#house clearance south london

[handyrubbish]

Rubbish Removal in Brunswick - Handy Rubbish

What are the methods of disposing of rubbish?

There are several methods of disposing of rubbish, each with its own advantages and considerations:

Landfill: Waste is buried in designated landfills. Modern landfills are engineered to minimize environmental impact, but they can still contribute to pollution if not managed properly.

Incineration: This method involves burning waste at high temperatures. Energy can sometimes be recovered from this process, but it can also release pollutants into the air if not controlled effectively.

Recycling: Materials like paper, glass, plastic, and metals are sorted, processed, and turned into new products. Recycling helps reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and conserves resources.

Composting: Organic waste, like food scraps and yard waste, can be composted. This natural process turns organic matter into nutrient-rich soil conditioner.

Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Plants: Some facilities use waste as a fuel to generate electricity or heat. This process can reduce the volume of waste and produce energy, but careful management is needed to control emissions.

Biological Treatment: Methods like anaerobic digestion and bio-drying break down organic waste using microorganisms. These processes can produce biogas or stabilize waste for easier disposal.

Reuse and Repurposing: Items in good condition can be donated, resold, or refurbished instead of being thrown away. This reduces waste and extends the lifespan of products.

Each method has its benefits and challenges, and the most suitable method often depends on the type of waste, available infrastructure, environmental considerations, and regulations in a particular area. Many places adopt a combination of these methods to effectively manage and reduce the impact of rubbish disposal on the environment.

[scotianostra]

January 29th 1848 saw the first adoption of GMT by Scotland. The subject has been the source of controversy ever since.

The change had broadly taken place south of the Border from September the previous year with those in Edinburgh living 12 and-a-half minutes behind the new standard time as a result.

The discrepancy grew the further west you moved, with the time in Glasgow some 17 minutes behind GMT. In Ayr the time difference was 18-and-a-half minutes with it rising to 19 minutes in the harbour town of Greenock. All these lapses were ironed out over night on January 29th 1848, but the move wasn’t without controversy as some resisted the move away from local time.

Sometimes referred to as natural time, it had long been determined by sundials and observatories and later by charts and tables which outlined the differences between GMT and local time at various locations across the country. But the need for a standard time measurement was broadly agreed upon given the surge in the number of rail services and passengers with different local times causing confusion, missed trains and even accidents as trains battled for clearance on single tracks.

An editorial in The Scotsman on Saturday, January 28th, 1848, said: “It is a mistake to think that in the country generally the change will be felt as a grievance in any degree. “Probably nine-tenths of those who have clocks and watches believe that their local time is the same with Greenwich time, and will be greatly surprise to learn that the two are not identical. “Even if they wished to keep local time, they want the means.

“Observatories are only found in two or three of our Scottish towns. “As for the sundials in use, their number is small, most of them, too, are made by incompetent persons and even when correctly constructed, the task of putting them up and adjusting them to the meridian is generally left to an ignorant mason, who perhaps takes the mid-day hour from the watch in his fob.” Can you imagine a Mason putting up with being called ignorant in this day and age!

The editorial added: “For the sake of convenience, we sacrifice a few minutes and keep this artificial time in preference to sundial time, which some call natural time, and if the same convenience counsels us to sacrifice a few minutes in order to keep one uniform time over the whole country, why should it not be done!”

Mariners had long observed Greenwich Mean Time and kept at least one chronometer set to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have a longitude of zero degrees. The move to enforce it as the common time measurement was made by the Railway Clearing House in September 1847.

Some rail companies had printed GMT timetables much sooner. The Great Western Railway deployed the standard time in 1840 given that passengers on its service between London to Bristol, then the biggest trading port with the United States, faced a time difference of 22 minutes between its departure and arrival point.

Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said travel watches of the day had two sets of hands, one gold and one blue steel, to help measure changes in local time during a journey.

Maps also depicted towns with had adopted GMT and those which had not, he added. "There was information out there for determine the local time difference so they would know the offset to apply to GMT before the telegraphic distribution of time.”

Mr McEvoy said different towns and cities in Scotland would have had their own time differences before adoption of GMT. Old local time measurements show that Edinburgh was four-and-a-half minutes ahead of that in Glasgow, for example.

Mr McEvoy added: “I think it is fair to say there was no real concept of these differences at the time. It was when communication began to expand quite rapidly that it became f an issue. I think generally, you would be quite happy that the time of day was your local time.”

In this day in age we takeGMT, for granted, but try and think of how it would have worked in this day and age, and the confusion that would reign!

[beattoquarters2]

Westminster Abbey is getting a bit crowded someone once thought, with all these monuments to dead people cluttering up the place. What��s needed is a great big extension and a massive tower.

In fact, what was planned was a tower twice the height of Big Ben* and would have overwhelmed Parliament next door.

The expansion of  Westminster Abby had long been mooted as far back as the 1750s, and in 1854, George Gilbert Scott was asked to design a cloister extension, which would have been used to house the lower class monuments.

The proposals didn’t get anywhere, despite a resurrection of interest following the clearance of Parliament Square in 1868, and in 1891, a formal Royal Commission considered some more ideas, but did not make a decision. The matter gained more support following the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, as the Abbey is surprisingly small once you get inside it.

A bit too small for big state events, it was getting smaller by the year. Inconveniently, it seemed that famous people will keep on dying after all. Thus, in 1904, the Diocesan Architect for London, John Pollard Seddon proposed a 167 metre tall tower in the gothic style to be built next to Westminster Abbey.

Seddon had previously suggested a couple of expansions, but it was his collaboration with the architect, Edward Lamb which was to produce the most controversial design.

The plans didn’t emerge newly formed though but were themselves an evolution of somewhat smaller plans for a national mausoleum in Hyde Park which would have become the centre for worshipping the memory of the great and famous.

The tower was however just part of a much wider complex which was to be added next to the Abbey, which would have included a Monumental Hall running nearly 200 feet in length alongside the Abbey.

The tower, which would have been the main centrepiece of the expansion would have been taller even than St Paul’s Cathedral, with the lower floors for use by the clergy, and the upper floors as an archive document store.

Another function was more political, and that was the opportunity to clear away the unsightly terraced housing that lined the roads at the time, in favour of more “imperial” architecture as was felt appropriate for the capital of the Empire.

Westminster Abbey was starting to lose out to St Pauls’ Cathedral as the main building for religious ceremonies, and wanted its place in the nation back. A monumental tower taller than St Paul’s was seen as the way to wrest back the public’s attention.

Contemporary with the plans for the Imperial Monumental Halls, were plans for a monument for the late Queen Victoria, and an Imperial Peace Memorial following the South African War. It seems that the architects of the Westminster Abbey scheme may have been hoping to usurp at least one of the two other schemes to secure funding for their plans.

As The Builder magazine noted, the tower would be 64ft square, and some 550 feet high, with a public walkway around the top. In addition, a new Central Hall of 192 feet in length with two new chapels for burials and a transept of 157 feet in length.

Overall, the plans would have doubled the floor space inside Westminster Abbey.

Unsurprisingly, once shown off the plans provoked howls of outrage. The Builder magazine wrote that there was “a little too much of ‘megalomania’ about it”

The fact that the plans were not submitted as part of a formal call for proposals, but as speculative architecture did not help their cause.

Fortunately, a lack of funds saw the plans quietly dropped

Today the spot where the tower would have loomed high is occupied by the considerably smaller statue of King George V.

[grantgoddard]

Remember the days of the old schoolyard : 1963-1969 : Cordwalles Junior School, Camberley

“I don’t wanna go,” I was shouting as I struggled to hang on to the car door for dear life. I was being kidnapped and forced into a vehicle outside my home that was wanting to carry me away … to my first day at infant school. My mother was trying her gentlest to push inside the family car her five-year-old son who was usually well behaved and never angry or upset. Passers-by on their way to work in town were gazing. Passengers were pointedly staring out of a passing double-decker bus. What was wrong with that belligerent child? My mother was equally horrified to witness my first tantrum.

I enjoyed being at home. I had plenty of activities to occupy myself there. I never found myself at a loose end. My parents had a remarkably hands-off attitude to my upbringing, letting me put on records, listen to the radio, watch television or play in the back garden whenever I wanted. There was no regime to follow. I was perfectly content organising my own life and did not require a school to instruct me what I should do and when. During the past year, my mother had been sending me to Mrs Potten’s ‘Gay Tree’ nursery school on Grand Avenue in order to mix with other children because I was an only child. I had found most of my peers there to be noisy and bossy, whereas I was quiet and calm. To seek acceptance, I must have adopted their rather posh accents, committed to immortality when my father recorded me on his Uher reel-to-reel tape machine reciting the two ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ books that I knew by heart.

My mother already harboured an aspiration for me to marry ‘above my station’. Whenever we walked into the town centre, on passing Bath Road, she would suggest I call on ‘Wooty’ who lived at the far end of that cul-de-sac in a large house backing onto the grounds of Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. I had met Alexandra Wooten at nursery school but had not developed a particularly close friendship with her, preferring the company of more down-to-earth Liam who lived only four doors away from our home … until his Irish parents moved away to Blackwater. Despite my mother’s persistence, I may have only visited Alexandra’s house once to ‘play’ because, unsurprisingly, I found we had no common interests.

My reluctance to attend primary school was due to anticipation that a new set of peers would be similar to Mrs Potten’s charges, the only children of my age I had so far encountered. I was mistaken! My fee-paying, town centre nursery school had been dominated by the offspring of Camberley’s middle class, whereas my state primary school was located on the peripheral council estate where I had been born, built to rehouse South Londoners whose homes had been destroyed by bombing during the War and subsequent slum clearance. Patronisingly, the council had named the estate’s streets ‘Kingston Road’, ‘Mitcham Road’, ‘Surbiton Road’, ‘Wimbledon Road’ and ‘Carshalton Road’, as if newcomers would feel more at home by eulogising their former hometowns some twenty miles away. Naturally, none of those roads led to the places after which they had been named.

