[morzh]

1. Tubes' pinouts are usually given looking from the pins' side,not from the top of the tube. And they are clockwise. The same pinout will reverse if you look from the top of the tube.
Which is convenient: when you work on chassis, you look at the pins, and so the pinout is exactly what you are given in a diagram.

2. Not that I have an experience even remotely comparable to some folks here (meaning old radio restoration) but for what it's worth, I have yet to see a bad trimmer cap.