Acting on my bucket list

At the start of September, I posted a bucket list so I thought it was time for a little check in, to let you know about my progress.

1. Join a book club.
Ok, I still look hopefully at signs in Waterstones stores or online and intend to do it. To be honest, I forgot I’d kind of obliged myself to do it by writing it here so I forgot to make myself join one! I’ll do it, I promise.

2. Master front crawl.
I don’t swim as regularly at the moment for a few reasons. The main one is that they close the outdoor pool from October til April and the indoor pool isn’t as fun. Also, I pulled a muscle in my leg a few months ago so took ages to get back into it. Perfecting breast stroke is my main focus when I do get to the pool. Fail no. 2.

3. Go back to Namibia (or at least make solid plans about it).
Ok. This one is going well. A friend who I worked for as a travel consultant is over from Namibia at the end of this month. We are going for a drink to discuss a two week trip to Namibia next year.

4. Go on (or plan) an epic walking adventure.
Ummm…. Does Richmond Park count?

5. Try running (haha!)
This one I did…. Kind of. I ran for the bus this evening, which I jumped on in haste then five minutes later realised was not on its way to my house. It was the wrong bus. I ran. I ran for a bus. And it wasn’t even the right bus. But I did run. This is a fact.

6. Go to Secret Cinema at least once.
Ummm…. I went to the normal cinema last week… Does that count as being half way there?

7. Sign up for a college course (not sure what in, I just think would be fun. Maybe food).
I’m thinking of doing a course in history or ancient civilisation or something. Another thing I forgot I’d told the world I’d do so forgot to sign myself up for something.

8. Go to that restaurant in London where everything’s completely in the dark.
This one I have not done either but I have possibly done something better… I’m going to a lovely restaurant in Paris on Thursday which comes with a fabulous recommendation from my manager. I still have the restaurant-in-the-dark place in the back of my mind though.

So there you have it. Not progress as such. Not what you’d call ‘solid plans.’ It really just amounts to running for the bus and a planned drink with a friend from Namibia. But it is progress. Of a sort.

The walking test

Happy Thursday all. It’s time for my guest blogger to take over again, so here goes. Enjoy!

 

Is it just me or does this happen to you? You’re walking along behind someone when they suddenly, without warning, just stop. Then you notice they’re either on the phone or doing something with their phone or they’ve stopped to tell their child off for something. You do a kind of side-step to avoid walking into them while they seem completely oblivious to the problem they’ve created. Last week I mentioned the incident, in my local supermarket, of someone talking on a mobile phone and leaving their trolley blocking the aisle. (This week, by the way, went without a hitch – result!)

I’ve been thinking of how this problem could be solved. My solution is quite revolutionary (in Rambler-opolis, anyway) – pedestrian lights. That is pedestrian brake lights (& side lights for when walking at night). Now, before you laugh, just bear with me while I explain. They would be positioned on your shoulders with the red lens facing to the back. They could be powered by a small watch size battery. Every pedestrian would have to have them so that people walking behind would know when the person was going to stop (as the red brake light would go on) and can then take avoiding action. Now I’m not sure at this stage whether indicator lights could be added. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell which way a person was going to turn especially if you were going to do an overtaking manoeuvre just by the lights on their shoulders?

Think about this – we don’t allow people to fly planes, drive trains, captain ships, ride motorbikes or scooters, drive trucks or any vehicle without passing a test. However when it comes to the pavement (sidewalk) we seem to just let anyone do whatever they want. Just as you have to pass a test to drive a vehicle on the road I think there should be a “Walking Test” before you’re allowed out on the pavements. (Kids would be exempt until they reach a certain age.) Until such time as you pass the test you wear an “L” badge (front and back). Once you’ve passed you get a pedestrian licence or walking permit. There’d be an equivalent to the Highway Code for pedestrians – a Pavement Code, maybe? There would also be a Pedestrian Police Force who could catch people breaking the rules; they should definitely catch people talking on their mobile phone whilst walking – this is a big “No-No”. (They could also breathalyse people if they suspect they are “walking under the influence of alcohol”.) In Rambleropolis if you want to answer the phone you must walk to the side of the pavement away from the road where there will be a white line marking an area for stationary pedestrians. It will be roughly the width of one person. (The area could be also used by those wanting to tie up a shoelace that has come undone or adjust their tie or dress in general.) If you are using your phone you should remain still, in this marked area, for the duration of the call. You must stop walking. Once the call, or whatever you’re doing, is over you should check behind to make sure no-one is coming and then cross the line and resume walking in the main area. How easy is that?

