Fractals

My wife wanted a horse box at exactly the same time we were going through a busy period at work. As a result, on one of those rare occasions when I got a whole Saturday to myself, we, the wife and I, went out and without a second thought bought a trailer for two horses. Two horses because she wanted the capacity to either take a friend (and friend`s horse) to the regular weekend trials meetings she attends or, eventually, maybe, start her own riding stables and transport client`s horses about. 

With each horse weighing about a ton the box had a gross weight that proved too great for our family saloon, both legally and mechanically.  My wife had always liked the idea of a Land Rover, and a pick-up body, she said, would enable her to cart animal feed and straw around.  We found a reasonably new long wheel base Defender which seemed perfectly happy with the box trailing along behind.  All appeared to be well.

Well, except that as my wife had decided on her commercial venture, the gross train weight of 4500 kgs put the combination within the range of tachograph legislation. I had only ever seen one Land Rover with a tachograph, a utilities company with a trailer lugging a mini digger, if I remember correctly, and I had heard there were difficulties fitting them with digital tachograph sender units. Eventually I found somewhere to do the work and went along to have, at considerable expense, an instrument and all its workings wired in.  

She`s not as tall as me, my wife, and had a bit of trouble seeing what was going on behind through the mirrors.  I simply stretched and craned my neck until I could see round the trailer.  The answer came in the form of some bolt-on mirror extensions, a disposable type judging by how many times they were wiped out of gate posts up and down the country.  And with a comfier, aftermarket seat (long drives in a cramped driver`s cab made her back hurt) my wife enjoyed many trips out with her friends, clients and their animals.

Enjoyment being relative, it wasn`t long before comfort at the events became an issue.  Other people were able to brew tea and even rest between sessions on horseback, she said, in their camper vans.  I sourced a fibre glass demountable camper body for the Defender.  It wasn`t cheap, but according to those who would be using it, it was worth every penny.

Eventually things calmed down at work and I was able to go along to a horse jumping event with my wife.  It was there it hit me.  As I stood looking along the lines of horse transport which occupied one side of the field, I saw our much adapted, bolt-on, bitty Land Rover amongst the 7.5 tonne horse boxes - the trucks built to do everything we wanted.

The Weather - It`s all our Fault

We are obsessed with our environment.  I don`t mean the planet and melting ice caps, and the prospect of entire countries disappearing underwater, I`m referring to our immediate surroundings.  A change in a landscape often evokes comment, on the rare occasions we actually look close enough to notice something different, but it`s alterations in our personal `livingscape` that really get us going.  Changes from what we think of as the norm prompt endless comment that result in a kind of environment fixation.  It`s no surprise in many ways: what goes on within the range of our senses has an immediate effect on our lives, and it pays to take an interest in what`s happening close by.  But it`s the character of the surroundings in which we exist that is truly significant.  When you live in a truck for weeks on end, for example, the inside of the cab, its comfort, size and colour are important. If I get in any vehicle for the first time I look around and assess it for all these points.  If anything untoward happens to the inside of my cab I take steps to rectify the problem straight away. I don`t like a dirty floor, so I make sure I leave my work boots in a side locker, and I hate marks on the upholstery and dust.  As a result, I sweep out and clean it regularly.

We notice our close surroundings because they have an immediate influence on us as individuals. The surrounding weather, because it effects our everyday lives, is an important `livingscape` factor and as such gets a lot of attention. But there`s a big difference between the planet`s too hot and I`m too hot; it`s all about our weather, in other words, my bit of weather.  Every time the `immediate` weather is in the slightest way unusual – which is more often than not - we greet each other with a comment about it being too wet, too windy or too hot.  And by obsessing we create a problem; a problem with The Weather.  Unlike the inside of a truck, which can be changed, and a dust problem solved, the weather is unalterable.  We`d be better off ignoring it – remembering that for most of us, the weather, in all its forms, is just part of our surroundings.  You can`t change it, it`s just there, live with it.

A Simple Test

You are going on holiday to the South of France by coach.  There are two drivers as usual for this type of journey and both, of course, have category D on their driving licence. Driver A, known as Lucky, passed his test after a mid-morning, post rush-hour drive that threw up few challenges. In fact, the glorious sunshine and lack of traffic meant that he almost enjoyed the experience.  He was well rehearsed for the set pieces, pulling into bus stops etc, and accrued only a handful of faults on the examiners fault finding sheet.  None were considered serious.  Driver B, who every one called Second Time Lucky, took his test in the late afternoon, battling with the school run and some pretty foul weather.  He was presented with numerous challenges, all of which he dealt with but not after some furious pen work by his examiner.  During one of these he scored a serious fault and failed the test.  His second attempt was a totally different affair. The roads were quieter and the other drivers around him seemed far better behaved.  In the end, to his relief, he was indeed second time lucky.

