Saturday Scattergun

INTRODUCTION

I have some pictures to share, and a few links, but no main subject matter, hence the title of this post.

THE MUSEUM OF LONDON

This is a signpost to my London transport website, and simultaneously a mention of James and Sons’James and Sons’ next auction, since the post was built around lot 737 in said sale…

How does this poster connect to the Museum of London? To find out follow the link below.

http://www.londontu.be/the-museum-of-london/

AN AUTISM RELATED PIECE ON WWW.INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

This story is about a 4 year old boy who was hospitalised after being fed a ‘holistic cure’ for autism on the advice of someone describing themselves as a ‘naturopath’. The notion of any sort of ‘cure’ for autism is of course offensive nonsense. Equally, the idea that a ‘naturopath’ should be entitled to prescribe remedies for anything should probably be considered offensive nonsense. The combination of one person’s belief in the offensive nonsense of a ‘cure’ for autism and one person’s cynical willingness to exploit this gullibility created a situation that was very dangerous for an innocent child. The full piece can be viewed here.

SAJID AND THE FRACKERS

Some of you will know that the Dishonourable Sajid Javid has recently made a decision to ignore the will of a community and give Cuadrilla the go ahead to frack there in defiance of clearly expressed local wishes. Mr Javid receives big money from fracking companies and as such should have had the decency to admit to a conflict of interest and say that this was a decision that he could not be involved in making, but of course Tory and decency do not go together, and so unsurprisingly he made a decision in favour of his rich mates and against the community and against the environment. I end this section by linking to a piece that details the environmental impact of fracking.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS

I am presenting this pictures in two tranches, starting with the general…

I bring this post to a finish with some pictures of the new £5 note, which before I got this one in change I had not seen in the flesh…

The two faces of the note in one picture

2017 Photographic Wall Calendar

A sneak preview of the 2017 Photographic Wall Calendar.

INTRODUCTION

As some of you know I created photographic wall calendars last year. I recently mentioned that I was going to do again this year. This morning my inbox contained an offer from Vistaprint that was too good to refuse, so the calendars will be arriving with me some time around October 20th.

THE FRONT COVER

This time, there will be no borders, and no added text. It will surprise few who have followed this blog recently to find out that I have chosen an Inlandsbanan picture for the front cover…

The actual calendar will be much bigger than this of course.

THE MONTH PAGES

Here are the individual pages for each month…

feb — This picture was taken quite recently, but I decided that it looks wintry enough for February.

june — This picture is one of my Swedish ones, but not inappropriate for the month.

sep — This picture was taken on Heritage Open Day, which in King’s Lynn is always the second Sunday in September.

oct — Two pictures both from October 1st joined together.

dec — Another two pictures from very recently joined together for this purpose.

Autism and Other Stuff

Some stuff about autism, some important links and some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

Although this post includes some links that are not specific to autism, and of course some photos, enough of it is autism related to warrant the first word of the title.

AN IMPORTANT EVENT ON MONDAY

This Monday an ‘autism positive’ event is taking place at the Theatre Royal in Norwich. I will be present in the dual capacity of autistic adult and branch secretary of NAS West Norfolk. As well as a display with full information about our branch we will be distributing leaflets about efforts to get some adult oriented events and activities going. Apart from the official NAS branding and header which I copied and pasted from the website the leaflets are entirely my work…

leaflet-social-media-whole-doc — This is a screenshot of the whole document – two leaflets to the page.

leaflet-social-media-single-leaflet — This is a close up of a single leaflet.

Advertising attended to, the second part of this section relates to:

AUTISM AND EMPLOYMENT

First of all, here is the grim truth about autistic people and employment in the UK:

75% of us are unemployed.
Others are employed in low paid and/ or part time work, so that 85% of us are classed as underemployed.

So, what can be done about this? Well, recruitment practices need to change and here is for me the single most important thing that could be done:

Abolish standard interviews, which place one in a position that one will never be in when in the job, making skills testing mandatory instead. Many autistic people however mujch preparation they put in cannot do themselves justice in interviews, while if you have them do the kind of work that they would be doing in the job they will fare much better, and you will learn not whether they can say the right things but whether they can actually do the work.

As a segue into the next section of the post, here is a link to a petition created by an autistic adult (Chris Packham), which calls on the Government to:

Introduce a moratorium on the hunting
of critically declining wading birds

LINKS

My first link in this section comes courtesy of the consumer group Which? who have managed to get the Consumer Rights Act to cover all travel sectors. Please read the full piece here.

