Next Year It’ll Be Fifty Years Since I Left Minchenden
It was in June or July 1965, that I walked out of Minchenden Grammar School in Southgate for the last time.
A lot has happened to me since, some of which is in this blog. Although some tales have been left out to protect the squeamish and the innocent.
I wonder if anybody is organising a fifty years reunion for the Class of 1965 from Minchenden?
Surely, in the true spirit that we learned at the school, we should make 2015 a year to remember!
Am I Bothered About The EU Ban On High Powered Vacuum Cleaners?
Of course not! Except that it has produced some entertaining articles, like this one in the Guardian.
I have a company clean my house. I get two girls for two hours for well under a hundred. And they bring all their own equipment and cleaning materials.
Idon’t have a dog any more, but one of our bassets, loved being vacuumed and would stand by you waiting patiently for her cleaning.
An Unusual Letter In The Times
On Friday this letter appeared in The Times under the title of Maiden Over.
It is well known that the Almighty is a spin bowler …
Sir, Patrick Kidd concludes that if successive days of rain in the cricket match between the Lord’s XI and a Vatican XI (Aug 27) stop play “it’s probably proof that God is more of a rugby man”. I think he needs to get out more, for we all know that She is an avid follower of lacrosse.
It was signed by the Diosesan Secretary of the Diocese of Ely!
How Much Water Vapour Is In A Cubic Metre Of Air at A Given Temperature And Relative Humidity?
I needed to know this as if I knew the temperature and relative humidity in my bedroom, when I went to bed and got up, I could work out how much water vapour had transferred to or from the air during my sleep.
One of my friends at school is an expert on these sort of calculations for industrial clients.
He came round on Friday night and we discussed it through, but I don’t think I got more than a basic grasp.
The reason is that he works from charts, whereas all my working life, I’ve started with proven formulae and worked everything out from first principles. But then I trained as a Control Engineer.
A problem I had with the psychometric charts he uses, is that they are all in a measurement system, that is totally foreign to me – Imperial. This is because most of the publishers are across the pond and they still use units, I last used in my early teens. When I went to work at ICI in the late sixties, the company had metricated in 1955 or so.
At least after our meeting and discussion, I now know what I’m searching for.
I finally found this web page, which gives a table of saturated vapour density for water in air. Although, it’s an American web site, at least it gives this in gm/cu. m.
The web page gives the SVP in gm/cu. m. at various temperatures
- 0°C – 4.85
- 10°C – 9.4
- 15°C – 12.83
- 20°C – 17.3
- 25°C – 23
- 30°C – 30.4
- 37°C – 44
- 40°C – 51.1
As an illustration, suppose you have a temperature of 25°C and a relative humidity of 50%. I measure it on my Maplin meter.
Maplin Hygro-Thermometer
At that temperature a cubic metre of water can hold 23 grams of water. But as the relative humidity is 50%, it is actually only holding 11.5 grams of water. As my bedroom is about five metres square and two and a half metres high, that means the room contains over 719 grams of water.
Now look at 30°C and the same relative humidity of 50%.
The same calculation gives 950 grams of water in the room.
So if with the central heating, the electric blanket and the fact that each person probably is equivalent to a one bar electric fire, your bedroom, about the same size as mine, goes from say 25°C to 30°C, the air will need another 230 grams of water to be in equilibrium, or in layman’s terms, happy with how it relates to everything.
So from where does the air get this water it needs?
You!
No wonder a lot of people go to bed with a night bucket, so they can replenish the fluid they’ve lost to the air.
Scatty Middle-Aged Mum ‘Reborn As Jihacker’s Wife’
This is the headline to a large piece in the Sunday’s Times, describing how a white female convert to Islam is tweeting offensively from land controlled by the Islamic State.
Surely, many of those who have gone to support the cruel and extremely violent regime in the Middle East would be how those that are best described as several bricks short of a full load.
Are we building enough secure mental hospitals?
A Surprisingly E-Mail From A Lady
I just had an e-mail from a well-brought up lady, which mentioned the word, Arseblog.
It’s not about what it could be, but the name of a blog, that provides text commentary for the well-known London team, that she supports.
Peterborough Station’s Litter Bins
I came across these bins, when I changed trains at Peterborough.
What a wonderful example of simple, good design.
If this doesn’t nudge people to put their rubbish in the right bag then nothing will.
Match Five – Derby 1 – Ipswich 1
Derby is one of the easier grounds to get to from the excellent rail station, in that it’s just about a walk of about ten minutes.
Today though, I went via Oakham to have lunch with a friend, so I had to change trains twice at Peterborough and Leicester. Both changes were the ones that should be avoided, where you have to climb up one set of steps and then down to another platform. There were lifts, but in some places on the rail network, we’re seeing reorganising, that mean the up and downs are minimised. We need more innovative thinking.
