yen_powell

The orangy lines in the topmost arrow are a flat channel about 6 inches wide to make the rainwater run along the top of the footway after it was built out into the road. The idea is it flows in from the back of the footway down the slope to the channel and from the new kerb top towards the channel then along and plops into the road. The bottom arrow is pointing at the back of the footway and the edge of the hoarding that is currently around the old London Chest Hospital site. I'll screenshot it close up so you can see the text on the plan. As you can see I got the surveyors to pick up all the spot levels, surface materials, road markings and manhole lids. This should stop me having puddles when I finish and having to explain to a large Irishman (or Romanian) why my new kerb runs right through the centre of a large steel frame and lid.

Phwoarrrrrrrr.

I'm really sorry Pete, but my colour vision is shit with thin lines, they all look mostly the same. Can you put an arrow onto my original screenshot to what you mean? I wonder if I can get a guide dog for colours?

What houses and what colour line?

I'm slowly getting there when people aren't bothering me with other stuff

Well, put simply old bean.............Silver treasure what make engine go whizz along him fella. You are Pete Sake and I claim my five pounds.

I've had to cover the seat for hygiene reasons, it's obvious if you think about it.

Honestly, you start a couple of itty bitty world wars and nobody will let you forget.

Too late to enter I suppose, still September you know, a damning indictment of the current social climate, urban survival, a top box, a green box shaped back rest, this picture has it all

This is a second hand story. In the old days at work we used to have quite a few retired policemen on their second career. One was a lovely bloke called Ron. Full of stories about his exploits in the Met traffic division during the late 50s, 60s and 70s, he was also a bit of a befuddled old gent occasionally as well. The story I heard was that he had been out playing golf in the morning and had been on the drink as well and had had a bit of a tumble on the course, so was muddy clothed, faced and handed. He got dropped off at home in the early afternoon and let himself in quietly via his side door and stripped off and used his downstairs shower rather than spread mud everywhere. He then walked stark bollock naked into the front room to let his wife know he was home and walked right into the faces of all the ladies having afternoon tea with her. She didn't speak to him for about a week afterwards. He went a bit senile in his later years and the last time I saw him was at a leaving do where he gave me a big smile and said "Hello Twistgrip". I gather he had me mixed up with some Police motorcyclist from the old days according to his wife who was also there.

Splitter!

That should be your bike of the month shot, a cheeky thumbs up shot. Although I am torn between that and the 2000 year old cobbled low rise viaduct roadway.

One of the maps I mentioned.

No, not at all, nor did she look like a sausage nosher. Arnold Circus which she is mentioned in helping get restored is the centrepiece of a housing development which took the place of the most deprived and poverty stricken area of London. To help the old locals better their living conditions they moved them all out and flattened a large area. I really mean flattened as well. When I look back through the OS maps for the area a huge section is just white space for a few years. With the rubble from the demolition they built a large mound, planted it up and then put a bandstand on it. They then moved in only new respectable people with good employment records and made them leave if they didn't behave and the old residents were shuffled off to some other slum.

I met this lady a few times between 2015 and 2017 when she sadly passed away. I went to a meeting of residents in an area near Shoreditch to talk about their traffic concerns and it turned into a how can we stop drug dealers and crime in the area etc. This lady had dominated the meeting using nothing but gentle charm. She side lined me afterwards and we spoke about a scheme I wanted to design that might benefit the estate next to her house, but which had no funding available. She had me on side in about 10 minutes, but when I went and spoke to the money people in the office the answer was still no. So I asked if they would meet this lady and tell her that directly to see if her magic would work on them. Sure enough they all came back from the meeting with a glassy stare and chanting, "We must do what Ms Khan says" over and over. So I got my funding and every time I went on site she would come and chat. She showed me where she had designed and built a play area for small children and where they could be seen by their parents from the windows of their flats, she'd had a concrete table tennis table installed next to it, convincing the Olympic people to pay for it, she had plans to rent out the disused underground car park under one block to artists so their presence would put off criminals using them and was getting lighting installed in any dark corners of the estate. She made me laugh when she told me that drunk pub goers occasionally used her drive for a piddle or a dump on their way home. The last time I saw here i was half way through my scheme and she looked tired and made a quiet comment that she hoped she would be around to see it completed. I heard she had died a month or so later. Then this turned up in Spitalfields Life a while after and I finally learnt her story, totally unexpected, I had her down as a posh lady from an old English landed gentry background, the truth couldn't have been more different. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2017/06/09/so-long-naseem-khan-obe/

