Out and about and a memory...

The Man has bought himself a new toy…

No not of the bedroom variety…It’s a metal detector. 

Well he’s been looking for  something apart from me to occupy his time when we do finally get back to new Zealand. So to that end he’s been reading and talking to people about these gadgets before finally making a decision about which one would best do the things he wants. All he needs now is a few fine days to get out in out communal back yard to practice. 

What better thing to do on a very chilly Friday evening than to wander around the London  Ice Sculpting festival. It was a shame that the breezy evening followed a relatively mild day which had the ice melting way too fast and rounding the sharp contours of the creations.

It was a beautiful blue sky day when we, or should I say I got up leaving the Man to snooze a bit longer. So while he snoozed I hit the computer and got on with writing about my grandfather’s war. I don’t have his personal diary, that would be too much to ask for. What I do have is a copy of  the diary of his regiment, and from that I am building a picture of what his time on the western Front might have been like. But you’ll have to wait a bit longer to read about that 

Later we went to Bromley to do a bit of shopping . The bus went past a  pub called The Pawleyne Arms…really it is spelled like that. Doesn’t it look odd.  We also went past a little Chinese takeaway called Auntie Mays…Goodness that brought back a memory. No not the takeaway, the name.

Back in the dark ages when TV was in black and white there was  TV commercial for a brand of cakemixer called a Kenwood. It had a couple of kids in it who were looking over a table full of goodies created using the mixer and the catch phrase was ‘I like going to Auntie Mays.’ Well when my father’s run brought him past our house, he was a driver at that time he would drop in for morning or afternoon tea. If I’d been baking, and I often did back then, that’s what he’d say that to me.

York and the Minster

I've been reading a book by Ken Follet called The Pillars of The Earth. One of the main characters is a stone mason who dreams of building a cathedral. He describes the building of it in his mind, naming the different parts and their function. This afternoon The Man and I visited York Minster and the book came to life. In my minds eye I saw Tom, the mason, sketching out the plan on a plaster tablet, using multiples of his rod to create the perfect dimensions. Each structure a multiple of a single measure, thus making it pleasing to the eye.

Our modern buildings go up at breakneck speed compared to the years and manpower that it took to build a masterpiece such as The Minster.

There are many many tombs within the great building, some with dates as early as 1740. The beginning parts of the church are much older though dating from the mid 1100's

Outside proud of countenance, is a statue of a Roman conqueror call Constantine. He declared York was Roman back in AD746. Hows that for age. It continues to astound me that people just like you and me lived worked, laughed and loved all those thousands of years ago. 

York is a nice place, but boy did we notice the cold, it must have been all of five degrees there today, good thing the wind wasn't blowing or it would have felt a good deal colder.

Christmas Day in Scarborough

Some in England will have had a very wet one. And may still be without power.

There is also the threat of more rain for some.

We've had a lovely day, a light brekky was followed by a very pleasant walk along the beach and around the headland. There's a castle up there, I wonder if we can get up to it.

Following the directions of a couple of locals we found the steps and soon were admiring the view across the bay. It was a good thing we were well wrapped up 'cos it was a very cutting wind.

Down through the back streets of the town our steps took us past St Mary's church. In the grounds were a couple of ruined columns that lined up with the end wall and on the ground were what must have been the bases of several isle pillars. In the well kept graveyard some of the stones we read were dated in the mid 1700's.

On the side of one of the pretty steep streets was a well weathered column about eight feet tall and protected by railings, but we couldn't find any plaque to tell us what it was for. But good ole google solved the problem.

The Butter Cross now stands at the junction of Low Conduit Street and St Mary's Street, but would once have stood, complete and with a carved head, in Cross Street. A butter cross would have stood in the market square and derives its name from the produce that would have been sold near it

Back at the hotel we enjoyed a traditional lunch complete with Christmas crackers, silly hats and silly jokes, not forgetting the pud with brandy sauce.

The Man and I hope that not matter where you spent the day and who you spent it with that you had a very merry Christmas Day.

