Out and About

As early as the free bus pass would allow I limped down to the bus aiming for Colchester.  However as the Chelmsford bus was leaving seven minutes earlier I got on that and chatted to the driver about Edinburgh and the crowds attending the 'Fringe.'  I was unsure about going there as there are more charity shops elsewhere and I was shopping.  The jacket and the book voucher were in my mind.

Chelmsford is not a city in which smiling is proclaimed.  The few shop assistants to be noted were either ignoring the customer, careful of the inch of paint on the sour face or like the sole male on the phone.  I trawled my way through all the charity and big shops finding high prices on suitable things and low prices on things that did not fit or were unsuitable for anyone not living in London.  Eventaully I obtained, in M&S of all places and at huge price, something that will more or less fit and just have to do for the next thirty years.  An imitation Harris Tweed jacket, sixty pounds less than the real stuff.  Sometimes even I have to put on a degree of smartness.
How disappointed was I in Waterstones. I searched the entire floor of the shop and came away with nothing!  What's the matter with these bookshops that they don't stock something I wish to read?  That's never happened before.

 

In less than an hour and a half I was back on the bus, drifting past old expensive and occasionally somewhat shabby houses looking for a healthy lunch.  The cloud cover had not diminished the warmth and the day enabled me to rejoice in sitting starkers at the laptop something not usually done in this country.  I really should remember about the windows next time.

One other thing, Local news on TV, why do they always have a medical story on there?  Tonight someone was having some sort of cancer operation, why is he on TV?  Every night they are in a doctors, a hospital or telling us of a man who fell over and broke something, why?  I spent ten years in hospitals and occasionally made use of them for myself also yet never did I phone up the local news and talk about it.  Never in the working days in the NHS did anyone rush to the press because they were ill, why do it now? 
This TV region covers three counties, if the cannot find a decent story with all the history, industry, people past and present what are they doing employed?  Either cut out the health stories or reduce the programme to fifteen minutes which is all they really require.  How much time can be taken up with fire, rape, murder, doctor each night?  
Go out to the farms and watch them gather the harvest, find a happy farmer, that will be difficult, and tell his story.  Talk to the bus drivers about what they endure each day, have a contest to find a smile in Chelmsford, do anything but stop going to the doctors to fill space. 

 Daily Mail

I read about this the other day, a 53 year old unfit granddad goes to Iraq to fight IS.  Some see him as daft others see him as a hero.  I just wondered about why he gets so excited about IS?  Sure his brother died in Iraq in 2006, sure IS are not nice but neither are the Taliban and many died there in Afghanistan.  His contribution may please him and those around him but will do little to stop IS and their doings.  Could it be the propaganda has got to him?  Could it be he believes the bull in the press?  Or is he just wishing to be a soldier?  I'm sure there are a thousand things in his local area that require change, just ask the police, and I'm sure he could do more working amongst the locals if he really wishes to change things.  The lure of shooting people can be er, deadly sometimes.

Sympathy Lacking

Amateur Photographer

There has been much made recently of the sufferings of the Japanese people, always referred to as 'innocent civilians,' when the two atom bombs were dropped in 1945.  Now suffering such as this is indeed terrible and it is to be wished it had not occurred however I find my cynical nature rising at this as I contemplate the sufferings of the people in Korea, dominated by Japan since before the turn of the century. The Korean women used as prostitutes for the Jap army, the Phillipino, Indian, Burmese, South east Asian people who suffered brutality under the Japanese occupation also get mys sympathy.  As does our own British troops and our allies, Indian, Australian American beaten to death, tortured and enslaved by cruel Japanese forces.

When the Japanese admit their 'rape of Nanking' their despicable treatment of the Chinese civilians, women raped to death and men tied up and used for living bayonet practice, then I might feel sympathy for their suffering.  However being unwilling to 'lose face' the Japanese have never admitted their faults (the Germans of course have) nor have they faced up to their wrongs.  Lets not forget that had the allies invaded Japan every POW would have been shot, over 100,000 of them, but of course they don't count.

Two points here, one is the recent discovery that those who suffered under the bombs were more or else ignored and kept aside by the government of their own nation as they did not wish to remember their wartime actions!  Another discovery was an email claiming (with photographic evidence apparently) that the Chinese did not suffer but happily welcomed the Japanese, this 'evidence' arrived the other day showing how some still refuse to accept their wrongs in Japan.