I quickly discovered how wrong my expectations about school had been. My new classmates seemed perfectly normal. Unlike Mrs Potten, teachers did not require us to dress up in costumes and repeat archaic speeches for Biblical reenactments, or to watch violent ‘Punch & Judy’ puppet shows. Instead, we were given interesting creative activities to do and treated with respect and encouragement. Teachers addressed us by our first names. I loved school. I quickly retired my quasi-posh accent. I had already mastered the reading and writing skills with which some of my peers were struggling and was now teaching myself to type. One day at home, my mother had asked me to put away her electric iron and, without realising it was still plugged in, I picked it up by its plate and screamed, burning my right hand. She had to bandage my thumb and index finger for a while, so I continued to learn to type at home using my middle finger … the way I type to this day. I had wondered if my erased fingerprints would ever return, but they did eventually.

After two years, we all moved to the adjoining primary school where teaching was more structured. I attended my first morning assembly in the main hall but was baffled when the principal instructed us to recite something called the ‘Lord’s Prayer’. Everyone around me bowed their heads and recited a kind of mantra I had never heard. It felt unnervingly as if I had mistakenly been invited into some kind of cult in which all the teachers and children had already been indoctrinated … except me. I had no understanding of what was going on around me, more so because next we were told to sing strange songs from a thick book of incomprehensible ancient lyrics I had never heard played on the radio. It was impossible to sing when you had no idea what the tune should be.

Afterwards, having observed my bafflement, a teacher asked why I had not participated in the religious part of our school assembly. She seemed shocked that I had never heard of ‘hymns’ or ‘prayers’, asking whether my family was ‘Christian’. I had no idea what that word meant, so I returned home and asked my mother, who replied that we were not religious. She wrote a brief note to my teacher explaining that simple fact and, thereafter, I was excused from the section of daily assembly devoted to hymns and the like. Every day for the next four years, I would sit in a nearby small side-room alongside several children including classmate Jacqueline Dixon, a Hindu who initially asked me what was my religion. I had to tell her and the other non-Christians sequestered there that I did not seem to have one. I was an oddity.

Although my aunt Sheila worked as a ‘dinner lady’ at the school, I always returned home to take lunch. I would stand alone at the bus stop at the top end of Upper College Road, staring across at the modernist St Martin’s church on the opposite side of the roundabout, puzzled as to what might go on inside. I had heard classmates talk about attending something called ‘Sunday School’ there, next door to the home of classmate Annette van Hartaan Veldt. This church must have been where almost everyone else at school had been indoctrinated into their cult. It seemed to take an age until Aldershot & District Traction Company Limited’s number 1, 2 or 3C bus arrived to carry me one mile home for a halfpenny fare. (Once I had grown to be amongst the tallest in my class, the bus conductor insisted I pay the adult one penny fare despite me still being a child.) Arrived home, I would have just enough time to snack something and then catch the bus back for afternoon classes.

After school finished at four, if it was not raining, I could save the bus fare by walking home alone the length of Upper College Ride. This downhill route passed through a 400-yard stretch of Ministry of Defence woodland, a natural barrier intended to isolate the council estate from private housing around the town centre. It was always a lonely journey bereft of fellow pedestrians and scary on dark winter afternoons, me worrying an escapee from Broadmoor might jump out from behind a tree. The money saved I would blow in the sweet shop near my school on ‘Batman’ bubble gum packets, ‘Flying Saucers’, ‘Swizzels Love Hearts’, ‘Lemon Sherberts’ or a ‘Lucky Bag’. I was obsessed with the ‘Batman’ TV show and, as well as requesting my mother fabricate the superhero’s ‘utility belt’ for me to wear, I saved enough sweet wrappers to send for a ‘Batman’ poster that would grace my bedroom wall.

My favourite school activities were summer days when the teacher would take our class outside, thirty of us sat cross-legged in the shade of a huge tree behind the main building, writing essays in exercise books balanced on our laps. Those remain some of the happiest days of my life, before homework and exams impinged on my childhood, and before my parents sent me to a faraway school stuffed with posh boys and requiring a bottle-green uniform.

My least favourite school activity was ‘swimming’ in the newly constructed, unheated rectangular above-ground pool on the playing field. Alongside were two tiny windowless wooden huts in which girls and boys were shepherded separately to change into their costumes, and where I hated my mates spying me naked. I was so rake-thin that the bottom of my rib cage protruded, making me imagine I had some kind of physical deformity not evident in my schoolmates. My acute embarrassment destroyed any enjoyment and inhibited my capacity to learn to swim … which sadly I never overcame.

In my final year at Cordwalles, teacher Mr Hales encouraged us to open savings accounts with Trustee Savings Bank [TSB]. Once a week after class registration, he would ask if we had coins to deposit, record their value in our individual bank books and update our balances. It was a great way to make us understand the value of money, particularly as the monetary system was about to convert to ‘new pence’ from shillings. Would a school today actively encourage ten-year-olds to manage their first bank accounts in class?

I made some really good friends – including Paul Rowell, Michael Heinrich and Martin Bell – who would invite me to their houses on the estate after school. I was surrounded by peers of both sexes, of various religions and diverse races. I feel very lucky to have been educated in such a safe, sympathetic and uncompetitive environment, full of stimulation and encouragement that immensely shaped my attitudes and life thereafter. Unfortunately, it made my subsequent education and career make me feel all the more like a fish out of water, forced to navigate pathways amongst privileged, entitled people who seemed to have had very different childhoods that had fostered their cold, cutthroat, self-centred outlook on life.

I was sad to leave my primary school in 1969, after which I no longer saw the classmates with whom I had spent the previous six years. My parents failed to appreciate that their decision to continue my education at a distant school tore me away from roots I had forged on Old Dean Estate and isolated my social life by forcing me to travel daily to the other end of the county. At Cordwalles, I had felt like a normal boy living a normal life. I was never again made to feel that I fitted in so comfortably.

Postscript. The first time I went to church was in 1967 to accompany my mother to the final service of St George’s, built by the local Middleton family in the 1890’s on St George’s Road at Knoll Road, prior to its demolition to create a car park adjacent to Herman Solomon’s Garage. Despite never having known my mother attend any church, she was annoyed that our nearest one had been sold off as part of Camberley town centre’s modernisation. 

More than two decades later, having recalled that I had once opened a savings account at school, I walked into the TSB Camberley branch in London Road and asked if I could withdraw the balance. It took several weeks for the staff to locate my details and obligingly add years of interest to my balance before I could withdraw a small sum that I had almost forgotten I had.

[beeclearance]

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[answersdetective]

The Fingerprint Hub now have an office in Trafalgar Square near South Africa House and the Canadian High Commision – fingerprinting for overseas Police Clearance and other reasons

Tel: 020 7158 0332

[roversremovals1]

Top 5 Tourist Attractions in Blackburn, UK

Blackburn, a town in Lancashire, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United Kingdom. It has been shaped by its history and culture, which are reflected in its architecture and museums. Here are five attractions that make Blackburn a must-visit destination for travelers from all over the world:

Blackburn

Blackburn Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral in Blackburn, Lancashire. Its formal title is the Cathedral Church of St. Mary and All Saints, and it is the seat of the Bishop of Blackburn. It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and consecrated on 1 September 1847 by Rt Revd Edward Benson (later Archbishop of Canterbury).

The first bishop appointed to Blackburn was Rt Revd Henry Montgomery-Massingberd (1905–48), who chose as his motto "Constans Fidelis" ("constant and faithful"), which can be seen carved over the south door together with his personal arms: argent three crosses botony gules on a chief azure two bars wavy argent between three escallops or; Motto: Constans Fidelis." The arms were granted by royal warrant on 19 July 1929.

Darwen Tower

Darwen Tower is a Victorian folly built in 1857. It was built by John Bowes, a wealthy cotton merchant who wanted to build something showy and grand for his family to enjoy. The tower stands about 50 feet tall and has four floors inside; each one has unique features like stained glass windows and ornate fireplaces.

The building was originally intended as a summerhouse but later became known as an observatory because of its high vantage point over the surrounding countryside (it's located on top of a hill). Today it's open to the public with tours available during certain times throughout the year--you can even stay overnight in one of the rooms if you'd like!

Little Harwood

Little Harwood is a town in the borough of Blackburn with Darwen, England. It is famous for its brickworks and mills, as well as its railway station.

The population of Little Harwood is approximately 2,000 people and it has been around since at least 1200 AD when it was first mentioned in documents from nearby townships.

The Lord Street Centre

The Lord Street Centre is an excellent place to learn about the history of Blackburn. Located in the heart of the town, it's open to the public and has a collection of over 20,000 objects. The centre focuses on social and industrial history, as well as local culture. It also houses an art gallery that features temporary exhibitions from artists from all over Europe.

Of course, there are many other good reasons to visit Blackburn.

Of course, there are many other good reasons to visit Blackburn.

It's a great place for a weekend away or day trip if you live in the surrounding area.

You can visit several tourist attractions within the city and surrounding towns.

There are many free things to do in Blackburn that don't cost any money at all!

There are many good reasons to visit Blackburn. It has a rich history, beautiful architecture and an abundance of natural beauty. The city also offers plenty of activities for visitors with everything from museums and galleries to parks and gardens. We hope this list has given you some ideas about some places that might interest you on your next trip!

