This blog is where I post my main articles. All minor rants,random stuff and spontaneous posts end up on my g+ page. Click on the g+ icon below to see them.
For our first anniversary Tracey and I were going to have tea at the BFI,where we first met. At the Last minute we decided to got to Brighton instead,Tracey had received an invite to a friend of hers Birthday party there. A day trip to the sea side sounded perfect. We got the train and just as it was approaching Brighton,about half a kilometer away it stopped,the announcement over the PA said ‘This is Brighton Station where this train terminates,please mind the gap’. Gap? That’s not a gap,that’s a taxi ride. It did shortly after that make it the final push to the platform. When we walked out of the station there seemed to me more Japanese tourists than indigenous English people,Tracey said they may be here to see the sea,I reminded her that they saw quite a bit of the sea last March.
A short walk away we stopped for breakfast at Taylor Street Baristas to plan what to go see. They had a random selection of books here and I picked up one titled ‘Photography –Using a 35mm camera’ by R.H Mason. It was written in the 70′s and was an introduction to photography laid out in a comic book style. Some of it was obviously dated,but all the basics still stand today. The very odd thing about it was that,with the comic style,I assume it’s targeted at kids,however the authors example photos are all of nude women. And these are not artist impressions,these are real photos. Very odd mix of genres and almost suspect. I think that,if Mr R.H. Mason were to try and publish this book today,he would be put on some watch list. However it was a very entertaining read and also had a lovely scrambled egg on toast at this cafe,ten out of ten for presentation too.
First place to visit,and top of the list in trip advisor was ‘The Lanes’. It was unclear from trip advisor what exactly the lanes were. The only fact I did know was that this was the only part of Brighton (or Brighthelmstone as it was known then) that was not burned down by the French in 1514. I guess they liked that part of town,there was probably a snail or beret shop there or something. Anyhoo,it turned out to be a few small roads and alleyways,full of market stalls and a whole cluster of interesting shops. By interesting I mean visually interesting,not shopping interesting. It was also populated by some colourful characters. I am pretty bad at approaching strangers to ask if I can take a photo of them,but did manage to ask a couple of people this time. First person I shot was a white bearded old guy at a stall wearing a captains hat and smoking a huge cigar. It was exactly the sort of weathered faced character I was expecting to see outside a pub in Ireland last year,which never materialised. So I asked Captain Haddock if I could snap his boat and he agreed. I was so caught up in talking to him and trying to get the pose I wanted from him that I took no notice of the important stuff,like exposure,and ended up horribly over exposing the shots. I did not realise this till we had moved on a bit,what an schoolboy error. Tracey told me to go back but I was too embarrassed,that ship had sailed. We cruised a few of the shops and Tracey picked up a present for Kirsty and her new baby,I would like to point out that I spotted the gift for the baby,it was a bib with ‘Give peas a chance’ on it. I also spotted character number two,the proprietor of a clothes shop. He reminded me of some Victorian gent of a Steam Punk character and approached him saying ‘You have an interesting face,can I take a photo?’ I guess I could have used a better opening line,but hey,he did said yes. Tracey did in the end manage to convince me to go back to Captain Haddock,for which I am very grateful,and this time I managed to get the basics of photography right. Unfortunately his cigar had burned down somewhat by this point,but still makes for a cool portrait shot I think. Probably not enough nudity for Mr R.H Mason’s tastes,but to each to their own.
We stumbled upon some impressive murals in Kensington Street just off The Lanes. Did not see anything about this in the touristy sites,mind you we did not spend much time researching. One thing we did want to see,and which was on the list,was the Culture Quarter which is were we headed next. This is where the Royal Pavilion lives,a building very out of character for England with it’s Indian design with lots of highly intricate detail everywhere. It was built for George Of Wales as a seaside retreat. Most people settle for a small beach hut,not so for George. There were a couple of guys busking in the grounds and they had some very repetitive melody going that was not bad. I actually gave them a pound,which I think is the first time I have ever given any busker some money. Must be getting soft in my old age.
