To Norbiton For A Plate Of Lovely Liver
I seem to need a lot of Vitamin B12.
- I am coeliac, which probably means I don’t absorb enough out of my food.
- Although, when my gallstones were removed, the surgeon had a look and said everything was good.
- When Homerton Hospital found my Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, that I talked about in I’ve Got Uncomplicated Pancolonic Diverticular Disease, they also said everything else was good.
- In the United States, Vitamin B12 is given to stroke patients to help recovery.
- I’ve had Vitamin B12 injections for nearly thirty years, since they were prescribed by Addenbrooke’s hospital.
Certainly, I find that a Vitamin B12 injection doesn’t seem to have the same effect, it had twenty years ago. So, is my brain saying, I’ll have that, when I have an injection?
When I lived in Suffolk and I felt my Vitamin B12 was low, I’d go down the pub or carluccio’s in Cambridge or Bury and have a plate of liver.
But liver is rare in London restaurants and Carluccio’s don’t serve it any more.
A guy in the reader’s comments in The Times told me of a restaurant called the Trattoria Calabrese, that sold liver in sage butter yesterday. So today, I took a train to Norbiton to get myself some extra Vitamin B12.
These pictures describe my first visit to Norbiton.
The short walk to the restaurant from Norbiton station was very much worth it. I shall go back!
Denny Bros Completes Solar Scheme At Bury St Edmunds Factory
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the East Anglian Daily Times.
This is the sub-title.
An energy-hungry manufacturer has completed a huge £0.5m solar array across its roofs – which on a good day can power the whole operation and more.
This Google Map from a few months ago, shows the incomplete array.
A more recent picture in the article, shows the top building with solar panels on the roof.
According to another report in the East Anglian Daily Times, the company turns over about eight millions.
As Denny Brothers appears to be a well-run company, that is partly employee-owned, the numbers must add up.
Incidentally, the article was displayed with two adverts; one for a solar panel company and the other for the well-known employee-owned company; John Lewis.
I suppose that’s the way the cookie rumbles!
I certainly don’t regret installing solar panels on my flat roof!
What About A Couple Of Wind Turbines?
I ask this question, as some MPs want to allow more onshore wind, providing the natives don’t mind.
I wrote about onshore wind in Chancellor Confirms England Onshore Wind Planning Reform and I think that in the right place they are acceptable.
I know the Government has changed since September, but if you look at the Google Map above, I suspect a couple of turbines could be squeezed in and they probably would be in Germany.
Bury St. Edmunds: A Town With Dreadful Rail Access
If you need to go to Bury St. Edmunds by train from London, it is usually a cross-platform change every hour at Ipswich station.
It is actually, a journey that will get better in the next couple of years, because Greater Anglia are doing the following.
- Introducing new Class 745 trains between Liverpool Street and Ipswich
- Running three express trains per hour (tph) between Liverpool Street and Ipswich
- Reducing Liverpool Street to Ipswich times to sixty minutes.
- Introducing new Class 755 trains between Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds.
- Running two tph between Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds.
Journeys will get more frequent and there will be more seats.
A quick calculation on Greater Anglia’s non-electrified routes gives the following.
- They are currently served by a total of thirty-two coaches in excellent trains like Class 170 trains and twenty-nine coaches in scrapyard specials.
- They will be replaced by a total of fourteen three-car and twenty-four four-car bi-mode Class 755 trains consisting of a total of one hundred and thirty-eight coaches.
That is a 4.3 to 1 increase, so you can’t accuse Greater Anglia of not making a generous promise.
Greater Anglia have not disclose much about their plans, but I would suspect that they could include.
- At least two tph on as many routes as possible.
- A much improved service between Bury St. Edmunds and Cambridge.
- More services at Cambridge North station.
- Direct services between Bury St. Edmunds and London.
They’ve certainly got the trains for a major expansion of services and stations like Cambridge, Cambridge North, Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich are excellent transport hubs.
But stations like Bury St. Edmunds let the others down and don’t provide the service passengers expect.
I think to quote any optimistic Estate Agent, it is a building with possibilities.
Consider.
- I suspect that Greater Anglia wish the track and platform layout was more train operator friendly.
- There is a cafe on the Ipswich-bound platform.
- Facilities are limited.
- The only shop is a barbers.
- Car parking is limited.
- The town centre and the bus station is a stiff walk away.
- There is no shuttle bus to the town centre.
- It is a Grade II Listed building.
For a town of 40,000 people it is a disgrace.
Improving Access To Trains
I’ve read in several places that Cambridge and Greater Anglia would like to create a frequent service between Cambridge and Bury St. Edmunds with several new stations, to help in the development of Greater Cambridge.
For example, a simple triangular route could be run between Cambridge, Ely and Bury St. Edmunds.
To do this efficiently would probably need a West-facing bay platform at the station.
But as this Google Map shows, that would be difficult.
It might be possible to split one or both platforms, as happens at Cambridge.
When you consider, that the space in the middle of the platforms, is large enough for at least one extra track, I’m sure Network Rail have ideas to create a more usable station without spending an enormous amount.
One thing that surely helps, is that it is unlikely that many trains will be longer than four-cars.