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[coolronyposts]

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[deathonyourtongue]

Resurrection | 12

Summary: A ragtag team of Spec-Ops operators are brought out of retirement for all the wrong reasons. When the dust settles, only the best will be left standing. Pairing: Pablo Schreiber x OFC, Henry Cavill x OFC (listen, she gets with the whole team, okay? Don’t lie, you would too.) Word Count: 2K Warnings: Nothing much really. A/N: Sorry this took so long. February really is the worst month.

By the flight manifest, we’re half an hour behind Wallace, and I feel every minute of it on the plane ride from London to Benghazi. Prior to joining the team, I’d only been assigned to Libya once and it was from the comfort of the Whitney parked off the coast of Italy. This will be my first time with boots on the ground, and the history of spec ops in the country isn’t lost to me; it’s just one more reason why I’m glad I no longer have to wear a uniform.

“Ten minutes out,” the pilot calls over the comms, everyone prepping their go bags, ready to make up for any head start Wallace has. 

Benina International Airport barely registers in my mind as we pick up two vehicles that were prepped for us courtesy of Uncle Sam, my mind’s sole focus being on saving the hostage and capturing Wallace. All of us want our pound of flesh, none more so than those he’s directly injured over the course of the last few weeks. 

“I need everyone on their A game. We can’t afford to let him slip through our fingers again. His behavior is escalating and since he’s so well-connected to the who’s-who, it stands to reason, he’s going to throw everything he has at us. Above all else though, we leave no one behind. Understood?” Rick’s voice is firm but warm over our comms, making it clear that despite the gravity of the situation, he cares about our well-being first and foremost. 

“Do you think he’s trying to do a shot-for-shot remake?” Jake asks as we roll into Benghazi proper, grateful for the tinted windows on the late model G wagons no doubt left over from Gaddafi’s rule. 

“If you mean do I think he’s going to go to the same village we were patrolling? No. I don’t think he’s that sentimental about things. I think he’s going to pick a spot that’s overlooked by the country and blow it to high hell after he finishes reenacting his sick fantasies. Remember, had we not stopped him that night--”

“I know, he’d have committed war crimes,” Jake cuts Dom off, his sickened expression making it clear that he doesn’t need to be reminded. 

“Has intel found him yet?” I ask, hoping we don’t have to waste any more time in tracking him down. 

“They don’t have a lock yet, but they are tracking a BMW that came out of Benina half an hour ago. Reports of a blond woman without a hijab and a red-haired man poured in the second they landed.” Rick explains, all of us shaking our head. 

“Muslim majority country and she already sticks out like a sore thumb by being blond, but he didn’t bother to make her wear a hijab? If we don’t get to him, the Libyan police will,” I snort, finding little humor in the recklessness with which Wallace treats the lives of others. Like any good narcissist, he cares only for himself and if others get hurt in the process of him getting what he wants, so be it. 

“They’re going to attract attention no matter what. All of us are. Keep as low a profile as possible, and with any luck, we’ll be out of here by this time tomorrow,” Rick adds, all of us hoping for the outcome that’s eluded us since we reunited. 

Our hideout in Benghazi is simple, yet beautiful. Like most places, it’s heavily fortified, a solid metal gate closing behind us and men standing watch on all four corners as we make our way towards something that resembles a Roman villa of old. Outside, the heat hits me and for a second, I’m brought back to the op that nearly took my life, hoping that this time, things will end differently, at least for our team. Max’s cologne brings me back to the present, and I fall in step with him as we make our way into the blissfully cool war room. 

“Oh fuck yeah. Don’t mind if I do!” Jake enthuses as he takes note of the tea and finger foods laid out on the table. Shaking my head, but nonetheless pleased, I take a seat and let out a breath I don’t realize I’ve been holding. Max’s hand smooths over my hair as he sits next to me, his gaze still eyeing my bruise with concern. It’s endearing to say the least, and not the kind of treatment I’m used to in any part of my life. 

“Okay, fuel up, but pay attention. Intel has an eye in the sky and they’ve found the BMW. We’re tracking him now. Gonna let him get settled in, then we’ll pay him a house call. He’s also traveling light; only two body men and paid local team which means--”

“Which means a bunch of teenage human shields. Fucking great,” I mutter.

Stephanie Pierce had been dumped half an hour before getting to the airport. Doing her best to save face, she’d made it through security and was intent on getting a little drunk before boarding, if only so she could sleep on the flight. American by birth, she had come to London for school, and had, up until the breakup, been having the time of her life. 

Now it's all spiraling into a nightmare. 

“Please, just let me get back to the airport! I don’t have anything to do with this! I didn’t do anything! I’m just a student! Please!” 

“I can’t do that, darling. For one, you’ve seen my face, and two...Well, you’re my insurance policy. You see, the people that I’m after, they have a soft spot for those they consider innocent. Problem is, no one’s ever truly innocent, are they? No, not even you, dear Stephanie. It only took a few moments for me to do the numbers, so to speak. Young, parents are middle class at best, no real money for school, especially abroad, but here you are in designer clothing, taking vacations whenever it strikes your fancy, and not a dime in debt. Do your parents know what you do on the internet, my darling? Didn’t think so. No, that deep, dark secret won’t be revealed until after you perish, which...will be soon, I’m afraid.” 

Her screams make her captor laugh, almost as though he’s delighted by the reaction. It chills her to the bone. Now she understands that this isn’t some wannabe who hijacked a plane and has no real plan; far from it. Whoever he is, he has calculated each and every move leading up to this point. 

She wishes she could talk to her mom one last time. 

“Night Train to Alpha, confirm visual.” 

“Alpha to Night Train we have visual. We count 12 signatures, including the hostage. You are a go.”

We’re no stranger to David and Goliath fights, and 12 is on the smaller side of some of the groups we’ve taken on, but no matter the number, we approach this one with extra precaution, only because of Wallace’s M.O. None of us are looking to be anywhere near another one of his bombs. 

The compound he’s made his hideout is run of the mill for this part of the world. Like our own, Wallace’s has high walls, a sturdy gate, and a simple floor plan. It leaves us with two options; come in with a bang, or creep in with a whisper. 

“There’s two gates,” I remind the boys, knowing full well that while they all prefer coming in with as much firepower as possible, it opens the door for Wallace to get away in the commotion, and I, for one, want to end this once and for all. 

“Alpha, how many signatures on the exterior?” Dom asks, all of us hidden in the shadows, waiting for the deciding factor on how we proceed.

“Looks like 2 on the south side, patrolling the far gate. If you’re going in quiet, now’s the time to move.” 

We all nod and immediately get to work. Strapping on my gloves, I grab my wire cutters out of the pocket on my kevlar, and wait until Flip has gotten into position. The tallest of the team, he bends over, providing me with the flat of his back to stand on so that I can cut the razor wire off the top of the wall. Carefully, I peek over the edge, relieved when I find the courtyard empty. Though there are lights on in the compound, every window is covered with an opaque blind, making this way of entering far better suited to our needs. 

I cut enough wire away to allow all the boys to climb over, making sure to throw it away from the compound not only for safety, but to reduce the chances of us being heard. Satisfied that everyone has clearance, I pocket my multitool and quickly hop over, landing softly in the dirt. 

Rick and Benji are quick to follow, the three of us taking up post so that the rest of the guys can come in safely. It takes less than five minutes for all of us to breach the perimeter, and after a moment to regroup, we move towards our target. 

“Alpha, we need your eyes,” Rick whispers, taking point as we position ourselves flush against the nearest wall of the compound. We could clear the place blind, but that increases the chance that someone will sound the alarm as they die, and we can’t take the risk. Though they said they had to wash their hands of it, after Rome, the DOD extended their resources; while they can’t send those currently serving, they can provide a helping hand to those who are willing to risk it all to capture one of our own.

“Two at 3 o’clock, in the first room. There’s two at the back gate you’ll want to handle first.” 

Nodding at one another, we split up. Rick and Dom position themselves at the first room, Flip and Benji take up post across the villa in front of another room, while Max, Jake and I edge around to the back of the compound, intent on taking out the two men guarding the rear gate as silently as possible.

With Jake on one side, Max and I move around to the other side, all of us needing to get eyes on the men. As I predicted, they’re young, but I find cold solace when I see that they’re not teenagers, bought out to act as human shields. Checking my gun, I make sure the silencer is on tightly before leveling it into place to look through my scope. At less than 50 feet, it’s an easy shot; it just has to be timed correctly. Max counts us down using only his fingers, and when the time is right, both Jake and I take double-tap shots, killing the men before they have a chance to make a sound.

Over comms, I can hear Rick and Dom breaching their first room, and as we move back towards the center of the villa, Benji and Flip do the same. My relief grows with every room that’s cleared, the body count growing as we approach the spot where Wallace is holed up with the hostage. 

“Last room has the prize. Good luck, and godspeed.”

The room in question lies at the heart of the villa. Protected on either side by anti-rooms, We have to work our way through two more sets of men before finally being able to come face-to-face with Wallace once again. 

A bright smile is the last thing we expect when we finally level our guns to his head. 

“Nice of you all to finally join me. Thought it would take much less time for Uncle Sam to track me down. No matter, you’re here now, we can get to it. In your haste, I’m afraid none of you noticed...” Wallace’s gaze goes to the floor, and as my own eyes follow, I can’t help but feel my heart sink. My eyes dart quickly to Max and Dom, nausea overcoming me as I find that every single one of us has stepped on a trip wire. 

“It’s like Russian Roulette, except I’m the one holding the gun.”

Wallace’s laugh will be imprinted in my mind for the rest of my life.

