19th century tin processing and a little nostalgia at Camborne's King Edward Mine Museum

I need very little excuse to visit the King Edward Mine (KEM) Museum in Camborne. It is only 12 miles from Falmouth, and is without doubt one of the world's finest mining museums, and an absolute must for anyone interested in early mining industry. There are very few, if any, places in the world where you can see 19th century gravity concentrators, such as round frames, buddles, Frue Vanners and rag frames, in operation.

Yesterday there was a very well attended Open Day and it was good to catch up with many of our sundowner regulars who are volunteers and give their free time to developing the site and to acting as knowledgeable guides.

KEM is the oldest complete mine site left in Cornwall. The mine was formerly part of South Condurrow Mine, which was abandoned in 1896. Re-opened and developed as a fully operational/training mine by the Camborne School of Mines (CSM), KEM was used up to the mid 1970s when the mill became a store. In 1987 a volunteer group was formed who restored the mill using rescued machinery.

The star attractions in the mill, which simulates operations much as they would have been in the early years of last century, are the Californian Stamps and the Rag Frames, and Carol Richards, a Director of Camborne School of Mines (CSM) Association and a long-term KEM volunteer, has produced two excellent videos showing the stamps and the rag frames in operation.

Carol Richards

Californian stamps were introduced in America during the gold rush of the late 1840s and differed from the traditional Cornish stamps in that the heads were circular in cross-section, rather than square, and the cams that lifted the stems were bevelled, so that as each head was lifted it turned slightly, thus reducing wear. A heavier, re-designed version of this stamp began to be used in Cornwall in the early 20th century.

The stamp battery at KEM is very small, but visitors are always impressed by the deafening noise, which gives some impression of what the now tranquil scene outside KEM must once have been like. The Museum is in the centre of the Camborne mining district, surrounded by ruined engine houses, some of which drove huge stamp batteries. With the engine houses spewing flame and black smoke from their chimneys, amidst a background of the continuous drum of the stamps, the nearby villages could not have beeen described as prime real estate, and it is pretty obvious that licence to operate was not a major consideration in those days.

Rag frames were simple but effective machines, their operation being shown clearly in Carol's video. Like round frames, they were used for the automatic treatment of fine cassiterite slimes, and were developed from hand-operated wooden frames, tended by girls, or bal maidens, which were in use for well over 100 years, until the 1860s.

Bal maidens by the rag frames at Wheal Grenville, adjacent to KEM, c1900

The automatic frame was developed in 1860 and thousands were installed by mines and tin streamers as the recovery of fine tin became important. Many hundreds of rag frames would be linked together to form a “slimes plant” and would have been a common surface feature on many 19th and early 20th century Cornish mines.

Rag frames at the Dolcoath mine, Camborne, in the 1890s

As rag frames were made entirely of wood, nothing remains of these ingenious devices, and the only place where they can now be seen in action is at KEM, and they have always generated much interest during MEI Conference visits to the mill.

Physical Separation '13 delegates by the rag frames

The KEM rag frames were built in the early 1990s by a KEM volunteer, Willie Uren (1925-2010), who had spent most of his working life in the mill at the South Crofty tin mine in Camborne. During his lifetime he saw the traditional equipment, such as stamps, vanners and buddles, replaced by heavy medium separation, ball mills, hydrosizers etc. He came to KEM in 1990 when work on the mill was just commencing and Cornwall was being scoured for old machinery, where it was repaired and erected under Willie's guidance.

My visits to KEM are also tinged with nostalgia as it was here that I spent my first few months at CSM from late 1974 until the move to the new premises between Camborne and Redruth in 1975. My first office at CSM was an old broom cupboard in the KEM Survey Office, and laboratory practical sessions were carried out on the disparate pieces of equipment which were in what is now the museum's mill, which was piercingly cold in winter. Not too far away, in the centre of Camborne, was the student union and squash courts, and it was great to see the old squash honours board yesterday, which has recently been found after all those years.

In my old office, and the recovered CSM squash club honours board

Thanks to everyone at CSM for a great day out yesterday.

Twitter @barrywills

A reminder that the deadline for abstracts for Flotation '19 is fast approaching

A gentle reminder that if you would like to present a paper at Flotation '19 in Cape Town in November, then you should submit your short abstract no later than the end of May.  Full details are on the posting of 20th January.

