A Good Class of Horse!
I’ve mentioned Vague Shot a couple of times in the last week or so, as an exmple to us all on how to cope with the current weather.
He’s actually a pure English thoroughbred, with no trace of suspect American blood. I say suspect, as because they run on drugs over there you don’t know how good they actually are!
He’s also the best and most comfortable horse I’ve ever ridden. He was no flighty horse who’d spook at a heavy lorry, but one who’d pick his way past, whilst giving the driver a stare, that said. if you touch me, your cab will be full of horse-shoe-sized holes. But no-one ever touched him.
But then he’s in that class of horse that old Suffolk horsemen say would have been good enough to fight German tanks with grenades, if they’d ever invaded in the Second World War. The Poles did it, by attacking the tank from several different directions at once. The theory was that one would get through and get a grenade on the tracks or even inside. I’ve heard from several Suffolk sources, that some were prepared to do that. They would have been a lot braver than me. But then you hear all sorts of tales, including one about burning all copies of the Geneva Convention and not abiding with its provisions. Suffolk has a lot of strong trees!
True Suffolk people may well have Iceni DNA in their genes and we all know what Boadica did to invaders.
How to Survive Tragedy
Alan Dickinson, a solicitor from Sudbury, was nearly killed in a train crash at Little Cornard two months ago. Today, the East Anglian Daily Times reports how he got back on the train again.
Mr Dickinson, a partner with Tomlinson and Dickinson solicitors in Sudbury, faced his demons today as he boarded the branch line at Sudbury for the first time since the crash.
“I need to get the monkey off my back,” he said.
Waiting on the platform to board the 9am train this morning, Mr Dickinson said he had no fears of returning to the scene of the smash, which almost claimed his life.
“Rail travel is very safe, I have no concerns,” he said.
Mr Dickinson was the worst injured in the crash, in which he was struck in the chest by the table in front of him in the carriage.
Despite walking off the train with fellow passengers, Mr Dickinson was flown to Colchester Hospital then the Royal London Hospital with internal bleeding.
But just two months after the smash, Mr Dickinson, who has lost a stone in weight since the incident, was once more aboard the Sudbury train.
He also bears no ill-feeling towards the tanker driver, who has admitted causing the crash.
He has certainly got all his dignity back too!
Incidentally, in the paper he is shown holding a copy of the Racing Post, so perhaps he knows something about luck and the real odds in life!
It’s Only a Small Step for Beccles
There was news today, that the government had put forward funding to create a loop at Beccles, so that the frequency of trains between Lowestoft and Ipswich can be doubled.
This is very much to be welcomed and does it mean that we’ll start to see more developments on East Anglian railways.
We also need some new trains, to replace some of the crap.
The A11 Missing Link Goes Ahead
Or that’s what it looks like after the government’s cost cutting according to this report on the BBC.
I know you could have argued that in our current state all road projects should go, but this is one that will pay for itself in lives saved because of the dangerous Elveden village.
The upgrading of the A14 through Cambridge has been scrapped, but if the Felixstowe to Peterborough rail freight mprovements kick in as they should, then the congestion caused by heavy lorries may decrease. Remember too, that a lot of the cars on this section of the A14 are commuters working in the high-tech businesses in the Cambridge area and these are just the commuters that might use alternative technological alternatives.
So if it was the A14 or the A11, then the A11 is the more iportant. It’s just a pity though, that there appear to be no plans in place to improve the links between Great Yarmouth and the rest of the country. The A11 Missing Link will be a great help, but work on the Acle Straight would very much be welcomed.
Where Have All the Hitch-Hikers Gone?
A letter in The TImes today asks this question and even ponders where drivers carrying trade plates have gone.
When I drove, I always gave people lifts and so did C.
In fact we were of an age, where many more people hitched than have ever since. In one case, C and I actually htched to London from Liverpool to tell her parents, that we were going to get married. Little thanks we got for being up-front and honest, as I was accussed if getting her pregnant. Not that she was as we just got married in time before she was! Or else it was a very long pregnancy!
But I used to enjoy hitching and I must admit, I’ve thought about it lately, as public transport is so bad round here. But then public transport was always bad in East Anglia and I can remember that you had to have a car as as eighteen-year-old as there were no buses or trains from Felixstowe to anywhere interesting. I suppose there were ones that got you there, but the last bus into the town was about seven in the evening.
But even in those days of the 1960s, hitching was not very productive in East Anglia and I can remember spending a whole day getting from the M1 to Felixstowe. Or on another occassion, when C was a mother’s help in the summer before we married in Norfolk with the Wright family, having to hitch or almost walk back to Felixstowe from Hingham.
But these days, there is usually some form of transport, so people don’t give lifts as they feel you must be some sort of low life to hitch. And because no one gives lifts, no-one tries!
Lucky Gordon
Lucky Gordon is mentioned in the Sunday Times magazine today, as there is an article about a new exhibition concerning Christine Keeler.
I never met either, but years ago I used to drink with the musician, Danny Thompson, in the Clopton Crown. He related how on some of his recording session, Lucky was the chef. Danny did make a comment about how Lucky served too much rice and peas.
At the time, I seem to remember he was working on the music for a documentary, where a film-maker was taking some elephants over the Alps in a reenactment of Hannibal’s famous expedition.
Adnams Doesn’t Put the Gas in the Beer
When virtually everybody thinks of real ale, they think of Adnams, brewed on the Suffolk coast at Southwold.
When I was starting to drink, they had just thirteen pubs, but they did supply a good part of the club trade in Suffolk. Now their beer is found all over London and the South East, and I’ve even seen it as far north as Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Not bad for a small family company, albeit one that makes a quality product beloved of beer connoisseurs everywhere. But their proven route to success now seems to be being followed by Aspall, the cider maker.
Adnams now have a new venture, called Adnams Bio Energy, which on the face of it is as far from brewing as you can get. They are diversifying into the production of biogas from brewery and food waste. The latter comes mainly from Waitrose.
The scale is only small at present, but it would seem that properly developed it could be a valuable addition to our energy resources. National Grid have said that by 2020 about 15% of domestic gas could be produced in similar ways to that at Adnams Bio Energy.
Suffolk Art
Suffolk is a county that has been either the birthplace or home to numerous artists; John Constable, John Duval, Thomas Gainsborough, Alfred Munnings, Philip Wilson Steer and George Stubbs, to name some of the more famous. In the present day there is Maggi Hambling. But she is not the only successful woman artist to come from the county. There was the sculptor, Elizabeth Frink and in the seventeenth century, the successful Mary Beale, who was born near Bury St. Edmunds.
There is more on Suffolks public collection of art here.
Loss-Making Libraries
In an earlier post, I questioned whether we needed libraries. Now it is reported in Saturday’s East Anglian Daily Times that readers’ or should that be non-readers’ owe Suffolk County libraries £72,000.
Surely, the sooner we reduce public libraries to reference only, the better. We can’t afford them!
Cycle Race’s £1.5m Boost for County
Yesterday, this was the front page headline in yesterday’s East Anglian Daily Times. It was a good day out and shows that if you put on a show in Suffolk, people will attend.
As we have the Great North Run, today, would it be an idea to have Great East Run!
The Anonymous Widower 