Daily Moan #19: Upgrading the computer

Another New year and it's back to having a good old moan! Now I must preface this moan with the statement that I love Apple and Apple products, and believe that Jony Ive should be knighted. I bought my first ever Mac Plus back in June 1989 and even before that, way back in the early 80s, I got my company - IPC Science and Technology Press - to buy an Apple ][e with a bank of four floppy drives, just to put conference delegate lists into alphabetical order. But...

BUT...

I hate upgrading. I dread it. I avoid it like the plague until I get dragged into doing it for the sake of a new gadget. It happened when I got my first iPod. I brought it home all excited and unpacked it, only to find my OS wasn't up-to-date enough. So I upgraded, and of course nothing worked - it took days to get the internet, printers and everything back working again. Stressful!

The same thing happened when I got the iPad 2. I was perfectly happy with OS 10.4 but it insisted I needed 10.5. So I borrowed a copy (the only alternative was to buy an expensive box set) and again it was traumatic, mainly because a program I'd been using for years, Adobe Streamline, which was working fine in 'classic' mode, was no longer happening. Ah well, I thought, I am almost retired and should I need to trace line drawings, I could learn Freehand's built-in trace tools. But then, just before Christmas, my trusty iMac died!

OK, I'd had seven years productive use from it (bought May 2005). It was the last of the PowerPC iMacs, the white one before they stuck a camera in. I'd woken it from sleep and everything was frozen. I restarted it from the power button, it chimed but never got past the blue screen. Hmm, what to do. I had the iPad so I was on Facebook and Gmail, but I couldn't work. I'd rigged up an old 12in Powerbook G4 (bought to handle Channel 4's dreadful content-management system, for which my iMac was too up to date) as a distraction-free writing machine for NaNoWriMo, so I could use that. I'd been thinking of buying a new iMac for a while, so I took the plunge and ordered one from the Apple Store, where I get an NUJ discount. The old iMac went to the menders. I was hoping it could be repaired so I could get at Filemaker Pro and my invoices etc.

When the new iMac arrived, I transferred all my life from an external hard drive (using Time Machine). My neighbours had already been caught out with the new Firewire 800 plug so I borrowed their £20+ cable to transfer everything from the hard drive into the new computer. So far so good, but I'd been reading up and was aware that Lion didn't support PowerPC apps. My plan was to get the old one mended and strip it down as a work computer, but as it worked out the logic board was gone and it was an uneconomic repair. Luckily Mick Swabey had an old iMac like mine but with smaller screen on sale for £85! So he swopped the internal hard drives for me and I was back in business, but with two computers on the go.

Now I've been using Freehand since the beginning, but that was no longer supported on the new computer. I had archives going back years and my new giclee prints had all been created using Freehand. I'm too old to learn Illustrator! Luckily, Photoshop CS3 still worked, but I didn't even attempt to connect my old scanner to it. All my records - invoices, addresses, etc were on FileMaker Pro - I could have bought an upgrade, but why should I when it was working fine on the old computer? Upgrading is not only stressful, it can be expensive too. So to do my Xmas cards I began transferring my contact info to Address Book - I didn't try printing labels, I still have that bridge to cross.

I'd also bought a Time Capsule, which I thought was just a glorified hard drive, but it is also a router. I couldn't get it to work as just a hard drive, so took my Netgear router out of the loop and everything was sweet as a nut, just like Apple products usually are - all working straight out of the box. I noticed it had a USB port to attach a printer, but after trying to get the old HP 990c printer to work on the network, discovered it too was no longer supported! Ah well.

Anyway, on New Year's Eve I went up to the 100 Club in London to see my favourite band David Devant and his Spirit Wife, and as usual I took my Flip video recorder to document the event. Back home, I put a couple of videos on YouTube and set about compiling the DVD. My trusty copy of iMovie HD was working and I started importing the Flip files and typing in the song titles. When it was all done, I clicked Share to power up iDVD then discovered my iDVD wouldn't work. OK, so I'd download an upgrade, only there isn't one! What! Yes, that's right, iDVD is no longer supported by Apple. So how the blazes can I make a DVD? The only solution was to start again on the old computer, transferring the Flip files by USB memory stick (the iMovie project file is 17 gigs, I could have used my old external drive to transfer it over but I don't have the right Firewire cable!). There may well be way of doing it via Time Capsule, but it's done now... or rather it's in the process of doing it!

