The weather where you are

“‘Evenin’ all. Knackerthrasher of the Met here. I have to caution yew that I am about to issue yew with a severe weather warning. In short, for the next few days it’s going to be brass monkeys. Parky in the extreme. Yew have been warned. Mind how yew go”.

Weather affects everyone, but like most things these days, can be personalised. No longer does it have to consist simply of objective measurements of temperatures, barometric pressures, and wind speeds; no, it can be about you. Rather than it being 3 degrees above zero, add on the wind chill factor and it feels like 7 degrees below. That’s made the weather more subjective, more personal, more about how you feel. It’s you shivering at the bus stop on Monday morning. Brrrrr. Less about meteorology (whoa, science, long words, panic), more about you.

Forecasting may yet become even more personalised. I’m not up on such things but I wouldn’t be surprised if already there is a weather app that can be tweaked according to taste, educational level and individual requirements, so that Rebecc-ah from Pinn-ah can know that there is a chance of thund-ah in Dov-ah where her friend Gemm-ah lives, but it will become a little warm-ah in Doncast-ah where Tyl-ah lives; so that those who love to be offended can receive suitably offensive weather forecasts thus enabling them to claim compensation; and so that Mr Creosote can download details of his very own microclimate onto his waffair-thin smartphone.

As I say, I don’t really understand these things, but I do like watching the weather forecasts on the Beeb. John Hammond, solid, reliable, the archetypal weather forecaster. Not necessarily right, mind you, but believable. Jay Wynne, a thorough professional, who likes to forecast only fine, er, sunny, er, weather, which makes him feel good about it and you too, a truly wynne-wynne situation all round. Still probably wrong, though. Chris Fawkes, also excellent; they sometimes let him out on November the Fifth for a spot of pyrotechnical banter with a conniving newsreader. Stavros, brilliant, used to own a plant called Shirley when he was in ‘Kojak’. And I get so excited when you-know-who starts talking about warm fronts and tightly packed isobars.

They all have their own styles, and you will pick your own favourites. The only one I really can’t stand is Tittering Timmy (it’s probably not his real name), who knows you have something big planned for Saturday afternoon and it’s going to absolutely widdle down. Titter, titter. And he may even lie to you and tell you it’s going to be glorious. Titter, titter even more. Then there’s that strange little man who can hardly see over the bottom of the screen. I feel he’s been put on at the wrong scale and someone needs to Photoshop him. Not to mention the one who likes to personalise your weather by hovering over the map and offering suitably regional descriptions, a homely touch indeed. Gorblimey guv, it’s taters in the Mile End Road, and it be oo-arr in Zomerzet. There’ll be a wee drop of this here, a wee dram of that there, and during the wee wee hours it will be weeing down torrentially. It’s a dreich day in Dumbarton and Dumfries, and later on there’ll be a funny peculiar haar in the Firth of Forth. Which raises the question, why does Scotland have to have so much weather? If that woman with her cracked record about wanting a man date gets her way the weather forecast could be so much shorter. And incidentally, the weather today, mon, in Nyercassel-an-Tane, in tha Toon, is a lord av shate.

Then there’s the matter of “named storms”. This means that you can come home all bedraggled and declare “I sustained a considerable battering from Doris outside Sainsbury’s this morning”. Names are tricky beasts. Are we going to be sufficiently impressed by storms called Adrian, Rupert or Piers? I wonder. Ooh, that Julian, ooh, he’s such a bitch, blew my brolly inside out. Weather maps can be intriguing, too. Mostly, for obvious reasons, they pinpoint a handful of major cities and coastal resorts – London, Plymouth, Norwich, the inevitable Stornoway and Lerwick. If there’s a major sporting event, a highlighting of Aintree or Twickenham or Edgbaston is understandable. Occasionally, however, some mischievous presenter will select differently; not really obscure places like Yardley Gobion or Bagillt or Great Snoring, but those that are merely an odd choice – Nairn, Lampeter, Thetford, Dollis Hill, Ormskirk, Horsham. Probably an in-joke with his aunties, but you never know … it could be you. It could be the weather exactly where you are.

