How can I not help you 2 - The Blind and the Stupid

There’s a lot of bad customer service around. I even write about it every now and then. But I don’t think I can beat this. This story, printed in the Belfast Telegraph and filched by me without their permission, features my daughter, so obviously I’m not without a bit of bias with my opinions. But read the article and think on. And wonder how the person who “served” my daughter can do their job and sleep well after each day. The idiot.

For anyone who is blind or knows someone who is, then they will be familiar with the knowledge and having one’s cane lost, trampled on by a careless member of the public or just going knackered on you through wear and tear, is not just a matter of inconvenience, but literally of life of death. Their justification is that if they were to sell Carly a cane of the wrong size, she tripped (or whatever) and became injured and could/would sue them is plainly more important to them than allowing someone who is obviously blind to go wandering in the streets without any kind of symbolic protection let alone an essential guiding tool, when they plainly have the power to avoid that situation – and abuse it.

Some jobsworth has really had an attack of the stupids. Or can’tbearseds.

They really should not be doing their job as they plainly lack any sense of decency and humanity.

My former employer is truly going to pot when it puts their own liability over the real risk of a human being – someone, let’s remind ourselves, who they are in the unique position to serve, then don’t.

Can you imagine this scenario?:

"I'd like to buy a knife - a big one".
"Can't. You might use it to stab someone".
"But I'm a chef. I need it for my job".
"Can you prove you're a chef"?
"Yes, the big white chef's hat I'm wearing...".
"Is that the best you can do? Might be a fancy dress hat for all I know".
"Unlikely. Ha ha. Well..here's my work badge with my restaurant's name printed on it, and my job title, Head Chef, and a wee photo".
"Sorry, still can't sell you one. And the man on the photo clearly has a moustache, whereas you...sir...don't".
"It was a fashion faux pas I'm afraid. Can't you see the little blood stain on my shirt".
"Oooh, you don't want to mention that to PC Plod. It might be kiddie blood. You can do down for that".
"It's from a dead cow which I cut up earlier. So you won't sell me a knife, even though I can see a big rack of Sabatiers over there".
"No, well now you come to mention it, yes I could, but you'll need to show me the knife you used".
"Difficult. It broke - that's why I'm here".
"But without your old broken knife as evidence, I can't, no, won't sell you a replacement. You might use it stab a poor innocent child, then come back and blame me for selling it to you. It's a knife-for-knife situation only I'm afraid".


and blah, blah, blah

Here's the article. (Full name of my daughter curtailed by me).

"I’m blind, but I can't get a white stick"

RNIB centre won’t sell Carly a new cane
Friday, May 30, 2008
By Emily Moulton
Blind people in Northern Ireland cannot buy white canes from the province's only resource centre because the charity does not provide training for its staff, the Belfast Telegraph has learned.
The revelation came to light after Ulster-born woman Carly M (21), who lost her cane en route to the airport from her home in Oxfordshire, tried to purchase a new one from the Royal National Institute of the Blind centre in Belfast earlier this week.
Miss M, who was born with a genetic condition called Leibers Congenital Amaurosis which made her blind, said she was told by staff at the centre that they could not sell her a cane unless she could provide proof of her old one.
She also claimed that after she explained how she lost her "stick" and what its measurements were, they still refused to sell her one saying it was not their "policy".

The RNIB is the only organisation which provides support for blind and partially sighted people in Northern Ireland. On its website it says its resource centre is where people "can try out or purchase the most cutting edge access technology, everyday living products, and a wide range of specialist equipment for blind and partially sighted people".

Miss M said she was shocked that she could not buy a cane which, she said, is essential for her mobility.
The 21-year-old, who had to leave Northern Ireland five years ago so she could study physiotherapy, usually has a guide dog but was unable to bring it with her on her visit back to Craigavon.

She explained she used her "stick" to navigate when she was travelling and was a little distressed when she discovered she had lost it — but thought she would be fine once she arrived because she would just be able to buy a new one.
"I just could not believe they could not sell me a stick," she said. "When I told them that I had lost it on my way over from England they said the only way they could get me one was if I showed them my old one. After I explained again and told them the measurements of my old cane they then said they did not have any.
"These people then said they could not sell me one because it was their company policy and said if they sold me one and it was the wrong measurements and I had an accident they would be liable.