The 'A' bombs were devastating, however more died elsewhere from other bombings, including Japanese bombs.  Those two bombs did however stop any nuclear war in the west as all were soon aware of the cost.  We all know what even small nuclear devices can do and the nine nations that possess them require to maintain control over them and their neighbours (yes India and Pakistan I mean you!).  While people feared nuclear war in the west some fifty million were dying in south east Asia, Africa and central America as the cold war was fought by proxy with everyday weapons.  I never feared the US or USSR would use theirs, it is more likely a rouge state or one with an unbalanced mind in charge that would be tempted.  We are back to India & Pakistan!

'Innocent civilians' those supporting their soldiers, sailors and airmen, making bombs, guns, weapons and encouraging and praising their men were all involved in war like the citizens in the west who suffered.  War today as it always has doe includes civilians.

   

It appears that people in the outlying areas of Australia, I suspect this means Queensland, have been misusing Australia's staple diet.  These people have not been eating 'Vegemite' but turning it into alcohol, getting drunk and beating one another up as if they lived in Glasgow.  Now I realise that some folks canny stand this sort of edible but many of us have tried it and found it better than 'Marmite' (the spellchecker calls this 'Termite')  the original substance that is difficult to describe.  However few to my knowledge have ever attempted to turn that into alcohol but I suppose somewhere in Glasgow as we speak several shops are being broken into and the 'Marmite' removed.

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Physicality or Brutishness?

My knees informed me that we were not going far today, we were standing at the bus park at the time, so I checked the minutes before any bus arrived and calculated it would be better returning to bed.  I wandered around town first trying to get some sunshine onto me, collected my veg and went home to cogitate on words, especially 'physicality.'

You see this is another word that has suddenly become common usage in the football world.  For a while footballers became 'athletes' something they were never called in my young days, and now using their strength has become 'having good physicality.'  Instead of 'barging the enemy about' it's 'making use of his physicality.'  Why I ask must we use language in such a manner?  All organisations, all groups of people, all towns, cities and villages (all today always called 'communities' rather than what they are, towns, cities and villages) have words used in their line of business or area.  This is normal and we can all soon gather the appropriate terms if need be but why are the words in football these days so silly?

Could it be an attempt by those with too much money trying to improve their image?  Using a word like 'cogitate' rather than 'think' makes me look educated, something which is soon disproved.  Also if we have our own language we 'belong,' we belong to a specific group and are better than they out there, we can then look down on their stupidity and feel superior and bully them needlessly.  But the man using the word today is not looking down on folks, nor does he bully, this man was just speaking words from the up to date phraseology and probably didn't notice he was doing this.  It may well be the number of highly trained sports physio's, doctors and specialists originated such a phrase hopefully they will soon learn to speak in simple terms so the lads around them can understand what they are talking about.

p.s, The Heart of Midlothian are top of the league already.  Only run of the mill physicality was used. 

 

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A Walk in the Sunshine

Last night as I reclined on my bed wondering whether to change the sheets now it was August I decided on a day in Camolodunum (which the spell checker thinks is 'Numerological' for some reason) and so i rose somewhat earlyish and made for the bus station and the 9:20 bus.  
Naturally being me the bus leaves at 9:15, someone has amended the timetables again!   
So thinking clearly I changed my plan and got on the free bus to the shopping centre where I realised my runabout jacket was fine for carrying a camera in the pocket but not for a sun which had decided to shine for once.  We arrived at 9:30 only to find the shops there don't open until ten!
Grrr!  My plan was to look for a sports/dress type jacket to make me look smarter than I was today, and many clearly agreed with this plan.  I glanced at a window or two, a young shop staff member arriving for work or two and got a dirty look or two in response.
I made for the free bus.
However instead of returning home I took another bus, grasping my free bus pass for old people in my hand and we wended our way past the harvested wheat fields, through a village here and a village there and after around an hours quiet tour we arrived in Witham some six miles from home.  A car would have taken the straight road and been there in fifteen minutes.  It was however a good day out, no screaming kids on the bus, the country views were enjoyable as I have not been amongst them for a while and some villages were part of the WW2 research and I saw them close up.

Witham is not a great place to be.  It lies on the road from Camolodunum to Londinium and during the medieval period the Knights Templar who owned the land in the towns original centre in 'Chipping Hill' obtained permission (which means promised taxes to the King) for an Inn and associated buildings on the main road.  This blossomed into the grubby town that stands here today.  Fifty years ago it was not a bad place however the London overspill, trains take an hour to Liverpool Street) meant it grew abundantly and not very nicely with lots of Londoners and their outlook forming the majority of the near thirty thousand populace.   
The 'Spread Eagle Inn' pictured above in a grubby state today has they claim stood here since 1300.  This may well be right, although much of it is 15th century and the Victorians did it up somewhat, and along the road the Town Hall stands where the 'George Inn' stood for several hundred years.  Travellers by foot, horse or coach would find this a suitable stopping place before the railways came. Methuselah Head was publican here in the late 1890's and into the 20th century, that's the sort of name a publican requires!

