The Tube Map In German
The Times publishes the work of an interprising academic today. It is the London Underground Tube Map translated into German. You can download it here.
He is not the first. There is another one here, which seems to have been designed after the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and ham. Click on this map for explanations of the various names. I particularly like Southgate, for which the term “penalty misser” has been used.
The Good Don’t Always Die Young!
Unless of course you consider 95 to be before your time.
Arthur Budgett was a racehorse trainer, who is one of only two people to have bred, owned and trained two Derby winners. In his case they were Blakeney and Morston. C and I actually used Blakeney to cover one of our mares and I had the pleasure of meeting the horse several times at the National Stud, where he was very much a favourite of everybody.
To get more of the flavour of someone who seems to have been a truly good man, read his obituary in the Telegraph. I particularly like this paragraph.
That he had only two head lads — Denis Rayson and Tow Dowdeswell — throughout the 30 years that he was training speaks elegantly of his consistency of character and the esteem in which he was held by his staff. Despite all the success he enjoyed, Arthur Budgett remained a modest and unfailingly courteous man, though he would fight his corner resolutely when he thought he was being unfairly treated — as happened when one of his horses was subjected to a dope test, and an official attempted to prevent him from having an independent vet carrying out another test. Budgett won his point; had he not done so, his career could have been brought to a very early end.
They don’t make people like that these days. More’s the pity.
The Queen’s New Photo
The Queen has had a new portrait photograph taken and it is shown here on the BBC.
I don’t like it as it is too formal and looks like the sort of rubbish monarchs would have had painted hundreds of years ago.
I bet she likes this one much better!
Is London The Best Therapist In The World?
Today, I had to go for the MRI Scan to my arm and shoulder. I decided as the weather was so good that despite my hay fever and the high pollen count, I’d walk to the hospital from Great Portland Street station.
Flower Gardens in Regent's Park
As you can see Regent’s Park was at it’s glorious best and ready for the real summer. One Cypriot couple I met had come to the Park specifically to see the roses. Madame Tussaud eat your heart out! Who wants to see a lot of wax models? I don’t! Unless you can stick pins in them!
I walked past the Open Air Theatre and on to the lake, where mothers were doing what they have for hundreds of years and we used to do in the 1970s and that is feed the ducks and geese.
Feeding the Ducks in Regent's Park Lake
C had a phobia about large birds and I can remember her screaming madly, when a gaggle of angry geese almost chased her into the lake, not far from where the above picture was taken.
She didn’t fall in there, but she did have to jump in here to retrieve our middle son, who fell in throwing bread for the ducks on the other side of thec lake.
Where Our Son Fell In
Both survived without any harm, although it was rather wet walk home to our flat just north of the Park.
I was also pleased to see that the rails, I remember so well because of a photo I took, are still in place after forty years.
A Fence in Regent's Park
They say things don’t last, but memories and that fence do!
A few minutes later I was at the hospital on the other side of the Park.
It seems that in many places in London, I seem to come across items, buildings and bridges that remind me of my past, comfort me and tell me that I did the right thing to come home to the city of my birth and childhood.
She is my friend and therapist and she is always with me.
And for me, as I live in her bounds, all the consultations cost is a bit of effort and perhaps some rubber from my trainers. She is truly the best free therapist in the world! But then others will say that about New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Rome and masses of other places.
But it is only your home city that can reach the places in the mind that others can’t reach.
The Real Problem With Olympic Tickets
I did get a few tickets, but not the real ones I wanted like the cycling and the 5,000 metres. I did get some for the beach volleyball though!
I should have applied for more events and perhaps only two tickets for each, rather than the three or four I did.
The real problem isw that for some events there are just not enough tickets. And that doesn’t mean that too many are going to sponsors and the great and good.
Take the equestrian events, which are being held in Greenwich Park. I applied for the cross-country day for the eventing and got none. It should have been held in a larger venue, where they could really have spread everything out. Three venues would have offered much more space and they already have purpose built grandstands that can take over 50,000 spectators. These are the racecourses at Epsom, Ascot and Sandown. If you really want space, then you could have done it at Newmarket, the biggest horse centre in the world. After all, if you are doing the sailing at Weymouth, surely putting the eventing slightly out of London wouldn’t have been a problem.
And then of course there’s the British. And I’ll chuck the Irish in here as well. All of us, be we English, Scotch, Welsh or Irish love our sport and big events. Just look at all the fans, who are going to Glastonbury this weekend, to get filthy dirty in the mud. It’s an event and we’ll go and fill it.
When did you last here of a major sporting or cultural event in these isles, that wasn’t a success. I go to Liverpool regularly and many there will tell you how the celebrations in 2008, when the city was European Capital of Culture was a real party, something to be proud of and also an event that kicked the city into the future.
So did we do the Olympics in too small a way?
Littering
A new campaign is being started to stop the amount of litter, getting on the streets.
I think some of the problems are down to the way we are designed.
One of the reasons we create so much litter, is we only have two hands. I’ve just watched a mother pushing a buggy down the street to take her child to school, whilst she was smoking with one hand and texting with the other. The dog end went on the pavement. Here in Hackney we have some very clean streets, due to an excellent street team, but people should use the bins provided.
Most of the litter on the streets is discarded flyers from fast food shops, taxi companies and others, dog ends and empty beer cans. The latter strangely seem to be put in many cases in my can and bottle recycling bin, which sits on my front patio, by the wheelie bin.
On a more serious note, there were 50,000 or so blockages in the London sewers last year. One was an infamous Fatberg outside a fast food restaurant in Leicester Square, but many were caused by people putting their rubbish down the toilet rather than walking downstairs to put rubbish in their communal bins.
