What's your unique interest?
I love learning about lots of different things and the more obscure the better!
One topic I love is Soviet Bus Stops. There's a documentary and a book about them and they're fascinating. They are so beautiful and unique, and not what you would expect from the Soviet era, which just makes them even more interesting. Here's a picture of one from Georgia.
Tell us about your unique interests!
Comments
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Video Games, specifically Xbox at the moment, Karaoke, Digital Photography, Cosplay, Martial Arts.
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Quite a few there @SheffieldMan1976, that's great! Do you have a favourite karaoke song? I love karaoke but my friends aren't so keen!
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I do a few different songs, mainly 70s and 80s Pop/Rock.
I'm actually going to a Karaoke in my local after tea.
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Car valeting videos … and there's actually a programme on History now … Dirty Old Cars
Strangely appealing to the OCD Neat Freak in me
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Oh that'll be fun @SheffieldMan1976! Let us know which songs you end up singing.
Ooh interesting @WelshBlue. Is it vintage cars or modern ones? Have you watched powerwashing videos? There's a few where they clean really dirty rugs and it's amazing how much cleaner they keep getting.
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It's a mixture of barn finds all crusty inside and out and modernish cars people have really let go
I'd be lost without my pressure washer … so therapeutic watching dirt, algae etc just wash away.
Lord I've got a sad life … although my brother is far worse. He's got every cleaning product and chemical going. Nobody is allowed a drink or anything to eat in his car. He's even got a vacuum for his forestry machine 🙄
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That actually sounds really interesting @WelshBlue! I think I'll give it a go. I'm so jealous that you have a pressure washer. I'd be making things dirty just so I could clean them 😂
What's a forestry machine?
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@Rachel_Scope a forestry machine … aka a Harvester
cuts down trees and sneds the branches off. We used to fell and clean between 60 to a 100 a day with a chainsaw … one of them does that in an hour … Many different types available if you've got a spare £400,000 😁
I miss it. Maybe not so much in this weather but still miss it
Doing it by hand
Machine
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Well I'm very glad I asked @WelshBlue! I find large machines fascinating. It's crazy how these can devour a tree. So is this what you used to do as a career?
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@Rachel_Scope yep that was my career for nearly 30 years, although towards the end I was more focused on felling trees the harvesters couldn't because of size, and on the spanners/ welding. It was a good career, a lot of laughs, a lot of close shaves … even if we saw things we can't unsee. Definitely saw some changes from when I started at 16
If you like machines this is the next stage after the harvester. The Forwarder. with one of the very few females workers in the UK, in the industry
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Finding online the international research that tries to murologically explain invisible disabilties, especially my lifelong disability Auditory Processing Disorder. I now have multiple pdf research paper collections to help me understand these issues.
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@Rachel_Scope Soviet bus stops is interesting… I've read into Russian/USSR history a little but but never came across them. What period were they from?
@WelshBlue My brother would like a go on that, though in fairness he's less into industrial mass tree removal and more keen on keeping individual trees (& other shrubs/plants) healthy when they need a bit of TLC
He does like to swear and throw stuff around though, and I don't think he'd turn down a go using that because it looks big and noisy. Interesting about the female employees, something I'm noticing living relatively rural is the amount of tractors driven by young women. Seems like the new generation of farmers and definitely lays some stereotypes to rest about gender and manoeuvring big vehicles
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@66Mustang … would you believe that the strongest language I used was golly gosh that hurt
or having walked 1/2 a mile up a mountain, and your saw wouldn't start .. it was fiddlesticks, I'll have to walk back down ?
There's always a need for Arborists to take care of trees, so fair play to your brother for giving them a chance. The machinery is definitely noisy and you realise how big when you have to fix a puncture. I think women in farming is a breath of fresh air … more level headed, less likely to cause unnecessary damage to the enviroment/ nature (it does happen)
Women definitely are as capable as men on machinery and I'd have had no qualms working alongside one as an operator … the manual side they would struggle with on production forestry. And that's not being sexist as I'm a firm believer women are the stronger sex in so many ways.
Back on topic … I've been looking at Soviet Bus Stops. Fascinating. Some truly remarkable architecture
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Learning a lot about emotional (amygdala, hippocampus) and rational (PFC) brain… I do get why my brother (and others in the profession, and indeed any manual profession) can be a bit "abrupt" to put it politely!!
I can well imagine 35 degree heat, of course wearing padded clothing so even hotter, mid afternoon trying to get finished and a member of the public calls you down from the tree. They want to politely warn you that a few of the leaves from the tree you're working on are fluttering down quite near their to car.
I don't think "thank you, didn't realise" would be the first thing that comes to mind!!!
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@66Mustang … brilliantly put. And interesting. Looking back, I used to mainly swear out of frustration and pain.
The heat of the safety gear is pretty unbearable at times. Imagine the heat of 30 + degrees radiaing from the ground like a radiator, the sun beating down, and all the time your cocooned in safety gear of knee high boots, padded trousers, leather chainsaw gloves and a helmet with earmuffs and a visor .. I used to lose a good Stone in the Summer
Heroes to get people their toilet roll, paper and wood for DIY 🤣
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We used to try and combat it by starting at first light … but I imagine your brother would get a few choice words of his own in a residential street starting a saw up
I hope you're doing well with the thing you started
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I think there's a shortage of people doing jobs like that in all honesty. The last few decades we've been encouraged to, or aspire to go to, university, plus it's a lot more accessible… it no longer marks you out as academic elite, everyone has a degree nowadays & manual jobs are looked on with a certain amount of snobbery
Seeing the amount some trainee lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers get vs. lots of manual jobs is enlightening… of course the former offers much more room for progression & a builder or whatever I guess earns roughly same throughout their career but it's quite eye opening
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@66Mustang I'm glad you find them interesting. They were built between the 1960s and 1990s, with most of them built in the 70s. I actually made a PowerPoint presentation about them which I'll have to dig out for more information! Is there anything in particular you like about Russian history? I haven't done a deep dive into it for quite a while and I've got a memory like a sieve. I do like Russian Suprematism art though.
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Oh just noticed you've had a look at the bus stops too @WelshBlue! I'm so happy to be spreading the word about them 😁 Any favourites?
I can't imagine how stifling the heat would be in the summer with all the safety gear. Did you have a fan and lots of water to keep cool? You wouldn't want to be getting dizzy up a tree!
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My favourite Bus stop is one where the Bus actually turns up! 😂
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I was looking into East Germany then naturally went back to USSR, then just got interested in the whole communism thing and Russian history back to the Russian revolution 😊
Something interesting I learnt - the word "bolshy" people use today to describe someone a bit full of themselves - comes from the Bolsheviks whose behaviour I guess could be described as "bolshy" back in their day!!
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