My second link, courtesy of Richard Murphy at Tax Research UK is to a piece that demonstrates that Jeremy Corbyn’s investment program will cost less than the Tories current QE program.

I give the last word before the photographs to DPAC, who have prepared some online action to coincide with the Tory conference for the benefit of those who cannot make it to Birmingham but want to be part of the protest. Please click the link below to see how you can be part of…

ONLINE SHENANIGANS FOR THE TORY PARTY CONFERENCE

PHOTOGRAPHS

All the photographs below were taken yesterday…

dscn5845 — Having seen an abundance of cormorants where the Nar joins the Great Ouse it was a fine bonus to see these swans enjoying the Nar.

dscn5858 — To be able to capture this creature on camera was a huge bonus.

Grab Bag

A variety of things that have come to my attention recently.

INTRODUCTION

This post is about a mixture of things from the last few days, hence the title.

CHAMPIONSHIPS AND CONTRIVANCES REVSITED

Some of you may remember that I put this post up on Thursday, with Somerset having secured an emphatic win in their game and Middlesex and Yorkshire going head to head in theirs. Sadly, when I checked what was going on on Friday afternoon, Lyth and Lees (the two opening batsmen, neither with any sort of status as bowlers) were purveying out-and-out filth for Yorkshire to help Middlesex set an agreed target. Yorkshire paid for accepting such an arrangement when their batting subsequently collapsed handing the title to Middlesex. Sadly, Somerset were innocent victims of this scam by Middlesex and Yorkshire, being robbed of would have been their first ever county championship not by good cricket but by dirty back room dealings.

BEES AND PARKS

This refers to two important issues that came up this weekend. Firstly, Greenpeace have exposed Bayer and Syngenta as having covered up evidence that their products were hugely damaging to bees. Greenpeace’s release can be viewed here, and here is a copy of their accompanying picture:

The parks part of the title of this section refers to an effort by 38 Degrees to secure better protection for our parklands. Living in King’s Lynn at this time gives this a particular resonance for me, so:

Britain’s parks are at risk. There’s no legal responsibility to look after them and squeezed budgets mean our local green spaces – from playgrounds, to the park you relax in on your lunch break – don’t have the money they need. We could end up being forced to pay to use our parks – or lose them altogether.

A group of MPs are looking into the crisis right now. They’re thinking of making protecting parks a legal requirement, and they’ll advise the government on what to do. A huge petition, signed by all of us, will prove how much we love our parks. It could convince the MPs to come up with a water-tight plan for protecting them.

Can you sign the petition now and demand that looking after our parks is made a legal requirement by the government? It only takes 30 seconds to add your name:
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/save-our-parks

Here are some pictures of my own, including a few from King’s Lynn’s own parkland areas:

LABOUR LEADERSHIP ELECTION

I will let these beautiful infographics culled from twitter do the talking for me on this one:

SOME AUTISM RELATED STUFF

As NAS West Norfolk Branch Secretary and as someone who is #ActuallyAutistic I am always glad to share really excellent autism related content, and I have two absolute gems for you:

Courtesy of The Art of Autism I give you “12 THINGS THAT MAKE ME WEIRD #WEIRDISGOOD #WHOIAM“
From Autostraddle comes “Telling Myself the Truth: 5 Strategies for Fighting Internalized Ableism“

Finally to end this section, as regular readers will know one of the activities I am involved in via NAS West Norfolk is Musical Keys, and this is an advert they have recently produced:

THE FINISHING TOUCHES

One of my favourite blogs is that of singer Charlotte Hoather, who has just started at the Royal College of Music in London. Her post about her first week there can be viewed here.

To end this post I give you a series of pictures starring a snail…

dscn5734 — This is the original picture that I took.

snail-cropped — This is cropped but not otherwise edited.

snail-normal-edit — This is the snail after my normal editing routine.

snail-cb — This is a colour-boosted version.

snail-contrast-enhanced — This version has the contrast enhanced.

snail-the-works — Finally, this version has had the colour boosted and the contrast enhanced.

Cormorants and Calendars

A brief post showcasing some cormorants from earlier today and announcing my intention to produce a calendar.

INTRODUCTION

This post combines showing some new pictures with being the official announcement that I shall be repeating last year’s experiment of producing calendars as Christmas presents.

