And Happy New Year to all BootsnAll members and visitors to the site.
My name is Chris O’Neill and the Bootboys have invited me to contribute to this blog with some daily thoughts on what’s happening in the London area and the UK. I was born and grew up in north London and now live in a small town called Hertford, pop. 22,000, which is about 25 miles north of the centre of London.
Well, winter has arrived at last, it snowed pretty much all day here but hasn’t really settled. It’s been much heavier to the south of London with some places getting about eight inches, so if you’re coming here soon bring warm clothing.
A piece of travel advice for anyone landing at Heathrow Airport this Saturday and Sunday, 11/12 January. You won’t be able to get the tube from Heathrow to central london, they’re replacing the track, so there are coaches to take people to Acton Town from where you can catch the tube onwards.
The big news here has been the arrest of seven Algerians, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, for the manufacture of a poison called Ricin. One milligram of Ricin can kill if injected, inhaled or eaten and there’s no antidote.
The crazy thing is how easy it is to make. You get it from the seeds of the castor oil plant by crushing the seeds in water, the Ricin dissolves into the liquid, takes about 15 minutes. Then put the solution in a centrifuge for 45 minutes and you’re left with a Ricin sample you could inject or dry as a powder. Death takes about three days.
These guys were holed up in a flat in the Wood Green area of London. I know this place really well, a very multicultural, working class part of town, with lots of new immigrants, so a group of young Algerians would not look out of place. It’s also about two miles from a well known mosque at Finsbury Park that Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, attended. Hopefully there’s no more of these characters still loose waiting to use this stuff.
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Chris - the Heretford Gooner -if anyone remembers World Cup Blog - he graced us with his writing presence back in June.
I am chris’s bro and spent Christmas with him in London. While there I updated the BootBlog from a cyber cafe in Wood Green. It is very multicultural…almost in a crazy way with refugees from all over the world seemingly outnumbering the locals. Apparentely 187 languages are spoken in N.London.
I remember back in 1982 going to my first kung fu class with a muslim guy named Massar in finsbury Park. That place has always been multicultural.
Nick
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