Memories Of Althorpe
On The way to Cleethorpes, I passed through Althorpe station.
This Google Map shows the area.
Note.
- The River Trent flowing South to North.
- Keadby power station at the top of the map.
- Althorpe station close to the bridge over the river.
- The village of Althorpe is at the South of the map by the river.
C and myself had friends, who farmed much of the land in the curve of river, South of the railway.
These are a few tales, some might enjoy.
Althorpe And Princess Diana’s Grave
I was once told, that regularly tourists would appear looking for the last resting place of Princess Diana.
Sat-navs may be a wonderful gadget for some, but they do lead those with a certain lack of common sense on wild goose chases.
C And The Tug-Boats
C once spent a night in their farmhouse, which was by the River Trent.
She didn’t sleep well, as tug-boats pulling barges were constantly going past and sounding their sirens. The river was actually above the house, due to the embankments to stop flooding.
Princess Anne And The Centrefold
Our friends’ daughter was a very good rider in eventing and used to supplement her variable income in the sport with modelling. At one point, I used her for some promotional shots for one of my companies.
Some years ago, she was competing at an event in Yorkshire. Coincidentally, this was just after she had appeared as the centrefold in a well-known men’s magazine.
The event was a bit of a nightmare for her, as paparazzi were following her with open copies of the magazine.
At one point, it all got a bit much, so she decided to sneak back to the calm of her horsebox, by a circuitous route.
As she walked back, she encountered Princess Anne, who was also competing and using the same route to avoid the paparazzi.
They talked about the pressures of the paparazzi, who were being a nuisance, with the Princess saying, she approved of my friends’ daughter’s modelling and hoped it continued, as it had taken the pressure off herself.
Flixborough
My friends’ farm was not far from Flixborough, which is infamous for the Flixborough Disaster in 1974, when a chemical plant exploded and killed 28 people and seriously injured a further 36.
My friends also lost several thousand pigs because of the explosion.
Wikipedia says this about the cause of the explosion.
The disaster involved (and may well have been caused by) a hasty modification. There was no on-site senior manager with mechanical engineering expertise (virtually all the plant management had chemical engineering qualifications); mechanical engineering issues with the modification were overlooked by the managers who approved it, nor was the severity of the potential consequences of its failure appreciated.
At the time, I had just left ICI and I was still in contact with my former colleagues.
One told me, that he had met a Senior ICI Engineer, who had been involved with the enquiry into the disaster.
The plant had been a copy of a Dutch plant, that had been built to metric units, which were converted to Imperial to build the Flixborough plant.
As ICI had used metric units since the mid-1950s, there was considerable alarm in the mind of the Senior Engineer, that when the hasty modification was made, someone got mixed up.
Would the Flixborough disaster have happened, if the plant had been built as a copy of the Dutch plant using metric units?
Sibling Wars
I agree with the princess in this story on the BBC, which is entitled Genetically-modified crops have benefits – Princess Anne.
But I doubt her elder brother does!
Let Them Eat Horse
Princess Anne has stirred everybody up, with her statement on why we should eat horsemeat. It’s reported in her mother’s Daily Telegraph. Here’s the first paragraph.
The Princess Royal, who is President of World Horse Welfare, says that Britain should consider eating horsemeat because it would improve standards of care for the animals.
As someone, who has been around horses for a lot of his life, I totally agree with what she said.
One point is that in France, their heavy horses are in much better state than ours! Ours, include the Suffolk horse, which is becoming one of the rarest animals on the planet. The reason the French horses are in better state, is that they are kept for the production of meat.
The Anonymous Widower 