Spot of Bother

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Seven of the 12 British 'plane spotters have been found guilty of spying on the Greek air force. The rest have been convicted of adeing and abetting.

Quite how a bunch of anoraks can be confused for James Bond etc, or what secrets the Greek air force has to offer is beyond me.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

Answers

Any Packed lunch, dear? Oh, prawn sandwiches...my favourite. Pass the pickles...

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

Hello hello hello, what's this in the lunch box then (ooh missus), two ham sandwiches, a bottle of Tizer, an apple, some sun tan lotion, a knotted handkerchief, a cyanide pill, and some Top Secret papers. Just come along with me, Biggles. Mr Stavros would like a word.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

Well they exposed a fairly major secret as far as I was concerned. I never knew the Greeks had an air force.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

I heard the spotters had come to Greece directly from Turkey. The Greeks and Turks still have regular air skirmishes, including shooting each other down on occasions - hence the sensitivity. Put before a jury, it's probably not easy to explain any difference between 'spotting' and spying. They both entail watching and noting down various details. Whether intended or not, that information could be useful to the 'enemy'. Hopefully though, now they have made their point, the Greeks won't be too harsh with the sentence (which they might have served already).

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

Sentencing is thought to be suspended, but was awarded between 1 and 3 years.

Mind, I think it would be a good thing for all plane/train/bus spotters to all be locked up. The tartan Thermos flask industry may suffer, but it's for their own good.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002



saw a 14 year old boy with video camera tracking my train coming into Edinburgh last weekend, oh dear

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

I have never understood the point of it all, train spotting or plane spotting.

I could understand if it was people admiring the designs, but noting down a number and a time just seems like a complete waste of time.

Do you think anyone car-spots, collecting number plates? (apart from traffic wardens)

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002


Well that's interesting. There's Paul posting between 6 and 7 pm on a Friday Evening in April. I think that's the seventh one of those I've noticed this month, a new record for April unless anyone can beat that?

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

And your point is?

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

I used to car spot when I was a kid. When me and me big brother got dragged around shopping by me Mam we used to decide before we went out what sort of car we would spot - probably a 105W Ford Anglia with a slanty back or summat. Then we would look out for them and write down the numbers. Don't know why we did it - s'pose it made the shopping bearable. Can't remember what we did with the lists we made but knowing me brother it probably involved me getting beaten up!

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002


When I was a kid, license plate spotting was something parents used in an attempt to keep kids occupied on long car trips. You were supposed to see how many different state license plates you saw, and how many of each. Didn't do much for me growing up in CA, since it was such a large state there weren't many cars around from other states. Have to admit the influence of that game is still with me, as I still tend to get a mini thrill seeing out of state plates. Don't bother keeping track anymore though. It's not that interesting. ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

My son was a VERY determined train spotter when he was young. He turned out to be a mathematician. He had a book in which all the train numbers in the then British Rail stock were listed. There was a pattern to the numbering.

What he got from train spotting was exploration of a classification system and the comfort of examining an ordered process (which was not so apparent in the home!) He also explored, with his cousins, large numbers of stations in the search for numbers to complete the sightings of a particular class. Between them they got to plan where to go, how to get there, how to optimize their financial resources. All in all I think it was a much more relevant experience for "life" than how I spent my youth, i.e., wrapped in a Jackie Milburn look-alike United strip kicking a ball every moment God sent. He also got just as dirty as I ever did - so that was accomplished as well!

Its probably very difficult for us "sporty types" to ever understand train spotting. However, from an early age my son completely over-awed me with the effortless ease in which he did his math homework and played the piano - and I could see that the train spotting somehow fitted in with that just nicely. He was a quiet child and I worried about this - well we do worry about our kids don't we. However, when he was about three I took him to the bridges over the railway that lead from Princess Stree Gardens. His aim was to be directly above each train as it passed under the bridge and he ended up pushing kids twice his age and size out of the way. I was very pleased about that!



-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002

Anoraknophobia

Excellent Sudden. A very spirited defence of train spotting for sure. I did some of it myself as a kid but the steam trains were pretty exciting beasts with their noise, different shapes and wheel configurations etc. I certainly couldn't understand the simple collection of numbers from electric and diesel trains which all looked so alike. It's interesting that the Suddenlet was inspired to learn order and classification from all that.

