What – is it the end of January already? What an odd month, where time has seemed elastic, sometimes stretching out in a series of ‘Groundhog day’ moments due the the Covid restrictions, yet on other days the month has flown by. The problem was, you never really knew which was going to be which!
That busyness has kept me from blogging as much as I’d planned, although the farcical anti HS2 demonstration has given some light relief as the remaining demonstrators who’re holed up in their tunnel try to pass the buck to HS2 for the situation they’re in due to their cluelessness when it comes to digging. The fact they chose to dig in sandy soil during the wettest time of the year won’t qualify them for any awards! The only question now is how long this farce drags on. Will they come out, or will they be dragged out. Either way, it won’t stop any work on building HS2 as they’re hundreds of metres away from any active worksites!
The rest of the weekend’s been quiet due to the mixed weather and lockdown. It’s not like there’s many places we can go, so life’s quite mundane. Apart from chores, walking, cooking and scanning old slides life’s been much of a muchness. But, I do have a new picture of the day from the latest batch of slide scans. I took this on the 12th September 1999 at Robin Hood’s Bay. Lynn and I were spending a long weekend at the wonderfully named Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, which made a great base for coastal walks.
Robin Hood’s Bay is a picturesque little place with some marvelous coastline and beaches that are great for just ambling along, beachcombing at low tide when some impressive rock formations are exposed. If the weather changes for the worst there’s also a couple of decent pubs in which to seek refuge.
In February I’ll be starting scanning another album of pictures from India, so expect a real variety of shots from Goa and the Gujarat.
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As if their doomed campaign campaign hadn’t reached farcial new lows at Euston over the past few days, they’ve decided to descend even more into parody this afternoon.
Remember these are people are supposed to be concerned for the environment. Of course one of the best things for the environment is green travel options – like electric railways for example. Ah, but not if you’re of an Extinction Rebellion mindset! Remember they’ve a history of really dumb stunts like gluing themselves to electric trains which provide eco-friendly mass-transport around London. The last time they did this it really didn’t go down well with ordinary Londoners and XR hastily back-tracked, claiming it was a ‘mistake’ (damned right it was! Ed).
It appears they have the memories of Goldfish, because this has just appeared on the Hs2Rebellion Facebook page.
So, these ‘environmentalists’ have closed down a green railway in the capital in the height of a pandemic, this preventing key workers – which will include NHS staff, fire-service staff, and other public-transport workers getting to/from work. For example, University College Hospital (UCH) is only across the road from the station. How many people could potentially lose their lives because of stupid stunts like this unless this idiot is removed quickly and Euston station reopened – and what the hell do these people think they’re playing at?
My only hope is that the police now deploy the full force of the law here, as this has gone way beyond the bounds of legitimate protest. This is putting innocent people’s lives at risk.
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Unless your name’s Rip Van Winkle it’s unlikely that you’re unaware that the UK is currently in a national ‘lockdown’ to combat the resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially as there’s a new (much more easily transmittable) strain around.
The Government is (for once) pretty clear on the legal restrictions, and the message is – stay at home! As the rules make plain;
“You must not leave, or be outside of your home except where necessary”
You are permitted to leave home for certain (essential) reasons, but the laws go on to say;
“If you do leave home for a permitted reason, you should always stay in your local area – unless it is necessary to go further, for example to go to work.
Staying in your local area means stay in the village, town, or part of the city where you live”.
Straightforward, no?
To the nation’s credit, most people are obeying the laws for the simple reasons of self-preservation and out of respect for others. Well, that is unless you’re an anti HS2 protester as apparently the rules don’t apply to them. These are the same protesters who have launched a barrage of complaints against HS2 workers, labelling them Covid ‘super spreaders’ for continuing to work during the pandemic (ignoring that they’re only one part of the construction industry which is continuing to work on essential projects up and down the country whilst being closely monitored by Health Officials and other Government agencies).
You may have seen from the media that here’s a farce going on outside Euston station at the moment as a tiny band of protesters and homeless people are being evicted by Police, bailiffs and HS2 workers who have moved in to begin clearing and securing the site. As of Friday morning all that’s left is (according to the protesters themselves) four people in a tunnel the protesters have dug under the gardens.
To say this protest is futile is an understatement. It doesn’t stop any HS2 construction work at all. The Gardens are outside the main footprint of the Euston station construction project and the site isn’t required for temporary relation of facilities for a long time yet. In effect, the protesters had neutralised themselves! All it’s achieved is a certain notoriety as a squalid place for drug-dealing that’s turned the gardens into a tip. A lot of the publicity the protesters are attracting is as much negative as positive.
