A survey came up on my computer from My London, I have no idea who they are but made an effort to answer the questions as I thought this would give me an opportunity to voice my dislike of the London ULEZ charge.
Sadly I only got as far as question four where there was no option suitable for me to continue.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT ULEZ AS EXPANSION ARRIVES?
Are you in favour of London’s ULEZ expanding?
NO
Do you agree with people damaging ULEZ cameras to show their opposition?
YES
Have you used the scrappage scheme, and have you found it fair?
HAVEN’T USED
If Londoners had to be charged for driving in the capital, which system would you prefer?
£12.50 daily charge for drivers (ULEZ scheme)
Pay-by-minute system for drivers
Pay-by-mile system for drivers
Select an option.
I was looking for the option of; It’s a very unfair tax and we shouldn’t have to pay it at all as we pay enough tax for the privilege of driving our cars already but it wasn’t there so I could see no point in continuing with their survey as they obviously didn’t want to hear any answers that did not fit with their agenda.
Without putting too fine a point on it, this is bloody typical of the contempt the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has for the rest of us drivers who might have to drive to London.
He on the other hand swans about in a luxury Range Rover which obviously runs on clouds or reindeer fluff which has no polluting effect on the London air whatsoever.
I have just wasted the last 20 to 30 minutes of my life filling in a questionnaire from the City of London Transport Strategy Commonplace and having completed it I had to confirm my comments with a link they had sent me which when clicked said, I had only completed 1 of the 13 tiles and suggested I start again.
Now, it is possible that I have the wrong end of the stick and all my answers have been recorded but I have to wonder if that being the case, why was I invited to go round again this time with photographs?
Anyway, the long and the short of it appears to be more and more penalising the motorist until we finally admit defeat and never venture into London ever again, the only saving grace I could see from their survey was that their suggestion for a blanket 15mph speed limit had been rejected I believe by the Government. There was however a suggestion that they would encourage the use of electric scooters, as if they haven’t injured enough pedestrians already.
Another proposal was to ban freight transport from the City completely, although there was no suggestion as to how the City would exist without the necessary goods for the day to day running of the place unless Uber Eats were going to diversify into multiple deliveries of stationary and other items needed for the smooth running of a modern office together with the employees lunchtime snacks.
I did voice my opinion that most of the proposals seemed to involve yet more measures to impede the use of the motorcar or at the very least, leave it stuck in the single lane allotted for its use whilst the occasional bus or taxi passes and brushes the tumbleweed to the kerb. Reading between the lines I would warn motorist to be prepared for yet more costs with the potential of a new road pricing scheme coming into effect, this in a city where I’m led to believe the Mayor is driven about in a Range Rover.
I was surprised when getting to the end of the survey I was asked what my sexuality was, although Lord knows what that would have to do with traffic management as I would imagine whatever you identify as we all walk or cross the road in a fairly similar fashion, another surprise was the multiplicity of options from which to choose and having checked in my underpants and found a penis lurking there I plumped for the straightforward answer MALE.
Having got to the end of the survey and clicked on the link to confirm my comments I was faced with yet more of the same saying I had only completed 1 of the 13 tiles available, so I started again until halfway through it said I had reached my limit, leaving me to wonder if they can’t run a simple survey how on earth are they going to run the city in a sensible fashion.
So, finally in despair I filled in the last box available to me with the following;
I have just wasted the last 20 minutes filling in your questionnaire and when I got to the part where I had to confirm my comments, it said I have only replied to one of the thirteen tiles so it would appear your questionnaire is faulty or perhaps you didn’t like my answers. Either way I suggest you stick your survey where the sun doesn’t shine as I have better things to do than mess around with this bollocks.
A couple of days ago Angella and I got home from the most wonderful weekend spent meeting friends, shopping, and dancing to some of the best dance bands on the vintage scene, I have to admit I am still in a state of excitement just thinking about it.
The weekend started on Wednesday when we drove to Devizes staying at the Bear Hotel and taking the opportunity for some clothes shopping which I have to say proved a little fruitless this year but knowing what lay ahead we were optimistic we would make up the shortfall over the weekend.
We checked into the Imperial Hotel on Thursday and were pleasantly surprised to be upgraded from our usual sea view to a suite with a sea view. The Imperial is a beautiful hotel with plenty of character and massively high ceilings which may explain why it’s always on the chilly side.
Quite a nice photograph only slightly marred by the plastic bag which for some reason the computer wouldn’t let me crop! This is also the only shot of any of our daytime outfits which as you can see, if you look very closely is a combination of pink/red trousers, white blouse and a red snood, although my description may not be that accurate as like 9 out of 10 men I am slightly colour blind.
