Strategically sited public lavatories are the sign of a civilised society

PERSONALLY, I blame the Liberal Democrats. But, first, let us consider life’s positive side. I mean, there are lots of advantages to reaching 65. A free bus pass for one. And not really caring what others thinks of you for another. Done it all, got the cardigan (as opposed to the T-shirt), nothing to prove – for the first time in a lifetime you can dawdle, smell the roses, visit places on your must-do list, read books you’ve never opened, spend long, lazy days again with friends who, like you, have been busy these last 50 years earning a living. Yes, I’m grateful for every morning that I wake up and can swing my legs out of bed.
Downsides? Well, the obvious one is that you’ve got a lot less time to live than you’ve already lived. The last 35 years have passed in a blur. I was a young man then. If I last another 35 years, I’ll be expecting a congratulatory message from King William V, or whatever our dashing young prince will be called by 2044.
What has all this got to do with politics? Well, another negative to reaching pension age is that you’re much more likely to have need of a public lavatory. And Derby’s Lib Dem-led council wants to close a good number of our city’s conveniences, replacing others with automatic flushers. That debate on the matter has been delayed does not signal victory for the protesters.
Of course, there was a time when Derby was blessed with many places in which to spend a penny, inspect the plumbing, turn your bike around, or whatever euphemism you care to use in polite company. Whenever we were in the late and lamented-only-by-some Bus Station, a pal of mine used to announce that he was “going to Cheltenham”, the gents’ lavatory being next to the stop for the Gloucestershire spa.
In those days, I could leave the Queen’s Hotel in Crompton Street on a Friday night, confident that, if nature called soon afterwards, I could take advantage of the gents’ that stood by Unity Hall at the junction of Green Lane, Babington Lane and Burton Road, next to the corporation horse trough (I wonder what happened to that).
On a cold winter’s morning, on my way to the Midland Station, there was the public facility in narrow Bradshaw Street, before they bulldozed the lot to make way for Bradshaw Way. Other Derbeians of a certain vintage will have their own favourites, all placed around the town to help the day run smoothly.
But now these “branch” lavatories have all gone. And soon, if the council has its way, so too will several others, even those that I would call “mainline” public conveniences. If they aren’t removed altogether, their replacement by automatic lavatories will do little to ease the worries of an older generation. They will surely be terrified by the prospect of one day appearing in a Derby Telegraph headline, as they star in a real-life version of the limerick. I can see it now: “One old lady locked in a lavatory.” Imagine the ignominy: council workers, a fire engine, a crowd of gawping onlookers. Would you want to come out?
It is my view that, along with safe streets, good health care and reliable public transport, strategically sited loos are a prerequisite for any society that wishes to describe itself as civilised. So, councillors, save the money on something else. Your travel expenses, perhaps?
One last thing: does anyone know why the hand dryers in the Westfield loos give off more decibels than a Harrier taking off from RAF Cottesmore?

Over the moon with council reply. For a bit. At least they said sorry

SO, the controversy surrounding our spanking new Royal Derby Hospital rumbles on. Residents complaining about helicopters clattering over their houses are told to get used to it. And highways engineers come up with a cunning plan to make street parking even worse in the hope that, one day, it might make it better.
I have mixed feelings about the air ambulance. Not because I live just out of range of actual rooftop flights, more the fact that, if I ever broke my leg on Kinder Scout (unlikely I’d ever be up there, I know, but indulge me), then I’d be thankful for the swift response of an airborne medic, no matter whose peace they were shattering.
The reality is that, once you conceive the daft idea of building a huge “super hospital” slap bang in the middle of one of the most heavily populated residential areas in Derbyshire, it naturally follows that you can’t go landing helicopters there without disturbing the neighbours.
Protesters may cite an alleged agreement that flights would approach the hospital only over a “green wedge of land”, but would that make any difference? I don’t know much (well, OK, nothing at all) about flying helicopters, but I’ve seen enough television documentaries to believe that landing them depends a lot on which way the wind is blowing. Unfortunately for those living near our fantastic new hospital, this will always be an ill wind, it seems. According to Derby City Council, when permission was granted for the helipad, it didn’t go into detail about flight paths. So helicopters – air ambulances and police – will continue to chatter over Littleover’s rooftops for the foreseeable future.
But if I were among the protesting voices, I wouldn’t give up entirely. At least, I wouldn’t take the opinion of anyone at Derby City Council at face value. And I’ll tell you why.
The day before the recent Littleover Neighbourhood Forum meeting, we received an email showing proposed new parking restrictions. There would be no parking allowed in our street from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Which, so far as we were concerned, would just about solve the problem of hospital parking overflow. As it seemed too good to be true, we asked for confirmation.
It was too good to be true. Two days later, Adrian Astle, projects officer in the Regeneration and Community Department, whatever they do, emailed. The bit about no parking in our street was “a mistake which should have been removed”. Pity we didn’t know that before the neighbourhood meeting. Still, Adrian apologised for any inconvenience caused. So that’s all right then.
Meanwhile, Councillor Lucy Care tells us that the highways engineers’ plan is to severely restrict parking in some areas in order to make the problem in others even worse than it is now. This will encourage the beleaguered rest to sign up to a residents’ parking scheme that might otherwise not gain sufficient support.
Really? It would seem simpler just to find out how far people are prepared to walk to park for free. Then, by the judicious use of a tin of yellow paint, force them beyond that point. But then I’m not a highways engineer.
As for individual councillors, it’s one thing to enjoy the photo opportunity afforded by the provision of an extra park bench, quite another, it seems, to sort out a problem that angers thousands of voters.
In the meantime, those bothered by low-flying helicopters, or by any other council-related issue, might readdress their gripe. You never know: the original answer might be a mistake. At least they’d get an apology for the inconvenience caused.

