Bold Brigand: The Mary Shelley

I've mentioned my good friends The History Chicks on several occasions. My "gateway podcast" from the Chicks was their minicast on Mary Shelley (podcast/shownotes). When I saw The Mary Shelley (located here) while engaged in my close protection course, I had to take a picture to share with the Chicks, and now I'm sharing it with you. The Mary Shelley is a J.D. Wetherspoon pub, as is the Archibald Simpson.

The History Chicks' feature on Mary Shelley is great, and since it's a minicast it's fairly short, so go check it out!

CN GBU-16 and the Red 2 Poster

As dissertation season progressed, CN Homeboy was done, I was in great shape, an CN GBU-16 was in rough shape. So, what did we do? We went to see a few movies. One evening, when seeing The World's End, Homeboy was sorting himself out and GBU-16 and I were in a holding pattern, so what did we do? BAM! GBU-16 photo op with the Red 2 poster! When we roll in Aberdeen, we roll raw! I don't think that actually means anything, but the point is that we have fun together. I still chat with GBU-16 and Homeboy a few times a week. Even though we don't get to the theater ("cinema") together anymore, there's always hope for the future.

And hopefully, whatever we see next will be better than Red 2... Or the last ten minutes of The World's End.

Around Aberdeen: More Cosby Goodness

Late last year, I posted about a funny discovery. Well, apparently the "No Bill Posters" guy isn't the only person in Aberdeen who has a thing for Bill Cosby... Or, perhaps they are, because that first one is only about three minutes walk from this latest masterpiece. Sometimes, the things that are the most fun are the ones that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I'm here for a while yet. Who knows? Maybe before I head back to the States, I'll run across at least one more piece of Cosby-related street art... But, for Bill's sake, I hope I don't!

Bold Brigand: Namaste Gurkha

So... I have this thing here in the United Kingdom. I just sort of, y'know... Stumble, upon Nepalese restaurants. There was the Gurkha Kitchen in Shetland - literally the last place on Earth where one would expect to find a Nepalese restaurant. Then, there was the Gurkha Kitchen in Aberdeen - one of two restaurants at which I was such a regular customer that they started giving me rides home from the restaurant. So, was I surprised when the close protection team and I discovered a Nepalese restaurant while scouting Blandford Forum for our final exercise?

No, dear reader. I was not surprised.

On the first night of our final exercise, we had a couple of hours to kill before we were supposed to pick up the guy whom we were guarding. Having scouted the restaurant with Tom Thumb the day before, I insisted that we go. (You'd be amazed what you can get people to do when you offer to pay.) Being a sort of amateur Nepalese food aficionado, I was able to make a number of recommendations that were quite well received. (Zulu was a lost cause, but more on that later.) We enjoyed momo, some great naan, and since I wasn't driving, I had a great big bottle of Tiger! Awesome!

While I didn't get a picture of the proprietor, we got several chances to chat with him. His name is Raju, and he's a veteran of the Queen's Gurkha Signals. He told us about Nepal, and about his service in the Gurkha Signals. Zulu, in his infinite wisdom, asked Raju about the legend that a khukuri can't be returned to its scabbard until it's drawn blood. (Raju didn't even let Zulu finish the question before answering that he knew where he was going with that, and no, they don't do that anymore.) With a great meal and some great team bonding complete, it was time to rock and roll.

The next morning, and half of the next day, Zulu kept telling people - particularly attractive young women - about the gastronomic effects of the "Gurkha curry" he'd eaten the night before. I literally couldn't take that knucklehead anywhere. On the plus side, another town, another Nepalese restaurant... You can't get much better than that.

The Royal Cyphers: VR Classic

While I was in Bournemouth, I ran across a beautiful example of the VR cypher, on an even more beautiful version of a pillar box. This example is representative of some of the earliest pillar boxes from the 19th Century, before the design was standardized into the cylindrical pillars that are so ubiquitous throughout the United Kingdom today. As much of a fan as I am of standardization, sometimes it's nice to run across something different. As such, I was absolutely thrilled to see this specimen.

Bold Brigand: Two Weeks of Close Protection

I needed to kill a couple of weeks. I decided to do that by continuing my education... Right after I'd finished and submitted my dissertation. Yep, I'm that guy.

I got in touch with a company called Titas, Ltd. and took their Executive Close Protection course. Despite booking in on short notice, and despite arriving a couple of days after the course had started, I joined with my coursemates and put in a yeoman's effort to catch up on the bits that I'd missed. I was fortunate to join a solid "team" - although we were technically classmates, the two weeks we spent together basically amounted to two weeks of fairly hard work.

"Shorty" was a large Lithuanian doorman/bouncer. He's been in the United Kingdom for several years, and had some excellent local knowledge of the area in which we were conducting our training exercises. As a result, Shorty ended up being our guide for most operations, and we deferred to him when planning routes - and planning routes was a giant part of the preparation for nearly every operation in which we participated. As such, Shorty's local knowledge was priceless, as was his general demeanor. Nothing upset the guy, he was constantly calm, always ready with a joke, and a great sport about the inevitable comparisons to both Borat and Ivan Drago.

"Zulu" is a serving Royal Engineer with two tours in Afghanistan to his credit. He was constantly eager, and constantly fixated on performing well. There was a lot of "young soldier" in Zulu, as evidenced by the repetition of various stock phrases and the sort of demeanor that I generally associate with young initiates to military service - particularly recent graduates of Marine Corps basic training whom I've known over the years. Zulu and I were the only two students who stayed in the affiliated hotel, so we ended up carpooling and eating most of our meals together; as a result, we got to know one another fairly well.

