It ain’t over ’til the fat lady bumps and grinds
Welp, there it is: the official end of Summer. The circus has come to town. Actually, this circus comes to towns all around us beginning in about June, but we traditionally go when it reaches Rye, and we look upon it as the end of the fête season (and the beginning of the bonfire season).
We went last night. It’s a week early this year. That seems about right for this Summer (it’s been gorgeous for the most part, but it’s suddenly gotten chilly).
Every year, this one gets smaller and sadder and we wonder if we’ll see it again. This year, there’s a definite rumor that they won’t be able to use this field again. But if they turn up at all, we’ll go see them in some other town.
I didn’t bother taking a good camera this year. I never get any decent pictures, and last year they fussed at me for trying. I like this grainy cellphone picture Uncle B took anyway. This fat chick had a hula hoop act, and she was awesome. Seriously one of the biggest applause getters of the night.
So there you have it. There she is. Pack up the shorts, folks — it’s over.
August 22, 2014 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 12
The most gothick thing EVAR
The winged skull is just a taster. Click for the whole tomb.
It’s the grave of John Cheney, who died on the 20th of September, 1601. And presumably his wife and daughter, who are mentioned. I think the slate inscription stone must have shattered as they pulled it out to stuff more people in the ‘ole. Brrr!
This is on the wall left of the altar in a little village church in Sussex. More on that later.
We started Saturday at an airfield, because we heard a rumor the two Lancasters were going to fly over on their way to an airshow.
Of the over seven thousand Lancaser bombers built in WWII, these two are the last in the air, and they’ve been kept airworthy by cannibalizing some of the others. One of them usually lives in Canada, so…last chance.
We waited and waited and it didn’t happen. So we headed to this church, miles away, and suddenly the planes flew across our path, low and spooky. No time to stop and take pictures. Wish we’d gotten closer. Glad we didn’t miss it.
August 18, 2014 — 9:58 pm
Comments: 20
Toilet bowl – badum*tssss*
Yes, the summer fête season is in full swing. This is a game that…gave someone an excuse to bring six toilets to a cricket ground.
Since I broke my D40, I’ve been relying on a little digital Pentax camera for blog snaps. For its age and size, it takes great pictures (this isn’t one — I saved the .jpg at low resolution because all that bitsy grass was killing my file size). I’ve also set it up to “meow” convincingly when I turn it on (got to love the Japanese!).
It was my exit gift from my old job, though, so I always think of it as the camera that cost 25 years of my life.
August 6, 2014 — 9:16 pm
Comments: 12
‘Member these?
Last of the nice days today, so we snuck in another field trip (Sissinghurst, old favorite). We stopped at a convenience store on the way to buy some sammiches, and Uncle B bought me a packet of these (see picture). And I’m, like, “whoa, dude…do you recognize these? They’re candy cigarettes!” Rebranded “candy sticks” for a different age.
Uncle B could do that one better. In his day, they sold Junior Smoking Kits — chocolate cigars, chocolate pipes, chocolate matches, chocolate ashtray and candy cigarettes. I managed to find a picture on this guy’s blog, from his visit to the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh.
Mind, blown.
By the way, all you gotta do is have your picture taken with Spiderman at the circus one time…
p.s. Yes! It came with a Spiderman tattoo! I shall be the envy of the office tomorrow…
August 5, 2014 — 9:08 pm
Comments: 21
Messing about in boats
Yesterday, the RNLI Dungeness had an Open Day (that’s the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to you). Per Wikipedia, the RNLI has 444 lifeboats at 236 stations. Since 1824, they’ve saved 140,000 lives at the cost of 600.
They’re entirely funded by private money (legacies, donations and merchandise), which I think is unutterably awesome, so we try to turn out when they have a fundraiser and spend some money. I bought a hat and Uncle B bought a burger and we put some money in the thing.
It was a lovely sunny, breezy day, and I didn’t go watch the maneuvers. I plunked myself down on the warm shingle with the complete works of Kipling (I’m up to 2% now!) and listened to them sing sea shanties in the boathouse. That there’s some powerful local atmosphere.
Uncle B did go watch the maneuvers and, even though he only brought a little handheld camera, he got some great action shots of the boats. Black and white doesn’t do ’em justice. He’s a better photographer than I am, and that pisses me off no end.
If you squint at the background, those are the white cliffs of…Folkestone, actually. But the white cliffs of Dover look just the same and they’re the next headland along the coast to the Northeast.
Fun fact: the RNLI was originally called the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Or NIPLS.
August 4, 2014 — 9:23 pm
Comments: 20
I don’t know, I’ve never kippled
We’re determined to make the most of Summer this year. We didn’t get many days out last Summer, and this year we’ve been extremely lucky with the weather. So it was off to Bateman’s yesterday — Kipling’s last home.
There’s something sad about the house. And positively non-Euclidean — it’s somehow much smaller on the inside than the outside. But still, a good day out, and Uncle B found a much quicker route to get there, so we’ll probably go more often. Have to squeeze every entertainment penny out of the effing expensive National Trust membership.
They cleverly left copies of his books about, with “available to purchase in the gift shop” written inside the covers. So I tucked into Puck of Pook’s Hill while Uncle B wandered about on his own. I think that’s my favorite Kipling, but the man was hella prolific, and I got to wondering how many of his I haven’t read.
