Category: Uncategorized

Summer is Here and Other Stuff

A mention of politics, cricket and summer being here. Some good photographs as well.

INTRODUCTION

I have various things to cover, and of course pictures to share. I will work up to the pictures, covering everything else first…

LOCAL AND REGIONAL ELECTIONS

The only vote I was able to take part in was for Norfolk Police & Crime Commissioner, and although disappointed that it went the way of the Tory (by a small margin from Labour) I was pleased to see the incumbent, Mr Bett, finish a humiliating fourth.

THE LONDON MAYORAL ELECTIONS

The news from these was nearly all good. Sadiq Khan won with a record vote for any candidate in any London Mayoral election. This has probably had the added beneficial effect of ensuring that no further campaigns will be conducted under the malign influence of Sir Lizard of Oz (yes, even as the latest effort to be besmirched by his dirty pawprints was unravelling in spectacular fashion Mr Cameron was orchestrating a knighthood for him) aka Linton Crosby. Sian Berry was rewarded for the excellence of her own campaign with third place, a record vote for a Green candidate and election to the Greater London Assembly along with Caroline Russell, while Shahrar Ali just missed out on becoming a third Green GLA member.

THE OVERALL PICTURE

In the first set of elections since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader his party won 47% of the council seats contested while also succeeding in in two mayoral elections (Bristol as well as London) and two by-elections. For comparison during the first set of elections contested after the election as leader of Anthony B Liar Labout won 46% of the council seats contested, while in those days there were no mayoral elections.

CRICKET

The English cricket season is well under way, with some heavy scoring going on all over the country. May 9th 1895 was the day on which W G Grace played his first first class innings of that season, and just 21 days later he reached 1,000 runs for the season, the first time that feat had been achieved in May (the strict 1,000 in May has since been emulated only by Wally Hammond and Charlie Hallows, although Tom Hayward, Don Bradman (twice), Bill Edrich, Glenn Turner and Graeme Hick all reached 1,000 for the English season before June, having played some innings in April).

SUMMER IS HERE

After a somewhat patchy spring, summer appears to have started early. For the second straight day I am in shorts and t-shirt. Here are some summery photographs to end the post (in tiled mosic form – click on an individual to view at full size)…

These planes flying in chevron formation were tough to capture, and shooting upwards from ground level I probably have not done the spectacle full justice, but I was glad to have managed this much.
This was on a wall near my flat.

A Poster and More Imaging

An account of today at work, featuring the creation of a poster, a laminated copy of which is on display in our shop window at 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AF

INTRODUCTION

Today as well as producing the poster which forms the first part of the title I did some more postal history imaging and imaged a couple of lots for a small militaria sale in which i have otherwise had no involvement. Also, I assembled a metal detector for display in the shop.

ASSEMBLING THE POSTER

The purpose of this poster was to advertise the hats and helmets I blogged about yesterday. This required selecting the images which would work best, getting brief descriptions of the items chosen to feature and fitting the whole together in a visually appealing way. The three images I selected were:

P7P10P4

I went for the white helmet to provide a contrast withe dark colour of the other two. Putting these together with the descriptions and appropriate top and tail pieces gave this final product:

POLICE HEADGEAR AT JAMES – this is a link to the original word document – a screenshot is below…Poster JPG

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM TODAY

Just a few images from today…

Voting and Imaging

An account of voting in the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner election and of my day at work.

INTRODUCTION

I have had a busy day imaging auction items at James and Sons, but before going to work I did find time to…

VOTE

The only election in which us Norfolk folk had a vote today was for Police and Crime Commissioner, and to put it mildly I was not 100% convinced that this was an election worth voting in. However, in my inbox this morning was an email from the Grteen Party candidate, and that settled the issue – I would vote. The polling station was not a hive of activity (indeed to judge from the reaction to my arrival I may well have been the first voter the folks running that polling station had seen that day). This election used a preference system – one vote for your favourite candidate and one for your second favourite. With three of the candidates being respectively Tory, UKIP and a highly suspect Independent, and a fourth standing for what is effectively an ex-party, I used my votes for the Green party candidate (1st) and Labour (2nd):

Vote

IMAGING

Today’s imaging consisted of two distinct parts, first a collection of police helmets and such, and second starting work on some postal history items. I will start with the…

POLICE HEADGEAR

These feature a wide range of police organisations.

