Little (And Big) Boxes Everywhere
Today the recycling collection takes place and I’ve just thrown out 32 boxes that were used by the movers for packing.
Boxes for Recycling
I bet I was charged for every box, so shouldn’t they pick them up for a reward. Obviously, this wouldn’t be practical in all cases, but surely with moves to a large town or city, it would save money and create less carbon dioxide all round.
C Would Not Have Been Amused
I most certainly aren’t and she would have been with me on this one.
The lights in this house are generally wall units, which were originally fitted with 40 watt tungsten bulbs, that I believe should be removed immediately, as we do need to do something about our electricity consumption and carbon emissions. As half of them have failed, the light in some parts of the house is not good. The fittings were designed for 100 watt tungsten screw bulbs, which despite being available in markets round here should not be sold. Finding an adequate energy-saving replacement is proving tiresome, as it seems that many shops only carry a few very standard and expensive bulbs. So perhaps people in London stick with their illegal tungsten bulbs. As an example, I’ve not seen one of the clever light sensitive bulbs I used to use outside in Suffolk.
There are also loads of the dreaded MR16 halogen bulbs. I hate them as they give me headaches, but the LED replacements don’t. They also give out a lot more light, use a lot less energy and last for ever. I did manage to find two and they helped, but I need to find a lot more, as quite a few of the old ones have either failed or flash on and off.
London Takes Charge of One of its Lost Sons
There are cities, mega-cities and then there is London, a unique blend of people, races, buildings, transport systems and history.
Today the city of my birth and most of ancestors took control and welcomed me back and protected me.
The first thing I did was go and get my copy of The Times and have a coffee in the local Deli. I’ve never been able to do this before at any time of my life. But the Deli was selling smoked salmon from the Butley Oysterage in Suffolk,so my adopted county was making its presence felt. If only the rest of the country had only half as much get up and go as London and Suffolk have we wouldn’t be having a recession.
Also in the morning I registered at my new doctor’s. No problems at all and very different to when registration last happened twenty years ago. I should say that there was one small problem in that I forgot to take the urine sample I’d provided in the morning. But even that was quickly solved by a two-hundred metre walk home from the surgery to collect it and a quick walk back. My short term memory may be suffering, but I’ll get it back, by practice.
I then took a bus to St. Paul’s and took a few pictures on the so-called Wobbly Bridge, which is one of my favourite structures.
I then walked through to Carluccio’s in Smithfield to have some lunch.
And then London sent me an angel in the form of a female oriental banker, who’d just arrived in the UK, who was exploring before starting work in the New Year. We chatted for a minute or so and then she asked if there was anything to see in this part of London on a very cold day. So I showed her the wife market description in the meat market, St. Bartholomew the Great, Bart’s Hospital and then the Museum of London. I can still see my sons performing in the Nativity play at the church and my mother-in-law in the hospital after having her heart valve replaced.
We then walked through the city to Leadenhall market before having a glass of mulled wine in a pub. She then went home from Bank and I walked through the city back to the Barbican and the Waitrose in Whitecross Street. When we lived in Cromwell Tower, there were no supermarkets in the area. But it was a pleasure to be in an area with so many happy memories. Luckily we were away for the weekend when the Moorgate tube crash, which killed nearly fifty, happened.
The Waitrose there though is in some ways more homely and much less crowded than those at the Angel or the Holloway Road, but it had everything I needed and it was only a short walk away from the bus home, which ran on a much less crowded route to a stop just a hundred metres from my home.
So thank you London! Thanks also go to my charming companion for a lovely couple of hours in the afternoon.
Claiming Winter Fuel Payment Without a Birth Certificate.
I’m 63 and have never claimed the Winter Fuel Payment. In 2007, when I was first eligible, I had many other things to do with C’s illness an eventual death. I should have claimed in 2008, but I was after the cut-off date. Last year my son was dying with pancreatic cancer, so again it was the last thing in my mind.
So this year I decided that I’d better do it. I phoned the help line number, 08459-151515, who said they’d sent me a form in 2007. As I was claiming Widow’s Benefit at the time, I suppose I ignored it. They said they’d send another, but it never arrived. Or at least I never saw it.
So yesterday, whilst the weather was so cold, I decided to have a go. At least I was in front of the cut-off day in March, so I should get it this year.
I updated the form on the Internet and printed it off. But it needed birth certificate for proof of age! My birth certificate was unique in that it had the wrong date on it, which had been officially changed a few weeks after I was born. But I have not seen it since we last moved in 1991. I paniced a bit and ordered a copy on-line, but that won’t be here until mid-January.
So again I phoned the help line ans told I could take two of my passport, driving licence and medical card to the nearest JobCentre Plus to get them verified. I searched the JobCentre Plus website and there is no office finder as you get on any chain of shops website. After perhaps twenty minutes of searching, I found that the nearest one was at the other end of the road on which I live. Within ten minutes my passport and medical card had been copied and certified.
Everything was in the post by lunchtime.
