The London Aquatic Centre Is Changing!
The London Aquatic Centre is changing.
It will be opened fully in the summer of 2014.
Note how a lot of the seats have been reserved.
The picture was taken from a train on the East Anglian main line.
It’s Not Just The Dutch That Get Rail Ticketing Wrong
We always think of the Swiss as being clever and efficient, but according to this report on the BBC web site, they seem to have trumped the Dutch by bringing in a ticketing system, that is even worse, than the one I described here.
One thing that never seems to work with these systems, but does usually work well in the UK, is how the system deals with the occasional problem or a traveller, like the man I met, who was using a London bus for the first time in his sixties, despite living there for years. In his case, the probably very friendly bus driver was able to help him out.
I’ve had a case on the train from London to Ipswich, where I had got on the train with the wrong ticket. I can’t remember exactly why, but it may have been that I’d punched the wrong button on the machine, when I bought the ticket. In Switzerland, now, that would now mean a fine of £133, but the inspector sold me the appropriate upgrade and even took into account my Freedom Pass and Railcard. Ticket inspectors are the first line in both protecting the revenue and making the customers happy.
Let’s hope British train companies don’t do any of these.
1. Bring in swingeing fines for genuine mistakes.
2. Abandon the simple orange tickets that everyone understands.
3. Insist that everybody has a smart phone.
Point two has so many simple advantages other than the obvious one of familiarity. Imagine your ninety-year-old mother lives in Edinburgh and you want her to come to you by train. You just post her the ticket and seat reservation and tell her to get to Waverley at the appropriate time. It usually works well, as the tickets are of a size and type, that don’t get lost and are easily understood. They can also be easily shown to staff, which can’t always be said for a display on a smart phone.
An Overview Of Peer-To-Peer Lending
I just found this excellent article about peer-to-peer lending in the Northern Echo.
Should London Improve The Sub Surface Tubes?
London’s three sub-surface lines; Metropolitan, District and Circle, are getting new S-Stock trains, but you do wonder if investment in the stations along their core route would improve things no end and perhaps even add more capacity to the lines. It should be said incidentally that the new trains will add more capacity and when they are running at full speed, they should give a further increase in passengers carried.
The part I know best is the Hammersmith and City and Circle lines from Whitechapel to Paddington.
Kings Cross St. Pancras station has already been rebuilt and has good access from the two main line stations and to the three deep lines that meet at the station. It will be even better in a few months, when the buses have been reorganised around the new square opening outside. We tend to forget about buses, but they are often an invaluable way to get to your required train line.
Whitechapel, Liverpool Street, Moorgate, Barbican, Farringdon and Paddington stations are all on Crossrail and will probably go through a lot of changes to improve access over the next few years. The stations from Liverpool Street to Farringdon, will effectively be connected to two giant double-ended stations on Crossrail, so interchanges to the Central and Northern lines and Thameslink will be greatly improved. In fact, when you look at journeys made in the eastern part of Central London, you can see how Crossrail will transform them. Even a journey as mundane as Liverpool Street to London Bridge will be a lot easier, as you’ll just dive into the Crossrail station to walk to the Northern line at Moorgate. I’ll probably use that route to get to my 141 or 21 bus from Liverpool Street to get home.
The next station is Euston Square, which is one of those stations on the London Underground, that was built in the wrong place. They didn’t even rectify the problem, when the current Euston station was built in the 1960s, by moving it in front of the station, like the corresponding station at Kings Cross St. Pancras. Probably all that could be done is to put lifts into the North entrance to the station and improve the walking route from the main line station. When the main line station is rebuilt, Euston Square station will probably be part of the rebuilding.
Great Portland Street station is typical of many of the Central London, sub-surface stations. Short double staircases lead down to two platforms on either side of the tracks. Lifts or escalators could probably be installed, but I suspect a clever engineer or architect could do better.
Baker Street station is one of the architectural gems of the Underground and doing anything to improve it will be difficult. The junction to the east of the station also makes things difficult operationally.
Edgware Road station, is one that needs significant improvement, although as with many of the sub-surface stations, space is limited. Since the Circle line, stopped being a circle in 2009, the station has become a nightmare, as many visitors can’t understand that you have to change trains to continue round.
