It began badly with a trip on Last Great Western's new trainset. \u00a0I was not impressed. \u00a0I travelled from Bath to Bristol; by Keynsham, my bum ached and by Temple Meads, so did my back. \u00a0LGW has taken a cheap seat policy to heart and applied it to the upholstery and padding. \u00a0I'm told that this is for fire safety reasons although its first class seats have padding aplenty it seems. \u00a0Is there less of a fire risk in First Class?<\/p>\n
I'm reading Rory Steward's book, Marches<\/em>. \u00a0These are the English Marches (not the Welsh ones) and they constitute the land south and north of the border line that runs north-east from the Solway. \u00a0The early part of the book is about the Cumbric, Roman, Northumbrian and Norse occupations, and it's hard to do justice to this epic book which I already know I'll have to read again. \u00a0This land was lawless for a long time and is now an almost empty quarter where there are still traces of lost times. \u00a0Asked, in 1912, why the vast majority of the people buried in Bewcastle cemetery were women, the churchwarden replied it was because the men had been hanged in Carlisle.<\/p>\n It was hard not to be impressed by the thousands of school children in the USA who walked out of classes the other day to protest about guns, death, and the gun lobby. \u00a0Many did so in the teeth of warnings from bureaucrats threatening their suspension, presumably on the ground that they'd be missing some education. \u00a0The irony. \u00a0I listened to TV footage to see is there was an update of the anti-Vietnam protests from the 60's. \u00a0There was:<\/p>\n \"Hey, Hey LBJ (NRA), how many kids did you kill today?\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n