There were only a couple of presents that I specifically asked for Christmas this year, and one of these was a Google Chromecast. At £30, it’s a cheap and easy way of getting internet content onto your TV.
The Roku is good little device, especially as it now supports almost all streaming media services in the UK with the recent additions of Rakuten’s Wuaki.tv and Amazon Prime Instant Video. And it’s easy to use, since it comes with a remote control – unlike the Chromecast. The main issues I’ve been having are:
Speed – apps such as BBC iPlayer are very slow. You can press pause, and the Roku will take several seconds before it actually responds in any way. I imagine newer Roku devices (the third and fourth series) are much faster; the Roku 2 series was on its way out when I bought it in 2014. That being said, it’s still receiving software updates which is good.
Stability – sometimes the Roku crashes, and has to reboot. I’ve had particular problems with the YouTube app causing this.
Netflix – the Netflix app on the Roku (second series at least) is poor. It doesn’t support multiple user profiles per account, so whatever you watch goes on the viewing history of the main profile. And parental controls don’t work, so you can’t watch any shows on the Roku which require a parental control PIN.
Spotify – Roku has a Spotify app, but you need to be a Premium subscriber to use it – that means paying £10 per month. I’m on Spotify’s £5 per month ‘Unlimited’ plan, which suits me but doesn’t work with the Roku.
Where the Chromecast excels
Setting up the Chromecast is quite easy – it took around 10 minutes which included installing a software update. And installation is as simple as plugging it into a spare HDMI socket, and then connecting the USB cable to a spare socket (a mains adaptor is included if required).
To ‘cast’ something, you just need to open an app on your Android or iOS mobile device, and look for the cast icon. Whatever you’re streaming will then appear on your TV, and you use your device to control it – playing, pausing etc. And, it only casts the content that you’re streaming, so your TV won’t flash up any notifications for example. This is a big advantage over simple Bluetooth speaker systems, for example, which simply broadcast all of the sounds that your device makes.
Compared with the Roku 2, the Chromecast is very fast. Tapping the cast icon in an app registers almost straightaway on the Chromecast and the only delays seem to be caused by buffering, rather than the device itself being slow.
Netflix works as well as it would do on a mobile device, so we can watch more adult things when our one-year-old isn’t about, but also ensure that their profile doesn’t show them. And Spotify streaming via Chromecast is available to all users – even those with free accounts.
There’s also a guest mode, which lets anyone who doesn’t have your Wifi password to cast to your Chromecast – provided that they have the PIN code displayed on the home screen. The PIN changes at least once a day.
…and some pitfalls
I’ve already mentioned the lack of a remote. But this problem is exacerbated, in my view, because you have to go into the app to access the controls to play and pause. On iOS, at least, the controls don’t appear on your device’s lock screen. You can lock your device and the content will still play, but pausing when the phone rings (for example) is a bit more involved. It’d be nice if there was an iOS widget that could pause whatever is playing, but I don’t know if that’s possible.
Not all apps support Chromecast. The big one that’s missing is Amazon Prime Instant Video, although there is a relatively easy workaround. The other app that I miss is UKTV Play, which is the only way that we can watch shows on Dave, like the new series of Red Dwarf. Living in a valley prevents us from receiving Dave via Freeview, we can’t get Virgin Media, it’s not on Freesat and we’re too cheap to pay for Sky.
I was also hoping that my favourite Podcast app, Overcast, would work, but apparently not. A tweet from the developer suggests that it would not be trivial to add this in future. And you’ll need to use an app such as AllCast if you want to view photos and videos from Dropbox on your Chromecast. I had mixed results with this in my testing.
Also, none of the built-in apps on iOS support Chromecast. This isn’t surprising – Apple sells a rival device, the Apple TV, and has a rival protocol called AirPlay. AirPlay is, in my view, more basic than the Chromecast protocol. With AirPlay, your mobile device acts as an intermediary – it receives the content stream, decodes it, and then sends it via AirPlay to your Apple TV. The Chromecast, instead, streams directly from the content provider – your device merely sends some instructions. The main benefit is that it won’t drain your device’s battery.