CORMORANTS

I decided once I had completed my online NAS branch officer’s training this morning that I would go for a walk, and I was delighted to see the structure I call ‘Cormorant Platform’ was very busy…

dscn5546 — The first of the cormorant images – this one shows precisely why I call it ‘Cormorant Platform – notwithstanding the three Caspian gulls also on there, it is the cormorants (five on this occasion) who stand out.

dscn5550 — Just before leaving the river I got this picture of a cormorant in flight.

dscn5553 — A couple of moorhens to finish with…

CALENDARS

The calendars will be large, month to page, each month decorated with a picture. Learning from last year I will be aiming to have no borders, and certainly no patterned borders, just pictures taking up the whole available space. This is very much a work in progress, but here are the pictures I have so far picked out as being good enough (feel free to add your own suggestions of pictures you particularly enjoyed when I first posted them in the comments sections, although remember that I am limited to 13 pictures (front cover plus 12 months):

dscn9190 — This picture showing the two Inlandsbanan trains together is earmarked for the front cover

dscn4002 — I will use one of these two ducking pictures

dscn4950 — Likewise, I will use one these two butterfly pictures.

dscn8156 — This photo, from the Stockholm Archipelago, will be July’s

dscn9030 — This picture was actually taken in January.

dscn9277 — This picture might get the nod for August

dscn9319 — This is nailed on for April, since it was in that month that the Positive Autism Awareness Conference was held at this establishment.

dscn9332 — This is provisionally September’s picture.

Musical Keys MKII

A brief account of the resumption of Musical Keys sessions for NAS West Norfolk.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday saw the resumption of Musical Keys sessions for people with Autism in the King’s Lynn area. The sessions will now take place fortnightly at the Scout Hut on Beulah Street (youngsters 3PM to 4PM, older people 4PM to 5PM). The sessions are now being run by two new people, John and Kirsty.

FIRST SESSION BACK

The biggest change other than in personnel was the absence of i-pads – we were using real instruments, with the focus being on percussion…

You can see here five drums that need to lifted above ground level to be played, one box which you sit on to play, generating sound by hitting the front, a wooden instrument that like the drums needs to be lifted to be played and a second wooden instrument (partially concealed), which comes with its own striking implements.

Once we had made our selections it was time to start playing, initially to instructions.

The side of the drum I chose.

After a while I was introduced to a new instrument, a wooden frog with a hollow centre, which comes with a wooden striking instrument.

Later still I switched drums to one of the larger ones…

dscn5500 — With this larger drum I could position the frog in the centre and vary the sound according to whether I struck the frog or the drum.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the session. John said that if anyone indicated that they wanted a particular instrument to be available they would try to make it happen.

SOME NEW PHOTOS

With one exception these pictures are all from today, from walks at each end of the day…

dscn5493 — This poster was on display at the Scout Hut yesterday.

dscn5528 — These last three pictures are from this evening.

Side By Side

Some musings on the county championship (cricket), and an acknowledgement of King’s Lynn’s latest effort to advertise its heritage.

INTRODUCTION

I am posting about two unrelated matters, hence the title, which is borrowed from a series of Bridge Magazine articles written many years ago by Terence Reese. The firs topic of the day is…

CRICKET

As another English season draws to a close there are two topics to cover in this section, first of all…

A THREE WAY TUSSLE FOR THE COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP

Thanks to Somerset continuing their late charge with a 10 wicket victory over Yorkshire, and Lancashire earning a draw against leaders Middlesex the final round of games will commence with Middlesex, Somerset and Yorkshire in that order all in contention for the title. Owing to the fact that a decision to alter the structure of the two divisions has meant that there is only one promotion place up for grabs the second division is now settled, with Essex having secured the promotion.

In the final round of matches Middlesex will play Yorkshire at Lord’s, while Somerset face already relegated Nottinghamshire. While my chief emotion as a cricket fan is gratitude that the championship race is going down to the wire, I cannot claim complete impartiality – despite having grown up in London and possessing a Yorkshire surname, it is my support for the underdog that wins out in this contest – I will be rooting for Somerset. Somerset have never won the championship (Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire are also in this position, although the latter were named as champion county three times in the 1870s, before the official start of the county championship in 1890). Apart from being a historic first, a championship win for Somerset this year would also be a fitting reward for Marcus Trescothick as he approaches the end of a long and distinguished career with the county.