But my issue is this. If we’re in a lockdown amidst a pandemic that’s already killed 100,000 in the UK, where are these protesters coming from – because many aren’t living in that camp. Now, I’m going to make absolutely no apology for naming and shaming some people here. People are dying in their 1000s, yet these protesters (and their hangers-on) consider the lockdown rules don’t apply to them. They’re roaming the country at will. Here’s some examples, all taken from their own self-publicity on social media.
Meet Caroline Thompson Smith, a ‘leading light’ in the anti Hs2 campaign in Steeple Claydon, where she lives.
Here’s Caroline yesterday, livestreaming from Euston to the HS2rebellion Facebook page. Steeple Claydon is 59 miles away from Euston. Now, what was that Government advice again?
Meet Sam Smithson, AKA “Swan”, a protester who lives at the risibly named Denham Ford ‘protection’ camp North of Uxbridge, where the protesters have failed to stop the National Grid moving some High Voltage pylons that are in the way of HS2. Back in the summer ‘Swan’ had a fall from some ropes whilst protesting and the anti HS2 websites were full of claims that she’d broken her collarbone. She made a miraculous recovery and was photographed bouncing on a bed in the hotel she was taken to immediately after her arrest!
The Denham camp is 20 miles NW of Euston. Here’s ‘Swan’ being interviewed there during their last failure to stop National Power.
And here’s ‘Swan’ yesterday at Euston, broadcasting to the world with the assistance of William AKA “boots on the ground” (more of whom in minute).
Right, let’s talk about William. Ole’ Boots can’t be with us today because he’s buggered off to Spain (for the second time during the Pandemic). This time he was boasting about how he took the train to get there. Y’know – High-Speed trains – the things he opposes the UK having? William (an American national living in London) has a long history of both spouting rubbish and flitting around the world and the UK whilst totally ignoring the Covid restrictions. Ole ‘boots’ nonsense has featured in several blogs before, notably this one, and this one.
Whilst William had to be content circulating his rubbish whilst sunning himself in Spain, other protesters had turned up. Meet Jacob Harwood, a long time protester who’s popped up all over the place since 2019. Supposedly, he’s meant to be in Canterbury where he’s a student.
Jacob (or ‘Groovella’ as his renamed himself to fool no-one at all) is still getting about a bit. On the 18th January he was filming at the HS2/E-W rail work at Steeple Claydon in Bucks
Which is rather odd as on one of his videos filmed at Euston on Thursday you can hear him swearing blind to a police officer that he’s now homeless as he’s lived at the Euston Camp since August 2019! The story changes in later videos where he claims he’s only been there five months. One thing is clear, you can’t trust a word he says.
Here’s another one to add to the list from today. Karen Wildin, who is already known to the police, having been arrested by them before for climbing on machinery up in Warwickshire. Wildin, who says she lives in Leicester, has filmed herself at Euston this morning. Now what was that the Government advice was? “You must not leave, or be outside of your home except where necessary”…
There are several other protesters who’ve pitched up from elsewhere, including this chap, who’s ostensibly based in Bristol (and who was at Crackley camp recently). He’s one of the ‘leading lights’ in HS2Rebellion. I’ll add more details later.
Frankly, it was a wasted journey. He and another protester were taken down and arrested this morning. All the trees are now clear of protesters. In fact, the only ones remaining on site are the four holed up in the tunnel (well, they’re *really* going to stop HS2 down there, aren’t they? Ed).
Of that four, one is the famous failure, Larch Maxey, who was last seen up in North London where he didn’t stop a tree being chopped down in Islington. Clearly, Maxey has got more ‘bubbles’ than an Aero! Rather than being nicknamed ‘Larch’, Maxey would be better called ‘Dr Death’ because wherever he turns up, trees die! He’s been a serial failure since the mid-1990s when he didn’t stop a motorway extension in Lancashire. His recent roll-call of failure includes just about every StopHs2 camp going!
Oh, another ‘face’ that’s appeared in the Guardian today is Daniel Hooper aka ‘Swampy’ who is pictured down the tunnel. Is he ‘really’ living at that camp? Last month he was arrested at Denham after another famous failure to stop Hs2 work. Or, is this a case of popping in for a photo-op to get in the newspapers – sans mask, in the confines of a tunnel!