We walked out on Brighton Pier, which first opened in May 1899 at the record cost of £27,000, and did the touristy thing of sticking our heads in the various caricature seaside boards,a Victorian version of Photoshop. On the back of each one was a warning sign about getting your head stuck. If you are not a child and you have got your head stuck in one of these,you are a buffoon and should not be outside without adult supervision. It was extremely windy on the pier and at the far point was a string of bouncy castles. I wanted to sit down and wait for one of the kids to be caught in the hurricane winds mid bounce and be thrown into the sea. Video of said event should have been worth a few quid on some TV show,however we did not have time and I was told it was not a good thing to want to see. I thought it would be TV gold,hey ho. Also on the pier was one of those fish pedicures. Do remember reading about how these fish help to transfer a whole host of infections from one person to the next. Seeing it empty gave me hope for humanity.
Brighton Fishing Museum
Took a stroll along the promenade,taking in the sights and sounds as well as the fresh sea air. Did spot a fishing museum,did not go in,don’t think I could handle that much excitement,plus there was already someone else in there,two people might have been a crowd,packed in like sardines (See what I did there?). After walking along the beach we stopped for a bit of fish and chips at the Buccaneer Cafe,a very narrow and long establishment built into one of the archways under the road. Was a bit like being on a train. Our fish really tasted of the sea and was very nice,could have eaten a second one. Just by the remains of the West Pier,which burned down in 1975,there is an ad for a proposed new tourist attraction called the Brighton Eye,or the i360. This is going to be an 183 metre high tower and has been designed by the same person as the London Eye. Unlike the London Eye wheel design this will have a large observation platform for 125 people that will ride up and down the tower. Should be interesting in high winds.
Then it was time for Kirsty’s Birthday party. We found the building pretty easy and there was someone just about to enter carrying a couple of coffees when we got to the door. The guy saw us behind him and kindly said ‘Did you want me to let you in?’ we said ‘No it’s OK we will ring the bell,unless you are going to flat 4?’, ‘I live there’ he replied,so we told him we were here for his party,LOL. He let us in and as we started up the stairs and said ‘Sorry,who are you?’. Awkward. Tracey convinced him,Chris,that she knew his girlfriend. As it turned out Kirsty was the only person Tracey did know,which was one more person than me. It seemed everyone apart from us had brought a baby,I think Kirsty must have felt we were left out a bit and lent us hers,he was very well behaved and slept through this loan period. There was a lot of breast feeding going on (by the other guests) which was new to me for a party,at least that is,any parties outside of the Soho area. I was tempted,when Chris asked what I wanted to drink,to say ‘I’ll have what he’s having’, but resisted. As well as babies;musical instruments seemed everywhere and various people would spontaneously start playing and others joined in. They were all pretty good and was great to listen to. When they were all in full swing the wooden floor was bouncing up and down in tempo with the jam (I believe that’s what a spontaneous outbreak of music is called).
Then,before we knew it,it was time to catch our train back and exchange the fresh sea air of Brighton for London smog. So long and thanks for all the fish.
P.S. When Tracey read the notes I made for this blog she said ‘This one may actually be funny.’,I just want to thank her for her continued support,it’s what keeps me going
I had always thought that by this time phones would have at least 32gig of space built in and that micro SD cards would be in the 64 Gig range. Unfortunately we are not there yet. This may be a side effect of everything moving to the cloud as less &less local storage is needed. I wrote about this in July of last year.
As my music collection is just over 40 Gig I could not store it all on my phone. Sure I could get a separate MP3 player but it’s something else to remember and maintain. So for years I used Subsonic which basically runs on a PC connected to the Internet,then it streams your music to your PC,Laptop or phone etc. This works fine and is a bit like having your own Spotify service for free. Of course you do need a spare PC and leave it on all the time,but I had this already so no biggie.
Like most Internet connections your upload speed is almost certainly going to be a fraction of your download speed. This is perfect for most situations as you are inevitably leeching more data off the net that you are uploading. When streaming from your home PC to a remote location however this starts to become an issue. I tended to find most of the time subsonic would work fine then other days you had to let it buffer for a fair bit of time. Not a fault of Subsonic,more my ISP. Still rather upsetting that your song would stall just when you were getting into it.
