yen_powell

There's a formula for bridge height signs that errs on the safe side, so it is probably half a foot higher then that. But then some twat resurfaces the road and doesn't tell the bridge people who look after the signs that there is more or less room of course. From Chapter 4 TSM 7.4.1.  The imperial figure shown on signs to indicate the available headroom should be at least 3 inches less than the measured height to allow a safety margin. If the resulting figure is not a multiple of 3 inches, it should be rounded down to the nearest lower multiple of 3 inches. Example 1: measured height 15’-2”: Step 1 subtract 3” to create a safety margin 14’-11” Step 2 round down to nearest multiple of 3” Step 3 sign as 14’-9”. Example 2: measured height 14’-6”: Step 1 subtract 3” to create a safety margin 14’-3” Step 2 sign as 14’-3” (rounding down not required as already a multiple of 3”)

From the link above, this is currently being converted into our new Town hall, no one wants to work there it's a nightmare to get to or park around. Even the Elephant Man died rather than stay there, I bet I get his old room (when they finish getting all the asbestos out of it), or a desk outside on the old helicopter pad, I'm sure that wasn't an original feature!

Homeless people in Itchy Park, Spitalfields Drunken women fighting on a rooftop https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/19/jack-london-photographer-x/

TFL said they were going to put a double decker under this during the Olympics, I said will it fit? They assured me it would. My next question was could I watch them try please? They said I could ride on the test bus if I wanted, but I declined. No idea height of DD bus so it may have fitted. I do note that since the Olympics the bridge height sign is 6 inches lower than before. It used to say 4.6m/15'

During the Olympics many buses were on diversion. One driver who hadn't paid attention managed to take his double decker through the Blackwall Tunnel by mistake. His passengers all gave him the advice to find somewhere to turn around and go back to the north side of the Thames. Luckily he was not that silly, the southbound tunnel is newer (1969) than the Edwardian northbound tunnel and will take a double decker, the north bound won't. I reckon he had to head to Tower Bridge or Dartford to get back.

I have a photograph somewhere of the same company's warning signs about a height restriction on a diversion route. They had drawn the arrows on the sign as a width restriction so all vehicles wider than 14 foot 9 inches were barred from going that way. I took a picture of a lorry and squashed the y axis so it was super wide like a Hummer on a high fat diet and sent that with the photo of the sign to the bloke paying their invoices.

Correct young Bob and even younger Buckster, top of the class. The very expensive traffic engineering experts were all set to put a cycle track and island on one side of a similar arched bridge pushing all vehicles to the right hand side of the road under the part of the arch that doesn't have that clearance. It's funny till you get Railtrack knocking on your door because a bus from the depot 200 yards up the road has damaged their bridge, or from TFL because their double decker has been turned into a convertible.

Consultants charging a fortune for their supposed expertise and then having to fix stuff for them afterwards or jump in and stop stuff happening before we all get tarred with the same brush. A few HGV/Bus drivers on here. What does this sign mean, particularly the white arrows either side of it? Answers on a post card and then I'll tell you what brilliant idea the consultants came up with and was due to be constructed next week.

I get asked by tourists where Petticoat Lane Market is and they get confused when I say no such named street exists but it's in Middlesex and Wentworth Street. They say you can have your watch stolen off your wrist as you enter at one end and by the time you get to the opposite end you can buy it back off a stall. Same goes for bicycles in Brick Lane market.

There's still a few thousand miles in those. You haven't thrown them away have you?

You’ve heard of Christian Dior, I’m the Yiddisher Dior! https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/16/george-dickinson-sales-manager-x/

You see, we bloody spoil them.

Proper characters!

That's m'name innit.......Ian. My fellow draftsman is called Et Tu Brute. I don't think he's from round here.

I think he was my last maths lecturer.

Just got sent the draft traffic order notices for my new scheme to proof read. I won't paste the whole thing because it tells you how to object at the bottom. Drawing still a work in progress, but we start building on December 3rd, Gas board are doing something first so I have to wait for them to get out of the way. Using my new drawing frame, I've added shadows this year. I've started work on the area just below now, my dog turd roundabout and location for the burial of my time capsule.

So tarmac had arrived by the 70s then. That must have made motorcycling easier.

Today's article was about a bloke who is a lone pleater. I didn't even know that was a trade! https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/09/kyriacos-hadjikyriacou-pleater-x/

I can still recall my shock at hearing Welsh spoken in the flesh rather than on TV at 5am on a Sunday in the 80s. It was two children about 8 or 9 years old running around a ruined castle. It wasn't a pay to get in, manned castle, it was a free for all. I'd been busy trying to get inside a fenced off tower which had no centre and only the stubs of a spiral staircase sticking out of the inner walls. I was halfway up and near a ruined window when I saw them running about and chatting away to each other. There was no one else about so they weren't putting it on for my benefit. Anyway, I found myself at the top of the tower and realised that getting back down was quite daunting with only a wall to lean against. When I emerged a pale shadow of my formerly brave self the kids had long gone. A few years later I was in a chip shop in somewhere (Pembroke Dock??) with a woman in front of me. About 6 or 7 of Wales's finest well built youth stuck their head in the door and shouted something at the woman, possibly in Welsh, their diction wasn't the best. She muttered something back and one of them shouted at her, "Fuck off back to England you Cockney cow!" Right then the shop owner asked me what I wanted and I did my best to have any accent except a London one.

Did you lean on the keyboard when you did the site name????

We had some neighbours come by once who had just been to Carmarthen. They were complaining that they searched everywhere for this great castle they had heard about, but all they found were the council offices. I asked if they might have got the place mixed up with with Caernarfon.

I had a Garmin for Morocco in 2002. It only showed a direction arrow and grid references/distance to next waypoint, no maps. Worked though, each evening I would laboriously take grid references off my Michelin map (read the opposite way round to OS grids) and tap them into the GPS for each leg of the route and hope for the best. Works in a place where you are just following tracks and trying to work out the best way out of a remote village. Wouldn't stand a chance in somewhere like central London with one ways, no entries etc.