Reignited Memories

As many of my friends and colleagues will tell you, I am hideously late for just about everything - I suspect it's to do with holding my interest, but I'm rarely early if I have to be (conversely, out of choice and I'll be there 3 hours early).

Watching the excellent Seven Ages of Britain this evening reminded me of probably the only time I've been somewhere at 8am out of choice - 1982; the raising of the Mary Rose.

A young Colin would have been about 5 at the time, this would have been after the fire at my primary school which forced me to travel across town to a temporary site for education (prior to being stung on the nuts by a bee flicked up my trouser leg). I distinctly remember being the first into the AV room, sitting on my heart-shaped cushion (seriously, did nobody send a memo to my parents?) to watch the hulk of the ship being pulled up.

Curiously, and now probably to the frequent boredom of Chris, I can recall details about the lift, and subsequent preservation operations to some fine detail - and when it pops up on TV today - well the interest doesn't wane.

Was I ever that interested in history? Not really, until recently I was quite accepting of "that was what it was"... I suppose, with age, I'm now more impressed with our forebear's achievements, and intrigued, but I'm actually fascinated with the how... not so much the what. Yes, this series has focused on art too, which has been entirely fascinating within the realms of the politics and power of the age - and I've been enthralled by it all.

But, looking back though, is this what that young Colin, rushing to that TV, observing the great hulking lifting frame and mechanism, was interested in? Was this every indication of being an... engineer... all along? Am I subconsciously sat there trying to work out "well, if I didn't have X, Y, or Z - how would I do that?"

Well, yes, obviously on one level that is entirely true, but what these programmes and undertakings have is the ability to join my love of problem solving to the real world - making the engineer engineer. So often these days my problem solving is in a virtual, detached reality... this brings home the possibility of innovation, imagination and the power of engineering and gives it substance.

I'm loving this recent renaissance of BBC series connecting all these kinds of concepts to the real world, presented in entertaining and curiosity driven ways...

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