Sadly, I also had some stability issues when using the NextUp Comedy app with the Chromecast. Like with the Roku, these caused the Chromecast to lock up and restart. However, at least my device remembered where it was, so I could pick it up again easily after a restart.
Putting Chrome into Chromecast
There’s a reason for the Chromecast having such a name, and that’s because you can cast web pages from the Google Chrome web browser on the desktop. This is how you can get the aforementioned Amazon Prime and UKTV Play onto your Chromecast, but it does mean that you’ll have to play and pause playback using your computer. Which isn’t ideal when your computer is in a different room to your TV, like it is in our house.
Overall
The Chromecast isn’t perfect and has some key pitfalls as mentioned. But it’s great value for £30, and relatively simple for a moderately tech-minded person to use.
It’s time for my annual review of the year just gone. 2016 was a year that many will want to forget, thanks to the many celebrities who passed away this year (Victoria Wood arguably being the loss I’m saddest about), and major world events like Brexit and Donald Trump’s election. For us, it was a year of adapting to the major changes that took place in our lives in 2015, and coping with a rather limited income, thanks to Christine’s maternity leave and childcare costs.
Our baby arrived in the world late in December 2015, and was re-admitted to hospital on the 30th December with jaundice. So Christine and I were apart for New Year’s Eve, for only the second time since 2009 when we first met. Indeed, we didn’t have a great January; an undiagnosed tongue-tie meant a struggle to consume enough breast milk, and so we had to top-up feed with formula. Thankfully, the tongue-tie was picked up, the operation was a success, and 12 months on Christine is still breast-feeding in the mornings and evenings.
I was lucky enough to be on paternity leave for the whole of January. People whose partners give birth are allowed two weeks statutory paternity leave at 90% pay, in addition to any other leave entitlements; I topped this up with two weeks annual leave. A fifth week came about as my workplace is closed for Christmas. I’m really glad that I was able to take more time off – having spoken to other new dads who could only take two weeks, they found it not nearly long enough.
We made some progress on the house, with new doors downstairs. All year, we’ve been close to finishing the dining room by putting up coving and new architrave – but nearly a year on, those two jobs are still outstanding.
Later in the month, I went on the first of two visits to London this year, to attend a seminar on Big Data with my expenses paid. I also managed to squeeze in some time with friends whilst there which was nice, especially as I was on my own. And it was my blog’s 14th blogiversary. At the end of the month, we went to Halifax’s Bankfield Museum, to see the launch of a series of paintings by local artist (and friend of a friend) Kate Lycett, featuring various stately homes in Yorkshire that met an untimely end.
Right at the end of January, I had the first of three job interviews this year.
February
February saw me return to work after paternity leave, and on my first day back I was informed that I had got the job. It was a six month secondment working in timetabling at the university – same office, but different team. It was also quite a good pay rise and the extra money really came in useful this year. I hoped that this would become a new career path for me, but it didn’t really work out – I didn’t enjoy the job as much as I had expected, and other factors came into play in the summer.
Valentines Day was spent at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster. It’s a fantastic open-air zoo, and we’ll definitely go back there again.
I spent an evening at an arts centre in Sale, near Manchester, for a recording of the Guilty Feminist Podcast. It was good fun, although I wish Christine could have come with me as she would’ve enjoyed it too. Alas, we’ve not really been able to get a babysitter and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to bring a baby along. At least Christine got to listen to the show a few weeks later.
We had a few days out in March – the farm at Temple Newsam, York Model Railway Show and Lotherton Hall, where I was able to make use of my new (to me) Canon EFS 55-250mm lens on my SLR camera. It’s great, and has allowed me to take some brilliant photos this year.
We also took our baby to the theatre – an amateur dramatic production of ‘Back to the 80s’. It was a relief to know that we could still go out with a baby in tow.
