A Monday Morning's Woolgathering!

[BIAD]

I think it'll always be intriguing how the internet and one's memories can take you down a road that holds
overgrown side-lanes where a smile is always not too far away.

On this grey Monday morning, I'd just finished in avoiding another bout of unnatural questioning from an Asian
gentleman called 'Kevin' on my landline telephone, when I looked at the cordless device that allowed these
annoying would-be scammers into my home and pondered its evolution.

Feeling the confidence that Kevin wouldn't be bothering me for another hour or so, I took to YouTube in order
to see if there was a light-weight article on how the phone that I'd grown up with had now transformed into
the tiny machine my wife keeps in her pocket.

With the assistance of a TV programme 'Tomorrow's World' -a show that tracked my own developing years,
I saw that host Michael Rodd was displaying how the listening appliance that I assumed would always be
attached to a wall, was slowly mutating into a mobile contraption.



Fascinating... and the British Home Office couldn't see how a mobile telephone could have an advantage
to the world! Another fine example that shows society-changing enterprises are available to anyone brave
enough to make them happen, heh Mr. Musk?!

But that wasn't the end of it, Michael Rodd had always struck me as a decent bloke who conveyed information
in a sensible, easy-to-understand manner and after looking him up on the internet, I saw an image where he
was stood with two of his co-presenters of Tomorrow's World.



The lady at the front is Judith Hann, a Journalist who just happened to have honed her communication-skills
at the same newspaper company that I had also worked at. Who'd have thunked it?!

Here I was, surfing the web and I come across a fellow-employee who'd long ago clacked away on her typewriter,
bringing news and views to a region, whilst close by, Boy In A Dress probably swabbed-out one of the toilet cubicles
she may have used.
Lawdy, we walk in small circles.


The third chap in the picture is William Woollard, a man know for his serious stances during his presentations
and the creator of a little-known pastime -or so I thought, of 'Woollarding'.

During one of his stints at presenting on a series called 'Top Gear', a now-famous television programme that
these days seems to promote the presenters more than the vehicles it displays, Mr. Woollard discussed the
merits of a car's engine and offered a pose that strangely caught-on with some of the series' viewers.


The original.
And so the internet showed me something else I didn't know, Woollarding.




Many years ago, I'd found a curious website dedicated to the electronic boxes that are situated alongside the
British motorways and was intrigued by its geekish manner it discussed the handrails and steps that assisted
any road-maintenance engineers to the boxes that held the thingamajigs that made the electric road-signs work.



Photograph after photograph, the site talked to its few members of these lesser-known metal-contained
mechanisms and marvelled at some the forgotten locations. It's a shame I cannot find that residence today.
(Seriously, a shame?!)

As this grey Monday lumbers on, I'll ponder on whether the act of Woollarding can be classed with the same
prestige and even if there are more lesser-known places of quiet waters on this strange highway of information.