Of buses and things

Our kitchen window looks out on a roundabout at a four-road junction. We see cyclists and pedestrians, lots of cars and from time the blaring police cars or vans, as in the picture.
We are on a one-bus route - the 236, as seen in the next picture - an important link for Finsbury Park Station with its tube and mainline connections and buses to further north. But major roadworks have affected certain routes, and we now find ourselves on a 4-bus route, a diversion route for 3 bus routes, like the single-decker number 393. Blogger would not give me space for its picture, but it travels up the road past our window like this 236, at this point going in the exact opposite direction to its normal route, which it will pick a quarter of a mile away!
Here is the number 19, heading like the 236 for Finsbury Park which makes for a pleasant alternative to the 236, when waiting at our usual bus stop.
This number 4 passes near Finsbury Park on it way north to Archway where the Goinggwadw family reside which is also extremely convenient, though regretfully they will have gone to Gwada before these diversions have ended.
The sight of these double-decker buses passing the kitchen window - I still haven't got used to them - makes me thing how surprising it must have been for people living in houses near to the Manchester Ship Canal suddenly seeing these great ocean-going ships pass by after it was built.
(But not as surprising as it would have been if they had passed before it was built.)

saffron hill revisited

Looking up Charterhouse Street from Saffron Hill
Within Saffron Hill looking back at the entry steps on Charterhouse street.

Today Dunadan and Arathorn met in a cafe in Oxford Street and chatted about this and that over cups of tea and teacakes. Dunadan had been to Ely Place - see his entry - which is a side road off Charterhouse Steet, which itself leads off Holborn Circus. This is the 5-road junction just before the Holborn Viaduct. Showing off his new-found knowledge, Arathorn said that just down the road from Ely Place there is a side street (pedestrianised and stepped entry point) called Saffron Hill. It was the street where Fagin, of 'Oliver Twist' fame, had his 'den'. It was, Arathorn solemnly declared, in O. T.'s day (1837)) an area off much ill-repute, being the home of drunks vagabonds and thieves, indeed the worst of society. It then struck us that , being a stone's throw away from the City financial institutions, the area hadn't changed much, for all that they are clean modern-looking buildings...

Spelling or speling

i red a hedline in the paper the other day that sed that harf of londoners cahnt spel. but who counted them, and what dus it matter. After all if inconsistent speling was good enuff for shakespeer then who are we to fuss. It didnt stop him being famus and he had servral ways of speling his naym anyway. And i bet you hav understud every word that i hav written so fah. i was very good in skul at thre things - spelin, tabuls and ireggular french verbs. mi lak of understanding evrything els has not been of toooo grate a hindranz. we used to talk about area and the only area i no anything about is the one around our house which has to be cleened up from time to time. I new french verbs and cud make a reesonabul attempt at speking the french langwidge but all the french verbs in the wurld cudnt help me to understand what they prattled on in reply. It was a gud job the g.l. cud. however i am puzzld by won thing. the shops abound with puzzul buks and crosswords and things needing you to be abul to spel to get the ansers rite. if so many peepul are bad at speling how cum they sel al theses buks, eh, tel me that, wise guys. or is that why sudoku is so popular becos it has no words - but then how many are good with numbers...arent we suposed to be even worse with them.

for Dunadan and his friends

"Williams faces historic choice, says Vatican" blazes the major headline in the Catholic Herald, and continues, "The time has come for Anglican leaders to choose between Protestantism and the ancient Churches of Rome and Orthodoxy." The Vatican spokesman is one Cardinal Walter Kasper, the President of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity (don't they like their long titles). What rubbish! The man clearly has no understanding at all of the nature of the Anglican Church. It has for ever in my lifetime (some 67 years) been a monument to the broad-mindedness of the British people. The Orthodox, Roman and all other Protestant churches follow a clearly prescribed and essentially prescriptive path - and that is not meant as a censure but as a truism. Ever since the Victorians came up with the Oxford and Tractarian movements the Anglican path has been available to all and sundry. Consequently "are you a huntin, shootin, fishin, third son of the gentry? then it's the Church for you me lad, and no arguments" -#1 was the heir and #2 went into the army. Either side of these poor chaps were on the one hand the Low Church Evangelicals and on the other the "hey man, we're not going to bow down to no Pope, and we want to be married too" High church reverends. As for theology , well every possible doctrine and liberal thought is part and parcel of the whole set-up. The very essence of Anglicanism is such that one might as well say we had to choose between sushi and the ancient culinary delight of fish and chips. Come on Wally, there is room for all in the Good Ship CofE, and don't deny us our little island idiosyncrasy - and let their noble reverends have their little 20 minute chat over tea and biscuits or whatever. Come to think of it, how many major decisions have ever been made in 20 minutes? Actually, probably most marriages, and without the tea and biscuits.

Especially for Heather

As you hinted, so here is an offering of...
Bill leading everyone in a joyful rendering of 'Happy Birthday to you' where 'you' of course actually refers to 'him', if you get my drift...
a happy family group where all is peaceful and quiet, for a few minutes at least (and there is a baby there somewhere,I believe)...
the Scottish ladies, Wilma and Juliet, displaying patriotic and sisterly linkage and solidarity...
Alberto, who is normally no shrinking violet, holding forth on the mysteries of the Guadeloupe language in a seemingly clandestine manner...
while the woodland floor lies motionless and silent, yet what stories it could tell if it could speak...!

Welcome back camera! Evie these were all done on Auto. First a lovely rhododendron bush some 10 feet high at its highest point, I reckon.
Next a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth whose only merit is to provide a frame for photographing more r. bushes and Kenwood house...
...as it is in, almost, full visibility...
...and Kenwood through its 'keyhole'...
...and then away from it to look at light and leaf effect.

Check this out

A small observation: I went to the polling station and fulfilled my duty and went thome thinking no more about it. On Friday morning I was on the bus when a couple of elderly men were passing the odd comment to each other. One of them said that he had put his cross on the ballot paper... I thought, "I didn't put a cross on the ballot papers (we had 3 different ones here in London to vote on), I put ticks! For all my voting life I have always put a cross as I am supposed to do. Whatever made me put a tick? I can only think that all that one does on computers is to 'check the box' and that results on a tick being entered. So there in the polling booth my brain, what's left of it these days, said to itself, "Have box, will tick". What do you think? Apparently the voting papers were counted electronically, all 6 million of them Did the machine distinguish between a tick and a cross, I wonder?