Helena Handbasket

By Tivoli

Manifold

This is a small part of a much larger drawing I was working on today. It is a diagram of all the pipework entering and exiting an enclosed manifold on a landfill site. On this particular site there are 52 similar manifolds and the pipework spreads out from each to reach over 300 wells; some gas, some leachate, some both. The gas is “reactive organic gas”, some of which is methane and some of which is other stuff that burns, the mixture of volatile gases changes all the time and we suck it out of the landfill as fast as we can to prevent spontaneous combustion (usually caused by carelessly discarded Lithium batteries). It is piped to a secure enclosure where it is burned in specially-designed engines to create electricity in preference to causing a massive explosion or setting fire to the entire site. Where there's muck there's brass.

It also reminded me of Bridget Riley's work. Yes this small extract is straight parallel lines, but were you to see the entire drawing you would see sweeping curves as well. - Yeah! I love my job! (and no, the colour-choice is not mine, though I do rather like it)

In case you are interested, the unlabelled pink lines are 90mm gas pipes and the yellowish ones are 63mm gas pipes. The labelled pipes are drawn using a custom-made (not by me) linetype which incorporates the label at regular intervals along its length. The lettering in these linetypes does not accommodate for bends in the pipe which is why the leachate pipe at bottom right appears to be broken.

Separately, I have been aware that generally in English it is frowned upon to use a comma before an and, but sometimes I break that rule because it makes more sense to ignore it. So I was thrilled to find this in today's Guardian;
“Compare: ‘I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling’ with ‘I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling’.”
Full article
Certainly I had no idea that my reluctance to adhere to that particular rule is known as “the Oxford comma”. It makes me feel justified in a way that “the Lewisham comma” would not. How very snobbish of me!

PS I see that today is the fifth anniversary of my 3rd blip - pre camera. I am still very fond of that one

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