Song for me

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

3 letters

One of the things I have been thinking about is "What combination of three letters has the most permutations?"

For any group of three letters, there are six different combinations. For example...

ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA

That's just an example, and it yields just one legitimate English word, CAB, unless BAC is also a word.

I've not found a group that makes words in any order.

Or five.

I've found one that makes four:

SAP - ASP - SPA - PAS (the last word is a dance step closely derived from French but it's in the dictionary)

Here are some that make three:

APT - PAT - TAP
ART - TAR - RAT
TOP - POT - OPT
ERE - REE - ERE
ERA - EAR - ARE

It would be easier if I included acronyms.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Your money or your life

I call this the highwayman fallacy.

"Or" is a logical signifier.

To take the highwayman's words literally, you can either give him the money, or he will kill you, but leave you with the money.

So it should really be "Your money, or your money AND your life.

Just sayin'

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Living on an island...

When you look at Wirral, it's basically a rectangle, and that's how people tend to think of it. But it's a bit more complicated than that. Wallasey, on the top right corner, is almost cut off from the rest of it by the system of docks that run from the River Mersey through Birkenhead and up towards the Irish Sea. There are only 5 roads in and out.

Road 1. Leasowe Road, takes traffic from the North Coast of Wirral, Moreton, Leasowe, Meols, Hoylake, West Kirby into Wallasey Village.

Road 2. This takes traffic from the North of Birkenhead, with a lot of the stuff carried by road 1, and any traffic from the M53 into Wallasey.

Roads 3,4 and 5 all take traffic across bridges over the docks. 3 takes some of the M53's traffic and North Birkenhead. 4 takes stuff from the middle of Birkenhead. 5 Takes central Birkenhead, and anything coming up the A41 from Eastern Wirral - Tranmere, Bromborough, Rock Ferry, Bebington, etc.

Between 3 and 5, the docklands are being prepared for redevelopment. They have big plans for this area, which has been pretty much unused for the last couple of decades.

So they've been replacing the bridge over road 5. What should have taken a few months has now taken well over a year, and they're still not done. So all the traffic that would normally go through road 5 is being funneled through the other routes, mainly road 4. At rush hour, all of these routes become gridlocked. I'd like to humbly suggest that putting some kind of temporary structure in place, like a pontoon or something, might have been useful. When this work is finished, they will be replacing the bridge over road 4.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been roadworks causing long delays on road 2. (They're putting traffic lights in) For the last couple of days, a burst water main caused the closure of road 3.

I shall leave it to your imagination as to the effects. Road 3 has now reopened, but not everyone knows about this, so people are still avoiding it.

The bridges themselves, taking roads 4 and 5 across the docks, are quite interesting. They're single leaf bascule bridges with a curved rack intersecting a flat stretch of pinion on the side of the roadway. The leaf is balanced by a counterweight, which means the bridge needs relatively little energy to move.

Picture credit: Rept0n1x 

The bridges date from the 1930's, and both the Tower Road (Road 5) and Duke Street (Road 4) will be replaced by something that involves hydraulics and pistons and what have you. There will be one left, spanning two unused sections of dock. I'm glad about that. This type (known as a rolling bascule) is actually quite rare. They're a part of our industrial heritage, and have allowed ships and cars (and trains) to traverse the docks for close to a century.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

Limerick.

There was an unfortunate painter

Who's work became fainter and fainter.

He started in black, but pigments he lacked

Until he had nothing but

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?