Another nod towards personalisation is the local regional forecast. Some of the local presenters are wonderful, like the aptronymic Sara Blizzard in the East Midlands, and the woman with the strangely placed lumps and bumps which get in the way of Market Harborough. Weather watchers and their photographs of the sky can bring in not just some natural beauty but a little unintentional surreality too: clouds over Wimbledon that can not be cirrus, some wet looking mackerel in Hull, a grim day in Grimsby, a dull day in Dulwich, a magnificent cunnilingus towering over Maidenhead sent in by weather watcher Ron Devious of Taplow …  Er. Excuse me a moment …

 
“Knackerthrasher of the Met here again. ‘Allo ‘allo ‘allo, what’s all this ‘ere then. I am arresting yew on suspicion of broadcasting a weather forecast of an indecent nature. ‘Evenin’ all”.

Nominally Inappropriate

A certain acquaintance of mine bears a striking facial and bodily resemblance to the American author Bill Bryson. Consequently I tend to think of him as Bill, rather than Ken, which is his actual name. The other day I spotted him, out of his usual context and clearly out of his comfort zone, being dragged along the high street by his large, unruly hound. My reflex response was “oh, there’s Bill”. Quickly I corrected myself, but the fact is, he doesn’t look like a Ken at all.

So that got me thinking about the archetypal Ken. Who is the archetypal Ken, the prototype Ken to which all other Kens aspire? I considered Red Ken as an obvious candidate, along with Ken “no, no, no-oh, you don’t love me any more” Clarke, the Euro-Ken. Nope. Neither are thoroughly, intractably, unequivocally Ken. Undeterred, however, and mentally scanning the Kenscape from here to Kendom come, I soon arrived at a fictional contender, the wonderful and most definitely not boring Ken Barlow who has brought dramatic pleasure to us during several long lifetimes. Yes, he is the prototype Ken, the central Ken, the number one Ken, Ken-san ichiban desu ne? as they say in Weatherfield. For he looks like a Ken through and through, a Blackpool rock of a Ken; he is Ken-shaped, he is intrinsically, innately Ken. The others aren’t. Kenneth-shaped perhaps, but that’s different. 

Indeed. Once, long ago, on the seafront at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, I witnessed a lady out walking her chihuahua (contrary to what you might be thinking, dogwalking is completely irrelevant to this theme) calling “Come here, Kenneth”. A chihuahua called Kenneth. Spot on. Not Ken, but Kenneth, like Horne or Kendall, Branagh or Williams. Frinton, I understand, is special. Ooh, Matron.

Some people have the perfect name. Trump. If he wasn’t called Trump you’d have to invent it. Boris is perfect, at least his name is, absolutely Boris-shaped, although the full version can easily get mixed up with Cherylene LaPier Sarkisian Bono (or permutations thereof) - apparently someone else entirely. Completely different hair for starters. Elvis, now he was perfectly named. So is Paul McCartney, although his first name is James. Do you think “John James George and Ringo” would have been as successful? Mm, not sure. Sometimes minor improvements have to be made: Keith. Yeah. “Keef”. That’s better. During the pre-Beatle era, in the interests of promoting singers with naff names to make them more believable as teenage heart-throbs and figures of fantasy, we had Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Adam Faith, Vince Eager. And, er, Cliff. Well, all theories have to break down somewhere. I think there was one called Jimmy Riddle.

Pseudonyms don’t necessarily have to relate appearance to name. While sometimes aiming at glamour or some other effect they may simply be invoked to avoid unwanted associations or awkward pronunciation. Famously, we get Michael Caine, Marilyn Monroe and George Orwell, not to mention Diana Dors, whose real name was Diana Fluck. Allegedly, opening a fête one day in her native Swindon, she was introduced by a nervous vicar as Diana Clunt, thereby opening a whole new sub-category of Freudian slip. Well, that’s the church for you. Whatever her name, she looked the part. Confusion sets in when people don’t look like their names. Apart from the obvious saintly role model, I haven’t encountered many Theresas in my lifetime, so I don’t really know whether Theresa May is typical of the species or not. I tend to think of her as Alison, and therefore often forget who she is. 

