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The quotation which I've used as a heading isn't directly appropriate, but I'm now sitting in a new chair made in a communist country (or at least one controlled by a communist party) and blithely spent lots of money today and let the credit card take the strain. I've finally replaced my six-year-old red computer chair, which was crumbling almost to dust - about a third of the seat's foam filling is now either still on the floor, or in the vacuum cleaner, or contributing to any coughs I may have) and have a much more substantial black number with a high back, which though cheap and cheerful as these things go, is much more comfortable than the item it replaced. Also newly acquired are a duvet, and a replacement digibox following the death of my three-year-old first model the other week, which was able to connect to my dodgy TV wall socket at the third attempt.
Next stop is the third and final part of BBC FOUR's The Secret Life of the Motorway, with fascinating archive footage (with some unfortunate intermingling of separate periods) including the original southern terminus of the M1 (visible, overgrown, on some satellite pictures, depending on the time of year) and examples of early motorway dining. The contrast between the 'aspirational' days of the 1960s, when pop stars would congregate at Blue Boar's Watford Gap services, folks from the north and midlands would gape at the 'Soho' ambience of Forte's cafe at Newport Pagnell services, or travellers would make special journeys to the Terence Conran-designed restaurant at Ross's Leicester Forest East (though the fact that Ross boasted of transporting fish directly from their fishing boats at Grimsby to 'The Admiral's Table' at Leicester Forest East wasn't used, surprisingly), and the present day of crowded plasticky boxes serving overpriced food, was implicit when the number of cars on the road in the late 1950s compared to the 1980s was mentioned, but it wasn't talked about or explained.
Next stop is the third and final part of BBC FOUR's The Secret Life of the Motorway, with fascinating archive footage (with some unfortunate intermingling of separate periods) including the original southern terminus of the M1 (visible, overgrown, on some satellite pictures, depending on the time of year) and examples of early motorway dining. The contrast between the 'aspirational' days of the 1960s, when pop stars would congregate at Blue Boar's Watford Gap services, folks from the north and midlands would gape at the 'Soho' ambience of Forte's cafe at Newport Pagnell services, or travellers would make special journeys to the Terence Conran-designed restaurant at Ross's Leicester Forest East (though the fact that Ross boasted of transporting fish directly from their fishing boats at Grimsby to 'The Admiral's Table' at Leicester Forest East wasn't used, surprisingly), and the present day of crowded plasticky boxes serving overpriced food, was implicit when the number of cars on the road in the late 1950s compared to the 1980s was mentioned, but it wasn't talked about or explained.
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