Tag: isle of man

Wish you were here?

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I love a good storm. And there’s a really good storm over the British Isles at the moment.

I’ve had the Isle of Man webcams open on my second monitor, and while it’s amazing to watch the Irish Sea doing its thing as we approach high tide:

I’m missing the noise and the smell and the stinging cold of the spray on my cheeks.
It’s just not the same sitting in an office 6000 miles… away.

Some of the best visuals have been from the Scarlett Point cameras – based at the old Coastguard Station:

It doesn’t look quite as green there today, but it does look pretty amazing.

That is Scarlett Stack,  the remains of an ancient volcanic vent, which – as the tide rises – is being repeatedly and more extensively overwhelmed by the incoming waves. Quite a sight, given that it’s a good 10m in height.

Beautiful. And I know that it’s far from everyone’s favourite kind of weather, but I really wish that I was there right now. (Like, on the footpath, not on the actual rocks: I’m just daft, not completely stupid.)

Also – on one of the other cameras earlier – fair play to this guy.

No better sort of day for a run.

EDIT: Still watching (with my sideeye) – suddenly (and briefly) – gorgeous sunlight.

It’s all going off on the Manx border

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I’ve said before that there’s a whole different pace of life on the Isle of Man. And that’s a good thing. All too often in this world, we’re rushed and stressed and pressured, and so I think that preserving that more gentle way of life in places like the IOM (and maybe , more locally, like Cape Agulhas, too) is hugely important to preserve.

But while there might be weapons and methamphetamine seized all over Cape Town, over on the Manx border, it seems that there have also been some heinous developments.

11 packets, you say? Unbrielievable. And not grate for the owner who was from continental Europe. And who tried to import meat as well: a deli-cate matter, but really a wurst käse scenario for him. Clearly, there was no whey they were letting it through. And when he asked for it back and was told “no, it’s nacho cheese anymore”. No wonder he went a bit emmental. He was lucky that they chose not to Prosciutto him.

But of course, there is a serious side to this. These products are illegal to import for a reason – to protect the island from also inadvertently importing Foot and Mouth Disease. And if confiscating 800g of cheese and 5kg of ham (what sort of charcuterie ratio is that, by the way?!?) stops the virus from getting in, it’s got to be worth it.

You can’t hide Uranium on the Isle of Man

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Remember that Uranium that was stolen from the nuclear power plant on the Isle of Man*?

Of course you do.

It’s been a mystery as to where it disappeared to, ever since it got taken**.

But inadvertently, a local photographer seems to have found the hiding place, simply by taking a local photograph.

Because surely there can be no reason for this eerie red/orange glow, and fuzzy focusing around this traditional Manx cottage, other than radiation seeping through the thick stone walls.

If you look carefully at the branches in the top right hand corner, you can see that they too have been affected by the alpha particles leaching out from the stolen isotope.
It’s also melted half of one of the chimney pots. Nasty.

And the patch of earth in the foreground with no grass growing? That’s probably where they put it down when they got it out of the Uranium theft vehicle.

I know the location of this particular cottage, and I’ll be passing on that information to the Isle of Man police force, so that they can get the International Atomic Energy Agency involved, sharpish.

After all, the only alternative to this being the actual spot that the pilfered element has been hidden, is the local photographer in question applying a ridiculous number of filters to this image to make it “look better” than it did when it was taken.

And I think we’re all aware which one of these things is more likely to be true.

I think it’s very obvious that a serious crime has been committed here.

* I’ll take Things That Didn’t Happen for 200 please, Alex.
** It hasn’t, because I made the incident up just now.

RBOSS is back!

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It’s been a while since we’ve seen some RBOSS (click here if you need an explanation, and here to see other posts about RBOSS), but it’s back with an absolute classic, a stone-cold banger, a perfect example of the genre. Not least because it’s actually of Ramsey Bay, and that’s the R and the B sorted immediately.

And just look at the O and the S. Wow.

It’s dreamy.

And next up, the photographer’s disclaimer:

not done a lot to it TBH

Ja right.

Of course you haven’t, mate.

The yellow is from your pants that are on fire after that statement.

And all that orange was the early morning nuclear test in Cumbria. A bang so big, it made one end of your photo go down. The Lake District is a whole lot less hilly now, and it’s sloping downhill strongly to the left.

It’s a shame that someone took a video of the same sunrise from about 300m to your left.
And that it looked like this: Ramsey Bay No Saturation Society.

Although you can still see the black smoke from the explosion.

See, that’s how a pro works. No dehaze (see the telltale white haze around the lighthouse on the left above), no silly saturation, straight horizon.

But while it might be more accurate and a whole lot less aggressive on the eyes, it doesn’t get you as many LIKES: the true currency of the RBOSSer.

And that – sadly – is why RBOSS will continue forever.

Video: CJ Wormwell

The revival continues?

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The plan to revive Manx Gaelic and bring it back into routine use (at least on the Isle of Man) received a big boost in the last week, when the language was added as an option on Google Translate:

There are only about 20 native speakers of the language, and it’s been completely impossible to communicate with them since forever*, so it will be fantastic to hear what they have to say after all this time. Possibly, anyway.

Agh shoh naight mooar da’n cheshaght Manninagh.

One thing you can’t do on the site (yet) is listen to the translated phrase. That’s not great from the point of view of learning how things are pronounced, but it’s actually ok, because – and I’m being nice here – you might think your laptop had been drinking.

It does all sound (no pun intended, Manx people), as if everything is a little slurred and words are running into each other a bit.

As with any language, to really learn it properly, you need to spend regular time with someone who is fluent. I think that I’m unlikely to find anyone that fits that bill here in Cape Town, but maybe that’s something that I should be doing – goaill stiagh ma t’eh goaill stiagh deayrtey!

Hahaha!

* I made this bit up.