Sleeping lorries and flying trampolines

[davidn]

The whole toast sandwich thing a couple of weeks ago prepared people more appropriately than I thought, because it seems that this week Scotland really is going through the apocalypse.

In an assorted collection of bad weather that in uniquely Scottish fashion is being dubbed "Hurricane Bawbag", there have been floods, with snow on the way tonight, and gusts of over 80 miles per hour that have closed down several of the main bridges and hurled around objects normally incapable of flight. Someone on my Facebook list posted to say that she was all right after the train she was on was struck by an airborne garden shed, and there's a video gaining fame on Youtube of someone's shot of a wobbling lamppost being invaded by a wild trampoline.


The BBC News pictures are quite striking (apart from the one with the cafe sign that's slightly tilted, which is a bit anti-climactic). The one taken on the road near Loch Restil is my favourite - the lack of obvious damage around the fallen vehicle makes it seem surreally misplaced, as if the drivers on this road have had the awful luck to get stuck behind the world's only narcoleptic lorry.

Comments

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Flying garden sheds, zonkered trucks, killer attack trampolines....

And my family wonders why I prefer to stay indoors?

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I am out of practice with the scottish accent, what was the lassie saying in the back. I doubt I would be that shocked about the trampoline and more incredulous/laughing.

The truck position is funny as where was it standing that it could fall perfectly on one track of the road? Also, the wind turbine catching flames was really cool.

[(Anonymous)]

A guy at my work was telling us that trains up towards Fife had been cancelled because one had hit a shed on the train tracks. He found it hilarious that some poor man was going out to his garden and thinking "Where the hell is my shed?"...

[davidn]

I find it something of a tragedy that someone who sounds (to my memory) quite so much like Dominik Diamond is forgetting the Scottish accent...! I continue to desperately hope that I'm not picking up Americanisms as I spend more time here, but someone said when they talked to me for the first time that they could tell I was British but living in America... now, British accents sound special and different to me.

That's the other thing that makes the photograph so surreal - it doesn't even look as if it fell over from driving normally, just... lay down for a snooze for a while.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Re: Truck, I have seen a wider angle of that picture and there is another on the verge on the opposite side of the road. All I can think how it could have happned was that it was at one point on two wheels. The carriage seems intact though.

I still have a scottish accent but I never hear it from me. Even when I hear the recorded voice, it always sounds weirder than other people's voices, so I don't hear the accent.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I have caught myself saying 'press' sometimes which is what the irish call a cupboard.

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

I am fistpumping the air as "in virtually the only part of Argyll that didn't have a power cut!". And that skanky hospital residence didn't actually blow away.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Wait - Dominik Diamond? The radio announcer? He's on a radio station here in Toronto (I think Q107) - is he on other stations too?

[davidn]

And Wikipedia confirms it - our host of Gamesmaster in the 90s is now on the radio in Canada! So that's where he went.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is just nuts, I never expected to have anyone outside of Toronto know who Dominik Diamond was, mainly because I seem to have this thought that if you work in Toronto, you've had no life outside of the city before that. :P I could tell that he was Scottish but I never knew that he had also been on television.

I'm assuming that it is very hard to keep an accent like that through all these years.

In any case, he's on weeknights at 6pm on Q107 (http://www.q107.com/), and he has a lot of awesome anecdotes inbetween songs. If you were wondering what he's up to, I'd definitely suggest giving it a listen sometime :)