Preparedness for when

jk0

You might want to check your emergency money stashes folks for any £50 notes with Sir John Houblon on the back. They are being withdrawn on 30th April 2014, and no doubt will raise awkward questions if you try to use them after that.

See here for more information: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Pages/about/faqs.aspx#50d

GreyQueen

grandma247 wrote: »

Dh and I were at Bury market yesterday. I found a really good wool and haberdashery shop in the shopping center too.
I am a Yorkshire lass married to a Lancashire lad but i would really like to move to Lincolnshire I am inching ever nearer that goal but it is awful slow progress.

I once nearly got my head bitten off for mistaking a new acquaintance for a Yorkshirewoman; she was a proud Lancastrian lass and wasn't best pleased. Gosh, I dunno, you'd think there was some kind of historical emnity there, something of a floral nature, I believe someone said? The War of the Herbaceous Borders (I may have got the wrong end of the floribunda on that, tho ).

I'm the product of a mixed marriage; one parent from each side of the county line. Well, Mum's a deported Londoner, but she's been awarded naturalised bumpkin status as she'd been in the sticks since she was a seven-year-old.

Been out and about earning my keep today, as you do, and have dropped in on SG for tea and a chat. Small cities are eminently walkable, as are market towns. I grew up in a market town. Over most of the countryside you have market towns no more than about 15 miles apart, so you can mostly be no more than 7-8 miles from one. This is realistically about as far as you'd want to go for a day's trading if you had to walk back again the same day.

It's interesting to imagine what the UK, in it's varied topographies, might have looked like if we'd never had the industrial revolution. Or if we hadn't moved from the steam age into the oil age. There's a whole genre called Steampunk, which some of us may be familiar with, which plays with an alt-future scenario.

:question:What do people imagine a world of declining oil supplies will do to us? Will we see the private motorcar become what is was once before; a toy of the wealthy? Will those of us with long commutes have to give them up or take a weekly lodging in the place where we work?

I find as a person who has to use public transport, and who doesn't have a free bus pass, that many journeys I would have made become impossible. You can get somewhere but you can't get back, or the cost is extortionate, etc etc. I travel a lot less than someone with a car, and think more carefully about what journeys I do make.

If you drive for leisure and pleasure as well as for necessity, would you be prepared to switch those journeys over to public transport?

jk0

GreyQueen wrote: »

If you drive for leisure and pleasure as well as for necessity, would you be prepared to switch those journeys over to public transport?

I've almost sworn off public transport GQ, as I have been ill since 7th December with a virus I caught on the bus that week.

I am fortunate that my house has bus stops front and back. The bus into Reading is pricey enough at £3.60 return, but the one to Wokingham is about double that.

It does annoy me that the country is borrowing money hand over fist while handing free bus passes out to all OAP's. They certainly won't be free when I am an OAP.

[Deleted User]

Isn't the quote that in a world without oil the rich will ride horses, the middle classes might have one cart per town and the other 99% of us will walk!!!?

mardatha

Just checked my money and all my £50s are Bank of Scotland. I never thought of banks withdrawing notes before... maybe better check this from now on! Might have been expensive lol

GreyQueen

Sorry to hear you've got the lurgy, jk0, and hope that you'll soon be on the mend. Hope you've seen a doc? Sorry, can't help be a nag, I'm a woman of a certain age.:rotfl:

Last week Mum had an entire Nat Express coach all to herself when she went back to the hometown after visiting me. Well, her and the driver and her three shopping bags. I joked that she should have asked him to drop her on the end of their road.

Here, there are very few people of non-pensionable age on the buses, largely due to the frankly ridiculous fares. I can get 15 miles across the region by bus for the same price as a round-trip to the edge of the city.

And, I suspect that when I get into my wrinkly years, the so-called "free" bus pass will be an urban legend.

My usual form of transport is this:


Or this



Or one of these;



If money were no object I'd have one of these:



I once got to drive a brand new (less than 100 miles on the clock!) Ford Transit automatic. It rocked. I'm an honest individual but I was wracking my brains for ways to avoid giving it back to the hire company........:rotfl:

We went to Lunnon Town. I got a tad misplaced in some complicated traffic systems, but I was of the White Van Fraternity and was cut considerable slack, despite being a gurl.

ETA; Mar, all bank notes can always be turned in at the bank for their face value, even ones which don't exist anymore, like the English £1 note. They're only promissory notes, not proper money. Just wouldn't want to get stuck trying to spend them.

I haven't got any £50 notes. I have some twenties, they're not about to go off, I hope?

jk0

GreyQueen wrote: »

Sorry to hear you've got the lurgy, jk0, and hope that you'll soon be on the mend. Hope you've seen a doc?

Thanks GQ. Not bothered the doc this time.

Cough and cold are long gone. The problem is, so is my energy.

I walk a mile every morning to get a paper. However, I get home totally wacked, which is frustrating when there are flats to renovate.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I'm the product of a mixed marriage

We've all got mixed parentage.

One man and one woman.

[Deleted User]

jk0. You remind me of Trigger, and his 20 year old road sweeping brush.

GreyQueen

Sounds like a virus has knocked you for six. My entirely non-medical advice is; early nights, good food and perhaps a tonic from the health food shop. You need to get some sun on your skin to make Vit D and help mood, so the walking is good in it's way.

I got glandular fever in 1988 and have been feeling rough ever since. These things take time to get right, so don't rush it and make yourself more unwell.

I'm into healthy eating. I'm even eating GREEN things with my supper. I don't really approve of green food but hey-ho, it's supposed to be good for ya, so here's giving it a go.

ETA Bob, whatever are you implying?! I'll have you known I was grown in a vat on Planet Sensible and am only here for the beer.