pumpkinstrokemarrow

I don't remember seeing a thing like this in the late sixties but it would have been an excellent accessory for a flower child.

A dancing water bowl. 15 inches in diameter. From Eastwind of Cambridge.

PS: maybe the people at BT Broadband are listening in. Prompted to take an important upgrade today. After which no longer sure that a bit of the help system was missing, as reported yesterday. Maybe I was just abusing it.

Was this my first ever residence in this world? With thanks to http://www.mysuffolkfamily.com/postcards3.html

Being in the area, thought to do a bit of poking around in the natal roots.

The large semi in Ipswich where my parents lived at the time of my birth. Also two siblings. Also a lodger.

In a park in Woodbridge, part from there being a large and impressive copper beech in one corner, there was something called an equatorial sundial in another. Which consisted of a spike which I decided was pointing at the Pole Star with a cylindrical ring around it. The cylindrical ring carried hour markings on its inner surface, and the shadow did indeed mark the right spot according to my mobile phone. There were a couple of screws for making minor adjustments to the orientation of the spike according to the time of year.

My reasonably old Sony amplifier recently started to behave a bit erratically, doing odd things if one moved the volume control carelessly or tapped the top of the casing. Decided that it was time to do something about it.

Can now indulge in a bit of hot off the motorway comparison between the Novotel at Ipswich and the Best Western at Cambridge.

We were amused by a rich Jacobean's idea of cupboard decoration which we came across in Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich. Might be thought a touch tacky these days, but as it is, an important historical document. Possibly Ole King Cole.

Bit of public archeology yesterday, courtesy of the National Trust. Where they manage to put on a good show despite the burial mounds themselves not being that impressive. I imagine they would have been more so when raw and new, perhaps at a time when the landscape was less obscured by trees and bushes.

Shiny new exhibition and cafeteria halls. Exhibition hall has lots of educational panels, a sprinking of artefacts and some interesting reconstructions. I was very impressed by the sword, the construction of which was very complicated. A core and two edges. The core made in a long process of folding alternate layers of mild and hard steel, twisting the resultant bars into ropes and lastly welding two such ropes together to make the core. How on earth did such a process evolve? How much status did the smiths have? More or less priestly? What relation did this process bear to the Damascus proces of damascening sword baldes, also very strong and up for slicing through the rather thin armour available in those days. There was also very elaborate decorative metal work on a small scale - clasps and buckles and such like. Impressed also by the material poverty of the big cheeses of that time. They might have had some very fancy toys but that was about it. After that onto wives, slaves and other livestock.

Site rounded out by a couple of excellent circular walks, mainly through woodland. Some large trees, mainly sweet chestnut, and the largest ash tree I have seen since our visit to Cadbury castle. Views of the Deben, from where the funeral ships had been dragged.

Plus a nice bit of chain saw art of Spot the magic dragon. Whoever did it played to the tree as he found it, rather than playing with his chain saw. Far better than the stuff you get in Surrey.

The mystery to the proper bread in Novotel has been solved. When logging out I noticed that the Apple was talking to me in French and the reception people informed me that Novotel was indeed a French outfit. Presumably all their IT is piped through their HQ, somewhere in France.

But they have put up a black. I discover this morning that I cannot escape Coronation Street by having a bath. They have thoughtfully piped the sound from the television into the bathroom. On the other hand they did see fit to pipe up the toilet in the same way...

Yesterday evening we discovered where the brightest and best in Ipswich spend their evenings when we wandered along the northern shore of what used to be the wet dock and is now the marina. Pots of flashy looking boats with a sprinkling of older boats, some actually made out of wood, and including a handful of Thames (maybe Orwell?) barges which looked as if they were in working order. One, which did not look as if it has been health and safetied for passengers, appeared to be offering trips, but they were bird flavoured and did not kick off until November so we did not pursue the matter.

Took refreshment in Isaac's. A collection of ancient dockside sheds which had been very expensively and tastefully converted into a day & night spot. One which the National Trust would be proud of and which packs in upwards of 700 revellers on Friday and Saturday nights. Good quality heaters in the various smoking dens. Average quality Greene King IPA - but at least they had it. I dare say most of the clientele was into cold and fizzy. There was also a place to get married.

Kept going past all the bistros until we came to the boundary between the marina and what was left of the proper dock. A spinkling of real boats. Cranes and warehouses. Also a poky little dockside pub, tucked behind some warehouses, which we thought would be full of superannuated soaks and worse but which turned out to be a newly opened Chinese restaurant. It had retained the name, 'The Golden Ship'. Interesting meal, if the brand new staff a bit self conscious and over attentive in a not very busy restaurant. I would be just the same, if not worse, in the same circumstances.

