Poppleton Station

Look, my village has a station where the man pops out of his little house to open the barriers when a train is coming.

The village I live in is called Upper Poppleton. Nether Poppleton is a little further down the road. The station is just labelled Poppleton, probably so that neither village feels left out.

York Village Challenge

I currently have the best of both worlds. I moved in June to a village on the north west outskirts of York, with the city on one side, and open countryside on the other. It takes me literally only 5 mins by train to get into the city centre.

The photo is of a section of my village's name, from the station platform. Anyone want to guess what the whole thing is? (A clue: There are 2 villages next to one another with "POPP" in the name. Say them both out loud. Mine is the one that sounds like bubble wrap popping).

The FuTuRe of Travel

The number 4 from Acomb to the university and Science Park is the poshest bus in York. It is called the FTR which immediately made me think farter. But no, the letters ftr are actually a reference to the FuTuRe of travel.

The FTR is a bendybus, with spacious seats, plenty of standing room, and a TV screen which displays messages such as "For the comfort and safety of FTR passengers, please do not eat, drink or smoke in the FTR." This one kept coming up a lot last night, which was irritating, because I had a vegetable samosa and bottle of diet coke in my handbag, and was trying to suruptitiously pic-nic. Not straightforward. The FTR is the only bus in York to have a conductor, who comes to take your fare once you've sat down. Every time he got up, I had to quickly freeze my jaw in whatever chewing position it happened to be. Which is why I hadn't finished before the end of the journey.

I justified my samosa-eating recklessness by telling myself that despite the FTR TV warnings, my samosa didn't actually pose a safety threat or inconvenience to any of the other passengers. This was before a pea fell out though, and rolled right into the middle of the sparkling purple FTR floor. I must have jolted in horror because the pea was closely followed by a potato cube and several other peas. Fortunately my stop was coming up, and I was able to exit quite speedily.

For some rather better pictures of the FTR than mine, do check out this gallery)

Ruby un-hibernates

I have been hibernating. Right through the tail end of last winter, right through summer and most of autumn. Then for some reason I decide to tentatively poke my camera through the back door in the middle of a rainstorm.

It's slashing it down in York today. This view of the remaining apples on the tree in my garden is the best I can do.

Things have changed since last I blogged. I now live in a village to the north-west of York, with Mr Ruby, Erik (my eldest son), and the two younger ones who are now not so young. Life continues. And I am still Ruby :-)

Pextons - a fine local shop!

I'm lucky to live near a good parade of local shops, just a few minutes walk from my house. Last night they were a real God send. It was nearly 5pm, snowing thick and fast, and I suddenly remembered I needed to make a tray bake for my youngest son to take to school the next day. I had a recipe handy for carrot and orange cake, but no carrots and no suitable cake tin! So I put on my boots and coat, and went to get what I needed at the shops.


The photos are of Pextons on Bishopthorpe Road, a hardware store selling all sorts of useful things for the home - including a cake tin in just the size I needed for my recipe.

Exciting news!

Today's photo is of our blue bag and green box, provided to householders in York for our fortnightly collection of recyclables. What could that have to do with exciting news? Bear with me, it's coming.

I make sure that I use both the bag and box shown above, but also do more besides, such as avoiding excessive packaging in the first place, using my own bags and shopping trolley for my shopping, shopping locally, and on one occasion, I even left my excess packaging behind in the supermarket.

The changes I made were as a result of following my friend Karen's Rubbish Diet Plan - which is about slimming the bin, not the waistline! There is a hideous problem in the UK (as in other places) with too much rubbish being sent to landfil, and ensuing environmental problems.

Karen, who blogs as almost Mrs Average, started her blog The Rubbish Diet at the beginning of last year after a new year resolution to create less waste, and a decision to participate in the local council's "zero waste" week - where the aim was to generate NO RUBBISH as a household for a whole week. In fact the only thing she ended up sending to landfil that week was just one sticking plaster!

Anyway, back to the exciting news as advertised in the title of this post. Karen's blog The Rubbish Diet has just been shortlisted in this year's Guardian Media Awards! The award is an Innovation Award and you can see it for yourself on the Guardian's website here. Scroll down right to the bottom, you'll find it under the heading "Independent Media."

WOW! Congrats Karen, this is much deserved recognition for the Rubbish Diet, WOO HOO!

I like the Knavesmire in the mist

I posted a misty Knavesmire photo not so long ago, but went back to take more. Here's one of them (click on the Knavesmire label at the bottom of his post if you want to know more about it from my previous entries).