"I have never been aware of any policy which says you can not sell a blind person a cane if they don't have their old one. When I got mine I just walked into the centre in London and they found me one. I just couldn't believe it. They were happy for me to leave and travel on my own unaided but they were not happy to risk selling me a stick which might have been two or three centimetres different."
Martin Walls, spokesman for the RNIB in Northern Ireland, said staff at the centre were unable to sell her a walking cane was because they lacked training — but in light of this issue the organisation was now re-looking at its policy.
"For RNIB, the safety of blind and partially sighted people using our products is a priority. We consider that mobility training is key to using a cane safely and RNIB does not currently provide this training in Northern Ireland.

"We don't therefore stock canes for sale in the resource centre and have to order in replacements where RNIB has supplied the original cane. We will however be looking at our policy in light of this as the needs of customers are paramount."

Artful combination

Nearly forgot to blog this diamond of this shop sign spotted on East Street, Barking. I'd never have considered buying a mobile contract with my duvet. Just think! One stop shopping. Ooooh-er.

DaggersDukc's Eats: Oh Vesuvio, Upminster, Essex

I haven't written up a restaurant review in some time, but the Access Eat blog has inspired me. So here goes with a slab of suburban eating.

Mrs D-D and travelled to nearby Upminster last Saturday for something to chow down on after spending a large chunk of the day fixing up my boss's home internet connection. Upminster, literally at the end of the line (the green one on the tube map), may not be the first place a Londoner would think of when going out for a night's grazing, but is becoming more popular and could soon rival Hornchurch - again, not a place that regularly jumps out as restaurant capital of London but well established as local gem in East London amongst a tundra of towns featuring little more than restaurant mediocrity. Trundling along Corbets Tey Road, and finding our usual Italian choice, Prezzo, already fully booked, we moved on to a place we'd passed on by before - Oh Vesuvio.

Quite a pleasant meal awaited us. Our friendly waiter made a special effort to fit us in - the place was bursting, as it turned out, justifiably so. Decor is dark, but homely and has the feel of an established local restaurant - its signage suggests it may be been here since the 60s.

The menu comprised the usual staple of Italian menus we've known in England for decades with pasta, meat and fish dishes being the order of the day, with rich wine based sauces being represented well. I started with smoked salmon cones loaded with prawn cocktail, which, with lemon juice sprinkled over it, burst out with a cartoon-y flavour and got a full 10/10. I then had steak with marsala wine sauce which was again brimming with flavour and which I gave 8/10 - large portion of perfectly cooked steak too. Mrs D-D's main was beef canneloni which she rated as 8/10.

For dessert, I had a rather nice, though small, home-made Tiramisu, which at least tasted home-made and which I'd have given 8/10 had it been a little more generous in portion.

Summing up, Oh Vesuvio is a pleasant, somewhat conservative local Italian. The kind of place you could happily take a business client for dinner. The average age of the clientele was around 50, so perhaps not the coolest joint in town, but a highly satisfying one, at least as far as their food and helpful service goes. Average prices were: £5 per starter, £10-15 main course, and £4.50 for dessert.

Service: 8/10
Food: 8/10
Value: 7/10 (prices were higher than average for the area)

Oh Vesuvio: 101 Corbets Tey Road, Upminster, Essex


My dessert - a nice little touch

Great Lives, Radio 4: Ian Curtis of Joy Division

For the last week or so, I've kept hearing trails on Radio 4 for a program called Great Lives, this week featuring the life of Ian Curtis of Joy Division. I've not really been a great JD or New Order fan (though like many I thought Blue Monday was a masterwork) and I think the lyrics in Love Will Tear Us Apart are probably some of the most emotionally charged to have graced a pop record. I'm sure any decent appreciator of poetry might disagree, but I'm more of a pop lover than a poet.

