Visiting London as a boy

 London as a boy

When I was 12 I spent a week in London. This was in 1954 and London was quite different then. I was taken by my mother who was determined I should visit some of the well known National features. It came as our family, never well off, was at a low point. Father had been ill and off work for some time and felt he couldn’t come. However mother felt that I needed the experience but was determined to do our trip as economically as possible.

I was a keen trainspotter  so I noted that we were hauled by a Patriot class 4-6-0 on our journey. These were a quite common locomotive on the LMS region. We travelled into Euston on the West Coast main line

We stayed at a cheap B&B in Putney. For entertainment we mainly relied on being an audience at BBC programmes which were free. As tickets were only available at two per address relatives were drafted to get more tickets. As a result we saw a recording of the then famous TV panel show “What’s my line”. We also attended several radio performances. The one I recall was a miscellaneous collection of performers all drawn from the Commonwealth. The audience “warm up” for “What’s my line” was Richard Dimbleby, panellist himself,  father of David and Jonathon prominent today. A very large, rather obese, man he was known as a solemn commentator at major state occasions but on that day he showed himself in humorous, even comic, mode. In describing the seating he said the reinforced concrete one was his.

In the village where we lived I had been quite friendly with Alf. Older than me he had become an apprentice chef at the hotel where his brother Danny was also an apprentice chef. Mother determined that we should invite these boys to spent the day with us. I think she thought that they might be homesick and grateful for familiar faces. As it happened Alf was in awkward shifts but Danny had a free day. He was old enough not to be inhibited by us who he didn’t know well. With him we visited a large library ( British Library ? ) where he was fascinated by Bradshaw’s rail timetable. Long ceased publication this book sized publication gave rail timetables for all  the UK. The one indulgence was to go a performance of the musical “White Horse Inn”. Danny much enjoyed this and mother for years after would recall his uproarious laughter.

During our trip we visited the Tower of London where we saw the Crown Jewels. At the nearby Tower Bridge I was astonished by the mudlarks; boys delving at the rivers edge for coins thrown by passers by.  Madame Tussauds I thought not very interesting but the new planetarium was fascinating. Brand new at the time, the only one in the country, this was regarded as the height of technical sophistication. We had a commentary pointing out the constellations. Ever since I’ve been able to identify the Great Bear ( aka the Plough) and the Pole star.

I was very interested in aircraft and flight and I persuaded mother to go to Heathrow. At the time this was the only airport of any note in the UK. Security wasn’t a big issue in those days and viewing areas gave close proximity to the aircraft. I marvelled at the big four piston engine craft like the Constellation flying international routes. At the time these were the height of technological prowess and were never seen at Birmingham Elmdon ( now called Birmingham International ). The only international route from Elmdon was to Ireland flown by ex WW11 Dakotas. I only learned much later that the massive radial engines were not very reliable and to have one fail over the Atlantic was unsurprising. Recently, with vastly more reliable turbofans, twin engines are common across the Atlantic.

At the time there were many inexpensive cafes by J Lyons and ABC. where we ate during the day. Lyons cafes were a national institution then but disappeared completely later. As we had a fierce schedule we were travelling around the city a lot and I became very footsore. When I moaned enough we would take a bus where mother would ask for a ticket in the opposite direction and then alight after a free ride a couple of stops in the direction we wanted to go. I was a trial during this manoeuvre as I would say we were going in the wrong direction. Mother was very conscious we were on a tight budget.

The Festival of Britain was long over but some remained. I enjoyed our visit to the Festival funfair at Battersea.

I was impressed by the 6 wheel trolleybuses along Putney Bridge road outside our digs. I was a bit surprised that they seemed absent from central London. There it was the old RT buses as I don’t recall the famous RM model at that time. Emergency vehicles were a not uncommon sight; Daimler ambulances with a bell instead of a siren which came later.