[mcmansionhell]

The Brutalism Post, Part One: Introduction

This is part one of a five-part post about Brutalism. 

University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth campus by Paul Rudolph. Photo via Library of Congress

No style of architecture so passionately divides even the most good-natured and level-headed people as Brutalism. The discourse surrounding Brutalism being “good” or “bad” is fierce and polemical. The “for” crowd lobbies on both aesthetic grounds – posting pictures of incredible and obscure structures and saying “I mean LOOK at this” – as well as political ones, citing in particular, how Brutalism was used to house thousands of people during the postwar period. 

On the other hand, the “against” crowd brings up the failed urbanism of Le Corbusier that gave us the freeways and slum clearance that split and displaced entire swaths of city fabric, proclaiming that only architects or architecture enthusiasts like Brutalism, and that this is a testament to how out of touch they are with everyday people. “If you had to live or work in these buildings,” they say, “you’d feel differently.” 

Unité d'Habitation by Le Corbusier. Photo by Thomas Nemeskeri, via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) 

I’ve been a spectator to this debate since I first lurked in the Skyscraper City forums as a high school freshman, ten years ago, when Brutalism itself sparked the interest in architecture that brings me here today. I have, as they say, heard both sides, and when asked to pick one, my response is unsatisfying. Though my personal aesthetic tastes fall on the side of “Brutalism is good,” I think the actual answer is  it’s deeply, deeply complicated. 

Still, what is it about Brutalism that makes it so divisive? Why does a short-lived substyle of modern architecture elicit such vehement passion in so many people? What does it even mean for a style of architecture to be “good” or “bad”? You can see why I’m drawn to finally sitting down and penning this series, which has been simmering at the back of my mind since I started McMansion Hell three years ago. (By the way, Happy Birthday to this blog!!!) 

Brutalism has a special way of inspiring us to ask big and difficult questions about architecture. “Is Brutalism good?” is really a question of “is any kind of architecture good?” - is architecture itself good? And what do we mean by good? Are we talking about mere aesthetic merits? Or is it more whether or not a given work of architecture satisfies the purpose for which it was built? Can architecture be morally good? Is there a right or wrong way to make, or interpret, a building? 

Ferrier Estate, a now-demolished social housing complex in South London. Photo by Tim Slessor via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)  

I have bad news for you: the answers to all of these questions are complicated, nuanced, and unsatisfying. In today’s polemical and deeply divided world of woke and cancelled, nuance has gotten a bad rap, having been frequently misused by those acting in bad faith to create blurred lines in situations where answers to questions of morality are, in reality, crystal clear. This is not my intention here. 

For centuries, the philosophical discipline of aesthetics has tried in vain to articulate some kind of clearly defined standard by which we can delineate whether or not a work of art is good, bad, moral or amoral. Architecture makes this even more complicated because unlike literature, painting, music, or art, we have to live, work, and exist in architecture. Not only does the question of whether or not we can separate the art from the artist exist in architecture, so to do questions of whether or not we can separate the building from the politics, from the culture, from the time period, from the urbanism, from the socioeconomic system, from the entire contents of everyday life in which it exists. 

Orange County Government Center, Perspective Drawing, by Paul Rudolph. Photo via the Library of Congress.

Existential questions aside, there are other reasons to write about Brutalism. First, while we’ve been hemming and hawing about it online, we’ve lost priceless examples of the style to either demolition or cannibalistic renovation, including Paul Rudolph’s elegant Orange County Government Center, Bertrand Goldberg’s dynamic Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, and the iconic Trinity Square, Gateshead complex, famous for the role it played in the movie Get Carter. My hope is that by bringing up the nuances of Brutalism before a broad and diverse audience, other buildings on the chopping block might be spared. 

On an even broader note, I think Brutalism is worth writing about simply because a lot of people are rightly confused as to what it even is.  The common practice of identifying Brutalism by the presence of a material - reinforced concrete - too broadly defines a style that belongs to a specific era and architectural praxis. There are so many buildings and styles called Brutalist that are not Brutalist that I’ve devoted the first two installments of this series to the subject “What Brutalism Is Not,” followed, of course, by “What is Brutalism?” The goal is that these two essays will be educational and interesting (with the added bonus of providing the reader with an arsenal of information that will make them as insufferable at dinner parties as I am.)

The third part in this series is devoted to the people of Brutalism - the architects, politicians, planners, writers, and philosophers, who signed their names to an architectural movement that spanned the globe. Finally, the last installment gathers all this information together and answers the question we’ve all been waiting for: is Brutalism good? 

The Kyoto International Conference Center, designed by Sachio Otani. Photo by Chris Guy, via Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) 

This is a series on Brutalism, but Brutalism itself demands a level of inquiry that goes beyond defining a style. Really, this is a series about architecture, and its relationship to the world in which it exists. Architects, as workers, artists, and ideologues, may dream up a building on paper and, with the help of laborers, erect it in the material world, but this is only the first part of the story. The rest is written by us, the people who interact with architecture as shelter; as monetary, cultural, and political capital; as labor; as an art; and, most broadly, as that which makes up the backdrop of our beautiful, complicated human lives. 

---

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Copyright Disclaimer: All photographs are used in this post under fair use for the purposes of education, satire, and parody, consistent with 17 USC §107. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2019 McMansion Hell. Please email kate@mcmansionhell.com before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

[evendeadlmthehero]

The Keepers (2/10) “The Hulk and Arrow”

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Based on after the events of Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: FFH

Summary: The Keepers, they call themselves. Little children know them as Santa, The Easter Bunny, Leprechaun, Jack O’ Latern and you. You’re Valentine Cupid; a seducing-angel who’s good with arrows. The Keepers have been a secret for centuries, but when one member goes rogue, this forces The Keepers out of hiding and needing the help of The Avengers.

‘The Keepers’ Masterlist

The quinjet hummed quietly as it neared it’s destination. Bucky had stood in the back, adding knives to his pockets and bullets to his guns. He had hoped that the mission goes smoothly. That Bruce won’t require to Hulk out on anyone, and that he wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. He didn’t want to add to his body count.

Your face however had haunted his mind. He had never seen someone as beautiful as you. Your beauty was not the standard of Hollywood. Your beauty was so unique that it had its own standard. One that went above and beyond Hollywood.

“Okay, it’s 1 minute to land. We’re landing on the old Avengers building in New York,” Sam spoke, grabbing the shield from the ground. “We got clearance from the new owner. Lets make sure this goes smoothly guys, no casualties. It’s in, out and then questioning these guys. You know your missions. You know your assigned targets. Don’t underestimate them. We do not know them and they can be a threat. Make sure you watch each other’s sixes.”

The Avengers nodded, standing up to ready themselves. Sam then looked at Bruce who was standing in the back beside Wanda. “Bruce remember, when I give you the signal, that’s when you come in. You will only be called if things go south and the targets won’t cooperate.”

“Well hopefully it won’t come down to that-“ Bruce had spoken, but stopped when he looked outside when the view of New York had come into view. There was a great snow storm covering the city. Snowflakes fell profusely, which were carried by what looked like a tornado. 

There was also flashes of fire near the ground but Bucky couldn’t see where the source was. Snow mist was everywhere, blocking his vision. He couldn’t see anything at all but ice and fire.

Sam quickly ran over to the pilot seat, switching the flight mode from automatic to manual. Bruce also walked over, taking the co-pilot seat that had a bigger chair due to his hulkiness-size. Both men tried to manuver the quinjet away from the tornado. “New plan, we’re going to land on the bridge!”

Mist had clouded his vision and he was unable to see anything. He was flying in blind. Bucky walked over to the windows, looking down at the city. His face had morphed into shock when he saw the same old man controlling both the tornado and snow. He then fell back when he saw something flying in full speed passed the quinjet.

“What the fuck.”

5 hours earlier

We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin. Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.

You sipped your coffee, a blanket wrapped around you as you listened to the radio. It was the day before Christmas, the first Holiday since the disappearance of Jacko. Your hair was a tangled mess, bags under your eye. Yes, Jacko was still missing and you had yet to recover.

You wore your Christmas sweater, black leggings and snowmen socks. You were desperate to keep the Holiday alive, despite everyone being in a gloomy mood. You hadn’t had a proper nights rest since the 31st of October and you haven’t been out since then.

Truth is, none of you have been out since that night. Nicholas Santa and Osterhase had both went out in search for Jacko and Saint had stayed with you. If Nick and Osterhase were to go missing, at least you and Saint would be safe to remain has Keepers.

But they came back, to your luck. However they were the bearers of bad news when they had announced the official disappearance of Jacko. He was gone, he really was. And there was nothing that you could do but wait.

“Maybe he ran away,” Osterhase spoke, when he and Nicholas came back from their search. You sat down on the couch, tears streaming down your face as Saint rubbed your back. Nicholas looked away in sorrow, feeling guilty that he couldn’t find Jacko. “Maybe he wasn’t ready to be a Keeper.”

“The guy is almost 200 years old, Osterhase!” You yelled back, wiping your tears away furiously whilst getting up. Saint got up with you as well, trying to hold you back from doing something irrational. “What would he go back to? Everyone he knows is now dead! If anyone was not ready for the Keepers, it’s me! I had a fiancé, a family, and you took that away from me! You all did! And they’re still out there, thinking that I’m dead, yet I’m still here!”

Your thoughts vanish from your head as Nicholas walked into the room, donning a red shirt. When he armoured up, that’s when his infamous red suit with white fur outlines came to light.

When you first became a Keeper, you always wondered how Nicholas gave presents without Adults getting suspicious about there being random gifts scattered under a tree that they never bought. Then you found out that Nicholas implanted false memories into their mind, one of them buying the gifts for their children. The fact that he also had the power of invisibility also enabled him to remain anonymous.