My appetite was whetted though and it was worth firing up the BBC iPlayer just to hear an unreleased version of LWTUA played on plaintive reverb-heavy piano, and sung by Mr Curtis through a pitch-shifter or vocoder - I couldn't tell with. This version, which appears about half way through the program, has all the lonesome qualities of a computer calling out to a silent, post-apocalyptic world. Fractured, damaged, almost dead, but with just enough charge to cry out its last - a digital vocalisation is it is putting all its effort into, knowing that it too will be finito soon.

The show was interesting in its own right - we get to hear about the two faces of Ian Curtis, public and private. For that 1 minute excerpt of song, it is worth seeking out the shows, which will be on iPlayer for the next few days, and no doubt will make occasional re-appearances in the BBC's archive music documentaries so is likely to pop up sporadically on iPlayer.

An interesting source of some cover versions is:

http://coverlover.vox.com/library/post/love-will-tear-us-apart.html

Accessible eating blog

A quite interesting blog comes from Graham, who is a big, bad blind eater extraordinaire. This boy loves eating and writing his experiences after doing so. And he generally grubs down in the kind of places many Londoners eat: cheap, local restaurants and cafes. He's stone blind too, so his comments aren't the usual critiques, but concentrate on how helpful staff are when it comes to reading menus, whether speaking English is an issue and whether, in his opinion, packet sauces have been used.

His Access Eat blog is here:

http://access-eat.blogspot.com

First barbie of the year

My bro-in-law unhooked his chefs whites and made one heck of a barbie in our dripping back garden yesterday. Burgers, tuna steak, haddock, mackerel, couscous stuffed peppers... and so on to gluttony and happy food related death. Shame we couldn't barbecue the Thickie. She would have been quite tender and tasty as the 'cue wasn't too keen to light. Covered in sweet chilli sauce, her meat would have been a rare and fragrant treat.

Slow cooked dog. Good enough for Korea, good enough for me.

The sound of the draburbs

My boss, who is moving to Dagenham (out of choice), has christened it “The Drabbest ‘Burb”.

I can’t think of anything that could possibly contradict this description. Admittedly, in its favour, there are the tube stations, for easy exit, it features numerous fast food outlets (most with home delivery and mainly decent without troubling the word “gourmet”) and there are few rather nice parks, Parsloes and the un-aptly named Central Park (inaccurate for the fact that it lies to the north east of the town, AND is about as far as its more famous counterpart as you can possibly get). And it has been a safe enough place for us to reside for the last eight years.

My boss, on landing there for the first time, also described it as “an area without stimulation”.

Can anyone knowing the UK capital well come up with a more drab ‘burb? Cos I grew up in suburban west and have lived in southeast and inner east London and I can’t think of anywhere – least of all a whole town - that’s drabber. Oddly enough though, I do rather like living there. Maybe I reflect the town as much as it reflects me.

TV programs and foreign dubbing. How to please no-one

So, we find a Freeview box which manages to access and output the Audio Described audio track available on British TV. Great.

Then we find it in Aldi for £39 and don't end up paying the Dick Turpin inspired price charged by RNIB (£89). Great.

Then we plug it in and it all works finely and dandily. Great.

And when the audio-d happens it is fun and really, really great. Great.

All great, fab, cool and hip If you don't own a blind wifey or can actually follow any film which runs at anything faster than Brokeback Mountain, you won't realise how non-ironic I'm being here.

So, armed with your electronic joybox, you turn on a program without audio description. Nothing new under the sun there then. Not great, but what we've experienced since the dawn of TV so no reason for boo hoo hooing. There will be more A/D coming along soon if the media slaves remember they are dealing with a "disabled" audience who aren't all planted in wheelchairs or stuck with ear-trumpets. Stick wavers and dog-shaggers exist and are cooking in the unappertising stewpot of "disabled" punters who rather inconveniently won't go off the pub for an uber-bender and just die. Anyway, I ranteth somewhat excessively. (But its my blog so ner ner na-ner ner).

I can only assume them that there is a whole jungle's-worth of happily brainless media-chimps that haven't yet been trained in the "wake up and smell the coffee" philosophy of programme making. (I will do this, by the way, for a small consultancy fee. I like the small of the gravy pouring off this particular traiin).

