A personal account of yesterday’s Musical Keys at the scout hut on Beulah Street and a walk on either side of the session.
INTRODUCTION
Musical Keys sessions happened at the scout hut on Beulah Street yesterday. I was there both as NAS West Norfolk branch secretary and someone who enjoys the session. With it staying light later in the evening and yesterday being pretty benign for an early March day in England I got two good walks in on either side of my session.
GETTING THERE
I made a quick visit to King’s Lynn library before heading for the scout hut by way of the Broad Walk and the Sandringham Railway Path. I had sufficient spare time to take some photographs en route…
This town centre cafe is the venue for an NAS West Norfolk coffee morning on WednesdayHere are some of the trees from which it takes its name, on the bank of the highly sculpted stretch of the Gaywood river that passes through The Walks.The library, fresh from recent repair works.The first of four flower pictures – all featuring crocuses.
AT THE SCOUT HUT
I arrived with the youngsters session still in progress – here are some pictures I took before my session started.
Before getting into details of what I did, I have a short subsection about…
A SPEAKER SYSTEM FROM Q BRANCH
This is best shown in a series of photographs…
The speaker system in usePartially closed up – machine and bag of cables in the centre, the two speakers forming the sides of the case.And fully closed – a stout black plastic suitcase.
MY SESSION
I was on the computer, using Scratch 2. Once again I consider a series of photographs to do a better job than words…
A modest but sufficient set up – I have eight notes on my chosen instrument (Cello) set to be played by pressing a, s, d, f, h, j, k, and l respectively, and various extras, including getting the cat avatar to move and draw, with the pen size increasing each time I pressed one particular key.
THE JOURNEY HOME
Once the session finished, and the clearing up and locking up was done it was time for the walk back. I journeyed back by a different route, heading for Bawsey Drain, the Tuesday Market Place and King Street. Here are some photographs from this walk.
Announcing NAS West Norfolk’s Just Giving page, and sharing a few other interesting and important bits.
INTRODUCTION
I have a few other links to share as well, but this will be one of my rare posts not to feature any photographs.
THE NAS WEST NORFOLK
JUST GIVING PAGE
This was discussed and agreed on at our branch committee meeting yesterday, and is now ready for viewing. To see the page itself please click on the screenshot below:
TWO PIECES WITH TRANSPORT LINKS
The first of these two pieces is a campaign run by We Own Ittitled We Want Buses for People not Profit. For more please click the screenshot below:
My second piece with transport connections is an article by Patrick Barkham, a well known writer on nature, published in The Guardian, about a piece of road-building that is in the pipeline and if allowed to go ahead will be incredibly damaging to the environment. The development is planned because the road in question struggles to cope with the traffic that uses it. However, extending roads (as is planned in this case) or building new roads is proven not to alleviate this type of problem – it just generates even more road traffic, with attendant problems of noise, pollution and the destruction of sometimes priceless nature and habitats. Why is there so much traffic on Britain’s roads? Because our public transport system is a complete joke – and that is where attention should be devoted. To read Barkham’s article please click on the image below:
FOR AN ELECTED UPPER HOUSE
There have been recent damning revelations about the conduct of certain members of the House of Lords. The single most damning incident caught be a fly-on-the-wall documentary was of a certain peer who arrived by taxi, told the driver to keep the engine running, went into the house to trouser his £300 daily attendance allowance and then got back in the taxi. This has prompted the Electoral Reform Society to launch a petition calling for an elected upper house to replace the Lords. To view and if so inclined sign and share the petition click on the screenshot below:
ALWAYS #HELP TO GET HOME
This is a campaign launched by the NAS nationally. Full detail about the campaign is available here.There is a petition running as part of this campaign which you can access by clicking on the image below:
Some local photographs from earlier today and some interesting links.
INTRODUCTION
I had expected to be blogging about the first ever NAS West Norfolk curry night at The Globe today, but the event had to be postponed due to the severe weather that affected King’s Lynn yesterday. In addition to the decision to postpone the curry night made because those who would have had to travel (as opposed to me strolling down the road) to get there did not feel safe doing so I have a couple of other little pieces of evidence to back my claim that the wind yesterday was the strongest I have experienced while living in King’s Lynn, which is a fairly windy town anyway. Firstly I had to retrieve one of the legs of my outside table from the roof of Artertons (this roof adjoins my balcony but is one storey lower, so to access it I have to descend to street level, ascend a fixed steel ladder to the Artertons roof, retrieve the item, descend the ladder and ascend the stairs to my own flat). For this to happen, the table top, which when the table is not in use I position covering the legs, had to be blown clear of the legs and then one of those legs had to be blown across the width of my outside space and down on to Artertons roof, and it has never happened before. Secondly, the 813th King’s Lynn Mart made what was in truth the only sensible decision they could have done, not to open yesterday evening on safety grounds, again a first in my time living in this part of the world. Therefore with a couple of links at the end as a bonus I am falling back on a staple of this blog, some local pictures taken today.
