Kitchen Garden Forum

Re fog: my twin daughters were born in November in the early 1960s. We had no car and the ambulance had to take me about 10 miles to hospital through an absolute pea-souper in the middle of the night, crawling along with the blue light flashing. We got there just in time and now they are in their healthy fifties and mothers themselves.

Re birds: the number of birds at the feeders has certainly risen in the last few colder days. Highlights have been a pair of bullfinches, lots of goldfinches, a nuthatch and long-tailed tits. Still missing are bramblings and greenfinches which we used to see regularly in winter. About a dozen blackbirds come to the back door every morning to be fed with currants.

Colin2016 wrote:Heard Dave King on the radio, talking about his alternative way of predicting the weather. Seems we are in for a hard cold winter I’m keeping an eye out to see how good his perdition is. His web sight if any one is interested http://www.weatherwithouttechnology.co.uk

Hopefully if he's wrong he'll get a really good perdition!

I saw the name 'Dave King' and immediately thought of the singer, actor, comedian of the 50's and 60's.

I think he is past the perdition stage by now (see what I've done there )

Regards the fog in the early 60s. I used to play in a group, to get home in the fog one night one of us had to sit on bonnet to guide the driver home.

No elf & safety in those days, mad days but what fun.

Ha ha, our drummer ran off in front of us and he went too fast and we lost him

My Mum was saying today, that she used to have to walk in front of the London Buses wth a light, when the horrid smog about.

A scene such as that was created inside Shepperton Studios a few years ago for a TV series called Jericho starring Robert Lindsay. They created thick fog through which I was driving one of my 1950's London buses.

The "conductor" walked in front of the bus holding a flaming flare and I can tell you that even in 'controlled' conditions inside a film studio it was damn difficult to see and very disorientating. When we finished filming her face was just as if she had walked through smog, sooty black marks all over it.

What garage was your mum based at OH.

You could guarantee if you went down town for a night out in winter there was a good chance you would have to walk home as the buses had been stopped running ,the colder the night the bigger the risk , every house had the coalfire burning bright and this being a mining town were miners got cheap coal the fire would be a big one

I always thought the burning fog lamps made it worse.

Quite right Geoff, the flares gave off loads of smoke.

One of your London buses, how big a fleet do you have Pa?

peter wrote:One of your London buses, how big a fleet do you have Pa?

Not very big Peter

At one point I had 12 classic double deck, single deck and coaches, some operational , some in process of restoration and some just waiting their turn.

Maximum I operated at any one time was 5

Pa Snip wrote:........
Maximum I operated at any one time was 5

I now have a very odd image in my mind of five buses being driven simultaneously by an oddly stretched and contorted root vegetable!

Classic Peter, I like it

However you know what they say, you wait for ages then they all harvest together

Pa snip I think you might be blakey incognito he was always on the buses