please empty your brain below |
There WAS (well, 11, 12 years back; and still may be, I dunno, I don't drive either, and the ideal country walk involves neither arterial roads nor bog-standard Little Chef branches) one on the A127 Southend Arterial Road, in the stretch kind of north (and west) of Upminster and south (and east) of Harold Wood. I remember dropping in in my days as a "green patrolman" for Havering Council... en route from said Harold Wood to Upminster... and actually the countryside around there is far from unpleasant. Tyler's Common and what have ye |
There used to be a Little Chef on the (old) road out to Witchy's. |
Ripley By Pass, Guildford came up as nearest Little Chef to me on their website when I put in a West London postcode. |
Venichka's one is still there, junction of the A127 and A128 about 2.5 miles southeast of Brentwood, so a bus might get you there quicker for a cholesterol boost... |
On the subject of hidden waterways, White Hart Dock, parallel to Albert Embankment, has just been given a facelift. |
There are still several near me actually. A child I know got food poisoning from one of them a few weeks ago. |
Although I think the one NiC is probably thinking about is now a housing estate. |
The Little Chef at Popham is a mere two and a half kilometres or a mile and a half from Micheldever Station. You could take in some microlighting from nearby Popham Airfield before lunch too. The walk is none too interesting though, being mostly along the A303. Alternatively one could walk mostly offroad from Overton Station (about 7 km), or better still from Watership Down, about twice as far. One could take a taxi from Newbury to Watership Down, or the hourly (no Sunday service) bus to Kingsclere. Just a thought. L. |
You can carry on talking about canals and SE London as long as you like, as far as I'm concerned. Part of my interest goes back to trying to find why there was a bridge along Evelyn Street, in Deptford*, which didn't seem to have any purpose: with a little searching I was to find out that it was where the road had once crossed the Grand Surrey Canal, which became defunct - and was literally 'filled in' in the late '60s/early '70s. There are still other reminders of the canal along its former route, such as another of its bridges standing - somewhat disconnectedly - in Burgess Park at Walworth. (*Once part of my daily commuter route to London) |
The Little Chef search works if you type in Kettering! London crashes, so tried specific areas: Hackney gives: Alfreton - A38/A61 view details Chesterfield - B6050 view details Little Eaton - Ford Lane view details Tried Postcodes, it should have heard of SW1A 0AA, but alas it crashes! |
only the Pet Shop Boys twitter account is verefied, all the rest MUST therefore be fake!!! |
The Stephen Duffy one is real. But "mid-80 popstar", pshaw. His latest (compilation) album, not inappropriately entitled "30 years in the wilderness" (and accompanying film, that was on at the Raindance festival in London recently), will show that he, and his band, the Lilac Time, has brought out smashing LP after smashing LP through the whole of the 90s and 00s as well. A much-loved and treasured secret to his fans that deserve a wider audience. |
Know the Popham Little Chef very well indeed, as we always took the A303 to/from Cornwall. It was one of the landmarks for us kids, along with Stonehenge & the Tamar Bridge! |
Howard Jones's twitter is genuine too. |
brilliant post... i guess i have a 1990's attention span... short and to the point!!! ;P... |
I'm not sure that we are comparing like with like on the figures for singles sales. In the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, buying a single meant buying a chunk of vinyl, a cassette or a CD. It usually consisted of an A side and a B side and, when CDs came along, a bonus album track or a remix or two. But the key thing was that what you bought was dictated by what the record company chose to put out. Now, if I use iTunes (rarely) to buy a "single" track, I can buy any single track from an album and not necessarily that which is featured as a single. I'm also not dependent on the record company's distribution network, so, if I discover an artist or song six months after it was released, I don't have to rummage around in the "reduced to 50p" bin in the record store to find it (the music I liked always ended up there because it never sold the first time around in Our Price, Bognor Regis) - I simply go and download it because it is still available. Which all sounds good. And yet. And yet, I miss rummaging in the 50p bin, looking for something that I might have missed and buying purely on the basis that the band have an interesting name and a good CD sleeve (Flying Saucer Attack, Ultra Violet Explorer, for example) or because I'd heard Peel mention a name and couldn't quite remember what they sounded like (Autechre, Dream City Film Club). Yes, I had a few purchasing disasters from that bin (and still do, from other bins like it, particularly in the record stores in North Laine, Brighton) but I also found a few gems that set me off in new musical directions. And then there is the joy of the tangible - actually holding your music in your hands. But that's an age thing that afflicts the likes of you and me. Those young 'uns will never understand. |
A similar thing here. I began enjoying music in a far greater way than I'd ever done before, when I began borrowing CDs and casettes from the library. It started with getting my old favourite artists but then - through the whole cheapness of it all - I started taking complete pot-luck chances, on the basis of, "well, for 50p, what's the worst that can happen?" As a result, I've made some fantastic discoveries that I would never have otherwise come across. Hmmm. And bad ones? Yes, maybe there were some lemons along the way, as well. But thre's the great thing about libraries... you never have to make up excuses for taking stuff back if you didn't like it |
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