Still clumsy as a septuagenarian (London)

 

The wild garlic season has started.  It’s a short season, lasting about three months, so I try to go and pick as often as I can, for the exercise and the therapy as it’s so meditative, then give it away to students and friends.  (A robin there also comes to keep me company, singing to me from the branches aloft.)

    Shanghai-based student is back in London on a maternity cover stint, which means he’s only around for a short while.  He was driving to Bristol to see his parents, so I thought I’d catch a rare lift for my wild garlic to give to his mother, who’s also my student.

    Delivered the wild garlic to his office in the City, which is in a glass-fronted block with a huge double-storey foyer (both seem to be the trend in the last couple of decades at least).  Big reception desk — three on duty yesterday, not the usual lone one whenever I turned up at 5.30pm for the lessons.  At least three porters standing around.

    As I was leaving after handing over the wild garlic, people were coming back to the building from lunch, going through the revolving door at a brisk pace.

    I went up to it and stood there looking at the feet entering it, watching for a gap.

 

    Forgetting that I had approached it from the side, which means that I wasn’t actually standing by the opening, I stepped forward as soon as I saw a gap.  An almighty SMACK BOING rang through the foyer.

    Everyone stopped and turned to look at the source of that noise.

    The porter nearest me asked if I’d like to sit down.  No way was I going to let them have a good look at me and remember my face, no way.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

    Of all the places and the time of day to walk into a glass wall, I had to do it with so many witnesses around.

    I will have to wear a balaclava or a burka/niqab next time I go to that building…

(London, 2025)

Read also O-chyo-ko-chyo-yi 

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/o-chyo-ko-chyo-i.html

Escalators that detect footfall?

 

I’m watching a modern mainland Chinese drama on YouTube that was aired on Chinese TV in 2015.  There’s a scene involving taking the restaurant chef to the hospital for his skin allergy.  I see that the escalators carry on moving even when there’s no one around.

    This makes me think:  why not design them (escalators anywhere, not just in hospitals and not just in China) so that they only start moving when people approach or step onto the lowest step, rather like ceiling lights that go off after x seconds when there’s no movement in the room?

    This should save some energy (and therefore bills as well, so it’s economical, not just ecological).  I think there’s an escalator at a London Underground station (Liverpool Street?) that already does this:  I thought it’d only started to move as I stepped onto it a fortnight ago when I was there.

    Smoke detectors work on the same principle (springing into action when there's something alien or different in the air, in this case “smoke”), and they’ve been around for a while.

    Automatic doors that slide open or revolving doors that start to go round (in shops, supermarkets, hotels and office blocks, just to name four off the top of my head) at the approach of a human being have been around for decades, so why not escalators in the 21st century?

   

    My nearest Tube station, Manor House on the Piccadilly line in Zone 2 in north London, does not consistently have that many people throughout the day.

    The London Underground Tube system is so vast there must be loads of other stations (outside central London / Zone 1, or even Zone 2) that have very slack footfall stretches outside peak time.

    I was once in conference with someone in a classroom at the university, in the late 90s.  As we were just sitting there, discussing the text for translation, not moving at all, the lights would go off after a certain duration.  We had to start waving our arms about to set off the movement detectors.

    So, why not escalators in the 21st century when even AI (artificial intelligence) is so advanced?

(2025)

Madeleine in Madrid (Spain)

Madeleine [not her real name] had got up to Grade 3 Spanish but felt she still couldn’t speak the language properly, so she thought a stint at the Amnesty office in Madrid might help.  She and I were both regular volunteers at Amnesty, and they have an office in Madrid.  Not being confident enough about travelling on her own in a wheelchair, she asked if I’d like to go along, to which I readily agreed.

The trip was doomed right from the start, with me being late for the flight, first time ever.  We had to catch the next one some six or seven hours later, which got us into Madrid central well after the Amnesty people had knocked off work.  I’d been tasked with getting the air tickets, and Madeleine the accommodation, through the Madrid office.  She had failed to note down the details of where we had been booked into, relying instead on our arriving on time in Madrid and being taken to the hotel by the Amnesty colleagues.  So, at 9pm and in an alien city, we had to find somewhere for the night, wandering around, looking for signs and asking in our very limited Spanish all likely candidates.

The next morning, we set off for the Amnesty office along the long Gran Via.  Madeleine espied a sign in a restaurant window advertising a Madrid speciality and decided she wanted it, there and then.  I tried to put her off, saying we should be trying to get to the Amnesty office first, as we needed to go to our hotel before we lost our pre-booked room.  Besides, we were going to be in Madrid for ten days, so there was plenty of time to sample this speciality, which must be available at lots of other places anyway, but she was adamant about trying it at that very establishment and right then.  In the face of all this determination, I had to cave in.  

The restaurant had a revolving door and a normal door.  The latter was too narrow for Madeleine’s wheel chair to go through, so I had to go in and persuade the staff to dismantle the revolving door which, luckily, they most obligingly did, bless them.  

Within a few minutes of sitting down and consulting the menu, Madeleine pronounced she’d gone off the idea of trying out the Madrid speciality and ordered spag bol instead.  All that work dismantling a whole revolving door, for us to get in, and then again to get out, just to have spag bol in the end.  

(Madrid, 1992)

NB:  For those readers who need help over “spag bol”, it’s short for “spaghetti bolognese”, because it has become a common (as in “everyday”) dish to the extent of British people treating it as a standard easy-to-cook-yet-exotic meal.