The question is, which driver would you rather have behind the wheel, Lucky or Second Time Lucky?  They both have licences for the vehicle but has one been examined to a higher level than the other?  Has one proven himself a driver more able to deal with a wider range of challenges, and more importantly, has one not been tested sufficiently?  My own answer is that I wouldn`t, without sitting behind each one of them for a while, choose either.  Not that I would be fault finding, it`s just that I would want to assess how Lucky and Second Time Lucky actually drive.  Finding fault is easy - and, let`s be honest, it can be quite enjoyable - in fact you can become so engrossed in it that all common sense and reason goes out the window. Assessment is far more accurate if you look at what people do right and not what they do wrong, particularly when it comes to dealing with problems. A satisfactory driver is one that generally does everything they should while demonstrating genuine ability with the vehicle. It wouldn`t matter to me if one drove in a small town and the other in a large city: just by watching, I`d know if they were competent or not.

Total Control

I tried an experiment this week.  My old BSA motorcycle needed a new clutch – it had been playing up for a while and was getting so bad the old girl would soon have become unusable – so I took steps towards repairing it.  However, instead of simply disappearing with the motorcycle and my tool chest into some quiet corner of the workshop, I tried something new.  I sat down and created a spreadsheet.  And, once it was completed (and an outline and schedule of work was laid out before me, costing analysis included) I gathered a few like minded people around and we had a discussion.  All in all it took several hours. I slumped into my armchair that night tired, but although my eyes were sore from glaring at all those rows of figures, I was able to take comfort in the knowledge that my time that afternoon had been fully occupied.

The following day I went to the old motorcycle and found the clutch as bad as it had been the day before.  In the cold light of day I wasn`t particularly surprised:  why should it have been any different?  No work had been done on the vehicle itself; no proper effort had been applied to the actual problem. I drew my conclusions and noted the result of my experiment, not on a spreadsheet or any other sheet for that matter - no, within my mind I understood. Administration should support action, not dictate it.  I should have made a decision about the best way to progress and then got on with the job.  An engineer`s approach: a physical solution to a physical problem, not an illusion created by administration.

The administrator’s language is unmistakable.  `I`m calling a meeting`, they will say, as if announcing the unveiling of something tangible, commercial, viable.   `Best Practice`, `Fit for Purpose`, their maxims are endless.  Their justification is the pursuit of the ideal; the result is purely imaginary apart from an all consuming paper chase. The administrator creates their own workload, gradually building, creeping over time, so that no one notices the extent of the change taking place.  They bolt bureaucratic layer upon bureaucratic layer, until the illusion is complete.  A system that is an entity of its own – one that`s far too busy being itself to actually support anything else.  A self serving sphere of delusion.   A sole occupation that`s convinced of its own usefulness and, because of the gradual nature of its infestation, one that deceives all – including the administrator. 

The worst thing is that we are all potential administrators at heart – we have an inbuilt gene that makes us want to order and organize.  But like all instinctive behaviour, the manifestations are not always logical and despite my experiment convincing me otherwise, I still love doing things that I know don`t really need doing.   I can`t help myself, they`re just there, begging for my attention.   I play around with my laptop`s systems instead of getting on with the job in hand, the tasks I bought the thing for in the first place.  All of us are susceptible to the draw of administration over practicality.  I once worked with a bloke who was a bit of a hi-fi nut; he read all the magazines and by all accounts had a pretty expensive system at home.  (He was also, significantly, a real hands-on engineer.)  But when I asked what sort of music he enjoyed, he looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot.  It was all about the system: a complex virtual world of perfect settings and specifications – in other words, administration.

It`s probably no surprise that we are governed by administrators: men and women who pour out legislation in the belief that some sort of order can be achieved.   In truck driving alone, requirement is being heaped upon requirement, each addition supposed to improve quality but in reality just adding unnecessary burden. And as my little experiment showed, we would be far better off with a balance tipped towards physical solutions rather than imaginary ideals.  But not everyone understands the real nature of pragmatism.  Most government ministers seem to have been raised in a hierarchy that instills self belief and confuses the retention of obscure facts with intelligence.  Many are barristers and when they see a system it`s not as a predictable or mechanical entity but as an abstract. Their misjudged conjecture, in my opinion, should be replaced by something far more certain.

Driver CPC is a typical example of the inappropriate application of abstract conjecture. Drivers don`t need to know the details of tachograph legislation, they simply need to understand the small part that applies to them.  A tipper driver in London doesn`t need to get his head around ferry journeys; a transcontinental haulage driver doesn`t need to know the extensive list of exemptions.  I don`t believe any driver needs patronizing for seven hours learning that if he drives on the throttle and brakes all the time it`s not good. In the long term, all that CPC is likely to do is create a shortage of drivers; experienced drivers and rookies alike put off by the irrelevant obstacles they need to negotiate in order to maintain a licence.

All legislation has the potential of becoming abstract in the end - because it relies on compliance, a blind deference to bureaucracy, good or bad - especially when it`s the good guys who suffer by bearing the cost of increasing administration.  You don`t need a driving licence or tachograph driver card to drive a 44t artic, you only need them to be legal.  Legislation gives the impression of control but it will never control all drivers, only those who participate in its scheme.  The engineer`s solution would be to shift the emphasis away from the driver and concentrate on controlling all vehicles; the logic of it is irrefutable, a quantum leap in thinking taking us from uncertain to certain. There will be paperwork to sort out, there always is, but that`s what administrators are for – to implement decisions already made.