Nottingham City Transport's NHS fundraiser you can wear, read and use to wrap gifts

Here I am a couple of days after taking delivery of two masks, a book and seasonal wrapping paper I bought from Nottingham City Transport, which they are selling to raise money for local NHS staff and patients.

The wrapping paper has already been put to good use, wrapping Christmas presents. The labels were made at home by Susan and printed on 220gsm white card.

Here is a link to the NCT website news story about the masks, book and wrapping paper: https://www.nctx.co.uk/read-all-about-it-nct-branded-face-coverings-and-book-written-nct-customers-sale-raise-money-local

A great idea. I wish them well. I also love the fact that Buster is back again. I still think he makes a great logo, despite being close to 40 years old. Here's Buster earning his keep on the front of my favourite NCT Route Map and Pocket Guide, dated October 1983 (click on the images to enlarge):

Perhaps next year NCT will create a fundraising 'Santa Bus', which will spend time on all the routes, collecting the wishes of passengers young and old and, perhaps, helping to deliver donated gifts to those who do not have a chimney for Santa to use. A few of his reindeer on the front and along the sides, plus his sleigh of course. I can't wait...!

In the meantime, enjoy the next few days as best you can in these difficult times. I am of an age when I tend to remember those no longer with us, who shared their happiness with me, and try to do the same.

Take care and thanks again to Nottingham City Transport for their generosity.

Take a look at History By Bus and see Nottingham a little differently

Click on the poster to enlarge and see it at its best.

More of my time is going to be taken up with my other blog: historybybus.blogspot.comhttp://historybybus.blogspot.com.

The blog tells its own story, so I won't repeat it here, other than to say that I have worked with local groups and Nottingham City Transport since 2014 promoting the 35 bus route as the city's 'History Bus' and a couple of weeks ago NCT published their version of my guide, for which I thank them wholeheartedly.

There are eleven 35 branded buses and all now carry this roundel on their sides to the back of the bus. Seeing it gives me a buzz.

Each of the eleven buses has different history panels on the lower and upper decks. Here is a copy of the one for Wollaton Vale and its link to Trowell.

Reproduced with thanks to Nottingham City Transport who own the copyright, designed and created the panel using my text.

I hope you'll go and have a look at my History By Bus blog. Over the coming months I am planning to walk the entire 35 History Bus route recording the different styles of council and charitable housing along its length with a view to creating a 'Nottingham 35 History Bus A–Z of council and charitable housing' and it will include parts of Beeston Fields, so watch this space.

Ten days with a sting in the tail, more Relish, plus a 'Home from home' on the High Road and a Tram epitaph from someone who should know!

My chest infection persists, so I have yet to venture out on my own, and the only two occasions (Friday and Sunday just gone) so far have been to accompany Susan to the City Hospital's Breast Institute. Close friends went with her on Wednesday because I was still too poorly and on medication.

10 days ago Susan's visit to The Ropewalk for a mammogram was 'routine', except by Saturday just gone we knew there was nothing routine about it. Susan had breast cancer again, the last time being in 2006. The worst part of the process is the days of not knowing. You go 'with the flow'. It is what it is.

Over the next couple of weeks at least we have two more hospital visits, then Susan will get a date for the operation, which will be 'before Christmas' — that quick. Susan feels fine in herself — a bit like I did with my lungs and heart. No symptoms, no discomfort — just a life-threatening physical condition if left untreated.

In the real world I had another Henderson's Relish moment the week before last in Skipton, where we went on a day out to collect a small table we had bought on e-bay. It was a glorious day and enjoyable. Where we are today not even a speck of dust on the horizon.

I asked the waitress in the Skipton fish & chip restaurant we were in (Bizzie Lizzie's) if they had any Worcester Sauce or Henderson's Relish. She said 'no' to the former, but 'yes' to the Relish, adding 'We use in the kitchen to make chilli. No one's ever asked me before' and here we were in Yorkshire — the home of Henderson's Relish.

The one thing I have never quite got about fish and chips north of London (even though work took me to Birmingham in 1969, then Mansfield in 1975) is how the choice of fish is limited to cod (or haddock if you're lucky). No plaice or rock salmon (dogfish). The highlight of our all too rare visits to my sister in Hastings are paddles in the sea and battered rock salmon, mushy peas and chips. I buy it very occasionally when I see it in Hallam's. You will never taste a sweeter fish.

The view from our table in Bizzie Lizzie's. Skipton is a 150 minute drive including a 30 minute break about half-way.

Our destination. A small plant nursery on the side of a hill overlooking Airedale, just south of Skipton. The ducks and geese were all birds saved from slaughter.