Mood's a thing for cattle and love play - Gurney Halleck
Now with Google Music you transfer all your tunes to their servers and this issue goes away. You do have to first upload all your music which took me just over a week and was not without issue. It seemed to not like any WMA file that had a ‘-’in the filename and would simply stall. Once I figured this out it was fine. Guess it is still in beta after all. However now my songs are on fast Google servers with fast upload speeds I start streaming a song in a couple of seconds. With the advent of HTML 5 your web browser can now function as a very impressive media player.
As long as you have a good connection to the net the streaming is absolutely fine,it’s extremely rare to have a track stall and from clicking play to the track starting is only 2 or 3 seconds.
Google Music on the web
A tip I would suggest before uploading your collection is to run your local library through something like Windows Media Player and get it fill in all the missing meta data. You can add it after the upload but its a very slow process. I would imagine that in the near future Google will add the option to auto tag music,but it’s not there yet.
Google is pretty late to the online music game. Other services are available such as the aforementioned Spotify &there is of course iTunes. I believe that if you use iTunes cloud music service you don’t have to upload your music at all,it scans for what you have locally and then lets you stream shiny new high quality AAC versions. Sounds fantastic. I have heard that it then (in the background) replaces your local music library with these new AAC versions which would not seem to be a problem,some of your local music may be 128k versions in MP3 so getting this replaced with a 256k AAC version is going to be awesome right? It is till you find out they are all DRMd. Now this may not be an issue for you,but sounds a bit sinister to me. Any legitimate non DRM music that you owned has now been replaced by Apple DRMd tracks. Now you are restricted in where you can play them. Owned!
Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap - The Spacing Guild Handbook
Interestingly Google Music has chosen MP3 as it’s format of choice. It’s not the best compression format for audio,AAC is much better. However at high sample rates,I wold suggest 196k+,MP3 sound absolutely fine. I am guessing the choice of MP3 has to do with compatibility,everything plays them back no problem, especially if they are DRM free.
So now we have our music in the cloud it’s a simple case of visiting https://music.google.com/ and you can start playing your tunes on your PC,laptop or slate etc wherever you have a connection to the net. You can also load an app on your phone and stream to that,which is what I use most often. The phone app also has the ability to store music locally so that if you venture onto the subway or visit far flung places without 3G you are still able to throw some shapes.
Google Music on Android Phone
The service has an ‘Make Instant Mix’option that you apply to a track and it creates a playlist of 25 tracks similar to that selected song. This seems to work very well and is a quick way to create a playlist. Like everything else you do on Google Music it’s replicated on whatever device you use to connect to the service. So when you create a playlist on your laptop it appears on your phone and all other devices. No longer do you need to export a playlist from one device to another.
All the usual functions such as sort by artist,Album,Track,Playlist,Recent,Genres etc are all there. Ratings for songs just have a thumbs up or down option which I don’t like. I would prefer to have the good old 5 star rating system. Also my ratings have not been carried over to Google Music,however I have heard other people have experienced any track with 3 or more stars automatically gets a thumbs up. Perhaps I have done something wrong. So I now find myself having to go through my library online to give it a thumbs up/down on each song. A bit of a pain but hey,it’s free.
Yes free. This is probably the most amazing thing about the service. I think they let you upload up to 20,000 tracks for free. My 40 Gig collection is about 2,500 tracks. So that is very generous of them. I guess they could be using the drug dealer model and in a year say that ‘Due to huge volume of storage we now have to start charging’. Hopefully not.
I think Spotify charges about £15 a month (£180 a year) &iTunes ‘Match’is about £22 a year,but is limited to a certain number of devices and this service appears to already be failing. Also I am not sure if the iTunes service does stream,it may be the case that you need to download it first to your device. For now Google Music is a no brainer IMHO,it’s easy to set up (initial upload takes a long time but is a one off thing),works on any internet connected device that can play audio and is free.
