Convalescence Considerations
Your elderly blogger is back home after a challenging eight days in hospital in Exeter. Recovery may be slow and energy levels are at best in the orange!
fbb intends to continue a daily posting, but qualtity and quality may vary according to his well-being index, whatever that might be. Long series of blogs requiring lots of research are unlikely for a week or so.
In the good old days he might have spent that recovery time in a Convalescent Home ...
... but the facilities at fbb mansions are surely more conducive to recovery. The grub is most definitely bigger and better!
Kite Flying ...
Approx 45 years ago, the fbbs rented a holiday cottage at Bank Top near Rosedale Abbey in North Yorkshire. The booking was shared with Sheffield chums Peter and Janice and their children.
Here is Bank Top (bottom leftish) ...
... at the top of the partly 1 in 3 road known as Rosedale Chimney ...
... scary both up and down in the fbb's Mini Traveller Estate!
Bank Top was a long gone mining community ...
... once busy and bustling ...
... but now just a row of cottages at the top of a steep hill. The mining business was served by train ...
... with mysterious kilns and chimney still visible today.
The system closed in the 1920s. Wagons were steam hauled ...
... with a short incline rope-hauled en route.
Chum Peter brought a kite to "entertain the children" but more likely to entertain himself.
The holiday cottage had no electric, open fires and limited plumbing; but one bonus was a hoard of approximately 500 wire coat hangers.
So one blustery evening (mostly they all are at Bank Top), out came the kite. It kited spectacularly in the moorland breeze. Then fbb had a jackpot idea. Why not hang a few wire coat hangers (hook on bar) on to the kite and see if it would still fly.
Wow did it fly!
Eventually the kite rose majestically into the evening sky with about 30 hangers as a tail!
Then the string broke and off into the setting sun sailed kite and attached hangers never to be seen again.
Overnight, somewhere on the moors, sheep may have been intrigued as 30 wire coat hangers fell from the planet Zog into heather clad moorland like aerials from a UFO
BUT ...
... incidents like this gives a powerful illustration of a colloquial meaning of "kite flying". It is a "spectacular project" proposed with boundless enthusiasm, but very likely to crash ignominiously to oblivion.
And Bodmin!
Many readers will be familiar with long-standing plans to fully reopen the former Exeter to Plymouth Southern Railway route from its current terminus at Okehampton ...
... to Plymouth. The work needed to reopen on an existing track bed and by pass built in sections is viable as this 'Railfuture' scheme illustrates.
Amongst other things, the reopening would provide a diversionary route for trains west when the sea defences at Dawlish fail, as most certainly they will.
So when fbb found this on line ...
... he confidently expected to read of yet another study for the above plans.
How wrong he was!
This is for a whole new-build line between Okehampton and Bodmin!
Yer what?
This shows, roughly, the route of the former main line from Okehampton to Plymouth via Tavistock. 
The dual carriageway road is the A30 running east west across the top if the map.
Now read on!
A study into whether a multibillion-pound rail link through Cornwall would work has been hailed as a "huge step forward" by campaigners.
They said the proposed line would link Okehampton, in Devon, to Launceston, continuing onto a new station near Bodmin and joining the existing Cornish mainline.
Cornwall Council said it would now look at a more detailed study into the scheme - admitting it had the potential to improve rail resilience and open up the opportunity for more freight trains.
However, it warned the railway would be unlikely to be in use until the 2040s at the earliest.
Hmmm?
As the man says above, the new line will follow the A30 ...
How much?
Time to get the kite out!
======================
For the next few days, in a snippet on each blog, fbb will outline the possible reasons, the experiences and the possible consequences of the last week or so. The squeamish or hospital phobic should not read this diary!
EIGHT DAYS INSIDE (Prologue)
It might have started with a toothache!
In the days running up to the first May Bank Holiday, fbb had a very sore tooth - some readers may remember. Remarkably (God is good that way!), the pain vanished for the old folks' May fellowship meetings and disappeared until an extraction on May 19th.
The pain over that bank holiday weekend was mitigated by Ibuprofen and/or Paracetamol in modest doses well below guidance on the packet.
The tooth was extracted painlessly and all seemed dine and dusted.
BUT on Wednesday 20th ...
