Using Lea Bridge Station For A Purpose
After going to IKEA, as I often do, when I only have one blue bag, I caught the first bus that appeared of either a 192 to Tottenham Hale station or a 341 to the area of Hackney, where I live.
It was a 192 and I took it, now that I have four trains to choose from at Tottenham Hale station.
- A train to Liverpool Street via Hackney Downs.
- A train to Stratford via the Lea Bridge station.
- A direct Liverpool Street train.
- A Victoria Line train.
The first two would be the most preferable, as a bus can take me to fifty metres from my home from either Hackney Downs or Lea Bridge stations.
I could also take a 76 bus to Dalston Junction station. That bus is not as slow as the 341, which gives you a mystery tour of a lot of Haringey and tends to get stuck in the traffic of Tottenham High Road.
As I walked into the station, the first train was announced as a Stratford train via Lea Bridge and by running across the bridge, I was able to get on a fairly crowded train.
Five minutes later and I was on the platform at Lea Bridge station.
After a walk of about a hundred metres with no bridges, two steps and two light-controlled crossing, I was at the bus stop. But I’d just missed the 56 bus, that takes me directly home. So I took the first bus that arrived to Clapton Pond, where I got on one of the frequent 38 buses to my house.
It may seem complicated compared to taking the Victoria Line to Highbury and Islington station, but that station is a 1960s monstrosity, built when the disable didn’t go out or even exist. Walking routes in the long tunnels and bus access at Highbury and Islington is not good either.
But Lea Bridge station is already proving its worth. Several people on the train had used the new station and a young lady at the station said she used the station a lot.
But the station needs more trains and two trains per hour is not enough, especially when Angel Road station is upgraded.
I have a feeling that the forecast traffic through this station will be in the same class as those for the Borders Railway.
There’s More To Liverpool Than Football And The Beatles!
This morning, this story on the BBC web site entitled ‘Major Win’ In Pancreatic Cancer Fight is one of the top stories. This is said.
A new combination of chemotherapy drugs should become the main therapy for pancreatic cancer, say UK researchers.
The disease is so hard to treat that survival rates have barely changed for decades.
But data, presented at the world’s biggest cancer conference, showed long-term survival could be increased from 16% to 29%.
The findings have been described as a “major win”, “incredibly exciting” and as offering new hope to patients.
I must admit that I feel a touch of pride, as the study was led by Professor John Neoptolemos at Liverpool University, which was where my late wife and I met when we were both students at the University.
But I also feel a touch of relief for others, who might get this awful cancer in the future, as now they may stand a better chance of survival, than did our youngest son; George, who survived just a few months after diagnosis.
I also raised a small sum of money for the research by visiting all 92 English and Welsh football clubs in alphabetical order by public transport. The main funding for the research included Cancer Research UK and I think some EU money!
The BBC story also says this.
The trial on 732 patients – in hospitals in the UK, Sweden, France and Germany – compared the standard chemotherapy drug gemcitabine against a combination of gemcitabine and capecitabine.
I’ve looked up the two drugs mentioned and both are on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, which are the most important drugs needed in a basic health system.
An article in The Guardian is also illuminating. This is said.
The ESPAC trials, which began publishing findings in 2004, showed that chemotherapy with gemcitabine brings five-year survival up to 15-17%, doubling the rate of survival with surgery alone. The latest research, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, showed the two-drug combination nearly doubles the survival rate again to 29%.
It showed, said Neoptolemos, that chemotherapy does work in pancreatic cancer, even though most attention in cancer research is now focused on immunotherapy, and precision or targeted medicine.
But the trial would not have happened without funding from the charity CancerResearch UK (CRUK), because both drugs are old and off-patent, meaning they can be made by any generic drug manufacturer and are consequently cheap. Drug companies would not foot the bill for such a trial because the profits to be made are small.
“This is an academic-led presentation,” said Neoptolemos. “This shows the enormous value of CRUK. Without them, none of this would have happened. There is a lot of pressure [on doctors] to do drug company trials because you get £2,000 to £3,000 a patient. For something like this, you don’t get anything. It has been quite tough to do.”
So this is not some elite drug for the rich, famous and powerful, but one that might even be applied everywhere.
I must admit, that I’ve shed the odd tear this morning!
Thoughts On My Vitamin D Deficiency
I’m now convinced that the cause of my bad springs and substantial absences from school as a child, and periods of bad health since, is due to a periodic vitamin D deficiency.
I suffer from several of the same symptoms as my father, who was most likely the parent from whom I inherited coeliac disease.
As a child, I didn’t go out in the son much, as I think I found it a bit painful and I burned. My father was the same in those days and was very much a man for his garage or shed. He only ventured out to smoke his pipe.
The problems dropped, when I went to Liverpool University and met my future wife. But then she would drag me out into the sun for a walk, with great regularity.
When I was diagnosed as a coeliac, I thought this would be the end of it all. And it did get a bit better, with the bonus that I could now sunbathe without burning. I also stopped being bitten by mossies.
Since the death of my wife, my stroke and moving to London, the bad springs and a lot of the other symptoms have returned.
But no-one could say the weather in London and it seems much of North and Central Europe has been very sunny over the last few years.
I even took a holiday in Croatia for some sun, but in My Home Run From Dubrobnik, I saw probably a day and a half of sun at most!
I’m now on vitamin D3 tablets and they appear to help.
But I think, what I need is a good scientific book on vitamin D, how it is absorbed by the body and what it actually does.
So much of what I get told seems to only have vague science behind it!
If I could find a top class University, where they were doing serious research into vitamin D, I’d go halfway round the world to talk to them.
The Anonymous Widower 