This from the Novotel at Ipswich. Which distinguishes itself by being the first hotel in ages to supply decent French-like bread sticks (between flute an baguette in size) for breakfast and the first hotel in England to have free Internet in the lobby. This last in the form of a large and flashy Apple. As big as our telly at home. The first free Internet ever was in Paris. But there we had to go out to the cafe for breakfast - breakfast room underground and cramped. To mix it with people who were still allowed to puff over their croissants.

Room nicely got up. Posh telly positioned so that you can use it from a small sofa without having to go to bed. It may even show ITV3. Separate toilet and bathrom. Another hotel first. Separate shower and bath in the bathroom. Yet aother first. Interesting sink, with the bowl of roughly cylindrical rather than spherical shape. Interesting plumbing, which takes a while to get the hang of. Bath itself rather small with the very trendy plughole located just about where one might otherwise want to sit down.

Off to explore Ipswich!

Some years ago we had a plump blonde barmaid at TB called Wendy. I know of at least two gentlemen who were fascinated by her generous curves. Recently another Wendy appeared, same sort of chassis but with much reduced circumference. Hair possibly dyed. Which caused us to wonder about the rarity of the name. I used to work with one. FIL had one for a neighbour in Exminster. Then there are the hamburger places. There used to be one near the Marble Arch Odeon and the company appears to be alive and well at http://www.wendys.com/ but I cannot remember when I last came across one of them. Peter Pan was fond of a Wendy. And that exhausts my store of wendys. Perhaps there was a spurt of them from the generation of mothers brought up on Peter Pan and then that was that.

I was oddly disappointed to read somewhere that this strange and wonderful helmet was found in 67 pieces, this confirmed by Wikipedia which talks of 33 large pieces and 34 small pieces. Also oddly, the blurb at http://www.christies.com suggests that the thing was found more or less in one piece. Sellers privilege perhaps. Must go and take a look at the thing at Christies before it vanishes.

Yesterday being both a Friday and one of the days of the first papal state visit since the reformation of the church all those hundreds of years ago, it was doubly appropriate to have baked cod for lunch. At least I think it is the first state visit; the royal web site not being specific on the point although the papal visit of 1982 does not appear to qualify. And although the papal web site covering the 1982 visit is overloaded and unavailable in Epsom, its index entry does suggest that that visit was actually the first ever visit of a pope to the UK, never mind the reformation. Another index entry suggests that there has only ever been one papal visit to the more extensive flock in Ireland.

Men in black just about visible on the top of the Tradescant Tower on the occasion of the state visit of His Holiness the Pope. Time: waiting for the cardinals' charabanc (hired from The Kings Ferry, see http://www.thekingsferry.co.uk/) to emerge. Policeman from Bromley. Outrage! protest hidden down among the trees. Elderly Nokia not really up to shots of this sort.

Before earth, I report an odd glitch. That is to say that the image in the last post loaded wrong first time around. That is to say that it looked OK on my PC but when it was loaded the bottom half had been displaced relative to the top half by half a centimetre or so. Somehow the image had been corrupted in transit. The sort of thing which is not supposed to happen in the digital world. First thought was that perhaps it was something to do with the format generated at my end not being quite what the other end was expecting, different version of the format or something, but this thought binned when the thing loaded OK on the second attempt.

Would my younger brother have been amused to think that his last resting place would get to be advertised in this way? Also a place, as it happens, where I used to go to look at stars when in my astronomical phase. The darkest place in the vicinity.

Given that our consumption of cows is a big contributor to global warming, not impressed that Lady G. chooses to consume her cow by wearing it. Very wasteful and one might have thought not very comfortable or hygienic. Poor old cow (or perhaps cows from more than one country), gone through all the unpleasantness of the slaughter-house to wind up draped around the posterior of a poppess. Not something people have made a habit of since Aztec warriors used to dress up in the skins of illegal immigrants who had been sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl.

Can't show the pictures which came with yesterday's concert but I can show the blurb.

A few days ago scored what I think might be a first for us. Went to see Tamara Drewe within days of its release, in a proper cinema. Rather than grabbing a senior session at the small & hard seated Epsom Playhouse, some months or years after the event. But no more punters in the Odeon than in the Playhouse, say less than a dozen. Hard to see how they make a crust at that rate. We could hardly have paid the staff costs never mind anything else. Film itself both good fun and with some good hot spots, if a little long and marred, for the BH anyway, by liberal use of the vernacular. Bit like a glossy version of Midsomer Murders. Some good swipes at best selling authors and writers' retreats - which might be why the TLS was a little po-faced in its praise. Bit too close to the bone.

Reached the baker at the unseemly hour of 0820 this morning, having to be elsewhere later in the morning. The ladies at the baker almost fell off their perches and when they recovered enquired very solicitously whether I enjoyed cycling with all the riff-raff about at that time of day. They themselves start work at 0730 and are more used to the early morning goings-on.