A Clash of Cultures In Suffolk
Nothing serious or untimely, but I found this charming tale in the Daily Telegraph about the Rwandan athletes settling into their base in Bury St. Edmunds. Here’s the opening couple of paragraphs.
When Robert Kajuga was served a plate of food shortly after he arrived in Bury St Edmunds earlier this month, there was one item in particular upon it that he did not immediately recognise. It was certainly not anything he had encountered in his home country of Rwanda.
Thus it was that Kajuga, a 27 year-old distance runner who will compete in the Olympic 10,000 metres final on Aug 4, became acquainted with the concept of mashed potato.
“The potatoes,” he says in broken English. “They change the potatoes into, like porridge. Puréed. In our country, we just cook potatoes. We don’t do that.”
Let’s hope that the links forged result in something lasting and positive. Perhaps, we should sent someone like Delia Smith to Rwanda to teach them how to make mashed potato. Especially, if their athletes do better than they’d expected to on the strange foreign food.
Do We Need To Close More Hospitals?
I’ve believed that we have too many hospitals for a long time. Often politics mean that the needs of getting votes come before the needs of good healthcare. No-one would ever get elected, if they were in favour of closing their local hospital.
When I lived near Newmarket, we had two hospitals at the same distance away, Addenbrooke’s and Bury St. Edmunds. The first is a world-class facility and the second is a typical general hospital on a cramped site with bad transport links.
No-one ever chose to go to Bury St. Edmunds and I always remember once turning up at A & E there in the middle of the night to find no-one waiting, but it still took me three hours to be seen. The whole hospital should have been down-graded years ago. This is unlikely to happen, as the powers that be in Bury still resent the fact that Ipswich became the county town, when West and East Suffolk were merged. So we all pay extra through our taxes for local vanity.
So should we close more hospitals? Lord Cross who used to run the NHS, apparently thinks so according to this report on the BBC.
The Train Ticket Nightmare
Yesterday I needed to go to Bury St. Edmunds from London for an appointment at 11:00. I booked on the Internet and the National Express East Anglia web site, sold me an Off-Peak Single with a Senior Railcard leaving at 08:10 for £23.50. For some reason, when I picked up my ticket, I asked an inspector and he said I couldn’t use the ticket, as Senior Railcards aren’t valid until 09:30. So I purchased an upgrade for £18.40, as I wanted to avoid the fine he promised me.
I got to Bury on time after a good journey and particularly liked the new Class 379 train from London to Cambridge.
New Trains from Liverpool Street to Cambridge
The inspector though on the Cambridge to Bury train had told me that I had been overcharged £4.00 at Tottenham Hale.
So something is wrong. Either the web site gave me the wrong information and sold me a ticket I wasn’t entitled to or the National Express East Anglia rule book given to their inspectors doesn’t reflect the web site.
When I got home, I investigated buying the same ticket for today. It would have cost me £23.50.
I should say, that if they can get the pricing right, I will travel to Cambridge this way, as the trains may take longer than those from King’s Cross, but they are much more comfortable and have even have wi-fi. Although, I couldn’t use it yesterday, as I didn’t have my computer with me.
Today is St. Edmund’s Day
St. Edmund should still be the patron saint of England.
Today is his feast day and in the place of his death, Bury St. Edmunds, they had a mini-festival with a charity market and some other events.
The Bury MP, David Ruffley is quoted in the East Anglian Daily Times as saying. “No one will persuade me that we are not the most gloriously historic county town in England” He also said that the Magna Carta was not about Runnymede in Surrey in 1215, but about Bury, where it originated in 1214.
Bury St. Edmunds Guildhall
The Trust that owns it is trying to raise money and decide what to do with building according to this report on the BBC web site.
They should at least use the building to house the Mary Beale pictures, which are hidden away in Moyses Hall Museum.
Airdrie to Bathgate
Modern Railways also has an article about the opening of a new electric railway between Airdrie and Bathgate, which effectively creates a fourth link across Scotland’s central belt between the two main cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I’ve read the article in detail and it states that a new station is being built at Drumgelloch to serve just 3,700 local inhabitants. This really shows how different rules starve East Anglian stations of money. Bury St. Edmunds for example has a population of 35,000 and the best thing that could be said about the station is that it compliments the Abbey Ruins. Haverhill has a population of 22,000 and no train station at all.
I think East Anglia could take a leaf out of Scotland’s book and reinstate the line between Sudbury and Cambridge. But that will never get done in my lifetime, despite the fact it could probably be done for a lot less than Airdrie to Bathgate.
The only thing we get is other areas’ hand-me-downs and a virtual busway.
Bury Town 2 – Staines 2
I think that was the final score, but I left soon after half-time with Staines in the lead, as the match was a bit of a struggle for Bury and I needed to get the bus back to Newmarket.
Ram Meadow is a pleasant little ground that holds about 2,000.
It was interesting to see James Scowcroft enjoying himself and showing no mean skills. Players like him seem to continue playing, just because it’s such a good thing to do.
Will I follow the winner of this tie towards the final. I’m not sure, but I think I might go to Staines!
The Anonymous Widower 