Grapes

Hotel competition

Between pleasure Island and the snacks haven lies the hotel competition

Car Park, Blackpool

I love full bodied car parks

A sunday in Blackpool

When I got out of the plane at John Lennon Airport, the first thing I saw was the semi-industrial landscape, and the fading november light flowing over trees and chemicals alike. The second thing I saw once I had reached the ground below was the orange girl standing helpfully and still to convey all passengers in the right direction. On the way back, I had a whopper and cheese menu. Things work both way.

culture and concensus

Systematically writing about the same stuff over and over, I find myself checking online exact book references, only to bump into my own online bibliographies! Surely that's a step forward (somehow)!

Newcastle Boer monument

Obviously no one gives a damn anymore in Newcastle about once mythic now slightly unpolitically correct colonial wars, such as the Boer one where the troops of her majesty fought to many a death not such a long time ago. Well, in a long line of appalling urban design move, none withstanding the fact that apparently the top of the monument had to be replaced and is now made of plastic (or something), there is this new unveiled metro entrance structure, smashing!

Distinction

According to my insider's information, Newcastle University is showing its muscles out there in the tough world of academic competition.

to get in the frame!

Manchester

Robinho can take the money but can't take the weather!

Modern art in hotels

This sould probably be a sub-theme: modern art in hotels around the world. here in Dublin, the Lisson.

Cake

Some time ago, the 'guide du routard' correspondant in Lyon judiciously pointed out the uncanny ressemblance between the city's cathedral and the sophisticated topping of a wedding cake.

Times they are a changing (Lycée Richelieu by night featuring boost da man)

cramped

Home sweet home

Facing the future

Here too there are some things to look at, though they don't look as funny.

ALE

I have lost some weight, but I miss my ale

Melody

I bought a mobile phone. I used to have one, but then it broke, and I lost the data card shortly afterwards. Anyway, it was the cheapest think on the market, was it pink or violet? It was crap, fortunately I didn’t have to use it much as nobody ever rang me, and I had a landline as well (no one phoned me on that line either, but I used it). Anyway, I displaced myself, and took the opportunity. I stormed into a phone shop, and got me-self a phone. I also bought the cheapest thing on the market it seems, but I guess France is doing so much better than the UK at the moment, it must stand as the explanation of my fortune. My phone is a nokia, and it is dark looking. But that is not the good thing about it. Somehow, as trends go, flourish and despair, I was under the impression that the fantastic tool that I was given with my first ever mobile phone (crap as well), the ‘composer’ had disappeared. The reason for this belief must surely be the addiction people seem to have taken to already made distinctive ring tones. In fact, it is quite likely that this is the main trend in the world today generally speaking (is that a good thing?). But the profusion of technological progress has adorned my new acquisition with the most valuable tool that I rate in mobile phones, the ability to let the owner compose the melody of the main and minor ring tones himself.

Interestingly, I am quite pleased with my first composition, whose very beginning seems to be growing up on me. I feel like it’s there all the time, ringing, in the chaos of the city’s sounds, mostly imperceptible, and I check my phone, and now my mind, as the obsession runs deeper, stronger, and more dangerous every day.

the ideal 2 1 as seen from the south

the Oval

All has gone well, 18 days of hikink and I see that it's indeed 1-1 and England are on top, excellent stuff!

break

Dear readers,

I am off to the South of France,
I will not be able to keep in touch with the dreadful weather up North as well as the thousands of unfolding amusements of the British Isles. Nor will I be able to follow the action at Edgbaston and Headingley. If all goes well, I should reach a radio five in time for the Oval somewhere near the Mediterranean sea, in which case I hope the score will either be 1-1, or even better, 2-2, for a grand final.

enjoy the cricket, I'll be back later with a tan

Smoke on the horizon, York cathedral

garden, Olbadswick

dead end (York, King's Court)

scrouge

to scrouge : to hassle

fielding position

Sefton park

Now if I were still living in Liverpool, I could go to Sefton park this week end and watch the cricket on a large screen.
But I am perfectly happy to listen to radio 5 here in my southern provinces.

