Odd things about Stafford.

industryarch

industryarch

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Sir BoD said:
Quite.
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Wormella

Wormella

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littleme said:
Another thing I've noticed that's odd (today while looking for someone's house) is that some streets in Stafford are numbered very strangely - in the Midlands houses are numbered odds (1, 3, 5, 7...,.) on one side & evens (2,4 6, 8, .,. on the opposite side.....in the road I live on in Stafford all the houses are numbered sequentially.... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.... :strange:
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I went off to collect something for Brit yesterday - came across a curious numbering system where odds were once side of the close and evens the other - but no signage to suggest this was the layout - who on earth thought that was a good idea?
 
Goldilox

Goldilox

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Wormella said:
I went off to collect something for Brit yesterday - came across a curious numbering system where odds were once side of the close and evens the other - but no signage to suggest this was the layout - who on earth thought that was a good idea?
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Is that odd? It's how every road I've ever lived on worked, the only exception being our current residence where they go up sequentially on one side & then come back down the other.
 
littleme

littleme

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proactive said:
Can't think why you'd want to given the assorted weirdos and dangerous drivers behind the wheel of them.
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I didn't drive when I first moved here, so relied heavily on taxi's & the bus...

But it was one of the things that I found strange when I moved here....

You can't hail a cab...

The bus only runs one every 20 mins (or once an hour, or sometimes once a day) not every 8 minutes...

Most of the hospital is closed at the weekend....

There are no shops....

The corner shops actually close at night...
Everyone wears wellies

Everyone seems go to bed at 10pm....

20 years on I wouldn't change it for the world!
 
Jonah

Jonah

Spouting nonsense since the day I learned to talk
When there was the minibus service running in town, they were every 10 minutes.

Are there cabs in Stafford? I thought there were all private hire cars rather than taxis.
 
citricsquid

citricsquid

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Speaking of numbers, does Silkmore Lane have even numbers? I grew up in number 105 with 103 and 107 either side, and over the road was a concrete production facility (I think? something industrial along those lines until the late 90s?) which eventually became an estate. Did it have even numbers and then the houses were knocked down, or has number 104 never existed?
 
Wormella

Wormella

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citricsquid said:
Speaking of numbers, does Silkmore Lane have even numbers? I grew up in number 105 with 103 and 107 either side, and over the road was a concrete production facility (I think? something industrial along those lines until the late 90s?) which eventually became an estate. Did it have even numbers and then the houses were knocked down, or has number 104 never existed?
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If it's the same as Oxford Gardens there's probably a whole block which doesn't have even numbers because a factory took it's place,
 
Jonah

Jonah

Spouting nonsense since the day I learned to talk
There is a road near me which has the numbers 37, 39, 41, 43, 45 and 47 missing from the odd side of the road. No apparent reason for it as number 35 is right next to number 49.
 
wildwood

wildwood

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There's some missing on the Lichfield Road too heading into town - it goes 115 to 123. I'm guessing the buildings have replaced houses that USED to be there many many years ago.
 
John Marwood

John Marwood

I ♥ cryptic crosswords
Sir BoD said:
I've done a fair bit of travelling in the past few years, and Stafford actually strikes me as more boring rather than odd.

"PUTTING up for the night in one of the chiefest towns of Staffordshire, I find it to be by no means a lively town. In fact, it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see. It seems as if its whole population might be imprisoned in its Railway Station. The Refreshment Room at that Station is a vortex of dissipation compared with the extinct town-inn, the Dodo, in the dull High Street.

Why High Street? Why not rather Low Street, Flat Street, Low- Spirited Street, Used-up Street? Where are the people who belong to the High Street? Can they all be dispersed over the face of the country, seeking the unfortunate Strolling Manager who decamped from the mouldy little Theatre last week, in the beginning of his season (as his play-bills testify), repentantly resolved to bring him back, and feed him, and be entertained? Or, can they all be gathered to their fathers in the two old churchyards near to the High Street - retirement into which churchyards appears to be a mere ceremony, there is so very little life outside their confines, and such small discernible difference between being buried alive in the town, and buried dead in the town tombs? Over the way, opposite to the staring blank bow windows of the Dodo, are a little ironmonger's shop, a little tailor's shop (with a picture of the Fashions in the small window and a bandy-legged baby on the pavement staring at it) - a watchmakers shop, where all the clocks and watches must be stopped, I am sure, for they could never have the courage to go, with the town in general, and the Dodo in particular, looking at them. Shade of Miss Linwood, erst of Leicester Square, London, thou art welcome here, and thy retreat is fitly chosen! I myself was one of the last visitors to that awful storehouse of thy life's work, where an anchorite old man and woman took my shilling with a solemn wonder, and conducting me to a gloomy sepulchre of needlework dropping to pieces with dust and age and shrouded in twilight at high noon, left me there, chilled, frightened, and alone. And now, in ghostly letters on all the dead walls of this dead town, I read thy honoured name, and find that thy Last Supper, worked in Berlin Wool, invites inspection as a powerful excitement!

Where are the people who are bidden with so much cry to this feast of little wool? Where are they? Who are they? They are not the bandy-legged baby studying the fashions in the tailor's window. They are not the two earthy ploughmen lounging outside the saddler's shop, in the stiff square where the Town Hall stands, like a brick and mortar private on parade. They are not the landlady of the Dodo in the empty bar, whose eye had trouble in it and no welcome, when I asked for dinner. They are not the turnkeys of the Town Jail, looking out of the gateway in their uniforms, as if they had locked up all the balance (as my American friends would say) of the inhabitants, and could now rest a little. They are not the two dusty millers in the white mill down by the river, where the great water-wheel goes heavily round and round, like the monotonous days and nights in this forgotten place. Then who are they, for there is no one else? No; this deponent maketh oath and saith that there is no one else, save and except the waiter at the Dodo, now laying the cloth. I have paced the streets, and stared at the houses, and am come back to the blank bow window of the Dodo; and the town clocks strike seven, and the reluctant echoes seem to cry, 'Don't wake us!' and the bandy-legged baby has gone home to bed.

If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird - if he had only some confused idea of making a comfortable nest - I could hope to get through the hours between this and bed-time, without being consumed by devouring melancholy. But, the Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a chair for every day in the year, a table for every month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely China vase pines in a corner for its mate long departed, and will never make a match with the candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the larder. Even now, I behold the Boots returning with my sole in a piece of paper; and with that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he comes across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo excludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bedroom, a smell of closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond having met him once or twice in a dish-cover - and I can never shave HIM to-morrow morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels; expects me to wash on a freemason's apron without the trimming: when I asked for soap, gives me a stony-hearted something white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, and possesses interminable stables at the back - silent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless.


As Bruce Hornsby (and his Range) once said, "Some things'll never change."
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Miss BumBum does the last supper
 
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