April
We started April by making a return visit to Hebden Bridge, for the first time since the devastating flooding on Boxing Day 2015. There was also a day out at Springtime Live at the Yorkshire Showground – a smaller scaled version of the Great Yorkshire Show with a focus on activities for kids and families.
A visit to the Trafford Centre (now much easier to get to as we have a car) saw our first visit to Five Guys, which is still relatively new to the UK. They’ve since opened in Bradford and we’ve been 3-4 times now.
May is my birthday month, and was also our third wedding anniversary. At home, we moved forward with a couple of projects – a new boiler, and a downstairs toilet. The new boiler, combined with a Nest thermostat, seems to be saving us money. Which is good, as we’ll still be paying back the cost of the boiler installation (on interest-free credit, thankfully) until May 2018.
Whilst it took me two months to write about it, we had a nice day out at Hollingworth Lake, a reservoir near Rochdale that’s become an inland tourist attraction. At the end of May, we had a day out in Scarborough, including a visit to the Sea Life Centre.
In other politics news, I joined the Labour Party. Historically I’d voted for the Liberal Democrats, but following their collapse in the 2015 general election, I felt it was important to support the left-wing party best-placed to form a government in 2020. So far, the regular emails that I get from my local MP and councillor (both Labour) have been useful but I’ve not yet got further involved.
June was my first Fathers Day, which was nice.
July
I started July with three job interviews scheduled, for four jobs (one was for two posts). Restructuring at work meant that my substantive post was being made redundant, and so I needed to find a new post. My secondment was also about to run out at the same time, and the third interview was to continue this on a fixed-term 9 month contract.
I got offered both jobs in the first interview, but failed the second. I accepted one of the jobs, and declined the third interview, as the job I accepted was a permanent post. Best of all, it was on the same wage as the secondment, so I finished the year with more pay, better job security, and, thanks to several workshops, a massively improved CV. 2016 wasn’t all bad after all.
Having booked a Friday off for something that then got cancelled, Christine and I ended up with a free weekend, and so we booked a last-minute impromptu trip to Liverpool. We took our baby with us, and it proved that we could still spontaneously go away even with a small child in tow. It was our first visit to Liverpool since 2010.
Whilst we were there, Christine started playing Pokémon Go, which hadn’t officially launched in Europe but it was possible to side-load the APK on her Android phone. I started playing when the official launch happened, and we both still play to this day. I’m level 27.
Although we’d been to Springtime Live earlier in the year, we went back to the Yorkshire Showground for the Great Yorkshire Show proper in July. Because we were meeting with friends whilst there, it meant that we didn’t see as much as usual, but it was still a fun day out.
At the end of July, Christine finished her maternity leave and returned to work. Our baby now spends weekday daytimes with a childminder, although until September this would only be four days a week. Christine and I took it in turns to take Wednesdays off, and I had my first full day on my own with our baby. It wasn’t a total success but I managed better on later occasions.
August
I started my new job on the 1st August, processing PhD applications. The first couple of months were basically spent firefighting, as I started at a peak time, but things have settled down somewhat and I’ve been able to make some improvements to processes. I’m enjoying the job; I get to work with some of my old team and lots of new people who I get on with well.
We attended a couple of wedding receptions in 2016, but it wasn’t until August that we went to a full ceremony and reception, for two friends from university. It was up in County Durham, in a really nice part of the world that I’d not previously been to before. And we had a day out in Ripon on the way home which is one of Britain’s ‘Cathedral Cities’ – it’s a small town that has city status by the virtue of having a massive cathedral.
On one of my ‘Daddy Days’, we followed the Hebble Trail from Salterhebble into Halifax. Someday, I’ll actually write up the blog post that I’ve been meaning to write about it.
September
We’d finally ‘finished’ the living room – all the paint is on the walls and we’ve installed the furniture that we want. The living room is also a designated ‘baby safe’ room, so we spent some time erecting a TV stand and fixing the TV to it. Indeed, just about all of the furniture in there is fixed to the wall. Our baby had learned to sit up by July and was crawling by this time, and later in September had learned how to pull themselves up on furniture. Still not able to walk independently yet, but not far off.
