Bruce Castle Park and Tottenham Cemetery
At this point in my walk, I met a very helpful Harringey Council official checking how many litter bins they’d lost and after asking the way I walked under the railway to Bruce Castle Park.
Sadly, the museum doesn’t open until one and I was too early. As Sir Rowland Hill once owned the house, the museum also features a history of the Royal Mail.
I will return to see if there is anything my father printed. It does have the archive of Wood Green Empire and my father certainly did their posters and programs in his works in Station Road, Wood Green.
It was a very surprising area, especially as you consider it was only a coiuple of hundred metres from the riots in the High Street.
Hackney Downs Station
I wanted to go to Tottenham today, to answer a few questions that had arisen in my mind after the trip yesterday to IKEA.
I started at Hackney Downs station.
To say it is a dump would not be fair, as I suspect that staff try hard to keep a station that has lacked investment for years, working well.
It could be a very good station and I think it could be made into a major interchange by just a few changes and perhaps by borrowing ideas from the Overground.
The access to the platforms, which is by steep staircases, must be improved. I’m not disabled, but do appreciate the problems of those who are. In a wheelchair, unless accompanied by say four of Her Majesty’s squaddies, you wouldn’t stand a chance.
It is dark and dingy too and desperately in need of an imaginative repainting. Hackney has lots of artists, so perhaps they could help or design a scheme. Has a station ever been converted into an art gallery? I know the Musee d’Orsay was formerly a station, but they threw the trains out. Babies and bathwaters come to mind.
How about adding a food shop and a coffee bar?
The interface to the buses underneath the station is poor, as the picture in the gallery shows. There should be a light-controlled crossing over Dalston Lane.
But there is a lot going for the station.
It is close to the open space of Hackney Downs.
It is well served by services going to Enfield, Tottenham, Chingford, Cheshunt, Hertford and of course, Liverpool Street.
A walkway did link it to Hackney Central and this could be reinstated to create a true rail interchange for Hackney.
A Quote from T. E. Lawrence
As the players came out in the Fourth Test at the Oval, a quote from T. E. Lawrence was on the wall.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
I’ll go with that! I actually think, that when you dream in the daytime, you do it because of real stimuli around you, so your dreams fit the facts. When you do it at night, you imagine advice from past friends and companions, which keeps you going in difficult times. I had such a dream in Hong Kong.
I would suspect that Martin Luther had his dream in the daytime, when he analysed what he could see going on around him.
Lawrence is a great source of quotes.
I particularly like this one.
The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander.
And this one.
I’ve been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I’m quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I’m one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.
It just shows what a great man he was. It’s a pity we didn’t realise it fully at the time.
We didn’t even learn from this quote.
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour.
Tony Blair and Dubya certainly didn’t see it coming.
BT 2 Virgin Media 0
I had a letter from BT this morning, saying could I contact them, if I thought there might be a problem setting up my landline. As the Virgin Media line has been down for a couple of weeks now, and to check my side I asctually bought a new phone handset, I sent an e-mail to BT saying that they may have trouble connecting.
They phoned me within ten minutes and even went to the trouble of ringing me back on the Virgin number to see if it did work. It didn’t.
So that made the score BT 1 Virgin Media 0
Then when I was at the checkout in Sainsburys about half-an-hour ago I got a call on my mobile marked Private. Usually, I don’t answer these, as they are often scammers or crooks. But this time I did and it was Virgin. I politely asked them to ring in a few minutes as I was at the checkout.
They haven’t so far, so that makes it BT 2 Virgin Media 0.
I shall wait in all night to see if they call!
Student Finance Agreement
I’ve just recieved an e-mail with the above heading and this message.
Dear Student,
Student Finance Application Year 2011/12-Information RequiredTo assess your application, your student finance agreement needs to be signed and returned back to us . This can be done through “MY ACCOUNT” session of your online account .
Failure to sign and return this to us would mean your next student loan payment and maintenance grant will be delayed.
Thanks for your co-operation.SIGN ON HERE
Yours sincerely,
Student Loan Finance England.
As it points to a web site in the United States with no contact address, it’s a scam. It also came to one of my trap e-mails, which seem to be passed around by spammers.
Virgin Find a New Way to Deliver Phone Calls
I’ve just had some junk mail from Virgin Media, which of course I opted out of, which is entitled “Excitement? We’ve got it by the bucketful.”
It would be good if they could get me a working landline that I pay for.
I’ve actually got a yellow bucket in the garage. If I put it outside the front door, will they put my messages in it.
As a company they seem to go out of their way to annoy people who might want to use their service. If I was to rate, Sky, BT and O2, all of whom I’ve used without trouble for many years, I would give them perhaps 8 out of 10. But Virgin would be up there with the old Eurovision joke of nil points. And that would be generous!
Somebody Nicked The Beach
The beach at N1 has gone.
The Beach at N1 Has Gone
Did it get nicked? Or have they decided summer is so terrible, that it just had to go!
IKEA’s Silly Screws
I’m putting the IKEA Stolmen wardrobe insert together now that I’ve got a complete chest of drawers. But why do they use such silly screws?
IKEA's Silly Screws
They are absolutely impossible to use, if you have a gammy hand and their little bent wire socket keys are definitely something for one person per end and as I live alone, what am I supposed to do?
I’ve given up on them as and as you can see, I’m using conventional nuts and bolts from Clerkenwell Screws. They were just a few pence each.
The great thing about the conventional hexagonal head nut and bolt, is that they are an almost perfect piece of design. They are easy to put together, they don’t roll away, when you leave them to their own devices and they can be screwed tightly together with a couple of spanners. I always have a nut driver handy for one end. Usually, you only find these tools at proper tool shops, like Clerkenwell Screws, Franchi or Mackays in Cambridge. But having one in the right size for a job you do often is worth the saving in anger.
In this example I’ve used standard bright zinc-plated bolts, but I could have used brass, as I did in the staircase.
I’m an electrical engineer, but remember the definition of a mechanical one; A nut who screws, washes and bolts.
Do Historians Ignore Facts?
Terry Deary, the author of Horrible Histories, thinks so and said as much on BBC Breakfast this morning.
I agree!
I once dealt with an archaeologist, who analysed a database of fragments found in peublas all over the South Western United States with Daisy. When we analysed the whole database we got totally different answers to those of an eminent professor, who’d discarded all of those entries that didn’t fit his personal theory.
A lot of people have been saying that the riots were caused by X and doing Y will stop it. Have they even got any facts, and if they have have used all the facts to get the answer.
And Now There Are Six!
I had a special delivery today from IKEA containing a set of draw sides for my cabinet.
Six Left and Two Right Sides
As you can see they did the safe thing and set a complete set of two left and two right sides.
I can’t fault IKEA on this one and must give them 10 out of 10 for customer service.
I can make an appeal to anybody who has a Stolmen two drawer chest in white with missing left sides, I’ve got four spare ones.