More about the givers and takers than the haves and the have-nots

WHAT a difference a day makes.
First there was the dignified 84-year-old who recalled being marched into a prison camp on his 17th birthday, and the 70-somethings who were only children when they escaped aboard the last ships to leave before the bombs fell.
Later, there were the world-owes-me-a-living layabouts of modern life, the sort that must make the others wonder if their sacrifices were ultimately worthwhile.
From dignity to despair – it takes only a few uneasy steps in today's Britain.
Scene One was a military club in Piccadilly, where a reunion of those who'd been in the Second World War's Malaya campaign was under way. The old soldier had joined the volunteer forces on the outbreak of hostilities. He was still a teenager when the Japanese put him to work on the Thai-Burma railway. Sixty-seven years on, he smiles a lot. But he still suffers nightmares.

Most of the others had been small children in 1942, the offspring of planters and civil servants working for the British Empire on a part of the map that was still solidly red. Their stories were remarkably similar. After the Japanese invasion, their fathers had spent the next three-and-a-half years – if they survived – in the dreadful Changi prison, or on the Death Railway. The children fled with their mothers as Singapore capitulated.
To be honest, I felt something of a fraud at this gathering of folk dedicated to keeping the families of the British Malayan volunteer forces in touch with one another.
I had no shared experiences. I was there simply to keep alive the memory of my own relative, cousin Fred, who'd served as a volunteer before spending the rest of the war in Changi. So it was enough to stand and listen – and in some awe, too.
Scene Two was Derby city centre, the following day. There was a time when everybody in the middle of Derby looked busy, as if they were going to, or coming from, somewhere. But now there were many who appeared to be just hanging about. Some were scruffy; others well dressed. Some looked like foreigners; others were obviously locals. Some were in groups; others alone.
They all had one thing in common, though: they didn't appear to be going anywhere, or coming from anywhere.
If I'd been a brave man, I'd have approached at least one or two, and asked a very simple question: "Excuse me, I'm dying to know – who pays your wages?" But I think that I already knew the answer: indirectly, you and me, dear reader.
I'd be very surprised if the relatively young people who can apparently afford to loll about all day in Derby, often drinking strong lager, aren't on some kind of benefit. And, here, I may differ slightly from the likes of UKIP: I don't care whether they arrived yesterday, hanging under a container lorry from Calais, or whether they can trace their origins right back to the primordial soup that once sloshed around this particular bit of Merry England.
I'm not bothered whether they are from Timbuktu, or whether neither they, nor their ancestors, have ever set foot outside the Ring Road or its prehistoric equivalent.
I'd just stop the benefits of anyone whose sole idea of a career path is learning how to fill out a claims form.
We used to say that life was all about the haves and have-nots. Today, it's more about the givers and takers.
Those Malayan veterans and their children gave a lot. Sometimes they must feel terribly let down.

Why this won't-go-homing pigeon is carrying on happily in the wild

IT’S been a strange week. I’ve been trying to catch a pigeon. Now I’m having second thoughts. It arrived one morning and sat on our back step. Initially I wasn’t even sure that it was a pigeon. With a black body, white head and white wings, it looked more the result of an illicit liaison between a magpie and a dove. But it was ringed. And, as it looked young and lost, I thought I’d better try to reunite it with its owner.
There was just one thing: the last time I tried something like this, it proved a fruitless endeavour. A grey squirrel sat on our lawn for hours, looking depressed. When I rang the RSPCA, they told me to don a pair of welder’s gloves – not freely available in our part of Mickleover on a Sunday afternoon – and pop it in a box. Then they would come round and kill it. Apparently you aren’t allowed to give aid and succour to a grey squirrel. So I let nature take its course and the squirrel dragged itself off somewhere to die with dignity rather than by official hand.
However, homing pigeons being a whole different issue, this time I rang Alan Maris, chairman of Derby, Burton & District South Road Federation, who proved very helpful. Although if I’d thought he was going to jump in his car and come round to sort the job out himself, then I was going to be disappointed. There is a homing pigeon re-homing service. But first you have to catch the bird yourself.
It turned out that our visitor was something called a black pie (don’t bother to look on the internet; I’ve done that and all you get is recipes for pigeon pie, which certainly wasn’t my intention). Anyway, Alan gave me instructions on how to go about capturing my new feathered friend. I needed two things with which I’m not blessed – patience and a quick eye – and a supply of birdseed (having first removed all the wild bird feeders so that Desmond – well I had to think a name – would become so hungry that he’d consider eating out of my hand). Oh, and if I could get him backed up against a wall, then that would be good.
When I had him, I just had to pop him in the box that I was going to use for the squirrel, read off the number on his tag, and Alan would be able to identify his owner. Simple? No.
Of course, I failed. Miserably. Every time Desmond came close and I make my move, he just flew on to the roof of the summerhouse, cocked his head on one side, and gave me a beady stare. After a few days, he disappeared altogether, so I assumed that he’d finally remembered his way home. Or perhaps our neighbourhood sparrow hawk had succeeded where I’d failed.
But now he’s back. And, as in case of the sickly squirrel, it’s suddenly become my view that you should let nature take its course in these matters. Especially since, unlike the squirrel, Desmond looks blissfully happy and seems to enjoy his liberty.
Incidentally, all this pigeon talk reminds me of the story of a football reporter who was covering a match at the Baseball Ground in about 1895. At half-time, he released a carrier pigeon to the Telegraph office, then realised that he’d forgotten to attach the score to its leg. As it flew off into the distance, the reporter cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted after it: “Derby County three, Small Heath nil.”
Well, it made me laugh.