Only one major day out in September, which was a visit to Cannon Hall Farm, near Barnsley. It’s a great place for families, with an indoor soft-play area, lots of animals to look at (including meerkats, bizarrely) and activities. Our baby enjoyed it, and we’ll be back sometime. Especially as it was quite cheap.
We also managed a child-free day closer to home. After dropping our baby off at the childminders, we went to see Doctor Strange at the cinema. This was our first cinema visit in almost a year – the last film we’d seen was Spectre, when Christine was still pregnant.
November
America decided to emulate Brexit by electing a man whose surname means ‘fart’ in British English as their next president. I was hoping Hillary would win, and I guess we’ll have to see what happens. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not still president in four years’ time – whether he resigns due to corruption or boredom, or gets impeached, I don’t know.
Despite not getting as much sleep as usual, I managed to stay reasonably healthy this year, until a bought of gastroenteritis hit me in November. Annoying, I got ill with it again in December, and then had a horrendous cold right through the Christmas period.
As in previous years, we went to the Thought Bubble comic con, this time with our baby in tow. We didn’t have chance to dress up this time though.
December
And so to this month. We haven’t had any days out – it’s winter, and we’ve been spending time doing Christmas shopping. But we did manage another child-free day, this time to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the cinema. We spent Christmas itself with my parents in York. Plans for New Year are sketchy, but shouldn’t involve our baby being in hospital this time, hopefully.
A quick blog post to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
We’re in York with my parents for what is our little cherub’s first Christmas. Alas, it’s been overshadowed by illness – all but my dad are all ill with a horrendous cold. As in, the sort of cold that’s serious enough to warrant sick leave from work.
My main presents were a new power drill, and a Google Chromecast, which I’m looking forward to trying out when we get home. Our not-quite-one-year-old got a chair and plenty of toys, and my gifts to Christine were a couple of books.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and an enjoyable festive period.
Yesterday, I did another round-up of the audiobooks I’ve been listening to recently, save for two. I singled out these two as they’re both by the same author, and are both fiction. Now I’m not a big reader of fiction, as my wife, ex-girlfriend and parents will testify. So what made me read these books?
The two books are Terra (Amazon link– sponsored) and Terra’s World (Amazon link– sponsored), part of a series with recurring characters by Mitch Benn. Benn is best-known as a musical stand-up comedian. He has performed on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show for many years and regularly tours his shows. Indeed, I’ve seen him perform live four times now:
In Leeds, at the wonderful City Varieties, with his band The Distractions.
In Leeds (again), at the rather less wonderful Carriageworks Theatre, with his show Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle (also broadcast as a standalone Radio 4 show).
In Halifax, at the Square Chapel, with the Don’t Believe a Word show that he has just finished touring.
In Hebden Bridge, at a comedy club night at the Old Gate where he was the headline act.
I also follow him on Twitter, where he is very active. So you could say I’m a fan.
Anyhow, as well as being a successful stand-up and radio performer, Benn has also written the two aforementioned books. I would probably describe them as ‘young adult science fiction’ – not too challenging to read, but enjoyable stories. And they’re good books, with good reviews of them both.
Terra tells the story of a baby girl, whose bickering parents accidentally leave her behind, when fleeing from the car after an encounter with an alien spacecraft. The spacecraft’s pilot, having seen that the baby had been abandoned, takes her back to his home planet. He names her ‘Terra’, and brings her up as if she were his own daughter.
Terra’s World follows the first book. The story is told partly from the perspective of Billy, a new character who befriends Terra after her return to Earth in her adolescence. The planet that Terra grew up on is in trouble.
For me, Terra’s World was the better of the two books, but you’ll need to read (or listen to) both in order to understand the plot and who the characters are. I would also recommend the audiobook – Mitch Benn read his own work very well, especially the pronunciation of the names of the alien characters. Plus, he has composed the music that accompanies the books.