You watch a programme (in this case "I am the Elephant Man", about a Chinese geezer with elephantistic tendancies, or whatever technical term which accurately describe his mis-shapeness. Large chunks of the program contain dialogue in Chinese, which sort of makes sense as it is the Elephant Man and his family doing much of the talking.

So, how to blindos fare compared to our mutt 'n' "pals" in the disab scene? Badly.

Deaf person switches on subtitles and has everything subtitled. The Chinese translation either comes up as an English voiceover - which is subtitled, OR a load of white subtitltes appearing for the benefit of all viewers who don't understand Cantonese.

Its the OR that matters.

Since there is no audio description for this program, if you press the A/D button on the Freeview remote, without much surprise, nothing happens.

So...what you get, is a program where half the Chinese is translated into English and spoken by a translator. And half the of the Chinese being subtitled (which benefits everyone - except the blind person who doesn't get a translation of any description.

It just so happens, in this case, that the hero of the programme, the Elephant Man himself, becomes silent to a blind person. Because, although a deaf person gets the benefit of added subtitles, plus the added-in subs for the benefit of the great unwashed, a blind person gets nothing but pure Cantonese.

I have two solutions - and for once, coming from me, they aren't even the slightest bit sarcastic.

1. All TV producers and program makers should agree that having three quarters of a program made watchable, or indeed, listenable, means that actually, in reality, the whole of the program becomes pointless. Either translate all of the non-English segments of the programme with an interpreter, or put a full A/D soundtrack on board for so that a blindo can opt into the verbal translation experience.

2. Oh dear, gnashing of chimp teeth. I can hear tthem crying that this would be awfully expensive wouldn't it? Er, nope. You make subtitles already, Mr Programme Maker. So, simply feed the text of this through a half-decent text-to-speech voice, such as Realspeak Sarah, who isn't massively different in sound to Charlotte Green. And off we jolly well go. The audio description track comes for free anyway. Make some use of it then. And stop chucking out programmes that are worse than useless because they are three-quarters baked and therefore promise a gift which doesn't transpire to owt. All or nothing.

Thanks.

Hello John, gotta a new mo-ta!

I’m about to be the proud best man to my mate, who is a 70s car nut, and ideally, he would like to be transported to his nuptial ceremony in a motor born before the days of lead-free petrol. So it was with a sense of serendipity that both of us should stumble across this rare and wild beast in the centre of where it was probably made.

Therefore, as a relic of Dagenham’s finest export, I give you a (somewhat rusting – no, completely red-flaked), Cortina Mk III estate. A car I’m very familiar with indeed having been driven to school in one for three or so years in the early 70 when I was but a nipper.

Built in a time before accountants were moved to the design department.

It’s just a shame this one is is more rust than car.

Suburban dliemma: blinds

Please tell me, is £1000 too much to pay for blinds?

They are blinds. Yes, venetian, wooden, slatted blinds. But light-stoppers. Curtain-replacers. Nothing that a couple of heavy blankets and some good quality string couldn't achieve.

We have a small 3 bedroom house. A very SMALL 3 bedroom house.

It has eight windows, one of them minute.

£1000. For flip's sake. Am I being a fuss-budget or am I about to be ripped off?

IKEA is where I'm going after I die. Celine Dion and Mariah Carey records will be playing over the tannoy on perma-loop. There will be no meatballs. There is no Swedish shop. There is no exit. There isn't even directions to a non-existent way out. Sartre mange le coeur, buddy.

But even I reckon a trip here, just a little weeny visit, with drugs and social workers to hand when required, would be preferable to paying this amount. They are very cheap in IKEA. Well, not very cheap, but not £1000 either.

Please tell me I'm not being screwed. Thanks.

In praise of...The Art of Falling Apart

My right ear has been bunged up with wax and behaving rather unreasonably. It started out on Easter Friday and continued being mutt 'n' jeff until a few minutes before I rocked into work on Tuesday. Gree-ut as they say in Newcastle....

It was over the weekend after trying to make a mate's iPod synch properly with his copy of iTunes, that while drifting off to sleep, my own iPod threw a wonderful random track into the mix.

