The great Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos once defined a mathematician as: “someone who turns coffee into theorems.” I am inclined to think something similar could apply to data input operators. However, my new work at James & Sons continues to go extremely well – the client database I am establishing now contains 270 records, from which I have already generated large numbers of queries and reports which will provide useful information.
In the last round of county championship matches Joe Root served notice of intent with an innings of 182 that enabled Yorkshire to make light of a fourth innings target of 335.
Continuing my London Underground 150th anniversary theme, I will acknowledge Leanne Shapton’s effort on the Waterloo and City line by saying that her treatment was inventive and although I did not greatly enjoy the book, it would be quite difficult to come up a better way of handling this line.
Lucy Wadham’s book connectting with the Circle Line did not seem to me to fit very well with the brief. Some of the things that I might have covered relating to the Circle Line are: South Kensington and the museums, Temple and the London Underground scenes in Skyfall, Monument, the great fire of London and the escalator connection to Bank, Tower Hill (with various connections spanning nigh on a millennium of history), and a few others.
If you recall the first post in which I mentioned these books, you will know that i was particularly disappointed by John O’Farrell’s Jubilee Line effort owing to having had very high expectations of it. My own treatment of this line would have begun with the history of the Stanmore to Baker Street section, before moving on to the plans for an extension to serve the areas of Southeast London and West Kent which were and remain under served by public transport and how these were deformed by the Thatcher regime into an extension that served the new Canary Wharf development. The natural progression from this would have been on to a mention of North Greenwich and the dome. A dramatic change of tack would then have seen me focus on Wembley Park, and in my particular case a mention of the visit by John Paul II and the service he held there which I attended, which in turn would have led on to some thoughts about religion (from my present, atheist, perspective). After Wembley Park would come St John’s Wood and Lord’s cricket ground.
We are now progressing towards books which I am not necessarily critical of, but for the sake of completeness (and because I have found the exercise enjoyable) I will float my alternative ideas in any case. I would open my account with Walthamstow and a tale of a famous victory for the forces of good agains the Eejits, Dipsticks and Losers (EDL for short), before skipping all the way south to Warren Street to talk about the Marxism festival and my involvement with it. Recognising that I am hardly the person to talk about the Tate gallery my next port of call would be Vauxhall, to talk about the pleasure gardens that were once there, maybe mention the rail connections and of course MI5, and a mention of the Oval cricket ground, overlooked at one end by this station (The Northern line can spare this). Finally we come to Brixton, which would feature accounts of the latter stages of election night 1997 (at a lock-in in this part of the world), working for Lambeth council and choosing to walk the four miles to and from my home in Streatham, which would segue naturally into ideas about extensions of the line.
For the first time in this blog a photograph will feature that is not mine, though it will be balanced by one of mine….
aspiblog 