Crewe
After reading the Wikipedia entry for Crewe, I was apprehensive, as it is not complimentary and quotes Bill Bryson as saying it isw the armpit of Cheshire.
But I also have had the other view from the late MP for Crewe; Gwyneth Dunwoody, who used to be my next door neighbour. She was the sort, that if you went to borrow some sugar, you didn’t return until after several stiff drinks.
Even last week at Crystal Palace, a fellow Ipswich fan had said that he’d enjoyed a couple of trips to the town to see Ipswich.
The Crewe Arms Hotel, Crewe
I stayed in the Crewe Arms by the station, which is typical of many station hotels all over the UK. It has mahogany panelling, deep red carpets and brown leather sofas. One unexpected thing it has is free and high-speed wi-fi. It definitely didn’t have that in 1880 when it opened.
I slept reasonably well too, as the bed was comfortable. The room was very clean with a bathroom that looks like it had been refurbished in the last year or so.
In the morning, I skipped breakfast because I ate well the previous night, but the coffee I had in a proper china pot was of a high standard.
I would certainly stay there again, if I went back to the football at Crewe.
The town centre was fairly clean with a lot of flowers and had most of the usual names.
Shopping Centre, Crewe
But the highglight last night was an excellent Indian meal in the Passage to India.
Passage To India, Crewe
The building was best desribed as clean, smart and comfortable, the staff were polite and professional and I give the food at least five bricks in honour of Brick Lane, where C and I had one of our most memorable Indian meals together. How about this for a seious shami kebab.
A Serious Shami Kebab
Dirt is not for racing on!
For various reasons, I don’t like American horse racing and especially on dirt.
Small circular tracks, with the exception of Chester, are boring and lack the atmosphere and character of the tracks you get in the UK and Ireland.
In America you can use drugs to improve performance. This might be alright for the Ben Johnsons of this world, but it distorts bloodlines.
But the real problem with dirt racing, is that there is an unacceptable level of equine breakdowns and fatalities.
According to Chris McGrath in The Independent, America is reversing their incorporation of more equine-friendly artificial racing surfaces, as we have at Lingfield, Wolverhampton and Southwell. This is very much a retrograde step, but it is typical of the United States, where despite the rest of the world being different, they are always right and the rest is always wrong.
I’ll leave the last word on racing surfaces to my stallion, Vague Shot. He retired after seven seasons of hard racing without having suffered any serious injury at all. Now at the age of 28, he is still fit and sound and if he feels so inclined he can still do a full roll both ways. He may be the oldest Royal Ascot winner still alive. but he would have been dead many years ago if he had raced on dirt in the United States.
Non Disabled-Friendly Sugar Packets
Now I’m not disabled, but I do have a left hand that is less than perfect after the stroke.
On the train today, when I had my coffee, I found that it was virtually impossible to open the small square sugar packet without spilling half of it on the table.
Surely, in this day and age we can come up with something better! At least where you get little tubes I have less of a problem
Nothing Gluten-Free on Virgin Trains
There were complimentary sandwiches, but nothing that was gluten-free, except for an apple, coffee and diet-Pepsi.
Sandwiches are always a problem, as you can’t expect gluten-free ones. I would have liked a banana, as I find apples a bit difficult with my mouth from the stroke.
Funding the Arts
David Lister wrote this provocative article in today’s Independent.
He argues that cutting arts funding may be a good thing, especially as some institutions like the Royal Academy, Glyndebourne and the Lowry in Salford, seem to manage better without it.
He asks hat should the Royal Opera House gets as much subsidy as it does, when the companies based there never perform in the regions and does London really need four Symphony orchestras.
He also attacks the highly-paid time-servers on the boards of the various quangos that adminster taxpayers money an proposes more democracy in how money is allocated.
I agree with nearly everything he says.
Virgin’s First Class Toilets
Some coeliacs can be paranoid about toilets as many like me, have had so much diarrhoea, that it becomes a way of life. Now that I’m strictly gluten-free I rarely suffer that way, but I still sort out the best toilets. Certainly, one of the pleasures of travelling on Virgin is the quality of the First Class Lounge at Euston The free toilets were definitely up to the best standard expected.
On the subject of toliets,those at Portman Road are pretty good. It will be interesting to see how Gresty Road stacks up tonight.
Off to Crewe Today
I’m off to Crewe today to see Ipswich play, tonight. Tomorrow, I shall visit Chester, which is just a short train ride away.
There would appear to be little to do in Crewe, as the Crewe Heritage Centre, a railway museum, is closed on weekdays. But I shall check, as this hasn’t stopped me in the past.
Do We Need Libraries?
I rarely use a library and I haven’t borrowed a book in perhaps forty years. I’ve still actually got it as my mother-in-law’s dachsund chewed it and as I had to pay for it, they let me keep it.
I only use a library for reference. I was in Cambridge a few months ago and I needed to answer a question, so I looked it up in an old directory of the city. At home, I would have used the Internet and usually on the move, I’d find an Internet cafe.
So to me libraries only have one point and that is as a place to look up facts or perhaps get ideas.
To me books are something to buy and cherish. Perhaps, this is because my father was a printer, but also because most books I read regularly, are the sort of reference books or histories, you don’t find on the web or in libraries. I suppose now, I probably buy more books on the Internet than anywhere else too.
Books too, are a recyclable resource. When I move, a lot of my fully-read histories and references will go to Oxfam. but why can’t they go down the pub or the local cafe. The rules should be as they are in many hotels; you can take the book, if you add another one to the collection. Many pubs and cafes could and some already do, provide a quiet room, where customers could read, whilst they are having a coffee or a glass of something stronger.
So I very much feel that libraries as we know it are past their sell-by date. Perhaps, though, we do need quiet reading rooms in very much the old Victorian tradition, where knowledge can be passed on, books can be recycled etc.
The trouble is though the Middle Classes won’t like it. But in these times of austerity, they’d actually support more jobs, by buying the book they want to borrow in the first place and then recycling it creatively. They might even get more pleasure, if they then swapped it in the local cafe for something they would have never thought about reading in the first place.
So before you criticise me, just think when was the last time you borrowed a book from a library!
Remember too, that before public libraries were as common as they are now, companies like Boots used to run them.
Back to Square One
I had thought that I’d found a house to move to in Canonbury in North London. But it failed the survey yesterday, and so I won’t be buying it.
But at least there would seem to be lots of suitable places for sale in the area to the east of Highbury and Islington.
So I’m going to start looking again.
I would really love to live in de Beauvoir Town, as C and I nearly moved there years ago, but instead we went to the flat in the Barbican.
I remember that we looked at a house owned by the writer, Alun Owen. Strangely, I’d met him before when he was a guest at dinner in the Liverpool University hall of residence, where I lived in my last year at University. Owen is probably best known for his screenplay for the first Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night!
The Anonymous Widower 