I like Soft Cell in the same way I like Wagon Wheels. That is a like them a lot, but once in a while only is a very good thing indeed: same attitude I have to Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and Newcastle Brown. I had bought a couple of CDs a few years ago. "Non-Stop Erotic Caberet" replaced a cassette copy I'd worn out, and for good measure I'd acquired "The Art of Falling Apart". I'd ripped both and not really played the second album, other than the deliciously spooky "Martin" - an Annie Nightingale 80s staple.

It was while drifting off to sleep that the magnum opus of TAoFA was revealed - a track called Heat. As spooky and disturbing in its own way as the creepiest record I've heard to date, Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady. I've played HL to many a person who didn't previously believe that music could be genuinely scary - with mixed receptions from those who have become converts to those who simply asked me to turn it off (most a quite fascinated by what it is obviously doing to their perception and wish to hear it again, but in a "did that guy really eat his own shit?" sort of way.

Next day, with my ear still knackered, I played the album in full, and what a finely bleak album it is - particularly disconbobuled pseudo-mono. Depeche Mode before they started the CBT counselling. Throbbing Gristle mixed my Stock Aitken Waterman's pop sensibility. Pervy funhouse music for 80s darkside club-headz. Music that Smiths' fans would have liked had they been into granny porn.

This is one of those great lost 80s albums. Ones the critics will not include alongside, for example "Welcome to the Pleasure-Dome" by Frankie, Rio by Duran Duran or the ultimate 80s audio sum-up, according to yon host, The Lexicon of Love by ABC.

It would be hugely unjust to overlook this album though. It wasn't ever as rawly indie as the music released on Cherry Red, but it was a outlet of (and for) those many who were disenfranchised by Thatcher's "winner takes all" laissez faire greed and fuck you Jack society. But unlike the Smiths whose albums whined about just how plastic and silly 80s Britain was for the vast majority without a stake in Canary Wharf Porscheville or even access to a reppy Ford Sierra, this album served as a foghorn call reminding you that having such trinkets was a complete pile of jizz anyway. Screw all that, it said, get your blow-up doll out and get the family mutt to give you a blowy while the wife's out at bingo.

You know you want it.

Then afterwards, go blast your cranium with crystal-meth and burn your house down. With your family inside.

For Danny Baker fans only

Went to see The Candyman, Amy, Kwo-ey and Baylon at the Hackney Empire last night. Not exactly what I'd expected but a lovely show anyway, and a great showcase for the BBC Concert Orchestra and the lady with the typwriter.

Anyway, just a quickie. Do any DB fans know what the tune "which is what you hear when you listen inside a 2 year old's head" is called? I've not heard this for a few years as I don't listen to the afternoon show (being as I am at work) but was an avid fan and a daily listener to his BBC London breakfast show (much missed).

It is probably a piece of ungettable library music, but if it does have a name or author I'd love to know.

Cruddy brown saliva

Dear Blogging audience (a veritable universe!!)

This isn't an aspect of my life I share without considerable thought. What I'm about to discuss is neither pleasant not great self-PR. But nevertheless, I've googled extensively this subject and find nothing that constitutes a satisfactory answer. Thus I beseech you, can anyone tell me what kind of crud I spit out in the middle of the night when I go for a no. 1? And what I can do to stop it happening?

So, I wake up needing a gypsy's kiss. My mouth, though, is all dry and tastes dreadful. I spit into the sink. What comes out is grim, and ranges in colour from light green-yellow to coca-cola brown. It is mid-way in texture between snot and saliva.

I am borderline diabetic, and wondered if what I have is the result of mouth thrush. But I can't find this symptom when I look under diabetes, and I wouldn't know whether this is one of the fun filled results of such a condition. And anyhow, the description of this condition seem to indicate that the crap you spit out is creamy in colour.

My physiotherapist daughter thinks my lungs are ridding themselves of all the accumulated nicotine and tar from when I was a 20-a-day smoker for 10 years (gave in October 2006 - so far, so good).

Anyone have any idea? It doesn't happen every night, but it does seem to occur more regularly (though not always) following the consumption of large amounts of food, regardless of whether my teeth have been cleaned.

