I was in Chorley town centre to watch the small procession with the Mayor and Santa arriving at the Radio Lancashire stand when I noticed a parked police car by double yellow lines blocking an emergency access to the pedestrianised area. When the female police officer returned to it, she was not on any mission of mercy but seemed to be wandering about aimlessly, I pointed out than she was illegally parked. She took no notice, sat in her car and stayed there. Presumably the police think they are above the laws of the highway and with this attitude and nobody to police the police - they are.

Around 1925 the then Fylde Water Board began to construct Stocks Reservoir and associated pipelines between Slaidburn and Blackpool. High on the fells above Slaidburn is the old Jumbles Quarry where the stone was cut for the reservoir embankments etc. The quarry and reservoir construction site were connected with a narrow gauge railway. All that remains of the works in the quarry is this 1920s vertical-boiler steam crane.

The railway timetables are mostly fine, except for the massive blank during the night hours. This means that if you are trying to get home and one of the trains arrives at a station around midnight you have a long cold wait for a connection. I reached Manchester Piccadilly station at around 12:15am, knowing there was no suitable connection for many hours. I asked one of the stations cleaning staff where the waiting room was as was told there wasn’t one! I was told I could wait on the main concourse all through the night and it would be perfectly safe as there are CCTV cameras. I wasn’t the only one having to wait. The benches were horribly hard and uncomfortable so I used my small inflatable mat and sat on the floor all night. I would expect this in darkest Siberia but not a so called modern society.

Preparing for a long wait at Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station.

Batteries of the AA type always seem to confuse the security people at airports. The UK government website on batteries says carry them with you as cabin baggage and this worked fine when travelling to Kathmandu last month. However, this morning I tried the same system when trying to fly home from Kathmandu and the batteries I was carrying were detected by the X-ray machine and I was detained, interviewed and held until 10mins before my flight was due to leave. All my batteries were confiscated. I have no idea why and I’m sure they don’t either.