Monkey Hadley Common
Monkey Hadley Common or Hadley Wood as we called it, was one of the places I used to go regularly as a child with my friend Richard Plumb.
Today, I walked through it with a friend before having some lunch at Cockfosters.
Surprisingly, despite being probably fifty-five years since I’ve been there, some parts had changed little and I could remember everything well.
There was always fishing in Jack’s Lake and that was probably a lot cleaner.
Ofen we would go through the woods to the East Coast Main Line, where we would do the things that boys did in those days, like putting coins on the track, so the trains would flatten them.
Do kids still do that?
The railway incidentally is much changed with electrification and whereas in the 1950s, you saw perhaps one express to and from the North every half-an-hour or so, the trains are much more frequent now.
The Church Where C And Myself Married
These pictures show Christ Church, Cockfosters, where C and myself got married on September the seventh, 1968.
That day is still the only one, where I have entered the church. And it was locked today. If that sounds strange, C had been a Sunday School teacher in the church and we had met the vicar before the wedding, in the vicarage.
One of the church’s claims to fame, is that it was where the Memorial Service for Elvis Presley was held in the UK.
Read This Article If You’re With The Big Six Energy Companies
It surprises me how many people are still with the Big Six energy companies.
Anyone stupid enough to still be, should read this article by Stewart Dalby on the Proactive Investors web site.
His experience of changing from British Gas to Good Energy was much the same as mine when I changed from mPower to OVO. The big company used every trick in and out of the book to stop him changing.
The Big Six energy companies are a total disgrace and Stewart’s headline on his article sums up what you do.
Self-help is the only way to beat the Big Six
But remember the paraphrase of the Cat Steven’s song – The First Cut is the Deepest – The First Change is the Toughest
You may need to be extremely patient to get the change you want.
One thing I would always do, is go direct to the company to which you want to change and not use any intermeiate or comparison site. So if you have trouble changing, at least you can test out your new supplier’s customer services and if they’re any good they probably know how to shove a red-hot poker up the big company’s arse.
But once you’ve done it, you will have all the numbers available to do it again. (OVO sent me a single A4 page!) And I very much doubt that a small supplier would be as difficult to change from, as any of the Big Six.
My New Cooker Hood Has Arrived
My cooker hood arrived around seven this evening in the most inappropriate and large packaging.
Let’s hope it fits to the wall!
A Flypast Over London
I took these pictures as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight flew over the City of London today.
The fourth picture shows the area where I was standing on the walkway across the Barbican.
It is a good place to see any flypast that is going over Buckingham Palace, as the pilots use the three distinctive towers to line up for their trip across London. This Google Map shows Central London.
Flypast Route Over London
The Barbican is illustrated by the red arrow and Buckingham Palace is at the bottom left hand corner.
The procedure used by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight was explained, when one of the pilots was the guest of Test Match Special on BBC Radio.
When asked what you do if there is an engine failure, the pilot stated that there is only the Thames.
I Thought Couriers Like This Had Reformed
I knew that today, I would be getting my new cooker hood delivered. The delivery company confirmed yesterday that it would be coming today and that they would tell me today, in what four hour slot it would come.
The message yesterday was just an automated voice one, with no instructions on where to phone, text or e-mail if there was any problems.
This morning, I got the delivery slot as any time between 15:00 and 19:00. This is very inconvenient as I have an important appointment, I booked some time ago, at 18:00.
It doesn’t matter to me, if I don’t get the hood delivered today, as it won’t be installed until next week or even the week after.
I have no means to contact the couriers to say this time is inconvenient.
Also judging by this courier company’s attitude of we deliver it when we decide and don’t tell you who we are and how to contact us, I suspect it would be a difficult process to get the item redelivered.
So it is wait here until it is delivered and hope that it turns up.
Incidntally, I actually ordered the hood from the John Lewis web site, so for a start they will be getting a complaint to say the least.
But I did think that couriers with these sort of attitudes had reformed.
Are There Secondary Effects In The Budget?
I have a feeling that there could be some secondary effects from the budget and particularly the announcement of a National Living Wage.
Nowhere will this measure be felt more than at the bottom end of the employers. If you read the tabloids, you get the impression that dodgy low-quality businesses are the big employers of illegal immigrants, keeping them in squalor and paying them in cash, if they’re lucky.
With a solidly enforced living wage, will this make it more difficult for these companies and operators to survive, so this country might be less of a magnet for illegal immigrants. I don’t know, but a higher level of living wage gives the Tax Authorities a good reason to investigate the sort of businesses who rely on no-questions-asked labour.