I do tend to find it a bit scary how much of my data Google has,however they do such a darned good job of it all. I guess I must not fear…
He who controls the Spice,controls the universe! - Baron Harkonnen
I have never been to Ireland before. Whenever I think of holiday destinations I think of warm places,it felt very odd packing a woolly hat,fleece and my waterproof cycling trousers for a holiday,but boy would I need them. We flew with Ryanair which was perfectly fine but you do end up paying quite a bit more than the advertised price,plus you have to be careful not to fall foul of any extra charges,simply turning up at the gate without having printed off your boarding pass on a piece of A4 will cost you €40. However,got on the plane fine and perfectly good flight,one of the icons on the safety card caught my eye,it appears to instruct you to don a life vest then stick your fingers down your throat. Odd.. When the plane landed there was a bugle fanfare over the PA announcing ‘Another on time arrival’,the interesting thing here is the fligh was 20 something minutes late taking off. It was not thet the pilot put the pedal to the metal to make up foir this late departure,Ryanair know the flight time is is about 60mins but the official time is quoted as 90 minutes. So it’s not surprising it gets in on time,even if it takes off late. What a good blag.
We arrived at Derry Airport and it’s so nice to land and get out of an airport in less than half an hour. Got the hire car and started heading West. In Ireland a lot of the houses do not have numbers or post codes,the postman knows who lives where,for me this is an amazing concept and a hint as to how sparsely populated some areas of Ireland are. Quite how DHL and other courier companies manage to get anything delivered is a mystery.
We were staying with Tracey’s brothers family in Ardara Donegal who very kindly put us up for the week and fed us. The house is lovely and large complete with open fire,cozy. They put us up in Tracey’s five year old niece’s bedroom,with glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. It was very pink. In the garden they have some hens and a cockerel,I found it a bit odd that some of the feed for these animals was egg shells,which is a bit like cannibalism to me. Nice to have freshly ovulated eggs each day though. The local town of Ardara,meaning “Height of the Fort”, is a small (Pop. 578) friendly place where most of the shops don’t take cards and cash registers are usually shoeboxes with calculators stuck to the lid. At the top of the hill is the local guard (Police) station,a small shed. If ‘Assault on Precinct 13‘ had been filmed in Ardara it would have been a very different film. The town is known for it’s tweed products,so may have to get myself a tweed waistcoat at some point.
Wednesday 19th October 2011
First day of sightseeing and although a bit overcast the sun was out in places and so we set off for the Assaranca Waterfall which thanks to the rain overnight was in full effect and for my money more pleasing to the eye than Niagra falls,sorry Canada. Next stop was Maghera beach which is pretty notorious for the tide coming in quickly and cutting you off from the mainland. It was extremely windy there with the Atlantic sea rolling in. Nearby is Grannys Glen,but as the roads were a bit treacherous we did not go up Granny. Feeling a bit peckish we ate at Charlies West End Cafe. They did not have any English Breakfast on the menu but did have Irish breakfast,which appeared to be the same thing but had white pudding instead of black pudding. Now I really felt like I was abroad and living on the edge. Similarly there are no Irish pubs in Ireland,just pubs. At the end of the meal the waitress asked ‘Have yoozed finished?’,fab.
Later we would come back to town to Aroma Pizza,but because of Tracey’s lack of parallel parking skills we ended up parking the other side of town where there was a space large enough to navigate. We ate in the pizza parlour as I think the food would have gone cold if we had walked all the way back to the car. The guy at the pizza place tried to charge me €21,which sounded expensive for a couple of burgers and I told him so,‘Oh I was just kidding’,he replied,then it got revised to about half that. Was he joking or was I almost ripped off? I would like to think it’s the former.
Thursday 20th October 2011
I was woken early by Tracey because there was a beautiful sunrise in full effect,so I grabbed my camera &tripod and took a few shots. I did not know it then,but that was last time I would see the sun in Ireland. By the time we got out the rain had begun and we started off to the fishing town of Killybegs which is where Thomas Nesbitt lived, inventor of the Harpoon Gun. We visited one of Tracey’s relations there who works in a shop by the harbour. Rather worryingly he had a collection box for Lepracy. I am not sure if it was a local problem of for overseas,however I did not shake his hand.