As coffee and lunch breaks, the welcoming reception and one of the evening sundowners, will be held in the exhibition area this is a great event to exhibit your company products and services. Currently we have two booths available for rental.

Sundowner in the exhibition area at Flotation '17

Hope to see you in Cape Town in November.  Updates on the conference are at #Flotation19.

Celebrating 50 years of the International Mining Congress and Exhibition, Turkey

The 26th International Mining Congress and Exhibition of Turkey (IMCET 2019) was held at the Granada Luxury Hotel at Belek, about 40km from Antalya, Turkey, from 16-19 April. MEI was pleased to be invited, as a media partner, to this, the 50th anniversary of the congress.

Although the venue was such a long way from the beautiful historic city of Antalya, this was compensated by the impressive 5-star hotel itself, which was all-inclusive,  so that delegates had free access to all its amenities, including food and drink, during their stay. Considering that the conference was attended by around 900 mining people from over 40 countries, I hope that the hotel appreciated how risky unlimited access to alcohol might be!

Around 50 companies exhibited in the very clean and bright exhibition area, and it was good to see a number of MEI Conference sponsors represented. In the photo below, conference chairman Hakan Benzer introduces Turkish mining officials to representatives from  Flotation '19 and Comminution '20 sponsor FLSmidth.

Derrick Corporation is a Comminution '20 sponsor, and regularly exhibits at the IMCET events, supporting the mining industry for over 20 years in Turkey, with an installed base of over 200 screening machines. Some of the industries include quartz, feldspar, gold, lead, zinc and chrome. Derrick’s fine screens are helping increase grinding efficiency, product specifications and dewatering tailings in Turkey. 

At the Derrick booth

Members of the Global Comminution Collaborative (GCC) visit the Metso booth

The GCC group at the Loesch booth

The conference began Tuesday afternoon with an opening ceremony followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Conference Chairman Prof. Hakan Benzer, of Hacettepe University, on the future of the mining industry and the role of the professional organisations. The panelists were Diana Drinkwater, of the AusIMM and IMPC, Alastair MacFarlane, of the Mandela Mining Precinct, South Africa and SAIMM  President, Jacek Skiba, Secretary General of the World Mining Congress and Ayhan Yuksel, Chairman of the Chamber of Mining Engineers of Turkey.

Alastair MacFarlane, Diana Drinkwater, Hakan Benzer, Ayhan Yuksel and Jacek Skiba

The panel set the scene for the next couple of days, emphasising that mining's future was not just about technical innovation, but adapting to social challenges, licence to operate, reduction in energy and water usage and the impact of climate change. The industry is suffering from a manpower shortage and recruitment and education of young mining professionals will be an important role of the international institutes.

The panel discussion was followed by Welcoming Cocktails and a chance to catch up with some familiar faces.

With 2015 MEI Young Person's Award winner Hakan Dundar

With IMPC representatives Guven Onal (Turkey) and Diana Drinkwater (Australia)

Wednesday was the first full day with many parallel sessions covering all areas of mining and mineral processing and I was pleased to be able to co-chair  a short session on dewatering. There were a number of quite superb plenary sessions, all presented by top-notch men with great experience of the mining industry, its problems and how they might be overcome.

Developing one of the themes of Tuesday's panel discussion, Jeremy Mann an independent consultant, and adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town, looked at the future of mining, which is more than just technological innovation. Mining in the future will not be just about making money, responsibility and sustainability will be priorities. Society depends on our products but the social license to operate is becoming a pivotal component in new mine start up, as is responsible mine closure, and in the aftermath of recent tailings disasters, dry stacking, dry processing and closed water concentrators will become more prevalent. Minimising water and energy consumption will be crucial sustainability components and techniques such as ore sorting will increase in importance, reducing the amount of material which must be processed.

UCT Professors Michael Solomon and Jeremy Mann

Continuing on the theme of social license, Michael Solomon, also an adjunct professor at UCT, presented a very comprehensive plenary looking at economic succession planning, the economy of the mine site after closure and sustainable solutions to mine closure legacy issues. He stressed that it will be necessary to plan infrastructure and land rehabilitation, and diversification into areas such as agriculture, 10 to 15 years ahead of mine closure. In order to do this the mining companies would have to work closely with governments and organised labour.

