Is it just me?

[APOLLO]

Commuting in/out of London is something you can either take or you can't. I'd rather not commute, but I really don't mind it and the work/life balance of living in Milton Keynes and working in London is one I'm happy with. I'm from oop North myself, that big North of Lancashire, and people from back home think I'm a lunatic for living and working down here but I like it. However I can see why others wouldn't. I love London, it's a great walking city and I just take it for granted that I walk through Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, down the Mall, Whitehall, past St. Pauls, past Parliament, Tower Bridge etc so frequently.

 

I have always liked visiting London, especially the early 70's visiting the sheds at Finsbury Park etc (photos on my sites below). It's a fantastic city for it's history, museums culture etc. My sister lived in Twickenham back then, and was a base for my many weekend visits, all by train. Euston was new and fantastic, and we got electric trains direct to there back in 1973/74. Of course things have changed. but it's the rate of change that hits me these days, and down in London that rate seems frenetic.

 

I couldn't live there, or indeed in any city. I did commute to college back in those days, Wigan to Liverpool (2 car DMU always packed, 10 intermediate stops) then to Manchester (6 car express DMU non stop to Salford / Man Vic) . I mention these as the Liverpool commute was an absolute pain, the Southport - Wigan - Salford - Manchester 6 car DMU express a pleasure. A lot does depend on the quality of your commute.

 

I like to take a walk from home  to Haigh Hall, our local country park. On a nice clear day you can see the Peak District hills, North Wales and just about make out the Lake District mountains. Pendle Hill and the West Pennine moors are quite nearby also - all are within an hour or so's drive away. Another reason for me to avoid the crowded London and the S.E.

 

Brit15

[meil]

Marie Curie was so radioactive that she was buried in a lead lined coffin, to eliminate the radiation hazard to the other corpses in the cemetery...

This often stated "fact" is not correct. Her remains have been tested and found to be no more radioactive than background. She died of leukemia but the source of the ionizing radiation that probably caused it was more than likely to have been the work she did with the X-ray machines that she operated at the field hospitals during the first world war.

[kevinlms]

Always eat when you are weary,

Always drink when you are dry.

Always sleep when you are weary,

Don't stop breathing or you'll die

 

Sung to 'What a friend we have in Jesus'

In very hot weather, if you wait until your thirsty, its too late as you are already dehydrated!

[PatB]

It's all a matter of odds. You can adjust them a bit, maybe, but you can still end up  throwing a seven thanks to some unknown factor.  Males on both sides of my family aren't notable for their longevity, for example, but most have been smokers. I've been a smoker (but haven't for the last 20+ years) and am currently significantly overweight, though not particularly sedentary, so might go early from something else. I've also spent many years riding motorcycles in a manner that might be described as "not sensible" and got away with it (just), but my diet is fairly reasonable (not much junk, not a huge amount of sugar, limited meat; I do confess to cheese addiction though ). I'm now at an age where I find I'm fairly fatalistic about things, aided by watching various ostensibly "healthier" contemporaries suffer at least as high a rate of health problems as I seem to. I might last as well as my one surviving uncle, who's recently made it to the upper side of 80,or I might keel over tomorrow. No point worrying about it.

 

Something I did notice, when I still worked in the corporate world, was the amount of time lost due to injuries sustained during supposedly "healthy" activities. Contact sports and various cycling disciplines were the main offenders. Indeed, in spite of having spent my adult life around motorcycles, I never came across so many people with bits of metal in them until I came to Australia and started working with significant numbers of people who'd played competitive sport. Not pros though, just Sunday league/recreational stuff.

 

So, yes, coffee's probably bad for you in excess. So are most things. I'd be more worried about things I can't really control as an individual. Urban air quality, for example. Without the option of avoiding cities and/or stopping breathing, a huge proportion of the population are constantly exposed to a horrible cocktail of toxins.  Most will get away with it. Enough, at least, that we continue to regard living in such an environment as "normal".

[ejstubbs]

if you wait until your thirsty, its too late as you are already dehydrated!

 

Another myth: Five health myths reinvestigated - second one down, after five portions of fruit & veg.

Edited April 19, 2018 by ejstubbs

[Wickham Green]

I've just heard a report on the PM programme (Radio 4) on the cancer causing properties of coffee. A British oncologist ridiculed this, commenting that you were more likely to be hit by a car 'or a tube train.'

 

I just had a vision of such a train entering a station, jumping on to the platform and chasing away prospective passengers!

