The Place Where The Bottom Fell Out Of A Drawer
Whenever I go to Oakwood station, just seeing the parking in front of the station reminds me of a very funny story.
The Place Where The Bottom Fell Out Of A Drawer
Our next door neighbour, a rather pompous Mancunian, who thought the world revolved around him, just after the Second World War, had a Rover, very much like the one you see in the James Herriott programs on television. My doctor, the wonderfully named Egerton White had one too, as doctors in those days always did. just like they had three-piece suits, a good size corporation and a pocket watch on a gold chain.
Our neighbour, had a garage that was basically a store for his junk. in the middle of the back wall, was an old chest of drawers with large round knobs. He also had the habit of going in a bit close, so that he could shut the garage doors. My father, who was a bit of a comedian, once joked that. his junk wasn’t worth nicking.
One evening, he wanted to get an evening paper. The easiest place to get one, for our neighbour was Oakwood station, where he just parked outside, left the engine running and walked inside the station to get one of the Star, News or Standard.
The Entrance To Oakwood Station
The picture shows where the papers were sold, from the bench just inside the entrance.
Anyway, he duly backed the Rover out of the garage and proceeded to drive to the station. He always sat high in the car, to emphasise his own importance and was surprised to see people waving and pointing to the front of his car. He just waved back, as my father used to say, when he related the tail, in the style of the King.
When he returned to the car after buying the paper, he realised the reason for all the attention on the trip to the station. He had gone into the garage just a little bit too far, the night before and the bumpers of the Rover had hooked themselves under the knobs on one of the drawers. They were so firmly locked, that when he backed out to get the paper, the car extracted the drawer from the chest and it had stayed balanced there, all the way to the station.
He then took a fateful decision. He decided that as the drawer had stayed there on the journey to the station, it would stay there on the way back.
It did stay there, but as he moved off, the bottom decided to part company from the rest of the drawer and thirty years of accumulated odds and ends, were deposited all over the forecourt of the station.
Only The Names Have Changed
I took this picture at Southgate station.
Only The Names Have Changed
The banks, when I passed through in the 1950s, were I think, Westminster on the left and Midland on the right. I also think there was a National Provincial there as well.
Note the period finger post in the middle of the road.
The Red Sock Code
This article is both tragic and sad, but funny and gives a good feeling.
So what’s wrong about bring ladies, or men for that matter, of easy virtue, into a care home to help with the caring?
A Mouse In The Studio
Shelagh Fogarty has just been interrupted on BBC Radio 5 Live, by a mouse running around the studio.
What a bimbo! Judging by her reaction!
It’s what you get when you move the BBC to a rodent-infested part of the North.
Hedgehog Decline
A few years ago, when we owned the stud, I remarked that I hadn’t seen a hedgehog in years. when I lived in London as a child, they were always about and you used to see quite a few squashed ones on the road.
Now it would appear they are in serious decline according to this article in the Mail.
I’ve never seen one here in Hackney, although given the number of gardens, parks and cemeteries, there must be a few. On the other hand, we do have lots of foxes.
I did type “Hackney hedgehog” into Google and found this article. The writer suggests that foxes could have predated on the dead hedgehogs found.
So is Basil Brush one of the reasons for the decline.
Booking A Train From London To The Hague
Just out of curiosity, I looked at how much it would cost me to go from St. Pancras to The Hague next Wednesday, the 30th of January.
So I looked up on the Belgian Rail web site called b-europe.co.uk. They offer two routes.
You can go to Brussels Midi, where you take a train to Essen in Germany and then another one to Rosendaal in The Netherlands, from where you get a Dutch train to The Hague. For this Grand Tour of the Low Countries you will pay £114.42.
Alternatively, you can take the Thalys from Brussels to Rotterdam and then take the train to The Hague. It will be 17 minutes quicker, but you can’t book it in Second Class, so it’ll cost you £188.75 in First.
I have done the single leg in the past for under £100 and I can book it for about £60 by means of easyJet.
So who would use the train from London to The Hague?
Not this enthusiast for rail travel, for a start!
It’s all double-Dutch to me!
A Mini Tablet Computer With A Built-In Printer
My little tablet computer, which is a Samsung Tab 2 with a seven inch screen. I use it to answer e-mails, keep a list of tasks and details of my drugs and INR results.
It does the job well, but it doesn’t handle all scenarios.
Say I was an architect working on a new house. I could make notes as I walked round the site and type them up later to give to the builder, who may not be very computer literate. But that is more hassle than I need.
Imagine though being able to write on a pad of paper, perhaps a few centimetres across, with a standard ball point pen and then give the paper copy to the builder. This is how many people work, using Post-it notes for the purpose.
Suppose though, that the pad fitted over the screen of the tablet computer and that could capture what was written as an image, so that when I got back to the office, I could download the various images to my computer for safe keeping.
In the late 1980s, I saw a demonstration of a system, where signatures were captured, that had been written by a standard ball point pen, through a thick pad of paper.
So the technology has existed for some time.
This idea has potential and all of the technology exists somewhere.
As with the double-sided credit card holder, I want one. And I want one now!
The Warning That Was Ignored
On the BBC web site, there is this article about the sinking of the ferry Princess Victoria on the 31st January 1951.
The BBC article gives a full time-line of the sinking of the ferry until she sent her last radio message at 13:58. But it leaves out anything of what happened later.
As a child for a few years I lived in Felixstowe and I can still remember the dark marks on the walls of the houses in Langer Road, showing how high the North Sea Floods of 1953 rose later on that fateful day, killing some 38 people in that end of the town.
Many more died in The Netherlands and Flanders.
Sad that the sinking of the Princess Victoria was, it seems inconceivable today, that the warning wasn’t heeded and so many deaths and damage occurred.
I hope we have learned from what happened that night.
Peer-to-Peer Lending In Estonia
My Zopa alert found this article from a website called European Voice.
It gives this view on Estonian banking.
Banking is the economy’s biggest weakness. It offers stingy, fee-ridden savings products and over-priced loans with nasty hidden costs. Intermediaries gain colossal profits, especially when they are greedy and reckless. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, the taxpayer picks up the bill. Apart from that, it works fine.
It then goes on to show how things are changing through a company called Isepankur.
The writer has in fact invested some of his savings, by loaning to Estonian borrowers. This is his experience so far.
My net average return (like most Isepankur lenders) is about 17%. I have so far lent €1,570 to about 50 borrowers, in amounts ranging from €5 to €25. I have received €60 back in repaid capital and €24 in interest. I also got €0.06 in ‘penalties’ (my share in a small fine levied on a borrower called ‘Lillekas’ who paid a few days late).
I don’t think it will be many years, before the peer-to-peer lenders are available in many countries.
Who’d be a retail banker?
Looking For A Double-Sided Card Holder
I spent some time yesterday, looking for a new credit card holder, that meets the specification I laid down in this post.
I was unsuccessful, although an assistant in Selfridges said, he’d got a leather one and used a safety pin clipped in it, to identify the side to use.
The Anonymous Widower 