Malcolm Powell, of Australia's JKMRC is the founding member of the Global Comminution Collaborative, a collaboration between the JKMRC, Sweden's Chalmers University, the University of Cape Town, Germany's Technische Universitat Braunschweig, the University of Rio de Janeiro, and Turkey's Haceteppe University.

Malcolm Powell (right) with fellow GCC members Aubrey Mainza (South Africa), Hakan Dundar (Turkey),
Magnus Evertsson (Sweden) and Marcelo Tavares (Brazil)

In the session on energy, Malcolm presented a fascinating plenary lecture showing how a deep knowledge of the geometallurgy and mineralogy of an ore body can be used to provide integrated prediction of process performance from mine to metal. Such models, which can provide performance evaluations over a range of conditions, could be important tools as aids to securing the social license to operate.

It was an intensive first day of many presentations, but the spectacular gala dinner gave everyone the chance to unwind and enjoy the entertainment provided by the superb Ankara Modern Orkestrasi, encouraging delegates to take to the floor to dance to Western and Turkish popular music.

Alistair Macfarlane

Another full day on Thursday, with more excellent plenaries. Alistair Macfarlane is President of the SAIMM and co-Director of the Mandela Precinct, South Africa, which seeks to rebuild research and development, employment and investment along the entire mining value chain in South Africa via fully collaborative approaches between government, academia, industry and research councils. With the decline of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa in the 1980s the deep gold and platinum mines have suffered enormously. They are very labour intensive and attempts at mechanisation have been resisted by organised unions with the mantra "don't do anything about us without us". The Mandela Precinct was set up in November last year and has led to the South African Mining, Extraction, Research and Development Innovation strategy, which it is hoped will, via collaborative efforts, develop  innovation to benefit not only South Africa, but also other Southern African countries.

 

Marcelo Tavares

Luis Marcelo Tavares of University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil gave an excellent presentation on how computer simulation can be used to better quantify the role of mining and mineral processing in life cycle assessment and the move towards a circular economy. There was a huge increase in demand for minerals after World War 2, and the Club of Rome in 1972 famously and erroneously predicted that "economic development based on continuous increase in extraction of primary mineral resources is not sustainable". Based on this, there should be no minerals now available for exploitation, but the Club of Rome took no account of improvements in technology or the discovery of new deposits. Mining plays a crucial role in world economies, the extraction of natural resources contributing directly or indirectly to more than 45% of the global GDP, but to be fully sustainable Marcelo said that we must have a new era of growth in which developing countries play major roles and reap large benefits.

Irfan Bayraktar I first met in Bursa at the NATO ASI in 1984. He then attended the 1986 ASI in Falmouth, and I had not seen him since.

Bursa 1984: Umit Atalay, Bedri Ipekoglu, BW, Bill Petruk, Gulhan Ozbayoglu, Irfan Bayraktar
and Dr. & Mrs. Martin Parker

With Irfan Bayraktar

Irfan is now retired from his academic position at Hacettepe University, and presented the final plenary of the conference, reviewing flotation technology in Turkey.

Flotation came late to Turkey, the first plant treating copper sulphides in 1950. Now there are 49 flotation plants, treating a wide range of mineral deposits, mainly industrial minerals, Turkey having 70% of world boron reserves. Lead-zinc operations account for 20 plants, one being larger than 5000tpd. Base metal sulphides are numerous in the country, but the throughput of most operations is fairly small.

Of the 49 plants, 32 were designed and built in-house with locally manufactured process equipment. The first was manufactured in 1967, copies of the Denver Sub-A cells. Locally manufactured large cylindrical cells were introduced in 2010, designed using CFD modelling techniques.

The conference ended at midday on Good Friday, and chairman Hakan Benzer thanked the 17 sponsors and the Turkish Mining Chamber and its associated supporters.

This was an excellent event, but any conference of this size has areas open to criticism. Personally I would have liked the coffee breaks to have been much longer, and centred in the exhibition area to give more exposure to the companies exhibiting. The organisers have requested feedback and criticisms via the blog so that they can move forward to the next IMCET in Antalya in 2021.

Many thanks to Prof Benzer and his team for inviting Barbara and me to share the 50th Anniversary of IMCET. It has been a great week and we hope to be back in Antalya in two years time.