Because I have been unwell I missed the opening of the Bendigo Lounge, but Emma, the Community Manager in the Bristol HQ, kindly sent me some photographs. I'm looking forward to my first visit.

It looks very impressive from the outside. It seems a bit pricey, but they must have a segment of the market they are after. Rye may have to respond.

The interior is light and airy and I like that.

When the sun goes down Bendigo's looks a lot different. The large windows will draw in the customers of that I am sure.

And just in case you're not sure where Bendigo's is here is a close-up from my Beeston Map. I wish them well.

I will end with a reference to The Tram and its future development.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I firmly believe there will be no more street tram lines in Greater Nottingham and that what extensions there are will be minimal (from Toton Lane to the HS2 station whenever that is constructed and opens will be it).

Bus technology and changing public transport patterns have made The Tram outdated already. In terms of cost it has been as wasteful as HS2 will be.

I'm not alone. Others are of the same mind. In the December 2017 edition of Buses magazine this new item appears quoting Jeff Counsell, the Managing Director of Trent Barton buses:

(large text my addition)

Just in case you don't know, or have forgotten, Trent Barton is owned by the Wellglade, who also operate the NET (Nottingham Tram). If the MD of their largest company is saying The Tram is not the future, then we should all take note.

Trent Barton believe the future is electric buses, bus lanes and traffic lights which favour all public transport and not just The Tram. The way we use public transport is changing, even here in Beeston. Back in January this year I argued the case for looking at creating a Beeston Buggy Bus Network, rethinking the way we use (and subsidise) community buses.

At some point Nottingham City Transport will have to invest in more comfortable buses — as Trent Barton have been doing for sometime. Buses can compete with The Tram in Nottingham on so many fronts. If roads and traffic lights gave priority to buses as well as The Tram, and all public transport in the conurbation was cashless, then bus journey times would be become better.

The future of public transport in the Nottingham conurbation is not The Tram — it is the bus in guises yet to be realised as we adapt to a world in which public transport is more personalised — you might say 'taxified' at a price we can all afford.

From a 'beach' in Beeston to Dunkirk in four hours ten minutes

This post has minimal text, just captions as brief as I can make them. Anyone who knows me well will know that brevity does not come easy to me. This post is all about the pictures. At the end you will find a map of the route my walk followed.

'Beeston-on-Sands' has taken over the abandoned town bus station for the duration of the school holidays.  

Excluding Smith's, which sells new books, there is only Oxfam which sells second-hand books...

... 'Book Land' which sells remaindered books, now, as the sign says, either for £1 or £2. Most of the charity shops have small book sections, even the supermarkets now provide racking where customers can leave or pick up a book.

I bought Nottingham Transformed for £2. When published in 2006 the book cost £24.95. Its full of great photographs of Nottingham past and present as well as drawings of proposed future developments at the time of publication. Most of these aspirational visions of the city lost out to the financial crash.

The Sewing Box which is housed on Willoughby Street behind Barnsdales the Butchers, is now selling fabric. Mike Barnes, the owner, was just setting up his outside stall when he got his first customer...

...quickly followed by another. You can find The Sewing Box on my Beeston Vertical map.

Gourmet Delights closed on 2nd December last year. I did a blog at the time. It still stands empty.

You have a measure of how hard it is to let retail units on Beeston High Road when an estate agent as good as C P Walker & Son is forced to do this!

Odin's Table came and went in what seems a matter of months. Now it's another empty Beeston shop.

One person who is making a go of it is Lucy at 2 Little Magpies. Whilst have a wander around her lovely little craft and gift shop I came across these toddle 'London Bus' waistcoats. I have asked her to get me a price for a grown-up version.

I wonder how many folk have noticed the new housing going up behind Home Made Bakery?

It is a development by the long established local builder Hofton & Son on their old Roberts Yard site, comprising of a terrace of ten house. Visit their website to learn more. At £195,000 they are not cheap. Whilst I was taking this photograph Susan and I were invited to have a look around one of the houses. We wanted them to impress but they didn't.

What we did see from the Roberts Yard was the back of a development at the Broadgate end of Marlborough Road, where an old retail unit looks like it's being transformed into housing. The bamboo and fatsia look like they have been there forever.

Susan and I stopped at The Coffee House for a light lunch. It was until recently Mason & Mason, but has been 're-branded' by the owners. It is a cafe we have been visiting since it first opened in 2011. They do lovely salads and have a brunch menu that goes on into the afternoon. It was about 1pm when we sat down to Eggs Benedict and Egg Royale. They really do do a perfect poached egg.