Many factors affect how we feel about names and the people so labelled - famous or notorious individuals dominant in our society, the shape and sound of the name, the unexpected subjective resemblances that can sometimes be found between otherwise very different people, and between people and other entities. I used to know someone who resembled a hairdryer; he was a Graham. I’ve encountered many people with resemblances to animals. Lions, for instance. A leonine visage is supposedly diagnostic of a proneness to migraine. So why does the Lion King have to look like John Le Mesurier? Foxes, badgers, Dobermans (Dobermen?), pussycats, rats, I’ve known them all. On the subject of which, I once encountered a personnel officer who was a dead ringer for Vladimir Putin. By some not very convoluted process of association he was widely nicknamed Vlad the Impaler and was rumoured to bring raw meat for his lunch. I once had to go on a corporate team-bonding awayday with him, and we all had to stare into each other’s eyes for a whole minute, part of some sort of wacky exercise. Out of the box thinking, I expect, something highly original. I stared into his eyes as instructed. There was nothing there. Human resources, oh dear.

From time to time you find people, not necessarily of the same gender or ethnic group, who not only resemble each other facially, but also in terms of professions and aptitudes. This can throw you as well. So, for instance, you get Golda Meir and Lyndon Johnson, Lee Kwan Yew and Willi Brandt, Eichmann and Christie, Himmler and Beeching. And if my wife is to be believed, that Lib Dem chappie and Noddy – not the seasonal “so here it is” Noddy - but Big Ears’ best mate. Given the rarity of such similarities (and the rarity of, er, Noddies) this must be purely a matter of coincidence. Physiognomy is dead. Long live physiognomy.

I could go on, but we must leave such ruminations here, such profound explorations of why Ken Barlow is nominally appropriate but my High Street Ken is not.

Toton - an HS2 folly

The decision to locate the East Midlands hub of the hugely expensive and not universally applauded HS2 high speed rail line at Toton, midway between Nottingham and Derby is, I believe, ill-conceived (like much else about the project, including arrangements for Birmingham, London, and many other places). We’ve had the “experts” reviewing the situation and reaching their considered conclusions, but – I suspect - primarily from the point of view of “making a business case” rather than from the point of view of “making a journey”. I don’t know how they can make meaningful predictions about business that far into the future - most people can’t do it beyond the end of next week - but what one can forecast with rather greater certainty is that in the 2030s, barring catastrophes of an apocalyptic magnitude, towns and cities will still be in the same places as they are today, along with inhabitants who want to travel between them.

The unavoidable perception about the project so far is that it’s all about money rather than about what real people want; it’s about posturing with vacuous slogans rather than in-depth knowledge or practicality. One is provoked into unkind suspicions that London politicians like to imagine that the ungrateful peasants shuffling around with their clogs and cloth caps and polar bears in the tundra beyond the M25 – the perimeter of the metropolitan mind palace, the edge of the known world – will be placated by phrases like the “Midlands Engine” and the “Northern Powerhouse”.  I’m not so sure they are, especially after the EU referendum result. Let’s consider a practical example.

If I’m lucky, extremely lucky as well as extremely old by the time HS2 is built – if it is - I’ll have a flock of great-grandchildren who I’ll want to take to London for the day, or perhaps somewhere further south for a short holiday. Perhaps even somewhere European, if we’re still welcome over there and the Tunnel hasn’t been blockaded permanently. “Stop right there”, I hear you objecting, “HS2 isn’t intended for silly old geezers like you”. Maybe not, but please hear me out, with my pathetically integrated public transport scenario.