Finally, there was Tom Thumb. Thumb is a former Royal Marine turned roofer, and a family man. Despite his modest stature and age (he was the oldest participant by about fifteen years), Thumb absolutely led the pack, and his reliability and good nature made it easy for the two of us to get along and work well with one another. As he's getting to the age where roofing is likely to get more physically demanding for him, he's looking to close protection as a career that he can transition into that can allow him to continue making an income by applying a bit more brain and a bit less brawn.

Overall, I think the course was valuable. Our instructor had several years of experience in executive close protection for several high profile clients, which allowed him to illustrate a number of concepts with anecdotes from his past. We covered topics including threat and risk assessments, vehicle and building search procedures, operational planning, venue security, convoy security, and surveillance, among others. Many of these were topics I was familiar with, or even fairly expert in, before I took the course; but the practice was good, as was seeing it employed in a different context than the ones I've typically been exposed to. There were a handful of topics that I would have omitted had I been orchestrating the course, but the overall course was a good use of two weeks of my life.

As I write this, I've just received notice that all four of us passed the final exam, and to the best of my knowledge we all received satisfactory marks on the final exercise as well. The certifying authority, Highfield Awarding Body for Compliance, will issue our certificates, at which point my colleagues will submit lengthier applications for their Security Industry Authority licenses, allowing them to work in the United Kingdom (or for UK-based companies operating overseas). For my purposes, the certification alone should be sufficient.

With two weeks down, I was off and running on a Monday morning to take care of some long standing obligations.

Bold Brigand: Meeting Pockets

In 2004, I spent two months on "unpaid work experience" on the south coast of England. The experience was fantastic - the time of my life, in fact - and I was able to acquaint myself with great swaths of West Sussex, visit London once or twice, and hit a few other hot spots before embarking on an epic two week holiday around Scotland, Ireland, and France (after which it was back to the States for my last year of undergraduate study). I also acquainted myself with some great guys, one of whom was a guy around my age who was known as "Pockets" because of his habit of keeping his hands in his pockets when they ought to have been hard at work. ("Idle hands... ") Following my Orcadian respite, I had a long travel day that happened to take me through my old digs in Sussex, and I was able to rouse Pockets from his current gig as a journeyman embalmer to pick me up from the train station and join me for dinner.

Despite the fact that I've gained about seventy pounds, grown a beard, and lost a lot of my hair; and the fact that Pockets has grown a beard and gotten a helluva lot more ink, it was just like old times. We laughed like schoolboys, remembered the good times of 2004 and all of the great guys (and also the wankers) we worked with, and then took a stroll down to the beach front so that I could have a quick look at the place where I'd made so many memories so many years earlier. With that done and dusted, Pockets and I shared a last laugh and a hearty bro-hug goodbye, and I was back on my way.

Island Paradise: A Brief Respite in Orkney

After my early day of travel (and my ill-advised yomp from Thurso to Scrabster), I spent several days in Orkney. Having always previously stayed with contacts in Orkney, this was the first time I actually stayed in formal visitor accommodation. As things in Kirkwall were (to the best of my knowledge) booked up, I ended up in the Stromness Hotel. The Stromness Hotel boasts lovely rooms, a great breakfast, and three - yes, three - pubs, to include a "whisky heritage bar". The Stromness Hotel, with its youthful and hard-working staff (who seemed ubiquitous - I swear, one kid working there seemed to be involved in serving me just about every meal I ate there, regardless of the time of day) did a great job of making me feel welcome. With so much pressure having arisen during the intervening weeks, it was extremely cathartic.

Early in my trip, I had my first ever wander around Stromness. Small by comparison to Kirkwall, Stromness nonetheless boasts its own history and a variety of curiosities. Stromness is located within the sheltered harbor known as "Hamnavoe", the latter being the village's original name. Hamnavoe is Norse for "safe harbor", as the harbor was within a protected area of Scapa Flow. The ferry MV Hamnavoe transports passengers from Stromness to Scrabster several times daily (except when it doesn't). In the days of sail, and the early age of steam propulsion, Stromness also served as a last stopping off point for ships from the Hudson's Bay Company that were bound for Canada and elsewhere. Login's Well offered one last source of fresh water before the ships left on their long voyages across the Atlantic. At some point, a tiny foot path in Stromness inherited the name "Khyber Pass" - not to be confused with the Indian takeaway near the University of Aberdeen campus.

When I arrived in Stromness, I'd spent the prior two weeks finishing off my dissertation and preparing to leave Aberdeen, and I just sort of needed a break. I found a conveniently placed bench at the south end of the village, and just sat there for at least an hour, maybe more like two. It was positively idyllic, just cold enough to be comfortable for a well-insulated bloke like me, but sunny enough to bring out Orkney's lovely greens and blues.

During one trip by bus from Stromness to Kirkwall, I looked out the bus window and saw that the waters of the North Sea northwest of Kirkwall (right around Finstown) looked as smooth as glass - something I didn't think was even possible for a body of water connected directly to the ocean, and particularly the North Sea! Of course, I had to snap a picture of it to share with you, my beloved readers. While in Kirkwall (which happened a couple of times, both for errands and for general leisure), I also stumbled upon...

... another blackening. One would almost think that I'm getting to the point of being pretty familiar with this place I fell in love with so many years ago... But, alas, my respite was to be interrupted in short order. There was time to fill, and there were things to do, and as soon as I'd had a moment to catch my proverbial breath, I was off and running once again.