Penny For Them

Sunday saw us wandering around Carshalton in South London, popping into the Honeywood Museum of local life and climbing an early eighteenth century water tower, both taking part in the extraordinary Open London scheme where you can often see things not normally open. Carshalton came as a welcome relief after the day before when an insulation savant in Belsize Park got twelve of us shut into his small bathroom to tell us about condensing boilers.

My mate, (who was brought up around here), suddenly said "I wonder if the holes are still in the wall by the Ponds bus stop?". Indeed they were, as you can see. Every brick in the wall immediately behind the stop had holes in them of roughly the same diameter and depth. They tailed off in each direction. What can they be? Giant masonry bees? The only explanation we could come up with was that for decades schoolchildren had bored them out with their bus fare pennies. They're about the right size for an old penny, and presumably the brick is soft enough. And if the bus was late you'd soon have made a serious indent. But we're not at all sure. So come on Old Carshaltonians, have you ever joined in this communal making of brick Emmental? Or is there another even more unlikely answer?

Postal Orders

So. What I want to know is, when the Royal Mail gets privatised, will it still be the Royal Mail? Presumably not. I can't find a news item or discussion that even mentions it in passing, but don't we think it's important? You know what will happen. It'll be called something crass like Post For Yoo-Hoo; after all, look at the high level of thinking behind the moronic and quickly dispensed with 'Consignia'. And not being the Royal Mail means we won't see the reigning monarch's cipher cast into the iron. I think I'm right in saying that there's a dictat ( probably stuffed behind a radiator at Mount Pleasant Sorting Office) that they will always be painted red, like London buses. But you never know what mindlessness can beset those responsible for looking after our visual environment. The pillar box above is in Letchworth, the first garden city. Looking around, the colour that predominates in the leafy streets, apart from the cream renders and burnt orange tile hanging, is green. Green leaves, green trees, green lawns and the original Letchworth green doors, drainpipes and garden gates. So what colour did the council, unencumbered with any thought concerning their fabulous heritage, order the wheelie bins in? Of course. A mind-numbing shade of purple.