Of course my PC friends will be killing themselves laughing at all this. I thought Macs never broke, they'll taunt. The upshot is that I have a beautiful, fast, state-of-the-art iMac with a crisp high-res screen, but it does little more than my iPad already does. My workhorse is an old 17in G5 iMac running all my favourite programs on Leopard. If only my iMac had died earlier when they were still sending out Macs with Snow Leopard, I would have been OK (for a year or two). Guess which computer I'm writing this on? The old one of course.

Follow up to Daily Moan #18: Southern's sale

Well, finally, after two weeks a reply from Southern about them sending me the wrong tickets. This is most unsatisfactory - how many other organisations, when guilty of supplying the wrong goods, would put the onus on the customer to claim  a refund? The refund (of 70p) is not worth the effort anyway, so I won't waste any more time with them... disgusted of Brighton.

Dear Mr Pipes

Thank you for contacting us on the 07 Jun 2011 regarding the tickets you booked via our website during the 90% off sale. Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response.

We apologise to any customer who experienced problems with booking a ticket online over the weekend. We extended the 24 hour sale to 4 days to allow as many people as possible to find the 90% discounted tickets they were after. Like most online travel sales, the number of fares available at the discounted price were limited.

Unfortunately the customer service advisor you spoke to over the phone gave you the correct information. You must apply for a refund and then re-purchase the tickets you require. I am sorry I cannot assist you further on this occasion.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us directly at: comments@southernrailway.com or www.southernrailway.com/your-journey/contact-us/contact-us-form/ You can also contact our Customer Service team by phone on (08451 27 29 20), fax (08451 27 29 30) or in writing (Southern Customer Services, PO Box 3021, Bristol, BS2 2BS).

Kind regards


Naomi Altass
Southern Customer Services

Daily moan #18: Southern Railways' 90%-off sale

I haven't had a good moan for a while, so I'll enjoy this one.

Like many of my friends, I was looking forward to Southern Railways' 90%-off sale on 26 May. In my head I was planning trips to Southampton, Ashford, Rye, even London - for the Tuesdays that the Off Beat Cafe would be closed. Come the day, however, and their poor computer couldn't cope with demand and everything ground to a halt - impossible to buy tickets. So, they extended the sale and on 27 May, after many many attempts, I managed to buy a return ticket from Brighton to London: 45p up on the 11.19 on 14 June; 70p back to Brighton at 15.51 - a quick visit to go see the Aesthetics show at the V&A. I opted to receive the tickets by 1st class post and received an acknowledgment by email.

Some days later I received my tickets in the post. But, instead of my return ticket, however I received a day-return ticket from Dorking to London for 22 June! So I emailed them via their online form - twice - with no reply. On 7 June I called 08451 272920 and was told that I could claim a refund - which would presumably be for the 70p - which still left me having to buy another ticket for £5.90. Swizz! I felt cheated! So I sent off a letter of complaint - and as yet have not received a reply.

I did get a reply to one of my emails though on 9 June. I was told I could 'amend my journey' on the website but 'There is a charge of £2 per transaction for changes of journey on Southern services plus the cost of any difference in fare.' Well, there was nothing wrong with my order, it's there in black and white in my account history (and I have the original email to prove it) - it was Southern that sent me the wrong ticket!

Ok, the amounts may seem trivial, but I am complaining more about the level of service. First for the 90% off sale for which their website clearly couldn't cope and on which it was almost impossible to buy tickets, second for their lousy online form that gives no acknowledgment that an 'email' has been received, and third for a customer service call centre that puts the onus on me to claim a refund when it was clearly their fault that I received the wrong tickets!

I use Southern a lot to buy discounted rail tickets and every other transaction has worked perfectly - every time you but a ticket online you get an instant acknowledgement by email - nice reassuring feedback - the tickets usually arrive next day by post - or you can pick them up from a machine at the nearest station (I picked up tickets for my July trip to Dublin from Uckfield, a station I was just passing the other day), so what went wrong?

