Special thanks to Gareth Spencer, part BT, part hypnotiser for the tip-off for this story. Also a phone call while I was away on my hollies in Ireland from a BBC reporter who wanted this society’s anshauung*1 on the whole story.
One of the oldest telegraph poles in the UK has been saved to remain forever*2 to stand alongside the canal at Oilmills Bridge in Ebley near Stroud in Gloucestershire. This is the first time we have heard of poles actually being saved – with BT Openreach promising to continue to look after it as though it were an operational pole despite its being unused for up to thirty years. It is believed that the pole dates from 1895 and formed part of the link between Stonehouse and Stroud. I feel a bus trip coming on here.
Anyway, congratulations to the oft-maligned BT Openreach who get nowt but praise from our particular direction (WNW from there) and now that I have some names they can look forward to many, many emails from me.
I don’t normally just lift photos off the internet, but I haven’t been able to source one of my own. So, in a weak attempt to assauge any copyright infringement flak that may come our way, I’d just like to say what a fine and informative newspaper the Stroud News & Journal is – I wouldn’t eat chips out of anything else. And reporter Saul Cooke-Black’s sterling work at Stourbridge FC is sterling indeed. The full story of the above and from which mine is so obviously cribbed can be found <<right here>>.
*1 I’ve been playing with my thesaurus and can see me irritating a lot of people with my smug erudition as I bandy anshauung around from here on.
*2 Possibly not true: forever means infinity which is technically the limit that a function ƒ is said to approach at x = a when ƒ(x) is larger than any preassigned number for all x sufficiently near a.