Starting in Nottingham, I’ll board a now rather creaky and squeaky NET tram, with said great-grand-offspring, and perhaps a suitcase and a pushchair or two, and enjoy most of the next hour listening to interminable announcements advising me that “this tram is for Toton HS2 hub” at the more than 15 calling points before I have to propel said personnel and attachments down through a subway or up over a footbridge and down again onto a wonderful new train – probably one with windows carefully misaligned with respect to the seating, since the desired sort of HS2 passengers will be doing busywork and won’t be looking at the scenery - that will take us at a fairly decent lick via an imaginative dogleg (gosh, is that Birmingham over there?) and into Euston, with its (compared to KXSP) impoverished connections (to the Underground, to Thameslink, to Heathrow, to Eurostar, maybe to Crossrail 2 depending on its eventual route). At vast public (and no doubt considerable personal) expense, discomfort and inconvenience I and my extended family and possessions will thus arrive in the capital a few minutes faster than is possible at present. If I can remember anything at all by the time this happens I hope I’ll remember to be hugely grateful, and that I’ll still be able to afford to make the return journey. With luck I’ll still have my concessionary pass ready for when I get back on the tram; “the next stop is Chilwell Road” – oh good, only about 9 stops to go now.

Really, of course, it simply isn’t necessary. Not long ago I caught an (admittedly already delayed) train out of St. Pancras which reached Nottingham in 1 hour 31 minutes. “Nottingham in Ninety” is a boast easily achievable today, even without Midland main line electrification. Shave off a few bends near Market Harborough, improve capacity (again) at Nottingham station so as to eliminate the seemingly compulsory waits outside the station, pull out a few fingers, and the journey could be done in one hour twenty. Very soon and relatively cheaply.

However, if we must have HS2 (well, we do live in a democracy and the clever people who decide what the democratic decision will be have decreed thus), I believe we can do better than what is currently on offer. Toton - though close to the M1 and the A52 and potentially occupying a convenient patch of former marshalling yards just pining to be appropriated - has no direct east-west rail connections, so that access to the two major population centres of Derby and Nottingham is always going to be circuitous and clunky. That’s a simple geographical truth. From Toton one is always going to have to change onto another mode of transport (tram or otherwise) to reach the city centres. Avoiding having to make connections, with the physical effort and mental stress often involved, is good policy, and is part of the logic behind Crossrail and its precursors such as the RER in Paris and some of the S-Bahn systems in Germany. Toton will always be a kludge, a nuisance, a pain in the bum for the traveller. Conversely, East Midlands Parkway station, as well as being on the north-south route, already has direct rail access to the centres of Derby and Nottingham, has large parking areas with scope for expansion, and is close to a major highway intersection (M1, A50, A42/M42, A6, A453). The East Midlands Parkway option avoids having to change trains to use HS2 – services will use the high speed line from London and then go straight through to their final destinations. Like they do at present, but slightly faster. A bit of a no brainer, one might have assumed.

Despite its misleading name, East Midlands Parkway is not adjacent to East Midlands Airport (EMA), though closer to it than is Toton. EMA is a factor not to be ignored in this argument. One of the early proposals for HS2 was that it should burrow under EMA, though apparently a station beneath the airport was ruled out – perhaps for being too obvious and not requiring expensive-enough consultants to come up with such an astonishing insight. It would be rather good to have a station serving a major provincial airport, one might think, joined up thinking and all that. Evidently not. Perhaps the clue is in the word “provincial”.

Naturally, it would be unreasonable to expect HS2 trains to make two stops in close proximity – at EMA and then at Toton or East Midlands Parkway a few high speed seconds later. It would have to be one or the other. The cake and eat it conundrum applies to more than Brexit, but seriously, though, this particular issue does highlight the genuine difficulty of deciding the best public transport solution for the region. The given geography is unhelpful and dilemma-inducing. However, the EMA rail-access problem usefully provokes another idea - and I’m surely not the first to have thought of it. A double tracked railway already runs – currently freight only – from just east of Long Eaton station (on the Nottingham to Derby line) to near Willington (on the Derby to Birmingham line). As a side issue, if used for passenger traffic it could greatly speed up journey times between Nottingham and Birmingham, by missing out Derby, already well connected to both Birmingham and Nottingham. But it isn’t. Never mind, it could be. Returning to the main thrust, from this line, in the vicinity of Castle Donington, a tunnel could be bored beneath the runway and taxiways to a terminal station directly beneath the EMA passenger terminals. Via this tunnel, trains serving EMA could run directly to and from all the principal airport catchment areas, namely in the directions of Derby and Stoke, Nottingham, Loughborough and Leicester, the Erewash valley towards Sheffield and beyond – as well as the HS2 hub.

