Saturday, April 14, 2012
Trainspotting
Big day yesterday in that we took our first ride on a train since bag day: nothing too grand, just a short hop from Epsom to Stoneleigh and back. Made easier by the recent provision of radar facilities both at Epsom station itself and at the newly renovated John Barras community pub at Stoneleigh, a pub which used to be called 'The Stoneleigh' and is now called 'The Station'. Massive great place. Doing a reasonable trade on Friday afternoon - rather smarter dress than one gets at TB, but not at all clear what the huge amount of upstairs space is used for.
Rest of Stoneleigh Broadway was a bit sad and quiet, but the library was still up and running and we found a café where I took my first bacon sandwich for a while. A bacon sandwich which appeared to have been made out of bread which had been sliced on the premises, rather than the ready sliced white which is more usually used for the purpose.
The only downer was that somewhere along the line I managed to lose my walking stick. Only a prop at the moment but I do actually use it on occasion. Sturdy bent wood job probably bought for a quid at a car booter. Would also be useful for seeing off dogs and muggers. Bought new, I suspect I would have to pay a tenner or more, so next week's project is to tour suitable charity shops for a more modestly priced replacement.
More down back home when I took a look at the Guardian, to find that it is still found necessary to be dragging over the disaster at the Hillsborough football stadium, more than 20 years ago. I grant that there may be issues which have not been dealt with, but it is still depressing that we have been printing money for lawyers for all this time without an end in sight. As a nation we do seem to be getting into this sort of thing. Can't just settle for a cock-up and move on; we have to agonise endlessly, apportioning blame & punishment.
And then there was the rather grubby business of our sending people back to the late Colonel Gaddafi to be tortured in Tripoli. With one Mark Allen, a former career civil servant, in rather an odd role.
PS: earlier in the day, buying kippers at Waitrose, found that the fag shelves were now covered up by sliding doors. The sort of thing you might have knocked up for your kitchen. I wonder by virtue of what regulation the government is able to interfere in this matter? The no-smoking legislation that I have seen, tacked onto some health act in 2006, covers smoking, smoke free premises, vehicles & places and the age of smoking. Nothing that I could see about display of smokables. Perhaps there is some enabling act - along the lines of that which Hitler got passed very early in his reign, enabling him to decree into law anything that took his fancy, without having to trouble the legislature. According to Simon Jenkins (in the course of the same article that told us about the Libyan business) we have one such enabling act to support the forces of law and order in their fight against terrorism, an act which makes all kinds of unlikely activity into terrorism. Needless to say, the forces of law and order will only invoke the act when they are dealing with real terrorism.
Rest of Stoneleigh Broadway was a bit sad and quiet, but the library was still up and running and we found a café where I took my first bacon sandwich for a while. A bacon sandwich which appeared to have been made out of bread which had been sliced on the premises, rather than the ready sliced white which is more usually used for the purpose.
The only downer was that somewhere along the line I managed to lose my walking stick. Only a prop at the moment but I do actually use it on occasion. Sturdy bent wood job probably bought for a quid at a car booter. Would also be useful for seeing off dogs and muggers. Bought new, I suspect I would have to pay a tenner or more, so next week's project is to tour suitable charity shops for a more modestly priced replacement.
More down back home when I took a look at the Guardian, to find that it is still found necessary to be dragging over the disaster at the Hillsborough football stadium, more than 20 years ago. I grant that there may be issues which have not been dealt with, but it is still depressing that we have been printing money for lawyers for all this time without an end in sight. As a nation we do seem to be getting into this sort of thing. Can't just settle for a cock-up and move on; we have to agonise endlessly, apportioning blame & punishment.
And then there was the rather grubby business of our sending people back to the late Colonel Gaddafi to be tortured in Tripoli. With one Mark Allen, a former career civil servant, in rather an odd role.
PS: earlier in the day, buying kippers at Waitrose, found that the fag shelves were now covered up by sliding doors. The sort of thing you might have knocked up for your kitchen. I wonder by virtue of what regulation the government is able to interfere in this matter? The no-smoking legislation that I have seen, tacked onto some health act in 2006, covers smoking, smoke free premises, vehicles & places and the age of smoking. Nothing that I could see about display of smokables. Perhaps there is some enabling act - along the lines of that which Hitler got passed very early in his reign, enabling him to decree into law anything that took his fancy, without having to trouble the legislature. According to Simon Jenkins (in the course of the same article that told us about the Libyan business) we have one such enabling act to support the forces of law and order in their fight against terrorism, an act which makes all kinds of unlikely activity into terrorism. Needless to say, the forces of law and order will only invoke the act when they are dealing with real terrorism.
# posted by Jim @ 2:19 AM 
