turf

Rain.
Just right for laying some turf.
A shame we've run out part way along.
The truck is a bit muddy too.

less of a cycle, more of a walk

Still no furniture, let alone bikes, so I decided to explore by foot today. My route was directly into the centre and then along to the wharf.

The predominant form of transport around the wharf today seemed to be cyclists of one kind or another, worthy of a quick iPhone snapshot.

Only a few more days and I'll be re-united with my own bicycles. Meanwhile, there's other forms of transport to explore.

indoor campsite

The latest furniture acquisition is these stylish chairs. I spotted them in Tesco and their combined price was a remarkable £10.

They are more or less our entire furniture collection at the moment until we are eventually re-united with the items currently in storage. Everything else was trucked away to a depot back in early May, so it is becoming difficult to remember exactly what will return.

The more streamlined living of the last few months has been oddly addictive, so it is possible that we'll be jettison yet more stuff as part of this relocation.

For now, I'm sitting in one of the campsite chairs with Radio 4 as accompaniment.

fandango

The new Trump communications manager doesn't disappoint.

Worth a modest $85 million, Scaramucci is an investment banker pulling $5 million in salary and another $4.9 million from his ownership stake in SkyBridge Capital. He blames that disclosure on a leak, although it was freely available as Public Financial Disclosure Report (OGE Form 278e), which he was required to provide, when first appointed.

In keeping with the ever more Don-like moves of the President, Scaramucci has already made the Press Corp an offer they can't refuse. He threatens to fire them all if they don't behave. A quicker way to help Trump get the swamp he desires?

An early Goodfellas style Scaramucci move was to plan to dismiss Michael Short for an alleged leak. Short quit when he found out. Mooch blamed “another leak” for early news of the firing — even though he himself was the person who let it slip.

Scaramucci told reporters,“This (the leaking) is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”

How to sound self righteous whilst making mistakes? Inverse virtue signalling? Who knows?

Next Scaramooch slid it up a gear in that Newsnight interview with BBC's Emily Maitlis. Creepy space invading patronising rhetoric accompanied with much front stabbing. Multiple 'shout at the telly' moments all within 11 minutes.

So, entertainment it might be, proper politics, it ain't.

motel

On the road again, having left our temporary apartment by the jetty. Now we are closing in on the new area. There's still plenty of interesting places along the way, like Alf Resco's, which is a fine place for a brunch.

We're currently in a motel, which could have been a prototype for that old Crossroads television series. Indeed, it turns out that this motel was the very first one built in the U.K. back in 1955.

The one we are staying in has obviously been refurbished since those days, and even Breaking Bad managed to incorporate a kind of homage to Crossroads in one of its episodes.

So above is the one from Albuquerque, and below is our current venue.

But only for a couple of days, then we'll be back in our own place.

an interesting locomotive turns up at the jetty

Today, breakfast on the beach seemed like a good idea, so we headed off to a nearby bay.

Despite all the news broadcasts about traffic jams and overcrowding, we found the area perfectly accessible and just healthily busy.

Back, later in the day, to the temporary home by the jetty. I glimpsed the top of a steam locomotive chimney that I didn't recognise. A kind of elongated shape. They'd brought a special train into the station. We're in the west here, but this was very much an east coast locomotive.

My inner anorak surfaced as I noticed the engine was decked out in British Railways LNER Apple Green, with a first carriage in a rhubarb and custard paint scheme.

This wasn't a normal preserved locomotive. Ask many train knowledgeable folk if they know the last BR steam locomotive and they'll answer with Evening Star, a 2-10-0 engine once immortalised by an Airfix kit.

But this one was later. Much later. Built well after the end of the steam era on the railways. The Pacific A1 named Tornado was built from 1994, and only completed in 2008. Truly a 21st Century steam locomotive.

watch that train come down the track

I said I was staying above the train station, so here is a better picture from one of the windows.

It's raining right now, so the view isn't quite as clear into the distance. There's a black locomotive on its way to connect back with the front of the train. It's a GWR Hall class 4-6-0, but painted in the BR livery of black with red lining rather than the characteristic green of the GWR.

It's possible to zoom into that top picture, but here's more of a close-up taken at the other end of the line.

coal fired

It would be silly not to investigate the railway that is downstairs from the temporary apartment on the jetty. As well as the passenger ferry and the adjacent small car ferry, we have the steam trains departing about every 45 minutes.

It is even possible to check the approach of the next train via a handily positioned telescope, then saunter downstairs to be in time to catch the arriving train, whilst the locomotive runs around the rolling stock to the front ready for departure.

So what better thing to do than to head along the river and then out towards the sea, maybe to pause a while on a sunny beach?

wordless wednesday

paperless office with reckless abandon

I don't really care whether David Davis returned to Britain after an hour or so in Brussels because of a Commons whip or because of the in-fighting for leadership.

That he returned at all after what was effectively his second day in the front-line for the Brexit talks is appalling.

He and his team may look unprepared without papers. But we all know has a special silver briefcase with secret locks and that thing about 'don't show papers to the press' etc. It's still just like the other day when he sat in Parliament trying to laugh off Emily Thornbury's challenges. It isn't clever, it's insulting to the electorate. He's not showing leadership, and his ex colleague and erstwhile EU sparring partner Barnier must be quietly smiling at the incompetence.