My faithful Topfield PVR, bought in 2005, is finally on its last legs, it freezes and then I have to wipe the hard drive to get it going again (capacitor problem according to the Toppy forum) so I have ordered a Tivo from Virgin. Now I have had problems with Virgin in the past so I hope I haven't made a rod for my own back!

Daily Moan #17: Centre and epicentre

A joke. Q. where's the dead centre of Brighton? A. The cemetery! Ba dum bump ching! I've never been happy with the modern use of centre, as in Youth Centre, Health Centre or Shopping Centre. In Hove there's a place called a Trial Centre. We used to call them Courts, but presumably the people most likely to use them might get confused by the tennis courts down the road? Libraries are now called things like learning resource centres, to reflect that they rarely lend out books these days. Why have one simple word when you can have two or more? Boring old museums are sexed up with names like Thinktank, but I digress.

Because the word 'centre' has become meaningless, TV news reporters like to use the word 'epicentre' instead, as in 'Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism'. Now, this has a specific meaning: because earthquakes often happen underground, the epicentre describes the place on the surface immediately above the real centre. Well, this may have symbolic meaning, as it is the place where most damage occurs, but mostly it is being misused.

Questions Of Cash in The Independent

Highly abridged letter of mine in today's Questions Of Cash relating to Daily Moan #14.

My life in a map

You may have noticed I haven't been moaning much recently. Well I certainly have reason to - about my bloomin' Epson R2400 printer which has finally gone to the menders, and the fact that the Brighton recycling lorry came a day early, despite the council sending out a calendar of dates, followed by a revised calendar cos the first one had a wrong date on it - but I haven't been blogging them! Instead I've been messing around with Google Maps and managed to put every place I've ever lived onto a map. I've lived in 23 different houses, bedsits, rooms and flats, some for as little as three weeks. This morning I added all the places I've ever worked. So my whole life to date is on one map. Some places have been demolished; others are approximately located as it's sometimes difficult to read house numbers on Street View, and my memory isn't that good. My Maps is great - I could imagine using it as some kind of immersive narrative device, for eStories. Maybe I'll think about that. If that 'View ... in a larger map' link below doesn't work, try this link.


View Larger Map

Daily Moan #16: noisy and uncomfortable cafes and bars

I was amused by the review in the Independent of Bill's new Produce Store in London's Covent Garden. The former fruit and veg market sounds like an appropriate place for a pretend farm shop, but apparently it's been faked up inside a new development. Now, I confess I haven't been there, but I have been to the original one in Lewes, and the more recent Brighton branch, housed in a former garage. And I just don't get it. Maybe a few years ago the Lewes branch was a pleasant place to eat, but not any more. Not only do you have to queue for a table, but it's cramped, uncomfortable and very very noisy. The same goes for the Brighton cafe. The food is nice enough, but it's not a place you feel you can linger, what with the eyes of the queuing punters drilling holes in the back of your neck.

I remember when The Volunteer, by the Corn Exchange, was an old geezers' pub. Usually empty, except after a performance in the Dome complex, it had plush velvet seating, real ale pumps, and a sticky carpet. It was quiet. Then Zel took it over, stripped it back to wood and brick, put in old domestic furniture, replaced the beer with foreign-sounding lager at twice the price - and the youngsters flooded into The Mash Tun, as it was renamed. Their original inn sign is on display in the Waggon and Horses opposite, where you can still get a nice pint of Harvey's. This was before seating was allowed outside, and there was always a halo of customers round the door jostling to get in. What was going on? The formula was repeated around town. Bars with hard acoustically reflective wooden floors and walls naked of absorbent flock wallpaper assaulted the eardrums - even without the throbbing disco beats. The Tin Drum at Seven Dials, where a dear friend always insists we go for his birthday drink, is extremely noisy, even without muzak. I don't think anywhere has gone the whole hog like in some Northern towns yet however, where they have even removed the seating, but there again I haven't been down West Street lately!

The craze for discomfort has now spread to cafes, as in Bill's mentioned above. Nia in the North Laine was one of the first to introduce a mish-mash of mismatched junk shop chairs and tiny tables made from old school desks. At the brand new Carluccio's, seating is on long wooden benches and the noise level is at the road-drill level of decibels. Call me old-fashioned, but I like quiet comfortable cafes where I can chat without getting a sore throat, and pubs with comfy seats and proper beer - is that too much to ask?

