Waitrose Extend Summer
Waitrose are changing their summer opening hours.
Waitrose Extend Summer
Could this e due to the bad weather. all the staff this morning at the Angel were feeling the cold.
Two New Buses For London Kiss At The Angel
Because of the Torch Relay, you don’t pass anybody these days, but kiss. Here two of the New Buses for London kiss at the Angel.
Two New Buses For London Kiss At The Angel
As there are now eight in service, we’ll see more of this.
NatWorst Try Traditional Marketing
This form of advertising is popular with pubs. But banks!
NatWorst Try Traditional Marketing
However, the message gets across. Is the problem with banks, that now customers are just numbers on the computer?
Wiggins Plays The Gentleman
It’s not often that the Corinthian spirit shines through in modern sport, but when someone decided to throw tacks on the route of the Tour de France yesterday, Bradley Wiggins slowed the peloton to allow one of his rivals, Cadel Evans, to catch up. Read about it all here. Here’s an extract.
Race official Jean-Francois Pescheux confirmed: “The nails were mainly thrown on the ground around 200m from the summit.
“It was obviously done on purpose. We have the tacks but we don’t know who spread them. They are imbeciles.”
However, he was quick to praise the actions of Wiggins. “Sky showed they are for fair play,” he added. “They saw that something had happened and they slowed the peloton so that things could come together for the ride to the finish.”
Tour etiquette dictates that rivals do not take advantage of another rider’s misfortune and, as soon as he realised what was happening, Team Sky’s lead rider called for a truce.
“I thought it was the honourable thing to do,” said 32-year-old Wiggins who is aiming to become the first British rider to win the race. “Nobody wants to benefit from someone else’s misfortune.”
So in fact Wiggins was just following the etiquette. It’s a pity other sports don’t do the same.
There’s more on Wiggins here, who has now been hailed as Le Genteman by the Press.
Is This The Only Modern AEC Bus In London?
I took this picture a couple of days ago of one of the Wright buses on route 38.
Is This The Only Modern AEC Bus In London?
For many years, all London buses, including the famous Routemaster, were built by the Associated Equipment Company or AEC.
Comparing Two Chariots of Fire
I finally got to see the film this lunchtime at Cineworld in West India Quay.
So how do the two interpretations of the same story compare?
Obviously, in the film there is more action and of course period scenes done with all the care of a master film-maker.
But the play is a very good interpretation in its own right, with a track running through the audience. The only other show, where I saw a similar device was Siegfried and Roy in las Vegas. But their track was for tigers not runners. I incidentally had seat J8 in the stalls, which was right by the action. there are also seats on the back of the stage and inside the track at the front of the stalls.
What surprised me was that the words were virtually identical between the film and the play, although the play had extra scenes inserted to compensate for the lack of filmed sequences.
I enjoyed both and would recommend seeing both in a short space of time, as I have done.
Man Hunt
I’ve been wanting to catch this episode of Dad’s Army for some years. I can only ever remember seeing it once with C and that would have probably been in the 1990s. I can also remember her roaring with laughter, when our intrepid heroes acquired a tracker dog, which suitably for them was an English Setter. Two of the English setters, we had are shown in this post, which makes the episode even funnier for me. Some dogs are comedians, but English setters are almost the most natural straight-men of the dog world.
I found this on a page of English setter trivia.
English Setters are excellent with children. They make very good family dogs. However, they make terrible watchdogs . They are almost excessively friendly and will wag their tails and try to make friends with anyone who comes to your house. They may sleep through someone trying to break in. This is not the dog to get if you are looking for protection.
It sums the breed up well. I always remember the time, we mated our dog, Charlotte. Her husband-to-be had a very grand pedigree, but the two of them had no idea, what they were supposed to be doing, bringing this statement from the Brummie lady, who owned the dog.
If it hadn’t been for humans, English setters, would have died out years ago.
They were playing the straight-dog again, which is exactly what the dog called, Bran, did in Dad’s Army tonight. You should be able to catch it on iPlayer for a few weeks.
Two Chariots of Fire
I’m off in a minute or so to see the new stage play of Chariots of Fire.
Then hopefully, it’ll be to the cinema to see the newly-re-released film.
What a way to tee-up the Olympics! Sadly alone!
I did run out of time as the play was longer than I thought. So it was either go hungry and rush half-way across London or come home and eat and see the film tomorrow or later in the week.
I chose the latter, especially as that allowed me to have a soaking in my dreadful bath.
The Times Calls For Summer
The Times in its third leader makes a passionate and heartfelt appeal for summer. Here’s the last couple of sentences.
Let us make our position crystal clear: we are against this weather. It must stop raining, and soon. The British climate is supposed to be unpredictable. At the moment, it is anything but. If sustained sunshine is too much to ask for, most of us would settle for a little bit of fickle.
Let’s hope it’s campaign is as successful as the one it had recently to change the adoption laws. But does the jetstream have a subscription to the paper?
On the other hand, at least most of us can still laugh at the weather.
Midland Main Line To Be Electrified
It is being reported this morning, that the Midlands Main Line from St. Pancras station to Sheffield is going to be electrified. At present it only goes as far as Bedford, which must be one of the most stupid planning decisions by Railtrack and its predecessors.
But then there are several cases, where electrification stopped in the UK, rather than continue to its logical conclusion. I remember as a teenager, that the original plans for electrification in East Anglia included the branch line to Felixstowe. It should probably have included Ely to Norwich and Norwich to Yarmouth as well. Now there is a strong case to electrify Ipswich to Peterborough to haul all that freight from Felixstowe. Although the last bit would be difficult due to the number of bridges on the line, but hopefully when the line was upgraded for larger containers, they did it to allow for electric wires as well. But knowing the muppets in the Department of Transport, that like to think it’s their railway, deliberately didn’t, so that electrification would stay in the sidings.
This is what surprises me about Midland Main Line electrification being announced. Logically, it should be done before the Great Western, as it is a smaller scheme, doesn’t have a difficult tunnel like the Severn Tunnel and many of the current trains can be converted to electric operation, as I posted here. I think it is mostly three track too, which helps with the engineering.
But when do governments do things logically?
Have they seen sense or does Justine Greening read the railway press?
It will be interesting what is said on Monday.
Thinking about this more, we have to take into account the fact that a spur into Heathrow from the west has also been announced. Putting my old project management hat back on, I can’t help feeling that underneath all this is some very good project management. Three electrification projects on the go at the same time, all relatively close together mean that the expensive electreification train that Railtrack has bought can be fully utilised.
The Anonymous Widower 