Friday Smirk

The lads discussing how our religious brothers and sisters often bend and twist the stories in their holy books to suit the zeitgeist of the day, turning absurdities into "allegory" and contradictions into "interpretations", while others just stick their fingers in their ears and shout la la la!

Trains, a good idea?

This was the rail network in the UK around 1920 (probably it's peak), pretty much every major town and quite a few villages had stations, over a third of it was shut down and mothballed in the 1960s (and more since) as cars became the preeminent way of getting from A to B. I think it's pretty much accepted by people now that that was short sighted, what with climate change and congestion on the roads, trains offer a mode of transport for both freight and people that (with sufficient investment and maintenance) is superior for medium to long distance journeys as well as travel into large urban centres where parking is limited. 

I've used the train twice already this week and will again at the weekend, it's convenient but suffers from a couple of important limitations, it's too expensive and is relatively unreliable. I saw a couple of posters at the station today for "Great British Railways", a renationalisation of our train network, I wonder if that will improve things? I fear that trains will be too low down in the pecking order for cash from the government, the system is already creaking and desperately needs investment, I wonder if it will get it ahead of healthcare, social services and defence, I somehow doubt it.

So, wha'd we gonna do?

 

While on my lunchtime walk I spotted these three crows sitting at the top of a tree, it reminded me of that scene at the end of the Jungle Book movie (the original one) where the three vultures are debating what they're going to do and going around in circles, much like Trump and his cronies, at least the vultures were useful in the end but somehow I doubt Trump will ever be..

Shelter

I was walking through Belsize Park at the weekend on my way to meet my Son and I noticed this rather strange looking building. It looked very 30s/40s in style and although now a data-storage facility I did wonder what it was originally built for. A bit of googling revealed that it was originally a WW2 deep bomb shelter, connected to the Northern Line which runs parallel to Haverstock Hill it also goes much deeper than the underground. Amazingly it was designed in 1942 and could accommodate 9600 people and extends to 140ft below ground. There are a couple of these in London, built in residential areas and consisting of sleeping quarters, medical facilities, kitchens and self contained power units, hopefully consigned to history such shelters will only now ever be used to store things like computer data archives etc., but the way the world seems to be headed at the moment who knows!

Beak People

Tried one of these at the weekend, it's from  my favourite Sussex brewer Beak and is their table beer. Excellent flavour and mouthfeel for the low ABV, not quite as good as PMST from Verdant but not that far off! Good work Beak people!

Testing Times

Spent a great day at Lords with my Son yesterday, we were watching the test match between England and New Zealand and it was day 2 in the series. We were very lucky with the weather as the rain (only just) held off and a full day of play was possible (day one was shortened by rain). I snapped the picture above at around 3pm, as  you can see the clouds look ominous and the light was so bad that the floodlights had to be switched on (incredible for the middle of the day in June!) Anyway, we had a good day and England did ok, they looked like collapsing in the mid-order and had four batsmen out with ducks, all in a row (as the saying goes) but the tail end did a good job and in the end leaving NZ with 254 runs needed in their second innings, today was a washout, let's hope we get some clear weather tomorrow as I think England could just about win this one..

Friday Smirk

The boys talking about memorising holy books, kind of misses the point of books really, oh and it's usually beneficial if you read more than one..