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Thursday 5 July 2007

Glossop, Wales, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Hull, LOndon, Nova Scotia

My carbon footprint keeps expanding and in the last week there's been little I can do about it. It has been an incident packed week, and not really in a good way either, so although I have one brief comment to make about Transpennine Express, time has caught up with us and new updates will have to wait for a little while.

The Transpennine Express comment is simply this; the guards appear to have ceased using the phrase "Station Stop". At first I thought it was an accident, and that Monday's guard was somehow deviating from the TP SOP manual, but this week I can report that I have not heard the phrase once. Guards are now accurately reporting that the train will be stopping "at Selby". Its simple, accurate, concise, clear and use of the station's name now allows us to revel in the meaning of, for example, "Selby". We all know, I presume, that "by" was the ancient word for "village", thus Kirkby = place/village of the church, but what does the "sel" mean? Similairly Brough, Howden and Middleton all places with thousand year old names that should be respected. Happy days!

Less happy was the news I received very early on Sunday that my father was ill and had been taken to hospital. Now at the end of the week, I'm happy to say that what started as an apparently very serious situation seems to be resolving itself. Mr N. Snr has apparently had an infection caused by "appendix stones", which I had never heard of. Dad is currently still in hospital getting treated with an array of antibiotics, and is making good progress.

A blog seems to be a curious place to announce this news, but most of the people who read this I count as good friends, and as geography/time prevents me calling you on a regular basis, perhaps this forum is becoming a substitute for beer and wings or other get-togethers where news is swapped.

This news came just after we had returned from the wedding in Wales, and the travelling that ensued to visit Dad(Liverpool), go to work(Leeds) and feed the cats (Hull) means that I'll have covered at least a thousand miles, mostly by train, in little over a week by the time I fly out to Canada on Monday, averaging about 160 miles per day, although some days have been 300 miles, and others the "usual" 120.

Next post maybe from Nova Scotia, although I really have been meaning to post on the subject of Yorkshiremen for some time, and specifically on the meaning of the word "dour". It will have to wait.

1 comment:

JoeyMac said...

Sounds like a streak of the world making sense again. On this side of the pond, Anna just got back today and we move into the new home on Monday. Give us a call if you are passing through Ontariostop for more than 5 minutes, and Tom said to give him a call if you need anything in Halifaxstop.