After lunch Susan left me and I began my wander along Broadgate towards Dunkirk. This road sign at the junction of Broadgate and Broadgate Avenue remains in view thanks to the houseowner who trims his hedge to ensure passers by can still see the sign.

And its ditto for Peveril Road.

Along this stretch of Broadgate is a boundary marker dated 1933. To the left it is Beeston (now Broxtowe) and to the right the City of Nottingham (Lenton).

A part of me is loath to share the picture for fear of someone stealing it, but it's worth looking for

The Salthouse Lane road sign has no diligent householder to attend it, so in the absence of City Council care it has been lost from view (well almost)!

I like all my walks to have a bus nearby just in case I get tired or it begins to rain. In this case a Trent-Barton Indigo bus. Its driver has just let off a lady carrying two shopping bags and about to turn into Salthouse Lane. Perhaps she has been to Chilwell Retail Park (M&S Food) or Long Eaton Market rather than Beeston town centre? Someone said once that 'A bus is a community on wheels where people get to know one another and lives get exchanged'

Just beyond the bus is this row of lovely houses with pollarded trees.

At the University end of Broadgate another hidden road sign.

This entrance to part of Nottingham University has to be the best. To see it walk straight across from Broadgate and past the University's controlled west entrance and it's just don on the right.

A very different view of the University from Jubilee Avenue. Behind you is Florence Boot Hall. A few yards to the right and you are walking into Highfields Park.

The waterfall in Highfields Park is not always turned on, but it was last Tuesday. Back in the 1980s and into the 1990s all this was clean enough for me, my children and grandchildren to paddle in. Lack of care and maintenance as the City Council had to deal with budget cuts imposed by central government have seen it silt up...

...Now it's dogs who have all the fun. Off camera a little girl is crying because she can't join the dog!

I have included this picture as large as I can so that in the distance you can see a tram gliding by on a section of reserved track. Between the tram and the park is University Boulevard.

This is part of the footpath which hugs the north side of Highfields lake.

I wait to cross East Drive on the University Campus and into the Lakeside Arts Centre as a City Transport 34 bus goes by. The students have gone and it's coming up to 3.30pm but the bus has quite a few passengers. NCT have worked hard over many years to establish this route, so it is disappointing to see in County Council's August 2017 list of bus service changes that from September the 34 will run during term times only. 

Inside the Arts Centre a dinosaur grabs my attention. It's a free spinoff off the dinosaur exhibitiion currently on in Wollaton Hall.

To read the signage telling you more about the dinosaur, click on the image to enlarge.

In the Art Centre's cafe I sit for awhile sipping my Dandelion & Burdock (no ice) and catch a tram passing by. There can't be many better places to sit if you want to watch trams go by.

Outside I catch this pic of a tram as it glides past the Arts Centre on its way to Nottingham City Centre, Bulwell and Hucknall.

Then I crossed University Boulevard (or is it Beeston Road at this point?) and caught sight of the footpath beside Tottlebrook, which takes me to Dunkirk and my destination, a car repair bodyshop beside Beeston Cut, where I am having a dent and some scratches (of my own making) removed from our car.

Along sections I have to brush the blackberries away which dangle in front of me. I eat a good few as I go.

The footpath and Tottlebrook bend just before I reach Dunkirk. Not a sound apart from the brook and the birds which seem to occupy every tree and bush. 

Then I burst out onto Montpelier Road at its junction with Claude Street. Not quite a war zone, but look to the right (see pic below) as well and you can be forgiven for thinking that parts of Dunkirk are in need of attention and restoration.

As far as I'm concerned landlords, the University and the City Council are responsible, but a good few of what remaining locals there are blame 'students'.

Dunkirk housing stock is c.80% student housing and it forms part of historic Lenton — hence the City Council ward name, Dunkirk and Lenton (which I can say Susan and I are truly responsible for).

The arguments which rage around Brexit mirror the arguments which have raged around university expansion and accommodation since the 1980s. The incomers are blamed — not those who encouraged them to come in the first place, then failed to provide accommodation and the extra services and facilities needed to manage more people.

There are some lovely Victorian semis and terraces in Dunkirk, a good few of which are adorned with ceramic tiles like these. All different, put together by workman as it took their fancy on the day. I'm sure there is a dissertation on them waiting to researched and published.

My very last picture, and bleak as it appears, is my favourite. The end of Montplelier Road. To the left of this pic is a low railway bridge, as grubby as this broken window and broken panes of glass. Dunkirk gets more depressing every visit I make. Those who hang on, working to keep what community that's left alive are local heroes. Once I was one of them. Not any more. I imagine an independent Dunkirk, in charge of its own destiny (as I do every neighbourhood).