May is finished, although the Tories can't tip her out yet. Davis arrogantly considers himself in the running as a replacement, along with other comedy turns like Rees-Mogg, Johnson and Gove. Hammond is being heavily briefed against, so presumably we'll get a newbie or a stitch-up (possibly both).

The Brits can't have another Referendum about Brexit, but by now there must be a dawning realisation with the negotiating team about the futility of the process against the already dwindling time-frame.

Parliament will stagger on for a few more days but then hits summer recess. I'll be watching to see how much time Davis, Fox and the others spend doing actual Brexit things during the gap. No-one will be able to resist playing games leading up to the September conference season.

Most of Britain doesn't even notice all of this stuff; Game of Thrones has restarted and there's a new Doctor Who, as well as loads of sport to watch.

Meanwhile the UK is doing all kinds of irreversible things with no-one even tacitly at the wheel.

Corbyn's lot should bite the bullet on the 52:48, declare reckless endangerment of the country citing Cameron, Osborne, May, Johnson and Gove and put a stop to the madness.

I expect I'll return to this theme from time to time. I can't help it.

finding my jetpack, oh okay, jetty

We've left the temporary barn now, moving instead to the temporary apartment close to the jetty. It wasn't very far, although the introduction of a ferry into the journey added a whole extra element.

And it was one of those ferries where the cars travel on one boat and another one alongside is used to pull it through the water and steer it into the right place.

Then to find the actual apartment, which is part of the recent series involving the shack in the wood and the barn with the alpacas. This one has a telescope, which is quite handy for looking at the steam trains along the jetty.

For a Monday morning, the train seemed very popular, and once I noticed it, I was able to get from the apartment to the trackside in good time to take a picture or two.

It also gave me a chance to discover the shortcut from the apartment to the jetty, which is all of two minutes away.

Not to mention the various other ferries that seem to ply the river. I'd better plan a route using some of them over the next few days.

tap turns on the water #CCS #SS7 #nothingtosee

Like a series of Homeland, Breaking Bad or House of Cards, I'm finding the the ongoing White House saga a bit too suitable for binge viewing.

One of Trump's old mentors, the rather unsavoury lawyer Roy Cohn, gave advice to Trump along the lines of 'Never leave a paper trail.' Other advice included the formula 'Attack, counterattack and never apologise.'

Paul Manaport, Trump's one-time campaign manager was also good at the 'no paper trail' idea.

That certainly seems to be the case, along with the Cohn formula.

Ironic then, if true, that Manaport's phone was subject to FBI surveillance.

An old 1975 phone routing protocol called Common Channel Signalling (CCS) is still used today as the basis of phone call interception, by re-routing the call (e.g. to a surveillance desk) and then onwards to its real destination. The protocol is supposed to be used for roaming and mast handovers, but the Americans with their Plain Old Telephone Service can also use it for wiretapping.

Now, there's a small group of peopler alleged to have had this wiretapping switched on Manaport ~(frequently at Trump meetings), James Comey (who Trump sacked from leading the FBI) who asked for it to be enabled on his own work phone and (oo-er, via Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

What I can't understand, however, is that if this was true, then where are all the recordings? The basic use of CCS-SS7 can TRACK a phone, the more extensive use would provide fuller surveillance, from which there should thus be recordings.

For Comey, I can understand if there's nothing forthcoming. He's ex-FBI and also writing a show-and- tell book. For Kislyak, it could be immensely embarrassing to be seen to be bugging a foreign diplomat. Manaport could be fair game, but there's nothing in the open.

So, given the scrabble to go to the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and the lack of published files, it somehow suggests that Donny Junior's team were still short of proper information related to ways to assist their election prospects?

The complexities of this all require a proper flow chart or detective crazy wall to join things together.

Add in the curious Trump server (trump-email.com) which seemed to spend most of its life chatting to Alfa Bank in Russia and we start to have quite a three dimensional crossword. Of course, the investigations themselves are now polluting the findings. That server was spammed heavily just before it was taken down, which has helped to cover the tracks.

Incidentally, the server is back online now, but gives out droll error messages, presumably whilst monitoring who has taken a peek at it.

And now I speculate slightly. A combination of, say, a profiling database and a DNC campaign database would make a great start for who to influence. Ring any bells? That huge Facebook hack, plus the DNC database theft? But who to analyse it all? Trump's strategist Steve Bannon is a friend of Cambridge Analytica who could offer such services and - wait- are owned by Alfa Bank.

In the other direction such a server could provide access to funds (suitably laundered) which could then be used, say, by a botnet to create messages to those targeted voters.

I'd suppose I'd base the botnet in Russia although I could offshore it to say, Florida, for the irony.

And to keep things dramatic, Trump Junior has now retained Alan Futerfas as his attorney. "He's a good kid," as Trump Senior describes his 39 year old son, whilst helping him obtain the same veteran New York criminal defence attorney used by mafia crime families.

But. No tapes, no papers, no story?

Here's CCS playing 'tap turns on the water, See the water flow. Acorn makes a forest, see the forest grow.