Sunday, March 22, 2009
Seaside confusion
For some reason I have got my wires crossed between Hastings and Worthing. Don't seem to be able to tell the differance unless I stop and think about it. Bit like left hand and right hand on a bad day. So reduced to correcting a recent post some days after the event, something I do not like doing. (Tampering with notes taken at the time is a serious matter for a policeman). To avoid this problem, yesterday to Southsea. Bright sunny day, reasonably warm when properly wrapped up and huge, if stony beach. Long wide promenade. Lots of handsome park. Lots of people about, including herds of young people up to no good. Hanging out, tinnies, maybe even the odd fag. Somebody ought to do something about it.
Nearly lost FIL, so took tea at http://www.royalbeachhotel.co.uk/ to restore strength and good humour. Tea made with very powerful tea bags, the caffeine and tannin content of which entirely made up for the lack of nicotine and alcohol. Quite passable peice of Dorset apple cake, and, being a hotel, they found it necessary to decorate each peice with a halved strawberry, nearly frozen. At least FIL could have them, being thought to be gluten free. (The pleasant young barmaid who served us knew what the words meant but could not offer anything in the geefree cake department). Strange sounding, unmasonic lodges meeting there later in the day. League of bonding or something. Plus sundry weddings and engagements. Reminded that these big old hotels have a big advantage when it comes to putting on a flash meal: they have the rooms to do it in, unlike a Holiday Inn.
The strolled around. Inspected the impressive rose garden, which will be really impressive when the roses are out. Passed the model village and the boating pond. The latter complete with various pedalos dressed up as swans and what-have-you plus two very large model boats. One about six feet long, some sort of a battleship in conventional Atlantic gray colours, the other about twelve feet long, some sort of a cruiser in Britannia (the late lamented) blue, white and yellow. Maybe they are the sort of colours one had when cruising on the Yangtzee, something FIL's father spent a few years at in the thirties of the last century. Round the pier, which seemed to have bits missing, in particular the theatre at the end. It seems that it burnt down at some point and no-one thought it worth while putting it back up again. Down past the Pyramids - a sort of salle polyvalent including a large and complicated swimming pool - and onto good king Harry's fort - which, we learnt, had never fired a shot in anger in the 400 or so years of its life.
Back to the Pyramids, the appearance of which seemed to vary with distance. Very ugly at 100 yards, dominating the promenade, but much better closer to, when the cunning devices to reduce visual impact worked. Inside, for the first time in my life, I heard a clarintet quartet - that is to say four people playing the clarinet, not something by Mozart - in the middle of a rather feeble arts and crafts show.
Closed the event by taking the largest pebble I could find on the beach for adding to the new ponds. Luckily, just on the waterline, I came across a rather worn, 1kg flint, the shape of short fat sausage, hugely larger than anything else on the beach. Now safely installed on the boundary of the middle pond.
Having got there down the eastern road, past the Pompey-Everton bash, returned up the western road, through old town. Sadly, the fish stall in old town where we have, in the past, bought excellent kippers, was shut for the day. Up through all the goings on at Hindhead where I was moved to ponder on the eco-values of what was being done.
So we have a small town, the centre of which has been more or less killed off by having the A3 run through the middle of it. Solution, given the outstanding organic/vegetarian beauty of the surrounding countryside, build a tunnel. At a guess, I say that the tunnel and its approach roads cost £20m a mile. Say £200m altogether. All this to save motorists who ought to be using the train a few minutes at the Hindhead crossroads. How about if we canned the tunnel and bought out the 50 properties in the town centre? Give them £1m a go and four weeks notice to be out. Then knock them down and beef up the cross roads a bit. Say £50 for the compensation and £50m for the beefing up. Profit £100m. Large swathe of outstanding organic/vegetarian beauty not trashed. On the other hand, the PFI contractors would not have been making anything like so much, so they wouldn't have been prepared to pilot my revised scheme through the planning process. Taken all those worthy councillors and sub-regional planners on tunnel fact finding missions through neighbouring tunnels sort of thing. I wonder if I will attempt to find the business case for the thing?
Nearly lost FIL, so took tea at http://www.royalbeachhotel.co.uk/ to restore strength and good humour. Tea made with very powerful tea bags, the caffeine and tannin content of which entirely made up for the lack of nicotine and alcohol. Quite passable peice of Dorset apple cake, and, being a hotel, they found it necessary to decorate each peice with a halved strawberry, nearly frozen. At least FIL could have them, being thought to be gluten free. (The pleasant young barmaid who served us knew what the words meant but could not offer anything in the geefree cake department). Strange sounding, unmasonic lodges meeting there later in the day. League of bonding or something. Plus sundry weddings and engagements. Reminded that these big old hotels have a big advantage when it comes to putting on a flash meal: they have the rooms to do it in, unlike a Holiday Inn.
The strolled around. Inspected the impressive rose garden, which will be really impressive when the roses are out. Passed the model village and the boating pond. The latter complete with various pedalos dressed up as swans and what-have-you plus two very large model boats. One about six feet long, some sort of a battleship in conventional Atlantic gray colours, the other about twelve feet long, some sort of a cruiser in Britannia (the late lamented) blue, white and yellow. Maybe they are the sort of colours one had when cruising on the Yangtzee, something FIL's father spent a few years at in the thirties of the last century. Round the pier, which seemed to have bits missing, in particular the theatre at the end. It seems that it burnt down at some point and no-one thought it worth while putting it back up again. Down past the Pyramids - a sort of salle polyvalent including a large and complicated swimming pool - and onto good king Harry's fort - which, we learnt, had never fired a shot in anger in the 400 or so years of its life.
Back to the Pyramids, the appearance of which seemed to vary with distance. Very ugly at 100 yards, dominating the promenade, but much better closer to, when the cunning devices to reduce visual impact worked. Inside, for the first time in my life, I heard a clarintet quartet - that is to say four people playing the clarinet, not something by Mozart - in the middle of a rather feeble arts and crafts show.
Closed the event by taking the largest pebble I could find on the beach for adding to the new ponds. Luckily, just on the waterline, I came across a rather worn, 1kg flint, the shape of short fat sausage, hugely larger than anything else on the beach. Now safely installed on the boundary of the middle pond.
Having got there down the eastern road, past the Pompey-Everton bash, returned up the western road, through old town. Sadly, the fish stall in old town where we have, in the past, bought excellent kippers, was shut for the day. Up through all the goings on at Hindhead where I was moved to ponder on the eco-values of what was being done.
So we have a small town, the centre of which has been more or less killed off by having the A3 run through the middle of it. Solution, given the outstanding organic/vegetarian beauty of the surrounding countryside, build a tunnel. At a guess, I say that the tunnel and its approach roads cost £20m a mile. Say £200m altogether. All this to save motorists who ought to be using the train a few minutes at the Hindhead crossroads. How about if we canned the tunnel and bought out the 50 properties in the town centre? Give them £1m a go and four weeks notice to be out. Then knock them down and beef up the cross roads a bit. Say £50 for the compensation and £50m for the beefing up. Profit £100m. Large swathe of outstanding organic/vegetarian beauty not trashed. On the other hand, the PFI contractors would not have been making anything like so much, so they wouldn't have been prepared to pilot my revised scheme through the planning process. Taken all those worthy councillors and sub-regional planners on tunnel fact finding missions through neighbouring tunnels sort of thing. I wonder if I will attempt to find the business case for the thing?
# posted by Jim @ 2:07 AM 