Now, the right to protest is enshrined in law – as it should be. But the right to roam the country during a pandemic isn’t. This is the 21st century and there’s a wide range of avenues open to register a protest – as these protesters show by their use of the internet. They do not need to pitch up in Central London, putting other people lives at risk. But that’s their weapons-grade hypocrisy, as this shows.
“Recklessly flouts lockdown”? Oh, the irony…
No doubt I’ll be adding a few other names to this list in the next day or two. In the meantime, it would be refreshing to see some of my colleagues in the mainstream media stop giving these Covidiots a free pass and actually do their jobs by asking some awkward and searching questions of these people for once, rather than just being a propaganda conduit for the protesters…
Of course, the stupidity and futility of this protest is also being ignored by many, because whilst the media and public’s attention is on this circus at Euston, HS2 construction work continues uninterrupted at Euston and all the other sites along the 140 mile route to Birmingham. Soon, work will begin on the Phase 2a route to Crewe as that section will gain Royal Assent any day now. I’ll be listing progress on building HS2 in my next blog…
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There’s not much of a blog from me tonight. I’m tired and hurting from my fall yesterday, although I didn’t let it stop me getting my exercise today, it just meant some of it was through gritted teeth.
I do have one small cause for celebration. I try for a little victory each day – something that I’ve accomplished so that I can feel that I’m moving forward. Today’s was scanning the last few slides from our round the world trip. We left the UK and arrived in India on the 6th November 1997. Over the next 18 months we visited many states in India, then overland into Nepal to go trekking before flying to Thailand where we travelled overland to Malaysia, then by ferry to tour Sumatra, back to Malaysia and overland to Singapore before flying to Bali, then travelling by bus and ferry as far as the Island of Flores in the East. From there we flew back to Bali, toured the island with friends before doing a ‘visa run’ to Singapore and back. After which we went by bus and ferry to tour Java thence returning to Bali for the final time before flying to Australia for Xmas with friends we’d made on our travels. We toured Victoria with Alison and her family, then caught a train to Sydney to meet up with yet more friends before flying to Auckland, New Zealand. From there we travelled by train through the North Island, then a mixture of train and bus around the South Island (with Alison once again, sans kids) before flying back to Auckland to connect with our Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles via a week in Fiji and another in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Barely pausing for breath in LA, we caught our final flight on the 20th March with Virgin Atlantic, who flew us back across the pond and home to London, where we arrived on the 21st March 1999. This rather breathless precis is just to give a flavour of what was an incredible experience. You’ll be able to find all the photographs in this gallery by the end of the week. One day (when time permits) I hope to blog in detail about aspects of the trip and show just how much the world has changed since those heady days of the 1990s. For now, here’s the picture of the day, which is the final picture I took on the trip…
We caught a Virgin Atlantic flight from LA (VS8) at 17.30, it’s an overnight flight as the journey takes 10 + hours to cover the 5416 miles. Waking up on the morning of the 21st just in time to feel the plane banking over the Atlantic at sunrise I grabbed this picture out of the aircraft window…
Memories…
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This keeping fit lark is getting dangerous! Having spent most of the morning slaving over a hot computer I took a break to get in my daily constitutional. Grateful for the fact that we’ve had hardly any rain for the rain for the past 48 hours so the woodland footpaths are drying out I was really enjoying my stroll. Not slipping and sliding through miles of mud rather lifts the spirits, even if the weather remains cold. The better footing means you can take time to look around rather than always looking for trip hazards. Sadly, that was my undoing. Having successfully negotiated a couple of miles of woodland I headed to to the promenade and along to Savile Park to complete a circuit of the grounds. After all, what could possibly go wrong on a simple tree lined grass park?
Bloody tree roots, that’s what! There was me, merrily strolling around the park when all of a sudden my right foot skidded on a hidden root and before I even had chance to react I’d landed flat on my back with an impressive thud! Thankfully I was wearing a thick coat so apart from my pride the only thing that was bruised (but not broken) was my right side. I had to laugh as a few moments before I’d been congratulating myself of upping my exercise this year and feeling fitter as I’d eschewed the booze for January and also lost a few pounds. Undaunted, I still finished my 5 miles, although I know I’ll suffer for it in the morning.
Plonking myself back in my chair in the home office I forswore heading out again, so spent the rest of the day catching up on work and sorting out a selection of pictures for a potential book cover for a client. Slide scanning’s going to be taking a back-seat again for a little while as I’ve other things to concentrate on – although the odd one or two will get done, such as tonight’s picture of the day, which was taken at sunset on the Island of Viti Levu, Fiji, on the 7th March 1999. It’s the view from the beach outside the backpackers where we were staying.