We then drove to Slieve League, a mountain range and peninsula that has one of the highest sea cliffs in Europe. Tucked away at the bottom of the cliffs is the Giants Table &Chair,a couple of large rocks jutting out of the foaming sea. The rain had really started to come down by this point and the wind whipping up the cliffs was pretty nasty. Cold and wet we got back to the car and headed to a cafe we passed on the way to the cliffs. After driving for about a kilometre the car beeped a warning sound,turned out I had not put my seatbelt on,odd it let us go that far before pitching up. Perhaps it was busy doing something else. Anyhoo,we arrived at Ti Linn Cafe &Craft to get something hot. The place was deserted apart from the proprietor,who looked a bit like Bill Oddie. There was a chalkboard with one type of soup on it,I asked what other hot food he had,the answer was just the soup. So we had soup. After a hard slog up the cliffs this was not really enough,but he had no other food,not even a sandwich. So we had some tea and eyed the lambs grazing outside.
When we finished I asked if he knew the way to the Silver Strand,‘Yes’,he said. There was then an awkward silence for several seconds in which I think I heard my stomach rumble,then he told us the way. Oddie was a lovely man,but perhaps the lonely existence has left him a few sandwiches short of a picnic,in more ways than one. The weather was now a full on gale and when we arrived at the Silver Strand,a beach situated at Malin Beag,near Glencolmcille small animals were flying past the car. Tracey did not want to stop because she feared it would be blown away. I hopped out to make the video below, unfortunately you can’t hear a thing I ‘m saying as the wind was so strong.
Friday 21st October 2011
Another rainy day so we decided to spend the day visiting Tracey’s relations. We also went for a walk at Loughros Point. In the evening we got invited to a meal with Marion and her family which was really nice.
Saturday 22nd October 2011
According to the weather report there should be a break in weather today for a short while,the next few days are forecast to be very wet. So we decided to make a dash for the Giants Causeway as it may be the last chance to see it in any kind of dry weather. It’s about a 3 hour drive from Ardara to the causeway in County Antrim and on the way you pass from Southern Ireland to the North,I was expecting some sort of checkpoint,but the only sign you have passed to the Northern Ireland are the speed signs change from KPH to MPH. Saw a cool sign near some roadworks sating ’Kill your speed,not our workmen’. There were some odd signs painted on the road saying ‘Slow’which is fair enough,but then a few yards later another painted sign on the road saying ‘Slower’. By the time we got to the Giants Causeway it was about 17:00 and although it had actually just stopped raining it was starting to look like it would rain again. The causeway is extremely odd looking,I understand that it was created by volcanic activity,but why it formed in the way it did with fairly uniformed hexagonal piles of varying height. After about 20minutes the rain came back with a vengeance and it got real dark. Did manage to get a few photos but most were trashed due to water on the lens or because of the high winds there was a fair bit of motion blur,even though I was using a tripod. This was the first time I think I have ever cranked my camera up to ISO 3200 in the daytime.
That evening we went out on a pub crawl of the local town. Started off at Teague’s Bar then moved onto The Beehive. Both places were pretty much empty,quite the change to what I am used to where it takes you several minutes to get to the bar and then more time to get noticed. Made for a nice change. On the way home I had a Watcha Mc Collums burger from a roadside burger bar,was very much needed to warm me up as it was extremely cold that evening.
Sunday 23rd October 2011
The sky today was battleship grey again and the plan was to have a local walk but it was so wet and cold we did not get any further than the bottom of the garden. There is a stream down there with a rope swing that I had fun playing on,simple things. It was pretty muddy and we did not want to spend too much time there in case trench foot set in. Was nice to get back indoors to the open fire.
The papers had a story about Ireland having the worst weather in recorded history. Luck of the English.
That evening we went out to Thomas Paul’s 70th birthday which was exactly what I thought it was going to be. Large gathering of friendly people with plenty of drink food,fags and singing. I wussed out at about 02:00 but I am guessing the party was only just getting started.
