chairs, and great food. But they ruined it by trying to go ‘contemporary’. You need sunglasses even walking past it. EDIT 01/04/2010: The Jewel has closed down as of the last month or so. Not sure why, but if I was guessing I’d say it went to far with its change of image. A bog-standard Indian restaurant which serves great food will always survive – a poncey one which messes with the food too much and creates ridiculous overheads it has to pay for probably won’t.

As far as takeaways go two of the best around here have to be Curry2Night (West Bridgford: telephone 0115 981 1712) and New Everest Tandoori (Ruddington: telephone 0115 984 8358). I added the phone numbers because of the hits this page keeps getting – I suspect people are wanting to order takeaways and finding this blog!

But as I said right at the start, it has always been my ambition to be able to make curries like they do in restaurants. The Bangladeshi guy who used to own Curry2Night – and he and his wife had to have been the best chefs ever – promised me he would show me before he retired, but he never did. So I’ve spent a lot of time trying out different things, some of which has been given to me by pupils, whilst others I’ve picked up off the Internet and trialled/modified as needed.

The result  (so far – it’s always a work in progress) can be found in the Curry Recipe section (that new button at the top of the page).

I was out with a particular pupil a few days ago and something struck a chord with me as I kept saying the same thing. It then occurred to me that there are several phrases (including variations) which you end up saying a lot – so much so, that I think I may end up having one or two of them carved on my tombstone when I’m gone!

1. “Mind the kerb”

Especially when they’re just starting out, many pupils have this blindspot which is always occupied by the kerb. You can be driving down a straight road and the smallest thing – sometimes it’s so small it doesn’t even exist – will make the pupil head towards the kerb.

I had one who subconsciously steered away from those pedestrian refuges (with the tall white lamp on them) every time she passed one. Steering away from other vehicles is very common. It doesn’t matter if there is a 15 metre ditch, a lamp post, a tree… steering away from the other car is the only priority!

2. “Watch where you are going”

Some pupils can easily ‘switch off’, especially if they are tired at the end of a lesson. You’ll be driving on a long, straight road and you start to get uneasy as the car starts to drift. You don’t say anything immediately because you don’t want to over-instruct… but then it drifts further. If you allow it to continue, before you know it you’re on the other side of the road.

3. “Now plan ahead for this”

You’re doing something simple, like turning left at traffic lights or a junction. As you come round the other side, before you know it you’re across the other side of the road or heading on to the left pavement as the pupil either under- or oversteers.

4. “Stay in lane”

Perhaps tied in with ‘switching off’, some pupils have really serious problems seeing white lines on the roads. Add to that the fact that they see roundabouts as something similar to a Rubik Cube and you’ve got a deadly combination.

The one that particularly bugs me is when they are doing the roundabout perfectly then – all of a sudden – they decide they’re not and jerk the wheel so hard, almost full lock, that the car just about tips on to two wheels as they try to change lanes. And it’s usually more than one lane they’re trying to jump – nothing is simple for them.

I’ll always remember one pupil – Chris – who had had problems on roundabouts, but we’d just about got them sorted out. I once asked him what he thought the problem was, and he said: “I honestly think I’m going to kill us both when I’m on one.” Anyway, he drove on to this large roundabout perfectly… and then decided he shouldn’t have, and that the best solution was to stop dead. In the middle of entering a busy roundabout with cars coming in from all sides!!!

I pulled him over and said: “Chris, you know how you said you were worried that you might kill us on a roundabout? Well…”

5. “Did you see that skip around the corner?”

When we’re doing the Reverse Around A Corner exercise, if I notice that a pupil hasn’t looked into the road they’re going to reverse into I’ll often wait until they stop and then ask if they saw the skip (or car, or pedestrian, etc.) that is stopping them from doing it. One pupil cracked me up.

span style=”color: #800000;”>Me: “Did you see that skip just around the corner?” (there wasn’t one, but she hadn’t looked)

Philippa (quick as a flash): “Yes. It was yellow”

I was really impressed.

There has to be a full moon tonight! Incredibly, I just looked it up and there is.

We’ve been cut up more times today than in the whole of the preceding month, or so it seems. It started at a roundabout with roadworks on it – people too stupid to realise one lane was closed, so they just had to squeeze in just one extra car ahead just before the diversion sign instead of stopping and dropping in behind (one idiot woman in particular, who then got herself boxed completely in by returning to the lane which was blocked off). This was during the early part of rush hour.

