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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

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• London Mayor - (1)
  
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• British War Criminals - (2)
  
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• What really happened in Croydon? - (3)
  
• Bike hire in Berlin - (1)
  
• Brandenberg Gate - (1)
  
• Three Way Chess - (1)
  
• Gamelan instruments - (2)
  
• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
• “Bells and Smells” Mass - (1)
  
• Turn cash into less cash - (6)
  

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Pinkie decided to change the colour of her room, from pink to cream, and we spent much of the weekend preparing the walls, taping the skirtings, windows and doors, and applying a white undercoat. I was impressed at the paint shop at the speed at which they mixed Pinkie’s chosen colour - a base of white paint with different sized shots of colours K, R and T. After adding the shots they shake the tin for about a minute. I’m not sure what colours these letters represent, but you can view them in the photograph above.  I received at 10% discount at the shop because the sales representative failed to serve me within 2 minutes. He was busy with other customers and I had to wait 20 minutes.

With all the talk about carbon footprints, perhaps we should rethink that slogan about “taking only photographs, leaving only footprints”.

This coming week we have council elections, and according to the papers a hot issue in some local authorities is waste collection.  According to experts, moving from a weekly to a fortnightly waste collection scheme is good for the environment, as it encourages people to recycle more of their waste. Typically councils will have an alternate weeks approach: collecting normal waste one week, and recyclables the next.  The article I link to above claims that the LibDems lost control of Bolton in the 2006 council elections on this issue. 

Links du jour:

• Modbury (town) bans plastic bags
• Friends of the Earth booklet on household waste and recycling
• Recoup plastics recycling
• Recycling Appeal recycles mobile phones and printer cartridges
• Reuse - comprehensive recycling, reuse and repair website
• Waste Watch - national organisation that educates, informs and raises awareness on waste reduction, reuse and recycling

Driving through Sevenoaks this past weekend I noticed that the Corcoran & May shop is still boarded up after the recent incident of the car in the night. 

Yesterday was Earth Day, and the recycling people came round and put up a stall and a dispay on my client’s premises again. I posted recently about their last visit to promote recycling and their visit this time continued with that theme. The photograph above shows the kinds of materials that are collected for recycling under the present (extended) regime. Rather than push the “we burn your materials to produce energy” line, a thrust of yesterday’s message was how the recycled materials are used to create plastic rulers, pencils, notpads, etc.  The photograph above shows the types of materials collected, and the photograph below illustrates the types of materials that are produced from recycled materials.

Well after a week of working from home I’m back in Uxbridge, and noticing the signs of Spring. It’s probably high to late spring because many of the blooms are long past their best.  When is the official start of summer anyway?  Please somebody go to that site and vote for the suggestion which goes

Summer this year in the UK is on a Tuesday, just the one day as usual.

Quickly, before global warming makes that joke obsolete!

I think it is interesting to compare the photograph above with the last one I took from this spot, looking up the Grand Union Canal. There are definitely more leaves now on those distant trees.

This poster by Surrey Police makes an important point.  What if one’s child irresponsibily cleans up a work of graffiti from a public site?

An inquiry has been launched into who painted over a work by the self-styled guerrilla artist Banksy, which was spray painted on a wall near a London Tube station.

London Underground workmen have denied they were responsible for painting over the spray-painted mural of John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson which has become one of the artist’s most popular works.

The mural near Old Street station, depicting the Pulp Fiction actors holding bananas instead of guns, was blacked outto the bafflement of his fans. Transport for London confessed to having covered the mural in thick black paint last week, but after re-interviewing its anti-graffiti teams, it found they were not responsible. It said it suspected someone was “out-Banksying Banksy”, and now there is a suspicion that rival artists may have painted over the mural.

And yet it’s more likely that the anti-graffiti team have now realised they made a mistake painting over Banksy’s graffiti and don’t want to own up to it.  Just like kids: not wanting to own up to doing something naughty…

This is a close-up view of the rapeseed which is causing my hayfever at the moment.  Farmed for its oil, it is a member of the mustard/cabbage family (I never realised these two were in the same family) and the name derives from the old English word rapum, for turnip. And for what it’s worth turnips also have yellow flowers.

This is Fanny’s Farm Shop in Reigate, Surrey. For some reason the owner favours English flag bunting so this is strung both outside and inside the premises, and not only at World Cup time/s.

The thing about Fanny’s is that it’s a source of local honey, which is one of its specialities:

Fanny’s Farm Shop is the site of around 10 hives. At the height of the summer, each one contains approximately 60,000 to 80,000 nectar-gathering working bees.

These locally bred bees are situated to the surrounding downland conditions.

The bees are managed by British Bee Keepers Association Master Bee Keeper Maurice Field for the production of honey from nectar flowers at the Farm Shop and the surrounding countryside.

During the months of May to July, the Fanny’s Farm Shop bees produce honey from the nectar of the rich flora of the surrounding chalk downland; one of the best districts for all-around honey production in the United Kingdom.