Monday 24th October 2011
Monday was grey again and we did a bit more visiting of Traceys relations then off to see Donegal Castle. It’s the first castle I have seen with a bay window,probably a weak point in any siege situation,even with double latch window locks. The castle should have been open to visitors that day but the main door was closed and locked,perhaps the owner was out looking for some French doors. We also went down to the Friary Ruins on the bay,again it was chucking it down with rain,but at least it was quiet out. Every sensible person was indoors. Did see a solar powered sign post warning of conditions. It must have had a radar attached as it only came on when a car was close. This was a good idea as there was not much sun to keep it going. Also saw a tractor with a large hedge trimming attachment going down a lane cutting back the roadside foliage. It was essentially a large flymo strapped to the side of a tractor,ugly but very effective. Luckily no farmers or horse stuck there head out to see what the noise was,would have been messy. Went back to the house and went to bed dreaming of the horse head scene from The Godfather.
Tuesday 25th October 2011
Today is our flight home with the worlds favorite airline Ryanair. I had a fantastic time in Ireland and met lots of friendly people. Would like to see the country again when its not under water or grey.
Tracey and I booked a weekend stay in Bath,or Aquae Sulis (Waters of Sulis) if you are a Roman. As it turned out this weekend was a special Jane Austin event, this duth maketh for a most agreeable visit.
Coming Soon at Bath Abbey
We arrived a Bath Spa train station at about 10:00 and headed off towards the Jane Austen Parade by Bath Abbey.
There was a bulletin board there titled ‘Coming Soon at Bath Abbey’,it was blank. Fortunately the city had other things to see and do. I was expecting to see a dozen people in period costume for the parade but was delighted to find about a hundred or so. So we navigated our way through the crowd and got to the head of the line and watched all the Mr Darcys and Elizabeth Bennetts stroll by with assorted other characters. As a photographer Bath is a very target rich environment,with this parade it was hard not to get a good shot. Twas a good breaking in of my new Canon 60D,a vast improvement on the Box Brownie I wager.
After the parade we checked into our hotel to dump our bags then we walked up the East bank of the river Avon towards Pulteney bridge which is somewhat similar to the Ponte Vecchio in Italy. It is named after Frances Pulteney,heiress in 1767 of the Bathwick estate across the river from Bath. Robert Adam changed Pulteney’s original simple design to the one we see today. Evidently he was inspired by the Ponte Vecchio in his travels to Venice. That explains that then.
Just downstream of the bridge is a beautiful ‘V’shaped weir. On the other side of the river is a small park and some large columns with the road above,grand design and architecture all round. I went mental with the shutter. Thankfully Tracey is very tolerant of my hobby.
On the steps leading up to the bridge is a hobbit sized archway that leads to a small eatery called Riverside Cafe. There we ordered fish and chips,it was huge. It was also served with a small cup of what looked like sick. I think it was mushed peas,but I declined to try it. The meal was gorgeous and the view of the weir superb. Whilst eating we spotted a couple in period costume,we both jumped out to snap some shots, Tracey shouted out and got their attention and they kindly obliged us in a bow,complete with doffing of hat. On our walks we saw quite a few people still in period dress,I called them period people. ‘Oh look’I would say,‘More period people’.
We walked west to The Circus and the beautiful Royal Crescent. These two places are joined by a road called Brock Street and when viewed from above these two areas look like a key,check it out using the Google map at the end of this blog. Someone told me this was on purpose and had links to the Freemasons. I think the Royal Crescent has to be the most attractive set of terraced houses in England.
After much walking about taking in the sights we stopped to have a delicious meal at Browns Bar &Brasserie,by the time we left it was dark and so we went to take a look at the Abbey at night. I got my tripod out and started taking some long exposure shots. We walked round to the front of the Abbey and there was a lady sitting on her own on one of the benches there.
Woman:Where are you from? Us:London. Woman:Do you know how many pictures have been taken of this church? Me:No. How many? Woman:Thousands and thousands. Do you think your picture will be any better than theirs? Me:I believe I can take a nice photo,I like to think I would have a chance. Woman:You are stupid,you are wasting your time. Me:Well I think I will give it a try thanks. Woman:You’re being stupid,whats the point? Me:What is your problem lady,seriously? Woman:You’re the one with the problem.
