CHRISTMAS DAY
CHURCH SERVICE STARTS AT 1030
which will take you to the YouTube page.
Then click on the page for today's date.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Warning! A Christ-Mas Song
Not a traditional carol, but a song about Mary and her Baby. In the Bible we read "she pondered all these things in her heart." There was plenty for Mary to ponder and plenty for 2020 mankind to ponder as well.
Glad Tidings In Glasgow?
When fbb was a-wooing the future Mrs fbb, both trains and buses ran on Christmas Day, but nothing on New Year's Day as befitted the Hogmanay emphasis north of Hadrian's Wall. But now we have "Festive" services with no mention of the Birthday Boy :-
Thursday 24 December 2020- Saturday timetables will operate except on these services: M1, M2, M4, 14, 29, 49, 59, 93, 94, 128, 129, 202, 205, 210, 251 and 299 which will operate a normal weekday timetable. Most services will be withdrawn from around 2100hrs.
Friday 25 December 2020 - Christmas Day No services will operate.
Saturday 26 & Sunday 27 December 2020 - Sunday timetables will operate on all services.
But In Edinburgh - (Also In Scotland?) ...
Christmas Eve (Thursday 24 December) - Lothian, Lothiancountry and EastCoastbuses will operate a Saturday service, finishing earlier than normal with last journeys through the city centre at approximately 21:30.
Christmas Day (Friday 25 December) - A special service will operate across Lothian, EastCoastbuses and Lothiancountry.
Services 3, 7, 8, 16, 22, 26, 30, 31, 34, 37 and 44 will operate in Edinburgh and East Lothian. In the city centre, all buses (except 7 & 8) will serve the stops at the Scott Monument, and services 16, 26 and 44 will operate via Leith Street instead of York Place. Service 16 will be extended from Colinton to Torphin, and Service 34 will terminate at Newhaven (Pier Place) instead of Ocean Terminal.
EastCoastbuses will run special Services on the 106, 113 and 124, with financial support from East Lothian Council.
Lothiancountry will run Services X27, X28, 275, 280 and the new Service 231 (Bathgate – Linlithgow – Livingston) with financial support from West Lothian Council.
Why the difference? One reason is that First Glasgow is serving its shareholders whilst Lothian is owned by the Council and has a stroing desire to serve its shareholders, namely the people of the Lothian Region.
In Bristol : Positive Becomes Negatve?
After some years of Boxing Day operation, it is back to two days with no buses. Early finish applies as usual on Christmas Eve.
But it is still Christ-mas!
Oxford, Opulent By Comparison
A reasonable service on 26th from Go Ahead City Bus (extract only shown above) and similar from Stagecoach ...
... with a small Christ-mas click-picture,
Boxing Day - Saturday 26th December 2020
No services on routes 3A, 12, 14, 14A, 16, 16A, 26, 34, 200, 233, 488, 489, 500, 505, 700, 800, 900, N3, N7, N8, N10, NS1, NS3, NS5, NS8, S2, S4, S7.
All other local routes – Saturday service, with some routes finishing earlier than usual.
The Oxford Tube will be suspended until further notice following Tier 4 travel restrictions.
It is worth noting that the change in tiers in various parts of the UK may well bring last minute revisions to all sorts of public transport as with Oxford Tube above. Most arrangements for Christmas were in place long before Tier 4 brought even more tears into people's lives.
But remember Martin Luther's advice in a previous epidemic, "Wash your hands and pray!" We need more of the latter.
The above is not, of course, an exhaustive survey; but it does reveal some inexplicable differences. It seems highly unlikely that folk in Glasgow behave differently from those in Edinburgh, yet Glaswegians are banned from Public Transport on Christmas Day but just a few miles away folk in the Scottish Capital have an adequate frequency on "the big day"
Two days of buslessness in Bristol but a reasonable Boxing Day frequency in Oxford. The "Why" is a mystery.
Meanwhile, as usual, In that hotbed of crowded residential communities ...
Isle Of Wight - I'm All Right!