Most likely guesses from my point of view are:

1) Diabetes (yeast, maybe)
2) Nicotine
3) Gum or palate disease
4) Bacteria in throat or sinuses

Not sure though.

Any serious opinions will be given consideration.

How can't I help you?

Just for the record, I never received a reply to this email, which I sent after not receiving any service other than a shrug and a "sorry, can't help you" response.

If C2C, the local train company for south Essex, ever DO reply, I'll be sure to post it. I received an auto-response from their server so I know it actually arrived safe and well. Sadly, their response will remain...unknown.

More "how can't I help you" stories to follow as they come.

And they most certainly will. The culture of "how may I not help you" is endemic.




From: Me
Subject: Long distance ticket
Date: 8 February 2008 18:43:40 GMT
To: custrel@c2crail.co.uk

Dear fellow human

I have just returned from Barking station where I attempted to purchase a ticket from Kings Cross to York for next Friday (about 5.30).

I was told by your admittedly polite ticket sales chap that I can only do this between 10-4.

HEL-LOOOOO!

The majority of the great tax paying public work between 9-5. So to avoid a trip into Liverpool Street to buy a ticket from the long-distance counter, or risk not getting my tickets on time by booking online I now have to return to Barking tomorrow, Saturday, a trip which was definitely NOT on my agenda. As I am a prize-winning cynic, let me pre-empt some of your responses so that you don't waste my time with pointless automaton-speak (aka PR flannel. Been there, got the T-shirt....

1. "This is a busy time".

No, it wasn't. There was me in the queue. Followed by no-one. I was at the window in about 2 seconds.

2. "We are committed to improving our customer services".

Good. You could start by offering sales points at times where people actually wish to use them.


3. "You may purchase on the online."

Indeed, I can, have, and will continue to do so. Do I not have a choice though? Ticket office. An office to buy tickets from. On my way home from work. CO-VEEE-NI-ENCE! CHOICE! Nope, no choice? Shucks-a-mussy.


4. "Our special long-distance ticket printometer runs on solar power. Had you wished to purchase a ticket in the summertime..."

Nah, that's just tooooo cynical.

But please, you get my point, surely? I mean, you guys ARE human I take it?

Anyway, I really think this yet another case of "how can't I help you, sir?"

A non- cut and pasted answer from a pre-packed formula would be appreciated. Otherwise, do spare me.

Adam Holdsworth
Dagenham
Essex




A C2C train. More useful than its ticket office.

Zeerust - a pictorial definition

"Zeerust: the particular kind of datedness which afflicts things that were originally designed to look futuristic."
The Meaning of Liff
Douglas Adams and John Lloyd

And here's a nice example - kind of. Located on the decidedly un-futurist light industrial Thames Road area of Barking, East London, here's Edwards Recycling. I just love the way that perspex dome looks so scuzzified by the massive level of grime caked within it. Yet still appears oddly optimistic with a weedy morning sun trying to poke through.

The architect's blurb would have stressed the sense of light and space offered by having such a dome. Not so great when it is covered in shit though.

I really like this structure.

Idiot car drivers

I'm back, and just as narky as ever.

As anyone who knows me will tell, I'm not a great fan of cars, regarding them nothing more than things which are dangerously in my way. While I agree that cars are not the root of evil in the world, they would, in my idea world, fail to exist as I believe their existence brings out the individualist worst in many. Obviously, to have a car free world, alternative transport has to be there, affordable and fairly universal before this could ever happen - not that I can see EVER happening within my lifetime without there being quite a lot of bloodshed over the availability of oil and other energy resources first - but its a nice dream. If the alleged ticking timebomb of environmental catastrophe isn't merely a pile of pulsating bollocks talked about by those who don't have any real concerns, such as availability of the next lump of food, for example, and a real thing that'll really mean your days won't be as comfortable as they were as a complacent baby boomer brat

What I really dislike about cars is the way they turn what I'd consider to be nice, ordinary people with few bad bones, in to complete wankers when it comes to the placement of their lumps of metal. These guys were papped in my street, but they are far from being alone. Apart from looking ugly being where are parked, then in the way, and just say the pedestriian "fuck you jack - there's only king in this town, and it isn't you. Parking on the pavement is fairly new to our street. I've been here for seven years and have only noticed this kind of thing for the last six months, and as anyone who knows me will tell, I'm pissed off about so many things that I could not have not noticed this before.