Daily Moan #15: fewer not less

I was going to have a good old Moan about inkjet printer cartridges (especially Epson ones) today: the price of them and how they only put a few drops of ink in each - and how the chips in them make you buy more of the damn things before they've even run out. But I won't. Instead, it's back to grammar and something that when I hear it makes me want to shout at the TV. It's when people use 'less' when they should be using 'fewer'. It happened this morning on 'Wanted Down Under' - yes, I know it's a crappy daytime programme, but I got lured in. I think she was talking about 'less opportunities' or something, but it made me shout out: 'FEWER!'

According to my dictionary, less is used when talking about relative amounts or quantities and fractions thereof, eg 'eat less jam' or 'the government cuts will mean less money in your pocket' or 'he has less hair than he used to'. Whereas fewer is used for things measured by discrete number and usually deals with plurals, eg 'government cuts will mean fewer policemen on the beat'. Confusingly, however, less can used with numbers when they are on their own, eg 'Their marriage lasted less than four years'.

Supermarket checkouts with signs saying '10 items or less' are wrong. It should be '10 items or fewer' but try telling that to Mr Sainsbury. 'Less graduates will get jobs this year' is wrong. It should be fewer graduates. The Plain English Campaign, according to the BBC article about Tesco linked to earlier has a simple rule of thumb: less means 'not as much', whereas fewer means 'not as many'.

Daily Moan #14: Virgin Media

This a real genuine bona fide Moan and it makes me tired just thinking about it! Have you ever felt you were in a Franz Kafka novel? When something goes wrong in your life and you haven't a clue why? And you seem to lose control? And nobody seems to know why? Then you'll sympathise with my sorry tale. It does have a happy ending, of sorts, so there's no need to be alarmed. [Old Arnold Brown joke: 'This door is alarmed'. How does it think I feel?]

Back in November, Virgin Media sent me a letter saying I was 'guaranteed pre-approved' to get a Blackberry for £10 a month. My pay-as-you-go Samsung clamshell phone was fine for me, and to get an iPhone would mean upgrading my OS - and they're very expensive. And I already have an iPod Touch, and plan to get a 2nd gen iPad. Nick has a Blackberry and says it changed his life... So, I made the call.

I spoke to someone at the Virgin call centre, gave them all my bank details (I have been with Virgin Media for landline and broadband from the beginning - NYnex, Cable & Wireless, NTL and then Virgin) and received a confirmation email. Then nothing.

A week or so later I rang the number again. My niece had applied for one after me and was already enjoying it. I spoke to Alvin in Manila and he took all my details again. I received an email. But still no phone.

Two weeks later I called again and spoke to Sheryl. She said there was something wrong with my credit check (I was 'pre-approved' remember?). She said she'd call me back within 48 hours. She didn't. So a few days later I spoke to Lucy who said there was a problem with my credit rating (I was 'guaranteed pre-approved' remember?).

A week later I spoke to Anna who said I should re-apply in 31 days. Computer said no. I was getting annoyed by now, so I sent off two letters of complaint to two different complaints addresses, and copied in Paul Gosling from the Independent. I hate having to play the 'press card' but it had worked in the past.

I was worried about this credit thing. Anna told me they used Equifax, so I took out their free 30-day trial - and I paid an extra £5.95 to get my credit score. It was 508, in the 'excellent' band. The only slight blemish was a late payment to a credit card made ages ago. What was going on?

On 28 December (two months after my initial call to Virgin) I got a call from a Virgin press person. She said she'd expedite things. I sent her scans of the original letter. On 8 January, a Saturday, I got called by someone from sales who took all my details yet again, but this time I received lots of emails. I also received a follow-up call from the PR person. The final insult was a text at 3am (my Samsung kept ringing every few minutes until answered) on Monday morning saying it was on its way. UPS would deliver between 8am and 6pm. So guess when they came? Well it was choir in the afternoon and I returned home to find a UPS card on my doormat. My heart sank - but phew he'd left the parcel next door. I now have a Blackberry! I still haven't had a proper explanation or apology. Apparently too many orders going through Virgin's system caused a lock-down on my account - but is that my fault?