The change in the structure of the two divisions mentioned earlier, moving from nine teams in each to eight in first and ten in the second, is not the most significant one happening in English domestic cricket, that distinction going to…

THE INTRODUCTION OF CITY FRANCHISES

Yes, it has been decided by a vote of 16-3 in favour to augment the existing domestic T20 competition with an eight-team city based competition. I am not going to say either yea or nay at this stage, waiting to see how it works in practice before making a judgement. I mark the break between this section and the second section of the post with some recent photographs from King’s Lynn…

dscn5392 — This is the uncropped version of a butterfly picture

butterfly-close-up — And this is the cropped version.

A CODA TO HERITAGE OPEN DAY

Beales Department Store which is near thus bus station in King’s Lynn has recently closed down. Rather than leave the frontage as blank windows, it has been used as an opportunity to advertise our town’s heritage, as shown below…

dscn5258 — Save for the planning notice at the end, these pictures are presented in the order in which they were taken.

Heritage Open Day: Post Lunch

The conclusion of my series about Heritage Open Day.

INTRODUCTION

This post completes my account of this year’s Heritage Open Day in King’s Lynn.

A HOUSE, A CLUB AND A FERRY

On way out for my afternoon’s explorations I poked my head round the door of the Rathskellar, but decided not to go in. Queues and crowds notwithstanding I decided that my first port of call of the afternoon would be…

CLIFTON HOUSE

This house is the residence of the current head of English Heritage, and featured rooms open to the public on five different levels, and viewing area on yet a sixth (basement, ground floor, the four intermediate floors of the tower and the roof of the tower). The first part of the building that was opened up featured the cellar, the kitchen and a couple of rooms which could be viewed but not entered. I started by going down to the…

CELLAR

When the house was first built the cellar had been accessible direct from the river (which is now about 50 yards west of the house), and a system of ropes and pulleys was used to offload cargo…

dscn5200 — The first three pictures were taken en route to the cellar.

dscn5203 — Note the vaulted ceiling of the cellar.

dscn5204 — Three iron rings through which thick ropes could run enabled cargo to winched from boats into the cellar. I am not certain if all three are visible in this picture, but I tried to show them all.

After the cellar, it was time for the rest of that part of the building, and on towards the tower by way of…

THE KITCHEN

There were some very interesting things to be seen even though this had the feeling of being merely on the way to somewhere else, because of course what everyone was really interested in seeing was the tower.

dscn5205 — These canons were in a reception area just outside the kitchen.

dscn5206 — The remaining four photographs were all taken in the kitchen.

Apart from one last major queue because of limitations on the number of people being allowed in there at any one time (for obvious safety reasons) it was now time to venture the…

TOWER

There were interesting things to see on each level of the tower…

dscn5210 — These antique maps and the model of the house were on the first floor of the tower.

dscn5213 — One floor up was a room set up for a Jacobean supper.

dscn5216 — This room was a further floor up

dscn5227 — The ‘Prospect Room’ is one floor below the roof.

The views from the roof were amazing. Conscious of the number of other people who were waiting to savour the views I restricted myself to a few minutes taking the view from all angles, before heading back down.

dscn5223 — The Lower Purfleet from above

dscn5219 — The view focussing between St Nicholas Chapel and the docks.

dscn5224 — My humble abode viewed from the top of the Clifton House Tower.

Leaving Clifton House I headed for Ferry Lane, where I paid a call at the premises of

THE OUSE AMATEUR SAILING CLUB

This establishment, which has about 5o sailing members and somewhere around 500 ‘social’ members had opened its Ferry Bar to the public for the day. I consumed a pint of a splendid beer brewed in Lowestoft (just into Suffolk, but possibly close enough to count as local, especially as the other featured brewery is based in Southwold, a little further away). Having purchased my drink I took some photos inside…

I then went outside on to the balcony overlooking the Great Ouse, and took some photographs from this great vantage point…

It was at this point that my attention was caught by something downriver, which turned out to be…

THE ARRIVAL OF A FISHING BOAT

Given the role that fishing, and indeed the sea as a whole has played in the history of our town this was a particular splendid sight…

dscn5250 — Turning into the docks and therefore presenting a side-on view.

After finishing my pint I headed for the

FERRY

I finished my day by taking the special ‘Heritage Open Day’ trip on the ferry, which involves a small amount of travel along the river as well as across it. This was my first trip on the new ferries, which are equipped with caterpillar tracks for crossing the exposed mud at low tide. The King’s Lynn Ferry has been in operation for over 800 years.

dscn5255 — The other historic bus (my second post in the series featured the one put on by Towler’s), this one a routemaster.

