A Circus Performer on a 141 Bus
When I was returning from Oxford Street yesterday, I took the route using the Central line via Bank and a 141 or 21 bus to the end of my road. It is an easier route especially, if you are laden down with parcels as I was.
I sat just behind the wheelchair bay and shared a seat with an attractive young lady, who was also travelling fairly heavily laden. She had the aura of being someone like a dancer or athlete and after we’d chatted for a few minutes, I asked what she did. She said she worked as a circus performer (An aerial artist no less!) and had just done a show in London and was returning home before going to Glastonbury, where she will be performing in the Circus Tent.
I’m posting this, because Danny Baker on Radio 5 Live, asked if people had ever met anybody from a circus.
So I now have!
Chaos In Oxford Street
I needed to get some towels and a couple of lamps from John Lewis yesterday evening, so I took my usual route of Overground to Highbury and Islington station and then the Victoria line to Oxford Circus.
For some years now, getting out of Oxford Circus station has been a nightmare, so much so that I used to get there by taking a Central line train to Bond Street instead and then walking backwards.
That is not really an option now, as they are rebuilding Bond Street station and the narrow pavements cluttered by smokers outside the stores are not an easy route.
So it was a walk up the stairs to Argyll Street and then across the centre of Oxford Circus. At least that crossing works well, but then the north side of Oxford Street was cluttered with smokers and locked up stalls, that sell junk.
It is not good and it never has been in my memory.
Some years ago, I proposed an alternative which was published as a long letter in the Evening Standard.
I read with interest an article in the Evening Standard yesterday and feel I should comment about a proposed monorail for Oxford Street.
I should explain that I am an engineer with a lot of experience of transport projects around the world, mainly because the software I wrote, Artemis, was used to plan them.
I am also an inveterate traveller and have experience of a very large number of cities around the world. That experience is usually as a tourist and includes the Sydney monorail, the escalators of Hong Kong and the underground walkways of Perugia. I should also say that I visit the Oxford Street area at least once a month for shopping, eating or business.
I will agree with the plan, where the monorail gives the whole street a connection and a focus, but I believe that a moving walkway suspended over the street below would be much more flexible and inherently better.
1. It could be built in stages, with perhaps a spectacular star over Oxford Circus as a first phase to move people from say Regent Street North to Oxford Street East and West without getting involved in the fearsome crowds at road level.
2. Walkways are basically hop-on and hop-off. So if you see a shop or something else that interests you, then all you do is wait to the next hop-off point and exit.
3. As the walkway progressed down Oxford Street, it could rise and fall so that it was level with the floors of the major stores. How much would John Lewis pay for an entrance at first floor level?
4. Stops would be much more frequent than a monorail.
5. Walkways are a fail-safe system in that when the motor breaks, the system is still walkable. What happens when a monorail breaks down as the Sydney system did when I rode it?
6. Walkways can add spurs as required to Conference Centres, attractions and also to move people well away from Oxford Street.
7. As they would run effectively from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch, they would take the pressure off the Central Line.
8. Just as in Hong Kong it would be covered in a clear plastic roof. Video screens could be included under the roof to sell advertising.
9. Security is important and I’m sure the Police would like a high-level walkway from which to view the crowds below.
10. Bulges and platforms could be attached to the walkway, so that cafes and other attractions could be setup. If access is provided to stores on route, there would be no problems as to servicing these cafes.
11. The whole system has to be commercial. Imagine a platform just by Selfridges which sells the Wallace Collection, with a down escalator pointing that way.
Admittedly, it was published partly as part of their campaign against the then mayor, but I believe the idea of an overhead moving walkway would improve the movement of pedestrians around the area.
Thinking about it six years after the original letter was published, there are other factors that now apply.
- Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street are to become major stations on Crossrail and they will probably discharge more people into the area making it worse. Especially, as many will be long-distance travellers trailing mobile obstacles behind them. The pavements are just not big enough.
- The Eastern end of Oxford Street is scruffier now and who would want to shop there, when there are shopping centres at Westfield and the soon to open, Eastfield, just a few stops away on the Central line.
Certainly, I can’t wait for Eastfield to open, as then I’ll be closer to a John Lewis.
You will see I call the new shopping centre at Stratford, Eastfield. It’s what many of the locals do, despite the fact that it’s promoted as Westfield Stratford City.
But then East is east and West is west and ne’er the twain shall meet.
Are Pensions Just An Enormous Ponzi Scheme?
The title of this post was suggested by someone who I know well, who works in the City.
He has a point, as once people stop joining and contributing, it all goes belly up.
Think about it! And think too about all the rules brought in to protect the early joiners in the scheme and also to make sure that advisors get their part of your hard-earned pension pot!
