Busy Days

I must apologise for the lack of blogs over the last few days, this has been due to some late nights, a combination of signal box working and having our daughter Laura here for a few days.

The railway shifts during peak summer are quite long, starting at 9.30 and finishing after 7 in the evening. By the time I get home I feel fairly tired. You then add to that the necessity to watch the Tour de France, to eat, and talk to Laura and you see where the day goes, and why the blog does not get priority.

This afternoon I went for a lovely walk with Laura around Ravenscar. This is a very small village situated on a promontory to the north of Scarborough looking over Robin Hoods Bay. It was lovely in the afternoon sun. We walked through the grounds of the large country hotel situated there reminiscing about the open-air pool that used to be situated there. When the children were small we used to draw lots as to who would swim with the children. An indoor heated pool has sensibly replaced it.

Tomorrow should be a more relaxed day, so prepare for the renaissance of the blog.

The Last few days continued

So I have taken you through Friday night and made my excuses for not blogging. Saturday is more straight forward, I was back signalling on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. As you probably know by now I am training at Goathland, better known as Aidensfield in the Heartbeat TV show. It was also the setting for the railway scenes in the Harry Potter films I believe. Anyway it is as picturesque as they come.

It was very hard for me getting back into the routine and remembering the details of undertaking the signalling. I had not been working there for seven weeks, a seven weeks during which we had been travelling extensively. The physical work of moving the signals and points was also difficult. Never mind I enjoyed my day but arrived home tired at past 7pm.

Marion had cooked a lovely lamb curry that I certainly did justice to. It was however gone 9 before we sat down to watch the highlights of the Tour de France. Well you can judge my state by the fact that I was sound asleep before the highlights were over. I judged it safer to go to sleep rather than try to write a blog.

Sunday had been planned well in advance and was centred round celebrating the wedding anniversary of our friends. We ate at our favourite restaurant the Pipe and Glass. The meal was superb; I had a particularly fishy choice of mackerel rissoles followed by halibut cooked in chowder. The tastes were many but complimentary like a lovely warm glow rolling round your mouth. It was a lovely way to spend Sunday, great food and conversation. Fortunately it gave plenty of time to blog.

The Last few days

I have found it much harder than I expected to keep up with the daily blog. Particularly now it is summer and the there is so much more on, and also because the fruits of retirement planning are starting to bear fruit. By way of example I shall recap the last three days giving I hope some insight into some interesting subjects.

On Friday we returned Marion’s parents to Poole via Leeds Airport. I think that I have said enough on that subject, but suffice it to say it lived up to its previous poor reputation. A long time ago we had booked tickets for this evening at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, so we had some time to kill. Marion suggested visiting Salts Mill at Saltaire.

This is a great preserved part of our industrial heritage in West Yorkshire. Simply it is a huge mill at the centre of a planned village built in the 19^th century when this part of the world was a centre for world textile manufacturing. It was built by Sir Titus Salt, hence the name Salts Mill. It was one of the first planned towns in the UK where Salt provided for all of his employee’s needs except drink, the place was strictly teetotal.

The mill was saved from the demolition that was the fate of so many similar buildings. It now has an interesting variety of uses. One floor is the home of Pace whose main business I think is the manufacture of television decoders like Skyboxes. The anchor though is an exhibition of the works of David Hockney that changes according to the season. For those of you unsure of this juxtaposition Hockney was a native of nearby Bradford so it is entirely appropriate that it should be a centre for displaying his work. In between there is an excellent bookshop, a household shop and an excellent café. These are all set in the vast halls of the mills interiors. It is not hard to imagine the thundering machines that must have occupied this space. All in all it was a lovely couple of hours, also good for the quiet talk/discussion that we had.

So then it was on to the theatre, and this time it was a truly entertaining play about a Yorkshire sporting heroine, Beryl Burton. Beryl dominated women’s cycling in Britain for twenty years from the late 1950’s. She was a remarkably talented athlete and had some awe-inspiring achievements. Beryl was the first woman ever to break a men’s record in any sport. This was for the distance covered over twelve hours of road racing. The woman’s record still stands today almost fifty years after it was set. Remarkable when you consider the improvements in bike technology and training, and the fact that Burton had a weak heart.

The play itself was written by Maxine Peake a well know British actor. It was well constructed, had pace and was both funny and poignant at the same time. I felt that we were getting a great insight into a remarkable life. It was also played with verve by the small cast. So we did not get home until nearly midnight tired after a long day, I was certainly in no state to write a coherent blog.

To be continued………

Futility

As on every Thursday morning I undertook a shift at the Rainbow Centre, Marion helps out on the reception where she is a calming confident presence while I work behind the scenes with the Debt Counselling Group. I came across a case today that in a microcosm showed the futility of organisations. One of the clients owed well under £100 in Council Tax arrears to Scarborough Council. They decided in their wisdom to pursue this debt, which was relatively recent. The court summons to Scarborough Magistrates Court stated that an additional £100 would be added in costs. So now somebody who could not pay a small sum had his debts more than doubled.

Now don’t get me wrong I am absolutely behind the Council in trying to maximise the Council Tax take, I just think that there needs to be a sense of proportion. Is more than doubling the debt of somebody who cannot pay the original sum a good idea. It seems to me that there must be more humane and effective approach. Make no mistake the chasing of debts like this has only two logical outcomes, a restructuring of the original debt or prison. In the latter case the cost to society of getting to that stage is enormous both in financial and human terms.

We seem to have lost our sense of proportion and fairness as a society. We have no feeling for the humanity of a case but instead are heartlessly try to criminalise a whole raft of people. I contrast this was a piece that I saw in the media recently, it came to light that Ian Duncan Smith none other than the minister for Work and Pensions had failed to submit timely expense claims on his House of Commons credit card. There was a considerable amount of money, well into five figures that was unaccounted for. The penalty for this, his credit card was temporarily stopped. Now if one of his claimants were in a similar position all sorts of sanctions would have been imposed.

I feel very strongly that as a society we are not being fair and that we are losing sight of our humanity. We are also taking actions that seem to be totally ineffective in trying to fulfil their objectives.

Old Friends and a Shock

Today I entered full retirement by severing my last links with my old job. I travelled to London to return my IT kit. This was both an enjoyable occasion and a shock. Lets get to the shock first; I had to put on socks. No big deal you say, but I have not worn socks for about six weeks, and it feels good. This allied to getting out of bed at 6am made me realise how good retirement is. I do not like socks, it has taken me 60 years to get to this life affirming opinion.

Actually returning my computers was just an excuse to see former colleagues and good friends Mark and Rodney for lunch and a good talk. I swiftly concluded when I retired that it was not the work that I missed but the people that I worked with, at least the good guys. Over tapas we had a good talk, about personal things and inevitably some gossip about work. It was great to catch-up and reminded me what good guys Mark and Rodney are.

Inevitably with time train tickets there was quite a lot of downtime in London. I occupied that fully by walking the streets (21,000 steps today), drinking coffee and generally observing things. I noticed one stunning simple improvement. For what seems like forever they have been renovating the public spaces in the Barbican. Now finished the most magnificent beds of wild flowers have been planted. They contrast brilliantly with the brutalist architecture of the Barbican

However even walking the backstreets as I mostly did, I could not but notice the incessant traffic and in particular when you are around such road hubs as Kings Cross the pollution. It certainly makes a constriction in the throat. Do you know the first thing that hit me when I got of the train in Scarborough tonight, the smell of the sea. The tangy, salty aroma hit me immediately, bliss. Retirement is pretty good!!!!