Plastic Belt Buckles
I object to taking my belt off in airport security, as because of my gammy left hand, I need a mirror to get it back in again.
At Gatwick, I said could I not and said why, but the guy said you’ll have to take it off, if it beeps in the machine.
It didn’t beep and I kept it on.
In the 1970s I worked for ICI Plastics and there were plastics then, that were strong enough to make belt buckles, that wouldn’t be dangerous or set off medal detectors.
So why don’t we have them now?
If nothing it would speed up security!
A Solution To Travelling Paperwork
On my trips to Europe, where I fly out and then take a train back, one of the biggest problems is all the bits of paper for airline and train tickets and hotel reservations, you have to take. I used to take these in a secure A4 folder like this one.
A Secure A4 Folder
But it is rather large and is a bit of a nuisance to get out of my small case. As most of my tickets are A4 sheets of paper, which folds in half to A5, I thought that an A5 version of this folder would be ideal. I’d tried out stationers near me, so this was why I was at Tottenham Hale today, to visit Staples. They didn’t have any, but they did have this clear plastic zip up A5 bag.
Staples A5 Zip Bag
Several would have been ideal on my home run from Stockholm, where I was constantly changing currency, so I could have had bags for Sweden, Denmark, Euroland and the UK.
My only mistake today was just buying two. But at a pound or less a time, I can afford them!
Are Smoke Detectors Worth It?
For the last three days, I’ve been living with the constant beep of a smoke detector every few seconds.
I thought, I only had three smoke detectors; one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom and one in the boiler room. I check them regularly and know the beep when they need a new battery. Not that that would have helped, as I have none of the standby batteries needed, as if I do need one, I just get one from the 25 hour a day convenience store round the corner.
The builders, who put in my false ceiling in the hall, made provision for another, as this picture shows.
Provision For A Smoke Detector
But fourteen months after they started, it’s still not finished.
I eventually traced the noise to the smoke detector intended for that ceiling, which some helpful soul had placed in the downstairs bedroom.
The Errant Detector
As I couldn’t be bothered to silence it correctly, I stuffed it under some coats in a drawer.
If I hear it again it goes in a bucket of water! What noise does a drowning smoke detector make?
So how many smoke detectors end up being silenced or removed, because they annoy the house owner or tenant. Incidentally, when I moved in this house, all were beeping like an orchestra of mice. But that’s tenants for you and after having them for ten years this house wasn’t happy.
Smoke detectors as they are designed now are a nightmare. I’m not against them, but they should be independent of any form of changeable battery. I do wonder how many people end up in hospital, trying to put a battery in a smoke detector.
A Chief Fire Officer for Ipswich once told me, that they put smoke detectors in all the Council’s housing stock. But within six months none worked, as the kids had had the batteries for their toys and games machines.
Mugged In My Own Shower Room
Ever since I moved into this house, I’ve moaned about the bathrooms. The en-suite shower room of my bedroom has got a lot of my anger, as every other time I clean my teeth, I bump my head on the cabinet above the basin.
Last night, as I went to bed, the awful cabinet bit back. I’d needed a new toilet roll and as one does, I keep them in the bathroom cabinet. But the catch is not the most reliable of devices and as I rose from the toilet, the door caught me on the head.
It only managed to extract a very small spot of blood.
My head has a very thick skull, but this morning, I do have a wound and a small amount of pain there.
It could have been a lot worse.
It’s another piece of bad workmanship and/or design to blame on Jerry.
I wonder if RIBA have a worst building prize.
A Trap For The Unwary
Several times in Bilbao, I saw steps that were not easy to spot.
A Trap For The Unwary
In fact, I was first alerted to the problem, when a sensibly-shod middle-aged lady fell sat the bus station.
Many semed to have been designed the way I saw them.
Cast Iron Traffic Light Posts
I suppose given Bilbao’s history of iron and steel, these were to be expected.
But they are better than your usual plain ones.
My Hotel In Bilbao
I stayed at the Silken Gran Dominie hotel in Bilbao.
The hotel was comfortable and although it was a five-star one, I got each night of my say at €102.30.
The food and service were good and I ate in the hotel for most of the two days, as they knew their gluten-free and I wasn’t too sure about other places in the city.
But various little things were not what you would expect from a good hotel.
The wi-fi was free, but the passwords were so complicated, I never managed to get connected. My username was all numbers and letters with a password of kKf6vaW6. Ty typing those in on the small screen of a Samsung S3 Mini. But at least they provided a free desktop machine in the Business Centre.
There was no bathrobes, tea or coffee equipment or free water in the room, which I expect in a five star hotel.
There were also a few small details that annoyed. One was that you could only empty the bath from inside it, as you couldn’t reach the control for the plug. Note the picture of the bath! It’s full of water, which I couldn’t release once I had got dressed.
On the other hand the house wine cost just two euros a glass in the hotel’s cafe. And it was good too!
I’d definitely stay again, but I would expect the same cost!
Where Now For The New Bus for London?
This post was prompted, when I found this post on Leon Daniel’s blog. It was this paragraph that caught my eye.