Playing in England

"Jeez, it's not even as cold as this in my fridge back in Brisbane"

Jeff Thompson

Cardiff

Well, I followed the unfolding horror turning to miracle till the end on the way South, as fortunatly Radio 4 longwaves reaches the shores of France. I was around St Omer when Collingwood was finally bowled out, and past Arras when the draw was secured by Anderson and Monty, sometime around 7.40 I believe.
Now for Lords.

Ash

Here we go,
down there in Cardiff,
Already 3 down, Pietersen will have to do the job,
radio commentator raving about the man 'bringing a frisson at the wicket'
107/3

Ash ash

Of course, Wimbledon is in full swing, and temperatures vary from 25°c in London to 16°c in Newcastle. But the real excitement of the summer starts next week: the ashes. Will England loose 5-O again? Vaughan is not going to play, he is actually retiring! This surely doesn't help, though if they can get a few draw, who knows what might happen.

ice ice baby ice

'Duck island' Tory MP is forced to retire

This should go down as a classic moment in British politics:

"A 'furious' David Cameron last night forced a former Conservative minister to stand down as an MP at the next general election after he admitted claiming 1, 645 Pounds for a floating 'duck island' in his garden.
Sir Peter Viggers, a Northern Ireland Office minister in the late 1980s, was told by the Tory leader that he would be stripped of the Conservative whip immediatly unless he agreed to retire.
Cameron acted after the daily Telegraph revealed that Viggers, the MP for Gosport since 1974, had claimed 32 000 pounds in gardening expenses over three years at his Hampshire home. This included a claim for a floating duck island designed to protect his ducks from foxes. This was rejected by the Commons authorities.
Viggers also claimed for 28 tonnes of manure..."

Nicholas Watt in the Guardian

John Bercow

Bercow, who moderated his views after marrying his labour-supporting wife Sally Illman in 2002, said in his letter: "I have been on a political journey of enlightenment from the Thatcherite right to the political centre ground".
Senior Tories can barely bring themselves to speak to Bercow. One shadow cabinet minister said: " The problem with Bercow is that he discovered sex and new Labour at the same time".

30 with some new prospects?

pedestrianism

"J. Townsend,
Most respectfully informs the inhabitants of Abergavenny and Monmouth and their vicinities, that on Monday morning July 11, 1825, he will start from the
White House, Abergavenny,
And walk to the
Robin Hood, Monmouth,
And return to the White house, Abergavenny, from whence, after a few minutes rest, he will again start for the Robin Hood, Monmouth, and return through Abergavenny, and go to the Lamb and Flag, Llanweworth, and return to the white House, Abergavenny, being a distance of 66 miles in 1 day, the first he will perform for 6 successive days. No man ever performed such a [unreadable 21st century script] feast before".

good times for headlines

requirements, Southville, Bristol

A terrible show, Arnolfini, Bristol

St Werburgh, Bristol

Le banquet, Liverpool

Painting in Britain

"The question that remains is, where does all this leave Waterhouse's Painting in Britain 1530-1790? As a book it could hardly be more different from Painting for Money, not least because Reynolds and the creation of the Royal Academy are, respectively, its hero and its climatic event, not its disastrous denouement"...

"Painting in Britain differs from books of the new art history not absolutely, though it does so in method, in approach, in scope, mood and style, and in practically any other way one can think of (except seriousness of scolarship)".


Michael Kitson 1994 introduction to Ellis Waterhouse's 1952 Painting in Britain

AAG, the geographer's all-door style

Venice, Las Vegas

César's palace

'What is this red made for?'

Pasadena art school

'Speak easy cafe'

Coffee from Rwanda.

