Castle Aching

[Nearholmer]

25 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

And, remember, if you go down to the woods today, you'll be filmed by a police drone and fined.   

But that’s OK, because they will charge you under a completely irrelevant part of the Act (Section 97 Suppression of Bovine TB, or the like), and you will subsequently get away Scot free, although you almost certainly did commit a crime, just not the one they charged you with.

 

Anyway ........ etiquette varies here: Waitrose involves a very long queue with bored and very tense-Looking people at >2m spacing; the co-op involves no meaningful SD whatsoever, so that’s the last time I’m going near the place.

 

Masks are reserved for armed robbers and a couple of teenagers who think the whole thing is a really good laugh, thereby annoying all the terrified over 50s shopping for their cloistered parents.

 

Path etiquette is a bit random, and can involve the need to cycle in the hedge to avoid people who in insist on occupying mid-path with themselves and ten labradors, but that is as normal really.

[runs as required]

14 minutes ago, ChrisN said:

When we go down to the woods for our daily walk, we have a forest near us, a royal one at that ...

In your Cambrian 'neck of the woods', wood'nt that have been sent packing by Welsh Nats (as in Macbeth)?

[Nearholmer]

The Man Who Got Hold Of The Wrong End Of The Stick.

 

 

[webbcompound]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Not sure how he can get blood on the middle bit of his rapier but not the end though

[Nearholmer]

Poor shaving technique.

 

You only have to look at that moustache.

[St Enodoc]

53 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The Man Who Got Hold Of The Wrong End Of The Stick.

 

 

Must've been before he started building locos for Pendon.

[RedGemAlchemist]

14 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Disenchantment reference? Don't see that often.

 

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

If ever I can get to the Bure Valley railway again, I'll have to get off there and (carefully) have  a look over that cliff.

The answer to what's over there? From experience, not much.

 

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

"Welcome to Norfolk - The End of the World is Nigh", I can just see that on a road sign.

Go to Norwich on any given Sunday and you'll definitely see at least one sign with the latter half of the quotation hung around the neck of some random old man.

 

8 hours ago, Annie said:

I'm in love.  So utterly perfect.  Will I be able to create such beauty with my own Norfolk layout.  Alas I will ever be fated to fall short of such perfection.

Why do you think I love living in this part of the country so much? And alas, I shall be fated to the same inability to capture the true feel of Norfolk I fear.

[Nearholmer]

6 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

latter half of the quotation hung around the neck of some random old man.

Shortened these days to three fatal letters, I’m afraid.

[Edwardian]

12 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Disenchantment reference? Don't see that often.

 

Indeed, and, no, you don't

 

12 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

The answer to what's over there? From experience, not much.

 

Go to Norwich on any given Sunday and you'll definitely see at least one sign with the latter half of the quotation hung around the neck of some random old man.

 

Presumably not any more.

 

12 minutes ago, RedGemAlchemist said:

Why do you think I love living in this part of the country so much? And alas, I shall be fated to the same inability to capture the true feel of Norfolk I fear.

 

Few parts of the country elicit such a strong emotional response. The plump hills of Devon did it to me as a child, and I am, as you know in thrall to the wild beauty of the North, and for me the Norfolk countryside is also one of those landscapes.   

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Few parts of the country elicit such a strong emotional response. 

 

I'm sure we all have our own:

 

 

It looks increasingly unlikely that we'll be able to get there for our fortnight this August.

[Nearholmer]

Yep, nearly forty years out of the area that I was ‘born and bred’ in, and still that looks how countryside ought to look, and everywhere else looks faintly as if it needs to be altered.

 

I’ve often thought that refugees must suffer terribly from this, on top of all the more practical difficulties.

 

The Germans even have a specific word for it, although I’ve forgotten what it is.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Yep, nearly forty years out of the area that I was ‘born and bred’ in.,  ......

 

The Germans even have a specific word for it, although I’ve forgotten what it is.

 

 

 

Poland

[St Enodoc]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Yep, nearly forty years out of the area that I was ‘born and bred’ in, and still that looks how countryside ought to look, and everywhere else looks faintly as if it needs to be altered.

 

I’ve often thought that refugees must suffer terribly from this, on top of all the more practical difficulties.

 

The Germans even have a specific word for it, although I’ve forgotten what it is.

