Thoughts on the East London Line
I’ve now had three trips on the East London Line and you can see how it is fitting into the fabric of society in East and South London.
Obviously, there are things still to be done, like the connection at Dalston to avoid the short walk between the two stations. Talking to a policeman at Norwood Junction after the Crystal Palace trip, he said that people aren’t sure yet which station to use for various places. So perhaps, Transport for London need to put up similar route finders on the Overground, as they have on bus stops. This would direct football fans going to Crystal Palace to Norwood Junction for example.
What happens too, if say people from say Liverpool or Manchester arriving at Euston station ask how they get to Crystal Palace for the football or somewhere else in the area served by the East London Line. You could walk to Euston Square and take the Circle Line to Liverpool Street and walk to Shoreditch High Street, the Metropolitan LIne to Whitechapel, or the Northern to London Bridge and the Jubilee to Canada Water. The choice is yours, but not easy for a non-expert. I think this illustrates the problem outlined by the policeman at Norwood Junction; the East London Line needs time for people to get used to how and where it runs.
If I take my example to its logical conclusion, you could ask why people from the north don’t use Watford Junction and possibly Willesden Junction to change to the Overground. You wouldn’t have changed to the old North London Line, but now it’s a very much better and a lot more comfortable than it used to be. So I would feel that we’ll see some developments and changes to make this easier. It would also effectively add capacity to Euston, by removing those, who perhaps wanted to go to Richmond, Islington or South East London from the station.
I’ll end this post by looking at the positives. Everything is clean, the staff seem competent and happy in their work, the trains seem to run to time and as at present there are always staff on the trains, there seems no sign of any trouble.
Perhaps, though my journey back from Norwood Junction on Saturday summed up the line. The train was fairly full, but there were still enough seats for those who wanted one and the train was cool and well-ventilated. It was much better than doing a similar journey on the Underground.
It will be interesting to see how it performs during the Olympics. But at least we know it will probably be there!
Carluccio’s Risotto is Now Gluten-Free
Carluccio’s new gluten free menu has this satatement.
Our risottos are gluten free. We serve a different one every
week, so please see our Specials Board or ask staff for details.
I had a serious and very good chicken and spinach risotto in their Spitalifields branch last night.
The only trouble with Carluccio’s, is that there aren’t enough of them.
Rabbits in the City
I saw these yesterday in Spitalfields.
Rabbits in Spitalfields
I really like to see jokey and frivolous street art! Especially sculpture, as my uncle was a good one!
London Underground and Overground Interchanges
As I have gold older, I’ve tended to avoid some interchanges between lines, as they are either difficult or they make the journey longer. Now after my strokes, I’m a bit more careful, as some stations are a bit claustrophobic and just too busy.
I was also got on this train of thought, by a friend, who has to get King’s Cross and Gerrards Cross regularly. Usually, they end up taking a slow taxi up Marylebone Road. I thought there must be a better way. In some ways it’s a pity that when they built the new Wembley, that they didn’t find some way to connect the Chiltern, Metropolitan and Jubilee Lines in the area, as this would have given access directly from places like Aylesbury and High Wycombe to the City and East London. As yesterday, I had to go to Oxford Circus I did check out the Bakerloo Southbound to Victoria Northbound connection and I think it is up one short escalator, a few steps and then down another escalator. But you wouldn’t do it with a heavy bag!
I think it illustrates how you must get to know your interchanges in London. Here’s a few of the things I like and dislike.
Access to the Northern Line is much slower than the other lines at Kings Cross, now that they have virtually rebuilt the interchange. So I usually avoid it.’
Green Park always seems to be a slow interchange, as you walk for ever.
Bank is not for the faint hearted, especially as there are a lot of works going on at the moment.
In fact these days, I’ll often look for a bus route that does the transfer and perhaps avoids the difficult stations.
Crash Scams – A Job For Daisy
Apparently, according to the BBC, there has been a large increase in crash scams, where crooks get you to run into their vehicles and then claim for damage, injuries and storage that are pure fiction.
This is a classic application for my software, Daisy, as it can show a complete pattern of claims, by car, registration letter, post code etc., so that links and hopefully the crooks can be determined.
The Selfish Who Ruin Our Wildlife
With the conviction of Jeffrey Lendrum yesterday, we locked up a dangerous enemy of peregrine falcons. If you think so what, look at this post, where I saw these wonderful birds on the cathedral in Brussels.
But the real criminals weren’t in the dock. These are the middle men and the sheikhs in the Middle East, who feel they need to have our wild falcons for their sport. But it is not all gloom, as breeding programs are starting in places like Qatar.
I am not against falconry by any means, as I have enjoyed demonstrations at country shows and have met men, who use birds of prey to frighten pigeons away from airfields, to increase air safety. Controlling a bird like that is a great skill and it is to be admired.