The setting sun had disappeared behind some clouds, which cast the most spectacular shadows and light effects with the added bonus of the reflections off a millpond sea.
Lynn and I only had a week in Fiji as a stopover on the way back to the UK via the Cook Islands and the USA. Getting to Fiji was fun as we had a great evening flight with Air New Zealand. When the Steward brought round the drinks we were very happy to see they were serving really good Kiwi wines. We stuck up a conversation where we explained that we’d not really drunk much Kiwi wine as we’d been travelling on a budget and – as much as we liked them – Aussie wine had been cheaper. The guy was very sympathetic and determined to showcase his country’s wines so kept plying us with different ones. It got to the stage where he was just leaving us the bottle! As the flight time to Suva was three and a half hours the pair of us managed to tuck away a fair bit of wine as airlines were rather more relaxed in those days. So much so that they almost had to pour us off the plane! Arriving pissed at 22.30 in the evening in a strange airport in a country you’ve never visited with little idea of where you’re heading is always an interesting experience, but we survived! I still have the details of the wines in the notebook I documented our travels in, which brings back a lot of happy memories as I browse it for caption details of pictures like this.
I’ll add the final pictures of our trip over the next week. Despite the fact we’d been away for 18 months and only arrived back in March 1999 by December we were back in India, so there’s a whole new section of travel pictures to come over February – watch this space…
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Another early in the day picture from me. Well, if you count nearly 9 o’clock in the evening ‘early’! This weekend the pair of us have been playing catch-up on chores and also trying to get some more exercise as we’ve actually had two dry days in a row which is a minor miracle for this neck of the woods at the moment. I’m not sure what the rain statistics are for January but they must be substantial, and there’s more on the way next week, so the pair of us getting out for a long (dry) walk through our local woods and along the canal together today was lovely – although with it being a Sunday and sod-all for people to do, the towpath resembled Piccadilly Circus! Most people were good and respected social-distancing but there’s always a few muppets who try and walk three-abreast and think others should just squeeze past them. What IS it with some people?
Normally, Dawn and I spend January abroad but this is the second in a row where we’ve been stuck in the ‘septic isle’ and it really makes the year drag as we’re not used to the short days and freezing weather. OK, it’s been a novelty and I’m keen to keep it that way. I’m praying life returns to normal this year so that we’ll be able to book time away in 2022 with confidence.
As a tribute to the winter weather I’d much rather be experiencing, here’s the picture of the day which is one of a batch of slides I scanned earlier this afternoon. It was taken on the 25th February 1999 and shows Lake Wakatipu (near Queenstown) on the South Island of New Zealand.
Now that’s my sort of winter weather! You can find the rest of the pictures from the trip in this gallery. Next week I’ll have the last New Zealand pictures scanned and I’ll be moving on the Fiji, so expect some spectacular sunsets…
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Thank God it’s Friday! The week’s been a frustrating one. Nothing seems to have gone right and many of the things I’d hoped to have achieved never came to fruition or are still works in progress. I’m hoping for a much better weekend and a more fruitful week next week. On the bright side, I’m still making progress with scanning old slides although that process has slowed down as a consequence of everything else. This brings me neatly on to the picture of the day, which I took on the 20th February 1999…
This is the magnificent Franz Josef glacier on the West Coast of the South island. The picture was taken from the helicopter that was taking Lynn and myself and a group of other people for a trip onto the middle slopes of the glacier as part of a heli-hiking experience – which was an amazing experience. Seeing a glacier’s magical enough, but having the chance to explore the surface of one is doubly so.
I returned with Dawn in 2019 and I was shocked by what I found (here’s a link to my blog written at the time) Due to global warming the Glacier had shrunk significantly, retreating further up the valley and down off some of the steep mountain sides. It’s a very visible testament to the damage human activity is doing to the planet. I sincerely hope we get our acts together in time to prevent the glacier disappearing completely.
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Sorry there was no picture or blog yesterday. I’ve been struggling to keep on top of a long list of things I’ve set myself to do. Despite lockdown, there never seems to be enough hours in the day. I can’t think how I used to manage before when so much of my time was taken up with travel. Ah, travel – I remember it well (I think)…
To add to the fun and games the weather over the past couple of days has been utter crap. We’ve had so much rain in the past couple of months that the ground is completely saturated, leading to worries about flooding. Fortunately, despite the storm warning, the rain hasn’t come down hard, it’s just never stopped! Even so, I’ve still ventured out for my daily splash in the mud, slipping and sliding down paths akin to small waterfalls or plodding along paths that resemble WW1 battlefields – anything that gets me some exercise and away from staring at a computer screen for a while.
