yen_powell

That's a rubbish roller coaster.

Very sunny, but bloody windy. I didn't undo my bike jacket.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2022/03/19/jack-corbett-londons-oldest-fireman-x/

Some from today's ride. The second picture showing stone under the water is what I went to see, but the tide was extra high and covered it up. Beaumont Quay, Thorpe-Le-Soken (quite a way from the sea), constructed using stones from the medieval London Bridge. And last picture a medieval bridge still being used by vehicles in Hadleigh, Suffolk.

Welsh people where yearings in their years.

Watch the new NAN film, it'll be almost the same.

Never heard that before. I quite liked it. She'd have cracked up at it.

I'm going to have to search that out now. My Aunt used to look after our Collie when we went on summer holidays (Lassie lookalike), a few weeks every year. One dark rainy winter evening in the early 80s there was a knock at her front door. Who is it? It's the Police madam, could you open the door please? No, you could be anybody, I wasn't born yesterday, how do I know you are the Police. Look, I'm putting my ID through your letter box. Hmmmm, that means nothing too me, you could still be anyone. But madam, I have a Police warrant card No you don't, I've got it haven't I and now I'm pushing it back out to you, I'm still not opening the door. What do you want? There's been a dog run over out here and someone said that you had a dog. Well I bleedin haven't, so the nosy bastards was wrong weren't they. Sod off!!

My first house had a Stannah stairlift. It was put in for my aunt Reenie at the same time that the council extended her toilet/bathroom and created a wet room. My aunt was the model for Catherine Tate's Nan character, often saying "What a fuckin liberty" to anyone who would listen. She swore like a docker. I used to go round and cut her grass when I was young, or do shopping for her, she always seemed old to me, but it seems I always over estimated her age. She had been in the RAF during WW2 and had been injured (her back I think) by a bomb and been on a war/disability pension ever since. My parents and I had lived with her for a few months when we came back from Germany and were homeless until the council found us somewhere. When my mum's own parents and sisters were ignoring me and my brother, my aunt was always pleased to see us, she baby sat, fed us, bought us presents etc. When I was about 25 it had dawned on me that I was never going to be able to afford a house, not with all the prices flying through the roof and mortgage rates being particularly high. My then girlfriend and her mum suggested that I speak to my aunt about buying her council house under the Right To Buy scheme. I was against the idea at first, I felt it was basically saying that I was waiting for her to die. After about 6 months I finally plucked up courage to talk to her about it. She was all for it, I was a bit shocked at her enthusiasm. In the mean time, someone from the council turned up and said that as she was disabled (she just had a limp really) they could put in a stairlift and turn the bathroom into a wet room with a shower and a seat. My aunt straight away asked how much this was going to cost her. Nothing the man said. My aunt responded with the words, I'll have two of bleedin everything then! Eventually I got a mortgage. Technically the mortgage was in her name with me as guarantor, although it was set up for me to pay directly. My family had been living in the house since it was built in approximately 1927 when my great Grandad moved in with his wife and daughters (Reenie was actually my Great Aunt). My mum had lived there for many years as a teenager when she was thrown out by my Nan (her mum) when she objected to my Grandad (her Greek step dad) grabbing her backside all the time. Because of how long my Aunt had been paying rent we got maximum discount on the house price, it was an indecently low figure. Unfortunately about 6 months after the mortgage started I got a call from my Mum to say that Reenie had rung her crying in pain. I went round from work to find my mum and her sister in the front room with Reenie who was crying out with a lot of pain in her leg. She was taken away by ambulance to the same hospital where my mum worked as a theatre nurse. She had a blood clot in her leg and they had no choice but to amputate, they asked my Mum to ask her permission. She agreed, anything to stop the pain she said. I went to visit the day after the amputation. She was sitting up in bed with a big grin on her face. My only experience of amputations was the film Reach For The Sky. As there was no large box under the bed clothes I assumed no operation had taken place and it had been postponed. We chatted away, I didn't like to bring up the subject. After about 15 minutes, she winked at me and the conversation went something like this, They've bloody done it you know! Eh, what have they done? You know, what they said. Err, what was that then? Cut me bleedin leg of you dozy sod. Are you sure Auntie Reen, because you don't look like Douglas Bader did right now you know? What's he got to do with things, I'm telling you, they cut me bloody leg off, do you wanna see it? Errr, no, you're all right, shall I get a nurse, perhaps you need some tablets. Before I could stop her she whipped back the bed clothes. And she was right, there sticking out of her bed gown was about 6 inches of thigh with a neat bandage around it. And when I say 6 inches, I mean measured from her hip bone, they'd had to cut really high. She proceeded to wiggle this tiny limb up and down like a mad thing. "Look at that eh Ian, I couldn't wiggle me leg as fast as that before." She seemed really pleased about it, although she complained that her missing foot itched. She also delighted in telling me that a nurse had asked if she was all right and she had requested that she cut her toenails as they were catching on the bed sheets. The nurse had asked which foot, she thought that was funny as well. I told her how handy that she already had a stairlift and sit down shower, it couldn't have been planned any more conveniently for her. Just then some carole singers came in, the lights were lowered and they sang as they walked around with lit candles. I recall her getting a bit tearful and saying how lovely it was. I said my goodbyes after the lights came back up and left. I never saw her alive again. My Mum was working in the operating theatres in the late evening of the next day and she got a call to see my Aunt's surgeon. It seems that the gangrene caused by the clot had gone deeper than they initially thought. My Aunt was now unconscious and they were talking about removing another part of her lower body (something like that, I'm not sure of the details). My Mum was against that and asked that they just let her slip quietly away. And that's what happened, she died with my Mum holding her hand a few hours later without waking up. She was about 67 I think. So, I had a mortgage for 6 months and then suddenly found myself with an empty house. My Aunt's older sister (my maternal nan) wrote to my Mum from her home in Cyprus saying how disappointed she was when she found out that the house was mine as she was planning to add it to her property portfolio. My Aunt had deliberately not told either of her sisters what me and her were doing, she said it was none of their fuckin business! My nan satisfied herself with emptying out all the furniture and electrical goods and having them shipped to Cyprus where she put it in her various holiday rentals she owned. My Aunt had no will, so it went to probate. We had a deed of covenant which covered the house only. Amongst the few remaining items in the house I found a small battered picture of a woman in an RAF uniform. There was no mistaking Auntie Reenie. Even as a teenager she looked like a pensioner. It is stuck on the front room wall of my current house with a big map pin, without her kindness I would probably be living in some rat hole beholden to a scummy land lord right now. So god bless you Irene May Parker

