what I don’t understand is that from records week there’s going to be a significant amount of noise, wash, impact on wildlife, so why do they turn a blind eye to that yet make you guys jump through ever increasing hoops! It literally must be like trying to organise a circus. It does seem like the ldnpa etc have only half arsed commited to bluebird running as a pr exercise in the hope that if they drag their heels enough and put up enough barriers you’ll tell them to shove it and they can then say we gave you the opportunity...
Lot of truth there... The big difference with records week is that no one goes there but let the media stir up a furore about
Bluebird 'going home' and
everyone would go.
By the way - a quick question. If
Titanic were raised, would her 'spiritual home' be a Lat and Lon in the north Atlantic? or would it be Southampton, or Belfast, perhaps? Just wondering. One or two have questioned my opinions on this but they haven't lived with the thing for a quarter of their life. I got a rescue dog once and its home became here with the kids and family, not with the RSPCA.
K7 is like a living thing to us and her workshop with all her tools, spares, support equipment and her loving team has become her true home. No problem displaying her in the museum when she's not doing other things, which will be most of the time, but pack your kid off to boarding school and you expect them to come home in the holidays. Anyway, enough explaining.
The LDNPA appears to be terrified of the whole thing, nor do they like the fact that a group of determined volunteers from the other side of the country has forced their hand. Well they should have had the common sense to see this coming and positioned themselves to be the heroes of the hour. Not our fault they sat there fat, dumb and happy collecting their wages for back-stopping anything remotely controversial for so long and therefore had nothing in place to deal with a fast ball coming their way.
Trouble is, the world is full of whiners. Take that astronaut chappie who quoted Winston Churchill. Got shot down by a load of do-gooders calling Churchil a racist. So, the man in the moon apologised and promised to educate himself on Churchill's racism whereupon the Churchill supporters waded in to tell Mr. Astronaut not to judge Churchill by today' standards. FFS! The guy was only being an astronaut. Then today there's a fat lass who's made a film and flew the flag for fat lasses everywhere only to get grief from others citing that other fat lasses had made films and they were black into the bargain. For goodness sakes, I'm a fat lad - just fly the flag, will you!
I digress again...
As I touched on before, one major thing that just isn't going in either is that under no circumstances will we put the boat in the museum without an agreement stretching into the future to get her back out again. Heard lots of silliness on this one. Everything from us trying to steal the boat, that we make money out of this somehow, etc, etc. It's a standing joke in the workshop that we just can't seem to find all this money and all the brown envelopes remain obstinately empty. It's utter bollocks - this costs us money in the same way as our hobbies and holidays cost us but there's an ever present group of snide, jealous individuals out there who just can't or won't get their heads around this. They've always been there going right back to the recovery when they thought the BBC handed out the buckets and granted us access to their money lake so they get a good case of being rightly ignored.
The truth of the situation is this. Back in late 2000 I stood in the doorway of the Bluebird Cafe listening to a dad telling his lad about Campbell's boat. The lad was first super excited then equally crushed when he found he couldn't go see the thing as it was sunk. I had been sat astride the engine cover less than an hour earlier. In that moment I decided that if there was any way on earth we could get that thing out of there and mend it then that had to be the plan. Never thought we'd find a way but Gina surprised us all by taking it over and asking for just that.
So, having spent 18 years without ever letting up for a single day getting almost to the point where young and old alike can be inspired for years to come by this stunning machine, can you imagine the horror at the thought of it being locked away never to run again, as some would prefer to do?
Yes, there will still be the Type II and Type IIIs who will say, nah, they're trying to steal it to make money, blah-de-blah, but they're morons and time, as ever, will be our witness. What will happen, however, is that we will play every card to the death to make sure that machine is as accessible to as many people in as many places as possible going forward and anyone who wants to lock her away to gather dust will have the fight of their lives on their hands!
Will Coniston be ready to host an event in 2019? Who knows, it's in the balance, but if they can't do it properly the best thing they can do is be honest with everyone and re position for 2020 and we'll put on another show in 2019 while they sort the finer points.