Not the Dreaded Knotweed
I know that these days the boundary between town and country is very vague these days, with foxes and muntjac everywhere, but I was surprised to see this at Caledonian Road and Barnsbury station.
Japanese Knotweed at Caledonian Road and Barnsbury Station
It would appear that the unwanted Japanese knotweed gets everywhere.
How To Fund A Dog Wash!
The Times today has an article about peer-to-peer lending by Alexandra Frean.
In it she describes how a guy called John Good from Davison, Michigan got the money to expand his car wash into the clean dog business by using a loan from Lending Club.
It’s all good stuff and just shows how the banks are missing the peer-to-peer lending market, which I think will be one of successes of the next ten years or so and probably much longer.
In the United States the systems are different to the UK, but it doesn’t totally stop them having successes. I myself use the peer-to-peer lending site, Zopa, as my deposit account as even if I run it conservatively, it gives me upwards of six percent before tax. There is risk and I have had 3 contracts out of 2359 go bad, which have cost me £322.60 or 0.6 percent of my total investment. Alexandra’s article quotes returns of 9 percent net of defaults and charges in the United States.
I could probably make a higher return, if I upped my rates, but then I’d get a higher rate of default, as I’d probably attract more risky borrowers.
I also think I’m benefiting because I’ve been lending money for some years now and have a strong feeling about how you arrange the rates to get the best value.
A Circus Performer on a 141 Bus
When I was returning from Oxford Street yesterday, I took the route using the Central line via Bank and a 141 or 21 bus to the end of my road. It is an easier route especially, if you are laden down with parcels as I was.
I sat just behind the wheelchair bay and shared a seat with an attractive young lady, who was also travelling fairly heavily laden. She had the aura of being someone like a dancer or athlete and after we’d chatted for a few minutes, I asked what she did. She said she worked as a circus performer (An aerial artist no less!) and had just done a show in London and was returning home before going to Glastonbury, where she will be performing in the Circus Tent.
I’m posting this, because Danny Baker on Radio 5 Live, asked if people had ever met anybody from a circus.
So I now have!
Chaos In Oxford Street
I needed to get some towels and a couple of lamps from John Lewis yesterday evening, so I took my usual route of Overground to Highbury and Islington station and then the Victoria line to Oxford Circus.
For some years now, getting out of Oxford Circus station has been a nightmare, so much so that I used to get there by taking a Central line train to Bond Street instead and then walking backwards.
That is not really an option now, as they are rebuilding Bond Street station and the narrow pavements cluttered by smokers outside the stores are not an easy route.
So it was a walk up the stairs to Argyll Street and then across the centre of Oxford Circus. At least that crossing works well, but then the north side of Oxford Street was cluttered with smokers and locked up stalls, that sell junk.
It is not good and it never has been in my memory.
Some years ago, I proposed an alternative which was published as a long letter in the Evening Standard.
I read with interest an article in the Evening Standard yesterday and feel I should comment about a proposed monorail for Oxford Street.
I should explain that I am an engineer with a lot of experience of transport projects around the world, mainly because the software I wrote, Artemis, was used to plan them.
I am also an inveterate traveller and have experience of a very large number of cities around the world. That experience is usually as a tourist and includes the Sydney monorail, the escalators of Hong Kong and the underground walkways of Perugia. I should also say that I visit the Oxford Street area at least once a month for shopping, eating or business.
I will agree with the plan, where the monorail gives the whole street a connection and a focus, but I believe that a moving walkway suspended over the street below would be much more flexible and inherently better.
1. It could be built in stages, with perhaps a spectacular star over Oxford Circus as a first phase to move people from say Regent Street North to Oxford Street East and West without getting involved in the fearsome crowds at road level.
2. Walkways are basically hop-on and hop-off. So if you see a shop or something else that interests you, then all you do is wait to the next hop-off point and exit.
3. As the walkway progressed down Oxford Street, it could rise and fall so that it was level with the floors of the major stores. How much would John Lewis pay for an entrance at first floor level?
4. Stops would be much more frequent than a monorail.
5. Walkways are a fail-safe system in that when the motor breaks, the system is still walkable. What happens when a monorail breaks down as the Sydney system did when I rode it?
6. Walkways can add spurs as required to Conference Centres, attractions and also to move people well away from Oxford Street.
7. As they would run effectively from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch, they would take the pressure off the Central Line.
8. Just as in Hong Kong it would be covered in a clear plastic roof. Video screens could be included under the roof to sell advertising.
9. Security is important and I’m sure the Police would like a high-level walkway from which to view the crowds below.
10. Bulges and platforms could be attached to the walkway, so that cafes and other attractions could be setup. If access is provided to stores on route, there would be no problems as to servicing these cafes.
11. The whole system has to be commercial. Imagine a platform just by Selfridges which sells the Wallace Collection, with a down escalator pointing that way.
Admittedly, it was published partly as part of their campaign against the then mayor, but I believe the idea of an overhead moving walkway would improve the movement of pedestrians around the area.
Thinking about it six years after the original letter was published, there are other factors that now apply.
- Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street are to become major stations on Crossrail and they will probably discharge more people into the area making it worse. Especially, as many will be long-distance travellers trailing mobile obstacles behind them. The pavements are just not big enough.
- The Eastern end of Oxford Street is scruffier now and who would want to shop there, when there are shopping centres at Westfield and the soon to open, Eastfield, just a few stops away on the Central line.
Certainly, I can’t wait for Eastfield to open, as then I’ll be closer to a John Lewis.
You will see I call the new shopping centre at Stratford, Eastfield. It’s what many of the locals do, despite the fact that it’s promoted as Westfield Stratford City.
But then East is east and West is west and ne’er the twain shall meet.
The Anonymous Widower 