Watching the Tube
They’re showing how they vacuum out the tube tunnels. Strangely, a few years ago those that did this job were women, now they are men. Can there be many jobs these days, where men have taken over from women?
Soon these men will be succeeded by a new Tunnel Cleaning Train made up of two old Victoria line power cars, with some carriages turned into a giant vacuum cleaner in between.
It was strange too, that the two aerial cleaners, who did the roof at Canary Wharf came from Suffolk. Strange as there aren’t many mountains in that part of England to practise on.
Gypsies
The BBC phone-in this morning got very heated when they were discussing gypsies.
I lived in the country for forty years and everything you didn’t lock up properly disappeared very quickly. The gypsies always got the blame, whether it was their fault or not. I would say though, that if you wanted to hear a farmer get angry, then just bring up the subject of gypsies.
My late wife, C, was a barrister and she was involved in the divorce of a leader of the gypsy community, who incidentally lived in a 1930s semi-detached house in quite a large town. His attitude to those who claimed they were gypsies, was that many were just criminals taking advantage of rights and our good nature. Incidentally, my wife found him to be a very honourable man, who fully abided with the divorce settlement.
We are on the one hand guilty of labelling a community with the habits of their worst members. But then we’ve done that for years with everybody.
Bagpipes: Love Them or Hate Them!
I am actually fairly ambivalent about bagpipes. Partly because I’m a bit deaf on the street where I might hear them, but mainly because in London, you might see all sorts of musical buskers, but I can’t remember seeing anyone, Scot or not, playing pipes in the last few years.
So I was surprised to see that Edinburgh is stopping shops playing loud bagpipe music.
On the other hand, in one of C’s offices in Ipswich, a piper decided that outside her window, was the ideal place to play the one tune he knew. The barristers were thinking about taking out an injunction, when the council imposed the standard Suffolk solution. He was run out of town on a rail.
Boadicea Stands Guard
Standing guard opposite the Houses of Parliament is Boadicea, or as she is more normally spelled these days, Boudica.
Boadicea Stands Guard
She may or may not have defeated the Romans, as whatever happened they remained in Britain.
Her spirit lives on, especially in East Anglia. She probably came from that region, although no-one is sure quite where! I have heard several people say, including my father, that if the Germans had landed in Suffolk in the Second World War, they would have got similar treatment to that meted out by Boadicea and her ragbag army of upwards of 100,000 men. When questioned as to the legitimacy of this treatment under the Geneva Convention, a common reply was “What would Boadicea have done?” I don’t know the truth of all these reports, but I know Suffolk people well and they wouldn’t have taken an invasion lightly.
Some also say that her tribe, the Iceni, were the supreme horsemen, who when their horses were suffering from horse sickness, looked for a new and healthier place to raise them. They found this valley in the chalk downs and moved there, calling the place New Horse Market. In time this was corrupted to Newmarket. The town is the world centre of horse racing and breeding, known amongst racing people as Headquarters. Every thoroughbred can trace their ancestry back to this small town in Suffolk.
You Can’t Get Away From Suffolk
I was at the Olympic Park yesterday and saw this artwork created by the children at a school in Lowestoft, displayed at the ViewTube.
Art at the ViewTube
It was actually rather good. In fact, if you are in that area, there does seem to be a constantly changing set of artistic displays, which always seem to be worth visiting.
I just can’t seem to get away from the county where I spent nearly fifty years of my life.
What Is It About Suffolk?
There is an item on BBC Breakfast this morning about GreenBottle, which is a new concept of milk bottle, that uses a papier mache outer container and a small amount of plastic to actually hold the milk. When you have finished the milk, you split the container, with the outer biodegradable shell going into the cardboard recycling and the inner container into the normsl household waste. Read the full story here.
If I look at what makes a good idea, it ticks a lot of boxes.
- It doesn’t expect the customer to make serious changes to their thinking.
- It would appear that it doesn’t mean there are large changes to manufacturing and distribution.
- Asda have not objected to stocking milk in these bottles. I’m always cynical about supermarkets. Their problem is they try to live up to a macho image.
- Customers like it.
- It is kind to landfill, even if the end user doesn’t recycle it.
But my initial question was, why has this been invented in Suffolk?
I do sometimes wonder, if it’s because Suffolk has always lived on the scraps government chooses to doll out to it and people in Suffolk get used to thinking about how to get round the problems that blight their lives.
As an example, railways in Suffolk have never received the investment they need. I was brought up partly in Felixstowe and it was a miserable place for a teenager, as to get to Ipswich was either a decrepit train, an occasional bus or a bike. In some ways, I wonder if that was all good training for my life now. You learned to plan journeys efficiently, until you could scrape enough together for a car.
Suffolk too is a very independent county and Suffolk people and businesses support each other. GreenBottle have partnered with the independent Marybelle Dairy to prove the concept of the bottle.
In other ways, it might not be what Suffolk has but what it doesn’t. Until the last couple of years, there was no university in Suffolk.
Does all of this push people to think for themselves? And dare I say it out of the bottle.
Suffolk Rules, KO or My First Pint in Ten Years
I said that the Draft House had something better and this is it.
St. Peter's G-Free Beer
And guess what, it’s brewed by St. Peter’s in Suffolk. Will the county of my conception ever leave me alone? But to drink a real pint, even if it was from a bottle, in ten years is something special.
I was even able to have some superb mackerel pate with home-made oatcakes.
Mackerel Pate and Oatcakes
The pub even has free wi-fi and an extensive menu, so if you are looking for somewhere to escape the hustle of London Bridge, whilst waiting for a partner or friend, the Draft House might fit the bill. Some would argue the walk from London Bridge is too far, but then you have to pay for a drink, with a small amount of exercise.
Another Taste of Suffolk
I like my hummus and usually have it with some toasted Genius bread, that I cut into fingers. So today I bought a pot of hummus with butter bean, mint and lime from the de Beauvoir Deli for my lunch.
Purely Hummus
One reason I bought it, was it said that it was suitable for coeliacs on the packet and it was only when I got it home, that I found that it was made by a company called Purely Pesto from Saxmundham. And the last time I looked, that oddly named town was in Suffolk.
As to the hummus, it was very good.
You May Get the Man Out of Suffolk, But You Can’t Get Suffolk Out of the Man
I wasn’t born in Suffolk, but according to my father I was conceived on the floor of the Ordnance Hotel in Felixstowe. But for the last forty years or so, I’ve always had strong associations with the county and of course I still support Ipswich Town.
But Suffolk gets under your skin and every time I go to the local de Beauvoir Deli, I’m reminded of my history, as they sell products from Pinney’s of Orford. C and I must have had upwards of fifty happy meals in their Oysterage in Orford. I think C would approve that I’ve just bought some of their smoked fish pate for my lunch, which I’ll eat with s0me Genius toast.
Smoked Fish Pate from Pinney's of Orford
Gressingham Slow Cooked Duck
My son cooked this for me for Christmas yesterday and it was very nice. It was also gluten-free, in that none of the ingredients could by any means be made with gluten.
the strange thing was that their offices now are in Debach, a small village in East Suffolk, where we all lived for nearly twenty years. I was also nearly killed there, when the chimney went through my office in the Great Storm.
The Anonymous Widower 