Liquor store

It is important to know that you can't drink in the street or in the car. And people keep on asking for my ID every time I try to have a drink. One guy in a shop even refused my ID as it didn't have a body description on it; 'homeland security' he muttered, to the general bemusement of those present.

Kyle with attitude

Hitchhiking

Erin & Kyle went to a hitchhiker’s convention in Slab City (artificial salt and sea resort) for New Year’s Eve. Six hitchhikers also made the trip. Of these pour souls, one took the bus.

Museum, Old Town, San Diego

An ocean apart

The flying bar, Beauvais

New times are coming, Liverpool

France-Wales

'A tank of a centre'

(in the guardian).

banks

It looks like the three banks I have (very limited) funds in, all seemed to have gone bust! I am to thank the British and French governement I dare say, if I can eat my pancakes this evening.

Afternoon stroll, Waterpark, Chorlton, Manchester

my first squash racket

A time comes, when a man (or a woman) has to let go.
Sport is not without its perrils,
For bodies of flesh and metal alike,
Death comes, sooner or later.

Farewell, my slazenger,
It was a wall too many,
A hit too canny,
The abrupt road finally ducks.

Sean Scully in the Lake District

Saturday afternoon in Jesmond, Newcastle

The Troubles, prophecies

There were signs to be read:

"For the remainder of labour's stay in the office (until June of the following year), it proved possible to represent the cabinet's irish policy as a success story. And the Tories did show bi-partisanship. But one can't help feeling that there was more than a touch of symbolism about the manner in which Ted Heath, the Tory leader, came to the problem. He was taking part in the Fastnet yacht race, off the coast of Cork, when he was contacted by radio to discuss the statement which Quintin Hogg, the Tories' Northern ireland spokeman, intended to issue on the sending-in off the troups. The toing and froing over the wording of the statement used up so much power that the batteries of the yacht's engine went dead. Because of the sitting of the mast it proved impossible to get at the engine to recharge the batteries. Then the wind droped, leaving the Conservative leader helplessly adrift in Irish waters".

Tim Pat Coogan, The troubles, 1995, p. 93

The cunning bearded baddy

The cunning bearded baddy had finally reached la puorta del sol, a notoriously infamous tapas bar situated in the west of Paris, not too far from the defensive outreach of the city. At the bar, he ordered a chili con carne, for he had travelled a long way to lay his evil plots and he was hungry. It looked as the place wouldn't be too much of a problem, though you never knew in those shark infested waters, better to keep an eye open. He sat down with his glass of surprisingly good wine in the main dining room of the dingy hole, which also surprisingly boasted of some rather excellent modern art on its walls, and a suspicious looking library. Was this really la puorta del sol his cousin Juan had recommended? 'You had better watch yourself', he thought to himself as he nervously took another glance at the other customers in the room...

de-icing

"De-icing is the process of removing frozen contamination, snow, ice, slush from a surface".
Yes, well I didn't know about de-icing, and, should it be cold and snowing, it’s a necessity for the purpose of aviation.
At Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport they seemed completely taken aback by the fact that it was snowing this Monday. To be honest, they do seem completely incompetent most of the time. So we were delayed. But we were in the plane, ready to go. We queued for two hours, to get the de-icing thing, and then we had to queue another hour to take off. We were getting somewhere when the captain informed us we didn't have enough gasoline anymore to reach London, let alone Liverpool. So it was back to the stand, this time to fill the reservoir to its maximum capacity (4 tons, is that possible?). That being done, as it was now snowing heavily, the only available track was used for… landing, of course. But it seemed a great injustice had been committed, and we were awarded the first next available slot. More de-icing, and after eight hours we did get into John Lennon airport. Nacked.

Run

On the first day of the new year, I do my traditional jogging.
It takes me to Bougival, then onto the island of the impressionists via the Bougival bridge, pass the golf of la Grenouillère, where I did spot a lonely golfer, then along the narrow and muddy lane, pass the Bouglione circus, then back on the Rueil bank via the Chatou bridge.