yen_powell

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.

Well exactly. I do tell them that but it's going ahead and in some cases in place already. There is an idea that all children should walk or be walked to school and that is fine if it is within walking distance and parents have time to do it. Unfortunately lots of children are sent to schools that are too far to walk, or in the case of little children, the parents have to be at work at a certain time so the car gives them that time. Having said that, the driver behaviour I have witnessed outside some schools in disgusting and unsafe. I live next to a school and they are bad enough, but where I work it is a whole different level. A few months ago I watched a car stopped at a ped crossing by a lollipop man. The driver opened his door, took his child out and walked with him into the school. Left the car in the middle of the road for a few minutes till he came back.

I was hoping you could tell me. I have heard it mentioned, but can't recall what I was told. My next job is to turn this survey, that I've paid loads of money for, into a design for a traffic scheme with no puddles (hence the contour lines and level information). The problem is what was originally planned has now been cancelled due to the fact that word of it caused a local election to get lost by the ruling party, so I have to think of something else in the next few days. Then I have to go and build it. Beautiful spot for something though. right outside some park gates. I worked on the fabrication drawing for the metal part of the gates years ago.

Notice the Welsh and Bi-lingual sign icon on the top tool set on KEYsign. I don't think I could manage that one.

Back to work today and knocking out a sign for my boss as I am the only one to have a working version of KEYsign because I put it on my home PC so my employer's own I.T department can't muck it up. Already done 18 of the poxy things, all with different time restrictions and zone numbers and then an extra one dropped into my inbox this morning. The idea is to close streets outside schools to any vehicular traffic except residents during the little darlings' chucking in and chucking out time. The zone number refers to residents in that street who have exemption to pass in and out at those times. Now anyone that knows your typical Brit driver knows that they will go past any new restriction due to the fact they don't care or that they never look at any signs anyway because it was clear in 1985 when they last went through. So they plonk a camera up and ticket them to encourage compliance. Edit Please note despite me putting the screen caps in order, it has decided to reverse this so it is the wrong way round. Edit 2, can anyone identify the motorcycle used in all our No Vehicles signs?

Spanish builders I heard. Oak is cut whilst still green because it is bloody hard when it dries out. If there is any give in the framework then it will twist and warp. Hence some old timber frame cottages are quite straight, but most are on the wonk.

Just for Pete, I saw this about imperial measures.

I was out at a fake ELO concert last night and stayed over at my mate's house, so I was up and out at 7:30am this morning so he could go to work, I've got the day off so decided to head for a place 4 miles from home for a sit down in the sun whilst it was still out this morning. Cressing Temple Barns was a Templar property until just after nearly all of them were arrested on Friday 13th 1307 when most medieval monarchs took the excuse to seize their property. This was a working farm until my local council bought it in the 1970s. It's a nice place to wander about and costs nothing to get in if no events are on. They still have the receipts for the construction of the two larger barns, built in 1220 and 1280. I expect they are out of warranty now though. Apparently the tiles alone weigh around 70 tons.

Wonder if he's any relation to the Walking back To Happiness lady Helen Shapiro?

Another interesting tale from a seemingly ordinary person that you could meet in the street and not look twice at. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/09/20/the-return-of-benjamin-shapiro/