I got to London and back with no problems yesterday, and one highlight of the day was that I saw Feargal Sharkey somewhere in the vicinity of Goodge Street. My friend Karen, who is very good at celebrity spotting, pointed him out to me. So ever since, I have been singing - mainly the first song in this list, which is very catchy, but also the second two which bring back my early teenage years:
A Good Heart Teenage Kicks My Perfect Cousin

(Just so it's clear, Feargal Sharkey has nothing whatsoever to do with the Knavesmire, it's just that I'm thinking about seeing him yesterday while putting this photo up!!)

London again

Make way! I am going to London today! I need to be there to attend a luncheon at 11.45am, and will, I hope, be boarding my train at 8:12am.

Snow, rain, floods and all kinds of awful weather conditions are forecast so this photo of a Japanese bullet train in the National Railway Museum here in York is on my blog for good luck!

Not that I know how one of these would fare in British winter weather conditions. Our own trains tend not to do that well either, of course, and I will be amazed if I get to York Station tomorrow and see lots of "on time" trains on the board. I am kind of expecting lots of cancellations. How I hope I'll be pleasantly surprised!

(There is of course also the possibility that I might get there and not be able to get back. That would be interesting.)

More snow

Just when the last lot of snow had just about cleared, it's done it again! My daughter gave a huge sigh when she saw it, and told me; "School is freezing when it snows and some of the stricter teachers won't let us keep our coats on in the class room." Thermal vest for her today then :-D

Army Climbing Wall in Parliament Street

The army recruiting team were in York for the recent residents' festival, with a climbing wall that moved on a conveyor belt sort of set up - so you could climb and climb but never get to the top. It could be tilted forwards and backwards to vary the gradient too.


LJ had a go, but don't worry, I'm not letting him join up. He'd hate the haircut, anyway :-D

The Roman Bath Museum

In the centre of York is a pub called the Roman Bath, named as such because the steam room of a Roman bath house was found underneath it in the 1930s. The excavations have been turned into a small but very interesting museum, and last week I went for a look.

This was the bath house in the military fortress of York rather than in the civilan side of town, so there are no decorative mosaics and some tiles bear the insignia of the 9th legion who founded York in AD71. (OMG! This place was once full of naked 9th legion Roman soldiers sitting in the steam!)
I liked this model of the fortress and stood here for a while working out where everything was. That's the main gate at the front which was in St Helen's Square, and the tower on the front left must be the multangular tower. I think the square building in the middle is about where the Minster is, and I think the bath house must be that barely visible building on the front right, just peeping out from behind the wall.

LJ enjoyed trying out the replica armour, shields and helmets in the museum. He found out that a centurion's helmet is very heavy!

Sumo Wrestling in Parliament Street

This was going on for a large part of Saturday morning at the Residents' Festival, with various bystanders lured out of the crowd to don a Sumo costume and wrestle. I should have volunteered. It would have been a good way of keeping warm. Live coverage of events was going out on Minster FM.

The Fountain

There's a Facebook group I've been enjoying recently, called You Know You're From York When ... and number one on the list is "you meet up at the fountain." Above, is The Fountain. No-one meeting there on the day I took this pic, Monday at around 10am. It was way too chilly!

Lendal Bridge and Tower - seen from the York bus

So after dissing the York bus only a few days ago, I went for a ride on one. An open topped York bus. On the freezing cold last day of January with the snow blizzard that was about to hit York already making itself felt in the air.

I now know what it is like to have the beginnings of frost bite in my nose end. Why don't they make hats for noses? You can get hats, gloves, ear muffs, even thermal underwear to insulate your nethers, but noses are just left exposed to the elements. Anyone good at knitting? There is clearly a gap in the market.

Apart from the bitter cold, being on the York bus was really very good. There was even a commentary to listen to, through some provided earphones. I found it a bit irritating at first, because the commentator was talking to me as if I was an imbecile, but then I realised I had tuned into the little kids' channel. I hadn't realised there were channels. After playing around with the dial for a bit, and amusing myself by listening to various different languages, I settled into the English one (for grown ups this time), and began to enjoy it.

After about fifteen minutes though I'd had enough of being in the open top, and moved downstairs for the remainder of the journey. Maybe I'm just getting nesh* in my old age.

The view here is of the River Ouse, and the bus is going over Lendal Bridge onto Museum Street. The tower is Lendal Tower, built in the 1300s, originally defensive and also a toll point along the river. An iron chain was once stretched from this tower to Barker Tower on the opposite bank, to stop river traffic. A little ferry used to operate just here from at least the 1400s, to get people from one side of the river to another. But the ferryman was put out of business in 1863 when this bridge was built.

*Nesh was a favourite word of my grandfather, who hailed originally from Sheffield. Being described as nesh means you're a wimp - in the sense of overly sensitive to the cold!