Coincidence

The road from Brighton to London is numbered A23. I have just discovered that there is another Brighton in MI (Michigan?), USA. Guess what? Highway 23 runs through the town!

Gridlock

Brighton - or to give the city its full title, Brighton & Hove - is not particularly big as cities go. In fact, with a population of about a quarter of a million, it's really quite a small city. But it sometimes feels as though that population figure almost doubles, particularly on a fine summer weekend when visitors flock into the city in their thousands. The proximity of Brighton to London doesn't help, of course, and from mid-morning on a fine Saturday or Sunday, the only main road into the city from the north is reduced to a snarl up as trippers try to drive into the city, down to the sea front, and then start searching for somewhere to park. If they are lucky enought to find anywhere within spitting distance of the beach, parking will cost them an arm and a leg.

That main road from the north almost exactly bisects the city, so trying to drive from one side to the other can be a frustrating business at times, even if one has no wish to go into the centre. The traffic jams spread from the sea front right through the city and about a mile or so beyond the northern boundary. We got caught out last Saturday. Our daughter has spent a few days with us and suggested that we had lunch at a country pub before she headed back to the Midlands. On the way to lunch we had to cross the stream of traffic heading into town, but that took only about a quarter of an hour. It was coming back on a quiet(ish) country lane when we really had trouble. It must have taken the best part of an hour to travel no more than a mile, the traffic was so bad.

That was admittedly the first warm Saturday we have had this year, so we really should have expected the problem. If the weather is the same next Sunday, Brighton will most definitely be a city to avoid as that is the day on which the town will be pretty well closed down for the first ever Brighton Marathon.

Election fever

I have been a little surprised at the lack of coverage there has been in our newspapers and on the television of the forthcoming election. The PM went to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and there was a lot of coverage that evening and the following morning, but since then there really has been very little. I suppose this is partly due to the fact that Parliament sat until Friday, so the campaigning has not really got into its stride. I expect that things will start to change this week.

The opinion pollsters are forecasting a hung Parliament with neither the Conservative nor the Labour party having an overall majority, which will not be good for the country. My constituency has had a Labour MP for some time now, the seat having been lost by the Conservatives in the early 1990s (I think), but the bookies are forecasting that it will be won by the Green party this time. A flyer for the Greens was pushed through the letterbox yesterday, but I have no idea what their policies are.

Another four weeks and it will be all over bar the shouting.

Weather report

Well, it seems that spring might have arrived at last. Yesterday's temperatures reached the 60s and there are hopes that we might hit 68 (which is 20 Celsius) over the weekend. The lawn needs mowing, if I can summon up the energy, and I really should get down to the vegetable plot and sow various seeds. It's ridiculous that neither the Old Bat nor I can summon up more than about 60-70% of our normal energy as we are still suffering the aftereffects of the chest virus we went down with.

Overdue

I've just remembered that I had intended writing brief notes about a peculiarly British custom that took place on Thursday last week. It was way back in the 13th century that the then king, Edward I, followed the practice of Jesus by washing the feet of a number of poor citizens - but only after the Yeoman of the Laundry had washed them first! The king then distributed food and clothing, and later money was also distributed. By the 18th century the foot-washing had been discontinued, and in the 19th century only cash was distributed.

It was in 1662 that special Maundy money was minted and that practice is still continued today. Today's recipients of Royal Maundy, as many elderly men and women as there are years in the sovereign's age, are chosen because of the Christian service they have given to the Church and community. At the ceremony which takes place annually on Maundy Thursday (this year at Derby cathedral), the sovereign hands to each recipient two small leather string purses. One, a red purse, contains - in ordinary coinage - money in lieu of food and clothing; the other, a white purse, contains silver Maundy coins consisting of the same number of pence as the years of the sovereign's age.

Maundy money has remained in much the same form since 1670, and the coins used for the Maundy ceremony have traditionally been struck in sterling silver save for the brief interruptions of Henry's Vlll's debasement of the coinage and the general change to 50% silver coins in 1920.

The sterling silver standard (92.5%) was resumed following the Coinage Act of 1946 and in 1971, when decimalisation took place, the face values of the coins were increased from old to new pence.

I copied most of the last three paras from the Royal Mint web site.

Peter James

One of the advantages(?) of having felt so poorly while we in France was that I was able to get a lot of reading done, including three books by an author who was new to me but who had been recommended strongly. So, this is not a review of one book but of three.

Peter James is a Brighton-born author who (I believe) still lives at least part of the time in the town. He has written a good many books, but has lately taken to writing novels in the crime genre. These are set in and around Brighton, which adds to the interest for me, and follow the career of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who is based in the CID office just a mile from my home. The plots of the three I have read (Dead Simple, Not Dead Enough & Dead Man's Footsteps) are sufficiently intricate to keep one's interest, and the sub-plots, of which there are several running from one book to the next, are equally intriguing.

Interestingly, I found one geographical error in each book, although I accept that one of them may be ascribed to poetic licence. Having now been lent James' latest title (Dead Tomorrow), I shall read it closely to see if I can find another error!

But joking aside, these are well-written, fast-moving novels that will bear reading a second time and I am happy to give them five stars.

We're back

After another very enjoyable Easter on the farm, we are back home with no plans to go away again until the end of May. We met up with my cousin Hilary on the way to Somerset and had a most pleasant pub lunch with her. Unfortunately, her husband was unable to be with us as he had a job interview to attend - job-hunting as he has just retired from the army and doesn't feel that he can fully retire just yet.

Surprisingly, neither the Old Bat nor I are fully recovered from whatever it was that we have had. I walked the dog as usual this morning but, much to my alarm, I found that I was too weak to do the usual walk without taking a rest on a bench in the park halfway round. It really is a pain, but with luck I should be back to normal in a few days. If I'm not, I will just have to give in a see the doctor.

An early lunch today, then we must attend the funeral of the wife of one of the Lions, with a Lions dinner meeting this evening.