Scarboriugh is grand

Tuesday 24 Dec 2013

Oh dear it looks like the weather men were right, at lest for some parts of Britain.

Heavy rain and flooding in Surrey, strong winds in Manchester and Rail lines in Devon obstructed. Airports Gatwick and Heathrow are also affected by high winds. One airport had a power supply failure affecting luggage belts and departure boards.

And are The Man and I affected, thankfully no. We arrived in Scarborough last night, just in time for tea at The Grand Hotel where we are staying.

And grand it certainly is.

The 300 plus room hotel dominates the seafront.

After a very nice breakfast we were on the coach and off to Whitby. The Man and I visited here in 1998 when we stayed in a youth hostel up at the old abbey. The ruin was the inspiration for Brahm Stokers Dracula. The James Cook Museum that we were hoping to visit was closed. Undeterred him and me had a fossick on the beach and a walk around the town before out time was up and the coach took us on to Goathland. That mightn't sound familiar, but if you are a fan of Heartbeat then the town of Adensfeild might. It is the tiny town where the TV series was set.

We called in at the only café in the town and when I went back for a second coffee and a scone the very helpful (not) woman serving said we're not serving any more food, we're closed. She did make the coffee tho. We couldn't understand her turning down paying customers at half past two in the afternoon. And she didn't only turn us down, there was a another whole coach-load of tourist pulling up as ours left. Oh well, I guess the business must be thriving if it can turn customers away.

It was still early when we got back to Scarborough so after a comfort stop The Man and I put our warm gear back on and went for a walk into the town.

We were attracted by what sounded like live Christmas music. There in the main shopping precinct was, not a band but a huge electronic music maker. In the back of a special truck played piano accordions, pipe organs and drums all controlled by a computor. The chap with it said that it can play continuously for seven days without repeating itself.

Scarborough is a pretty place, even more so in the evening. We spotted a very pretty view over the harbour. What do you think

Weather woes...for some

The weather forecasters have go their doom and gloom hats on. They may well be right, but they do seem to relish the thought of a bad storm, something to worry, like a dog with a bone.

That is an odd expression isn't the worrying bit I mean, though I suppose it relates to the way the dog gnaws and chews at it. So when you look at it like that it makes more sense. The newscasters do like a good 'bad new' story to get their teeth into.

The headlines claim that it couldn't happen at a worse time of year. I would have thought that there is no time of year that is better than any other.

OK, it is very close to Christmas and lots of folks could be heading away,in fact I would think that a lot of holiday makers will have already gone,

The 2010 winter, the one before we came here, was I have to admit pretty bad. People got snowed in and lots of folks couldn't get to work.

It amazes me and The Man too that a country so far north is so ill prepared for bad weather. In fact the bad stuff can bring the country to a halt. Others we've talked to who come countries with much harsher winters shake their heads incredulously at the way the a bit of bad weather affects the country.

OK enough of that.

And now for something completely different.

For some reason the words of an old nursery rhyme popped into my brain and do you think I can remember the rest of it,

Off to bed said sleepyhead

Tarry a while said slow,

I started out with the weather and I'll finish with it too. The Man and I are, as I write, on a coach ( have you noticed that I don't call them buses any more?) being driven northwards. The other day at work someone asked me if we were going somewhere warm and sunny for Christmas. They were almost incredulous when I said no, that where we were would be cold. But The Man and I are after a different experience, warm is what we will get when we get back home to New Zealand

Rainy Saturday

Not much to write about today…I seem to be saying or at least writing that a lot latel. Bu tit is true.

I got up early to write, leaving The Man snoozing in our nice warm bed. I’m trying to turn the basic info that I know about my paternal grandparents into a story. I Keep coming up against brick walls. For example according to the 1911 census granny was living with an aunt and her occupation was a worker in a jam factory.  There were a couple of jam factories in the area Mortons and Cross and Blackwell.  The address on the census is at Victoria Docks, but these days there is no street there of that name.

That area has considerable changed since then and so the street may well not exist.