So there we have it - off my chest. I've had problems with Virgin before, almost always caused by their internal lack of communication, and phoning call centres is a dismal experience. If you need to get things going, bring in Watchdog or some other consumer programme, or newspaper 'agony aunt' as early as possible. And don't rely on verbal assurances. Get it in writing!

I am thinking of sending the Blackberry back and getting an iPhone. What should I do?

the # character: more an explanation than a moan

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed I've been using the # symbol in my Daily Moan blog items, instead of the perfectly good English No. - especially with my going on about Americanisms yesterday. In the olden days, this usage used to mystify me when I saw it in US comics. Nowadays, with Twitter 'hashtags' we are more used to it and can find it on the keyboard. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the number sign, also called the Pound sign in North America. On my keyboard it is coincidentally hidden behind the £ and 3 key, although the pound the Americans mean is the weight unit lb. Apparently on phones it's also sometimes called the octothorp. In copy editing and proofreading a # in the margin usually followed by a caret ^ (with a caret in the text indicating where) means add some space.

Daily Moan #13: Americanisms

Today's Moan is short and sweet: it's the word 'envision' used as a verb. It really annoys me, I don't know why. Simon Price used it in today's Independent in his review of British Sea Power's latest LP Valhalla Dancehall. He writes: "We are Sound" - possibly a pun on the Mancunian use of the title's final word as an adjective of approval, possibly not - attempts to engage with someone who "can barely string two words together", while "Georgie Ray" envisions, with a shudder, a time when "the language gets perfected to a solitary grunt". Envision isn't in my Oxford dictionary; 'envisage' is. You could say 'envision' scans better in that sentence, but why use a North American term when we have a perfectly good English one? A quick Google brought up this argument. And surely the word 'sound' meaning great is Scouse slang, not Manc!

Daily Moan #12: poncy food

Heston Blumenthal has a lot to answer for. I quite like the idea of Heston Blumenthal, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy his food. Too fiddly - I like honest ingredients that haven't been mucked about with too much. I blame his wannabe followers, however, for all the poncy food around these days. It's all a tower of this, drizzled with that, nestling in a bed of the other, with a liquid nitrogen cooled foam jus reduction of something you've never heard of. Terre a Terre's menu used to be famous for it, tho I suspected much of it was tongue-in-cheek. The new menus appear to be far more understandable. One place that doesn't even bother with menus is Viajante in Bethnal Green town hall, London - take a look at their gallery - are those supposed to be meals or canapes? This place was drawn to my attention by someone on a UK TV newsgroup (yes, they still exist) linking to an hilarious Grauniad review. Puts you in mind of the Harry Enfield 'I saw you coming' antique dealer selling tat to people with more money than sense who actually believe the emperor is wearing his new clothes. What amuses your bouche? I'll stick with hearty pub grub at the George.

Daily Moan #11: food adulterated by animal products

I'm not a strict vegetarian - I sometimes eat fish - but I don't eat meat, and that includes gelatine, chorizo, chicken stock and wild boar. I love scallops and quite fancy going to the Rye Bay Scallop Week in February (unfortunately there don't appear to be any clog dancers or sea shanty singers taking part) - but looking at the menus on offer it seems that most of the dishes have been spoilt by the addition of bacon, black pudding and foreign dried pig-based sausages. Why do so many chefs hate vegetarians and pescatarians so much that they feel they have to sabotage their food with strong-tasting meat products? One gets the impression that should you ask for the dish without the chorizo or parma ham, then the chef will surely gob on it before it leaves the kitchen!

Eating abroad is a minefield: in Italy, an innocent pasta with tomato sauce might have a bit of wild boar added to spice it up; in Barcelona, a Catalan dish of broad beans will have little chunks of butifarra in it. In France they are perfectly capable of cooking exquisite vegetables, so long as they accompany meat or fish. Ask for a selection of them without the meat and you'll end up with an omelette! In Germany and further east the only vegetables not pickled to death you'll see in restaurants are potatoes. Japanese noodles may have been made using chicken stock - and beware of jelly anywhere - it's almost certain to be gelatine made from boiled up animal bones. I suppose we are spoilt here in Brighton for good veggie food available almost everywhere, and most big cities will have decent Asian places to eat with plenty of meat-free choices. And one day maybe eating meals without meat will no longer be seen as something weird and not to be tolerated.