THE PICTURES
Weatherwise today has been the calm after yesterday’s storm, so after lunch I went out for a walk with only my trusty Nikon Coolpix P530 for company. Below are the highlights of this walk in picture form…
Daffodils just emerging in The WalksSigns of life in what I call the “Trivial Pursuit Beds” in The Walks
A cormorant showing its wingspan on the west bank of the Great OuseCormorant just in the western edge of the Great Ouse
A view of the town from Harding’s PitsThe Nar was so calm that these modern houses were clearly reflected in its water.A tern (probably in origin an Arctic Tern.A Moorhen
SOME LINKS
My first link is to a new petition on change.org calling on the UK government to treat hate crimes against autistic people as seriously as race hate crimes. Here is the body text of a suggested message provided by change.org:
I just signed the petition, “UK Parliament: Make autistic hate crime as punishable as racism.” I think this is important. Will you sign it too?
On a completely different note, courtesy of www.independent.co.uk here is a fascinating account of a new solar system in which no fewer than seven earth-like planets wouyld appear to be in the habitable zone around their star. Click on the picture below to read in full.
Finally to end this post, a highly amusing video. Clearly based on the classic sketch “What did the Romans ever do for us?”, this is a sketch called “What did the European Court of Human Rights ever do for us?”
A couple of moon captures and a note about the Autism Awareness Cup Event Page.
INTRODUCTION
Just a very brief post. The moon is out at the moment in what is nearly full daylight here in Norfolk, and I have a couple of captures to share…
THE PICTURES
This is the first capture.I then got a second closer shot.
THE AUTISM AWARENESS CUP
EVENT PAGE (FACEBOOK)
Just a brief note to say that this page has had 872 visitors in its first month. If you want to help push that number up beyond 1,000 click on the image below…
Some thoughts on round two of the 2017 six nations, and a few Sunday shares.
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday saw the first two matches in round two of the 2017 Six Nations. This afternoon Scotland and France will fight out the final game of the weekend.
ENGLAND SQUEEZE PAST WALES
In the women’s match which preceded this England won 63-0, which gave them 89 unanswered points in their last 120 minutes of rugby (they were 0-13 down at half-time against France last week).
Wales dominated the men’s match for long periods, but too often did not turn pressure into points and eventually a 77th minute try put England in front for the first and only time of the match. England have not been all that impressive in either of their matches to date, but is the mark of champions to find a way to win even when not playing well.
IRELAND THRASH ITALY
Ireland were always in control of this match, with two players (Stander and Gilroy) recording hat tricks of tries. For the first hour the scoreline was semi-respectable but then the floodgates opened and the Irish winning margin mushroomed to over 50 points.
Two matches in to this tournament it is hard to see Italy doing anything other than bring up the rear, a long way adrift of the rest.
SOME SUNDAY SHARES
We start the shares with a couple of public transport related bits…
THE GREED OF THE PRIVATE RAIL COMPANIES
Private operators have creamed of more than £3.5 billion in profits from running Britain’s railways over the last ten years, while services get worse and prices go up. Click on the image below to read in more detail, courtesy of AOL:
AN EXTENSION FOR THE BAKERLOO LINE
The extension, from Elephant & Castle to Lewisham is expected to open in 2028-9. Click on the image below to read the Time Out piece in full. I have already pressed a link on to my London transport themed website and will be writing about it in more detail in due course.
THE WENSUM VALLEY UNDER THREAT
The Wensum Valley is a very beautiful part of Norfolk, but a malign group of ‘planners’ are putting this beauty at risk – they intend to send a big new road through the heart of it. Please watch the video below to see what we are seeking to protect:
A COUPLE OF REGULARS
Another reminder that James and Sons next auction is on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of February, the first two days at our shop, the third at the Maids Head Hotel, Norwich. Click on the image below, from lot 891, to view a full catalogue…
Finally, the Autism Awareness Cup 2017 will be taking place at Ingoldisthorpe Social Club on June 4th. Click on the image below to visit the website.
This event is taking place at theJohn Innes Centre, which is located close to the University of East Anglia, a little outside town (though there are regular bus services from central Norwich to UAE). Below the flyer I have included a screenshot from google maps.
