Well the child bride and I are off to Europe again next week. It was to be South America this year but a family wedding in Wales in August put paid to that. Those of you who regularly read my stuff on this website will know that I occasionally digress and I’m going to here. Do you know where the term “put paid to” comes from? No, neither did I until I looked it up a minute ago. It refers to the practice of bookkeepers stamping “Paid” on accounts which had been finalised so it’s not quite as exotic as sayings like “beyond the pale” or “three sheets to the wind”. But you did learn something by coming here today.

Anyway, back to the travel thing. Yes the epic tour of South America has been postponed until next year so we can get to a wedding in a place called Mold in Wales. I don’t know if that name has some historic meaning or whether it’s just constantly damp, but I do know it’s a real place because I have a cousin who used to live there. But before we meet up with Cuz 1 and Cuz 2 (of Rheinube River Ramble fame) whose son it is who’s getting married, we’ll be tripping around Spain and Portugal (the Iberian Interlude perhaps, in keeping with the rather dorky names I have for these trips) then we’re off to Morocco which could be called the Camel Caravanserai. Carlos Santana’s fourth album was called “Caravanserai” but I’m sure he won’t mind me pinching the name as I’m sure we’re outside the statute of limitations as it relates to these things. While there and in keeping with its current trendiness, we’ll be looking for a gin joint for the CB to walk into. This sentence and the title of this piece are a little esoteric, I know, but not that esoteric if you’ve seen the Bogart movie. And Rick didn’t actually say…….. doesn’t matter.

So this post is like a prologue to our trip. I shall try to keep you posted as we swan around – there’s another one of those sayings. No wonder English is such a hard language to master. I’ve been speaking and writing it for decades and just had to look up “put paid to”.

It was going to be a bit difficult to keep up with the scribing because as I mentioned in the previous post, I was expert witnessing for a mining related trial and that process was to be ongoing while we are away. Fortunately, (or not depending on how you look at it) I was kicked off the case. I was a relative latecomer to the trial after another chap got sick but my report must have been so demoralising for the other side that they protested to the judge and he elbowed me. There were legal reasons which I won’t bore you with here. Needless to say it’s yet another example to add to my list of reasons why I believe we have a legal system and not a justice system. And I don’t have to lug a laptop around Europe with me now. Yippeee!!

Apologies for not posting for a while dear reader, but I have been rather busy. If you’ll excuse the colloquialism, I’ve had my arse hanging out. First I had to squire some overseas colleagues on mine and port visits and then I had to write a report for a court case I am expert witnessing on.

I sometimes wonder which was the harder. The first one involved extensive planning then being on the road for the best part of two weeks with flights, long drives and lots of coal dust which had to be washed away by the occasional beer. Only occasionally I have to stress because we were all alcohol tested at every site and had to draw lots to see who got drug tested at every site. The mining industry is far too serious these days. The second job involved writing a hundred words when ten would suffice in plain-speak. But we’re talking legalese. And leaving out a comma could mean the difference between a slap on the wrist and death.

The trip was quite interesting for me – 11 coal mines, four ports and seven separate meetings plus lunches and dinners spread over ten days. I say interesting because even though I’ve been in the industry for centuries I never got to visit any of these mines (apart from one) because I always worked for a competing company so the respective owners wouldn’t let me in the gate. Now I work for a steel company which buys a……I was going to say truckload of coal but while a truckload of some things, like paper clips, is a lot, for coal it’s a veritable eye-drop.  Anyway, the cost of what they (I’m on contract so strictly speaking, am not an employee) buy from mines in my state every year is measured in the billions so it was nice to be treated respectfully by former competitors. Oh and the “apart from one” mentioned above was one I worked for when it was owned by one of my former employers and the less said about them, the better. One of these days that little episode will probably find its way here but I’m still looking for an amusing angle and right now that’s like looking for sincerity at the Oscars.

My visitors were from Singapore, India and Holland. All of them whip smart and experts in their respective fields but half of them had never been to Australia before so it was like herding cats. A half kilometre walk from one meeting to another in the city would see the group strung out over a hundred metres or so because photos had to be taken and walking was more accurately described as carefree meandering. And time management…pfffft.

Notwithstanding it was a very successful trip. We didn’t lose anyone despite going into a number of very large and very deep holes – that’s the most important of all success measuring criteria – and no one got hurt. The paranoia about safety in these places is bordering on the fanatical. In fact it probably is when you consider the need for a safety induction, a long sleeved shirt, a hi-vis vest, gloves, steel capped boots and a hard hat when you don’t even get out of the vehicle. Interestingly some open cut mines don’t require you to wear a hard hat because what’s going to hit you on the head – a bird? But others do. And some don’t require the boots or the gloves. My mates in production will be horrified at my devil-may-care attitude to safety but when I worked underground (as a mine geologist, not a miner) many moons ago, no one really gave a shit. And apart from the occasional mine visit nowadays most of my post-underground time is and was spent in offices and aeroplanes. I am rather a stickler for safety when it comes to flying though.

As I’ve already mentioned, either side of the mine visits I have been writing an expert witness report for a mining related litigation and the less said about that the better – literally. Legalese is a foreign language and a very wordy foreign language. If there isn’t at least one statement of the bleeding obvious in each paragraph then you’re not trying. But it pays the bills. As a mate said recently, every time he did a job like this it was another cruise for him and his wife. Not a bad way of looking at it as I wend my way wearily into the semi-retirement sunset. As if….