The Lurker

My direct report is from Hong Kong - she can’t stand “the Chinese” or more realistically the Party. She and her English husband took part in the umbrella marches til someone pointed out that a white man marching was not the most politic thing.

And that is the one we’ve trekked to recently - ironically BiL lives in Seattle WA although he had moved out before the in laws moved to Tyne & Wear

Greetings from a grey and damp Boring Borough. The end of another working week, and for the rest of the household, half term. Mrs Lurker is off to her Mum's tomorrow for a few days so the boys will have to put up with just me although I need to be in the office several days next week so I will have to leave them packed lunches (no doubt they won't be up when I go so maybe breakfasts too!). There are planned roadworks on one of my regular routes - from Younger Lurker's school to Mrs Lurker's school so that I can drop the car off for her. I foresee that all the alternative routes will be snarled up - there are not too many because the effect the A2 and the railway have on north-south travel through the borough. Fortunately, the first planned week of three is next week so I will not need to do that bit of travelling. We've used the car more than usual this year - we normally do around 6,000 miles max, but this year the car has done nearly 7,000. That's the unfortunate need to have travelled to and from Washington more than once over the last 6 weeks or so. Each trip is 600 miles there and back. Still, it's not as though the car is not built for it - it's more suited to the long distance than the usual urban cycle.

The Stake green is a refreshing change. Daft name though. Will the team be referred to as Sauber by the pundits? They started to drift back to it at the end of last season as the Alfa Romeo days came to an end.

If it is any consolation London Bridge to Sidcup takes the same time as it did in the 1870’s - per the timetable in the Middleton Press book for the Dartford loop!

Lord Nelson? I seem to recall reading that it was the most powerful in terms of tractive effort, albeit briefly until the King class emerged.

Now on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/68205305

Actually Bulleid was appointed CME of the Southern in 1937, although that doesn’t diminish the point you were making about the changed conditions postwar.

They’re certainly advertised on the telly though I can’t say I have seen one on the road yet. Mind you, there is a certain sameness to the looks of a lot of electric cars that makes Teslas, Polestars, etc indistinguishable at a glance to the untrained eye.

Greetings from the Boring Borough where today the neighbours moved out after being next door since 1987. They have moved to Chestfield near Whitstable. This week has been a long one. FiL was buried in Spennymoor on Monday and we were up there for a few days before, visiting old haunts like South Shields. Inspired by DaveF I took a few snaps of the beach but sadly for Neil, none of the little railway. They had an 0-4-0 running -smelled like a real steamer.

Yes and yes, sometimes. Explorer was the default on the work pc for many years. It then moved on to Edge, although Chrome is also used a lot. Recently they introduced their own “secure” browser which is basically chrome adapted by group IT.

And the place that first solved how to run Cable Cars (a la San Francisco) round corners IIRC.

Here Comes The War - New Model Army

Catchy name!

It soon leads on to a Biggenden Road. Wikipedia tells me Biggenden is named after a native word for Stringy Bark Tree. However, the "den" village name is typical of Kent and Sussex, particularly the Weald. Halfway up the hill to the village next to one I grew up in is Biggenden Oast https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4489062 So now you know we had stringy bark in Kent...

Managed to fit in a walk through Foots Cray Meadows yesterday after dropping the car off for Mrs Lurker. The frost had started to clear and the Cray was running higher than I expected. Five Arches Bridge in the shots below.

I too remember the rag’n’bone man into the early 80’s at home. and didn’t Whitbread retain horses for central London deliveries from their Chiswell Street brewery until they closed it? I seem to recall that was probably the 90’s but I could be making the date up! Edit / and they rested / retired them at the hop farm at Beltring

Greetings all from a part of the Boring Borough which is still cold and cloudy but which has been snow free. WFH this week as we are between offices which means I seem to have done more ferrying of others while trying to work! Oh and answering the door to deliveries- three calls in a row interrupted today! there was talk of pharmacies earlier - we seem lucky here in that there are two independents on the high street plus a Boots, another on the way down to the station and another down in Foots Cray. And given that I am about 90 seconds Walt from the High Street, that’s pretty good. The High Street itself is the usual mix of charity shops, nail bars and takeaways although the Chinese medicine shops seem to have gone.

When we first moved to Singapore, I was six. We frightened a small lizard in the house so that it left its tail behind (classic defence behaviour). The tail continued to wiggle and I wanted it to take it to school show my new classmates. It was put in a matchbox for me but of course by the morning it had long since stopped wiggling. I assume it went in the bin!

Sorry to hear of the accident Phil, but glad there are no injuries ( although keep an eye on unexpected aches and pains over the next few weeks). The bloke who drove into me a while back claimed both that his car was not on the road and that he’d suffered whiplash; go figure! It still look the insurance people 19 months to sort it out, for reasons I won’t bore you with.

The BIBO ships we part owned have now been scrapped- they became unviable when they needed substantial repairs. We’d only owned 50%. The vast majority of raw and white sugar is shipped in bulk. Although I work in the murky world of tax, I like the fact that the commodities we deal with are familiar and relatively commonplace.

Well today was my last day in the old office before we move to a new (temporary) office near Southwark tube. It’s already starting to look empty. I did manage to take a photo of one of the ship models for JJB and anyone else who likes ships. Unfortunately it’s not a great pic. it shows a now scrapped BIBO ship (bulk in bags out). They were loaded with white sugar and bagged it onboard while chugging round the Med, discharging at various ports. I think there were smaller barges on the Rhine that operated in a similar way at one stage.

The politicians are accountable for the policies- the civil service are responsible for seeing that the policies are implemented and as such can have great influence in how they are implemented- Yes Minister was a comedy but it worked because there were grains of truth in it. Michael Gove is well known for wanting grammar to be taught at school again. Now it is taught to the nth degree at primary schools and in such detail that kids spend so long getting the required grammatical constructs in that they forget to write a good story. Fronted adverbials anyone? I am convinced it is the education establishment’s attempt to make the teaching of grammar so frustrating that it is quietly dropped from the curriculum and we can go back to 70’s when grammar was not taught (at least not to me)

I am not sure it was “only a few years “. There was significant overlap in some areas and even evidence of Neanderthals replacing local archaic sapiens (in the Levant and IIRC in parts of Western Europe). Lastly there is significant DNA evidence of interbreeding- excluding sub-Saharan Africans, modern humans have up to 4% of Neanderthal DNA. having said that the theory may well have weight and have led to local extinction events for isolated groups- and I can’t help feeling isolation was a frequent factor given the difficulties of travel at various stages.

Or is it that the local delivery drivers have been warned what might happen if they fail to deliver with suitable politeness to GDB?