Drivers Are Being Persecuted
That’ll be the call that goes up after the government crackdown on bad driving. It’s reported here on the BBC.
Obviously, as a pedestrian, it doesn’t affect me.
But bad driving does!
I regularly cross the road at the junction of the Balls Pond Road and Southgate Road. several times, whilst crossing on the green pedestrian light, I have nearly been run over by someone turning right illegally out of Mildmay Park. Only buses are allowed to do this, but do it only rarely.
I also get very annoyed with drivers, who disobey Rule 170 of the Highway Code. This is the relevant advice to drivers.
Watch out for pedestrians crossing a road into which you are turning. If they have started to cross they have priority, so give way.
Many don’t. Especially on one junction near me, where drivers think they are clever to take it as if they are entering the pits at Silverstone. Luckily, I now know the driving habits at that junction and check carefully, but quite a few drivers, don’t have the courtesy to use their indicators, so I have to wait to see their intentions.
So let’s persecute bad drivers and use the fines to improve driver education, public transport and walking routes.
Advice For Expectant Mothers
There is a widely trailed story today about what expectant mothers should avoid. It’s here on the BBC. This is the main advice.
- Use fresh organic food rather than processed
- Avoid food and drink in cans and plastic containers
- Minimise use of moisturisers, cosmetics, shower gel and fragrances
- Avoid buying new furniture, fabrics, non-stick frying pans and cars when pregnant or nursing
When C was pregnant with our first child, she was a student in her last year at Liverpool University. She actually did her exams at nearly seven months pregnant. She got a II-2, so she couldn’t have done badly.
She didn’t purposedly avoid any chemicals, but as the nice flat we lived in didn’t have a shower, she did at least avoid shower gel, which is on the list of products to avoid. As to the last point, we couldn’t afford new furniture or cars. our frying pan had been borrowed from her mother and was a well-used steel one, complete with a bit of added rust. Did it put iron into the food?
Neither of us smoked, although throughout her pregnancy, she had to endure the Capstan Full Strength cigarettes of her tutor; Robert Kilroy Silk.
But advice was different in those days. We went to stay with a family in Hingham in Norfolk, where C had been a mother’s help during University holidays. The mother, who incidentally was the daughter of a doctor, asked if she’d like a brandy before going to bed, as it would make the baby sleep better. She declined, but only because she was pretty abstemious with alcohol.
We also moved south just a week or so before the expected birth date and then in London, she didn’t have a hospital. I told that story in a post called Waiting for Apollo 11. Theses are the links to Part 2 and Part 3 of the story. We didn’t do boring, even in 1969.
We all survived and the only question, that sometimes comes to mind, is was the cancer that killed her caused by all of those smoky tutorials forty years before she died?
I do know that if she was here today, she’d be laughing like a drain!
George Clooney And Matt Damon Relax In Cambridge
Usually, when a story about celebrities relaxing ends up in the media, it usually concerns something like alcohol, drugs or bad behaviour.
But not this story from Cambridge, where George Clooney and Matt Damon are making a film. Here’s the final paragraphs.
Damon turned up with Clooney and two other men, and spent the hour “shooting hoops”, before Miss Shadrack said she had to inform them their time was up as others were waiting to use the court.
“They were very nice, such lovely people, and they posed for some pictures and chatted with people, but they didn’t say anything about the film they were making,” she said.
It looks like a good time was had by all!
Wetherspoons To Open A Pub On The M40
It looks like Wetherspoons will be opening a pub on the M40 according to reports like this one from the BBC.
I have no view on whether it would increase drink-driving, but surely it would be just as easy to drink in a pub just off the motorway, than one in a service area.
But what I would like to see is better rail interchanges on motorways! Very few railway stations are close to motorways with large amounts of parking. Personally, I’m not too badly affected, as I don’t drive, but sometimes when I want to meet someone driving along the motorway, finding a suitable station is difficult.
The Sun And INR
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been testing my INR daily. These are the early results taken daily on my Coagucheck.
Tuesday, June 4th – 3.0
Monday, June 3rd – 2.9
Sunday, June 2nd – 2.8
Saturday, June 1st – 3.0
Friday, May 31st – 2.9
Thursday, May 30th – 2.3
Wednesday, May 29th – 2.7
Tuesday, May 28th – 2.5
Monday, May 27th – 2.4
Sunday, May 26th – 2.2
Saturday, May 25th – 2.2
Thursday, May 23rd – 2.4
Wednesday, May 22nd – 2.2
Tuesday, May 21st – 2.2
Monday, May 20th – 2.1
Sunday, May 19th – 2.5
Saturday, May 18th – 2.3
I’m not having any medical problems, but to a certain extent I’m scientifically curious, and feel that the INR swings up and down a bit. As I’m paying for the strips, no-one can say, I’m wasting NHS money. A cardiologist once said to me, that if I got my INR right, I wouldn’t have another stroke.
I have to keep my INR between 2 and 3, with a target value of 2.5. As I’m a trained Control Engineer, I’m using a simple algorithm to make sure I’m in range and to try and nudge the INR to 2.5.
