Tuesday: The Vacation with The Narration

Back to the fair city of Dublin and three years later, the journey from the airport (all of 6 miles) still takes nearly an hour because they* are still building the Dublin Port Tunnel...



* They being Mowlem, who have a talent for delivering major projects on time, having also built The Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth for the Millennium in 2005. The scenic lift there now does work apparently, after a further five months delay, due to the addition of a small magnet.

This is due to open later this year and all HGVs will be forced to use it (apart from the ones which won't fit, 'cos they built it too small), taking them out of the city centre. So when the guide on the Dublin Tour Bus says "T'be sure, if ye look te yer right now, dat'll be da Ha'penny Bridge..."** you won't take a photo like this...



** Authentic Irish © Liz Meehan Texting Services

Anyway, lots to get done, only here for three days.

Saw Molly Malone again...



..and was reminded by the all-knowledgeable tour guide that she's also called "The Tart with The Cart", and she also sang the song this time, badly, (the tour guide, not the statue) and gave us further nicknames for her...

• The Trollop with The Scallops
• The Dish with The Fish
• The Dolly with The Trolley etc...

These nicknames are a peculiarly Dublin thing, so I'll thread them in as I go and you can try and spot any I've made up...

The Old Jameson Distillery was definitely worth a second visit, as you get free whiskey (with an "e"; I obviously wasn't paying enough attention three years ago), and you get a really good look over the city from the Smithfield Viewing Chimney (The Flue with The View).

In the "Other Tall Things in Dublin" category comes The Spire. (Can't get it on one picture, so here's two and you'll have to Photoshop them. Or just cleverly use your mind and imagine what it would look like...)

You will notice that I have made ( *** insert own favourite from below ) look taller than it really is by including the same cloud twice.

• The Stiletto in The Ghetto
• The Spire in The Mire
• The Rod to God
• The Stiffy by the Liffey

Fisnished the day with a return visit to Kilmainham Gaol...

• The Jail in The Dale
• The Clink in The Stink

...which is where they tell you that under British rule, hundreds of Irish people were killed (which is what they tell you everywhere you go in Dublin...)

...and where they filmed bits of Michael Collins, The Italian Job and In The Name of The Father...

That's Tuesday...

Wednesday...? We're all going to the zoo tomorrow... (for Roger!)

Eireann go Brach!

Attracted by the Irish Tourist Board's exhortations, I am off to Dublin tomorrow morning.

Did the Guinness Experience, the Whisky (or should that be Whiskey?) Experience and the Ballykissangel Experience (albeit by accident...) last time, so this time doing the Zoo Experience, the Viking World Experience, the Phoenix Park Experience, and the Bram Stoker Dracula Experience (the last one is actually called that...)

Three years ago, we also had the Entire-City-Centre-Being-Completely-Dug-Up-To-Lay-Tram-Lines Experience, but I am reliably informed that's all finished now...

Come on you BISON!!!!!

That's what you're supposed to shout! I didn't, but Jerry did. Nicky and I tried to look like we didn't know him....

Anyway, the reason he shouted it was that we were at the Ice Hockey at Basingstoke. "Are you home or away?" asked the woman in the ticket booth. "Well, it's the first time we've been," we explained, "so we had better be home."

So, there we were at the ice rink...



(This is what it looked like before the players came on, and is the only photo which isn't blurred...)

...suddenly fans of the Basingstoke Bison. (Not Bisons, for some reason...)

It's a bit difficult to sum up our first experience, but here are a few important things to point out for when you go...

• There is blood. Some bloke on our team got the puck full in the face after about a minute and needed "medical attention"
• It's very fast. It takes about 3 seconds for the action to move from one end of the rink to the other.
• There are loads more players than they need. About 20 per team, but only 6 on the ice at once, meaning lots of people skating off and others leaping over the barriers to replace them. Constantly. Average time on the ice before coming off seemed to be about 45 seconds.
• If the puck comes over the side, you can keep it. If you are conscious.
• It's quite violent. Lots of shoving the opposing team members into the side or legging them over. Even if they don't have the puck.
• There is a DJ. Who plays amusing sound clips denigrating the referees (who are sponsored by SpecSavers) or crowd-rousing mega-anthems - "We Will Rock You", "Holding Out for a Hero", "Let Me Entertain You" and at one point "I'm The Leader of the Gang, I Am", although he obviously thought better of that and took it off quickly.
• You can't take flash photos. Which means they all come out like this:
  

You can see that a player in white and a player in red are just about to have a minor, but nontheless very high-speed, disagreement...

You can get a much better idea of what's going on from these photos from the mobile phone...




(Quite why the cheap, inbuilt camera on a Nokia phone can take better action photos than a Canon Digital IXUS costing considerably more I don't know. Technology continues to baffle.)

