It's Cheaper By Concorde (2 April 1976)

I was strolling along the arcade the other day when an acquaintance sidled up to me and whispered:

“Psst! Do you know it’s now as cheap or cheaper to ride in Concorde, with all the trimmings, than in a United Counties bus, with no trimmings at all?”

I said “Really?  How do you make that out?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said he.  “A return trip to Bahrain by Concorde costs £676.  The distance there and back is 7,030 miles.  That works out at about 9.6p a mile.”

I said:  “Does it?  I’m afraid I’m no good at sums since they brought in this decimated currency, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Right,” said he.  “Well, the distance from the Shoulder at Old Bletchley to the new bus station is a mile or just over and the fare is 11p.  I reckon that’s more than Concorde’s 9.6p a mile.”

Then he added:  “Next time I ride down I shall take a seat on the upper flight deck and order a champagne cocktail!”

I go regularly into the town only on a Monday because I like to park my car in the “Sainsbury” park and I have never seen more than two complete rows of cars there on that day of the week.

So I had resumed my stroll along the arcade when another acquaintance overtook me.  He was in too much of a hurry for his state of health, but he slowed down to pat my back and say:

“Don’t dawdle if your hour is anywhere near up.  I thought I had plenty of time last Monday but by the time I drew up at the exit gate I was one minute over the hour and, believe it or not, they charged me an extra 5p for just that one minute.

“Mind you, I didn’t blame the attendant.  He was only carrying out orders.  But the council used to charge nothing for the first hour and now that they do charge I think they should allow a bit of latitude to old boys like us on Mondays when we deliberately come so as not to be in anybody’s way on busier days, don’t you?”

I see that (at this time of writing) Stanier Square is now taking a shape.  What kind of an internal shape is hard to tell.  I am reassured, however, by the fact that, as part of the starters, there is the usual Bletchley hole in the road.  There are also some low brick walls.

Talking of bricks reminds me of that exhibit at the Tate Gallery.  My art sparrow’s description of the concrete Arc de Triomphe outside Sherwood House as being of artistic value doesn’t seem quite so quaint now, does it?

Perhaps we could do the Tate a swop, if we run short of bricks in the Square.

Well, well, well!  After all these years of open forecourts to council houses, the tenants are now to be told they can hedge them in – or so I gather from a recent Gazette report.

When the post-war council houses first began to be built back in the late 1940s, the tenants soon began to complain about the open forecourts.  They complained of people using them as short cuts, of children and youths using them for football pitches, and of the general lack of privacy.

When ex-Londoners arrived on the Saints Estate in 1952-53 they got together and made exactly the same complaints.

Each time the answer was the same.  Some tenants would look after their front gardens; others would not.  Low walls would add to the cost of the houses.  Palings would be unsightly.  Etc, etc.  Rather than risk an untidy appearance, the council were having the forecourts open and grassed and would mow them as required.

Ever since then various sort of motor mowers have been run up and down the forecourts and across the concrete paths, with the clippings finding their way into the houses, to the chagrin of the housewives, especially after rain.

And now, after the ground has been trodden hard or laid bare by thousands of feet, and after many original tenants have grown too old or infirm to tackle a job they could have done quite easily at the start, the council have apparently changed their minds.  They have discovered that in the long run hedges and front gardens would be less costly to all concerned than all that mowing, though maybe oil costs have a made a difference too.

To pass from the sublime to the ridiculous, I note from the Gazette that the forecourt hedges have to be planted one English foot in from the pavement and be allowed to grow not more than one French metre high.  Perhaps it is thought that, while a measure marked in inches and feet will be best at the time of planting, one marked in millimetres, decimetres, centimetres and metres will be better understood when the hedge has grown.

Oh dear, this metrication!  It is so long-winded and figure-wise.  So inconsistent.  And the spellings and pronunciations send you crazy.  I pity the kids at school.

Nobody says “metre” like that.  We all say “meeter” and that’s how we should spell it.  Then we come to “litre.”   We are told it rhymes with “metre.”  Then why not spell it “leeter?”  Also why “grammes,” not grams?  There is no need to copy all these inconsistencies.  We have enough of our own already – thanks to previous Norman-French influence.

But then, in France you have to know the sex of a shovel before you know whether to precede it with “la” or “le.”  Gallic clarity my 30.48 centimetres!  Thank God for our simple unisex “the.”

As for those wretched grammes.  They are nearly all in three figures.  They go up to 999 before you come to anything which seems shorter, but isn’t.  Can you see yourself asking for “a 113 gramme packet of tea, please” when all you want is a quarter?

Wouldn’t it be better to ignore the whole grammed business – hectares, litres, tonnes, the lot – on the retail side of things?  The only folk likely to benefit from metrication are the makers of pocket calculators – which our non-metric system has never needed.