I want my writing to be historically accurate which had me off on a tangent this morning leaving the writing behind and getting more and more side tracked.

Despite the fact that the weather was a bit grotty we popped out to our now favourite eatery at Crystal Palace called Alistairs. They do a very nice all day brekky and pancakes to die for. The price is right too.

Fed and watered we hopped on a 249 but to go visit some friends to wish them a merry Christmas. It was nice spend some time with them.

Now we are tucked up cosy and warm in our little flat and I am about to go put a pizza in the cooker for our tea.

Hard hat...

We meet some interesting folks on our way home on the train.

Standing near where we were seated was a young woman carrying a hard hat. When the person seated next to The Man vacated the seat hard hat lady sat down. I said to her, that’s not something you see a young lady with a hard hat. She laughed and told us she was working for crossrail as a geologist. Well that piques our curiosity and soon she was telling us about how she worked at the tunnel face checking that the cut face was safe and that tunnelling could continue.

I bet you see some interesting things The Man said to her, and she told us about the small fossilised shark teeth, but no dinosaur bones. She did say that they had come across some very early plague burials. They knew they were early because the skeletons were laying side by side. Later plague victim burials were nowhere near as  neatly position rather they were probably just tumbled into mass graves.

Archaeologists say 12 skeletons found beneath a building site in London could provide evidence of a Black Death burial ground.

The remains were found by teams working on Crossrail - a £15bn project to improve transport links in the capital, including at Farringdon where the bones were found.

Historical records indicate a hastily-built cemetery opened in the area in 1348 as the plague spread across the country.

Up to 50,000 people are thought to have been buried there in less than three years.

Jay Carver, lead Crossrail archaeologist, said: "This is a highly significant discovery and at the moment we are left with many questions that we hope to answer.

"We will be undertaking scientific tests on the skeletons over the coming months to establish their cause of death, whether they were plague victims from the 14th century or later London residents, how old they were and perhaps evidence of who they were.

"However at this early stage, the depth of burials, the pottery found with the skeletons and the way they have been set out, all point towards this being part of the 14th century emergency burial ground."

The skeletons were found during excavations below a road in Charterhouse Square.

They were buried in two rows and laid out in a similar formation to skeletons discovered at a Black Death burial site in Smithfield in the 1980s.

Experts at the Museum of London Archaeology will now use DNA testing and carbon dating to determine both a cause of death and a burial date.

Colchester

The Man and I had a sudden wakeup call at about one o'clock this morning. The footsteps overhead sounded like a high healed prance across the floor in the room above ours. Clippety clop clipety clop, backwards and forwards several times before the occupants settled in for the night. Ah nice and quiet. That was until 0500 this morning, when clippety clop up and down up and down. My fertile imagination provided the wearer with a bright red corset and fishnet stockings worn over long sinuous legs. After breakfast we left our things with the very friendly receptionist and went walkabout while waiting for my cousin to arrive.. There are some very old and interesting half timbered houses around.

We stayed here.

Legs stretched we returned to the hotel and enjoyed a coffee while wed waited for my cousin to arrive. I scanned and photographed some of the pictures she had brought with her yesterday. OK it might be doubling up on them, but I'm a great believer in hedging your bets.

Pictures I've scanned before have come out better than photographs, but I wasn't prepared to risk just scanning.

I can recommend the Rose and crown if you're ever looking for somewhere to stay in colchester, excellent value and great atmosphere too.

In the afternoon my cousin drove us out a little way into the country for lunch.Very yummy. Roast beef so tender it melted in the mouth, if I could get mine half as tender I'd be happy. Seems the trick is to sow cook it overnight. No hope for me then.

We're on our way back to London but will come back this way in February, hopefully by then my cousin will have sorted through her pictures and found me some more.

Saturday musings...

Only another ten days until Christmas Eve...OK so you probably really didn't want me to remind yu of that did you.

The man was just remarking to me how fortunate we are with our family.

Last night at dinner we sat next to a couple that we have gotten to know really well .