Anyway. Here's arsehole number 1.

And arsehole number 2

And finally, this clown things this is a great place to park. Hope your suspension becomes unbalanced, matey.

Ahhh, its good to be back...and on a high note.

Last Saturday I went for a wander to Ely and Cambridge, after reading Corn Dolls, a detective thriller set on the Fens. The author, Patrick Lennon, really sold the area and like Christopher Moore's portrayals of San Francisco, the location is almost a character in its own right. Unfortunately, the transport in that part of Cambridgeshire is so dire that you can really on soak up the atmosphere with a car. So, yet more social exclusionism hitting home.

Despite being confined to the city limits, I can say that Ely is quite a pleasant city and feels nicely balanced with neither too much deprrivation and unlike Chichester (another cathedral city) the population don't appear to be snobbish about its status, despite it being well-and-true middle-of-the-road England. Bet the salaries are crap in general though.

Having arrived, I munched a burger from the growler stand in the market, known simply as "The Business", I can thoroughly recommend it - one of the best burgers I've had a while, or maybe it was just that I was a bit cold. The meat was...well, meaty, which was a pleasant surprise, aand the bacon was a large, lean lump.

I fell in love with the cathedral which is about as picture-book as it could be (and free to enter too). Some pictures of the cathedral ltseelf and a couple of shots of the stained glass are below.

Its a shame about the lack of transport though. Getting around middle England is near-nigh impossible without a car and its at times like these where the non-driver really does feel (and IS) a second-class citizen of this country.

A Titan-ic admission of guilt

I have managed to get through over three years of writing this blog without telling the world at large that I'm a transport nerd, especially when that transport concerns me directly - so any London centric news interests me. I'm not a fully fledged anorak, but I'm fairly close. Keen readers may have spotted that I tend to include stories about transport which interest me.

Well here's a nice couple of pictures I took while on my way home from work. I was passing, on a detour, Barking bus garage, when I spotted this little beauty parked outside, with its nose, sadly, facing the street, so there was no way I was going to get a frontward view. Here's a couple of sideways shots of London Titan T1, the first ever Titan to enter London service back in 1979. The bus was done up in full 70s paint job with 'multi-ride' labelling on the front. Attention to detail also includes the RD garage code on the side. Hornchurch garage (RomforD) no longer exists and this bus would have been transferred to nearly NS (North Street, Romford). For London bus nerds of 30 or 40-something vintage, this is a wonderfully evocative animal. I remember how excited I was, aged 10, when the first Metrobuses appeared on one of my local routes, the 90B from Kew Gardens to Yeading (as was then). I'd never heard anything like them, the they did make the future seem a brighter place.
A lot of people were upset when the last Routemaster was withdrawn from regular service use. I was pretty sad, but the Titans, Metros and even Fleetlines were my generation's London buses when the last Titan went, more or less unremarked, this was a sad moment for me. I can't get so an excited over an ALX400 or President, competent machines though they are.

Nicki the dog goes rasta

Spent a very relaxing weekend at the parents house after the first week of my new job. And what a well-deserved period of non-work it was too. The work is difficult (being the newbie) and I'm learning loads and don't feel as though I'm pulling my weight - though i suppose that will change in time as I get to learn new processes and routines.

Nicki, AKA Noodles, Lynn's new dog, did it dancehall stylee with her new rasta hat, worn, aherm, firmly, on her head. Just caught her before she flipped it!

Supernanny

I'm only writing this cos its on telly at the mo. d
Does anyone else find Supernanny, aka Jo Frost, really, really sexy?

I'm married to a big girl and find that mostly I'm drawn to the corpulant side of femalehood, but I reckon than if I wasn't a chubby-chaser I'd find Ms Frost a bit of a lust-magnet.