For £12 a ticket you really get your money's worth. Especially when they argue about the state of the ice for 20 minutes and then still have to play extra time. We got there at 6 and left just before 10 so it's a full evening. And they make you stand up while they play the national anthem. (National anthems, in fact, as they were playing Cardiff...)

If you don't want to know who won, look away now...

It was a draw 4-4.

And if you want the blow by bloody-blow account, you can read the match report. And if you want to go too, it's off season till September so you're out of luck. But we'll be going back then, so you can come with us if you want... (Paul!)

"Special Subject: The Bleedin' Obvious..."

Seen at Barton Peveril on Wednesday evening...



Barton Peveril now officially twinned with here...

Happy 70th Birthday!

The world and his war veteran were lining the Waterside earlier on today to see the formation fly-past of five Spitfires.

Even I managed to get a good view, despite the fact that three local councils had conspired to shut off the best vantage point...



Now, you will agree that this is not the best photo of them...



...but they are there somewhere hiding amongst the pixels. The 11x zoom feature on the camera makes for very blurry photos, but confirmed once and for all that Weston Shore is actually home to Balamory...



...something which I had previously only suspected.

So, I thought I had missed them until, like in all the good war films, they looped round and tipped their wings at me (and everyone else)...



...I hope none of them lands to find out his dog has been run over. (Can't remember what film that was. Probably not a Spitfire one. Someone will tell me.)



Anyway, jolly good show all round, chaps!

Oh Lord...

BBC NEWS - Entertainment - Dance track wins Eurovision vote



Do we never learn? Altogether now, "Royaume Uni, nul points!"

But hang on, isn't this kind of thing just what passes for high art in most of Central Europe? Maybe we have pulled off a winning masterstroke...?

... or just maybe, something with big ethnic drums sung by a woman wearing (not much) rabbit fur will win, like it normally does these days.

Mardi (très) Gras...

If it's Pancake Day, it must be Paul and Nikki's house! Home to the best Pancake Day Pancakes in the world!

Previously I had thought that this was because Nikki was using a batter recipe handed down her family through the generations in a warm and comforting country-cottage styley. But now I discover it's because she gets the recipe out of an old Be-Ro book with food stains and no cover, just like everyone else does.



That aside, there are always some additional special ingredients which the book does not mention. This year, they were...



...Celebrations, Brandy and Flumps!

With the traditional orange/lemon juice and sugar varieties always available, this year's menu was as follows...



The brandy provided the fireworks...



..and the compulsory annual joke about who was the biggest tosser can this year be answered pictorially:

Friday afternoons should always be like this...

Latest update on Miss Ambler..

Here is my niece, seen with a new toy. One of those mobile-touchy-feely things which parents hang over cots, etc to stimulate the senses.



As you can see, she is so impressed that she has one eye shut, one eye open and her tongue out. Aren't modern toys wonderful?

Anyway, I got to see her too, which was my main reason for the "National Express" tour over the weekend. When I saw her at Christmas, she was still in her plastic box and I couldn't hold her, so it was very special to be able to this time.



However, no-one noticed at the time, and I didn't notice until I blogged this photo, that Evil Tony Blair is keeping a watchful, Nanny-State-style eye on proceedings... Scary!

In the news...

Digital Spy: Stone wants to quit singing for nursing...



..and who, precisely, (other than presumably any future patients) will complain??

Maybe they will make her wear shoes as well.

Monday is Lincoln - "Quick, Sophie! Run!"

This is Lincoln Cathedral - "one of the finest mediaeval gothic buildings in Europe..." (it says here).

And it is! Seen here from the castle (which I didn't know Lincoln had), it's very imposing and grand.



Looking the other way from the castle, you get a picture of how flat and tedious the rest of Lincoln (and Lincolnshire) is...



...and that somehow makes the cathedral all the more striking.

I haven't been here since I was about ten, and my Dad hadn't been here since before I was about ten, so we spent a long time looking round and having digital camera shoot-outs. My photos (camera cost about £200) came out loads better than my Dad's (camera cost more than double that) so I was quite pleased...



You really do have to wonder exactly how they built it without modern technology to help and Health and Safety law to hinder... "Have you been hurt building a cathedral? We can help you on a no win, no fee basis..."

If I play with the settings on my digital camera enough, I can often (through no skill or judgement) get good photos of hard-to-get-good-photos-of things like stained glass windows. This is the one good one of about twelve which didn't really work...



...and here's another with lighting effects. Don't ask me what part of the cathedral this is. I'm guessing the high altar?



Now, I suppose that the inside of one mediaeval gothic cathedral is a bit like the inside of another one, and this has been exploited by the makers of The Da Vinci Code, who filmed inside Lincoln, pretending it was Westminster Abbey...

These very ornate looking cathedrabilia are, in fact, fake. The tomb is plywood...



...and blokey here is made of polystyrene...



Look out for them as Sophie Neveu runs past when you go to see the film. What would be really funny would be if they ran past them several times, repeatedly, like the gang does in Scooby Doo...

