Naming Buses After Olympic Medal Winners
I am always in favour of naming buses.
Should all Olympic medal winners have a bus named after them?
I think it would be a good gesture, that could have lots of positive benefits.
Planning for the August Bank Holiday
As I’ve said before, I hate bank holidays.
For next Monday though I have a plan. Whilst I was travelling in Tottenham, I saw on the map a building named as Markfield Beam Engine and Museum.
I shall be going as it is in steam on the Monday.
I could even go to the football in the evening at Ipswich!
But the aim is to enjoy myself and judging by the way they are playing at the moment, a team made up of eleven fit men in the North Stand could do better.
My Allergies and Me
I seem to be getting no relief from the hay fever at all this summer. Just as it seems the pollen level gets to a low level for a day, it then rises back up again. I had lunch with a friend yesterday and he never suffers, but he is this year. It’s a story that I’ve heard so many times in the last few months from others. No-one seems to have any idea about it either.
I don’t get any luck with it either. On Friday I was to see a consultant about it, but for administrative reasons the appointment was put back for a few days. Any sane person, would think that the Devil has it in for them, if they had suffered the last three years I have. To make matters worse, the sale of my house in Suffolk, seems to be moving slowly and Ipswich lost by seven goals to one last night. But I’m still here, which is more than can be said for my wife and youngest son.
I also had a good lunch yesterday with friends, essentially to celebrate my birthday on Tuesday. Even Ipswich contrived to lose six two that night.
I know it’s only a small thing, but I slept well last night and got up feeling fresh. So I thought, it might be a good idea to go to perhaps Brighton or Southend and get a bit of sea air. But after checking the pollen levels, I decided against it as levels were moderate in all the places I checked. And the excellent Met Office web site, says that it’ll be Tuesday before the levels get better.
So I think I’ll go and see my therapist today. I’m not sure where I’ll explore, but because it is so easy and fairly close, I think I might go to Bruce Castle Museum this afternoon.
What I will do is reflect on my life and especially this dreaded hay fever.
I will start with my ancestors. I’m certain that it’s my father’s line that has the really bad genes and has brought me the allergies. From what I know now, I’m certain that he was a coeliac like me. He certainly had more wind than the Outer Hebrides. He was always choked up with catarrh and ate menthol catarrh tablets like others eat sweets. He was also a heavy pipe smoker and that couldn’t have helped. His father had died young of pneumonia and my father had told me, that my grandfather was a heavy drinker and smoker, who suffered from asthma. My father told me graphic stories about how he would pick him up in a terrible state from places like Wood Green Conservative Club. One of the strange things about my father’s family, is that there is very few women, who have ever given birth. Could this be the coeliac gene, which doesn’t help women carrying a viable foetus to full term.
Unfortunately, I don’t have my school records, but it would make interesting reading, as I can remember taking endless time off because I just wasn’t up to it. I seemed to be coughing all the time and spent many nights with my head over a jug of Friar’s Balsam. At one time I supposedly got a case of scarlet fever. How I ever got to a Grammar School I don’t know! Luckily, we had television and I had my Meccano to amuse myself with. And that is what I did, when I was at home. Most weekends I would be off to my father’s print works, where I did useful things. To say, I was an indoor child would not be an understatement. And we worry about kids spending too much time on their computers.
So what was it that made me so ill? Unfortunately, my medical records are incomplete and start in 1970. If only they were on a central database, that I could access!
My GP, one Dr. Egerton White, thought I was allergic to eggs, and so I was rationed to one a week. Did it help? Not at all. My father thought it might be the paint in our house, which he thought contained lead and I can remember him stripping it all off and using modern lead-free paints. It could also have been his smoking or the coal fires we had in those days, but I didn’t really improve much. I suppose it might have got better, when my parents bought a house in Felixstowe, but we only went for the odd weekends. But at least I used to walk a lot by the sea.
I think in some ways, I just grew out of the worst times and what finally killed it in some ways was going to Liverpool, where I spent the next three years at the University on top of a hill with the wind in the west.
So perhaps it was just hay fever of a particularly persistent form, as from what I can remember, I don’t feel much different now. The only difference, is that now I’m on a strict gluten-free diet after having been diagnosed as a coeliac ten years ago. That cured a lot of my problems, like chronic dandruff.
All of my levels like B12 are spot on, so it’s not as if I lack anything.
Since C died, I’ve started to get a few problems, like tight shins, difficulty in breathing and spots on my chest, back and legs. I scratch them a lot, when I’m alone.
I have been told on good authority by an academic I respect, that widows can suffer high cortisol levels and the Internet indicates there may be a link.
So has all the stress I’ve suffered in the previous three years, brought the hay fever back?
I sometimes think, that my mind learned how to control it and the stroke knocked out that knowledge, but that is just a feeling not based on any fact. I have been told by a serious doctor, that stroke patients sometimes have pain return from previous injuries. He did find problems in my neck, which are improving through physiotherapy.
