Do Bendy Buses Encourage Cheating?
I tend to avoid bendy buses, but sometimes they are the first to turn up and I’m in a hurry. When you get on a normal bus, where you touch the Oyster reader by the driver, you never see people get on without doing it. On the other hand a couple of weeks ago, I was in the middle of a bendy bus and at least half who got on at the middle and rear doors didn’t touch the reader.
It will be interesting to see the increase in revenue on a route like the seventy-free, when they change to normal buses in a couple of months.
Open House for the Olympics
I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time, but I’m now declaring a sort of Open House for the Olympics. With the ticket sales, a lot of friends have said they will be buying tickets, but they have nowhere to stay, if they are outside London.
So on a first-come, first-served basis anybody who has a direct link to me is welcome to stay for a night. By direct link, I mean, relatives, except the black-sheep, Alfred, ex-Metier and others who I’ve worked with and those who are my e-friends outside London. I am convenient for Stratford and will actually be going today, by taking a bus or train a couple of stops to Hackney Wick and then walking along the Greenway. To walk all the way takes 90 minutes along the Regent’s Canal and Hertford Canal via Victoria Park. There will also be a good bus service from just up the road at Dalston Junction during the games.
I suspect it will get chaotic, but we’ll only see one Olympics in London in our lifetime, so why not have a two-week party?
The house is fairly small but I do have a spare double-bedroom and a single one, but then I do have a warm living room with a large carpet, so kids could camp indoors on the floor. It’ll probably be the only Olympics they see, so a bit of roughing it wouldn’t matter.
I also suspect that there will be a big party in Victoria Park for the Olympics, as they are setting up large screens there. It might be where the real East Enders hold their Olympic celebration!
Disabled Access to the London Olympics
I am not disabled, although it is probably true to say, that for a time after my stroke, whilst I was in hospital in Hong Kong, I needed to be moved everywhere in a wheel-chair. I do suspect though that if I had been in a top hospital in the UK, like Addenbrookes from the start, they’d have dispensed with one pretty quickly. It’s not to save costs, but there is thinking from the Norwegians, that it is better to get people up and on the move sooner rather than later after a stroke.
But I do think I appreciate the problems of people with disabilities a bit better than I used to. So when Liz put a comment on the post about the London Aquatic Centre, I thought I’d investigate a bit.
I started by typing the title of this post into Google. By the time you try it, you might get better information than I did. The only thing of value was an old political statement from Boris, saying that the access will be the best. He would say that wouldn’t he!
There was also quite a few paid for Google entries trying to sell disabled-friendly accomodation in London for the Olympics.
On the other hand, when I applied for my tickets, I could have applied for wheelchair friendly seats, if I had wanted to. So at least the ticket ballot is disabled friendly. I suspect too, that the venues will have an appropriate number of seats for the disabled, as we have lot of experience of building stadia with them in mind.
Getting to the Olympic Park probably falls into two time periods; before the Olympic Park is completed and after it’s opened.
I’ll deal with the first one now, as why shouldn’t those with limited mobility want to go and view the construction site, as I have in the last couple of weeks? After all lying my hospital bed in Hong Kong, being able to watch the Olympics on television was a hope, rather than something for which my odds of seeing for real,are only a little bit less than say Lord Coe’s.
The Greenway, that I used to access the viewing site is absolutely flat and I think in my current state I could push an average man in a wheelchair from the station at Hackney Wick to the Olympic Park. As with all new London Overground and Docklands Light Railway stations, Hackney Wick has full wheelchair access using lifts. At a weekend, there is quite a bit of free parking in the Victoria Park area, which is not far from the start of the Greenway.
The ViewTube has pretty good disabled access, so you could get a good coffee and a snack.
The problem would come in getting off and on the Greenway at the Pudding Mill Lane end. It is still very much a construction site and although the DLR station has a lift, it might not be easy to negotiate your way through.
Another word of warning is that the best views of the site are at the other end of the Olympic Park to Stratford station.
So don’t go there!
Obviously, once the Olympic Park and the Eastfield Shopping Centre are open, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Applying For London Olympics Tickets
I have just completed my application for tickets for the London Olympics next year.
It was not a complicated process for someone like me , but I could expect people like C to have lost patience with the system, as there are just so many tickets to apply for in the initial ballot. I’ve tended to go for between two and four tickets for a large range of events, going for slightly higher price tickets in events I really want to see. I’ve also put in a bid to see some tennis on the centre court at Wimbledon, as there is no other way, I’ll ever get to see anything in that iconic venue.
It will be interesting to see how many tickets I get! In some ways I’m not bothered too much, as I suspect that the best way to see some events will be to go to the Olympic Park or Victoria Park and watch it on the big screens.
Remember too, that modern stadia such as Wembley and The Emirates don’t have many poor seats, so you can probably expect that even a seat in the Gods in the Olympic Stadium will be a lot better than some I’ve paid a lot of money for in various football grounds this year.
World Heritage Sites
Listening to the warm-up to the Grand National today on Radio 5 this morning, it struck me that none of the UK’s historic racecourses are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Liverpool city centre is but surely one of Aintree, Ascot, Epsom and Newmarket should be listed.
After all Newmarket and the Heath have been associated with horses since the time of Boudicca. Newmarket is actually a corruption of New Horse Market. And every thoroughbred horse can trace its ancestry back to the small town in West Suffolk.
And when it comes to other places that should be listed, the Forth Bridge is rightly on the provisional list, but Joseph Balzalgette‘s historic London sewers are not!
Coal Hole Covers
There are a few coal hole covers still left in Hackney and Islington.
Sadly many of these nice pieces of Victoriana have been collected or stolen and then melted down for the metal.
I don’t have one as my house is new and there are none down the road, as they have the wrong type of cellar.
Homes for Bugs
When I go to Waitrose at the Barbican, I walk through Bunhill Fields from the bus stop, where I get off a 21, 76 or 141 bus.
Just inside the entrance I saw this strange object.
A Home for Bugs
It is actually a home for invetebrates and was the winning entry in a competition organised by the City of London.
Leon Restaurants
I had lunch in the Leon restaurant in Spitalfields today.
I had a mackerel and beetroot salad with a home-made lemonade.
The restaurant is definitely worth a return visit.
The Biggest Hole in London!
The pictures show the hole being created for the new Crossrail station at Canary Wharf.
Is it the UK’s first underwater station?
The Anonymous Widower 