Next, a business plank in a plankmobile decided he would just drive out of his workplace car park in heavy traffic right in front of my pupil. The fact that it was a pupil made him do it, but his tiny plank brain wasn’t able to work out that learners have difficulty in stopping. This was during rush hour.

Then, the same pupil was cut up by an idiot leaving a house in West Bridgford in a pale blue Vauxhall (Meriva, I think) registration no. WF07 KWV. This pillock reversed out into traffic, levelled up on the wrong side of the road, accelerated on the wrong side, and then cut in front of my pupil (obviously, the idiot was breaking the speed limit to do this).

It wasn’t until I wrote this that I realised the moon looked quite big and the ‘full moon’ concept occurred to me. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Traditionally, driving instructors have not been noted for their intellectual prowess. But nowadays, you can add courtesy and basic human decency to the list of things they’re not very good at. Intelligence is still right at the top, though.

The other day I was with a pupil and we’d stopped in a convenient place for her to practice the Turn In The Road exercise. We’d been there for about a minute when another learner car stops just in front of us (a BSM car), and another pulls up behind. So we can’t do our manoeuvre until they’ve finished.

A couple of days later in a different area I was with another pupil and we stopped to do the Corner Left Reverse exercise. We’d reversed around it (not particularly well – the pupil is new to it) and when we drove back round to try again there was a learner car there trying to use the same corner. I was annoyed this time and flashed my lights – he drove off.

A couple of weeks ago a pupil had just reversed around a corner. We were going to drive off anyway after having done it correctly, but I was annoyed to see when we went back round that corner another learner was waiting to use it. I made it clear to the instructor as we passed that I wasn’t impressed.

Then tonight I was with a new pupil. She’s never done Turn In The Road before, so I stopped in a quiet place – this is at 8.15pm in a cul-de-sac, so it was quiet – and did the briefing. I noticed a little further behind us (beyond a side road junction) a car had stopped but seeing as it was stationary we went ahead, with me controlling the pedals so the pupil could work out where the kerb was. As soon as we turned round, and I’d reversed us back into a good position to try again, this idiot… no, ‘idiot’ isn’t good enough… this complete pillock from Cloud City Driving School pulled forward, blocked us in, and then proceeded to do the manoeuvre himself. It took him ages because his pupil wasn’t very good at it (not the pupil’s fault – it was his instructor behaving like a complete arse).

What really pisses me off is that if I see another learner car anywhere near where I want to do a manoeuvre then I get my pupil to drive on and we find somewhere else. If nothing else, it keeps the locals happy (they hate learners with a vengeance) by not having queues of learners in their streets. But it is common decency on the part of the instructor to think of others.

I reckon this one will be a running theme.

Being out and about I’ve noticed that some people – a surprisingly large number, in fact - have had Christmas decorations up since November. Pretty sad, really.

Appreciation of aesthetics is not one of the strong points of people who go for early Christmas decorations. They seem to be of the mind that if half a dozen lights look nice, then several thousand will be absolutely stunning. They’re right – but it all depends on what you mean by ‘stunning’.

Thinking about last year, one house not far from me had a Santa on skis crashed on to the roof, another Santa with skis splatted to the bedroom window, a Santa with a sack on a rope ladder hanging off the drainpipe, another Santa hanging from the windowsill… there were probably more. I lost count.

Already – and since November – there are houses with those preformed lights stuck all over the front: Santa on a sleigh, various reindeers, hot air balloon (never understood that one), a train (that one, neither), fir trees, dangly icicles (many of which have been hanging off the roof since last year), spirals wound around trees in the garden… the list goes on.

I don’t know if you ever watched that film with Dan Aykroyd – Coneheads. There’s one scene where Mr Conehead takes a photo of his daughter going out to the prom with a human date. He has this huge camera flash with a metal grid across the front. When it goes off you see the human with his hair all singed and blasted back, and the grid pattern burned into his reddened face. Well, there are a couple of streets around here where you really would be advised to wear sunblock if you walk down there at night. ‘Tacky’ doesn’t even come close to describing it.

Listening to the radio today it was part-entertaining and part-sad to hear the presenters trying to turn every single comment into a Christmassy one. It’s only 4 December – we have 3 weeks to go! I’ve heard Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody‘ about a hundred times in the last three days, and Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day‘ is a close second.

I’m now waiting to see my first ‘idiot wearing a Santa hat’.