Little or no nectar is collected until the spring, beginning with blackthorn, wild cherry, maple, dandelion, sycamore, horsechestnut, hawthorn and cultivated oil seed rape. These give way in the summer to blackberry, white clover, lime trees, rosabay willowherb, sweet chestnut and cultivated field (broad beans), and the small chalk-loving plants of vetches, thyme, marjoram and scabious. Even thistles, traveler’s joy, knapweed, yellow meliot and red clover all contribute to the delicate flavour and bouquet of Fanny’s Farm Shop hone

As I mentioned recently, local honey should be taken to protect oneself from allergy symptoms.

About an hour ago there was a loud bang outside, followed eventually by the wail of sirens as the police, fire brigade and ambulance services arrived to assist.  This is the same location where a pedestrian was knocked down earlier this year.

This time it looks like a car turning right out of Church Lane onto the A25 was struck by a heavy truck coming down West Hill. What I said last time was:

this is where the speed limit drops from 50mph to 40mph although motor vehicles also tend to ignore the speed limit at this spot.  It is a fairly busy intersection but, because it is in a dip between two hills, cars and trucks tend to speed up in order to keep their momentum for the upcoming hill.

I have been thinking for some time that the speed should be reduced here to 30 mph, not just for safety but because:

• It will reduce noise pollution;
• It will be consistent with the speed limit of 30mph on the A25 through other villages such as Godstone, Nutfield, Westerham and Brasted; and
• It is a tricky stretch for road-users who are not motorists to negotiate because it is where the bicycle lane suddenly disappears!

The Surrey Green Party Manifesto calls for speed limits to be reduced from 30mph to 20mph in residential and shopping areas and by schools.  In principle I support this. In addition, reducing the speed of the A25 from 40 to 30 mph as it goes through Oxted won’t ensure that drivers always keep below this limit, but it will slow them down and improve safety (and noise levels).

What I should have pointed out is that it is also a tricky area for motorists - even at the best of times! This morning the traffic is not particularly heavy on the road and conditions are excellent.

I hope that nobody was seriously injured in the accident. The ambulance was parked at the scene for some time so presumably the patient did not need immediate relocation to the hospital.  Here is a similar view of the scene. Both photos are from my mobile phone, hence the (poor) quality:

It seems that if I were voting in this weekend’s Presidential Elections in France I should be voting for a “militant green”, Dominique Voynet. Quel surprise!

This is where the sea meets shore and cliff on the Southern England coast.  The chalk layer which is visible here was laid down over most of the earth during the Cretaceous Period (144 to 66.4 million years ago).  In this chalk layer fossils of crocodiles have been found. Then again they have been found in the older layers below the chalk too.  85 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period this part of the world (Sussex) was covered by a warm sea inhabited by ammonites.  The ammonites became extinct about 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs.

This field of yellow Rapeseed marks the start of the hayfever season. They say that to minimise one’s hayfever one should partake of local honey, and this seems to have worked well for me for the past two or three years. According to a BBC programme:

• Allergy cases are increasing by 5% each year.
• Colder dry spells tend to make atopic eczema worse.
• Allergic asthma is a condition associated with changing weather conditions.

This afternoon I had lunch with Tessa and Jim then we went for a walk near Toy’s Hill in Kent. It was very dry and although we saw the bluebells in the woods they looked a bit limp. The photograph below shows how the path at one point is hollowed out, perhaps being an ancient walkway or road. (Probably too narrow to be a Drover’s Road).

On returning to the parking area we found a young boy who had found a “lost dog”. The boy was very concerned, but the dog seem pretty relaxed. After leaving the dog at the local pub for the night we headed home. I have subsequently discovered that the dog is a local one called Kiwi who regularly wanders off to the walking areas to get attention and to scavenge for left-over picnic food. Also the boy had last year received a handsome cash reward for finding a “real” lost dog and returning it to its owners. This would explain his eagerness to help this animal.

Yesterday Mandla Mandela, grandson of the more famous Nelson, graduated from Grahamstown University. According to the news reports he is to take up a position as a traditional leader in the Eastern Cape on Monday.  Today Graça Machel receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the same University and also delivers a keynote address.

A Mandela graduates from University, another receives an honorary doctorate: not very newsworthy events in the grand scheme of things. Madiba himself has received over a hundred awards, including honorary doctorates and a Nobel Peace Prize. However Scarlett and Pinkie have travelled to South Africa to attend the events as guests of the University Vice-Chancellor so it is a noteworthy day chez bigblue.

The China in London 2006 event trundles on into 2007. I took this photograph of the lanterns in Regents Street, London, last month. The event was launched in January 2006 by the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the “Chinese pop phenomenon” Li Yuchun.  There were reports of the event at that time on the Chinese government’s official web portal and on the People’s Daily Online (which appears to be another version of the same thing).