Car number games while travelling are fun and me and Tara devise ever more complex ones, using the letters as intials and building a phrase or sentence from those initials, or constructing the shortest and longest word we can think of containing those 3 letters in order, a countdown style game where you have to reach a certain total by inserting math symbols in between the numbers, etc etc.

And your point is?

Hmmmm. Sometimes an attempt at a joke doesn't work Paul. You said Do you think anyone car-spots, collecting number plates so I immediately came back in the style of an anorak and bbs spotter. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Less so now! Oh well, I'll try harder next time.



-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

Bliddy kids of today. They don't know they're born, eh Jonno.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

Sometimes my attempt at a joke doesn't work either :)

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002


Sorry about that Jonno, thought you would have realised it was a double bluff.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

[joke]It's our fault for not using the appropriate html tags I guess [/joke]

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

That's the annoying thing about all this text we use to talk, you can't tell what people mean sometimes as you don't have facial expressions or tones of voice to help you along.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

That's why emoticons were invented. ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

They're a bloody pain in the arse too, and yes I am being sarcastic! :-((

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002

There's no comparison between trainspotting and any other kind of anorakia, if the trains you spotted were the mechanical equivalent of human beings.

This might come across as the gibberings of somebody old enough to know better, but believe me, steam engines are one of the most sublime end products of the human intellect.

Fabulous machines, the whole lot, and you guys don't know what you missed.

Diesel, and any other kind of internal combustion crap, you can stick.

Take the p1ss all you l1ke, but 1 wouldn't have m1ssed 1t for worlds.

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2002


I endorse Pit Bill's remarks that the steam trains were wonderful creatures. They have a great romance about them, they were living breathing beasts with character and excitement, and they looked awesome simply letting off steam at the platform and waiting to take off again. They had an extraordinary sense of power about them which is not evident to me, in far more powerful vehicles of any kind. Unlike the standard male stereotype I have never had any great interest in cars (any set of electric windows to get me from A to B will do!) nor planes (although I can see some people would like these), but steam trains were something else.

What I do find interesting is the that the whole anorak thing seems so male dominated, and the tendency towards anoraknia, seems to be a defining feature of difference in the male and female brain. I have no idea why that should be so.

My own anorak thing was always boardgames, particularly board wargames, a passion I was surprised to find shared by two other of our esteemed contributors on here who I shall not name but they are welcome to "out" themselves if they so wish, else live in the constant fear that I shall start demanding money to retain their confidentiality. :-)

I have attended wargame conventions and the ratio of males to females was something like over 90% male to less than 10%. The less than 10% female were never there as fans in their own right but were always tagging along with a guy, although I know from my own experience that women who did show an interest always enjoyed the games but would never have discovered them on their own. Of many hundreds of games published, only a single one to my knowledge was ever designed by a female.

I think it's the same in so many other anoraknia type pursuits, heavily male dominated, with the female partners who tag along actually keenly interested, but obviously having discovered the pastime through the partner.

Does anyone know why this is so? I daresay our esteemed female contributors might have some input here. Have you been dragged off by your partners to re-enact history with the Sealed Knot or something similar? Or gone on Dungeons and Dragons Weekends or whatever other weirdnesses your partners pursue in the interests of getting a life? Or do you drag them off to things and if so what? Is the female mind differently wired so as not to want to pursue anoraknia? Are the biological differences associated with the whole business of reproduction an issue here - the male contribution to this process is only essentially a few minutes but is essentially months and possibly years for the female - so is it that women haven't the time (or don't subconciously perceive themselves to have the time?).

Or am I wrong altogether and women have just as great a tendency towards anoraknia but simply in subjects that haven't interested me so I've never witnessed their gatherings or conventions which are heavily female dominated?

I am aware that this is clearly a - er - ahem - fertile field for the odd an avalanche of sexist jokes, so feel free with those by all means, but I would really like to hear some considered opinion on this as well - it is something that really interests me - in an anorakish sort of way. :-)

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2002

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