Thursday 24th December 2020 - Christmas Eve
A normal Thursday service will operate on all routes
Friday 25th December 2020 - Christmas Day
Merry Christmas! - Limited Service
Special timetable on 1, 3, 5,7 and 9 only: no other services will be running on Christmas Day
All period and concessionary passes are valid on Christmas Day
Saturday 26th December 2020 - Boxing Day A normal Sunday service will operate on all routes
Sunday 27th December 2020 - A normal Sunday service will operate on all routes
Monday 28th December 2020 - Bank Holiday A normal Sunday service will operate on all routes
Tuesday 29th December 2020 - A normal Tuesday service will operate on all routes
Please note : NO early finish on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.
According the "the management" at Southern Vectis, there is no problem in finding volunteer drivers; and the revenue on Christmas Day covers the operating costs "and a bit more".
Perturbing Pothole Pictures
No 3 son, bubble partner of the oldies, took these pictures of the tyre ripping chasm at Axmouth Bridge. The cone is unofficial and has already been crushed by a passing vehicle.
The ends of the trough seem to have been worn down since it "got" the fbb limo.
Next Mini blog : Saturday 26th December
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fbb's Alphabetical Advent Calendar
In the Old Testament of the Bible the word "god" tends to be generic, as in "one god" or "many gods" or "pagan gods". God (capital G) has a title and a name. The title is "El" (same word as Islam's Allah) and it is usually joined to other descriptive words.
But when Moses (c. 1200 BC) "met" God at the Burning Bush which wasn't ...
... God introduced himself formally.
But Moses replied, “When I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The god of your ancestors sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ So what can I tell them?” God said, “I am who I am. You must tell them: ‘The one who is called I Am has sent me to you.’"
The name, expressed in Western letters, was ...
YHVH
... pronounced Yah We (that's "we" as in the first two letters of "wet". The word is a form of the verb "to be" (in English!) and means "I am, I always have been and I always will be"; a very appropriate name for an eternal being.
Remember that, for many centuries, there were no vowels in Hebrew; also the language reads from right to left!.
The ancients considered that God's name was so holy and so precious that they never dared to use it. But what might happen, they thought, if they accidentally read "The Name" from their scroll? So, later, when vowels were added to the Hebrew language, they decided to insert the vowels from the Hebrew for "lord", namely "adonai", into the Tetragrammaton. (Look it up; there's nothing good on the telly today!)
This gave ...
YaHoVaiH
... which came to us as "Jehovah" a totally fake Hebrew name. There never was a god called Jehovah. You can, quite legitimately say that Jehovah does not exist, never existed and will never exist!
But eternal Yahweh stepped from his eternity into "our" universe ...
... ro give us CHRIST mas .
Stagecoach East Kent cancelled their planned Boxing Day services on the 22nd due to tier 4. I'd be surprised if they were the only ones.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Sunny Bournemouth where GpAheads MoreBus operate a special M1 and M2 services across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole this Christmas Day as they have done for a number of years.
ReplyDeleteJohn in Bournemouth
Christmas Day & Boxing Day are a complicated puzzle and the added complications of this year make it even more so. In terms of Boxing Day a number of major retailers have announced that they won't open on Boxing Day to give their staff a proper break and added to the tightening travel restrictions mean that demand will be lowered and some operators will have decided that it isn't worth all the effort that goes into such an operation (& it is more complicated than just another day).
ReplyDeleteIn normal years comparing areas comes with the issue that there are more differences than simply geographical, probably one of the major issues are based around staff & their agreements. My employers normally provide a Boxing Day service at one depot, we have enough volunteers but despite efforts have never been able to increase it beyond the basic number we have always had, but at another of our depots the Union won't even agree to allow us to ask for volunteers as they don't want to set a precedence. SVOC may not struggle with volunteers, the island nature of the company mean there is a very different feel & relationship with their staff, elsewhere that isn't always the case.
Hmmm ... Cardiff Bus is owned by the Council and hasn't run Christmas Day services since we've been here. Boxing Day services were cancelled when the new lockdown measures were announced.
ReplyDeletePlymouth was same as normal, no service Boxing Day from Go Ahead Citybus but a Sunday daytime service on main Stagecoach routes
ReplyDeleteFrom what I hear this could be the last Xmas in Plymouth for Stagecoach with possible return of First in 2021, exact reversal of events 6 years ago
ReplyDelete