 

 

Heimweh? Heimatschmerzen?

[Tom Burnham]

21 hours ago, Northroader said:

And here’s a map for Mr. Schooner,

 

 

The sidings north of the Victoria Dock became the site of the Excel exhibition centre (now Nightingale hospital).  There's a DLR line roughly along the alignment of the Silvertown Tramway.  Part of the North Woolwich branch (including the Connaught Tunnel beneath the link from the Victoria to the Albert Dock) have been reused for Crossrail.  Photo of the PLA railway's Connaught swing bridge (above the tunnel) in 1971 attached, when it was disused but still intact.  If you stand there now (well, a few weeks ago) you can see planes at London City Airport.

[Nearholmer]

25 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Heimatschmerzen

It’s more about longing than sickness, and it’s specific to landscape rather than home ...... b irritating, but it will come back!

 

Landsehnsucht maybe? That conveys longing and nostalgia.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

33 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Photo of the PLA railway's Connaught swing bridge (above the tunnel) in 1971 attached, when it was disused but still intact.  

 

Is that PLA (or precursor) signalling equipment, or the signalling equipment of a pre-Grouping company - NLR or GER? - from whom the PLA took over this section of line?

[Nearholmer]

the Silvertown Tramway followed the old course of the ‘main line’ to North Woolwich, which was diverted northwards when the docks were built, and I think was always “railway”, while the “dock” railways branched off it.

 

I explored it in the mid/late 70s, when IIRC it was still being used to serve the sugar refinery and one or two other near-dead-looking industries.

 

Im pretty sure the signals in that photo are PLA - they operated passenger trains in the area at one stage IIRC. Gallions Wharf, now DLR, was a PLA station, I think, if in a slightly different place. I recall there being a pub marooned in the middle of miles of dereliction there when JLE was built.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Mornin' All

 

I hope everyone is safe and well.

 

I went out yesterday for 'essential supplies'; no loo rolls, but wine at least, so I can now face Isolation and Death with equanimity.

 

My previous supply run had been a week ago to the big Sainsbury's in Darlington, as then I'd also needed fuel.  I liberated a pair of disposable gloves from the garage forecourt and headed in.  Wide aisles aided social distancing.  There were no loo rolls and very little wine.  I found that most fellow shoppers were covering their faces with scarves, so I felt a little under-dressed as I skipped around the aisles singing Home in Pasadena softly to myself. I tell you, that song's infectious.

 

This week, heading into Barney Morrisons, I didn't sing, but raffishly sported a red scarf around my face, only to find that Apocalypse Etiquette was different in Barney from Darlo.  Upon being ushered into to the relatively cramped interior, no masks or scarves were in evidence at all, just me.  I felt like the Masked Avenger, comically over-dressed. 

 

So, as with President Trump; to mask, or not to mask, that is the question.  Well, I think on balance, and taking into account that, unlike the present occupant of the Oval Office, I lack the protection from infection afforded by a "resolute desk" (can I have heard that right ?!?) , I will continue to appear in public as the masked Scarlet Avenger (pace Victor Meldrew).  That, and the fact that I'm not a gibbering orange man-baby moron, of course. 

 

What, I wonder, is Apocalypse Etiquette in your neck of the woods?

 

And, remember, if you go down to the woods today, you'll be filmed by a police drone and fined.   

 

To provide some historical perspective, US presidential incumbents during Peak Beard, Rutherford B Hayes, James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison, all wore full beards. So, by way of a salutary warning of what can happen if you don't stay safely behind a Resolute Desk, for Beard of the Day, I offer you James A Garfield, 20th president of the US ...

 

 

 

You could hide a cat in that!

 

Shopping etiquette in these parts runs to gloves of all sorts, from hairy-palmed gardening gloves through ones nicked from the kitchen sink, to those that look like they were nicked from the local hospital, probably at the same time they nicked the hand sanitiser from the end of the bed...

 

One thing I've noticed is that no one has a clue about 2 metres.  Some will keep shuffling up until they're literally breathing down your neck, others seem to think that it must mean "within shouting distance" for someone with very good hearing. Perhaps an ultrasonic distance measuring gadget might be a good idea?