At first sight it looks like this was once a jolly nice house that has been ruined by changing first into a
shop and then into a bookies!  However while once it may have been a nice house, without water or toilet, it may well have been inhabited by some rough nasty type of whatever 'class.' We alas do not know.  he lived well, the chip shop is next door!

This derelict building was once very grand.  The town found a mineral Spa during the late 1700s and made capital out of this for a while, and the number of late Georgian/ early Victorian buildings lining the High Street indicate money was coming from somewhere but I am not sure where.  Agriculture was certainly big but what industry at that time I have yet to discover.  There are many delightful but now grubby buildings used for purposes other than that for which they were made.

This dwelling like many in these parts appears to be timber and lathe, such a fragile looking building material yet it has stood here since the 14th century like so many others.  I remember it as a book shop a few years ago.

 Witham's most famous resident outwith the English legal system is one Dorothy L. Sayers famous for her detective fiction featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.  These are still popular and have occasionally turned up in TV dramas, possibly they contain too little guns, explosions and naked wimmen for audiences today however.  I did hear on a TV or was it radio programme that she was married to a man who spent his time in the pub down the road crawling home drunk each evening.  Possibly because of her Christian humanism she never divorced him but luckily he died seven years before she did, she died in 1957.  

You would be surprised, if not disappointed, if I omitted the Witham War Memorial wouldn't you?

 The better half of the high Street possesses Georgian and Victorian buildings still in excellent condition costing excellent prices.  I am not quite sure what goes on in this one but it represents many of similar design along the way.  They all possess several steps and a railing or two, usually with a boot scraper alongside.  In the days of dirt roads and nothing much for a pavement such steps were required for the genteel and everybody else.  How mucky must the lobby indoors have been I wonder?  The Greek influenced doorways show the lack of understanding of ancient Greece by those who travelled there on the 'Great Tour.'  They thought all Greek temples were white but most had colours all over the pediments and friezes.  These in this country were always white.  White stone is marvellous in Greece where the sun shines daily, not so marvellous in Edinburgh where the skies are gray and soot from the chimneys turns them black!

 I love finding buildings like these, now commercial I guess they were once houses though it's possible they were used as shops from the beginning of their life one way or another.  A charming short row at the traffic lights where traffic thunders by daily.  Just where you wish to eat lunch.

Luckily I missed my bus.  This meant with time to kill I wandered down an area I had never ventured into before.  This took me along the River Brain and up to the best and oldest part of town.  Here I found this aged bridge and as I attempted to take pictures of the stones a few inches below the surface the dog appeared along with a despairing owner.  On holiday in the south west he got used to going in the water and insisted on doing so here.  When I moved on he was still standing there failing to understand why she wanted him out on a hot day and why she was not joining him in the cool water.  He might still be there.

At Chipping Hill I was almost at the oldest part of Witham.  There was an Iron age fort here in the distant past and from there a market appeared some time later.  I believe 'Chipping' comes from an old word meaning market but the book with the info is in the museum, not here!  Shown is an ancient bridge which carries innumerable traffic daily.  It is a suicide bridge in that only one vehicle at a time can pass and the drivers view is not perfect, indeed neither appears to be the drivers attitudes here.  Coming from this direction has priority but not all understand this.

The church of St Nicolas, note spelling, was built here in the 14th century, that's the 1300's to you.  This reflects the town's wealth by that date, wool mainly until the 1700's, but I suspect a previous church, possibly a Saxon wooden one, may have stood here before.  I was intrigued by this large memorial.  Church graveyards usually have one or two memorials from long ago for those who were great or thought themselves to be great in the land.  Unfortunately I have no idea who he is, and it will be a he.

  

To be honest this building was a wee bit disappointing, it was dark and gloomy inside in spite of the sunshine and had little going for it from my point of view.  I was not even sure what type of Anglican these were.  Clearly set up as Anglo Catholic but without that smell of candle wax so where are they I wonder?  

There is also a candle burning, usually a Catholic thing this as it indicates the wine and bread, the blood and body of Jesus, are kept nearby.  All very confusing, but not so confusing as my camera.  In attempting to convey the proper shades I went from too light to too yellowish, as shown here.  It's al so confusing, especially when getting tired wandering about.