Twitter @barrywills

Festo is the 20th sponsor of Flotation '19

Festo is a multi-national company, with over 22,000 employees worldwide, which develops tailored automation solutions for the process industry, in all project phases from engineering to operation and maintenance. The company exhibited at Flotation '17 for the first time, and now we are pleased to welcome them to Flotation '19, not only as an exhibitor once more, but also as a full time sponsor.

Russel Schwulst of Festo, South Africa, discussing reliable level control, which is critical
in flotation cells to maximize recovery, with Andrew Lewis and Martin Rudolph at Flotation '17

We are also pleased to welcome a new media partner for the conference, Minerals, an international peer-reviewed open access journal of natural mineral systems, mineral resources, mining, and mineral processing.

Updates on the conference are at #Flotation19.

Whetting the appetites for Cornwall in June

Cornwall is a very special place, not only for its rich nautical and mining history, but also for its spectacular scenery, the coastal path being a paradise for walkers. It is one of the most beautiful counties in England, although many locals say that once you leave Devon and cross the River Tamar you leave England behind!

Regular blog readers might be aware of my love for this special place, and those of you who will be attending Computational Modelling '19 and/or Physical Separation '19 in June will have a unique experience, as there is much happening during the conference week.

For the first time we will be using a new venue, Falmouth's National Maritime Museum, located by the magnificent natural harbour, and in the centre of what I call 'old Falmouth' where the town's world class restaurants and pubs are located.

The Falmouth National Maritime Museum
Photo: Peter Edwards

Only a 5 minute walk from the Museum is the famous 17th century Chain Locker pub, where delegates will be able to sample Cornwall's finest ales after the first day at each conference. This will be after a guided walk along the coast path and around the moat of the 16th century Pendennis Castle, which guarded the River Fal from French and Spanish invasion in Tudor times, long before Falmouth itself became a town.

The Pendennis Castle moat

The Chain Locker pub

The narrow alley leading to the Chain Locker, typical of many such alleyways leading to the quays, was a dangerous place to be in the 18th and early 19th centuries, as a night on the town could lead to an awakening the next morning with a very sore head, having been 'pressed' into service on a Royal Navy ship by one of the 'press gangs' which lurked in these areas. Cornwall in those times was the world's major producer of copper and tin, and some of the burly men 'pressed' into service would have been miners from the local Gwennap Parish, only 8 miles from Falmouth, and known as the 'richest square mile on earth' due to its high grade copper deposits. Physical Separation '19 delegates will pass through this area on the Friday afternoon, en route to the well-preserved engine houses of Wheal Peevor near Redruth.

Mining archaeology in the Gwennap Parish

On returning in the early evening, Falmouth will be coming alive with the annual Sea Shanty Festival, where 66 groups from all over the UK, as well as from Brittany, Holland, Spain, Canada and Ireland will perform their sea songs and shanties in over 20 different venues throughout the town. A good reason to book your accommodation well in advance of the conference week!

The most well known of the sea shanty groups is Fisherman's Friends, the subject of an eponymous movie, just released, which I would highly recommend that you see, as it will give you a real feel for the atmosphere of Cornwall. The group perform every Friday in the tiny village of Port Isaac, 40 miles from Falmouth by road, but extremely busy in summer. The movie was filmed on location in the village, and lovers of Doc Martin will also recognise it as the fictitious village of Portwenn in the BBC TV series. This section of Cornwall's rugged north coast is a haven for serious hikers, and if you really want a challenge, try the 9 mile walk between Port Isaac and Tintagel, perhaps the most gruelling section of the Cornish coastal path.

Port Isaac

There are many good reasons to stay on in Falmouth, even if you did not come by car, and on the weekend after the conferences Cornish Lithium Ltd has invited delegates to their Walking with Poldark tours. Coaches will depart from Falmouth, and on Saturday June 15th, there will be a wonderful 6 mile walk on Cornwall’s rugged north coast, in the area near Land's End where most of the mining scenes for the BBC series Poldark were filmed.

I am sure that you will leave Cornwall in June with the feeling that you have experienced something very special- the conference programmes are not too bad either!