All in all it was a memorable and enjoyable trip. Later as a teenager I visited Parliament so I’ve always felt I know something of London which has such a central part in the life of the UK.. More recently I’ve become increasingly disenchanted by the crowds and expense of London. Our last visit to a Hub hotel very near Westminster Cathedral went very well but in general I regard the whole area of London and the south -east as best avoided unless necessary as in visiting our daughter at Guildford

Remembrance

 

Remembrance

When ever I visited Coalville with my mother as a small boy I was always taken to the war memorial in the centre. There I would gaze, slightly puzzled, among the inscriptions to one for W Baker, Private, Leicestershire Regiment. I was told this was my uncle killed in 1917 in WW1. There was a great gulf of years between William ( Bill ) the eldest child of the family and my mother the youngest. My mother spoke of him rarely, mainly of him teasing her, but she always retained his cap badge kept among her treasured objects.

In the lottery of war Bill’s brother George spent his military service in India and never saw a shot fired in anger. Still he valued Bill’s memory and named his son William.

When my children were small we spent several holidays in the south of France. In our journey we passed by the battlefields of northern France. One year we visited Vimy ridge whose memorial cross could be seen from the autoroute. Here the trenches, now softened by time, are retained on a battleground memorial to the Canadian soldiers who fought there.

One another occasion we stayed overnight at Albert the small town just behind Allied lines. The town is dominated by the Basilica of Notre Dame de Brebieres which is surmounted by a statue. In German shelling the statue was knocked sideways and hung precariously. The local story was that the war would be lost if the statue fell. This story was encouraged by the allies after first making sure the statue was held securely by hawsers.

Later we stayed with a Castrol colleague near Peronne on the Somme. Peronne houses the historial , museum of the great war. The museum gives a timeline of the three armies, French, British and German. In a spirit of European unity all are given equal prominence. During our stay we also visited a few of the many cemeteries of the Somme battlefield. It was a slightly eerie experience on a fine summers day to walk along a track to one of the many cemeteries. Large or small, all are very well tended with uniform rounded rectangular headstones regardless of rank with flower and shrub plantings following the line of headstones. The whole enclosed by a wall and with a large cross mounted prominently.

The headstones have either the rank, name and unit inscribed or in many cases where the soldier is unnamed the inscription coined by Rudyard Kipling “ a soldier of the Great War known unto God”. The memory handed down was that Bill had no known grave, my uncle George always said he would have liked to visit had there been a grave to visit.. So many had no grave and they are commemorated at the massive monument at Thiepval. This brick and stone colossus has the names inscribed on its walls. I went expecting to see Bill and was rather surprised that it wasn’t to be found.

I happened to discuss this with my cousin who was able to give me Bill’s army number. Armed with this I approached the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who quickly told me where to find Bill’s grave. The reason our family had lost track was that Bill had been reburied in a consolidation after the war’s end. The information was exact; Plot 1, Row V, grave 26 at Philosophe cemetery near Mazingarbe. Unlike the rather picturesque Somme landscape Philosophe was located in a heavily built up area surrounded by colliery spoil heaps. I remember thinking this was appropriate for a boy from Coalville.

The grave was in a row with the cross at one end and the remembrance stone at the other. This latter inscribed “ their name will live for evermore”. Information at the visitors book lodge told me that 2000 British servicemen were buried there along with a few Commonwealth , two French and one German. As I filled in the visitors book I felt quite emotional feeling it should have been my uncle George visiting. He had died without knowing where his brother was buried.

Like so many Bill was caught up in the patriotic fervour of the war and lied about his age( he was 17) to enlist.

On our Somme tour we visited the Ulster tower which is the official Northern Ireland memorial. Standing at least three storeys tall I remember we paid to climb to the tiny museum at the top. The site is close by the Schwaben redoubt, a strong German defensive position captured by the Irish.

On the same tour we also visited the tunnels by the church in Albert. These were refuges for the locals during shelling. I purchased the nose cap of a shell as a souvenir. Earlier by the Ulster tower we had been approached by a local scammer offering to sell a pair of “genuine” German army binoculars. In the 1990’s this seemed highly unlikely they had survived seven decades. Detritus from the war emerges all the time and fields often have piles of rusted shells waiting to be collected by bomb disposal teams.