Listen to the announcements at any station nowadays and - often as not - they'll tell you what the next train 'on' platform so and so is ....................... this is getting so 'normal' that there's a caption in the new 'BackTrack' showing an A4 arriving at Kings Cross with exactly such an ( imaginary ) announcement. { and I'm pretty sure we were savvy enough in those days that we didn't need to be told it was London Kings Cross }

[Dunsignalling]

Commuting in/out of London is something you can either take or you can't. I'd rather not commute, but I really don't mind it and the work/life balance of living in Milton Keynes and working in London is one I'm happy with. I'm from oop North myself, that big North of Lancashire, and people from back home think I'm a lunatic for living and working down here but I like it. However I can see why others wouldn't. I love London, it's a great walking city and I just take it for granted that I walk through Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, down the Mall, Whitehall, past St. Pauls, past Parliament, Tower Bridge etc so frequently.

 

Almost all my visits to the capital in the last ten years have been purely to get from one main line terminus to another or Paddington to Heathrow.

 

I haven't even bothered with the show at Ally Pally since 2011.

 

Most of the "sights" have been seen and I have no desire to breathe any more of the vile muck that passes for air in London than is absolutely necessary by making repeat visits.

 

John

[Oldddudders]

Listen to the announcements at any station nowadays and - often as not - they'll tell you what the next train 'on' platform so and so is ....................... this is getting so 'normal' that there's a caption in the new 'BackTrack' showing an A4 arriving at Kings Cross with exactly such an ( imaginary ) announcement. { and I'm pretty sure we were savvy enough in those days that we didn't need to be told it was London Kings Cross }

 

I cannot imagine any other way of announcing a platform. I believe "at" is now sometimes heard, but in my railway years, including spells in the station control rooms at London Bridge, Cannon St and Charing Cross, not to mention London Bridge signalbox and Croydon Control,"on" was the convention. 

 

I appreciate usages change, as in the current "bored of" instead of "bored with", but anyone announcing "on platform X" is in tune with my recollections back to the '60s. 

[The Stationmaster]

Something I find annoying is that most medical stories express risk in terms of relative risk rather than absolute risk. Eating toast results in you being three times more likely to catch a disease you've never heard of than if you don't eat toast. And if you look at absolute risk three times a number which is so trivial you'd consider it to be effectively zero in most applications is still a number which is so trivial you'd consider it to be effectively zero. There is a whole cottage industry promoting health scare stories, health fads etc. I'm not down playing the importance of looking after your health, but if you avoid smoking, eat a reasonably balanced diet, are not a complete couch potato and have access to clean water then you're doing pretty much what you need to do to avoid the more preventable ways of dying early.

 

Agree absolutely.  because of my cholesterol level (I can't take statins) I was told last year by a practice nurse that I have 'an x% greater chance of dieing' to which I replied that it had long been my understanding that, like everybody else, I have a 100% chance of dieing come what may.  The warning was then changed to 'dieing prematurely' but that appeared to be equally spurious because it can be no more than an extrapolation of data from historic death rates rather than an accurate forecast for anybody.

 

All a matter of lies, damned lies, and statistics unless - as you say - something can be expressed as an absolute risk.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The real problem - from a medical profession point of view - is that while the readily identifiable risks may be advised against, there is as yet no measure of the specific effect likely to occur to any given individual exposed to those risk factors.

 

The famous case of Churchill undertaking five years in a moderately stressful job at a time of life when most of us think of slowing down, and subsisting largely on brandy and champagne throughout, and still reaching a ripe old age; which most of his contemporaries behaving sensibly and moderately did not. Known a 22 year old man, fit and healthy, simply die: and the most medical science could come up with was that 'something' had just stopped working (they were at something of a disadvantage in that he was over two days dead before the body was found after the weekend). Most of my mega fit and sporting type contemporaries are now lurching about like drunken sailors due to knackered hips, knees and ankles, except for a couple whose joints are stil in perfect fettle despite in one case regular indulgence in 'iron man' type events. Seen slim, outwardly healthy and active women die abruptly of heart failure in early middle age, while the two grossly fat chaps I know are still firing on all cylinders nearing 70 despite a total commitment to the couch potato lifestyle with maximum processed food intake.

[pH]

One of the below-ground rapid transit stations here has a long escalator to the surface. I was going up it one day, standing on the right, behind on old guy (i.e. older than me). There was a steady stream of younger persons striding up past us on the left. He watched them going past, then announced, to nobody in particular, "Yeah, you're going to be really fit when you die!".

[Barry O]

As my late grandma always used to say " you are born, love your life and then die...generally from shortage of breath"

And the station announcers in Leeds still say "the train arriving in platform xx" as well as "the next train to depart from Platformxx is"
But it's all recorded now...it used to be some very nice ladies with beautiful voices in perfect English..technology destroying the soul of passengers..

Edited April 29, 2018 by Barry O