The epilogue to Terra’s World implies that Benn plans a third book, although I understand from Twitter that he doesn’t yet have a publisher for it. I hope he’s able to find one – I thoroughly enjoyed these first two books.
Sara Pascoe’s book Animal (Amazon link – sponsored) is part-autobiography, part-anthropological look at the female body. It’s not a textbook – whilst Pascoe has clearly researched it thoroughly, it’s written with appropriate humour. Pascoe is, after all, a stand-up comedian.
More academic readers, especially those with an anthropology background, might take issue with some of Pascoe’s work, but I found it very enlightening. Reading… sorry, listening to it shortly after the birth of my daughter was timely, as it covers childbirth, and why human offspring are born so helpless when compared to other animals.
It can be a difficult read/listen at times, but I would heartily recommend it to everyone – not just to women, but to men and anyone who doesn’t fall into those two categories.
The Actual One
You will, by now, have noticed a trend – that I listen to a lot of memoirs by female stand-up comedians, and The Actual One by Isy Sutie (Amazon link) is yet another. Sutie, as well as doing stand-up, is probably best known for her role as the character Dobby in the Mitchell and Webb sitcom Peep Show.
The book’s title refers to Sutie’s search for the ‘actual one’ – the one person that she wants to spend the rest of her life with – but at the same time refusing to grow up whilst her friends get married and have kids.
Sutie reads her book well and it’s a charming story, but I didn’t enjoy this book as much as others.
Shrill
Lindy West isn’t a stand-up comedian, but she is a feminist and her book Shrill (Amazon link – sponsored) is a memoir about being a loud woman who isn’t afraid to take up space in society. Or, at least, not now – she wasn’t always like that and she discusses her upbringing in the book, as well as her career as a journalist.
It’s a good book, although not such a good audiobook. West is a great writer but I think her delivery could be better; I put this down to having listened to several previous books read by those who perform on stage.
I haven’t really followed Schumer’s career, but this book was recommended to me. It charts Schumer’s life, from being born into a wealthy family that lost almost everything, to living paycheck to paycheck in New York to becoming the household name that she is today.
I really enjoyed it. Schumer sounds like the sort of person I would love to be friends with – a definite guest at my imaginary celebrity dinner party, along with Felicia Day and others. Again, there are difficult sections that deal with non-consensual sex and abuse, and Schumer talks candidly about the shooting at a cinema in Lafeyette, Louisiana where her film Trainwreck was showing at the time. Schumer reads the book well and I heartily recommend it.
Bad Science
I bought Dr Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science (Amazon link – sponsored) last summer, when it was on offer on Audible but before I’d re-subscribed. It’s a long book – about twice the length of most of the other books that I’ve mentioned today – and it’s not autobiographical. Shock horror!
I’ve followed Dr Goldacre’s work ever since he was a columnist in the Guardian, writing a column of the same name. A number of the topics that he wrote about in his column crop up again in this book, with whole chapters on Gillian McKeith, Andrew Wakefield, various nutritionists and the media. Whilst it is about science, it’s an accessible read, and I say this as a relative layperson. You’ll even learn about how to spot bogus or overstated science stories in the media, such as the ‘most depressing day of the year’ story that seems to re-appear every January.
Dr Goldacre doesn’t read the audiobook himself – instead, it is read by voice actor Rupert Farley, who delivers a good performance.
Up next
I’m currently listening to From Frazzled to Fabulous(Amazon link – sponsored), the spin-off book to the popular ‘Man Who Has It All’ Twitter and Facebook page. Imagine a self-help book for women, telling them in a patronising way how to be successful whilst managing a family, but gender-flipped. It’s a comparatively short book, and was offered for free on Audible recently.
Plus there are a couple of other feminist titles on my wishlist. Tomorrow, or whenever I get around to it, I’ll write about the two other books that I’ve listened to recently.
Last month, Christine and I had a day out in Oxford. I have family who moved down to nearby Bicester from Yorkshire some years ago, and so we visited as a stopping-off point on the way to our week’s holiday in London.