“Good morning,” he muttered to you, buttoning up his coat. You gave him a little nod, taking a sip from your coffee. You watched him getting dressed, a feeling of sickness coming over you. You and Santa were not as close as you were to the other members, but you were still worried about him.

“I’m coming with you,” your voice just above a whisper. It was hoarse, due to the nights you spent crying. Nicholas knew this, as he heard your cries during the early hours. He stopped buttoning his shirt when he heard your voice.

“Coming where?”

“Tomorrow,” you finished, putting your mug down on the coffee table. “For Christmas.”

Nicholas scoffed, shaking his head at you. He scratched his beard before his blue eyes made its way towards you. “I’m centuries old, I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t care how strong you think you are Nicholas,” you replied back, getting up from your seat. “I am coming whether you like it or not.”

You crossed your arms, standing in front of him in determination. By the looks of it, Nicholas knew you weren’t backing down. And by the slight tint of pink on the tip of your ears, he knew that meant you wanted to cry. He let out a sigh, continuing to button his shirt up.

“How about you and I go to that little cafe in the City you always tell Osterhase about, yeah?” Nicholas spoke, before walking over to the door, his hand on the handle. He stopped when he saw you weren’t following him. “Are you coming or not?”

You stared at him, before nodding slowly. “Let me just get dressed.”

•

People murmured around you as both you and Nicholas were sitting in the cafe. Nicholas was sipping some lemon tea whilst you settled for a red velvet cake. It was quiet between you two, a sense of gloom settling in. Both of you felt like you failed as a Keeper. Like if you couldn’t save your own family, how did you guys expect to save the world?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Nicholas spoke, blowing over his tea to cool it down. You looked at him in confusion as he took a sip. “You talk in your sleep every night since Jacko went missing. You want the Keepers to go public. But you have to realise, that we can’t.”

“And why so?” You told him, taking a bite off your cake. Nicholas was about to speak before a waiter walked up to the table, placing a Nutella crossiant on the table. You looked at it confusedly, before facing the handsome waiter. “Sorry, we did not order this.”

“Don’t worry, it’s on the house,” he replied back, giving you a wink. He walked away, leaving you and Nicholas alone. Nicholas looked at you with an annoyed looked. You shrugged at him. It’s not like you had control over your seductive abilities.

“Anyway, back to what I was saying, we simply can’t,” Nicholas spoke, placing his cup down. You looked outside the window, seeing the sky slowly darken, despite it being only 12pm. Your attention went back to Nicholas as he kept speaking. “The Keepers work better when they’re hidden from the public’s knowledge, from the Universe’s knowledge.”

“You did nothing,” you interrupted him, pushing the plate away from you. “You guys did nothing for New York, nothing for Sokovia when I said we should go and fight and nothing when Thanos had obliterated half of the universe. But no, that doesn’t matter. Because none of The Keepers vanished. Because we’re dead already, right? None of us turned into ash so we didn’t need to fight a battle that didn’t affect us. But what exactly do we do, huh? The Keepers are meant to save the world yet we deflect the biggest battles on Earth to who? The Avengers?”

“Valentine, you know we can’t fight publically and the Avengers had it handled anyway if I sensed for a second that they didn’t then I would’ve gathered the Keepers. We fight when there’s no one else left to fight. Like in London-“

“Who says we can’t be public?” You spoke back, trying to get the truth out of him. He rubbed his chin in anger before letting out a sigh. “Jacko told me The Keeper’s were once living amongst humans, fighting with them, not away from them. We can make a stand Nicholas. We can help find Jacko without being tied down to our anonymity, we can get rid of The Avengers who fight for glory and install a new band of heroes who-“

“Last time we were public, all of the Keepers got killed!” Nicholas whispered-yelled at you, slamming his fist in the table. You went quiet at the revelation, leaning back to your seat. He then sighed, a look of sorrow pooling his eyes. “Long ago, dark elves ruled earth. Without any opposition, without any question. I used to give gifts to little children to make their days just a bit better. My sister, Saint Patricia used try to make people believe that certain things had luck within them, you know, like white doves, four leaf clovers. Just random objects, and she would tell people they had luck within them just to give them something to believe in. And they did believe.”

“My uncle, Jackson Latern, used to play pranks, you know,” He smiled fondly to himself. This had also cause a smile to break out on your face. “And gave us treats. Lots of them. Drived my mother mad. It also didn’t help that his brother, my Uncle Osterhase, who had protruding teeth, give us chocolate as well. My bestfriend, yes my best friend. Valentino Cupid. A ladies man. Every girl, and man, was in love with him. He was also very caring and loved everyone. Even our annoying neighbour who used to steal our toys.”

“The celestials gave us powers in order to help regain Earth from the Dark elves, only if we keep doing what we do. Me giving presents, Valentino spreading love and so forth. We were heroes of the public, until one day,” Nicholas spoke, shaking his head at the memory. “Their leader grabs this red stone, the reality stone, and kills everyone. Everyone but me.”

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered, tears welling up in your eyes.

“You see Valentine, that’s why we do things undercover. We die slowly, in a timely death. Not all at once with one person remaining to gather the rest of the Keepers and train them all by himself whilst trying to deal with the grief that his friends, his family, is now gone. The Cupid before you died, but at least us remaining four had each other,” He replied back.

“Nicholas, you know there will come a day where we’d have to go public, right?” You spoke to him, grabbing his hand. Nicholas looked away, letting out a scoff. “It could be today, tomorrow or centuries after we’re all gone. But there will come-“

You stopped, retracting your hand from Nicholas. You stood up, which got the attention of everyone in the room as you did it so abruptly. Nicholas looked up to you, his faced morphed with confusion as he looked at your concentrated face. “What is it Valentine?”

“Hate,” you spoke, a slight tremble in your voice. Hairs on your skin stood up as every thing around you slowed down. Voices, people and the whole atmosphere had slowed down.

Within a millisecond, you had ran towards a little girl sitting near the window. In that millisecond, your wings has sprouted from your back and your armour had replaced your clothing. Strands of your hair begun to braid itself but before it could finish you jumped, your eyes watching the bomb slowly crash through the window.

You grabbed the bomb that had previously wanted to land near the girl, and placed it underneath the armour that covered your stomach. The final strand had finally braided itself when the bomb went off from under you and your wings that created a barrier between you with the bomb and everyone else in the restaurant.

Everyone gasped as they saw you, a women who grew wings on her back. Many had grabbed their phones, taking photos. You got up, looking at Nicholas. He had looked shocked at both the bomb and your appearance. You looked at him, slowly backing away as you felt the presence of more hate, more bombs and more enemies surging towards you. “I guess today is that day.”

You then took off, your fists clenched beside you as you flew. Your wings pointed downwards as you reached speeds of 600 miles per hour. You were fast, but you could go faster if you wanted. You saw aircrafts, many small aircrafts, flying towards New York. You slowed down, grabbing an arrow from behind your back.

You had three different coloured arrows; pink, green and black. Pink was for love, green was to spread hate and envy and black were the ones you used to fight. They were essentially photon explosives. You aimed at one of the aircrafts whilst flying in great precision, causing the aircraft to explode before coming down.

This happened for over twenty minutes before you landed on top of the old Avengers building, looking at the more hundred and thousands of aircrafts that were coming out of nowhere. You couldn’t do it all by yourself. There were too many.

You looked down, seeing civilians scramble around and running in chaos. There were screams and police were trying to round up everyone and get them away from the centre of the city.

You breathed in heavily, trying to regain your breath. You let out a sigh, your face morphing into determination. You had to save these people. You had to prove to Nicholas that you can go public. Your were about to jump off the building and fly before a burrow formed two meters away from you. Specifically, it was Osterhase burrow that allowed him to transport places.

The burrow got big enough until three individuals popped out; Osterhase himself, Saint and Nicholas. You let out a scoff, shaking your head. “If you’re going to stop me from fighting guys, it isn’t going to work.”

“Oh no, we aren’t,” Osterhase spoke, drawing out his swords from behind his before giving you a grin. “We’re here to fight with you.”

You looked at Nicholas unsurely, not believing what you were hearing. He nodded at you, making you smile. “I still don’t agree, but it’s kind of too late anyway since you grew your wings in front of everyone which will probably be trending on twitter.”

You shook your head at him, giving him a grateful nod. You then looked back into the city, seeing weird creatures terrorising civilians. They were small, stodgy and had fangs for teeth. You had never seen anything like this. You then looked at your teammates you looked as equally as horrified as you. “Okay, here’s the plan. I’ll cover the sky. Any aircrafts have to go through me. Osterhase, you cover the ground with Saint. Osterhase if you see a pedestrian, use your burrow to get them the hell out of here. Nicholas, create the biggest damn snow storm you’ve ever seen. Hopefully that will throw them off course.”

“Got it blondey,” Saint Patrick spoke, getting out his golden encased staff, his green armour now in full show. Osterhase then formed a burrow, before he and Saint disappeared from sight. You then looked at Nicholas with a smirk.

“This is just like London all over again,” you spoke, as you started running towards the edge of the building. Nicholas also started running towards the edge of the building.

“You and I remember London very differently,” he yelled back as you both jumped. You hurled towards the ground, feeling the wind against your face. You felt the cool chill blast as Nicholas formed a snow tornado around him. You then sprung your wings out flying back up towards the numerous aircrafts.

One in particular being the Quinjet.

•

“There’s just too many,” you heard Osterhase speak as you flew back onto the ground. Osterhase, Nicholas and Saint stood in a circle as you guys regrouped after an hour of fighting. “It’s like you kill one, and then the whole family comes to visit for the funeral. It’s been an hour and we’ve yet to make progress.”

