Bin there, done that.

Much commotion outside this morning as the Bin Men try to negotiate their way around Clarendon Park. It is the same every week. One or two cars just a few inches out on their parking accuracy and the whole place shuts down. Here we have two culprits from the land of the rising sun narrowing the gap by a good couple of feet and the truck can’t get through. Given that all the streets around here and many other areas of the City comprise terraced houses built around the turn of the century, and most of them have similar width roads, would it not perhaps be worth using a fleet of smaller trucks? Too obvious I guess. Too much like the logic applied by a ten year old, not encumbered by committee thinking. What we need is those ones from the fifties with four gently curved roll up sides and an all up weight of about three tons. I had a Dinky Toy version as a lad. In the time I’ve taken to upload this pic and write this, he’s managed to reverse out and turn round. It’s taken 15 minutes. They may come back and do our road later in the day. Daft!

Daylight robbery.

For a long time the Mars Bar was used as a barometer of inflation. ‘A hours wage would buy 5 Mars bars in my day’ etc. etc. But we may have a new one in these more cosmopolitan times. The Clarendon Park essential, Lavazza coffee. I would never want to be thought of a consumer researcher, but brace yourselves for this bombshell! We, as many know, have a new local Sainsbury’s on Queens Road. This seems a good idea all round as it makes us all less car reliant. Lavazza is about the only thing I rely on supermarkets for. The going rate (Morrison's) for a pack is £2.74. The big Sainsbury’s in Oadby had it on spesh last week at £2.05. A snip. Here on Queens Rd it sell for £3.05. A more than a 10% price hike. Watch out!

Solid tyres

How much longer shall we hear the distinctive city clatter of a Milk Float? Surely the days must be numbered for this fine English institution, in the light of supermarket milk being about half the price. I saw our local Milkman this week speeding along Clarendon Park Road and wonder if he knows of the impending speed humps that will blight all our lives very soon. Too late to protest. Letters had to be in by 30th April.

But just look at this simple electric truck. Perfectly designed for the job. I guess it probably covers about 20 miles a day. Therefore, with the aid of a calculator with fresh batteries, since 1965, when it was first registered it must have covered ( 44 years x 365 days = 16060 trips x 20 miles = 321,200 miles!!!!!

All the fun of the fair.

Growing up in Warwick in the sixties, a highlight of the year was Warwick Mop, a funfair that closed the centre of town for a few days. Probably still does. We have a local fair on Victoria Park just about to open and it is reassuring that even in this doomed climate some things remain pretty well unchanged. Sneaking around this morning there are still ERF lorries and Foden's. Old English manufacturers that used to be powered by Gardener 180 diesel engines with a second in the back to power the massive generator needed to run the ‘Bumper Cars’ as we called them. I intend to visit one night very soon and see if the heady smell of candy floss and diesel can take me back to my childhood when i watched in awe, the operators skipping nimbly from one car to the next collecting a shilling off each of us. Of course, it was all in black and white then....

A Boom for Shoppers.

There used to be a grocers here, run by a smiling chap with greased back, black, hair. Those that have lived around here for over 25 years will remember him. It was old style. Shelves with packets of Birds Custard and a slicing machine with some dubious looking cooked ham. Now we are having a new Sainsbury’s Local to a mixed reception. As there was always a queue in Jackson’s a need can be clearly proved. My own thoughts are that far from suffering, the local, owner driver, shops may well benefit. There will no longer be a need to drive to a supermarket for loo paper etc. and I, for one, will be doing all that on Queens Rd, on foot. This may prompt locals to return to buying meat from a proper butcher and fruit and veg from a proper Greengrocer. Completing all of the weeks shop (whatever that is) on foot and on Queens Road. I hope so.

1984 and all that.

In a dastardly move today the Council has announced that we shall now be held responsible for issuing our own parking tickets. This move, hugely unpopular with residents, will save thousands on traffic wardens. Surveillance cameras will be positioned on every street corner and of such high definition they will even be able to read tax disk dates. Car users, the scum of our society, will be charged with sticking parking tickets on their own cars if illegally parked and reporting their own out of date tax disks! Fines will have to be doubled to cover the installation costs, but Graham Ramsbottom, the brains behind the scheme assured people they would soon get used to it like all other stealth taxes. The pioneering scheme is being applauded by snoopers everywhere hunched over monitors in their high vis jackets and hard hats. Possible future developments include catching thieves who bend down and pick up coins off the street, those who don’t own up when they’ve been given too much change in shops and people who wear odd socks. As English subjects will shall, naturally, take it all on the chin. If we were French we would block all the roads with turnips and retreat to a bar until the plan was shelved, but we’re not. Vive le France.

Lost World.

Few people ever notice as they stumble from one bar to the next on Queens Road, that if they were to just stray a little further the other side of the Clarendon Park Rd. traffic lights, then hang a left, they are in unspoilt countryside. This is the Queens Rd. allotments and have, I guess, been there since the area was developed around the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout the War they would have provided a lot of fresh food and post war they have offered chaps a chance to escape from the family at the weekend and head for the shed. There are various pleading notices asking if any are vacant, but no clues as to who owns any of them. Some are cultivated, but many are not, so I expect it’s only a matter of time before a property developer buys them and they become another housing estate. Ever the optimist.