 

[Tom Burnham]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Is that PLA (or precursor) signalling equipment, or the signalling equipment of a pre-Grouping company - NLR or GER? - from whom the PLA took over this section of line?

It was the second iteration of the North Woolwich branch of Great Eastern (after the original alignment had been cut by the Victoria Dock entry from the Thames) that had a surface route at this point.  It was transferred to the Dock Company in exchange for them building the Connaught tunnel in 1880, but the GER retained running powers over the swing bridge for use in an emergency or for particularly heavy goods trains.  According to the GERS booklet "Return to North Woolwich" (1987), this was Swing Bridge No 2 signalbox, No 1 box on the north side of the bridge was closed in the mid-1930s.  "The Docks companies installed signals of GER pattern, and these lasted until the PLA railways were closed.  They were at first gas-lit, but were later converted to electricity."  Comparing this photo with the 1959 photo in the booklet, the characteristic signal finials had disappeared by 1970.  The signals would look much more GER if they still had the finials.

[Regularity]

32 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s more about longing than sickness, and it’s specific to landscape rather than home ...... b irritating, but it will come back!

Whilst looking for this, I came across “Torschlusspanik”, the fear that time is running out and important opportunities are running away. (Literally, fear of the gate closing.)

 

Fernweh? The desire to be somewhere else?

[RedGemAlchemist]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm sure we all have our own:

 

 

It looks increasingly unlikely that we'll be able to get there for our fortnight this August.

I can relate. My family's annual trip to our holiday flat in Corfu has had to be cancelled.

 

[Regularity]

57 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s more about longing than sickness, and it’s specific to landscape rather than home ...... b irritating, but it will come back!

 

Landsehnsucht maybe? That conveys longing and nostalgia.

 

 

Heimatverbunden?

[Annie]

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

The sidings north of the Victoria Dock became the site of the Excel exhibition centre (now Nightingale hospital).  There's a DLR line roughly along the alignment of the Silvertown Tramway.  Part of the North Woolwich branch (including the Connaught Tunnel beneath the link from the Victoria to the Albert Dock) have been reused for Crossrail.  Photo of the PLA railway's Connaught swing bridge (above the tunnel) in 1971 attached, when it was disused but still intact.  If you stand there now (well, a few weeks ago) you can see planes at London City Airport.

Oh I do love that signal, - it is beautiful.  No one makes GER signals for the Trainz simulator and now that I've seen that signal all other kinds will seem like something that is of a lesser kind and only tawdry placeholders by comparison.

[Nearholmer]

Thinking about it, there is probably a compound word to describe every subtle variation of every psychological state ....... I’m going through a short phase of kinderschwerzulieben just now, because their favoured way of relieving lockdown fever is to needle one another mercilessly.

[Donw]

Another very humerous post from Edwardian. The local shops have adopted social distancing. It doesn't help when the Co-op and the Farm Shop have queues which meet if there are too many. Flour, Pasta, rice and porridge are all in very short supply the first two haven't been in the local shops  for weeks. The Tesco delivery did bring some white flour must have been timed just right. It is difficult getting slots for delivery and you can only order things on the shelves at the time of ordering but only get what is there when they make the order up. So the stuff you have ordered has run out again and the supplies that have just come in are out of your reach.  Somewhat surprisingly we are managing pretty well by strategic raids on the local stores as well as the deliveries.

The social distancing out and about is another matter, the number of people walking or running up and down our road has increased considerably. We would normally go onto the quantocks about 5 -10mins away half the time but driving there in our only vehicle a motorhome might be a red rag to an officious copper. It would enable us to keep well away from others but it seems safer to risk the local walks.  It is a problem yesterday a runner came by much to close just off the narrow pavement too quick to take avoiding action but he was puffing away probably distributing any germs far and wide. This morning at one point there was a young couple sat on the side of the path. You might think they would have a care for themselves and chosen a better spot.  A diversion into the field was needed. I have also seen three neighbours one in his 70s with a disabled wife to look after and another undergoing treatment for Cancer far too close and nattering away for at least 10 mins. We gave them a wide berth just calling out good morning. It will probably need a local death to jolt people by which time it may be too late and it is rife in the local community.

However the last couple of days the wind has lost its bite and it has been very pleasant working out in the garden with a big garden we are well away from the neighbours so no big worries there. 

Take care all of you.

 

Don