“Osterhase is right,” Saint spoke, his hand on his hips. There was dirt in his face and a cut on his lip. You pulled a loose strand of hair behind your ear as you looked around at all the ruins. “We need to find the one source that powers them. They must have a leader or something.”

“Yeah,” Osterhase replied back, his fur now matted with sweat. “We have to find the core of this thing or else we’re screwed.”

“Then let’s find the core-“ you spoke before you stopped speaking. You looked at a figure that stood still behind Osterhase. A familiar figure. But he had looked different to what you had remembered. “Is that-“

You couldn’t complete your sentence, because you couldn’t believe it. Nicholas looked at where you were staring, his face morphing into disbelief. “Jacko?”

You smiled, your eyes tearing up in happiness. Your feet begun making there way over to him. It started off as a slow jog before going into an all-blown-our sprint.

“Valentine wait!” You heard Nicholas yell from behind you, but you didn’t care. Jacko was here, and you were filled with happiness, hope and relief. You continued running towards him, but he had made no move towards you. You then saw him draw his arm back, a flame igniting in his hand.

You stopped, confused at what he was doing. He then looked at you with a dark look, resulting in a chill going down your spine. You let out a breath as Jacko hurled a ball toward you. You felt heat coming towards you before Nicholas had fused it out with his own ball of ice.

You looked at Jacko, gulping as you took a step towards him. He tilted his head to the side, watching you closely. “Hey, it’s me, it’s Valentine.”

“Valentine, get out of the fucking way now! It’s not fucking him!”

“It’s me, okay,” you ignored the pleads from the rest of The Keepers as you got closer to Jacko. You then whispered the next words, careful to make sure the other Keepers didn’t hear. If they knew what Jacko had revealed personal information to you, it would result to the permanent banishment of his title, resulting in his ultimate death. You didn’t want the others to know what Jacko had revealed to you about his past.

“Your name is Louis the Secound, son of King Louis the first. He wanted you to be the heir to the throne. But you fell in love, remember? And you bought a farm, and you raised two beautiful children,” you spoke, your bottom lip trembling as you shakingly reached out to his face. He leaned to the side a bit, trying to delve into the palm of your hand. “You were the first person to talk to me about the past, knowing the repercussions it may bring if others found out. But you still did it. Louis, please, come back to me. Come back from whatever spell a wicked being has casted upon you.”

He looked up at you, his eyes flickering with fire every now and then. You smiled at him, seeing that you may have sparked some recognition in the man’s head. But you were wrong. He quickly weilded a flame in his arm, going in for the strike before you felt the ground below you consume you. You then let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding in as Osterhase created a burrow from Jacko to next to him.

“W-what do we do?” You asked the Keepers. You were heartbroken and gutted. Your plan had failed and it seemed like emotional memories wasn’t going to aid you in getting your friend back. “He’s not- he’s not himself. We can’t just leave him, we have to do something.”

“Let’s knock him out and bring him back home, simple,” Osterhase stated before he started sprinting towards Jacko. Saint looked at you and nodded, before following Osterhase with his golden staff.

You felt a hand grab onto your arm. You looked at the source, seeing that it was Nicholas. He gave you a sad smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him back. He’s strong, that fucking bastard.”

He then created a snow storm, flying across towards Jacko who was currently fighting both Saint and Osterhase with fire. You let out a little sigh, before you sprouted your wings from your back and flew towards the fight.

Instead of using your black arrows, you opted for the pink ones. Maybe it will bring some sense of love and remove the hate that has poisoned his veins. You flew into the burrow that Osterhase created and came out the other side near Jacko, shooting an arrow successively onto Jacko’s arm. Jacko let out a blood-curling growl, before shooting a flame towards you. Before it could reach you, Saint had re-directed the flame away from you with his staff.

“You’re going easy on him,” Saint grumbled at you before running back towards the fight. You rolled your eyes at him, flying back again near Jacko. Osterhase used his swords, cutting the flames that kept rolling in towards him. Nicholas cooled down the flames that came towards the rabbit with his freezing abilities.

“Hey guys, just like we practised?” You asked your fellow Keepers that were still sane. Saint smirked at you, before positioning his staff. You ran towards his staff, before he used it to fling you across to Jacko. As Jacko was distracted by you and the arrow you were pointing at him, Osterhase created a burrow for Saint who was sucked into the ground and spurted right out near Jacko. He used his staff and wacked Jacko in the head before using the end part of the staff to knock the air out of his lungs.

As Jacko was hunched over, Nicholas used his freezing abilities to freeze his upper and lower limbs into the floor. You landed on the floor before walking over to Jacko. You then stopped, watching as Jacko kept letting out chilling screams and growls, one that was animalistic.

However, before you could do anything, tanks rolled out from behind you. It was the U.S. Army. The tanks had their weapons pointed towards all of you. They came out from behind building, a mechanical road deafening the entire city.

There was 20 tanks pointing their weapons at all of you. You then heard helicopters, looking up to see four. Ropes fell down from them and men and women in army clothing slid down the rope before rolling on the floor and pointing their machine gun at all of you.

“Freeze. This is the U.S Army. Drop all of your weapons and remain still. If you do not cooperate, we will use force.” You heard someone demand from the speakers. Wind blew against your face as you watched more tanks, more helicopters and more soldiers coming into the City.

Another plane, one that was bigger, had landed in the middle of the street, it’s force taking you a step back. This time it was shield agents, donning a black suit and even bigger guns.

You looked back to where Jacko was, only to see he was gone. You looked at the remaining Keepers, there faces in shock as well. He was just there, how would he have left, you had thought. It was a mystery that you had yet to solve. How easy it was for Jacko to disappear without a trace.

A man came flying down with his mechanical wings, a gun pointed towards all of you. He was followed by a man with a metal arm, a women wearing red clothing and Spider-Man. The other Keepers had de-armoured themselves and you were about to as well until another figure emerged from the shadows.

It was him. It was The Hulk, or as he liked to go as now, ‘Professor Hulk’. It didn’t matter to you. He had killed you and taken away your life. You could’ve been 36 years old today, married with your partner with children. But no, you were dead and stuck at the ripe age of 25.

“Bruce, what are you doing here, we said emergency only,” The dark-skinned man spoke to the giant as his eyes were still on you four.

“I saw tanks and I thought it was an emergency,” he replied back, before facing the rest of the keepers who had there hands up and de-amoured. All of them, but you.

You felt your blood boiling, staring maliciously at the Hulk. You grabbed the black arrow and pointed it towards him.

“Woah, woah, woah,” The Keepers and The Avengers had spoke to you at the same time. You felt everyone’s gun click as they all faced you. Bucky watched studied you intently, wondering why there was so much hate filling your face at the presence of Bruce. He saw as your whole arm was trembling as well as your bottom lip. You were struggling and Bucky could tell.

“Valentine, put the arrow down,” Nicholas had hissed at you. You glared down at the Hulk who seemed taken back, wondering why he was singled out. “Put it down now before you do something stupid.”

Your breath was shaky as you continued to stare down Bruce. All the guns and tanks were pointed towards you. You could kill him right now and end your life in return. But you couldn’t. You couldn’t let the reason for your second death be because of the same person. So you let out a little huff, trembling as you put down the arrow, de-armouring.

At your surrendered, the Avengers and Army ran towards you, arresting the lot of you. Bucky had walked towards you as you finally made eye contact with him. He gave you a slight hesitated look, as if he was afraid of your presence. You let out a scoff before bring your wrists towards him, letting him cuff you.

Bucky was trying really hard to ignore the attraction and pull he felt towards you. It felt like he was on drugs the moment he had touched the soft surface of your skin. It took him a while before he was able to cuff you. He then guided you towards the quinjet, a tingling feeling surrounding his body as your dorsal area was in close proximity to his anterior area.

As he was guiding you, you made eye contact with the Hulk. You glared at him with all the hatred you could muster. The beast who had used his anger to murder you. To ruin your life. You could never hate anyone, you were the goddess of love. You were a Cupid, a Keeper.

But you hated him.

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[scotianostra]

January 29th 1848 saw the first adoption of GMT by Scotland. The subject has been the source of controversy ever since.

The change had broadly taken place south of the Border from September the previous year with those in Edinburgh living 12 and-a-half minutes behind the new standard time as a result.

Some people in those days were still using sundials to tell the time, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain had only given the world the first electric clock 7 years previously. Sundials were criticised for being poorly made and set by "incompetents" among those who supported the move to GMT in the 1840s. 

The discrepancy grew the further west you moved, with the time in Glasgow some 17 minutes behind GMT. In Ayr the time difference was 18-and-a-half minutes with it rising to 19 minutes in the harbour town of Greenock.

All these lapses were ironed out over night on January 29 1848, but the move wasn’t without controversy as some resisted the move away from local time.

Sometimes referred to as natural time, it had long been determined by sun dials and observatories and later by charts and tables which outlined the differences between GMT and local time at various locations across the country.

But the need for a standard time measurement was broadly agreed upon given the surge in the number of rail services and passengers with different local times causing confusion, missed trains and even accidents as trains battled for clearance on single tracks.

An editorial in The Scotsman on Saturday, January 28, 1848, said: “It is a mistake to think that in the country generally the change will be felt as a grievance in any degree.

“Probably nine-tenths of those who have clocks and watches believe that their local time is the same with Greenwich time, and will be greatly surprise to learn that the two are not identical.

“Even if they wished to keep local time, they want the means.

“Observatories are only found in two or three of our Scottish towns.