PS: Broadband tried to throw a wobbly yesterday. Was able to make a connection but was unable to hold it. Kept trying and trying. Until in exasperation I fired up the Broadband help desk which sits on the top of my desk and that scared the problem away without needing to do anything further. Been OK since. On the other hand, the mysterious Trusteer Rapport, some security widget courtesy, I hope, of HSBC is behaving mysteriously. Don't seem to be able to get at its advertised weekly report but it is sitting on the task bar trying to put green padlocks and https connections on the command line. A proceeding which seems to work with Google mail but not with Google blogs which is add as they are tied together to the extent of sharing a login procedure.

PS: good to read of a bit of old-fashioned civility in the 'Evening Standard' of the same day. To wit, a Russian company, out of the blue, offering to build and replace the ageing masts of HMS Belfast as a gesture of thanks for its service on Arctic conveys during the second war. As it happens, a ship on which FIL's brother served during the Korean war. During which, I remember him telling us, it had a large hole punched in its side. This repair not visible to the untrained eye.

Been a very natural few days. Started off yesterday with my waking up to the sound of an owl flitting over the Chase Estate. Proper towit towhoo job. The second time this year, the second time since we have lived in Epsom. Birds I used to hear quite often in my childhood but then our house backed onto a large field fringed with woods. Then there was a heron sitting on top of one of the fir trees in the next door garden. Maybe it was eyeing up the newts in our pond. Followed up by FIL finding a large mushroom in someone's front garden on the way back from fetching the newspapers. After much study we decided that it was probably a common-or-garden horse mushroom. It did smell a bit of aniseed when broken but did not turn yellow, like the book says it should. Maybe a mutant. Then off to the canal at Wisley to see what was cooking there. One fish jumping out of the water, maybe six inches long. Lots of water boatmen. One snake swimming in the water, the first time I have seen such a thing. Silver grey and also about six inches long. Consensus was that it was a baby adder rather than a baby grass snake.

Had a cod panic this lunchtime. Went to take the cod out of the oven to find the oven was switched off. What had I done? Had I managed to turn the oven off when I got confused about the buttons for the hot plates? Which confusion I did remember about. Vegetables all cooked and would not improve with standing. As it turned out, the hot blast when I decided to open up suggested that the oven had not been off long. Panic recedes. And as it turned out, cod excellent today. Not sure if that is down to it being eaten on Friday and so a day fresher than last week's Saturday or to my making sure that it got the full hour and a quarter - having thought that last week was a touch underdone.

Another sort of sub-optimal solution I have come across recently involves parking at one's flat. So one has a block of flats, built maybe forty years ago at a time when plenty of people did not have a car, particularly if the flat was handy to transport, and few had more than one. So the flats did not come with a huge amount of parking. Maybe one each plus a few spare for the better class of visitor. No need to bother with allocated places as there were never enough cars on the block to be a problem.

A snap of the building where I once used to work. No where near posh enough to have an office with a river view though. I was on the third floor, just inside the front door, in a shared office overlooking the central courtyard. But they did supply large government issue ash trays in those days. And a weekly towel, with soap. Bridge doesn't look quite right; presumably the one before the one that I knew.

Time to move from the bubble men (as we would have called them when I was a student) on to the coin department where I read in the DT that that National Mint are changing the recipe of 5p and 10p coins in a bid to save £5m a year. The only catch is that the change costs the slot machine industry - this including worthy things like parking meters as well as unworthy things like arcade machines - £50m or maybe even £100m. No doubt the National Association of Arcade Machine Operators (NAAMO) is laying it on a bit thick. But an example of how one outfit is able to transfer costs to another, with UK PLC as a whole being a loser.

Remembered this morning that there are a lot of apocalyptic films out there. Such things must scratch an important itch. Some focus on the apocalyptic threat - so we have Dustin Hoffman and the giant killer, life as we know it threatening virus from darkest Africa. Some focus on life after the deluge, often of the nuclear variety - so we have Kevin Costner wandering about a thinly populated but hot part of California mixing it with a sort of latter day Hells Angels. Some focus on the unfolding apocalypse - so we have 'The Day after Tomorrow', 'Deep Impact' and freeview offerings of that sort. In all the films in this genre that I have seen, the world survives and humans live on to fight another day. So one where they don't would be a new departure. But would it make any money?

The Newcastle Brown Ale at TB has changed batch and returned to normal flavour, without my ever having made contact with that part of the Heineken empire which looks after the ale's UK customers. Woke up this morning, presumably still tainted by the previous evening's tasting, to apocalyptic musings. Which went roughly as follows.