Bruce Castle Park and Tottenham Cemetery
At this point in my walk, I met a very helpful Harringey Council official checking how many litter bins they’d lost and after asking the way I walked under the railway to Bruce Castle Park.
Sadly, the museum doesn’t open until one and I was too early. As Sir Rowland Hill once owned the house, the museum also features a history of the Royal Mail.
I will return to see if there is anything my father printed. It does have the archive of Wood Green Empire and my father certainly did their posters and programs in his works in Station Road, Wood Green.
It was a very surprising area, especially as you consider it was only a coiuple of hundred metres from the riots in the High Street.
Getting To And From The Race
Getting to the cycle race in London today was easy. I just took a 38 bus, got off at Cambridge Circus and then walked through to The Mall.
Not at any time, was I told that the bus was being diverted, although once I got off, I realised this was the case as it didn’t go down Shaftesbury Avenue, but meandered around Trafalgar Square and on to Victoria via Whitehall.
It was coming back that I had the problem, as no-one had any clue where I could pick up a northbound 38 towards the romantic, Clapton Pond. There was one diversion sign for the drivers, but none indicating where the stops were. To make matters worse, entry to Charing Cross station seemed impossible.
In the end I decided to go to Tottenham Court Road and get a Central Line train to Bank. I did find a 29 bus that took me part of the way and dropped me north of the station.
I thought that at Bank, I could get a bus home, but the stop was closed, with the helpful sign, that it would close from the 2nd August until further notice.
A Helpful sign on a Bus Stop
It just said go to the next stop on the route. I was lucky in that a bus arrived and the driver let me on unofficially. But what if you’d been a lost tourist told to take a bus from the stop.
Transport for London must get their signage right when they divert buses. Not everyone knows the bus network, as well as I do!
London’s Secret Cycle Race
Today, they have held the London Surrey Cycle Classic. I went down and had a look round.
You’d have thought that it was more run for the benefit of the Great and Good, as the publicity wasn’t very extensive and it was only by chance I heard it was on. I think it was on a traffic report on BBC Radio 5 Live. And I don’t drive! I didn’t see any detailed maps in the papers and although Transport for London has a route map, times of the race were all very sketchy.
I went to The Mall and there were quite a few people there, but little information. There wasn’t even anybody selling a souvenir program!
One thing I did pick up was a lot of discontent from cycling enthusiasts. All were complaining that they didn’t get tickets for the events in the velodrome for the Olympics and the serious ones felt that the Box Hill route was wrong, as no spectators would be allowed as it’s a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The original plan was to go up to Hampstead. After all they are the London Olympics not the Surrey Olympics.
Perhaps there are two races or classes in London; the Great and Good and the Hoi-Polloi. Obviously the latter can’t be allowed to spoil the party of the former. I suspect that most of those planning the cycling for the Games live in Surrey, that haunt of Manchester United supporters.
No wonder we had some little local rioting last week!
By the way the Great and Good think that this event is so special for them, that it is not being reported on television or radio. Or at least it’s not on my cable system!
The Thin Blue Line
At first sight it might appear that just six policemen against a much larger mob in Catford wouldn’t have stood much chance in protecting stores from being looted. But the line held as the BBC reports. Here’s a bit of detail.
A police officer has described how he and five colleagues, armed only with two shields, defended a retail park from a gang of up to 50 hooded youths.
PC Gordon Murphy, 30, said despite their lack of numbers, officers charged at the mob who were trying to loot the stores in Catford, south-east London.
He said: “We decided, as they ran at us, to rush back at them, with only six officers running back at 40.
“The mad thing is, they all ran back so we didn’t even have to make contact.”
It’s all a bit far from a similar situation, I heard of years ago from a British Colonial policeman, who faced up to rioters somewhere in Africa. He said you just identified the ring-leaders and shot them dead.
I suppose that the youths in Catford, had all the courage of mice and felt that running was the best defence.
I think in some ways this story is in a way a return to old-fashioned policing, where police often stood their ground and didn’t call for massive backup.
One of my abiding memories of Liverpool is that on public order duties most Northern Police Sergeants carried long batons, when trouble was expected. They weren’t afraid to use them either. I may have seen them deployed but I never saw one used.
Another policeman in London once told me that the worst thing they ever did for policing was give officers a personal radio. Without these they had to sort the problem out, but with them they always called for backup.
No Water Cannons or Rubber Bullets, But What About Smart Water Bombs?
Water cannons and rubber bullets, which have been called for by many commentators will only inflame the situation.
But what about plastic bags loaded with smart water! The chemicals in them make them absolutely traceable, so anybody with a particular chemical signature is immediately placed where the bomb was dropped on the protestors.
Once the rioters knew what was in the bombs, they might take the correct action and go home to bed!
Are The Riots Are The Girls Fault?
In all the pictures of the London riots there seem to be few women about except for victims.
But then how many self-respecting young ladies would want to be seen with the morons doing the damage?
So the calming influence that women generally bring to these situations isn’t there!
But then they have got much better things to do!
Wombles To The Rescue
This method was used in Vancouver to clean up after their riots. Here’s some details.
The Anonymous Widower 