Anglican churches can surprise me and finding two helmets, one 15th C and one 16th C, was a surprise although later I remembered another church has similar.  The 1500's memorial on the far wall had this grisly feature at the bottom.  The writing was a form of Latin so I ignored it!  Many Scots graveyards from that time also feature such reminders of death.  Cheery lot then...

Cheery indeed, here lie, with broken noses, Justice of the Queens Bench John Southcotte 1585, dressed in court dress, alongside his wife Elizabeth (nee Robbins).  I suppose these grandees must have known they were to be perpetuated thus?  With the reformation rising he might have been Roman Catholic and wished for the priests to pray for his soul and this would have been a good reminder.  Had he been protestant, as he should have been, he was just continuing the fashion of important souls everywhere of not being buried at the back of the graveyard amongst the paupers.

The old Iron forge still exists though I doubt you would get much done here today.  Tastefully redesigned for the discerning rich amongst us it stands in the old part of town and probably was in use in the 20th century still.  

"What," I hear you cry,"Is this all about?"
A crummy picture of a railway station with a vast Maltings in the distance?
In fact we are standing on a hill, Chipping Hill to be exact and this there 'ere was once an Iron Age stockade, the origin of Witham.  Built around 100, possibly a couple of hundred years before that, this was once surrounded by two ridges with a wooden stockade all around the core.  Round huts, that could last two or three hundred years, stood in the middle and people went about their business farming, hunting, fighting and watching football on TV.  During the 19th century the Great Eastern Railway, concentrating on reaching to Ipswich and Norwich did not notice the history as they cut through the small hill in front of them.  
I suggest the Iron age dwellings were better than the present London overspill myself.

With 70F degrees of heat upon me, that's about 21C in foreign, and my jacket weighing me down by now I headed for the bus.  A mere ten minutes brought me the way home once again through the narrow village streets with cars thoughtlessly parked where stone headed locals parked them.  Once again the harvested wheat offered a light golden sheen between the greenery, once again I noted the names in the villages.  Jeffery's Road was named after Jeffery's farm that stood here during the war and possibly for thousands of years before that.  Valentine Way in Silver End commemorated the Valentine Crittall of the metal window company of that name who built the village for his workers in its particular design.  

So with this in mind I ask who was this road named after...?

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Waste of Day

How nice to see the sky change colour as the sun goes down.  
It's been a quiet day, I went to the museum and found my place taken by another, what a waste of a bath, and then rushed home to laze around doing nothing.  Tomorrow I go somewhere out of town for a change, if I can be bothered.  
Nothing else happened bar the brute failing to connect with wifi again, grrrrrr. 
I'm disappointed you all, and the cats, failed to appreciate music....

It's Been a Long Day...

It was a long day at the museum, made longer by listening to the WW2 music CDs we had
to play for the exhibition.  I now sit here with Tessie O' Shea in my head.
I can only share this with you - and believe me you can keep it!!!!

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Tuesday Thoughts

When sorting out the shop early this morning I noticed the lass stopping and looking in a mirror.  This surprised me as we know how rarely women do this.  However it suddenly came to my mind that the said mirror was not there on Saturday so where did it come from?  While pondering this I myself came into view.  This was not a good sight.  My new shirt appeared somewhat tight and as I looked into a glass darkly I saw a sight reminiscent of the advert above.  I hung over my belt far too much.  Later a mum dropping off her kid mentioned she had ten weeks to go and I was bigger than she was!  My diet has restarted.
I had pie and chips tonight with sliced cabbage and tomato with mayonnaise.  
I see a problem looming.

Brutus switched off the wi-fi tonight again.  It returned but I may have sorted that as it had a choice of two connections, this one and the old one that no longer works.  I am hoping it has been attempting to connect with the old one and have closed that avenue.  Growing pains I say, and if they are this will be some size soon.  Otherwise it appears to be working acceptably.

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GRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

Having mentioned the successful download of Windows 10 naturally enough I happily spent some time trying to work out what had gone wrong and what had been fine and dandy.  While doing this connection with the world was lost, wi-fi ceased, this however returned within a minute indicating this was one of the BT people mucking about with the lines somewhere I bet.  It is not the first time this has occurred.  
Later I went to switch the beast off, this on Win 10 means clicking the 'Start' button and closing down.  It did not work.  Nothing moved.  Hmmmm.  I right clicked and there was the opportunity to shut down, this I did.  
Later I attempted to open up and this appeared:-

 GRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!
Sign out it said, so I did, several times and back in again to see if it worked.
It didn't.
I opened the other laptop that does not work right, indeed never has.  Some bad boy got in there and I am not sure he has completely gone yet.  I download Spy-bot and anti Malware and they say the file in corrupted!  Hmmm.
Anyway I have managed to get him sort of working, Windows Live Mail went on OK today so some of it works, but the bad boy may still be there.  While playing with him and searching for a variety of good advice re Win 10, "open start button" they say but it will not open!!!  I searched around and this was a common fault in the early beta modules.  
I tried again and LO!  Win 10 began to update, and then updated again, and now appears to work properly.   Hmmm, how long before the next update doctor....?