The next day we left early and drove the short distance to the Victoria Hotel in an attempt to bag a sufficiently large car parking space for the car, which I’m glad to say we managed, a word to management I’d like this spot again next year!
I then went for a walk to have a coffee and to check out the carpark at the Premier Inn which I’m pleased to say looked suitable so I’m thinking for next year we may be joining those who stay there as I suspect it may be a tad warmer than the Imperial.
My next job was to pick up a very nice valve wireless which I purchased from Alan Axon who had refurbished it and fitted a bluetooth connection and is as I write playing a rather catchy Jack Hylton tune from the playlist I have on my telephone. Blimey, I’ve almost dragged myself into the 20th century and may be bracing myself for the final plunge into the 21st, you never know.
The bands are always good at Riviera Swing but this year was superb from The Big R Band, The Pasadena Roof Orchestra and possibly everyone’s favourite 32 piece band, The Sleepy Lagoon Orchestra.
I have to say a big thank you to Mark and Hoc for their brilliant dance classes during the day, it’s quite amazing how much they can teach in such a short time, which meant together with the lessons from our ballroom teacher Cheryl enabled Angella and I to dance considerably more than we did last year.
The following are just a selection of our outfits for the evening from Friday to Sunday, which arrived far too soon, although with all the dancing my feet were glad of a rest.
And finally, an image which reminds me of some years ago when I first came across a photograph on Facebook of a large group of chaps on a staircase at a previous Riviera Swing in white tie and tails and I called Angella to come and look, “Angella, you’ve got to see this, it’s absolutely barmy we have to go.”
What a fabulous time we had, Riviera Swing gets better every year. Thank you to all those involved who make it such a wonderful event. Roll on next year!
Modern life has struck once again with a problem with my Tomtom sat nav which has caused me to waste many hours of what is left of my fast dwindling life, I do not have the time for this nonsense.
I know I’m a bit of a Luddite but this is not my first Tomtom and prior to this should I wish to add a feature or change something on the device I would open the mydrive connect thingy on the computer and connect the device with the lead and hey presto the computer would recognise it and allow me to do whatever was wanted.
Now, mydrive connect will not open, and having deleted it and uploaded it again it still stubbornly refuses to completely load nor open and when I seem to be getting somewhere when I connect the device it asks me to connect to my phone by my bluetooth personal hot spot which has me wondering, why when it used to work with the wire connection would it now want to connect to bluetooth? Answers on a postcard to Robert Robinson, BBC Points of View!
So having contacted Tomtom who doesn’t have a telephone help line and made an effort to communicate with a robot by following the various options suggested to me I have finally given up and gone for the option of sending an email but as it appears they only staff the help centre from 10.00 to 4.00 Monday to Friday this will not be much use to me on my journey tomorrow to Devon.
The following is my communication with what I assume to be the Tomtom robot.
My Tomtom mydrive connect on my computer seems to have stopped working, I have tried to uninstall and install again but it still won’t work. I used to just plug the device in and it would recognise it and let me update and add features but nothing seems to be working and talking to a machine for answers is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Much more of this nonsense and I will smash the machine and never buy another of your products ever again. It’s very sad that you can sell a product with such useless back up. Kind regards, Joe Wells.
I know quite a few people, mainly somewhat younger than myself who use their telephone for navigation by using Google maps and I have been greatly impressed by its capabilities especially accuracy and lane discipline advice when driving and am tempted to do likewise.
However, there is a slight catch 22 situation, in that I have an iphone 14 (I think) which is extremely good and not too bulky for my pocket whilst my Tomtom sat nav has a much larger screen and is therefore easier to glance at when driving but the advantage of the iphone is it will do what I want.
Should I not get the Tomtom working as I want, my decision to swop to using the iphone will be that much easier to make as when I have taken a hammer to the offending Tomtom I suspect there will be very little to see on the screen at all.
To say I’m somewhat shocked to see one of the best events of the year will be no more, with this years Woodhall Spa Forties Weekend 2023 being the final one.
I have seen suggestions that we should go regardless, after all the hotels must be responsible for putting on their own entertainment and vintage clothes shopping, perhaps the dance in the village hall would go ahead. What’s to stop the classic cars from parking in the high street, I wouldn’t want to be the parking attendant that tried, they would be severely outnumbered.
I seem to have talked myself into going, we can’t let this event die like this.
A week or so ago I organised a forties night dance for my local car club, we had the excellent Alex Jones vintage singer and dance lessons from myself and my wife, the Peabody being very popular.
Most people made an effort to dress the part and add to the atmosphere with bunting posters, incendiary bombs, red cross parcels and each table had a theme and period correct sweets for all.
Luckily the incendiary bomb was in a bucket of sand and no-one trod on the land mine.
Although we had a stirrup pump handy should things have got out of hand.