POSTAL HISTORY

Most of the postal history stuff was not so interesting in appearance, although there were a few hihglights…

This cruciform pattern was the most distinctive of all the postmarks I saw today.
With so much of interest lot 371 merited a five image gallery

Attending a Training Session at NAS Headquarters

An account of a visit to London for an NAS training session, including Sutcliffe’s Laws of Travelling by Public Transport and lots of photographs.

INTRODUCTION

This post deals with events on Saturday, when I attended a training session for branch officers at NAS HQ in London. Before moving on to the main part of my post I have a small section on…

WHY I AM GLAD THAT MY FIRST POST IN MAY IS AUTISM RELATED

April is Autism Awareness month, and here in West Norfolk we certainly did our part, with our hugely successful Positive Autism Awareness Conference. However it is also important to make it quite clear that autism does not stop at the end of April. Improving awareness, understanding and ultimately acceptance of autism is a year-round task.

SUTCLIFFE’S LAWS OF
TRAVELLING BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT

I have never previously set these out in full, so here goes:

Zeroth law: Any journey involving public transport requires careful planning no matter how apparently straightforward it is.

First law: If you allow scope for things to go wrong you will have a quick, clear run.

Second law: If you decline to allow scope for things to go wrong you will have a horror run.

Third law: Because bitter experience has taught them to make allowances public transport users are less likely to arrive late than car users.

Do you recognize the more famous set of laws on which the formatting of this set is based?

GETTING THERE

The session was due to start at 10AM, which gave two options for which train to catch – the 7:54 and be tight for time or the 6:54 and have time to spare for things to go wrong. In keeping with the first law of travelling by public transport the second option was chosen. The other person travelling from West Norfolk wanted to travel there with me, so we agreed to take the 6:54. On the day preceding the journey I called in at the station to make sure that the service was running as it should be (The branch chair had kindly arranged tickets for us, requiring in return that we make sure to come back with expenses claim forms so that she could reclaim the money). Here are some pictures from this preliminary stage…

We took our places on the train and having allowed for things to go wrong had a clear run to London. Callum’s girlfriend had decided to travel with us so she could have a look round London, and at King’s Cross she and Callum arranged a meeting point before Callum and I head off towards NAS HQ.

A shot out of the train window near Cambridge.
A side view of St Pancras, taken while Callum was arranging a meeting point with his girlfriend
The walking route we were going to follow.

Walking up Pentonville Road (between Pentonville Road, Angel and our London starting point of King’s Cross this was quite a monopoly board journey!) we arrived at NAS HQ almost dot on 9 o’clock, and were the only people there that early. I took some pictures while we waited for others to arrive, including the feature image…

DSCN5275
The #TMI mural outside NAS HQ, with Callum standing in front of the end panel.
DSCN5276
A close-up of the end panel.
This map is on Pentonville Road, but all the other pictures in this set were taken outside NAS HQ

AT NAS HEADQUARTERS

Alessia, one of the two people running the session arrived a few minutes after we had, and let us in to the building. We took our places in the training room, and examined our training packs…

This pot took a long time to boil.
Note the virtual emptiness of Norfolk on the NAS branches map and the complete emptiness of Linolnshire
The ticket – effectively £6.30 for a day’s unlimited travel in zones 1-6 (a day return is £24)

THE TRAINING SESSION

The training session consisted of presentations and some group activities. I found it to be a very valuable day, definitely worth the early start. The bit I enjoyed most came near the end, when we had to decide whether certain scenarios were things we could do as NAS volunteers, things we could not do or things that we might be able to do. At the end of the session Callum and I went our separate ways, he to meet his girlfriend and I to head back (albeit by a somewhat circuitous route). The pictures I took between here and the concourse at King’s Cross station will be featuring on my
London transport themed website, so I shall not share them here.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Apart from providing a few good photos, the return journey was pretty uneventful (yes, on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend I had two public transport journeys pass without incident), and I arrived back home just over 11 hours after setting off in the morning.

Half of the frontage of King’s Cross train station.
The best-known platform at King’s Cross
Ally Pally through the train window.
Ely through the train window.
Just beyond Ely, a perfect shot of a cross-country train where the routes diverge.