The Fox Covert

Defo an upgrade on Faes.

I just looked at the other predicted (speculative?) winners from other clubs outside the hallowed 'Big 6'. It includes Wolves, Newcastle (twice) and our friends from the banks of the Trent (twice). It does not include Spuds or Arsenal. Will they still be Big 6 if they go another half a century, trophyless?

Huddlesfield?

I live in rural Somerset just over 20 miles from Brizzawl and although I have seen the comment about it being a copy-and-paste job I think it is largely fair and accurate. Bristol is a nightmare to drive through because of the traffic, once you are in the city expect London-slow-style point to point times. The ULEZ is a shambles because it is not based on anything logical like a inner ring road, because there isn't one. But the cameras are not a shambles and are everywhere, don't chance it, plan your journey otherwise you will get caught and fined. Parking is also a nightmare and despite the advice about not parking on corners people in Brizzawl do it all the time because parking is so difficult to find in most inner city areas. Honestly, I would park somewhere with a good service past Ashton Gate like Long Ashton and get the bus. I didn't know about the block of flats from Only Fools and Horses but I do remember it being ever so familiar. I saw the comment about bringing your camera and one thing that gets me every time I go through the city is the graffiti. There is even a shop in the city centre where people who do street art buy their cans. To me, living in an environment of un-graffitiable things like fields and hedges and old stone walls (and sheep and cows) the bottom end of the M32 looks like the Bronx and I always heave a sigh of relief once away from the city and on the M5 northbound.

In Somerset general waste collection was reduced from fortnightly to three-weekly collection last year. My elderly neighbour heats his house with a coal-fired back boiler and when he got coal from UK-based pits the quality was decent and there was not much ash. Then his coal came from Poland and that was not too bad either. Now it comes from Bolivia and it is such poor quality he fills his bin with ash in a week. He could hardly move the bin on collection day last week because it was so heavy. I told him he could put some of it in mine as mine was only quarter full, but it won't always be like that. He will not have gas because he thinks it is dangerous. A heat pump is a complete waste of time on an eighteenth century house designed to be heated with an open fire and built of random stone, however well insulated. He is in his seventies so I don't expect anything to change, except that council services will continue to decline.

Bristol is the most traffic-ridden city in the UK outside London and I hate the time it takes to get from Brizzawl A to Brizzawl B. Don't mind the people though because it is up with Glasgow and Birmingham among the most friendly cities in the UK. If you want a good laugh with a Bristolian follow The Professor of Bristolian on Facebook. Top bloke. Not sure whether he supports Bristol City or the Gas.

In 1961 there were two railways from Leicester to Rugby. Despite this being a link from a major city to the West Coast Main Line both this line and the Great Central were closed. Leicestershire has the lowest percentage of public transport use for travel to work in the UK and the lowest investment in public transport per head. There are just seven railway stations in the county. None of the lines are electrified, and only the line to Birmingham has anything like a suburban stopping service, with stations at Wigston South, Narborough and Hinckley.

By great chance, I will be in Leicester that weekend. I am sure this will be really interesting. Ned Newitt has written a previous book on Leicester, pictured below. It features the poorest districts in the city, which were progressively erased by slum clearance projects from the 1930s to the 1960s. My mum still lives in the county and this book was on her bookshelves for many months. Whenever she had visitors with previous family generations who had grown up in places like Wharf St and Sanvey Gate they would want to look through to see whether there were any photos of the street where their mum, gran, aunt or whatever used to live. Thanks for posting.

There has been a spate of break-ins, thefts and drug dealing in my neighbourhood recently. In rural Somerset! I bought a security camera which covers my car and the gateway to my house and I am amazed by the quality of the video you get for a fifty quid piece of kit from TP-Link. It connects to the household wifi and I can view the video on an app on my phone.

I was with a friend at the notorious cup tie at Luton in the eighties. Millwall's thugs really excelled themselves that night. Because it was midweek the other London sides were not playing and the hooligans were joined by the firms from Chelsea and West Ham. A sight I will never forget is a stout middle-aged woman in her fifties bawling at the plod and then starting to throw punches. It took about half a dozen plod to subdue her and drag her off. I wonder what her kids turned out like?

Quinn

The redevelopment plan could easily be reworked to include a new pub. The right type of pub could be a really good replacement for the Parcel Yard.

I actually like Craven Cottage and the Valley. Usually the home fans are very friendly. I liked the old Highbury but never liked the Spuds old ground or any of the new grounds. A friend is a West Ham fan and he still dislikes the London Stadium.

Crimea by Orlando Figes. Written before the present conflict in Ukraine, it is a detailed study of the Crimean war in the 1850s, where the British and the French collaborated to prop up the decaying Ottoman Empire against Russian aggression. Crimea became the epicentre of the conflict, because both Western nations feared Russia annexing the area which became modern Turkey and Romania, and moving on to dominate the Middle East and the Balkans. Some things never change, in particular the brutality of the Russian army which pillaged the countryside and indiscriminately murdered innocent civilians, and also treated its own armed forces as disposable cannon-fodder. Thousands of injured soldiers were abandoned and left for dead on the battlefield or even killed by their own unit. Many were picked up by the Allied armed forces and treated in their own field hospitals. There was however a Russian counterpart to Florence Nightingale, Daria Mikhailova, who treated injured Russian soldiers in the hospitals in Sevastopol. The men called her Dasha Sevastopolskaia and she became the only Russian woman of non-noble origin to be awarded the Gold Medal for Zeal by the Tsar.

Interesting post. I disagree with Benjamin Disraeli and agree with Nikolaus Pevsner on this one. The windows on the second floor look blank and should have multiple panes. Probably a squat sash with each sash frame divided vertically. Also the mansard roof on the third floor clashes with the neo-classical facade on the lower two floors. The grand staircase in the second shot looks great though. Very nicely proportioned. Thanks for posting.