I thought it best to try and ignore this most impertinent woman,she was obviously spoiling for a fight for some weird reason. She did not sound drunk so perhaps she simply found sport in goading people. We moved to get another angle. After a bit she pitched up again with some other nonsensical comments and how pointless my actions were. I had finished taking my photos of the Abbey so I walked off. As I was just about to walk round the corner onto Stall Street she shouted ‘Prick’. Oh lordy I thought,can’t have that. So I had to walk back and continued my phlegmatic approach.
Me:I feel sorry for you,I really do. You are a very sad and pathetic person. Woman:You are the pathetic one my friend,you’re a prick. Me:Nice comeback lady,and I am NOT your friend. Do you have any friends? I can’t imagine you do with that attitude.
At last this shut her up,so I guess I had struck a nerve. I stood there for a few seconds waiting for some retort,nothing. I did consider taking a photo of her then uploading some local ‘Beware the Goth’message on Google+ just to warn others,or perhaps I could have printed it out and added it to the ‘Coming Soon at Bath Abbey’ bulletin board ‘See the batty bint of Bath’. Thought better of it. So I wished her a good night and walked away. I think that is one nil to the away team,back of the onion sack. Finally, I rather think my photos of the Abbey and Bath are quite good if I say so myself,certainly a cut above your average tourist snapshot. So in your sad face mad Bath lady.
Tracey insisted I let her write the following:
So we are in Newmarket Row shortly after meeting the mad woman. Tim is busy taking some photos and I’m enjoying the peace and quiet when,suddenly,Tim goes “Oh,Shit!”(in a really urgent way like something is wrong). I’m like,OMG –whats up with Tim? So I ask him. “What’s up?”He keeps saying “it doesn’t matter”,“it doesn’t matter”but I’m not having any of it and get it out of him. He goes on to explain that he thought for a moment that he lost/left his glasses in the restaurant as he couldn’t see through the camera properly. Then it slowly dawned on him that his glasses were,in fact,in front of his eyes all along and that the camera was out of focus. That was the funniest moment of the weekend,for sure. LOL.
We then walked back to the hotel,both of us were glad to put our feet up after 12+ hours of sightseeing.
Sunday 18 September,2011
For Sunday breakfast we headed off to Sally Lunn’s in North Parade Passage. It’s allegedly the oldest house in Bath (c.1483). This is a tiny eatery where we ordered a famous Sally Lunn Breakfast bun with scrambled egg and tomatoes. Was lovely, especially with plenty of tea. It certainly set us up for the days sightseeing. Whilst we were eating a couple of walking tours stopped by outside and a whole host of them pressed up against the bay window and peered in to watch us eat. The place is listed in some guides as a museum so perhaps they thought we were all animatronics,I was tempted to do one of those robot waves but did not. At the end of the meal we realised that neither of us had any change for a tip and asked the waitress if she could give us change of a fiver,she could not. So we rummaged through all our pockets and came up with about 37 pence in shrapnel. I kinda hope they saw it as a tip befitting an establishment of the 1400′s.
On the list of things to see and do for today was to take a dip in the spa. We arrived and found there was no queue so I walked directly up to the receptionist to find that Tracey had decided to go via the empty zig zag barrier thing off to the side. The receptionist and I looked at each other and grinned then we followed her movements looking left then right and back,not dissimilar to watching a tennis game. Eventually she made it through the vacant line. Being my usual tactful self I said ‘That was retarded.’Luckily she took it in the good humoured way it was intended. Unfortunately the spa was booked up for most of the day. I was not terribly upset however as £25 each for a couple of hours sitting in water that is somehow supposed to magically make you feel better is not a great deal IMHO. I can make my fingers prune at home for free in my bath. Great business model however,money for old rope. It’s sorta like a large scale Homeopathy deal and I think I have made my feelings on that subject very clear in the past.
