AN OUTSIDE VIEW

A curious side issue in the Labour Party's leadership campaign is his call for carriages for women only. "Ladies Only" compartments were usual on trains in Britain at least until the late 1950. But why the fresh call for them? Could the real problem be that too many seats are being crammed into too small a space? And could that be due to the fact that a railway carriage in 1955 cost around £6000, compared to £2.6 million today - a real increase by a factor of nine, so every square inch of floor space costs that amount more? Now there is a question that really does call for an answer, because the 1955 carriage wins hands down in terms of spaciousness, comfort and general ambience.

It has been a couple of months since I last wrote anything in this blog. I have been spending too much time on Facebook. A friend gave me a copy of "The Old Ways" by Robert Macfarlane for my birthday, which I have now read. The book describes a series of journeys on foot or in sailing boats, each lasting several days, with nights spent in fishermen's or shepherds' shelters or under hedgerows. Mostly, the journeys are in Britain though there is a dangerous excursion around Ramallah..The book gradually shifts focus, to Edward Thomas (composer of the short poem Adelstrop  in June 1914). Macfarlane has a fine sense of landscape and the book was an enjoyable read, though I could not connect with his outdoor sleeping habits. I found some aspects of the book irritating. He has a propensity to use words of extreme rarity, to the point that, presumably at the insistence of the publisher, he had to provide a glossary of well over a hundred; most of them could either have be...