Going electric

 

Going electric

I’ve taken the plunge and my new car is a hybrid electric. It is a Hyundai hybrid plug in electric. I take care to say a plug in hybrid as opposed to many hybrid which are , controversially, described as self charging. In this case the petrol engine runs all the time but gets some assistance from a small battery charged by regeneration braking. In contrast a plug in hybrid has a larger battery, can be recharged by mains electricity, and can drive for short distances on battery electric power alone.

The so called self charging hybrid can be best thought of as a more fuel efficient petrol engine car. In contrast the plug in hybrid can both recharge by regeneration and by taking in mains electricity .In terms I now find more ambiguous than I realised both types are serial hybrids in that both electric and petrol engine power the car. It is claimed that there is a benefit in the characteristics of the two engines are different. The electric motor/generator gives torque from zero revs while a petrol engine doesn’t develop useful torque below about 1500-2000 revs.

This combination of different torque curves( turning force vs engine revs ) is claimed to give something of the best of both worlds. In some cases the petrol engine is deliberately tuned for maximum fuel economy  at the expense of maximum power and torque. This is achieved by a slight variation on the normal ( Otto) cycle known as the Atkinson cycle. Essentially this reduces the engine compression but allows the expansion portion more freedom to use all of the combustion.

I haven’t gone for a full battery vehicle. Although I recognise the immense strides made in design I can’t afford the far and away the best design leader of Tesla who make fine vehicles but beyond the reach of my pocket. Non Tesla cars mainly look at ranges below 250 miles and the recharging infrastructure just isn’t good enough. Any long trip is going to be hassle. Tesla can reach 350 miles. There are other issues surrounding all electric cars particularly charging times. High capacity chargers can recharge a battery to 80% in about 15mins.

In contrast a plug in hybrid can do many hundreds of miles in normal hybrid mode once the battery is discharged to about 15%. At that level of charge the car is effectively a more efficient petrol engine one, with some energy recovered ( regenerated ) during coasting or braking.

My actual purchase was somewhat fraught as normal online bank procedures didn’t apply. Because of fraud worries my transfers made in the usual way were not honoured and it was necessary to phone ( with the massively extended wait ) in order to release the cash. The bank claimed to have sent a message saying the payment was held but I never received it. A very patient car salesperson guided me through the whole prolonged business.

I couldn’t wait to take my first all electric journey. Even though the car is a hybrid it has a battery big enough for about 30 all electric miles. Although I’m gradually learning all the controls I managed to select all electric and did a round trip of about 10 miles. This had the practical use that we could visit the place of Annette’s tuition day where she had left ( getting forgetful ) some paints. The journey was uneventful. The electric motor coped perfectly well with everything from a steep hill to slow town driving. The whole took about the expected 30% of battery capacity .A couple of days later a round trip to a nearby town of some 20 miles took 65% of the battery charge.

The electric motor is rated at 60 bhp. While not a lot this gives decent performance with 60mph very easily attained on a dual carriageway. The all electric performance is generally rather good giving the strong impression of reining in the car rather than struggling. A part of the reason for this is the very good aerodynamics with a drag coefficient of 0.26. The downside is weight; with 100kgs of battery the vehicle is rather heavier than average. One big downside of battery vehicles generally is weight. The best lithium ion batteries weigh much more per kW than petrol engines. As fuel is consumed the weight slowly deceases in a petrol car while the heavy batteries continue even when discharged.

Another downside is that batteries use significant quantities of materials like lithium, cobalt and other hard to obtain or expensive materials. The result is that the plug in hybrid car is considerably more expensive that the “self charging” hybrid. There are developments which show some success in reducing the cost of batteries.

A final issue is battery life. Pure battery vehicles seem to be showing good longevity with something like 5 years to reduce capacity to 90% of original. This doesn’t seem to fit well with common experience with smaller batteries where life is often fairly limited. Time will tell although Hyundai appear to offer good guarantees

It has been a long time since I habitually concluded my posts with a joke. My mother was fairly straight laced and the closest she came to a risqué  joke was the following conundrum.

What is it that a man does standing up, a woman sitting down and a dog on three legs?

The audience immediately springs to the obvious answer but surely that can’t be the intended reply. It isn’t because the correct answer is – shake hands!