As a stud owner, you also have to take into account the part that birds of prey play in the control of rats, mice and rabbits. We have a couple of pairs of harriers on the stud and they are fascinating to watch. Sometimes, if you drive the lorry along the narrow lane, you’ll have one flying alongside, waiting for the vibrations to disturb a mouse in the verge. It is a magnificent sight and long may it be admired.
I did not see it, but one of the most amazing stories I heard of, concerned a golden eagle, that had been trained by a falconer. He had been given it, after it had I think been stolen as a chick or something like that. In any case, he had definitely acquired it legally and at the time, he was the only person licenced to fly a golden eagle. Everybody who saw the bird, said they had never seen anything so spectacular.
So the bird after a bad start in life was giving pleasure to many.
You have to add to the selfish in the Middle East, who prey on our falcons, those adherents to Chinese medicine, who feel that rhino horn is a must. It is! But only on the rhino!
I’ve seen rhino in the semi-wild in South Africa, and they are truly wonderful.
But even those in game-parks are now being poached for their horns.
That is disgraceful, as rhino should be here for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. The only solution is to convince the Chinese that some of their traditional medicine is just not acceptable to the rest of the world.
Here Come the Nimbys
They are going to announce the compensation scheme for the High-Speed Line to the North (HS2) today, so what does the BBC do? They get a stupid Nimby on the BBC Breakfast counch. Looking at her, she looks like a typical Home Counties woman, who thinks much more for herself, than the general population. I was uncertain about HS2, until I read an article in Modern Railways, which convinced me that the planned route, via the Chilterns was correct.
There are a lot of unpopular developments we need like nuclear power stations and freight distribution depots. Done properly and sympathetically, they can be to everybody’s benefit.
We must not let the Nimbys win!
Travel, Hotel Web Sites
This is just a general observation really, as I’ve just booked an evening in Crewe to see Ipswich play.
I have a feeling that the general shenanikins I have with my left hand has put my computer into some sort of alien mode, as the mouse sometimes doesn’t seem to response in the way I want it to! Anyway I sometimes seem to select the wrong thing and have to restart. This happened on the excellent Virgin Trains web site, when I was booking for Crewe and I got the wrong train back. No problem, as I was able to just select another, but on the hotel web site for some reason I ended up with two rooms and had to change my reservation. I suspect it was my problem, but there was no way on the site to remove one after I’d booked without going through a full change procedure. Not too annoying, but web designers should impose more validity checks.
Two things often annoy me.
- Sites which don’t allow me to select my address by entering a post code and then choosing from a list. Virgin does this address lookup and it makes things so much easier, as I usually make at least two miswtakes, when I type my full address.
- Why can’t sites ask you simple questions, when you do things like forget to check the “Do I accept the Terms and Conditions?” box. Often forgetting this means that tou have to retype a lot of information. All they need to do is bring up a check dialog.
Parking and Clamping
This was discussed on Radio 5 Live yesterday morning, after reports that the government were to ban clamping on private land. It is probably right to ban the aggressive aspects of this, but what do you do if say you have a private car park on your offices that is always being blocked by illegal parkers. They also interviewed the man who refused to get out of his clamped car, so it could be towed away. Most had sympathy with the man, but I don’t, as he shouldn’t have parked where he did in the first place.
When I could drive, I never parked illegally and I think that in over forty years of driving, I’ve only had a handful of tickets. most of which were because I misread a sign or put the wrong amount of money in a meter.
Now that I use buses a lot, I realise how illegal parkers are a complete menace and slow the traffic a lot more. My post about chaos in Trafalgar Square was partly about illegal parking, but mainly about stupid idiots, who were trying to drive where they shouldn’t.
The irony about the BBC phone-in was that the stand-in presenter, Stephen Nolan admits that he gets lots of parking tickets outside the BBC in Belfast, because he claims there is nowhere to park. Surely, he should use the bus. But then he is almost proud of his very obese state, so I suppose the extra walk would be just too much for him.
I hope the BBC don’t pay his parking tickets.
Why We Are Short of Trains in East Anglia
Yet again, there has been a serious level crossing accident in East Anglia. At least the twat in a sewage tanker, who seems to have been the cause of the accident, has been held on suspicion of dangerous driving.
The knock-on of these accidents, is that yet another small diesel multiple unit, which are the backbone of rural services in Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, is lost or at least out of service for several months. The line I use regularly between Ipswich and Cambridge, is in desperate need of a two-coach unit to replace one of the trains, which is only one coach an totally inadequate, but this accident probably means that replacement is far in the future. I hope we don’t lose one of our trains to replace the one lost in the accident.
The Anonymous Widower 