The buses have also been busy promoting British technology at home and abroad. After leaving the USA, LT1 journeyed to Bogota after which it will head to the Far East. Another vehicle is already doing similar duties in Europe and a third vehicle is likely to be added to the tour. Wherever they go they attract huge attention and continue to promote Britain and British industry.
It’s an interesting itinerary!
Couple this sort of story with the news last week about LT100 appearing in Ipswich and it does appear there is a strong move to sell the buses more widely.
Remember though that WrightBus have sold a lot of buses to the Far East in places like Hong Kong and Singapore.
The New Bus for London is also not built like most other buses and coaches, which makes it easy to assemble from a kit of parts with most of the body made locally. Hong Kong and Singapore have got their previous Wright buses this way. I speculated on a New Bus for Hong Kong in May 2012.
These buses are almost like a kit of parts, that can be assembled in many ways.
But surely, one of the biggest selling points of the bus, is that each operator can rebrand them as they want. Will we see a New Bus for Ipswich?
And don’t forget that London’s red buses have always been fashionable and extremely cool. Were bendy buses ever that?
I do think we’ll see one big change on New Buses for London in a few years. Hybrid buses, like the New Bus for London, use a lot of batteries, that need to be changed every few years. I suspect these will be replaced by some form of mechanical energy storage device like a flywheel. There’s something about the testing of this type of technology here.
To my untrained brain, I think that the distributed nature of the power train on the New Bus for London, where the various parts are positioned around the bus, lends itself to the replacement of the batteries by a flywheel. The batteries are under the front stairs and the engine is under the back stairs, with the electric motors in the rear wheel hubs.
How To Do Interchanges
The London Overground wasn’t built to a generous budget and in some places it shows.
But not here in the two interchanges between the East and North London lines at Canonbury and Highbury and Islington stations.
The wide central platform handles a lot of the transfers with a simple walk across and then if you need to use the footbridge, there are lifts to avoid the stairs.
At Highbury and Islington, there is also a second footbridge,
Both stations have a coffee stall on the central platforms, which also have seats and shelters.
Note too how the freight train is some way from passengers due to the wide platform. This can’t be said of all stations on the Overground.
It just shows how a tight budget and good design often produce something that works well. If money had been no object, the stations would have had escalators, but these don’t allow for disabled and buggy access, which of course the stair/lift combination does.
Could We Create A Second Entrance To The Overground At Highbury And Islington Station?
Highbury and Islington station is not one of my favourites.
It has only two escalators to get to the deep-level platforms for the Victoria line and the Northern City line. At least we have now got two fully working examples, but a much needed third escalator can’t be fitted in the empty position, as there is not enough circulation space at the bottom.
It’s all because it was a typical 1960s Jerry-built station like several on the Victoria line.
One of the problems is that although since the Overground was opened at Highbury and Islington, there is more space on the concourse, at certain times, like an evening match at The Emirates, every passageway and the space in front of the station, gets seriously overloaded.
Although the Overground was built to a price, they did save money by using good design, rather than just leaving something out, as they did on the Victoria line.
For this reason, although they could have reinstated the Eastern Curve at Dalston Junction, to enable trains to go directly between Stratford and the East London line, they chose not to, but instead made Canonbury station, into a good, easy and efficient interchange. Especially, if you were coming from Stratford and going south to or through Dalston Junction! I regularly if I’m coming home from Stratford, change at Canonbury to a southbound train and go to the first stop; Dalston Junction, from where I take one of the numerous buses home. It sounds complicated, but if I have a heavy parcel, there is only one set of steps, which can be bypassed by a lift.
To facilitate train changing at Highbury and Islington station, they also built a second footbridge over the tracks, at the western end of the platforms. This footbridge is also designed to serve an emergency exit from the station.
This footbridge and its associated emergency exit, opens on to the road alongside the station;Highbury Station Road. So could this exit be expanded into a full entrance and exit to the station? I took a walk around the station to see it all from the outside.
The residential developments around the north side of the station, probably wouldn’t take too kindly, to large numbers of people and especially football fans passing down their road. But it is only a short walk up Highbury Station Road on the south side to the wide expanses of Liverpool Road, which is in fact, an area poorly served by buses.
So a second entrance is probably feasible and it might give benefits to those, who live in the area to the west of the station. As Liverpool Road leads to the Emirates Stadium, a second entrance might help with congestion on the Holloway Road on match days.
Admittedly, a second entrance here would really only serve the Overground, but bear in mind that over the next couple of years, the capacity of trains on that set of lines, will be increased by twenty-five percent. This will put more pressure on Highbury and Islington station, which is a terminus of the Overground and the main northern interchange to the Underground.
I suspect too, that more football supporters will be using the Overground to get to the stadium. Remember that football fans have different travel patterns to say commuters and usually have a window of an hour or so before the match, when they can turn up. So they’ll see the extra capacity on the Overground and perhaps take a few minutes longer to get to the stadium in comfort, rather than crammed into an Underground train.
A second entrance would have certainly helped on Saturday, with all the chaos in the Balls Pond Road. If of course, the Overground had been running.
The Anonymous Widower 