The Red Cross parcels came in very handy for the POW’s but no-one managed to remove the fuse from my disposal training bomb without the warning bell sounding.
Hopefully a good time was had by all and it kept me out of mischief for a while, I was hoping to use my display models for my audition for Blue Peter but apparently they are no longer going to make the programme.
M&S have apologised for their Christmas advertisement as they have received 40 complaints about a shot of three Christmas paper hats being burnt in the fire in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
It seems they have removed the advertisement which was apparently shot in August, long before the Palestinian war started, although the version I viewed on line just seems to have removed the shot of the fireplace.
Why, oh why, oh why, do we keep pandering to these ridiculous woke complaints, firstly there were only 40 complaints which means 99.99999999999999999999999% of the population found no offence in the scene and secondly the paper hats are not even the colours of the Palestinian flag which as far as I can see it is, red, white, green and black which is nothing like the red, silver and green paper hats in the fireplace.
People nowadays seem to go out of their way to find offence in the slightest little thing and even worse find offence where there is none to be found.
I have been rather busy of late as you may tell from the fact that I haven’t posted anything for some time, I was rather busy last week organising a forties night for my local car club, perhaps I will have time to post details at a later date, but in the meantime my eye was caught by the story of the ticket office closures.
I do not see the logic in trying to get rid of the ticket office, I rarely use the trains but I have experienced trying to buy a ticket from a machine rather than a ticket office. At the machine my wife and I stare at the machine trying to make sense of the multitude of different options to buy and pay for a ticket and like many before us in the queue, we are eventually assisted by a member of staff to purchase our tickets. In the meantime the queue has become longer with more people like ourselves who are not trained in the skills of the ticket office, how much simpler when one just went to the ticket office and asked for a return to your destination and were offered the option of a cheap day return or some other means of paying slightly less, paid for the dam ticket and buggered off.
Obviously, we have to move with the times, we can’t expect the stationmaster of every London mainline station to be wearing a top hat as a means to recognise him any more but I feel some things are worth preserving and although I was very grateful for the assistance of the member of staff who guided us through the process of purchasing the tickets one has to admit their talents may have been put to better use from the other side of the window of a ticket office.
I am very glad to see that the ticket offices will not be closed and have a piece of advice for the rail companies in the form of a well known adage, never forget….”if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t need fixing.”
We went to the Wallingford Back to the Forties weekend last week with the intention of meeting with an old school friend who lives in the village of Wallingford.
The original idea was to meet my friend on one of the days and do the Wallingford event the other but being caught on the M25 for three hours in a traffic jam upset the plans slightly, however we arrived in the late afternoon and thought we might as well have a quick look round before checking into our hotel.
I have to say we were somewhat surprised as to how small the event was, as it seemed bigger when viewed on Facebook but undeterred we had a quick look round and jumped on a train for a quick ride up the line and back, unfortunately after that there wasn’t much else to see or do so we went to our hotel and met my friend for dinner which involved quite a lot of laughter and memories of our younger days.
As usual we took very few photographs but here is one of Angella during the train ride, her look being somewhat enigmatic I’m not sure if it was saying, “I love you dearly,” or ” if you take me on another of these dam train rides going nowhere I shall never speak to you again” but as she never voiced her thoughts, I’m going for the former!
The following day we remembered we had been told of a The True Vintage Fair where we might buy some more vintage outfits which seemed slightly more constructive than going for a short train ride again after all it was only a matter of one hundred miles away in Loughborough. Strangely, this also turned out to be a smaller event than expected but my wife is not one to be put off and soon managed to get stuck in and I bought a couple of ties.
Coming back to the hotel we paused for a quick photograph at the new Agatha Christie statue in Wallingford where she lived for over forty years.
Whilst visiting the charity shops the following morning we were advised to go and see Masons in Abingdon which we did on the way home, I would highly recommend this establishment to all those who do their own dressmaking as they seem to stock everything.
Before departing for home we made a brief trip to Cholsey Church to pay our respects to the great Agatha Christie and to thank her for all the wonderful Hercule Poirot stories and then finally home, this time without the three hour delay on the M25!
Unlike the youth of today we didn’t take masses of photographs when we went to Sheringham last weekend, in fact we didn’t take one but we spent all day enjoying ourselves in the company of friends and managed a little bit of shopping.
Following on from Sheringham the following week was Bletchley Park Vintage weekend which was also good fun as we ran into quite a few more friends and you may be surprised to know we found a little time for shopping and chatting but as the day seemed to fly by we didn’t have any time for dancing.
I took my 1947 Bentley Mk VI which seemed appropriate considering the surroundings and have uploaded two photographs which cover the weekend, the first is shopping and the second, chatting with friends in front of the car.
The Diary of a Country Bumpkin 