Next stop the Roman Baths. It had started to rain pretty hard by then so this was well timed. After the winding round the internal museum bit we got to the main bath area where the rain was lashing down into the bath which seemed to make it steam more than usual. A little further on the tour is a raised glass floor leading over some of the old excavations,Tracey was tentatively treading on the glass looking concerned,so I just had to come running up and jump in the air and come slamming down next to her. This was great fun,for me anyway,and I’m pretty sure the other people on the glass bridge at the time thought it was a wag also. With the Abbey Goth,Sally Lunn tip &glass bridge incidents I really felt I was making friends in Bath.
Be Seeing you.
Ofter leaving we set off for the Jane Austen Centre. Jane Austen who is probably most famous for her book ‘Sense and Sensibility’lived in Bath from 1800~1809,she did not write very much when there however. It is said she was shocked to be told she was moving to Bath. It may have had something to do with the address,if you were told you were moving to Gay Street you may also be upset. ‘Where duth you hail from?’,she may have been asked,‘Um,Gay Street,Queen Square.’Chortle,chortle. The tea rooms at the top of the house were fab,lashings and lashings of tea &cake. We also bought some tea to take home,one of the less exotic brews,or as I called it,the plain Jane.
Then we were off home via the iron horse back to Londinium. Bath was certainly a great place to have visited, especially on the Jane Austin weekend.
A short walk away we stopped for breakfast at Taylor Street Baristas to plan what to go see. They had a random selection of books here and I picked up one titled ‘Photography –Using a 35mm camera’ by R.H Mason. It was written in the 70′s and was an introduction to photography laid out in a comic book style. Some of it was obviously dated,but all the basics still stand today. The very odd thing about it was that,with the comic style,I assume it’s targeted at kids,however the authors example photos are all of nude women. And these are not artist impressions,these are real photos. Very odd mix of genres and almost suspect. I think that,if Mr R.H. Mason were to try and publish this book today,he would be put on some watch list. However it was a very entertaining read and also had a lovely scrambled egg on toast at this cafe,ten out of ten for presentation too.
First place to visit,and top of the list in trip advisor was ‘The Lanes’. It was unclear from trip advisor what exactly the lanes were. The only fact I did know was that this was the only part of Brighton (or Brighthelmstone as it was known then) that was not burned down by the French in 1514. I guess they liked that part of town,there was probably a snail or beret shop there or something. Anyhoo,it turned out to be a few small roads and alleyways,full of market stalls and a whole cluster of interesting shops. By interesting I mean visually interesting,not shopping interesting.
We cruised a few of the shops and Tracey picked up a present for Kirsty and her new baby,I would like to point out that I spotted the gift for the baby,it was a bib with ‘Give peas a chance’ on it. I also spotted character number two,the proprietor of a clothes shop. He reminded me of some Victorian gent of a Steam Punk character and approached him saying ‘You have an interesting face,can I take a photo?’ I guess I could have used a better opening line,but hey,he did said yes.
We stumbled upon some impressive murals in Kensington Street just off The Lanes. Did not see anything about this in the touristy sites,mind you we did not spend much time researching. One thing we did want to see,and which was on the list,was the Culture Quarter which is were we headed next. This is where the Royal Pavilion lives,a building very out of character for England with it’s Indian design with lots of highly intricate detail everywhere. It was built for George Of Wales as a seaside retreat. Most people settle for a small beach hut,not so for George.
We walked out on Brighton Pier, which first opened in May 1899 at the record cost of £27,000, and did the touristy thing of sticking our heads in the various caricature seaside boards,a Victorian version of Photoshop. On the back of each one was a warning sign about getting your head stuck. If you are not a child and you have got your head stuck in one of these,you are a buffoon and should not be outside without adult supervision.
Did see a solar powered sign post warning of conditions. It must have had a radar attached as it only came on when a car was close. This was a good idea as there was not much sun to keep it going. Also saw a tractor with a large hedge trimming attachment going down a lane cutting back the roadside foliage. It was essentially a large flymo strapped to the side of a tractor,ugly but very effective. Luckily no farmers or horse stuck there head out to see what the noise was,would have been messy.
