“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know…”
DoD News Briefing – Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers
Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld February 12, 2002 11:30 AM EDT
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2636
Work continues apace on the new sea front developments. This leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it makes me weep that the council have demolished most of the 40s and 50s architecture, put in yet more shops and re-branded that part of the beach the new ‘creative quarter’. I get a bit funny about things being branded ‘creative’ when the real ‘creatives’ are being driven out of the city either because they can’t afford the increasing rents or because their studios have been demolished to make way for redevelopment… and for that matter, ‘quarter’ of what? What’s the other three quarters doing that’s so different?
On the other hand, I retain an utterly childish delight in any huge mechanical thing that can shovel vast amounts of earth from one place to another, make really big holes in the ground and then fill them with quick-setting slurry.
As a result of this ambivalence I spent a fair bit of time on the sea front today looking at the works in progress, outwardly sneering in righteous indignation while my inner 6-year old waited in forlorn hope for the site foreman to come over and say to me “here you are sonny, do you want a go on the big yellow monster?”
However, the real point of today’s entry is to highlight yet another mystery of the city, that of the zen garden immediately adjoining the building site. This is in reality a patch of mud bordered by low walls, but the mud itself had been combed into a variety of different shapes over the past few months by something big. Yesterday I noticed it was in the shape of a heart, at other times it has been a spiral, wavy lines… today it was combed into a series of concentric circles. I’ve photographed it a few times now, so scroll through some of my previous entries and see for yourself.
Today I also noticed that the diggers and bulldozers can be surprisingly sensitive when used by trained operators. Not a simple case of smashing the ground from here to there but more like old films you see of elephants nudging logs into a pile, or dexterously taking and eating buns proffered by visitors to the zoo.
So, can it be, that one of the construction workers is actually a closet Buddhist who, before starting work in the morning and while the city still sleeps, takes his metal monster and rakes the mud into these designs in an act of contemplation and oneness with the world? I imagine the dawn light filled with the asthmatic Om of mechanical devotion purring sonorously from one of the bulldozers while it completes its lonely task. There always has to be hope.
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!”
Closing lines of ‘Britannia Hospital’ (directed by Lindsay Anderson) spoken by the ‘Genesis Project’ a disembodied brain wired to machinery.
Original source: Hamlet, William Shakespeare
“You may forget but
Let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us”
Sappho, fragment 60
Translated by Mary Barnard
“Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things–unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they’re dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog…”
‘Men at Arms’ Terry Pratchett
Someone has compiled not one but two full lists of different types of heavy equipment for Wikipedia (1). A few of the items listed will be familiar to most of us; things like tractors, bulldozers and cranes. A few more will be imaginable by having quite descriptive names: steam shovel, snow blower, tunnel boring machine… But others read like implements of doom from a mediaeval manual of warfare or items used in a peasant’s revolt, while a few even seem to suggest zen-like paradoxes (can a wall also be slurry?). In my opinion this is poetry of the highest order, opaque yet richly evocative. To get the full effect I suggest reading the list out loud, preferably in the bath for the best acoustics, and intoning in the manner of Winston Churchill or Edith Sitwell:
Air-track
Bulldozer
Snowcat
Track skidder
Track-type tractors
Tractor
Military engineering vehicles
Grader
Skid steer loader
Compact excavator
Dragline excavator
Dredging
Excavator (wheel)
Excavator (bagger, digger)
Slurry wall excavator
Front shovel
Reclaimer
Steam shovel
Suction excavator
Trencher (machine)
Yarder
Backhoe loader
Backhoe
Feller buncher
Harvester
Skidder
Track harvester
Wheel forwarder
Wheel skidder
Pipelayer
Fresno scraper
Scraper
Wheel tractor-scraper
Construction & mining tractor
Construction & mining trucks
Articulated hauler
Articulated truck
Water wagon
Wheel dozers – soil compactors
Soil stabilizer
Loader
Skip loader (skippy)
Wheel loader (front loader, integrated tool carrier)
Track loader
Aerial work platform / Lift table
Boomtruck
Cherry picker
Crane
Forklift
Knuckleboom loader (trailer mount)
Reach stacker
Telescopic handlers
Asphalt paver
Asphalt plant
Cold planer
Concrete batch plant
Cure rig
Paver
Pneumatic tire compactor
Roller (road roller or roller compactor)
Slipform paver
Vibratory compactor, Compactor
Stomper: concrete drop hammer
Roadheader
Tunnel boring machine
Underground mining equipment
Ballast tamper
Attachments
Drilling machine
Pile driver
Rotary tiller (rototiller, rotovator)
Venturi-mixer
Dump truck
Highway 10 yard rear dump
Highway bottom dump (stiff), pup (belly train), triple
Highway end dump and side dump
Highway transfer, Transfer train
Highway transit-mixer
Lowboy (trailer)
Street sweeper
Auger
Bale spear
Broom
Bulldozer blade
Clamshell bucket
Cold plane
Demolition shears
Equipment bucket
Excavator bucket
Forks
Grapple
Hydraulic hammer, hoe ram
Hydraulic tilting bucket (4-in-1)
Landscape tiller
Material handling arm
Mechanical pulverizer, crusher
Multi processor
Pavement removal bucket
Power take-off (PTO)
Quick coupler
Rake
Ripper
Rotating grab
Sheep’s foot compactor
Skeleton bucket
Snow blower
Stump grinder
Stump shear
Thumb
Tilt rotator
Trencher
Vibratory plate compactor
Wheel saw
(List edited to minimise repetition and enhance narrative flow)
Umbrellage 