Thursday 31 December 2015

A Lovely Leaflet [part 1]

Wot No Map
Mr Chad was a wartime "character"; but he appears here as part of a little look at a lovely leaflet. It comes from ...
... Carousel Buses, now part of the GoAead group. Back in the days of the Great Britain Bus Timetable (year 2000, for example) Carousel did not exist.

Together with his Buckinghamshire timetable book (see "Excellent Technology ..." read again) fbb was sent the leaflet for Carousel's block of services centred on Uxbridge.
So fbb went back to a 2000 edition of GBBTT to see what was there.

Arriva The Shires were running every two hours from High Wycombe (service 305)
From Oxford, the same company offer service 300 every two hours, upped to hourly from Beaconsfield.
These were joined by the famous ex Green Line 724 which trekked round northern London from Harlow via Watford and Uxbridge to Heathrow.
And it still does.
The distinctive buses still run every hour.
In 2000 a Saturday journey all the way would take just under three hours. Today, also on Saturday ...
... nearly 20 minutes longer. That tells us something about traffic conditions.

But Uxbridge to Heathrow has changed a lot. In 2000 the GBBTT wasn't interested in local buses, so the London Transport routes between Uxbridge and Heathrow were not included. Alas, fbb cannot tell you when the A10 started; but doubtless a blog reader can help.

It now runs every 15 minutes via the delights of Stockley Park.
Stockley Park is a business estate in the parish of Harlington, located between Hayes and West Drayton in the London Borough of Hillingdon. It is home to companies such as Apple, Gilead Sciences, Canon, BP, Sharp Corporation, Marks and Spencer and GlaxoSmithKline.

Stockley Park was built upon a tip that was used by Londoners who would load barges on the canal and come to tip the industrial and private waste from West London. Topsoil was added to the site to cover the waste and the modern offices were built on top.

Before that it was site of the Dawley Wall farm and gravel pit, and before that it was seat of John Bennet, 1st Baron Ossulston.
So apart from the 724 and the non GBBTT service A10, a lot has changed since.

As we shall see, via the lovely leaflet, tomorrow.
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beyond the
31st
The third kingly wise-manly gift was Myrrh

When a tree wound penetrates through the bark and into the sapwood, the tree bleeds a resin. Myrrh gum, like frankincense, is such a resin. When people harvest myrrh, they wound the trees repeatedly to bleed them of the gum. Myrrh gum is waxy, and coagulates quickly. After the harvest, the gum becomes hard and glossy. The gum is yellowish, and may be either clear or opaque. It darkens deeply as it ages, and white streaks emerge.

The resin is used to add perfume to oils and similar; and the oils ...

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

... were used for embalming dead bodies.

So the third gift was embalming fluid.
What a lovely prezzy for the new-born baby. Some advance stuff for its funeral.

But that completed the picture. The baby Emmanuel would be a King, a Priest and a Sacrifice to pay the price for the sins of the world.

Glorious now behold Him arise
King and God and Sacrifice
Alleluia, Alleluia
Earth to heav'n replies

Which, 30 years later, takes us to a cruel death on a cross but a gloriously empty tomb on the third day.

It'll soon be Easter.
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        Next Carousel blog : Friday 1st January   

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