I very much watch innovation in the media and also have been in touch several times with universities in the last few years. I think we’ll see companies using their local innovators to make sure they support their now more highly-paid employees. I know several universities are giving students real projects in local companies.
So will we be pushing our employment up-market? I think we will!
As an example, an industry that we all seem to use more these days are couriers to deliver the goods we’ve bought on-line. They have got so much better over the last few years and that is just not the delivery reliability, but the staff as well, who seem to be polite and very much on-the-ball. Incidentally, most staff who’ve delivered to me lately seem to have been British born and educated.
I don’t know what will happen in the next few years, but I have a feeling that the Chancellor’s announcements may be helping to move the country on from a low-wage, low-skilled and badly-supported work force to one where a job, where you work hard and efficiently gives you a real living wage.
Of course Labour think that the restructuring of Tax Credits will mean many will lose out. But then Labour’s solution to a low-wage, low-skill economy was to pay people at the low-end to do nothing or crap jobs.
The other thing the Chancellor must do to help, is make sure that our transport links are improved. It’s one thing to get a job and often it’s a much more difficult thing to get to that job every day. You just have to see what the Overground and the fleets of new buses have done for Hackney and the surrounding boroughs, here in London, over the past few years.
That’s Better!
The old cooker hood is now down and the hole has been properly covered.
Note the scar in the brickwork, where Jerry ran the cable.
I’ll probably have to fit a splash-back to cover it up. A pity, as I like exposed well-laid bricks.
London Just Carried On
Ten years ago today, I published a post on my old blog entitled Carry On London, as a reflection after the bombings earlier in the day.
I make no apologies for repeating it today.
Tuesday, I went to the funeral of a friend. Alex died young at 48. Life is cruel. But even the funeral was not a sad affair! Alex wouldn’t have wanted it so and stated it probably many times before she died!
Wednesday, I was in Trafalgar Square, when my fair and beloved city, London, was announced as the winner of the 2012 Olympic Games. Life can be so sweet.
But then we have the bombings of today!
Thousands of times, I’ve travelled through the tunnels under London. Many times, I’ve done the stretch between Kings Cross and Russell Square, where most of the casualties occurred. Occassionally, I’ve used the two parts of the Circle Line, where the other two bombs went off.
Am I bitter? Angry? Sad? Vindictive?
Not sure!
Sad yes! As why would anybody want to do such a thing! How would I feel if one of my sons did that? I would know I had failed. How would I feel if one of my sons had got caught in the blasts. I don’t know! But thankfully they didn’t.
So it has to be sadness at the moment. Vindictiveness only follows the old eye for an eye maxim, which means that we all go blind!
But perhaps, the greatest thing we can do is just carry on, remembering those that died and vowing to be more vigilant so that it won’t happen again.
Fay would have done that. She worked for my father and during the Second World War, the shy girl from North London, worked as a conductor on the buses. One day, the bus she should have been on, was hit directly by a German bomb. Everybody died! She just remembered the tragedy, I suspect she cried long and hard, and then she carried on.
A few crackpots, who take the good name of Islam in vain, should never be able to bring London to its knees, when the evil Hitler and the Luftwaffe failed.
A last point for Bush and all those who think that the death penalty is a deterrent in these sort of cases. I’ll ignore the fact that the London atrocities may well have been suicide bombers, which are usually pretty difficult to execute. But as I am someone who has no belief in any religious being at all, I do believe that we should do all we can to preserve reasonable life here, as there is nothing more to come. So if we ever execute anybody, then we are losing our own humanity and descending below their level.
Carry on London.
A lot has happened to me since that fateful day of the 7th July, 2005.
My wife of nearly forty years and our youngest son, both died of cancer. I then had a stroke, which left me unable to drive. So I’ve moved back to London and almost ironically, I now live close to the route of the number 30 bus, one of which was destroyed with the loss of thirteen lives in the bombings.
But London has looked after me, as only one of the world’s great cities can.
And London has carried on, just as Fay believed you should.
The Greek Finance Minister Had The Crash Helmet
What made me laugh yesterday was a picture of the now-resigned Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, riding away from the problems on his motocycle.
He was wearing a crash helmet and his bimbo-on-the-back had to make do without!
A Greek metaphor on the lines of I’m alright, Jack!
I think the video is on this page in the Guardian.
The Mail says the lady is his wife!
The Anonymous Widower 