THE AUTISM AWARENESS CUP 2017
This is taking place on June 4th, at Ingoldisthorpe Social Club. For more information, and/ or to support by the event by liking and sharing its facebook page click the image below:
WITHIN DAYS OF A SUPREME COURT RULING A BUS DRIVER FLOUTS THE LAW
Not long ago a case involving one of Britain’s leading bus companies went to the supreme court, where it was established that bus companies, and by extension bus drivers are legally obliged to grant access to wheelchair bound passengers. Therefore, this story from disabledgoabout an incident in Wakefieldwhere the driver not only refused to allow on a wheelchair bound passenger but then allowed/ encouraged passengers to blame the wheelchair user for the subsequent delay looks even worse than normal.
TRANSPORT IN THE FUTURE
This next piece comes from indy100.com. To read it please click the image below:
THE LATEST ADDITION TO MY WEBSITE
This piece, titled “Big Wheels Old and New”, showcases seven of the lots going under the hammer at James and Sons’ next auction, which feature the Gigantic Wheel that stood at Earls Court between 1895 and 1906, while also mentioning the London Eye. Click on the picture of lot 1286 to view my piece and the picture of lot 1295 below it to view a full auction catalogue:
SAM HARRIS ON TRUMP’S MUSLIM BAN
Earlier today I featured a superb post by Heather Hastie on this subject. Sam Harris, distinguished author of many fine books such as “The End of Faith”, “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The Moral Landscape” has produced his take on this issue, which you can read here.
A note on comments,some science related links, some photographs and links to the Autism Awareness Cup facebook page and a full catalogue for James and Sons’ next auction.
INTRODUCTION
This is a post of my own, although featuring material from elsewhere. The text other than links is all mine, and there are of course come of my own photographs. Before getting on to the main meat of the post I start with…
THE COMMENTS SECTION
If a post is all my own, or like this post has a framework created by me even if some of the stuff contained within it is not mine then the comments section is open and all comments will be accepted and responded to. If however I have either reblogged a wordpress post or used a ‘press this’ button to share a piece created elsewhere I will close the comments section for that post as it is my intention that people should read the original, and the original is the appropriate place for comments to be posted. Here are a couple of screenshots to help clarify…
I did these screenshots while ‘pressing’ an excellent post from Heather Hastie. Here you can see two small boxes labelled “allow comments” and “allow pingbacks and trackbacks”, which are both checked (the default setting).Now I have, as my final piece of editing unchecked the box that says “allow comments”. For those who have not already done so, Heather’s piece can be accessed by clicking this picture.
SCIENCE AND NATURE CORNER
Welcome to what is becoming a regular feature of this blog. Today the posts are in order of the historical period they deal with, so we start with one set 450 million years ago, which details a find of…
TRILOBITE EGGS
This piece was posted on the website sci-news.com and can be read in full by clicking the screenshot below:
Moving forwards a few hundred million years we find…
BUGS IN AMBER
This concerns a new order of insects who have been discovered trapped in Burmese amber. I offer you two versions – click the screenshot on the left as you look to get the sci-news.com version and the one on the right to get the whyevolutionistrue version.
Finally for this edition of Science and Nature corner we come…
BACK TO THE PRESENT
With two videos from “Its Okay to be Smart”, the first of which details the discovery of a probable new species deep in the Amazon rainforest and the second of which asks “how many species are there?” (the answer is that no one has the foggiest).
PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are some of my photographs…
AUTISM AWARENESS CUP 2017
Below is a list of the confirmed details about this tournament, and if you click on it, it will take you to a facebook page which you can like and share.
JAMES AND SONS NEXT AUCTION
It will be a three-day auction, on the 20th, 21st and 22nd February (a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday). The first two days will be at James and Sons premises in Fakenham, and the Wednesday will be at The Maid’s Head Hotel, Norwich. A full catalogue can be viewed by clicking on the image below:
A must read article for anyone interested in autism…
PLOS NTDs co-Editor-in-Chief Peter Hotez lists the key scientific papers refuting the myth that vaccines cause autism I have a unique perspective on the recent headlines surrounding vaccines and their alleged links to autism. I serve as President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to vaccines and immunization. In that role I am director of its product development partnership (PDP) based at Baylor College of Medicine – the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, which makes vaccines for neglected tropical diseases – a group of poverty-promoting parasitic and related infections – including new vaccines for schistosomiasis, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis, among others. But I’m also a father of four children, including my adult daughter Rachel who has autism and other mental disabilities. These two parts of my life place me at an interesting nexus in a national discussion of autism and vaccines. My position is
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