About 20 years ago, my partner and I were walking alongside the Kennet & Avon Canal at Thatcham. We noticed a middle-aged woman looking sad and Maz, a very sympathetic lady, went up to enquire if she was OK. It  turned out the woman's son had died there, so Maz gave her a big hug. (We were on the Ridgeway above the Vale of Pewsey and noticed a stationary tractor with a man lying on his back about 15 yards away. Maz went over, but as she approached he got up - apparently he'd been having a snooze.)

I've mentioned before that I was waiting for a train in heavy drizzle at Tilehurst Station and noticed a girl sitting on a bench. When the train arrived, I got on, but the girl remained on the bench. Luckily there was a trio of Samaritan-style volunteers who'd got into the same carriage as I, so I pointed the girl out to them, and they scrambled off to offer help.

Grahame, not for a second did I think that your posting the image was any form of endorsement, rather that you did it only because it was a nice illustration - and one I found evocative. I only made my own post because of the coincidence of the company (of which I hadn't heard before) having just  featured in another forum which I frequent.

Reference the idyllic "poster" for Fisher Investments: there are half-a-dozen websites I visit daily, including a financial one where , coincidentally, someone asked about this company three days ago. The replies, one referencing comments elsewhere on the Web, advised caution about becoming a customer.

I guess that the turn-over of staff at pubs and other hospitality venues doesn't help. No doubt newcomers get some sort of induction training, but does it include "Angela"? Apparently not.

I think there's also a scheme whereby people with incontinence problems can produce a card asking to use the staff toilets. I wonder if this arrangement is also generally known to staff?

And I gather there are various ways that women can indicate that they're in an awkward situation. A very quick Google shows there are sites listing three or five ways, including this American one.

Who's going to replace them?

Typically for the Reading Chronicle, its headline says "Reading train station death: Person killed near Thatcham".

Before Lockdown, I sought several times to catch the very first Reading-bound service from Tilehurst Station on a Sunday morning, only for there to be a replacement bus service. (I would like to think that I knew this in advance.) On one occasion the bus entered the station forecourt where I was waiting, on another it stopped on the road outside the station and latterly one was meant to catch it from the regular bus stop at Kentwood roundabout.  I think that they only got around to stating on the departures board where to catch it on my last trip.

In mid-October 1914 some 31,000 Canadian soldiers arrived in Plymouth (most of their convoy having been diverted from Southampton because of a U-boat scare) and were taken by special trains to several stations on the edge of Salisbury Plain.
This photograph has been reproduced a dozen or more times, with varying captions. A copy in Libraries and Archives Canada describes it as "Troops of 3rd Brigade proceeding by bus from Plymouth to Salisbury Plain". The play "My Lady's Dress"  opened at the Royalty Theatre on April 23, 1914 and ran for 176 performances, an advert in The Times of Friday, October 23rd announcing  "Last 2 Nights", so it finished on Saturday the 24th, thus greatly limiting the time span of the photo.  The hut or tent in the background, together with the unsurfaced track, suggests that the bus had arrived on the Plain. There appears to be no information about bus journeys in appropriate war diaries.

The bus bears the name,"The National xxxx Car Company Limited", presumably the National Steam Car Company which was established by Thomas Clarkson to run steam buses in competition with the London General Omnibus Co. In 1912 the company was estimated by a competitor to have 27 buses in operation.

The New York Times of October 17 refers to "a long [Canadian] transport train of wagons ... motor trucks and lastly the commandeered London motor 'buses' arriving on the Plain”. Certainly Automobile Machine Gun Brigade No 1 and the Divisional Supply Column did drive to the Plain, via Exeter, Taunton and Heytesbury, an easier route compared with the hilly Exeter-to-Amesbury road.

It is a little difficult to believe that one or more London buses would travel the 200 miles to Plymouth and then 140 miles or more heavily laden to the Plain, and there would have been little need for them to collect soldiers de-training at Wiltshire stations, given the short marchable distances to camps. Unless the bus was already in Plymouth after delivering soldiers from the London area to troop ships there.

Lorry carrying hay-bales stuck under Reading railway bridge.

At least there shouldn't be any damage, and clearing up should be easier than usual.

Ah, the Cow Lane bridges ... Yes, that's the route I would take, though the ambulance that collected me the other day (no need for blues and twos) turned right into Beresford Road, then left, then right into Salisbury Road, emerging near Reading West Station.

The taxi driver who returned me home from hospital used the back doubles south of Oxford Street. (A friend had offered to collect me, but that would have meant her driving into  Reading from M4 JII, finding a parking space at the Royal Berks, finding me and then driving me home in the rush hour. Which might have strained our relationship.)

Fifty years ago (gulp!), my office was in Market Place House in Reading. There was a terrible Vauxhall Viva office car (smelly plastic seats, three gears with the lever on the steering column) that we were expected to use on business rather than our private ones. I have grim memories of taking it home to Tilehurst in the evening rush-hour for use next day:thirty minutes to cover four miles ...

When my office closed in 1982, we ended up in a grubby London office with "Holborn Viaduct"in its address.The office car was even worse, spending most of the time covered in pigeon poo in a triangular courtyard. For a while, the new boss expected me to drive the car 40 miles to my house, to use it rather than mine the next day for a 19-mile journey on the outskirts of Basingstoke. Eventually he saw sense ...

(I was tempted to laugh when the office car broke down on the M3 when he was driving it; a decision was taken to scrap it.)

"Our local stopping trains between Didcot Parkway and London Paddington will only run between Reading and London Paddington." 

That seems hard luck on passengers between Reading and Didcot - stranded at stations with few facilities, if indeed any that are open in the afternoons. Usually in these circumstances, I think, there's a shuttle service between the two towns. At least Newbury-Paddington trains ran between Newbury and Reading.

A friend was talking of visiting me from London yesterday and might have been affected had she done so, prompting me to have to drive her into Reading from Tilehurst (direct route down the nightmarish Oxford Road). In previous instances like this, I have been known to lack gallantry and put them on a bus ...

My Government job meant that it was possible that I might have had a place in the bunker opposite Basingstoke Station. On a course at the Home Defence College at Easingwold, I had the temerity to suggest that some officials might not turn up,preferring to be with their families; this prompted the tutor to have a dig at me later when he suggested that I might be one such. In the event of escalating tension, selected officials would report to a hotel in Newbury (close to the strategic targets of Aldermaston, Greenham Common and the USAF^▸ (United States Air Force. The Boeing C-40 Clipper is a military version of the Boeing 737-700C airline transport. The name comes from the fact that It is used by both the United States Navy and the United States Air Force) bomb depot at Welford) and then be bussed to Basingstoke.

There were fears that some might prefer to see out Armageddon with their families so, bizarrely, the Government  said that some relatives might be allowed in to the bunker ("Bouches inutiles"  - "Useless Mouths") and one guy nominated his grandmother.

Happily the world became a safer place    and the bunker was de-commissioned ...

"more bike parking is 'not ideal' and could cause 'bigger increase in crime'"

I'm not always impressed by claims of "victim blaming" when someone states the obvious. Perhaps the Comments from the Neighbourhood Policing Team, particularly the last paragraph, could have been phrased slightly differently, but the first one states a fact and the second sensibly suggests action that would benefit cyclists.