What is interesting, is that when this sunny spell of weather started on the 31st May, the INR has increased and despite reducing the dose to a sensible minimum of 3 mg., it remains at the high end of the target range.
Obviously, a few days don’t prove it conclusively, but there are other reports on the Internet of the sun affecting the INR. There a thread here.
Note that I now keep the results in a single post here and also with other data like the weather and how I feel in an Excel spreadsheet.
ARM Fire Another Shot
My trawl last night picked up this news item about ARM. ARM’s chief marketing officer, Ian Drew, is reported to have said:
Mobile users expect a range of devices at different price points, and for a mid-range mobile experience to include some high end mobile features. With a billion smart phones predicted to ship in 2013, and tablets projected to out-ship notebook PCs, device-makers can now provide quality, high-performance mobile products with the features that matter the most, at a range of price points.
I probably would agree. I for instance don’t use a smart phone, but carry a £10 Nokia phone and a Fuji Coolpix camera. For notes, I carry a small notebook and a couple of pens. So I don’t need a smart phone. I just want something to make and receive calls and text messages. In London, I’m never far from home and there are maps everywhere, so who needs on-line information and maps and the constant terror of e-mail, much of which is spam?
So a mid-range phone might just be the right one for me. But what would be better is a camera, that was wirelessly connected to my phone, so that I could post pictures quickly. If a camera is part of the phone, you inevitably end up with something that is just too big and the sort of device, that is regularly nicked.
I don’t think I’m alone either, in that several of my friends don’t have smart phones.
So have ARM come up with a winner in their new range of processor designed for smaller smart phones and tablets?
I think they have!
Should Tube Stations Be Sponsored?
It has been proposed that London Underground stations should be sponsored. The story is here in the Standard.
On paper it looks a good idea, but I doubt it would work as well as expected.
Look at the obvious example of Harrods, which effectively has its own entrance into Knightsbridge station. How would Harvey Nicks feel about being served by a station called Harrods?
Perhaps an idea that might work well, but probably would not raise as much money would be to allow the bus or train information system to say something like. “This is Knightsbridge. Alight here for Harrods”
But even then, how do you sort out the Harrods/Harvey Nicholls problem?
Angelina Jolie’s Example
I’ve never had breast cancer, but my late wife, C did, in her late fifties. She caught the cancer early and luckily only had a lump and lymph nodes removed, followed by a course of radiotherapy. She made a complete recovery and the cancer never returned. Sadly she died of a totally unrelated cancer a few years later.
I think Angelina Jolie’s upfront approach to her double mastectomy is to be praised. It’s reported here on the BBC. I know that Angelina has a lot more money than all of us and probably had the best surgeon, that money could buy, and C had a surgeon, who works extensively in the NHS, although she went privately. But her outcome was good and provided she was careful about what she wore, no-one knew that she’d had an operation. She was still able to wear a bikini, as I reported here. She also had to be reasonably careful about the bra she wore.
One thing that worried her, was that from professional experience, breast cancer operations, were quite a large cause of divorce, and I think she worried about my attitude to her body, after the operation. So I would also praise Brad Pitt for his support of his wife. Too often, in C’s experience, men often went looking for a perfect model.
I think my advice to anybody going through cancer or any other serious medical treatment, is to make sure you get a doctor, who you can trust and get yourself as fit as you can both before and after the treatment. And don’t rush things! Even with my stroke, the best advice I had was from a man, I bumped into on a train. He turned out to be a retired professor of medicine, who’d worked a lot with stroke patients. He said that time will be the biggest healer. I think now, three years later that has been very true.
I also wonder if those going through serious operations, in a stable relationship have a better chance of recovery.
I Get Turned Down For A Turn Up
I was talking to a friend, when she said that she had a dress that needed shortening. She was also rather worried about getting the length right.
I suggested that she come round later in the week, and I pin it for her, as it is one of my skills, even if I haven’t used it in some years. She could even take it to my dry cleaners down the road, where the owner’s mother does a good job, if the repairs she’s done for me are any guide.
It would have been a convenient time for me, as the table is still fairly clear.
The table is very stable and it must be countless times, that I’ve got C to stand there, whilst I got the length of one of her dresses just right. I used to sew them up for her, but for perhaps the last five years of her life, she got someone in Cambridge market to do the cutting and sewing.
At least in that case, it wasn’t my fault, if she didn’t like the new length of the dress.
Getting the length of a dress on a lady absolutely right, is very difficult. C’s problem, was that she had a very small waist for her height and it was very easy to get the proportions wrong, so in the end I usually relied on good old golden section.
In the end, my friend decided to take the dress to a dressmaker of whom she knew. Sometimes, it’s good not to be wanted, as if I’d got it wrong, I’d have been deep in it.
The Floods In Central Europe
A few weeks ago I was in Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Southern Germany.
Now it seems that much of the area is under water, as the BBC reports.
I know it was only luck, but I certainly got my timing right.
I’ve never ever been flooded out in a house and I don’t ever want to be.
My hearts go out to all of those who are suffering.
The Anonymous Widower 