My relatives kindly offered to look after our baby for an afternoon, giving Christine and I some time to ourselves, and the opportunity to visit the city. I’d last been there in the 1990s, coupled with a visit to Legoland Windsor, but Christine had never been before. She arranged to meet a friend for lunch, and then we hit the museums in the afternoon.
Oxford Museum of Natural History
Oxford’s Museum of Natural History isn’t as big as the one in London, but it is also free to get in. The museum is part of the University of Oxford, and is home to various stuffed animals and preserved skeletons. One of its more famous exhibits is the Oxford Dodo, an incomplete dodo skeleton. It’s accompanied by a model showing what we think a dodo may have looked like.
The building is also interesting. Many of the supporting columns are made with different minerals (with labels), making the building a museum piece in itself.
A number of the exhibits can be touched, which makes a change from seeing endless glass cases. There are also a number of activities for kids during school holidays.
Pitt Rivers Museum
Tagged onto the back of the Museum of Natural History is the Pitt Rivers Museum. We only had time to look around the ground floor but there was plenty to see. It houses a series of collections of objects, many of which were brought in from overseas and are sorted by theme. There are collections of pottery, death masks, shrunken heads (which were the inspiration for those used on the Knight Bus in the Harry Potter films), charms, weapons, musical instruments and lots more besides.
I’m sure you could visit multiple times and still see something new each time. This is despite the museum fitting into one, admittedly large, room.
As we were only in Oxford for one afternoon, we didn’t get chance to see much of the rest of the city centre. But we’ll probably go back again before long, especially for a return visit to G&D’s ice cream café.
Like most of the world, I was rather shocked when I read the news on Wednesday morning, following the US presidential election. I didn’t want to write about it straight-away and give myself time to process it, but I’m still flabbergasted that someone as awful as Donald Trump could be elected to be the most powerful person in the world.
I’m not going to try to come up with my own theories about why it happened – I’ll leave that to those with more knowledge of the facts. Especially as I don’t live in America, nor have I ever visited. But it brings back some painful memories of earlier this year, when it was announced that a relatively narrow majority of those who voted in the EU referendum voted to leave. And it reminds me of 2004, when George W Bush was re-elected US president with a greater share of the vote.
I don’t have any solutions, but America and the world have been in bad places before, and we’re still here. There’s an analogy I’ve heard where everyone is on a plane with an incompetent pilot; if he/she crashes then we all die so we need to work together to make sure we stay in the air. Whatever happens, the next four years have become very uncertain.
And I appreciate that as a white, able-bodied, straight middle-class male who doesn’t even live in America, it’s easy for me to say that. If I wasn’t at least one of those things, then I would rightly have more reason to be terrified. We need to stick together and be good allies to each other, and hope that we will all get through this alive.
Next week, Christine, our baby and I are off to London for a few days. It’ll be our first trip as a family of three there; I last went in January on my own when our baby was only a few weeks’ old. It’ll also be the first time I’ve ever driven to London, as we’ve always taken the train or coach in the past.
I’m driving because we’re also visiting family on the way, but also because of the amount of luggage we’ll need. Babies may be small, but they also need several days worth of food and nappies, a pram, travel cot, high chair and other things. So whilst Christine and I could do several days in London with a rucksack each, with a baby, we’ll need the car.
We’re staying in a hotel in north London that’s easily reached by car and has parking, but is also close to a tube station. Once we’re there, I have no intention of driving in central London – congestion charge aside, I’m not keen on driving in city centres. And whilst London Underground is not great for prams or wheelchairs, our baby thankfully tolerates being carried in a sling.
Part of the reason for our visit is so that I can go to the HE Show at Olympia – if you’re going as well, drop me a line. We’re also planning to go to the Tower of London, as it’s been many years since I visited, and Christine has never been. It’s expensive, unless you have lots of spare Tesco Clubcard tokens like we do.