“As for the sundials in use, their number is small, most of them, too, are made by incompetent persons and even when correctly constructed, the task of putting them up and adjusting them to the meridian is generally left to an ignorant mason, who perhaps takes the mid-day hour from the watch in his fob.”

The editorial added: “For the sake of convenience, we sacrifice a few minutes and keep this artificial time in preference to sundial time, which some call natural time, and if the same convenience counsels us to sacrifice a few minutes in order to keep one uniform time over the whole country, why should it not be done!”

Mariners had long observed Greenwich Mean Time and kept at least one chronometer set to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have a longitude of zero degrees.

The move to enforce it as the common time measurement was made by the Railway Clearing House in September 1847.

Some rail companies had printed GMT timetables much sooner. The Great Western Railway deployed the standard time in 1840 given that passengers on its service between London to Bristol, then the biggest trading port with the United States, faced a time difference of 22 minutes between its departure and arrival point.

Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said travel watches of the day had two sets of hands, one gold and one blue steel, to help measure changes in local time during a journey.

Maps also depicted towns with had adopted GMT and those which had not, he added.

 There was information out there for determine the local time difference so they would know the offset to apply to GMT before the telegraphic distribution of time.

Mr McEvoy said different towns and cities in Scotland would have had their own time differences before adoption of GMT.

Old local time measurements show that Edinburgh was four-and-a-half minutes ahead of that in Glasgow, for example.

Mr McEvoy added: “I think it is fair to say there was no real concept of these differences at the time. It was when communication began to expand quite rapidly that it became f an issue. I think generally, you would be quite happy that the time of day was your local time.”

Pics are the station clock at Glasgow Central in the early 1880s and the sundial at Stonehaven Harbour, Aberdeenshire.

[lumsyfashionista]

bradford bid

BRADFORD IN THE 16TH CENTURY

. During the 16th century Bradford developed much bigger and more critical. This was despite flare-ups of torment. It struck Bradford in 1557-58. . The fleece industry proceeded to develop. By the 16th century, numerous individuals in towns close to Bradford wove fleece. It was at that point taken to the town to be filled and coloure .There was moreover an impressive calfskin tanning industry in Bradford. Approximately 1540 an author named Leland portrayed Bradford as: 'A lovely active showcase town, approximately half the measure of Wakefield. It has one area church and a chapel devoted to St Sitha. It lives for the most part by (making) clothing and is 4 miles far off from Halifax and 6 from Christ corridor (Kirkstall) Nunnery. There's a conversion in this town of 3 brooks'. By 1500 a language structure school existed in Bradford and within the late 16th century the wooden houses within the town were revamped in stone.

 BRADFORD IM THE 17TH CENTURY.

• In 1642 came the gracious war between the lord and parliament. The individuals of Bradford unequivocally upheld parliament but the encompassing farmland sided with the ruler. In October royalist troops made there, to begin with, endeavour to require Bradford but the townspeople effortlessly drove them off. The royalists returned in December 1642 but once more they were driven off. In January 1643 a drive of parliamentary warriors was sent to involve Bradford. • In June 1643 a royalist army was sent to require the town. Sometime recently they arrived the parliamentary commander chosen Bradford was as well troublesome to guard and he chose to slip absent. In any case, his men were captured by the royalists at Adwalton Field. The royalists were victorious. • The vanquished parliamentary armed force fled back to Bradford. After 2 days they chose to elude at night. Most of them battled their way through the royalist lines and gotten away.

 The royalist officers at that point entered Bradford and sacked it. Bradford remained in the royalist's hands for a brief time but they surrendered the town at the starting of 1644. • In Walk 1644 the parliamentarians once more entered Bradford. It remained in parliamentary hands till the conclusion of the gracious war. Be that as it may, the enduring of the individuals of Bradford was not over. There was another flare-up of torment in Bradford in 1645. BRADFORD IN 18TH CENTURY • In the early 18th century Bradford was a little showcase town with a populace of, maybe, 4,000. Be that as it may, within the late 18th century Bradford was changed by the industrial revolution. • The material industry within the north of Britain boomed. The primary bank in Bradford opened in 1771. Bradford canal was built in 1774 and in 1777 it was connected to the Leeds-Liverpool canal. The advancement in communications boosted industry within the town. In 1793 a Bit Corridor was built where cloth can be bought and sold. Be that as it may, after 1800 the hand linger weavers.

 BRADFORD IN 19TH CENTURY

• In the late 18th century and early 19th Bradford developed exceptionally quickly. In 1780 it had a populace of around 4,500. By 1801 it had more than 6,000 tenants. By 1851 the populace of Bradford had come to an extraordinary 103,000. The gigantic rise in the populace was mostly due to migration from Germany and Ireland. • The exceptionally quick development of Bradford implied houses were built in an aimless design. There were no building controls until 1854 and most working-class lodgings were repulsive. There were no sewers or channels and stuffing was common. Most exceedingly bad of all were the cellar residences. Entirety families lived in clammy, ineffectively ventilated cellars. Regularly destitute families had no furniture. They utilized wooden boxes as tables and rested on straw or rags. • However there were a few enhancements in Bradford within the 19th century. In 1803 an Act of Parliament shaped a bunch of men called the Enhancement Commissioners who had powers to clean the lanes and light them with oil lights. They might too give a fire motor and a tidy cart. After 1823 the boulevards of Bradford were lit by gas. In 1847 an enterprise was shaped to run Bradford. • However, like all mechanical cities in those days, Bradford was terrifyingly unsanitary. In 1848-49 420 individuals kicked the bucket amid a cholera plague. In any case life in 19th century Bradford slowly moved forward. Within the 1860s and early 1870s, the organization made a organize of channels and sewers. From 1744 a private water company provided channelled water to anybody in Bradford who might pay. The committee obtained the company in 1854. After 1854 building directions progressed the quality of modern working-class houses. (Although dreadfully awful residences built some time recently at that point remained for decades). In 1877 Bradford organization started the work of ghetto clearance.

 • In the 19th century it was common to debase foodstuffs by including cheap substances. Calcium sulfate was included in peppermints. In 1858 a sweet creator in Bradford sent some person to get a few from a pharmacist. In any case, by botch, the pharmacist collaborator picked up a few arsenic considering it was calcium sulfate. Arsenic was included in the desserts. As a result, 200 individuals got to be genuinely sick and 20 died. • Meanwhile in 1853-71 Titus Salt built a show town at Saltaire. The town had better than average working-class homes, schools, and a church. • There were other enhancements to Bradford amid the 19th century. In 1843 a hospital was built. The primary stop, Peel Stop, opened in 1863. The enterprise obtained Peel Park in 1870. The primary open library in Bradford opened in 1872. • Meanwhile the railroad comes to Bradford in 1846 and from 1882 horse-drawn cable cars ran within the streets. Electricity was, to begin with, created in Bradford in 1889 and in 1898 the primary electric cable cars ran within the lanes. The

 BRADFORD Within The 20TH CENTURY

• In 1904 a Mechanical Show was held in Bradford. Cartwright Dedication Lobby was built in 1904. The Alhambra Theater opened in 1914. • to begin with board houses in Bradford were built-in 1907. Many more were built within the 1920s and 1930s to supplant annihilated ghettos. In 1919 the Church of St Dwindle was made Bradford Cathedral. Bradford Regal Hospital was built in 1936. • However on 21 Admirable 1916 blasts in a weapons production line slaughtered 39 individuals and harmed 2,000 houses. • Meanwhile in 1910 Benjamin and William Jowett began making cars in Bradford. The Jowett company made cars until 1954. Within the 1920s and 1930s, the material industry declined strongly and there was mass unemployment in Bradford. In any case, modern businesses came to Bradford such as a building. Printing moreover prospered and there was enormous increment within the number of clerical employments. Numerous more individuals worked in managing an account, protection, gracious benefit and neighbour hood government. In any case in 1939 the material industry.

 • In the late 20th-century tourism got to be a major industry in Bradford. Cliffe Castle Exhibition hall opened in 1959. Bradford Mechanical Historical centre opened in 1974. The Colour Exhibition hall opened in 1978. The Exhibition hall of Photography, Film and Tv opened in 1983. The Peace Exhibition hall opened in 1997. • In the 1950s Bradford was changed by expansive scale migration from the West Indies, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Bradford got to be a multicultural city. • In the 1950s and 1960s numerous more chamber houses were built and the city center was redeveloped. Bradford College opened in 1966. The Kirkgate Middle opened in 1971 and 1974 Bradford was made a Metropolitan Area Committee. In the meantime in 1977 a Transport Compatibility was built in Bradford.