Exploring Malmo

The latest in my series of blog posts about my recent holiday in Sweden.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest post in my series about my recent holiday in Sweden.

STARTING THE DAY

Once I had followed instructions for ensuring the cleaners knew that my bed was reserved for another night and made sure that none of the stuff I was leaving in the dorm room would get in their way it was time to set off to explore Malmo, although my first photograph of the day was taken before I had left the building:

HEADING TO THE CENTRE OF MALMO

The first major building I spotted on my way towards the town centre was the public library (Stad Bibliotek in Swedish):

Arriving at the first of many waterways I took a brief walk in the opposite direction along it to the one I was ultimately going to be headed in (deliberately so)…

Then I faced a choice between staying with the road or going by way of the Gamla Kyrkogarden (old churchyard – gamla = old, kyrko has the same meaning as the Scottish kirk, and the g in Swedish is usually pronounced as an English y, giving ‘yarden’ or removing the last two letters, yard), I naturally chose the latter)

This building, spotted as I was leaving Gamla Kyrkogarden was very impressive:

It was at this point that I got my first sight of a notable feature of Malmo…

BRONZE SCULPTURES

I have not seen anything quite like these elsewhere:

At this stage I was heading towards the station, to visit the supermarket to buy food before continuing my explorations. However, I was not by any means hurrying, and was still getting plenty of pictures…

DSCN3947 — This remarkable clockface is in the covered market adjoining the station, by way of which one can access the supermarket.

Leaving the supermarket I headed for more water, deciding to see as much waterside as I could contrive…

Still envisaging being able to make this a circular walk, avoiding retracing my steps, I continued on, sticking as close to the water as possible.

I was not ultimately able to stay at the waterside the whole time – I soon found myself in a light industrial development and obliged to temporarily head away from the water, but I got back to a waterside location to eat my lunch…

I began to head in the general direction of the hostel, although my day’s photography was by no means done…

DSCN4028 — My first photo of the day was taken at the hostel, and so was this, my last photo of the day.

Uppsala: The Linnaeus Museum

The latest in my series of posts about my Swedish holiday – today featuring the Linnaeus museum.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden. This post is the last to focus purely on Uppsala, although there is still the account of the journey from Uppsala to Malmo to cover.

FROM LIBRARY TO MUSEUM

Those who read my previous post will recall that while there was plenty to see in the exhibition of treasures at Carolina Rediviva I was prevented from photographing most of it, so I was quite glad once I had finished there to get back into action, starting with these pictures…

Shortly after I had taken the above pictures I came to…

THE BERLIN MURAL

This mural, which as the information board reproduced below shows is named because of its origins, is actually four walls, the front and two side walls of which are also reproduced below (I could not get a sufficient distance behind the back wall to be able to photograph it).

We now get to the main meat of this post, starting with…

A ROUGH GUIDE TO CAROLUS LINNAEUS

Carolus Linnaeus lived in the 18th century (he was roughly contemporary with Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the creator of the theory of evolution by natural selection), and the house in which he lived is in central Uppsala. He was a botanist by training but is best know these days for being the creator of the system by which all living organisms are still categorized. Discoveries made since he was around have changed some categorizations and created some new ones, but the framework and methodology used are still his.

Such names as Homo sapiens (note that with these type of names the first word is always capitalized and the second word never so, even if it derives from a proper name) come from Linnaeus’ magnum opus.

He is also significant in the history of science for reversing a previous trend – whereas previous eminent scientists had taken Latin names to sound more impressive he went the other way, changing his Latin birth name (his father, a clergyman whose birth name had been Nils Ingemarsson had taken a Latin name to emphasize his education), used so far in this post, to a vernacular one, Carl Von Linne. His reasons for making this change were it must be said just as rooted in snobbery as those of folk who Latinized – he had been given a patent of nobility and considered his new aristocratic designation more important than his old Latin name.

Many books on the history of science cover his career in detail, my own personal recommendation being John Gribbin’s magisterial Science: A History 1543-2001.

THE LINNAEUS MUSEUM

As you approach the museum it is made suitably obvious that you are doing so…

Here is the approach to the house…

The rest of this post will be devoted the photographs I took of the objects in this remarkable museum.

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