Actually I find the screen size a wee bit bigger, I adjusted it and went back to default as it suits my eyes, but it still is not quite right to me.

Windows Media Player however did not bring over the music I had on there.  I cannot say about videos as I had downloaded or dumped all mine the other day to make space, none were worth keeping.  On my music folder however the music there has come over.  I had some radio programmes and they have disappeared (or I may have forgotten I downloaded them) and I wonder if copyright is involved here?

Oh and to make everything seem better Selfridges have opened the Christmas store!


7:40 the brutes doing it again!
The start will not start so I canny shut down.  If I do I canny get back in.
One suggestion was on offer online, but it invles entering that I like item on the keyboard.  A straight up and down line sharing the key with two other things I never use.  I canny get this to work! Grrrr!
I'm not happy.

Sunday Sabbatical

Being trapped indoors by an attack of couldn'tbebotheredness I spent much time looking at this screen.  Having taken words of wisdom from those technically minded amongst us - and Soub - I went ahead with the Windows 10 upgrade.  This took a wee bit off time but appears to have gone through quite well.  Most things have been found and one or two items are a wee bit strange but we will get through.  It has been thought out better than 8.1 and is somewhat reminiscent of XP in my confused mind.  I am not sure why but I think it will work.  One or two quibbles but I will grumble about them later, not that I ever do of course...
Of course, I wait patiently for the updates to follow...

Win 10 worked well enough for me to watch the Championship flag being raised after our promotion last season and then enjoy a thrilling encounter as we trounced an excellent St Johnstone side 4-3.
How wonderful to know that now football is back and we look good enough to be at least mid table.
I compared this game to the Dundee United v Aberdeen game that followed and was surprised by the mediocre performances on view. Tsk!  We can take both if they keep playing like that!

This Lord Sewell fellow, the one from the House of Lords who was caught sniffing coke from a tarts breast, shoving vodka down and discussing the folks around him, then paying for it from his Lords allowances, have you wondered why he was caught?
I realise some tart could have thought there was money in this, but I don't see this as the reason.  The House of Lords, as indeed the House of Commons, is full of prostitute users. kiddie fiddlers, wife/husband beaters, tax dodgers, liars, drunks and the like, so why was this one targeted?
These guys all know who the dubious are, they know the perverts, they can hand them all in if they wish to so why does this one alone get caught?
What does he know, who has he upset that a man unknown to the world should be dumped on this way.  Or am I just a conspiracy theorist perhaps?

Anyway, I'm sick of laptops now but canny put this one down.  I had better take it to bed...



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WW2 Day at Museum

Today we had the WW2 day. Sadly I was not able to dress as a 'spiv' and sell bottles of whisky and petrol for a profit as they would have done, I have neither the moustache nor the sharp suit required.  However I did my usual running around act, avoiding real work, and chatting up the pretty girls.  Life can be so hard.  

As we crunched our WW2 biscuits, very good indeed, and listened ta a talk on Wethersfield airfield the band outside tuned up their sound system.  I suggested waiting till the talk ended, they agreed and as I returned our speaker offered Glenn Miller & Bing Crosby, both of whom visited the airfield to encourage the troops.  Nothing was remarked concerning Glenn Millers disappearance, this was put down to his crashing at sea in fog but it appears he was accidentally bombed by returning RAF bombers offloading their bombs in the dropping zone in the channel as he passed underneath in the other direction.  
The 416th Bombardment Group flew 145 missions in Douglas A-10G Havoc's losing 70 men in the process.  Some 14 of these men still meet regularly including one who is now 100 years old, the youngest is still referred to as 'Kid' by the rest in spite of being in his 90's. 

Moving swiftly on as the RAF did that day we find the exhibition went well, many passed through, many chatted, many listened to the talks (the other one on the 'Women's Land Army' the girls who worked the farms when the men were away) and most tried the WW2 cake slices, quite dry but forced me to go back for more and then drink tea.  In did not have time to take more pictures (who said hooray?) but I have found my knees aching.  I also shook hands with the Council Chairwoman, thus indicating I move in high circles. 

I am even more knackered now than ever.  A quiet week next week I think.


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