Oakham is a small simple station, with a pub and brewery attached, so it’s a good place to meet for business or pleasure.
Oakham Station
The picture shows the station from the footbridge. In the distance you can just see the infamous level crossing, that is a pain to people living in the town. The signal box there was used as a model for the Airfix kit.
After an excellent lunch at the Finches near Oakham, I arrived a few minutes late at Derby and thought I’d buy my return ticket before the match.
£141 – You Must Be Joking!
This was the only ticket offered by East Midlands Trains. A First Anytime Single at £141.
For Ipswich fans, the match was overshadowed by the news that David McGoldrick is leaving for Leicester. If he had played, the result might have been different as a couple of chances missed in the second half, were possibly the sort, he wouldn’t have missed.
But if Mick McCarthy has got the reported eight million for McGoldrick, then turning round the player’s career and getting half a season out of him for Town, has been good business for all concerned. Let’s hope Mick can resurrect Conor Sammon‘s career in the same way.
The match was enlivened by the debut of Ted Bishop, who after a quiet first half, started to create trouble for Derby in the second half. In dealing with him in one instance, Derby gave away the free kick that led to Ipswich’s equaliser. One shot from distance and another he had when he came on as a substitute at Crawley, show that he might have some serious talent in the future as a scorer from midfield, in the manner of Matt Holland. In some ways, the shot today, was reminiscent of some from Ipswich’s legend Ted Phillips, who I saw score several goals in the early 1960s.
When Bishop tired, he was replaced by Alex Henshall, who showed he could torment the Derby defence.
So two youngsters with a combined age of 38, showed the Ipswich fans, that this season might not be in the dire mould of some of recent memory.
I eventually got home with a ticket that cost £42.90, which was just forty pence more than their on-line price and £2.70 more than the sum of my two tickets to get to Derby. But why don’t East Midlands Trains make their ticket machines easier to use. The trouble was that I tried to buy a ticket via EMTrains, rather than Any Permitted Route on the machine. But as East Midland Trains was the operator I needed for London, surely my choice was logical.
Incidentally, on the train to London, I sat with a Derby fan, who said that for Tuesday night matches he reluctantly had to drive, as there is no late London-bound train after the match.
I don’t find East Midlands Trains good value and avoid them, if I possibly can.
Disappearing Balances
One of my old school friends came round last night for a drink and a chat. At one point, I used my letter balance to weigh something.
My All-Purpose Balance
They said, that at the University, where he works, they have given up on expensive weighing machines and now use cheap letter balances, as the students nick them, to weigh out their drugs.
Such is University life these days!
Forward Thinking In Liverpool
As a Londoner, I have always been fascinated with the City’s transport system. I have watched it develop and grow for over sixty years, from the days of trams and trolley buses through the classic Routemaster buses and the birth of the Victoria Line to the present day. London always seemed to have some sort of plan, even if sometimes some of them like the Bakerloo Line extension to Camberwell don’t get implemented and some like bendy buses were a mistake. In some ways one of the best parts of London’s transport system, that has grown over these years has been its coherent and understandable non-electronic information system, which is second to none in the world.
When I first went to Liverpool in the 1960s, the local train system was old and decaying and although the buses were generally younger than most of London’s, the only way to find how to get to different parts of the city, was find out your bus route before you started. It was the same in London in those days, but now generally turn up at any bus stop, train or Underground station in the capital and want to go a particular tube station and you can easily find the route.
Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and most of our large cities, still have public transport systems that are fairly incomprehensible to a visitor, who perhaps just wants to get to the hospital to see their Auntie Gladys.
I have never seen something as basic as a decent pedestrian or bus route map at a bus stop outside of the capital.
Could London’s obvious superiority in this area and others in particular, be down to London having an overall transport body, whose origins go back almost a hundred years? Part of Transport for London’s genes say that you must make the best of what you’ve got and that all design must be top class, even if you can’t afford the best architects and designers.
Most conurbations outside London don’t have overall transport bodies with such a heritage. They also often seem to allow the train and bus companies to go off in their own directions, rather than one that is best for everyone.
As an example, ask any visitor to London, how many bus companies there are. They will probably say one. Which is not true as there are several, who each run a number of routes to the same rigid standards laid down by Transport for London. How many areas outside London have a joined-up transport system?
Merseyside is slightly different, in that many of the local rail routes are run under the name of Merseyrail, in much the same way as the London Overground. It is system that seems to serve the city and its visitors well.
I was pleased to see on Global Rail News, that Liverpool is developing a thirty year rail plan. Here’s the first part.
The Liverpool City Region has worked with Network Rail to draw up a 30-year plan to improve passenger and freight rail links.
The Long Term Rail Strategy outlines 12 high-priority rail projects for the city and surrounding area designed to improve both suburban and intercity rail services.
Are other cities so forward thinking? I shall get hold of their plan and explore it.
The Anonymous Widower 