Fires, planning and a water table

21 April

Now what shall I waffle about today ... I know ...

The other day I was speaking about the fire season having started here in Dorktown. Well, it seems to have a started in Leeds too with a fire at a chemical plant. I don't know Leeds as well as I'd like to but it does seem more than a bit daft to have a chemical plant in a built up area. It reminds me of when I worked for Interlink in the 1990s. They sent me to collect a package from a chemical plant in Hinckley, just off the town centre. I went to the office and she gave me all the paper work for the job, which included haz-chem instructions. OK, fine ... but I didn't know anything about haz-chem transport. According to those instructions I had to wear full protective gear while handling the two barrels they were about to load onto my van. At that point I said, 'Oh no you don't! I'm calling my office before I accept them.' Reading a bit further on those instructions I found warning of not carrying it chemical in enclosed vans because if got too hot and pressured it had a lower flash point than petrol. That was enough for me. I pulled out there and then.

As I drove around the rest of that day I was slowly getting more and more concerned at the possible danger that the chemical plant posed to the town. It was situated at a cross road, with a busy railway line along one side, houses on  another side, a factory across the road and a supermarket next door. If those two barrels I was supposed to take were anything to go by, then that place was an accident waiting to happen! Whoever gave them planning permission to place it there needed their heads looking at.

Tuttle Hill is one of the major routes in and out of Dorktown. It's not a particularly pretty road seeing as at the bottom there industrial works and an eyesore of what used to be rather nice pub, The While Horse, which is now closed and looking rough. Across the road is what used to be Judkins Quarry, not the local landfill site. The area is dirty and dusty and very uninviting. About half way up, a load of new housing has appeared. I personally would not want to live opposite a land fill site. A few years ago, before the new houses were built that was a major problem large swarms of flies plaguing the area.

Of course, when Judkins began digging out the granite that was underneath the hill, Dorktown wasn't so large and busy. I have a feeling though that if they tried to get planning permission now it would thrown out. Where those new houses are being built, it a large, partly flooded worked out quarry. At the top of Tuttle Hill there's a right turn onto Mancetter Road; but right on that corner, on the left as you turn, is yet another worked out quarry. I'm calling them 'worked out' simply because they can't really take anymore granite from any of them without the whole area collapsing in on itself. There are number of other quarries around that area, most of which are now flooded. I suppose that they dug deep enough to hit the water table. That's probably why they closed really. Whatever ... I'm now pleased to live in much nicer area called Weddington.

And so to a photo ... First one ... 

Is of Judkins working face at the time it closed. The second one ... 

                           

Crowds at Dorktown's Wednesday market.

And the Sage has spoken words of wisdom ...

Never try & Out do a Woman!!! Hahaha!!!
One evening a Husband, thinking he was being funny, said to his wife, 'Perhaps we should start washing your clothes in 'Slim Fast'. Maybe it would take a few inches off of your butt!'
His wife was not amused, and decided that she simply couldn't let such a comment go unrewarded.
The next morning the husband took a pair of underwear out of his drawer. 'What the Hell is this?' he said to himself as a little 'dust' cloud appeared when he shook them out.
'April', he hollered into the bathroom, 'Why did you put Talcum Powder in my underwear?'
She replied, 'It's not talcum powder; it's Miracle Grow'.