The same arguments would also apply to a more radical alternative, namely to site the HS2 hub at Trent junction, east of Long Eaton, at the exact spot where routes north, south, east, west and potentially to EMA cross each other. Road access to this point would, admittedly, be problematical, but it’s a possibility.

The merits of East Midlands Parkway versus Trent junction can and should be argued about, but I would maintain that either option – if HS2 has to go ahead in approximately its current format – is preferable to Toton. I’m not the first to suggest it – far from it – but my firm preference would be for East Midlands Parkway. Toton should be binned as quite a good idea but one not quite good enough

My Kind Of Place : An Exhibition of Paintings

Today, 1st October, sees the opening at Bingham Library, Nottinghamshire, of a display of twelve of my recent oil paintings. Called “My Kind Of Place” the show will run throughout October, and all the items are for sale.

Bingham Library is in Eaton Place, off the Market Place, with extensive free car parking nearby, accessed via Newgate Street. The library’s opening hours are: Monday 9-1 ; Tuesday 9-7 ; Wednesday 9-12 ; Thursday 9-7 ; Friday 9-7 ; Saturday 9-4.

Titles and prices are as follows:

Sunny Day, Brixton : £180

Chelsea Embankment : £100

West from Westbourne Park : £250

South Kensington After a Long Illness : £150

November : £80

St Pancras Morning: £100

Gas and Electricity: £150

Sodium Time: £80

Signs of Spring: £100

Boulevard: £100

The Gentlemen at South End Green: £200

Over the Hedge: £100

Five of the paintings are based on largely residential scenes in West Bridgford. Anyone familiar with that delightful Nottingham suburb will have little difficulty in recognising the locations. 

  Signs of Spring    © R. Abbott 2016

 The other seven works are of inner London, with locations that include Battersea and Hampstead, and favouring my interests in public transport, street furniture and heavy industry.

 West from Westbourne Park    © R. Abbott 2016

 All of the works represent “My Kind Of Place”, the sort of locations I find visually stimulating and commanding of affection. It’s so hard to describe one’s own creative efforts without waffling pretentiously, so it’s really much better if you go along and have a look at the paintings for yourself. I hope you will.

Further tensions over North Hoylake Island

This week has seen renewed tensions over rival claims for the hotly contested North Hoylake Island, which is situated in the politically sensitive Liverpool Bay area of the Irish Sea.

 North Hoylake Island (left of centre) photographed very secretly on Sunday afternoon

Despite the United Nations showing little interest in this dispute, angry words have been exchanged between representatives of the interests of North Hoylake Island itself, and of the Wirral, West Kirby, Hilbre Island, Little Hilbre Island, Liverpool, Wales, the EU, and a man with a dog on Hoylake beach.

North Hoylake Island is of course of immense strategic significance since, whoever controls it also controls access to the estuary of the River Dee, with its vast reserves of water, sand, mud and other commodities. The shipping lanes between North Hoylake Island and the mainland of the Wirral are some of the busiest in the region, especially on days when West Kirby boating lake is popular. The value of cargo passing through this stretch of water is simply incalculable.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that North Hoylake Island is secretly being developed, possibly with a fish and chip franchise or even an unlicensed soft drinks stall. There are rumours that a Portaloo may have been installed, ostensibly for defensive purposes only, although – tellingly - its door is alleged to directly face Hoylake. An illicit ice cream van making the crossing to North Hoylake Island from the mainland at low tide is said to have been intercepted by an elderly lady asking for a 99. She has not been seen since.

These reports are, to repeat, unverifiable. However, a man who has lived in Hoylake for many years and was interviewed while exercising his bloodhound on the beach dismissed the very idea of North Hoylake Island. It didn’t even exist, he claimed. It was, he insisted, a well known mirage, a curious optical phenomenon caused by refraction of the air on warm days. The man did not want to be named, but the dog was believed to be called Ponsonby.

No spokesperson from Little Hilbre Island was available for comment, probably because nobody actually lives there.

 
While tensions continue to simmer, resolution of this issue appears to be as far away as ever.