This would definitely introduce a bit more order to the chaos of people just walking wherever they want. Then we could look at some more measures like pedestrian speed cameras. This would bring even more order to our pavements. Running would not be allowed as it’s dangerous to those moving more slowly and older folks. Speed cameras would pick up those who disobey, say those exceeding 6mph. Further on as systems develop I think maybe we could develop the idea of a white line down the centre of the pavement. That certainly would be worth looking into. Failing a driving test is something you talk about with your friends & relatives but imagine the shame of failing your pedestrian test. Yes, I think this would really spur people on to be good citizens.

(As a quick aside here, I think there should also be a test for people using trolleys in supermarkets that would include how to position the trolley whilst thinking about what to buy or whilst talking on a mobile phone!)

I can see quite a few nodding heads. I know what you’re thinking – why has no-one ever thought of something like this before? Well to be honest I was wondering that too. I can’t see too many problems with my idea so far so I think it’s off down to the patent office tomorrow to protect my idea from anyone trying to steal it and make a fortune. Remember, in a few years time, when everyone is wearing my invention, you read it first here! I would of course expect to earn sizeable sums of money from the royalties of my idea and will probably buy a decent car with a chauffeur so don’t expect to meet me on the pavement! Oh and finally would like to just wish you all “Happy Walking”.

Bird Droppings

It’s over to my guest blogger today for some fascinating facts on this subject:

 

Today I thought I would take a break from the more serious subjects I’ve covered recently. The topic today is bird droppings (or more commonly pooh). Unsightly mess? Spoils public buildings & many other structures – definitely. But how much do you know about it? Will you even carry on reading this because you think it’s boring and uninteresting. Tell you what – I thought that before I started thinking about it. It almost became something “to get excited about” as LLM might say.
I wonder if you’ve ever been hit by bird droppings from the sky as you walked along outside? I have. I was fortunate though, it landed on my shoulder (and therefore thankfully missed my head although it did get some small splashes) and left me with a stained shirt for the rest of the day. Yes, I was on my way to work walking from the train station. Oh well, it gave people in the office a good laugh when I arrived with the mess down the front. (“I see you had some visitors drop in on way to work this morning”, and other such witty remarks.)
So what could be interesting about bird muck? Well, in case you’re struggling, one of our national newspapers came to the rescue recently. It published a survey analysing droppings found on cars in different cities in the UK. It seems to suggest that it’s not just where you park your car that affects whether it gets muck on it but that it is related to the colour of your car. Is there a colour, for instance, which does or doesn’t seem to get hit as much as others? Yes there is but it’s not as simple as that. Before we go any further let’s look at the published table below:

Red – 18 per cent
Blue – 14 per cent
Black – 11 per cent
White – 7 per cent
Grey/Silver- 3 per cent
Green – 1 per cent

This is quite interesting as you can see that nearly 1 in 5 cars that are hit are coloured red. Hmm.. perhaps you won’t buy a red car next time. Before you get too carried away by this revelation just look at those figures again. Now you don’t have to be a maths whizz to see that the figures don’t add up to anywhere near 100%. I make the total 54% (and this is the full table as appeared in the newspaper). (You might have to add 7% if the white/grey means two colours tied on that figure but it doesn’t say.) What happened to the other 46% of the sample? Were they all colours different to the ones specified? If so why not include an “other colours” category? LLM covered “getting excited” about stuff but at this point I was doing “getting angry” (at the quality of this presentation). Why publish such a rubbish table which appears to show only just over half of the number surveyed? Is the paper really that bad at its adding up? (Is this turning into a “Chat 2” blast?)
Ok so let’s look at some more of the detail behind table. They looked at 1,140 cars across five cities: Brighton, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol. Sounds like a fair spread, north, middle & south, but wait a minute, think about this – why no London investigation? (London is noted for its population of pigeons in certain areas so should have been a good area to get a lot of test results.) Seems like a fair number of vehicles but did you know, as of the most recent figures, there are 31 million cars in the UK (and 134 million in the USA). Now take the sample size and divide it by the total number of cars (& times by 100) to get a percentage – any guesses? I’ll tell you it’s 1,140/31,00,000 = 0.00367% – that is 1/272 of 1%! Just take a moment to think about that – not half of 1%, not a quarter of 1%, not even one 100th of 1% or one 200th of 1% but 1/272 of 1%! How small is that? Now come on, since when did a fraction of 1% as small as that represent a big enough sample to make inferences about cars across the whole country. And yet, there in a national newspaper, the survey is given some column inches with no ref to how small the sample is when compared to the total number of cars on the road.
So far, amongst other things, we have: an apparently incomplete table that doesn’t add up to anywhere near 100%; we have a sample size so small that it makes it hard to deduce meaningful data; and we don’t know why the capital of the country has been excluded from the survey.
Steam is (metaphorically) beginning to come out of the ears at this point but bear with me there’s more.