New Year musings...

My neighbour Curtis has a Moan in his New Year musings...

New Year's resolutions?

So, what to do about New Year's Resolutions? Refuse to make any? Promise to cut down on the moaning? Dan Thompson said on Twitter this morning: 'So, resolutions; work a bit harder, travel a bit further, go to more live music and theatre, be more impulsive, longer cycle rides, draw' - I could do that! But could I be arsed? I mean, I know I should draw and get out more (and practise my uke more), but if I really wanted to, I'd be doing those things already. No need for resolutions.

The Grauniad has some reassuring news for Resolution makers in this article on seven steps to good health. I like the bit about eating more greens and not peeling things (and learning a musical instrument), but the alcohol thing is a bit disappointing. As a comedian once asked (I wish I could remember who): is a Unit a bucket full of vodka? No, it's half a pint of weak beer. So, three units a day isn't much fun is it? Though I suppose with fewer things to worry about, there should be less reason for self-medication. (A quick moan: why are the wines on special offer in supermarkets always so strong - 14%, 15%?). Maybe I should try drugs? The bloke who discovered Ecstasy once said he was trying to invent a calorie-free Martini. I'd buy that! So, resolutions? I think I'll sleep on it for now...

BTW: a point to ponder - at subbing school we were always told not to end a headline with a question mark.

Daily Moan #10: Waste food

There was an item on BBC Breakfast news this morning about this amazing brand spanking new anaerobic digester that could turn your Xmas leftovers into clean Green electricity - and save lots of stuff going into expensive landfill to boot. Great? No! NO! Fair enough if it's using inedible by-products to digest - but what I could see being dumped was edible waste food; sprouts, parsnips, oranges, tomatoes... OK, the tomatoes looked a bit ripe, but... Bob Geldof would be turning in his grave if he were dead. (And they didn't say what happened to all those plastic bags.)

There was another item about Baby Boomers (yes, I'm one, being born in 1947, two years after the war) having it cushy compared with today's young people: no university tuition fees to pay (true), lots of jobs to walk straight into (err, no), it was easier to get on the housing ladder (I still had to lie about my earnings to a mortgage broker when I bought my first house - for £10,000 - yes you could buy it on your credit card nowadays) and generous final-salary pensions to enjoy (definitely not, although working at IPC for five years in the 1970s resulted in a pension, higher than the private one I paid into for 20+ years). We have, however, seen the most change: in music, technology, and in attitudes to things such as consumerism and greed.

One thing a baby boomer would not do is waste food. (Other things we may not do include dropping litter and getting into debt!) We were, and I still am, frugal. We know how to cook and what to do with leftovers, which is to eat them! Nigel Slater knows all about the joy of leftovers. So should you! Don't blame the supermarkets, unrealistic sell-by dates and Thatcher - I like a 2-for-1 BOGOF bargain as much as the next man, and I always make for the 'Reduced to clear' section first. One thing I used to do as a kid was peel potatoes (we even peeled mushrooms in our house). I don't anymore (and Jamie Oliver doesn't even wash his veg), so the barest minimum of waste from food preparation goes into the compost bin. And I always clear my plate. If I bring a Tupperware container to your next dinner party, it's because I can't stand food going to waste. Waste not, want not said the wartime posters. That should be your mantra for 2011.

And if you think I'm a whinger, check out this Aussie article. I don't agree with all of it, and be warned - the Comments section is full of opinionated twats, just like on the Argus website!

Daily Moan #9: Rat Runs

Rat Run
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Shall I do booking fees for gig tickets today? No, too easy a target, even though they make my blood boil. Why do venues advertise tickets at say, a round £10, only to tell you when you try to buy one that there's a 50p, £1 or £1.50 booking fee, plus a charge if you want to use a credit card, etc etc, on top. It's as sneaky as easyJet!