(If you zoom into the picture above, you will be able to see that the inscription is done with Letraset...)

There's obviously a huge debate about whether they should have allowed the filming to take place in the Cathedral, as the story (if you don't know, and until Christmas, I didn't) details the Church's supposed duplicity and gynophobia over a number of centuries. Did they sell out to Hollywood money? You can read the Chancellor of the Cathedral's views yourself, but I liked this little extract from his sermon the week the crew packed up and left...

"Many have come this week to get a glimpse of Tom Hanks. We know from the staff and from our own experience that a few have also caught a glimpse of God. That is our work and that is our mission."

Anyway, they can now afford the thousands needed to restore the huge "Dean's Eye" stained glass window in the North Transept...



...and even though I doubt Tom Hanks paid for the scaffolding personally, Sophie-Neveu-like, I can't help but see a connection.

Sunday is Derby

Well, to be fair, Saturday evening was Derby too - a blaze (or possibly a blur) of food and alcohol! (Happy Birthday, Jo!) - so let's concentrate on Sunday, which was really Posh Derby. Darley Abbey - a little enclave of sophistication and refinement not 3000 steps (by pedometer) away from the hustle and bustle of the City.

Had lunch here:



OK, to be more accurate, as it is not the 1930s any more, had lunch here:



OK, OK, to be even more accurate, as it was raining and the people outside were pensioners in anoraks, not posed postcard-fodder, had lunch here:



This is The Abbey at Darley Abbey, barely big enough to fit 40 people in at a push*, it nonetheless serves brilliant Sunday lunchtime food. Roasts and hotpots and burgers and vegetarian sausage and mash, which is what I had. Highly recommended!

It does, however, serve very questionable-looking soft drinks...



...which are probably made in someone's front room with a Sodastream.


*Quite how you managed if you were a monk, I don't know, because you would have been very fat and your habit would have swished the candles over (or is that just in films?)

Saturday is Nottingham

Speaking to colleagues over the last week, I have learned that, during half-term, one was off to the Red Sea, one was going to Iceland (the country, not the shop), one was on a mini-break to New York... you get the idea. My performance management assessor was telling me about his recent holiday to Cuba. The Chappell family are bathing in the temperate waters of some estuary in Australia and the Streets are off to Devon, where it will probably rain, but at least it's touristy.

I am doing the Tour of Urban Population Centres of England, to which the soundtrack is probably National Express by The Divine Comedy. Southampton, Northampton, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, Birmingham, Reading and back to Southampton - between Friday and Tuesday I shall have passed through all of them.

Saturday is Nottingham.

I went on the tram for the first time:



Much better than queueing for ages to drive into the Victoria or Broadmarsh Centres, paying the best part of a tenner to park and then finding out that someone in their yellow Smartcar opened their door and knocked your wing mirror off.

The tram even has a conductor who chats jovially and sells you your ticket. And it has one of those "elevator voices" which tells you when you are stopping, saying helpful, calming things like "The Next stop is High School, for the Arboretum" and "The next stop is Nottingham Trent University, not really a proper University, it used to be Trent Poly."

Anyway, it drops you off in Slab Square (or Old Market Square as it's more properly known), which used to look like this:



...at the moment looks like this:



...and in a few months time, apparently, will look like this:







...but don't hold your breath, because it's being done by the same people who did the Diana (comma, reverential pause...) Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain Ring of Water Thing in Hyde Park which broke down and had to be closed.

But some things never change, and it's nice to know that people still sit around, eat their sandwiches and shout at their children near the Victoria Centre Clock. People stand around and text near it now too.



Whatever they are doing, they all ignore it when it goes off - all birds-a-flapping, frogs-a-jumping, squirrels-a-squirrelling and harpsicord music-a-playing. It's nice to know that some things don't change - people ignored it 20 years ago too. After all the effort Rowland Emett probably put into designing and making it, it seems a shame. But as he's been dead since 1991, I doubt he minds...

Bruno (Really Does) Chart the Future...!

I suppose it's worth pointing out, briefly, that I actually own two "records" which are in the top five of the singles chart.

This hasn't happened since about 1982 and has only happened now because Dead or Alive and Leo Sayer have been re-released and remixed (why does one have a hyphen and the other doesn't? Chris Purnell?) and both original "tracks" are already shelved up somewhere in the photo on the previous post...

It could easily be coming up to 7pm on a Sunday evening and the chart rundown with Bruno Brookes and his Mullet. I should be waiting for Annie Nightingale's request show to come on the Stereo Sequence, when Radio 1 was allowed to be on FM for a few hours before giving the frequency back to Radio 2...




...and reverting to mushy medium wave (yes, youngsters, that did happen... and Paul will know what I'm talking about even if no-one else does...) and I probably should be getting on with my Chemistry homework for Mr Fletcher (Beaker), or I might fail my O Level...