I always look forward to trips to London, partly because we always make a point of seeing friends who live there when we go, but also because there is so much to do. It makes a change from a few years ago when I developed a general dislike of the place. Back then, I also had access to free train travel and so could visit London (or, indeed any British city) whenever I wanted to. Perhaps I like London more nowadays because I only get to go there once or twice each year, and it usually requires weeks of forward planning – I can’t just decide to go there on a whim like I used to.
Earlier this summer, Yorkshire gained a new railway station on the outskirts of Leeds. Called Kirkstall Forge, it’s located on the Airedale and Wharfedale lines which offer commuter services from the Aire and Wharfe valleys into Leeds and Bradford. And on Wednesday, I went to have a look at it.
Kirkstall Forge gets its name from a large forge that used to exist on the site. It was demolished, leaving a huge area of brownfield land, ripe for development. And it happened to be right next to a railway line. So the site’s developers contributed a sizeable amount of money to ensure that a station could be built. After all, houses near railway stations tend to command higher prices.
The station has been a long time coming; plans were first drawn up 17 years ago in 1999, but it wasn’t until 2014 that all of the funding became available. Construction started later that year, although its location on the River Aire’s flood plain put its opening back to June.
As it was a nice day on Wednesday, I walked to the station from Leeds, along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. It’s about five miles and took me a bit over an hour to get there. Of course, I was about a third of the way there before I realised that Google Maps wasn’t showing a footpath from the canal towpath to the station. Thankfully, a quick Google search verified that there was indeed a path to link the station to the canal. Indeed, thanks to the footbridge at the station, access to the canal in this area is now greatly improved.
The station itself is nothing special. Two platforms, a footbridge with lifts, a couple of waiting shelters, some seats, a ticket machine and a passenger information system. The latter two of these were out of order, showing a scrolling message about checking the paper timetables. Welcome to 2016, everyone.
Considering that a train passes through the station every 10 minutes in each direction, surprisingly few actually stop there. The basic service seems to be hourly in each direction, to either Leeds or Shipley and Bradford Forster Square. A handful of services instead go to Ilkley or Skipton, but these seem to be limited to peak times.
It might seem a bit of a waste then, to spend millions on a station with such a basic service. But then, there isn’t yet much to serve here. Whilst I’m sure that the forge site will be covered with hundreds of new houses in a few years, right now there was only a little construction taking place. Still, I was not the only person to catch the train towards Bradford, at around 4pm.
Kirkstall Forge, for now, retains the crown of Yorkshire’s newest station, but not for too much longer. South of Bradford, Low Moor station is under construction, on the site of the ill-fated Transperience museum, and is due to open next year. Well, hopefully – it’s already behind schedule after an uncapped mine shaft was found right where one of the lifts was due to be installed. There’s still a big gap in the Bradford-bound platform, at time of writing.
Scott managed to visit Kirkstall Forge before me and wrote about it – and I largely agree. Maybe in a few years, the station will be able to better justify its existence.
I’m about six weeks away from my car insurance policy expiring. Presently, I’m with Diamond (part of Admiral Insurance), and haven’t yet had their renewal quote. But I’m already shopping around to see if I can get it cheaper elsewhere.
I’ve not claimed this year, so I should have one year’s no claims bonus. And I’m not a brand new driver any more. Hopefully, the combination of these factors will mean that I can simply renew my car insurance with Diamond to get the best deal, but I’m keeping my options open.
I did a quick price comparison on Confused.com, to see what other insurers could offer. Admiral Insurance itself came top at under £550, which is around £150 cheaper than Diamond was last year. There were a few others under £600, although the quotes will expire before my renewal date. Still, it’s good to get an idea of what’s out there.
I also got a car insurance quote from LV=, after receiving an email from my trade union with an ‘exclusive discount’. Their quote was almost £2000, which, for a car that is worth less than £4000, is ridiculous. Especially when another firm can offer similar cover for around a quarter of the price.
Whilst it’s a pain to have to research new car insurance policies each year, you usually have to be a new customer to get the best deal. Insurance companies presumably make most of their money from those who auto-renew every year, and don’t shop around. It is time consuming getting new quotes, but it can be worth it.