The next bits are what I would call basic. Think about it – we are not told anything about the locations surveyed. Were the car parks on open ground? Were the cars just parked in streets? Were there overhanging branches or even road or rail bridges which often have metal support girders underneath providing many ideal perches for pigeons? (The car park at my own place of work actually has a dual carriageway going over it so has two bridges & therefore lots of girders & therefore lots of pigeons.)
Remember too that the research did not consider the type of birds doing the fouling of the vehicles. (They actually spelt it “fowling” at one point in the article – haha.) Whilst they could not possibly see all the birds doing the deeds it is possible that they surveyed at a place in a city where there is a resident population of a particular type of bird –pigeons, sea-gulls or starlings for example. Btw, did you know that pigeon pooh is more damaging than say seagull pooh? I’m sure you want to know why so I’ll tell you – it’s because pigeons eat seeds and therefore produce grainier pooh and it’s that which causes more blemishes on your car’s paintwork. However what about all those smaller size birds: sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, finches, thrushes etc?
The article also gives you the useful info, from car polish experts Autoglym, that car paint damage is NOT caused by the acid or alkali in the pooh which I always thought – so I did learn something useful from reading it. I won’t bore you with the technical explanation – if you’re really interested you can look it up.
Did you know that insurers estimated that the annual cost of damage to paintwork from bird droppings is about £57 million? Best advice? – just clean it off as soon as possible. Well I’d never have thought of that!
In the car park where I work two people have yellow cars. Why is yellow not in the survey table? Does this mean it’s the safest colour to buy because the survey did not spot one yellow car with bird muck?
Another stat which might have been helpful is the colour distribution of cars on the road. Supposing, for instance, that 18% of all cars on the road are red, it would be no surprise that 18% of the bird muck survey were found to be red cars would it? This again is basic stuff which any normal person would ask. It’s like saying that a survey found that the average age of people going into a particular building was say 68 and you say why so high? Why were there not more younger people going in? Ah well, you see, it’s a day care centre for pensioners. Bigger picture springs to mind here!
It takes about 3 seconds to research colours of cars sold. Here’s the table of colours of cars sold (so not the actual total in the country, but does include yellow) for most of 2010:

1: black Cars sold: 465,249 Percentage share: 24.7
2: silver Cars sold: 402,537 Percentage share: 21.4
3: blue Cars sold: 310,331 Percentage share: 16.5
4: grey Cars sold: 270,863 Percentage share: 14.4
5: red Cars sold: 192,335 Percentage share: 10.2
6: white Cars sold: 188,463 Percentage share: 10
7: green Cars sold: 20,735 Percentage share: 1.1
8: beige Cars sold: 17,237 Percentage share: 0.9
9: yellow Cars sold: 7,621 Percentage share: 0.4
10: brown Cars sold: 6,967 Percentage share: 0.4

These figures do come to 100%. Again simple bit of research – look at the top 3 in the bird dropping sample (red, blue, black) and add up the percentage figures. It comes to 43%. Now look in the table for 2010 sales and add up the percentages for the same 3 colours – it’s 51%. Not that far apart I’d say.

Inference – the more cars there are of a certain colour the more likely they are to get hit! It’s not rocket science but it doesn’t make headlines and you know as well as I do that “headlines” sell papers.
Another newspaper gave the following table apparently for most popular car colours IN THE WORLD! And here it is:
1. Silver – 26 percent
2. Black/Black Effect – 24 percent
3. White/White Pearl and Grey – 16 percent each (tie)
5. Red – 6 percent
6. Blue – 5 percent
7. Brown/Beige – 3 percent
8. Green – 2 percent
9. Yellow/Gold – 1 percent
10. Others – <1 percent
We see that this table also does add up to 100% (you do have to add 16% to the 84% total because two colours were tied in third place).
Black, red, blue comes to 35%. Not that far off 43% really.
Now, apart from the fact that I was “getting angry” about this terribly presented (bird droppings) survey, I was amazed to note what I had come to believe over many years was actually being confirmed. I have on a number of occasions come to my car to find it has droppings on and yet the one next to it has none. When it first happens you don’t notice anything special but when it keeps on happening you begin to wonder: am I parking under a bird’s nest? Is there a tree branch over the parking place? Did I definitely remove the “Pooh here” notice from the roof of my car? Ooh… wait a minute was the notice invisible? – remember “Invisible Art” from 4.7.12. Better check that.

Ok so now you know the facts but will it influence the colour of car you next buy. Will you rush to the research paper and get the info and then decide to buy a GREEN car or even SILVER?
And you thought bird pooh was not that interesting. (Maybe you still do after reading Mr Angry’s rant.) What about readers of this blog sending in the colour of their car and whether it gets “pooped on” on a regular basis.