Paddington station, when it is fully rebuilt and Crossrail has been opened, may help with the problems of the sub-surface lines. If I come into Paddington from say Bristol or Cardiff, I will take the bridge at the back of the train and walk to the Metropolitan line, from where I get a train to Moorgate for a bus home. But when Crossrail is running from Reading to Moorgate, I might take that route instead, by changing trains at Reading. I suspect that many commuters from Reading, will go direct to Central London stations on Crossrail. After all, that was one of the reasons for which the line is being built.
So it would seem that on the Northern part of the lines, only Edgware Road and Euston Square stations need substantial improvement.
Appropriately Named Footballers
This article was on the BBC’s web site caused my eye, as it had a superb headline.
Hartley and Poole on target for Hartlepool
The first paragraph is here.
Peter Hartley and James Poole formed an appropriate scoring combination as Hartlepool secured only their second home League One win of the season by beating Notts County.
I just love wordplay like this.
Poles In Britain
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in London, there were large numbers of Poles. Every class at school had a few children, who were either Polish or had a Polish father. I also worked with a couple of Polish engineers, who had been part of the large numbers of their countrymen, who had come because of the Second World War.
Last week, I was relating this and other stories to a Pole, who manages my local restaurant. She had no knowledge of what I said, as under the Soviet influence, this important part of Polish and British history was not taught in schools.
Is There A Teetotal Gene?
Thinking about the last post about the about of fluids I’m drinking, I do wonder about the drinking habits of my family.
My father wasn’t a heavy drinker and he probably got through about four small bottles of Guinness or cans of Long Life in a week or so. There was a time, when I used to walk round to The Merryhills in Oakwood to pick it up from their off licence. But that was all stopped, when they said you had to be sixteen (?) to buy alcohol. He would probably be classed these days as a light social drinker.
I am probably that now, as I like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer with a meal. I can’t think the last time, I drunk a pint of anything.
But it hasn’t always been thus. At University, I drunk fairly heavily and I probably did too in my late teens, when I served in The Merryhills. I remember one night, I had thirteen small bottles of Guinness.
C had a similar drinking pattern, in that she got very drunk once just before I met her and probably twice or so, when we were together. She only drunk wine and the occasional whisky. Even as she was dying, she didn’t turn to the bottle, but partly because the drugs she was on had ruined her mouth.
What about my children? By twenty, none of them were drinking and only one ever drunk heavily.
So there seems to be this pattern in the male in my family, where drinking is responsible. I was also introduced to alcohol at an early age of about eight, by my father and I did the same to our children.
But where did this responsible drinking come from.
My paternal grandfather, who I never met, as he died before the Second World War, was a serious drinker and a heavy smoker. He died of pneumonia and asthma, but my father used to tell tales of picking him up at the Conservative Club every night of the week, when he was very much the worse for wear.
My father would always talk about the terrors of alcohol, with reference to his father. I suppose it hit home because I’d never met him and he had died in his forties.
There may or may not be a teetotal gene in my male line, but it’s more down to parental behaviour.
Why Am I Drinking So Much?
Yesterday, I drank heavily all day.
I had three mugs of tea before I left home to do my shopping and then another cup of tea in Carluccio’s with my breakfast.
Before I left for the football, I had a large glass of milk and then I had a tea on the train going to Ipswich.
I didn’t drink anything in the ground, but I did have a small bottle of water coming home, to wash down my Warfarin.
With my supper, I then had two 330 ml. bottles of Celia lager, to wash down the Marks and Spencer’s curry.
A couple of weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been able to drink that amount of fluid, as my throat was rather dry. But just as my gut seems to have improved, it now seems to be the turn of my throat.
Thinking through the last two years since my stroke, I don’t seem to have been able to drink like this. In fact some doctors have told me to limit my fluid intake.
In some ways though, this drinking behaviour has happened before. In the early 1970s, I was working as a consultant at Time Sharing in Great Portland Street and was getting most of my fluid in the Mason’s Arms next door. I remember then thinking, I was drinking too much, so I switched from coffee to tea at home and started to drink masses of the stuff. I felt a lot better.
Then sometime about 1985 or so, I gave up coffee again and started drinking tea, after I thought I’d got a serious mouth infection. I actually, stopped drinking coffee this time, a couple of months ago, as I thought I’d got a similar infection.
So it’s all very strange. At least drinking lots of tea, with one drink a day, isn’t going to do me any harm.
One side effect of my health and possibly all of the drinking, is that for the first time in a year or so, wine now seems to taste like wine again.
The Anonymous Widower 