On Line Grocery Shopping
It was reported today on BBC Breakfast that on-line grocery shopping is not being the great success it should be.
As a widower, who lives alone and who is very computer literate, you’d think I would do a lot of on-line grocery shopping. When my wife was alive, we did quite a bit as we both worked full time and I actually worked at home to take in the deliveries.
Now, I’ve had a serious stroke, can’t drive and have moved to Dalston and although I buy lots of goods like books, furniture and electrical items on the web, I haven’t bought any groceries on-line.
Last week though, I saw the future. I went to my local Waitrose in Upper Street, did a large shop and then they delivered it an hour or so later. As I had a job to do at home, it only meant, I had to get the bus home to arrive before the delivery did.
The only problem was the driver had left his pen at the previous delivery. So I gave him one of my many spares.
But it was just so much less hassle than waiting in at home to collect some goods that might be quite not what you want. As after all, I had chosen them in the shop, so if they were wrong, it would have been my fault.
As shopping innovations like this get more common, on-line shopping will continue to lose out. And in some cases it will replace driving to the supermarket.
Why Businesses Have a Cash Flow Problem
When I moved in here, I had a small problem and a local builder came round and fixed it. They did a good job and got me out of a hole.
Yesterday, six months later, I got a bill for the work. The only surprise was that it was probably about twenty pounds less than I had expected.
As I usualy do with bills that aren’t worth disputing, I decided to pay it immediately. I have given up on cheques and always pay bills by direct transfer. But there were no bank account details on the bill or even an e-mail address. So I had to ring them up to get the information I needed. And the phone was engaged.
I do think this is typical of many small businesses and is it any wonder they have a cash-flow problem!
Does A Blank Square Exist On An Ordnance Survey Map?
They are talking about the Ordnance Survey on BBC Breakfast this morning?
At my primary school, de Bohun in Southgate, there was a guy called Peter Laws. His parents were keen walkers and the family always scanned a new map to see if any of the one-kilometre squares on the map were blank. They had never found one!
But that was in 1958 or so!
So does a mythical blank square actually exist?
Every time I’ve bought a map in the last fifty years or so, I’ve always searched and never found one.
It’s All Greek To Me!
I like Greece and the Greek people for that matter, even if they do smoke too much!
I also like the euro and on the whole think it is a good thing and we should have joined, just like we should have joined Schengen.
The trouble with Greece is that they don’t like rules and especially those imposed by others on their economy. One Greek told me that’s why they all smoke in restaurants despite it being against the law.
So perhaps their economy wasn’t strong enough for Greece to join the single currency, but for a few years it gave them a lot of cheap money, just as it did Ireland. So now that the lenders want it back, there’s problems all round. Robert Peston of the BBC analyses it all here.
I’m no economist, so where it will all end, I do not know. But I am a qualified control engineer and I do know that the Greek economy has all the stability of a bicycle with the handles stuck either turning to the left or right.
Just like the bicycle, the Greek economy will have an awful crash.
The villians really are not the Greeks here, but the politicians who wanted a single currency and didn’t really think through about how to make it work properly. If the right rules had been in place from the first day, then there would have been no need for a bailout of Greece, Ireland or Portugal.
I suspect now, that if it was that stable, then we would have joined the euro. Or we would have at least tried to!
Would Anybody Ever Use Western Union?
I had four spam e-mails this morning with a title of “You have $250,000.00 Lodged in our Western Union” and a body of “RESPOND FOR DETAILS”
I like the fact that they call it our Western Union!
Does it mean they own it or there’s another one, we don’t know about? The e-mails came from a supposedly Peruvian .pe e-mail address.
Western Union’s name is now so discredited that I and I suspect any serious person, who uses the Internet, would ever use it. I have never used the company in the past and probably never will in the future.
Although looking at the financial results of the company, they seem to be doing quite well.
Growing Old Gracefully
Joan Collins gives a superb interview in The Times. Buying the paper was worth it just for this quote, after she was asked how many men ha been her lovers and the interviewer had been surprised – “As I’ve been married five times, I’m more of a serial bride than a mattress!”
I did meet her once and from the pictures in the paper, she probably looks better now. But another of her comments about Bette Davis (difficult and ascerbic and coered in cigarette smoke) does suggest that she has given up the evil weed.
If she has, good on you, Joan and long may you keep us amused and entertained.
Does Cannabis Help Period Pains?
I wouldn’t know for obvious reasons, but according to The Times today, Queen Victoria was prescribed cannabis for this purpose. But it wasn’t illegal until 1928. There’s more here on the BBC Panorama web site.
What a naughty old Queen she was! Did she roll it herself or did she ask that nice Mr. Brown?