That’s when I discovered Delphi Classics. They’re an eBook publisher that specializes in “Complete Works of…” editions of out-of-copyright classic authors. Nicely formatted for a couple of bucks. Buy them through Amazon or right from the publisher.
I don’t know about you, but I’m crazy about owning an author’s complete works. Even in the days when that meant that nice mister Dickens took up five feet of shelf space. There’s something deeply satisfactory about having them all together in one clean set, not a hodge-podge of mongrel editions with half a dozen books left out. I have a feeling I’ll be visiting Delphi again.
They all come as one big Kindle file, but they have a table of contents, so that’s okay. I’m going chronologically by publication date, starting with the novels. I read The Light that Failed all afternoon, and I’m still at 1% of the collected works. See you in the Fall.
Oh, yeah — Dead Pool tomorrow! 6pm WBT! I’m going to set it up right now, so I *can’t* forget this time.
July 31, 2014 — 10:20 pm
Comments: 17
Polly want a…hey, watch your mouth
The Summer fête season is in full swing now. I met this beautiful girl (probably. I was told it takes a DNA test to know gender for sure and they haven’t bothered) advertising a little father/son parrot rescue. He’s got a hand gesture to make her stand up and extend her wings, so I was able to take lots of good pictures. (Here this one is big and in color).
They said the main reason they have to rescue birds is that they outlive their owners. One of their parrots died last month at the age of eighty. Not sure how I’d feel about a pet that was likely to outlive me. I suppose it would be a good thing, provided they didn’t have to power to have me put down when I got feeble.
Took this before I dropped and broke my good old Nikon D40, obviously. Still pondering what to do about that.
July 29, 2014 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 25
Ride’s here!
I am so sorry to have blown the Dead Pool this week. We played hooky and snuck off to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch, which is a little line of 1/3 scale steam and diesel trains that runs along the coast.
It is a fine thing to do on a hot day, sitting in the open carriage watching the pretty English landscape roll by. We saw ducks and swans and several fine, fat pheasants. Some of the crops — the rapeseed — have been harvested already. Some — the hay — just coming in now. And the wheat and corn are yet to come. They were looking good.
We had an amusing conversation about National Trust properties with a drunken gay couple in the carriage behind us. A station master came by at St Mary’s Bay and quickly searched the carriages to “see if we had any owls.” Nope, no idea.
The English are prone to embarrassment and carefully avoid it in most social situations, but in certain narrow contexts, they give themselves a sort of permission to be foolish. I think this is why they like pantomime and dressing in costume so much.
They also give themselves leave to wave to, and from, trains. Especially heritage trains. The RH&DR runs past scores of back yards and in many of them, children stood and solemnly waved to us like visiting dignitaries. Cars at the RR crossings, too. You wave back. You haveta.
Afterwards, we stopped and bought some of the best fish and chips in the neighborhood. And long about then it dawned on me, Holy shit — I’m in England!
July 25, 2014 — 11:47 pm
Comments: 14
We just missed it…
Lookie here. Somebody’s done made a crop circle near the Long Man of Wilmington. Here’s an aerial view of the Long Man on Google Earth. Squinting at the map, I don’t think it’s the field directly at his feet, I think it’s the field above and to the left of that.
Do poke around Google Earth. It’s always cool to explore England like so. I’m sorry to say, they no longer think the Long Man is Stone Age. More like 17th or 18th Century.
What’s non-obvious from the overhead shot is that he’s on the side of a very steep hill. We climbed up to him once — there’s a footpath both above and below him — and it was one of our most memorable outings ever. Just as dusk fell, a great thick cloud poured over the top of the hill, swallowing up the giant. And us, eventually.
I’m not surprised the farmer in the article is pissed. Between the crop circle and the people going to look at the crop circle, he’s probably out a few hundred pounds in wheat. They’re bringing the crops in now.
We were there just a couple of weeks ago — he’s a couple miles outside Alfriston, where we had lunch.
We didn’t do it, though. I swears.
July 16, 2014 — 10:30 pm
Comments: 16
Another village, another George
‘Tis the season for day trips.
The weather in England is surprisingly lovely surprisingly often, for something so bitched about. It’s incredibly temperate: seldom gets below freezing in Winter, almost never rises above 85° in Summer. The worst it throws at you is a season of gray or rain, but these aren’t endless, no matter how it feels. And rain maketh green.
At the moment, we’re having England at its best and have done for weeks. Sunny and seventies in the daytime, clear and fifties at night. So no matter how hot the sun, it’s always crisp and cool in the shade, with a light breeze. Whur I come from, we called this April, only we don’t get several months of it.
Today we took a long run over to beautiful Alfriston. The hymn “Morning has Broken” was written to honor Alfriston (probably). Love this place. All the shops are ancient, charming and woefully overpriced. The National Trust’s first acquisition is here (the Clergy House, closed today, dangit).
We had lunch in the George (above), first recorded changing hands in Thirteen-something. Then a stroll along the Cuckmere (the river Virginia Woolf drowned herself in). Then a drive back along the coast to…ummm…Tesco’s.
Hey, hey…weasel’s gotta eat.
July 3, 2014 — 11:10 pm
Comments: 11