I’d planned to catch up on some blogging today, instead I became bogged down in editing a backlog of slide scans whilst watching the Brexitshambles lurch from one revelation to another as UK businesses come to grips with the reality of the shit-show we’ve got ourselves in. I’m reserving the rest of my feelings about this for a spleen-venting blog tomorrow, as well as another blog catching up with news about High-Speed 2 (and there’s plenty).
The one bright spot in the day was watching that orange tw*t leave the White House for the last time and seeing the new President sworn in. Biden’s speech was everything you never got from Trump. It was statesmanlike, conciliatory, coherent and meaningful, truly a breath of fresh air after listening to the rambles of the previous incumbent.
Anyway, enough of politics for now until tomorrow. The pictures I’ve been editing have taken me back half-way around the world to Australia and New Zealand (and back 22 years in time). Today’s picture is a classic tourist view, taken on the 5th February 1999 in Wellington, the city on the Southern tip of New Zealand’s North Island. Wellington posses a funicular railway which takes you from the town centre up the hill to Kelburn where you get a stunning view across the city.
Opened in 1902 and rebuilt several times since, the cable worked funicular railway is a popular tourist attraction.
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Another week begins and it’s indistinguishable from every other lockdown week as the routine doesn’t really vary – unless you count doing the same things in a different order, just to try and add some variety and a frisson of excitement as this is about as good as it gets right now!
Therefore I won’t bore you with the mundanities of life, I’ll cut straight to the chase and take you to the picture of the day. This one comes from the latest batch of old slide scans which will be added to my website tomorrow. I took it near Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia in the last week of January 1998.
With the Sydney Tower in the background, the monorail passes over the heads of tourists walking to the harbour. Monorails have never really taken off as a means of mass transit, mainly due to their low-speed, limited capacity and inflexibility.
Sydney’s monorail was an eight station, 2.2 mile loop that opened in July 1988. It connected Darling Harbour, Chinatown and the central business and shopping districts in an anti-clockwise loop. Six trains of seven cars worked services on the loop, working from a depot in Pyrmont. The never met its passenger projects and the last franchise that operated it was bought out by the New South Wales Government in 2012. On June 30th 2013 the monorail was closed to make way for the new Sydney Convention and Exhibition centre. The monorail tracks were dismantled shortly afterwards.
2 cars from one of the trains and a short section of track are preserved at the Powerhouse museum in Sydney.
Whilst monorails haven’t had much success, one operates in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia (opened in 2003) and another in Melaka. Another (larger) system in Bangkok, Thailand is due to open later this year. There are other systems dotted around the world, mostly in China and Japan, but most as short systems serving amusement parks or airports, like this suspended system in Dusseldorf, Germany. Of course, Germany also has the father of them all, in Wuppertal!
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There’s no ramble (or weather report) from me today! The pair of us have had a quite Sunday at home – hardly an unusual occurrence in these locked-down days. After all, it’s not as if we’ve got a flight to catch, is it? And a rolling blog about a walk along the canal would be a less than riveting read! So, I’m going to cut straight to the chase. Or in this case – the picture of the day.
I took this shot of pro Megawati students in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia in the last week of November 1998. Indonesia was in the throes of rediscovering democracy after years of dictatorship under President Suharto. Suharto had been forced to resign in the May of 1998 because of the Asian economic crisis, corruption and growing civil unrest – much of which was led by students like these.
Megawati Sukarnoputri was the daughter of Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno, who was deposed by Suharto in 1966. Born in Yogyakarta, she became the leader of the PDI party in the 1990s and won the Vice-Presidency in 1999, eventually becoming President in 2001 until she was decisively defeated in 2004.
Having travelled across Indonesia during the Suharto years in 1992 it was fascinating for me to return in 1998 and see the country regaining its democratic freedoms and learning how to express them. Demonstrations like this were commonplace but in Yogya especially as it had a large student population. Now, many years on, Indonesia is doing well, even if it has been a rocky road as corruption’s still a problem. Even so, within the next couple of decades they will overtake the UK’s economy – a job made easier by us declaring sanctions on ourselves with Brexit.
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 