Whaley Bridge brings back childhood memories for me as relatives (now dead) lived there. I wonder who now has there old home which we used to visit?
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"The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink -
I often think that too.Originally posted by Petrushka View Post
Rain today. Well we do need it down these neck of the woods, unlike our people in Whaley Bridge, etc.Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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I often cycle north of the River to visit my childhood home in S Ken, just to take a look. From being the ground floor flat with a front bay window and outside ledge my father used to warn us off clambering onto for fear of its collapse, it turned into some sort of hippie commune in the late 1960s, the outside painted in psychedelic colours, and I would see people crowded onto that ledge smoking spliffs, loud rock music coming through the wide open sashes!Originally posted by Petrushka View Post
In the early 1990s I returned for the first time in maybe 25 years, in the daytime, accompanied by my then-girlfriend, and after fruitlessly ringing all the bells we made out way into the back garden where we took some instamatic shots. The caste iron staircase up to the French window leading into my bedroom had gone, replaced by a sash window, with ill-matching brickwork below; otherwise the place was shipshape and, from what we could make out, probably occupied by city types. Then when I came back to live in London I was shocked to discover the place once again in a dishevelled state, with paint peeling off the front door portico columns, and two sycamore saplings 20 feet high breaking up the concrete retaining wall facing the basement area. Then three summers ago revealed that the place had obviously had a lot of money spent on it, with the front steps replaced (removing the Victorian mosaic tiles), sycamores removed, pillars repainted, and what looked like triple glazing fitted in all the windows. Assuming the flats are still rented I imagine the rates would be way beyond what my parents, let alone I, could have ever afforded. The verger in the church round the corner, where Mum would sometimes play the organ for Sunday Mattins, told me that mid-Victorian semi detached villas typical of the district were going to developers, foreign bankers and investment firms at £13m a go, to be left largely empty as investments. Nearly half the properties in one tree shaded street were having work done on them, offering a perpetual luxury ambience of drilling and hammering; elsewhere domestics were polishing up the brass surrounds to the doorbell systems, and in one front garden the turqoise pretend shingle substitute for a flower bed was in the process of being hand washed! Handwritten notes on lamp posts politely asking visitors to take their dog poo visibly dangling from many neatly trimmed privet hedges with them really summed up whatever desirability is left in a district developed on former market garden land between the 1850s and 1870s by a man who, one learns, bankrupted himself in the process.Comment
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Tanks from r that tale, SA!
Well, today looks as though it could be a bit of a mixed bag?!?!? When I was coming back from the vampire clinic this morning, it tried to rain but I think I knew I’d be safe enough on my motobility scooter. Only a few drops of rain, thankfully.Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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Whacking it down with monsoon-like rain and wind up here; scheduled to repeat same pattern + sun [a bit] through day.Comment
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... we're supposed to be spending the weekend with a friend in Derbyshire.
A couple of miles from Whaley Bridge.
Not sure whether the Stockport-Buxton trains will be running. And the weather forecast is pretty dismal...
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My friend in Stockport says all trains are running as normal, so it depends on the weather to come!Originally posted by vinteuil View PostComment
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Prior to travelling I always check the National Rail website for any last-minute delays/cancellations, hopefully, though have to say this has not always been a reliable source. A couple of times I've let friends down badly, in consequence. Once upon a time train stations each had a station master, who, should anyone here by old enough to remember, could be contacted on this thing called a telephone, which had a dial on it, for the very latest. That was when train stations were called railway stations, but I suppose they (the people so powerful that we all now have to say "So...", even though we're not elaborating on anything we or anyone else has previously been saying) have to prepare us for the right linguistic protocols for possible sell offs to American businesses, as with the NHS.Originally posted by vinteuil View PostComment
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For a long time Scotrail sent me train info via text, which was fine as I could see updates before I got to the station. Then they changed it to email which I can't access outside home, so it's useless. Also, they include a pointless rigmarole, the same for every message:-
'Disruption has been reported to services between Polmont and Glasgow Queen Street.
The 15:28 will be cancelled due to a shortage of train crew.
(It should be noted that this service is provided to indicate general disruption along the route as well as delays and alterations specific to services that are planned to operate during the times that you have selected. Problems occurring immediately before despatch of this email may not yet have been reported to the system and whilst the best possible prediction is made relating to future delays and alterations, thesemay change due to unforeseen circumstances. There may also have been short notice changes to the planned train services which have not been notified to the system and therefore this alerting service must NOT be used as a journey planner to indicate the train service between any two points. For further information on disruption to services log on to www.scotrail.co.uk/disruption)
So annoying.Comment
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It's so odd, when I can order up something online, and be told the whereabouts of the public toilets precisely now being used by my zero hours delivery person. I could also be told precilsely where at any minute the friends I've seen off earlier to Stansted are over the Atlantic on their flight back to Toronto.Originally posted by LezLee View Post
At some point this dependence on systems to control systems to control systems will, like sub-contracted privatised companies looking after previously in-house service providers' need for overseers who are in their turn dependent on overseers to justify "the taxpayer's money" will, (just getting my breath back!), like the tale about the old woman living in a vinegar bottle, turn out to have been less efficient because of the length of the chain of command and exponential likelihood of hitches along the way, prove to be a waste of money and decision-making in once but no longer smoke-filled rooms. By which time someone in charge will suddenly remember not having turned off the gas.Comment
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It looks as though it might be a mixed bag today!Don’t cry for me
I go where music was born
J S Bach 1685-1750Comment
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It was sweltering when I made my homeward bound uphill ride from Sydenham this lunchtime, and the heavyish shower that has just passed has done little to lower the temperature, but at least the air quality is good. It looks like I will cop the start of the weekend's heavy rain on the return journey from a Kennington gig tomorrow night.
Thunder has been registered in the Guildford area in the past hour.Comment
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It's suddenly really oppressive here, thundery and with forked lightning. It's many years since I saw forked lightning, looks good against the Ochils!Comment
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I bet!Originally posted by LezLee View Post
The storms, really just more developed surface-convected showers in contrast with the great elevated convergence events that flooded parts of northern England a week ago, are organising themselves into bands, converging centripically cross-angled to the isobars into the low centred right over where you are, Lez, so with all this humidity combined with temperatures higher than those in the past associated with these otherwise commonplace weather regimes, there is more to them in terms of lightning, intensity of rainfall and so on. The heavy shower that passed overhead here in London an hour ago has now developed into a thunderstorm taking place off the Thames estuary, which gives an idea how fast things are moving. That's about 40 mph. Dependent of course on traffic conditions, you could have got in a car in London an hour ago, and followed that shower all the way from east London to Southend as you drove along the A14!
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