Twitter @barrywills

Preparing for Turkey's IMCET 2019

Barbara and I arrived in Turkey in the early hours of this morning. We are near the old city of Antalya, guests of IMCET 2019, the 50th Anniversary of the International Mining Congress and Exhibition, which starts on Tuesday, and ends mid-day Friday.

The IMCET conference venue: the Grand Luxury Belek Hotel

We have been to Turkey many times, this our second visit to Antalya, and my first ever conference was in Bursa in 1984.

I am looking forward to an interesting week, with no idea what the conference will be like, or who will be there. But I expect a few surprises, hopefully catching up with friends from the past and present.

I will submit daily updates on the week's activities on Twitter.

Twitter @barrywills

Big changes at the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution

MEI has a very close involvement with the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution (CEEC), which is an Industry Advocate for Physical Separation '19, Comminution '20 and Sustainable Minerals '20, and MEI is a media partner for CEEC.

It was great to hear (MEI Online) that our good friend Mike Battersby has been appointed Chair of the CEEC Board of Directors. Mike and his company Maelgwyn Mineral Services have for many years sponsored MEI's flotation conferences, and he has been a regular visitor to Falmouth, his company being based in Cardiff, Wales, which is closer to Falmouth than is London.

Physical Separation '17 in Falmouth. Mike (3rd left) with fellow CEEC Directors Nick Wilshaw (1st left) and
Tim Napier-Munn (2nd right). CEEC sponsors Goldcorp and Gekko were represented by
Simon Hille (2nd left) and Sandy Gray (right) respectively

The CEEC is well known for its comminution energy curves, developed by 2017 MEI Young Person's Award winner Dr. Grant Ballantyne and Prof. Malcolm Powell at Australia's JKMRC. Grant recently moved from academia to Ausenco, and the new team will be led by JKMRC Senior Research Fellow Dr. Cathy Evans (MEI Online). Cathy is one of the three editors of the JKMRC Monograph Process Mineralogy, which was showcased at Process Mineralogy '17 in Cape Town.

Cathy (right) with fellow book editors Elaine Wightman and Megan Becker

Cathy is photographed below with CEEC CEO Alison Keogh and JK's Sustainable Minerals Institute Director Neville Plint.

Twitter @barrywills

Whatever happened to all the mineral processing polymaths?

It was interesting to hear that a new University in UK is to open next year offering only one degree. The London Interdisciplinary School aims to teach students to solve complex problems which cut across disciplinary boundaries, and to develop a polymathic way of thinking.

This is a bold step which acknowledges that these days many academics tend to be highly specialised and unable to take a truly holistic view of their chosen subject. This has become very apparent in mineral processing academia over the last few decades, where the pressure is on academics to pursue research and publications, often at the expense of teaching.

At the beginning of last century there was no recognised mineral processing profession. Ores were of high grade and any concentration necessary was undertaken by the miners using simple sorting and gravity techniques. The increasing demand for metals led to the development of flotation, and mineral processing became an acknowledged discipline, but teaching was the primary focus of the main universities, and the teachers were essentially well-rounded mineral processors, such as the legendary Arthur Taggart, the first person to be offered a Chair in Mineral Dressing, in 1919 at the Columbia School of Mines in New York (posting of 6th March 2012). His Handbook of Mineral Dressing is a massive volume, still used today, and I doubt if any mineral processor today would be able to match this in its scope. The recently published SME Mineral Processing Handbook is the modern equivalent of "Taggart" but this is the result of the efforts of a large team of specialists from academia and industry.

When I began my 22 year stint at Camborne School of Mines (CSM) in 1974, the majority of the academic staff had been recruited from industry, many like me from the Zambian Copperbelt. Very few had PhDs and there was very little research being undertaken. CSM's reputation had been built on its education of mining engineers by its fine teaching staff. The Royal School of Mines in London did have a world class research reputation, but research was not at the expense of its equally strong commitment to teaching.

Things began to change in the late 1980s, and when CSM was merged into the University of Exeter in the early 90s the pressure on academics to research and publish began to build, so I decided in 1996 to opt out and try my luck doing my own thing.