The waste is the best bit, I don't just do it for the money and causing traffic jams, that's just the cream on the cake. Going down there today hopefully, got to think about drainage, it's flat as a witches tit everywhere there and a large puddle when I've finished will make me look like a right dickydoodah. The bloke who is doing another area up the road told me last night he's off at the end of next week. He was agency and interviewed for my job but didn't get it when he should have (two posts the same, not actually my own job) and they told him they couldn't guarantee to keep him on after March as agency. So he's off to Croydon for a longer term engagement and you can't blame him. I despair sometimes, we have lost a lot of people over the years we should have hung on to because HR dick about. Now we'll either get someone hopeless who needs to have it explained all over again or I'll be doing that one as well plus all the other stuff he was covering.

You've got to have the right ears for a hat. I have to decide whether to tuck them in or outside the hat. When it is compulsory to wear a hard hat on some sites I hate it, I always feel like a poor man's Village People clone.

Much better. I only put the knee grip rubbers on my same coloured tank so people wouldn't think I had had it primed and then couldn't be bothered to get the top coat sprayed on. I've got one of those netty/stretchy seat covers, meant for some BMW but fits fine. I fitted it so I wouldn't slide when braking, but it also keeps my small but perfectly formed bottom from getting wet when the seat has been rained on.

Photographs of East London 2 years before the 1st World War (unless you are American, then it is 5 years before WW1) https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/09/23/c-a-mathew-photographer-x/

In my complicated pants.

Getting there slowly, sketched this up, new one way. Ran an articulated lorry through it on Autotrack to make sure it can get through and hatched it up the proposed new footways temporarily so I can explain to the politicians what I'm up to. Going to have a contraflow cycle track coming from the right against the vehicular one way. Took out the long island in Bishops Way I put in back in 89 to improve the access to the new one way. Bit of a chicane to slow the fast fuckers down outside the park , a drop for the part time licenced ice cream man to get up to the park gates, a narrower zebra crossing for the old folk so they have less distance to cross, some echelon parking bays in Approach Road to replace the ones I'm deleting in Sewardstone and pinching down the new one way approaches in Approach Road and St James's Avenue.

Did that ever have the silly all enveloping fairing with tall screen on it. Didn't the police ride something like that?

On hold, apparently the Mayor has spoken about it today and we have a 2pm meeting on this very subject. I'll do something else till I hear.

I was using my bike for day to day travel to work. My original plan was to carry the tyres and fit them after crossing Spain, but they took up too much room so me I decided to fit them the day before leaving. The rear Desert was fine. The front , which despite being road legal was quite aggressive looking had two problems. First was the very unstable feeling at speed on a tarmac surface. The second was at higher speeds they would not let the bike follow a curve, they wanted to carry on straight. I rode about 30 motorway miles to Strange Dave's house to find that out. If I did it again I would put an MT21 or similar front on. Having said all that, they tyres were very very good off road and tough as anything. Even with only 12-15psi in them they still didn't flatten out on a loaded Africa Twin. In fact, unknown to me, I had gotten a puncture when I got home, I think when I went over a burnt out pallet on a local green lane just before getting back. Wanted to use the bike with knobbly tyres one last time. Next morning I put my son on the back to take him to school and we got three streets away before I realised I had a flat tyre! They are in my garage rafters now, can't bring myself to throw them away. I might get them down and take a picture later.

Top to bottom of Spain is very easy, I had an approximate 50mph top speed when I did it due to unsuitable tyres, they scared me over 55mph until they were nearly worn out when 70 was fine. Even at 50 though it was easy going. We took 3 days but only because Charlie held us up for most of a day getting new tyres for his bike and the fact we got lost afterwards and made him pay for a hotel for the night as punishment. That was April time, like UK weather in Bilbao, cool and drizzly the first day.