Last word has to go to the Ornithology experts who were quoted in the article:

“The British Trust for Ornithology is more circumspect on the role of colour in the ‘drop zone’ for birds.

A spokesman said: ‘We do know that birds can be attracted to certain colours during display but droppings on cars are probably more to do with where you park; if you park where birds roost then you are going to get more droppings on your vehicle.’”

Incredible! Would you have thought of that? – and they didn’t even do a survey to back their conclusion up.

 

R is for…

RAMBLER!

Another guest post again today.

What connects ramblers and elves? Daft question? Good question? Quidnunc? (see K is for Knowledge if you don’t know what it means). Some investigation clearly necessary because there is more to this than meets the eye. You may have to bear with me for a while in order to understand, a possibly mystifying, connection. Ok, so let’s start with two well-known definitions from my trusty Chambers Dictionary:

1. A rambler is “a person who goes walking in the country for pleasure” or it could be “someone who wanders or is disconnected in their speech”.

2. An elf is, “in folklore, a supernatural being, generally of a diminutive human form, a tiny fairy with a tendency to play tricks.” Do you believe elves actually exist? Hmmm….

You’ve probably seen someone, in the first category, at some time or another: cagoule, rucksack on back, map in hand, maybe compass too. One thing is certain, they’re not just wandering about with no idea of what they want to do. They have a certain amount of time, a projected distance to travel, food & drink, emergency stuff (whistle & rain gear), and a very clear aim: to reach a certain point (or summit) and return safely. It is that final condition (‘safely’) which is where we will find our sought after connection.

How many of you have heard of the person with the double-barrelled surname, Anne Saif-Tee? Not sure I see any hands going up! Ok, what if I tell you she is an elf and a very important elf, would that help? No? Surely you’ve heard of some of the procedures she’s introduced in many workplaces around the world – they’re called the “Elf Anne Saif-Tee Standards”. Got it? They help people to be protected against potential dangers by specifying how a particular task should be done – safely.
However, she wasn’t happy with just that. She’s written stuff for many other areas. She warns people about the dangers of tobacco & drinking too much alcohol – surely you’ve seen the “elf warnings” that she’s introduced? A few more nodding heads perhaps now? And don’t forget that system she is responsible for to help pay for the provision of medical care & facilities – the Elf Insurance Policy. She’s been working overtime in the UK, during the past 10 years or so, and has introduced many measures in just about every area you can think of – except, to the best of my knowledge, in the field of rambling.

Now this is where I come in as I’m trying to imagine what could happen in the future as I’m sure, before long, she will have a go at reforming this leisurely activity. It’s not hard really. First job is to do what is called the “RA” (or “Risk Assessment”). (Even little kids know about this. You’ve heard them say “RA Mum” or “RA Dad.”) You must have an RA for every function people perform in their places of work or even outside of work whilst engaged in hobbies or pastimes so they can be protected from potential dangers. Look at cyclists, skateboarders, skiers, footballers et al. who, it is suggested, need to wear protective gear like toughened hats, elbow, knee & shin protectors etc.

But how might this impact in the field of rambling? Well, you’d need a hard hat to prevent injury if you fell or had to negotiate overhanging rocks; you’d need a Hi-Viz vest so you could be seen by your fellow walkers in case you become separated from the group; protective glasses required in case of stone chips hitting you in the face, say when you’re climbing a hill behind another person; knee pads would not go amiss either; you’d also need a Sherpa to carry your rucksack if it weighed more than say a couple of pounds because prolonged carrying could result in you sustaining a back injury.

I’ve decided to pre-empt anything Anne (the elf) might do – on a recent walk I took all the gear and hired a Sherpa. He just seemed to be able to keep going despite the severity of the terrain & all he was carrying. Unable to keep up the pace he was setting, I asked, in desperation, “Aren’t you going to ever rest?” He said, tensing up a little, “Probably next week! I’ll be somewhere in Nepal then and should be in peak condition, certainly intent on feeling on top of the world too!!”

Also, ever thought about those “Ess” elves? Who? Never heard people talking about “your ess-elves” or “them ess-elves” or “my ess-elf”? Also don’t forget those very quiet elves that lurk in your house – they’re called the “shh…” elves. And, not surprisingly, you know what they do – hold things up!

Now perhaps you’ll believe that “elves” really do exist! Well here in the UK at least!

So, have I been rambling or is it just possible I could be an elf, my ess-elf? Check those definitions again but I’ll leave it to you to decide.

P.S.: If you doubt how ridiculous Elf Anne Saif-Tee’s Procedures (“Health & Safety” in case you hadn’t got it by now) can be just check out the headline below. (I had to cut some of the page out, in order to fit on A4 scanner, but it really is from the front page of a UK national newspaper – Daily Mail, Fri 13th April, 2012).