Goodbye England
In the hierarchy of man-made beauty does a Gibbsian doorcase outrank an Ionic capital? Was the Renaissance better than the Baroque? Does a painting by Sir Frank Dicksee, RA, "trump" a Kelmscott Chaucer? Idiotic questions, of course, and what could be more foolish than the bureaucratic attempt to draw up a league table of such matters, for the benefit of the heritage and tourist industries? With that proviso in mind, I will mention that Bath is Britain's only World Heritage City. Large parts of it have been ruined, partly by the Luftwaffe, but probably even more by our postwar would-be commissars, who bestowed upon the city these flats in London Road which, when I used to pass them on the X4s, gave me the feeling that I was looking at coke-sorters' apartments in the suburbs of Smolensk.
Across the road is evidence of another act of hatred against English identity ...the alien decimalised currency introduced some eight years before the photograph was taken on Saturday 28th April 1979. I don't think people have ever taken it to their hearts ...and why should they? You hear it in the clumsy nomenclature. "One pence", "five pee", pence always pronounced in full, rather than the old "p'nce" contraction, no telescopings such as "tuppence" or "ha'penny", let alone demotic locutions such as "tanner" or "bob". The only identifiable price in the Co-op's window is 12p for cans of Coca-Cola (not yet "Coke"). The half penny ("half a pence") was still in circulation.
The bus is, of course, one of the FLF Lodekkas acquired by Bristol Omnibus Co. from Western National with the handover of the latter company's Trowbridge operation in 1970. Their side-by-side destination screens were a good early warning identifier and, at closer range, the Exeter registration marks.
Goodbye England
In the hierarchy of man-made beauty does a Gibbsian doorcase outrank an Ionic capital? Was the Renaissance better than the Baroque? Does a painting by Sir Frank Dicksee, RA, "trump" a Kelmscott Chaucer? Idiotic questions, of course, and what could be more foolish than the bureaucratic attempt to draw up a league table of such matters, for the benefit of the heritage and tourist industries? With that proviso in mind, I will mention that Bath is Britain's only World Heritage City. Large parts of it have been ruined, partly by the Luftwaffe, but probably even more by our postwar would-be commissars, who bestowed upon the city these flats in London Road which, when I used to pass them on the X4s, gave me the feeling that I was looking at coke-sorters' apartments in the suburbs of Smolensk.
Across the road is evidence of another act of hatred against English identity ...the alien decimalised currency introduced some eight years before the photograph was taken on Saturday 28th April 1979. I don't think people have ever taken it to their hearts ...and why should they? You hear it in the clumsy nomenclature. "One pence", "five pee", pence always pronounced in full, rather than the old "p'nce" contraction, no telescopings such as "tuppence" or "ha'penny", let alone demotic locutions such as "tanner" or "bob". The only identifiable price in the Co-op's window is 12p for cans of Coca-Cola (not yet "Coke"). The half penny ("half a pence") was still in circulation.
The bus is, of course, one of the FLF Lodekkas acquired by Bristol Omnibus Co. from Western National with the handover of the latter company's Trowbridge operation in 1970. Their side-by-side destination screens were a good early warning identifier and, at closer range, the Exeter registration marks.