A Walk To and Around the Kingsland Basin
I walked to the Regent’s Canal this morning and took a quick saunter to and around the Kingsland Basin.
My Fourth Christmas Alone
That sounds bad, but the previous three were very good. In the first I actually helped out with the pensioners’ Christmas Dinner in Bury St. Edmunds and I think, if I’d been here a month or so, I’d have done something similar this year. In the intervening two years, I’ve spent it with either friends or family and today I shall be having lunch with my son and his friends.
One thing C and I always used to dread over Christmas was waking up to some really bad news, like the invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians, Cyclone Tracy, Taeyokale Hotel fire in Seoul or the Indian Ocean tsunami. The last was Boxing Day, but you get my jist.
So today we wake up to the news that a suicide bomber has killed dozens in an aid queue in Pakistan. As he died, the bastard who did it, didn’t even get any satisfaction to know that he done what he intended. But if that is what religion is about, then, I’m on a better track in saying that outside of the humanity and downright goodness shown by most of the world’s great religions, the rest is all about bigotry and hate and is best avoided and certainly to be actively discouraged.
I think in part C and I’s apprehension about Christmas were caused by some of our own little disasters. I think we ran out of gas at least twice, as we forgot to order it and on one Christmas the electric AGA died. That won’t happen this year, as if my son’s cooker fails, he can put everything in a car and get here in ten minutes. He claims to know how my cooker works and I can muddle through, so dinner might be late but it will happen.
We did have a couple of frosty Christmases though concerning C’s mother, who at times could be a bit difficult. I think I appreciate her problems more now, that I’m widowed myself. One Christmas she was staying with us and the film on Christmas Eve was Five Easy Pieces. She didn’t speak to us for forty-eight hours after that! She was also with us when the AGA failed and that had a similar result.
The best Christmas in some ways we had with C’s mother was when she collapsed in our flat in the Barbican with heart trouble. We felt really guilty, as she was taken into Bart’s Hospital, where they did a great job in sorting her out and giving her perhaps another ten years more of life, than she would have got otherwise. She also enjoyed being in Hospital over Christmas, as they looked after her so well and she could tell everybody about all of the myriad medical problems she’d suffered with in her life.
Along the Regent’s Canal to the Angel
I’m about a five or ten minute walk to the Regent’s Canal and today, I walked along the canal to the Angel as it was starting to get dark.
I can remember some of this area in the 1970s and to say it has improved is one of the biggest understatements, anybody can make. I even saw a Norwich City supporter enthusiastically spinning for pike.
This is the third time, I’ve lived near this canal.
In the 1970s C, myself and our young family lived in St. John’s Wood, just north of the canal and we would cross it by the London Zoo to get into Regent’s Park. You used to see the occasional narrow-boat or pleasure craft, but I don’t think there was any easy access to the tow-path. It would probably have been deemed to dangerous anyway to take three small children alongside the water. So when we decry Health and Safety for ruining our pleasure, there must be many more examples like the Regent’s Canal towpath, where different interests coexist together in complete safety.
And then, a few years later when we lived in the Barbican we would often walk up to the Angel to shop walking right past the City Road Basin on the canal. But sadly we never explored.
It is often assumed that canals like this ceased to be commercial arteries, when the railways appeared, but the Regent’s Canal was still busy with freight until the Second World War. It also has another purpose in London’s infrastructure in that under the tow-path for quite a way is one of the city’s main electricity distribution mains. Believe it or not, but the cables at kept cool, by using water from the canal.
A Media Survey for Virgin
I always fill in surveys honestly, so when Virgin asked me how my broadband, TV and phones were going I told them in that way. I gave their service a score of 3 out of ten and said I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. They did allow me to give reasons and this is what I said.
1. I am still waiting for my previous BT number to be transferred. If I have to change it, then it’ll be an expense of several hundred pounds to change web sites and stationery.
2. The Virgin Media box has a poor interface, which I find irritating compared to my previous Sky+ box and Freeview recorder. Despite my stroke, I have a fearsome memory and if say I want a channel, I just type in the three-digit number. But with your box you must click OK as well. As I only watch and listen to about six channels anyway, that extra button is a real irritant. I have not used the record function yet, as it seems way to complicated. Remember, I made my money as a software designer, so I know about interfaces and your box interface rates about 1 out of ten.
I would give you 1 out of ten, but the support staff have been trying hard to get my number transferred and I think they are getting as frustrated with the non-transfer as I am.
I do hate surveys which just take scores as these can’t give meaningful results, when customers have had problems. They seem to work on the we know best principle and if you don’t like it tough!
They also had another box for comments at the end of the survey. I said this.
Because I’ve had a stroke and can’t read small print or use the telephone too well, I’d like to be able to e-mail problems in. What is the e-mail please? I also need that number transferred. BT say you haven’t asked them to do it and you say that BT sy the number isn’t active and other things. Something is seriously wrong. Or is it me, I once tried to transfer a number from Vodafone to O2 and it ended up with Orange. Only when Orange phoned me, did I realise why my late wife’s new mobile phone didn’t work!
James – Blogging as the Anonymous Widower
It will be interesting to see if I get anything more than the standard response.
Christmas Shopping Completed
I got everything I needed in Oxford Street this afternoon. The strangest request I had was to get six lemons for Christmas Day from my son. In John Lewis, they were in fours, so he got eight.
Some parts of Oxford Street were seriously manic, but none as much so as Selfridges, where I was picking something up. John Lewis was quite quiet, but when I enquired about blinds for my house, the assistant said that a lot of their departments are quiet over Christmas and pick up in January. So as their sales are up four percent on last year, they are doing very well. Although the food department in the basement had the longest queue to pay, I’ve ever seen in a shop.
After I left Selfridges, I had intended to take the 30 bus which stops at the end of my road, but they seemed to be thin on the ground, so I took a 274 to the Angel, where I knew I’d be able to get any of five to get home.
The 274 bus brought back many memories, as it effectively took the route of the old 74 to Camden Town and then meandered towards the Angel. We’d used 74s many times when we lived in St. John’s Wood in the 1970s to get to and from Oxford Street and Knightsbridge. The route used Routemasters and you had to be quick to fold the double push-chair and stow it under the stairs, before someone else grabbed the space. C would regularly do the trip with three children under four on her own. Mothers today have it so easy.
The 274 will be a useful bus for me, as it connects so easily to where I live. Either I can take another bus from the Angel or a train from Cmden Road or Caledonian Road and Barnsbury to Canonbury and then walk.
Today I did the simple thing and got a bus down the Essex Road.
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?