The wife, who I'll call Mary said that they were going to re write their will and write their son out of it. Son lives on the other side of the world in NZ and they are terribly unhappy with the way he has been corresponding with them. They don't like his wife or their grandson either. Mary said that the only time they heard form him was when he wanted money and then it was his wife who came to get it (when they were still living in the UK).

The Man and I hear this sort of story fairly often and it makes us sad for them. Family are so important, and we are so blessed with our

Last night The Man and I caught the late train over to Colchester. I have a cousin who lives here who is also interested in genealogy and we had a great time today talking and looking at pictures she had brought to share, some I hadn't seen before. There were a few I already had and a plus there was that they had the date they were taken on the back.

A flash of red tartan ...

When we were at the mall in Bromley yesterday off in the distance  I could hear carols being sung.
Nothing unusual in that is there after all it is that time of the year.
The singing got louder and louder and as we rounded one of the corners there in front of us was a group of carollers raising money for Samaritans.
Decking the halls of the mall with their voices, we heard the Bells of Christmas jingling all the way in their songs.
Listening to live performances like that always chokes me up. So does live bagpipe music.
Strange that 'cos the recorded stuff doesn't have the same effect.
Talking...well actually writing about the men in kilts reminds me of something I saw on saturday.
And doesn't a bloke in a kilt look amazing. I've tried for years to get The Man to agree to wearing one.
 And will he?
Nope, despite the fact that I think that a man in a kilt looks very sexy.
anyway, there I was at the  station when this chappie in a lovely red tartan kilt walked past, handsomely kitted out in matching hose and spats, carrying a chanter and what must have been bag pipes in a bag.
I resisted the temptaion to engage him in conversation.
He got off the train ahead of me and was out of the station in a swagger of  red tartan. 
i overheard a cooment about hi from two young fellows coming down the  starrs.
"Well" one said to the other turning to look at the disappearing scott. "That's not something you see every day is it"?
" Nope" said the other "I've never seen an Indian in a kilt before."

An announcement...

Tomorrow morning...yes that's right Monday 25th and only four weeks until the jolly fat man with the beard and dressed in red makes his appearance, The man and I are off on a weeks coach holiday to Europe.
I have no idea if I will be able to add to the  blog or not, but I will do my darnedest.
So its goodnight from me and its goodnight from him.

Now that's what I call a movie...

Blogging on the train on the way home is a tad bunpy.

Not as bumpy as the move The Man and I have just seen.

Tom hanks in Captain Phillips.

A pretty tense movie too I can tell you.

He's the captain of a container ship that is hijacked by Somali pirates.

It's based ona true story.

OK so there will have been a bit of artistic licence, even so it is a powerful story.

And Tom Hanks...well he's a great actor and played the part well.

As the tension built I was holding my breath and I think most of the audience was too. Not a rustle of a sweet wrapper or munch op popcorn to be heard. Though I did hear the occasional sharp intake of breath from one of the folks sitting behind us.

The Man and I feel a bit shell shocked.

If you like a tense drama with lots of action this is one you should see.

Just hope it doesn't give us nightmares

Plan B...

The Man and I had planned a day indoors today, but when we got up and saw what a nice day it was we threw out that idea and went with plan B.

Which was…

A return visit to the Natural History Museum, where I thought a photographic display was on…

Hmmmmmm Notice I said thought…

OK so it isn’t starting until next weekend...oh well it is a great place to visit anyway.

So first off we decided to go to one of the talks that are given regularly in the Attenborough Studio.

Today’s one was about how animals perceive the world. Aimed mainly at children, The Man and I learned a few things too.

The place was pretty crowded by the time we left in the middle of the afternoon so it was pleasantly quiet to be outside. We did our usual wander and spotted a bus going towards Clapham Junction. That’s an easy way to get back to Crystal palace without having to dodge the crowds on the underground.

Later this evening we flicked on the magic box in the corner and will you look at that a doco showcasing Windsor Castle, which is where we were this time last week. Funny that.