So it was fairly easy in the end, but why can’t it be like how you purchase a Senior Railcard. That is totally on-line and must be a much cheaper system than the one they have for the Winter Fuel Payment.
I know not everybody has a passport or a driving licence, but these people could just take everything they have got straight to the JobCentrePlus? And why is there no list of JobCentrePlus offices on the Internet?
Perhaps, the whole system is designed to employ more bureaucrats and reduce the take-up of the benefit? Or am I being too cynical?
Lawrence of Afghanistan
The Times today has an article about T. E. Lawrence, who as well as his efforts in Arabia, served in the RAF as Aircraftman Shaw in Afghanistan. We should listen to what he said.
Here is an extract from the article.
With the help of Hollywood, he would become a legend, Lawrence of Arabia, but today he might more aptly be termed Lawrence of Afghanistan: he understood more clearly than any of his contemporaries (and many of our own) the futility of trying to bomb an insurgency into peace; he put into action the tactics of modern guerrilla warfare; and he pioneered the improvised explosive device (IED), the most important weapon of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Britain Lawrence is revered as a figure of romance, the camel-mounted scholar-warrior in flowing robes, but his reputation comes tinged with a distinctly British embarrassment. Lawrence was stupendously strange: a diminutive, ruthless, obsessive, sexually repressed oddity, who spent his life striving for attention, and then rejected it.
What is too often forgotten in the mythologising (and debunking) of Lawrence is his enduring legacy as a military strategist of genius and cold-eyed guerrilla leader.
I like one particular statement.
Lawrence believed that “winning hearts and minds” (a term that would have made him snort) could only be achieved by education or cash, and never by coercion. “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander,” he wrote. The Arab rebellion was fought with new British tactics, and bought with new British gold.
The trouble is the Americans used to think that the only good Indian was a dead one and their thinking hasn’t changed much to reflect the modern age.
Every politician and military man, from the highest general to the lowest private, should read Ben MacIntyre’s article and then be tested on it.
My father was a printer and one of the most interesting things I saw in Belarus was this battlefield printing press from the Second World War.
Battlefield Printing Press, Minsk
The Russians and Belarussians obviously know their T. E. Lawrence and it served them well, when they turned the Nazis in 1941.
I share two things with Lawrence;stature and birthday.
Snuggling Down
Today, I’d intended to do a lot more, but the cold weather was against it.
So I met my new cleaner and got her instructions on to what I needed to buy to do the cleaning! I then went to Maplins to get a long HDMI cable, so that I could watch the football on a large screen. I’ve actually mounted the television on a swivel, so that I can watch it either from the living room or the kitchen off it.
I’ll watch the football, whilst having supper of a microwaved cod Mornay from Marks and then get over the electric blanket and under the duvet. I’d like to wake a bit later, but hopefully still early enough to see the eclipse of the moon.
I
A Previous White Christmas
All of this bad weather reminds me of a tale of getting home for Christmas in probably 1978. I say probably as the BBC have said that that was a very bad winter. Ian, one of our consultants, was working in Amsterdam and joined the exodus with many fellow Brits back to the UK on Christmas Eve at Schipol. But Heathrow was closed as many aircraft were frozen to the stands. More by luck than judgement BA were able to get a Tri-Star to Schipol after finding out that East Midlands airport was free of snow. The jet then did several shuttles between the two airports to bring everybody home, albeit not to where they wanted to go. BA also hired every coach they could find to complete the passengers’ journeys.
One version of the story says that the last flight came in at three in the morning of Christmas Day.
One gets the impression, that that sort of spirit no longer exists in our transport industry. Although as I said at the time, I’ll give credit to National Express East Anglia for getting me home on Saturday from Ipswich.
Not Many Takers for Boris’s Bikes
I took this picture in Bunhill Row in the City.
Boris's Bikes in the Snow
Only five of the bikes had been taken.
But then it isn’t good weather for cycling. I did see a few runners though!
Little Things that Annoy Us All
I don’t exactly have a phobia about coat hangers, but all mine are the same simple wooden design, that holds shirts, suits and trousers without difficulty.
C used to take all her clothes on holiday still on their hangers and got annoyed if they had those clip in hangers that you couldn’t steal in hotels. They seem to be dying out in hotels, as possibly other customers feel like C did.
So it was with despair that I found that the wardrobes in this house have those awful abominations.
Those Abominable Hangers
So there was nothing left for it, but to take the rail down and reinstall it as a simple one. The hangers will go to a charity shop.
Total Eclipse of the Moon
There is a total lunar eclipse early in the morning of Tuesday 21st December. It’s not particularly well-placed for UK observers, as the Moon sets during totality, but if it’s clear it will be possible to see an eclipsed Moon setting over the north-western horizon in the morning twilight. The partial phase begins at 6:32 UT and totality starts at 7:40 UT, not long before the Moon sets at around 8:14 UT.
Somif you know a place that gives glorious sunsets and the weather is clear, you’ll know where to go.
The Anonymous Widower 