A Load of Old Baltics...

Three photos from Sunday which might give away where I was...



(It's like a low-bugdet version of the Question of Sport Picture Board - you guess what it's of and then you click on the pictures for a fuller view...)

They are, in order:

• The Sage Gateshead - which is one of those armadillo-esque structures popping up to regenerate cities, viz. Selfridges in Birmingham and the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, which is actually called The Armadillo...
• The Angel of the North in Gateshead - by Antony Gormley, which is not as big when you get there as it looks on the photos, and...
• The Gateshead Minnellium Bridge - which is bigger.

They all have to have Gateshead in the title because the town has spent a whole bunch of council tax payers' money on public art and God forbid anyone might think it's all in Newcastle, with which Gateshead has an identity crisis, being separated from it by only 125 metres of the Tyne.

There's also the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts...

...which is housed in a fantastic old building - an old flour mill on the banks of the river. It's been cleverly and beautifully restored and is just as imposing as the landmarks above, but has become home to... well, the phrase "contemporary art" probably says all that's needed...

Splatter paintings done with a toothbrush, some careful colouring-in of squares and a sculpture made of metal and tea bags...

Well, who made me an art critic anyway? There were enough people there regarding it all wisely and nodding in a understanding way to make sure my comments don't give any of the artists sleepless nights. Especially as one of them is dead.

You bet!

A successfully family afternoon! We won £72.50 altogether. I won. Roger won. Susan won. Zoe won (and she's not strictly speaking old enough to bet yet...)

My Dad was the Weakest Link, leaving with nothing...

"Maybe I LIKE the misery..."

...© Mrs Doyle, Father Ted.

Couldn't pass this...



...without thinking that it would be the perfect place for her!

Thursday: A Drop of the Black Stuff*

(*Have totally given up on the rhyming now)

I actually don't like Guinness.

I can say that now, but obviously didn't say it (loudly) while going round the brewery. Last time I managed my free (half) pint at the top of the Guinness Storehouse, but this time opted for Coke.



The exhibition has changed a bit, and has lots of new videos of the master brewer bloke explaining the ins-and-outs of how they make the stuff. I'll short-cut it for you - it's barley and hops and yeast and water and they basically mush it up and swirl it around a lot. It's what makes it taste vile.

Much more interesting are the other bits:

You can webcam yourself to friends and relatives...



You can leave a message about Guinness for others to read. Here's one in Italian which proves I did do some revision during the Easter break...



You can avoid getting wet and slipping on the tiles near the big waterfall...



You can look at the Guinness advertising exhibition, which is great - all sorts of bizarre things with toucans and harps and white horses and that funny dancing bloke and, most bizarre of all, Clannad...



(Scary 80s hair. Perhaps that's what Guinness does to you.)

You can see for miles from the Gravity Bar...



...even getting high enough up to see the whole 64 acres of the brewery spread out before you!* Arthur Guinness took a 9000 year lease on the site, so they will be brewing for some time to come, I imagine...



(*not really)

If you can prove you know loads about Guinness, the master brewer bloke from the videos sends you a certificate...



...which I shall keep in case I don't get my Italian GCSE and have a frame spare...

Thursday: The Snail on The Rail

A big change in Dublin from my last visit was the fact that they have finally finished the tram lines. There are two, but there's a ten minute walk between them. Considering it cost €1.5 billion, it doesn't smack of much joined-up thinking in the planning process. Never mind joined-up tram lines.

(Viz. also, Tunnels which are too small for lorries...)



The green line ran four stops from the city centre right in front of the hotel and only cost €4.50 a day for unlimited travel.



It's called the LUAS, which is Irish for "Speed". I hate to think what would happen if Sandra Bullock was driving. However, the tram combined with the Dublin Bus Tour 24 hour ticket meant that it was dead easy to get around, and we avoided some of the problems of car ownership.

Wednesday: The Mission with The Apparitions*

(*OK, so I'm clutching at straws with the rhyming titles now...)

Any historical touristy city worth its salt now has some kind of tour after dark which tells you some of the less authenticated stories about spooky and (not really)unreal goings-on of yore. Or possibly of yesteryear, which is another term people use to try and make the past sound more interesting. These usually involve some out-of-work actor, possibly a student, dressing up all funny-like and being dramatic.

In Dublin, it's the Ghost Bus Tour!



Ghost-Bus-Tour... Do you see what they did there? I have to confess that I hadn't until about half way through...

Anyway, we toured round the city on this double decker with the curtains shut and occasionally got out to tiptoe round graveyards like we were the pesky kids in Scooby Doo. The guide (Look Velma, it was the out-of-work actor all along!) took against some woman in the front row of the bus who hadn't turned her mobile phone off and demonstrated how bodysnatchers got corpses out of graves quickly using a meat hook...

Japanese tourists looked on...



And he then proceeded to tell a highly improbable story, which he said (more probably) that he got off someone in a pub, about this gravestone and why the stonemason hadn't finished carving the last letters of the name at the bottom.



This involved several supernatural events and so I prefer to consider more rational options. Perhaps he died. Or didn't get paid. Or perhaps it was a good episode of Coronation Street that night.

Wednesday: The Panda on the Veranda

Went to the Dublin Zoo in Phoenix Park today. You can play spot the animal below...





The wilder and more impressive animals (lions, gorillas etc) were particularly shy and hid behind stuff when you tried to take photos. I suppose I would too if I were locked up for people to gawp at. (There's my "right-on" zoo comment for today.)

More amusing was the feeding of the sea lions...



...which was accomplished by two very French-and-Saunders zoo keepers in front of this sign...

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.