No, today's Daily Moan is about cars using pedestrian zone streets as rat runs. Unlike New Road, which is a Continental-style 'shared space', Sydney Street in Brighton, home of the famous Off Beat Coffee Bar, is supposed to be a Pedestrian Zone, and there are even signs at the Trafalgar Street end saying so (see photo): Monday to Friday, 10am til 5pm, only vehicles unloading are allowed. At the weekend, temporary bollards are placed in the middle of the road to stop vehicular access and parking. But cars blatantly ignore this and even have the nerve to toot at any strolling pedestrians in their way! The cheek of it. Mind you, it's not clear whether cycling is allowed. I have never ever seen this 'Pedestrian Zone' enforced.

BTW the steam train on The Indian Doctor yesterday was a green industrial 0-6-0ST, which seemed to turn red as it left the station. The location could be anywhere... More research needed.

Reasons to be cheerful #2

Well, I received a phone call this morning from someone in Virgin Media's press department, so things might start to move at last. I hate having to play the Press Card, but sometimes it's the only way to get attention. All will be revealed when this sorry story is resolved.

Meanwhile, The Indian Doctor is being repeated on BBC1 - and the first episode features a steam train! It's 1963 in the Welsh valleys. I'll tell you tomorrow if it's a wrong 'un and something to moan about...

According to the all-knowing internet, the BR Standard loco used in Poirot's Murder on the Orient Express, mentioned yesterday, was No. 73129 from the Midland Railway Centre.

Daily Moan #8: the wrong engine

Many films feature steam trains - I've already blogged one of them - and nearly all of them get it wrong. Either the loco is from the wrong region or company or it's from the wrong time. Granted, there is only a finite number of locos to choose from on a small number of available scenic heritage railways. But what on earth was what looked like a British Railways Standard Class 5 loco doing chuffing through the snowy Eastern European mountains in Poirot's Murder on the Orient Express on Christmas day? I suspect much of it was CGI, which means they will be able get it right in the future.

Which brings me to The Railway Children, shown yesterday. Don't get me wrong, this is a delightful movie, guaranteed to have you weeping uncontrollably at the end. I love it. This was filmed at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in 1970, but was meant to be set in 1905. The engine that appears the most, seen pulling the Old Gentleman in his North Eastern Railway Director's Saloon was GWR 0-6-0PT No. 5775 (L89) painted in the livery of the fictional Great Northern and Southern Railway - a sort of Stroudley 'Improved Engine Green' (ie mustard yellow-brown). These pannier tanks were built at Swindon 1929-50, so the loco is wrong for two reasons - it's from the wrong region and it wasn't yet built at the time the film was set. As far as I know pannier tanks were only ever seen in the Great Western region.

The one bringing them to Oakworth station, and also seen later in the film, is No. 1369, one of Hudswell Clarke's 0-6-0T 'long tank' locos, originally to be found working on the Manchester Ship Canal as No. 67 and now at the Middleton Railway.

Other locomotives include The Scotch Flyer No. 4744 (69523), a Great Northern Railway Class N2 0-6-2T steam locomotive designed by Nigel Gresley and introduced in 1920 - now at the Great Central Railway, Loughborough.

The Green Dragon, aka No. 52044 (preserved as L&Y 957), is a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Class 25 0-6-0 locomotive. These were introduced in 1876 and not withdrawn until the 1930s, so is absolutely right for the location and period! Hoorah!

Daily Moan #7: careless typos

I did promise I wouldn't moan over the Christmas holiday period, but I just couldn't let this one go. Flicking through the Independent on Sunday (no, I didn't expect there to be papers today either), I spotted this in the 'Watch this' section of the magazine:

Royal Institute!! Didn't they read the blog item that started all this Daily Moan business? The one I castigated normally excellent Robin Ince for? Obviously not. It should be Royal Institution! Don't newspapers have sub-editors anymore? I know that the Argus has been on strike recently over the threat to sack the local Brighton subs and move the operation to Southampton. The result was the spelling of Brighten - twice - in a news story! Shocking. And last night my friend Chrissie pointed out to me some of the many typos in a book of Brighton Bus Names. In books that I read I do regularly come across a couple of literals per chapter. Should I highlight them? I would if they were in library books...