 BRADFORD Within The MIDE 20TH CENTURY

• In 1955 the war of ghetto houses continued especially in Manchester where 68,000 were classified to be unfit. • In 1957 Henry Brooke the MP Serve of lodging and neighbourhood Government found that annihilated or condemned houses are expanding 20.000 in 1954 to 35,000 in 1956, whereas rehousing over 200.000 individuals amid the mid-1950s. • In 1960 a few neighbourhood specialists came to accumulate with a long term arrangement to address ghetto issues they found out that between 1955-1960, 416,706 houses were assessed unfit but as it were 65.372 were pulverized by 1960. Liverpool was one of the most noteworthy with around 88,000 taken after by Manchester. So they were one of the 38 areas that need that needs extraordinary attention. • Bradford board is arranging to make strides transportation system in Bradford within the another 15 a long time from 2018 Bradford Newsroom .by barging in the 21st-century cable cars which would connect to the proposed highspeed Northern Powerhouse Railroad.Got it from Bradford newsroom Thursday the 27th November 2018 at 11:30

 • City pioneers says that would too give unused extra capacity between Bradford and Leeds with a modern halt at Laisterdyke and line running through the South of Bradford with a halt in Moo Field sometime recently proceeding onto Dewsbury in Kirklees. • A London Underground fashion graph was one of the proposed lines, which would connect Leeds city middle with Bradford, Spen Valley, Castleford and East Leeds. They are moreover trusting to incorporate Leeds legs of HS2 Rail station which is anticipated to be done by 2023

 • The board says all usually within the early stages of improvement but guaranteeing that Bradford and the more out of control locale features a transport. organize fit for the 21st century that can take full advantage of a city middle station for Northern Powerhouse Rail. • washrooms Thursday the 27th November 2018 at 11:30 • City pioneers says that would too give modern extra capacity between Bradford and Leeds with a modern halt at Laisterdyke and line running through the South of Bradford with a halt in Moo Field sometime recently proceeding onto Dewsbury in Kirklees. • A London Underground fashion chart was one of the proposed lines, which would connect Leeds city middle with Bradford, spend Valley, Castleford and East Leeds. They are moreover trusting to include Leeds legs of HS2 Rail station which is anticipated to be done by 2023 • The chamber says all this can be within the early stages of improvement but guaranteeing that Bradford and the more out of control locale incorporates a transport organize fit for the 21st century that can take full advantage of a city centre station for Northern Powerhouse Rail.

[wastenawayuk-blog]

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We offer a mixture of waste collection services, including demolition waste, house clearance, garage clearance, office clearance, commercial removals, and more! We can handle most of your rubbish, including: • fridges and other home electronics • general rubbish • construction waste • appliances • furniture • mattresses • and many more, if they fit into a skip!

Whatever you want to dispose of, you can count upon us to manage it in the fastest, most responsible manner imaginable. We also do our very best that every one of our services is conducted in the eco-friendliest way possible, and so we make sure that everything that can be recycled undergoes that process. Nothing goes to waste with our best service.

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[skippyv20]

Prince Harry: Remember my mother’s words on landmines and put Angola ‘back on the map’ for eco-tourists

The Duke of Sussex has urged the public not to forget his mother’s words on landmines, as he argues the remnants of war must finally be cleared from Angola to allow wildlife and tourists to return.

The Duke, whose mother Diana, Princess of Wales, became the face of the campaign in her lifetime, echoed her words to say landmines “are a humanitarian issue not a political one”, urging countries not to leave the mission “half done”.

Saying it was “pretty shocking” to learn that de-mining funding had been cut by nearly 90 per cent in the last decade, he urged the international community to help Angola complete its “long journey, full of heartache and frustration” to safety.

In a speech at a Chatham House Africa Programme event, London, he made the case particularly for the wildlife of the Okavango Delta, where animals too have been harmed by the “remnants of war” including landmines.

“My hope is that through this collaboration, minefields can be cleared, land can be protected,  wildlife can be free to return to where they once roamed, and Angolans can reap the rewards by coexisting with the one constant that will draw people in from all over the world –  the extraordinary setting that they call home,” he said.

The Duke is understood to be planning a trip to the country in the autumn, working with the HALO Trust on the issue of landmines.

His visit, which will likely see him accompanied in some capacity by the Duchess and his son Archie, will be a major tourism coup for the region, showing potential holidaymakers that the land is safe in echoes of his mother’s  famous walk through the minefield.

“This event is the culmination of a great effort by many people to progress the vital mission of de-mining Angola - and putting it back on the map as a tourist destination,” he said of the Chatham House event. He went on to reference the words of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, when she was heavily criticised for her involvement in the issue of landmines and called a “loose cannon” by one British minister.

Prince Harry in Angola in 2013 CREDIT: PA 

“I’m not a political figure, nor do I want to be one,” she said then. “But I come with my heart, and I want to bring awareness to people in distress, whether it’s in Angola or any part of the world. The fact is I’m a humanitarian figure. Always have been and always will be.”

Speaking today, the Duke said: “I first visited Chatham House in June 2017 to take part in a scenario planning exercise - some of you in the room today were here with me.

“That exercise showed me the importance of landmine clearance within a humanitarian emergency because, let’s not forget, land mines are a humanitarian issue NOT a political one.” Saying countries must not “leave a job left half done”, he added: “In fact I was told just the other day of the positive transformation in Huambo since my mother walked that minefield all those years ago.

The Duke of Sussex attends the Chatham House conference CREDIT: CHRIS JACKSON

“What is less well-known is the impact landmines can have on conservation and wildlife, and therefore the economy.”

He continued: “Angola is an important example of a country leading the way in clearing the remnants of war to secure a better future for its people and its environment – it has been a long journey, one full of heartache and frustration I’m sure, but now with the optimism and encouragement from your Government Minister, I truly believe that Angola will become a shining example to the rest of the continent.”

The event included a major announcement about a new initiative between The HALO Trust and the government of Angola, who are investing $60 million to clear landmines surrounding the Angolan Okavango watershed. Organisers explained that large swathes of south-eastern Angola were ripe for eco-tourism but virtually inaccessible due to landmines, a legacy of the country’s bitter civil war that ended in 2002.

Diana, Princess of Wales, meets landmine victim Sandra Thijik in 1997 CREDIT: GETTY

More than one million landmines were planted across the country during the conflict, decimating rural regions and rendering large areas of the country unsafe for both local people and animals including African elephants, lions, cheetahs and hundreds of species of birds.

The HALO Trust, which has been working in Angola since 1994, during which time it has destroyed more than 95,000 landmines and cleared 840 minefields, estimates that there is still more than one thousand minefields to be cleared, an area of 121 km2.

The new investment, over five years, will fund the clearance of 153 minefields in the south-eastern province of Cuando Cubango inside two national parks, the Mavinga and the Luengue-Luiana. HALO estimates it will need a further $60 million to clear the rest.

The 1997 Landmine Treaty, to which it is a signatory, pledges to clear all landmines by 2025. Jane Cooking, chief executive MAG, another international anti-landmine organisation, who took part in the panel discussion, spoke about Diana’s work. 

She said: “She was very frustrated that what she was doing was being misconstrued as a political issue, not a humanitarian one.

"The point was the landmines treaty remains one of the rare pieces of international law where rather than everybody having to get on board, and you just end up with the lowest common denominator, a group of countries led by Canada said ‘scrap this, we are not going anywhere with this. This is not going to work. Those that are up for it, let’s just do it’ ‘

"Princess Diana put her weight behind it. So all this diplomatic effort which had been going on for years, she really helped get it over the line.

"We broke the rules and she broke to rules to do that wonderful thing.”

Thank you😁❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[scotianostra]

January 29th 1848 saw the first adoption of GMT by Scotland. The subject has been the source of controversy ever since.

For a short spell in the late 1840s, Scots and the English were living in different time zones as the switch to Greenwich Mean Time took hold across the across the country.

The change had broadly taken place south of the Border from September the previous year with those in Edinburgh living 12 and-a-half minutes behind the new standard time as a result.

The discrepancy grew the further west you moved, with the time in Glasgow some 17 minutes behind GMT. In Ayr the time difference was 18-and-a-half minutes with it rising to 19 minutes in the harbour town of Greenock. All these lapses were ironed out over night on January 29th 1848, but the move wasn’t without controversy as some resisted the move away from local time.

Sometimes referred to as natural time, it had long been determined by sundials and observatories and later by charts and tables which outlined the differences between GMT and local time at various locations across the country. But the need for a standard time measurement was broadly agreed upon given the surge in the number of rail services and passengers with different local times causing confusion, missed trains and even accidents as trains battled for clearance on single tracks.

An editorial in The Scotsman on Saturday, January 28th, 1848, said: “It is a mistake to think that in the country generally the change will be felt as a grievance in any degree. “Probably nine-tenths of those who have clocks and watches believe that their local time is the same with Greenwich time, and will be greatly surprise to learn that the two are not identical. “Even if they wished to keep local time, they want the means.

“Observatories are only found in two or three of our Scottish towns. “As for the sundials in use, their number is small, most of them, too, are made by incompetent persons and even when correctly constructed, the task of putting them up and adjusting them to the meridian is generally left to an ignorant mason, who perhaps takes the mid-day hour from the watch in his fob.” Can you imagine a Mason putting up with being called ignorant in this day and age!

The editorial added: “For the sake of convenience, we sacrifice a few minutes and keep this artificial time in preference to sundial time, which some call natural time, and if the same convenience counsels us to sacrifice a few minutes in order to keep one uniform time over the whole country, why should it not be done!”

Mariners had long observed Greenwich Mean Time and kept at least one chronometer set to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was considered to have a longitude of zero degrees. The move to enforce it as the common time measurement was made by the Railway Clearing House in September 1847.

Some rail companies had printed GMT timetables much sooner. The Great Western Railway deployed the standard time in 1840 given that passengers on its service between London to Bristol, then the biggest trading port with the United States, faced a time difference of 22 minutes between its departure and arrival point.

Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said travel watches of the day had two sets of hands, one gold and one blue steel, to help measure changes in local time during a journey.

Maps also depicted towns with had adopted GMT and those which had not, he added. “There was information out there for determine the local time difference so they would know the offset to apply to GMT before the telegraphic distribution of time.”

Mr McEvoy said different towns and cities in Scotland would have had their own time differences before adoption of GMT. Old local time measurements show that Edinburgh was four-and-a-half minutes ahead of that in Glasgow, for example.

Mr McEvoy added: “I think it is fair to say there was no real concept of these differences at the time. It was when communication began to expand quite rapidly that it became f an issue. I think generally, you would be quite happy that the time of day was your local time.”

In this day in age we only know GMT, but try and think of how it would have worked in this day and age, and the confusion the would reign!