A nice sit down and a think

From 'Memorial Bench' blog

The internet can be an amazing place sometimes. The time and energy that goes into crowdsourced information is fantastic. Until recently, I had no idea that people were making maps of public benches so you can find a place to sit down and have a think when on your travels whether that's in the town or the countryside. And it's not just about the benches, it's also about who the bench is dedicated to. So many of our benches have a dedication, especially on benches where there is a particularly good view that meant something to the deceased.

There are a few online resources out there...

A Nice Sit Down is on a mission to get photographs and location of all the public benches out there. It's a bit bonkers, but each bench gets their own page and you can add a bit of blurb to your entry if you wish. There aren't that many benches on the site but you might find one local to you or you can add one that's near you.

Open Street Map (a free, editable map of the whole world that is being built by volunteers) has a list of some of the benches in the world. It's not comprehensive unfortunately. I did a check on a couple of locations I know very well, and the benches I know about weren't listed. It's also safe to say that I found Open Street Maps a bit tricky to work out how to use it. It's a long time since I've had to read a map that's not a street map so I'm rusty on the protocol and on top of that, Open Street Maps seems to be very geeky so may put off the less geeky among us.

In Memory of is a blog about memorial bench dedications and the views from those benches. The author, George, claims to have always had a morbid fascination with reading the dedications on memorial benches and after a chance conversation with a fellow fan, she started the blog. She adds photos of memorial benches and the views from them on an ad hoc basis. She also accepts submissions from others.

The newest resource on the block comes from my friends Terence and Elizabeth and it's called Open Benches. They've put this together following on from their interest in blue plaques and the wonderful Open Plaques site. Blue plaques commemorate the famous and influential figures from the past and the open plaques site document those plaques and some of the history behind the figures.

For the rest of us, there are memorial benches. Open Benches is dedicated to those benches and they're asking people to take a photo of a bench's plaque and upload it to the site and it will then automatically be added to the map.

So the next time you're on a walk and rest on a public bench, why not take a photo of it and the memorial plaque on it and share it with the world via Open Benches? Not only will you be honouring those who've gone before us, but you'll also be sharing a valuable resource for those who are less able to walk or stand and need to sit down to rest and recuperate.

Day 4/25 Blogmas

Maps, Open Data and the Call for Cleaner Air

Screenshot of the Clean Air Merton Map of Air Quality results across Merton, London.

Those of you who know me personally, know that I've suffered with allergic rhinitis (that's hay fever triggered by more than just pollen) since I was a child. After a hiatus from symptoms in my teens and early twenties, a spell working in fashion retail in Knightsbridge with our store doors open all day and the relentless stop-start traffic outside caused my allergic rhinitis to return with a vengeance and it has never yet relented. This summer, during the heatwave week when NOx levels were exceptionally high in London I suffered, what I now know was an asthma attack. I had a worse one a few weeks later and ended up in hospital in the urgent care unit hardly able to breathe. Both attacks probably triggered by air pollution. This isn't trivial. That second asthma attack was very frightening indeed. I read someone describing an asthma attack as feeling like you're drowning in air. That pretty much sums it up.

Reading around the topic of asthma and pollution, I discovered that my local area is a hotspot for pollution and registered twice the legal levels of NOx in recent tests. It's a busy main road, there's a roundabout and lots of traffic lights and there's a lot of traffic that stops and starts causing much of the pollution. There are roads just like that all over London and up and down the country. I knew that parts of London had problems with air pollution, but I didn't realise how close to home it is. Air pollution is an issue which respects no boundaries.

As a result, I'm all for having cleaner air to breathe and luckily for me there are people already working towards this in my local area from several different community groups. They've teamed up and shared their air quality results with those of the council and mapped them on Google Maps. It makes for interesting reading. You'll need to be looking at Wimbledon, Mitcham and Morden to see the results. The black markers are over the legal NOx levels, the yellow markers are not far off the legal levels and the blue markers (there are only 2 of them across the borough) are well below the legal levels.

That's pretty depressing. The area where I live has lots of green space. I live within walking distance of Figge's Marsh, Mitcham Common, Ravensbury Park, Morden Hall Park, Tooting Common and Beddington Park. Yet still we're suffering. The picture will be similar up and down the country.

Mitcham Cricket Green Community & Heritage has lots of action points to improve air quality in Merton and one hopes that both normal citizens as well as those in authority in local government and business take note and take action.

The good news is that this data is  open data and therefore public which means anyone can see it and contribute to it. A big thank you to the contributors and administrators. This is important work and necessary to help us understand the impact we are having on our own environment. If we know what we're dealing with, we can find solutions. Let's all work towards having cleaner air to breathe.

Day 6/30 NaBloPoMo