Prefer this to the original

Tea would not have any effect on Putin, the man's a total nut job. You'd have to go all out and add chocolate hob nobs and possibly even break out the big guns, the fruit cake.

That's years of natural selection. The men who's head stayed above the rainy mud line were able to procreate. All the short arses drowned. This is why you are surrounded by dwarfs where you are, low rainfall and very little mud.

Don't undo all the fork clamp bolts too loosely as the whole bike just slides down the forks suddenly......I heard.

If you mean the little steel pins that make up the rollers, do you think you are missing a single one of those, because they always seem like one is missing, but there is a gap in the ones I have seen. You just put a bed of grease in the sleeve and lay the pins back in, the grease holds them whilst you put the bolt back through.

The first openly armed police I ever saw was at an airport, it seemed quite shocking at the time.

About 20 years ago I was out and about in east London with my late boss Steve. An old man, with his head down, shuffled slowly past us, his clothes dirty, tattered and creased. Steve said quietly in my ear, "See him, he used to be the hardest bastard in the whole of east London, people would cross the street to avoid him, now look at him!" I fell for that, Steve did that every time he saw an old bloke shuffling about. He also used to say "But Dad, I love him" every time he saw a particularly tattooed scruff bag as well. But the point is, you see people wander past all the time and you will never know their life story or what they have gone though most of the time. Occasionally you will get to hear a small part of their life if you get to know them better.

This is one of my 'take a picture looking directly into the sun' shots. You haven't a clue what you are looking at, you can't see the display, you are blinded temporarily......but the clever part of the image software always sorts it out and it usually looks nice. I did the same for some of the river shots.

I keep telling those stupid Roman soldiers, remove the feet nails before the wrist nails.

Another good one if you like a life story. You have to read the first article before you read the second one so you understand how Joseph expresses himself. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2022/03/03/milly-abrahams-dressmaker-x/ https://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/12/30/so-long-joseph-markovitch/.

I didn't do the walk around the walls unfortunately, just up some steps to get my first picture along an empty bit. Mostly it was rammed with people and I wasn't in a fit state to be held up if I needed to get through fast. I hope to go back as there was a lot I missed. Very friendly local people.

It's a beast as well.. The Railway Museum was a lovely place, but quite crowded, also difficult to get far enough away from anything to take a picture of the whole thing. I have not shown all the railway pictures to avoid it being too much. My mates stayed in the pub for this, I wandered over to it, walking gingerly and slowly. Cost me a pound to get in. Took some pictures of Mallard from above.