Now it is evident that teaching in many universities is secondary to research, and the pressure to publish for career advancement is enormous. Recruitment of staff from industry is now not the norm, and an increasing number of academics in minerals departments have never seen a mine, let alone worked on one. A typical career path is now postgraduate research leading to a PhD, followed by a junior lectureship, researching and teaching in the same narrow post-graduate field. And my experience editing Minerals Engineering has highlighted that these fields of expertise are becoming ever narrower, flotation for instance now having reviewers who can only assess papers in specialist areas such as flotation physics, sulphide flotation, oxide flotation etc. Reviewers who can assess work on 'general' mineral processing I usually choose from industry.

So are today's mineral processing students getting the broad-based education which they deserve and which is necessary in the modern mining industry?

As John Starkey pointed out in his comment on the posting of 17th December, there isn't a mineral processing industry. There is a mining industry, and mineral processing is part of it. Also, most mine sites have a mill on the site and very few mills exist that are not on a mine site. The expert mineral processor therefore cannot do his or her job well if he or she does not understand mining, because the concentrator’s feed always comes from a mine. Very few mine General Managers are mineral processors, they are mining engineers, who have a broad knowledge of not only mining, but geology, surveying, mineral economics, mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as mineral processing.

I was recruited to Camborne in 1974 to teach mineral processing on the mining degree, but three years later we also started a mineral processing degree. Although it turned out some excellent graduates, it was always difficult to recruit sufficient students to make it viable, and in retrospect I feel that the best route for producing good mineral processors is probably a broad-based degree in mining, followed by an MSc in mineral processing.

I would appreciate your views on this?

Twitter @barrywills

We welcome Outotec to Comminution '20

It is good to have Outotec as a sponsor once more of our comminution series of conferences. They are sponsoring for the 4th time since Comminution '14, and now become the 16th company sponsoring next year's Comminution '20 in Cape Town.

Current Comminution '20 sponsors

We are proud to be associated with Outotec, which, at the beginning of 2019, was ranked 12th in the Global 100 Index of the most sustainable companies in the world, being included in the Index for the seventh consecutive year. The giant international company is also a sponsor for Physical Separation '19 in Falmouth, and Flotation '19 in Cape Town.

Updates on these events are at #PhysicalSeparation19, #Flotation19 and #Comminution20.

Twitter @barrywills

Strange happenings in East Cornwall

Reports are coming in of a strange illness which is affecting a number of people in the Bodmin area of East Cornwall. The symptoms, of loss of energy, insomnia and pallor, are apparently similar to those of acute anaemia, which is usually associated with heavy blood loss. However one theory is that it may be due to release of a pocket of radon gas from one of the many old mine workings in the area.

Radon is a chemical element with symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless gas. It occurs naturally in minute quantities as an intermediate step in the normal radioactive decay chains through which thorium and uranium slowly decay into lead and various other short-lived radioactive elements; radon itself is the immediate decay product of radium. Its most stable isotope, ²²²Rn, has a half-life of only 3.8 days, making it one of the rarest elements since it decays away so quickly. However, since thorium and uranium are two of the most common radioactive elements on Earth, and they have three isotopes with very long half-lives, in the order of several billions of years, radon will be present on Earth long into the future in spite of its short half-life, as it is continually being generated. The decay of radon produces many other short-lived nuclides known as radon daughters, ending at stable isotopes of lead.

Unlike all the other intermediate elements in these decay chains, radon is, under normal conditions, gaseous and easily inhaled and is considered a health hazard. It is often the single largest contributor to an individual's background radiation dose, but due to local differences in geology, the level of the radon-gas hazard differs from location to location. It is known to occur at a relatively high level in parts of Cornwall due to the relatively high amount of uranium in the granite which underlies the whole county at various depths.

But could radon gas account for the strange symptoms suddenly manifesting themselves in this locality? I sought the opinion of Dr. Richard Head, the Director of the nearby Bodmin Institute, but unfortunately he was not available. His secretary told me that, since returning from a recent geological trip to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, he has not been seen during office hours, and has been working in his office through the night on a large soil sample which was delivered in what she described as a long and narrow rectangular box.

So I spoke to my brother, Bartholomew, who is back at the Bodmin Institute after a brief spell with MEI. He is as much perplexed by this outbreak as others, but tells me that a specialist consultant from Denmark, Prof. Elvan Singh, who apparently has had experience of similar outbreaks, will be coming over to Cornwall soon to investigate. Meanwhile Bartholomew appeals to anyone reading the blog who might be able to shed light on this very strange occurrence.