A train and his blankee
Uncle B snuck into the engineering shed and took this picture. The blanket, he says, really is to keep the little sucker warm.
Today we rode part of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch line. Which really ought to be called the Hythe, Dymcurch and Romney, because Dymchurch is in the middle. Or, actually, the Hythe, Romney and Dungeness, as that’s the two ends and the middle, but the Dungeness part was added later.
Whatever.
The RHDR is a giant train set built in the Twenties by two eye-wateringly rich men: Captain J. E. P. Howey and Count Louis Zborowski (who built and raced the “Chitty Bang Bang” Mercedes). Zborowski wrapped himself around a tree in the Italian Grand Prix of 1924, before the first two engines were delivered, but Captain Howey soldiered on.
The trains are one-third full size locomotives, built to run at 25mph on rails 15 inches apart, from Dungeness to Hythe — which is maybe twenty miles. They’re butt-punishing miles — the coaches are tiny things with wooden seats — but it’s a great run. In addition to the usual sheep and cows and fields of ripe wheat, a large part of the route runs right past row after row of back gardens.
An Englishman’s back garden is an intensely personal space, so it’s fun to see a bunch of them (the ones that weren’t fenced off, anyhow), from the scruffiest to the manicured. There was one huge train set (natch). In some, people sat out on the lawn and waved as the train went by (a think I can totally see myself doing with a cup of coffee or bottle of beer).
The line was requisitioned during WWII and ran up and down — I shit you not — a tiny armored train with an anti-aircraft gun mounted on it — they have a reproduction in the yard. It was there to protect workers on Operation PLUTO, which was itself a pretty remarkable thing…for some other post, perhaps.
Our engine today was the Hurricane. But the one in the picture is The Bug, which started life on the RHDR but found its way to a scrap heap for many years. And then back again. Hurrah!
Have a good weekend, everyone!
September 3, 2010 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 18
Bedtime story
This creepy dude is from the church of St George in Brede, where yesterday’s creepy box came from.
Things we know about him that are probably true: his name was Sir Goddard Oxenbridge. Known as the Giant of Brede, he was a powerful but a pious and peace-loving man. He was knighted by Henry VIII in 1509 and his daughter was the Princess Elizabeth’s governess. He died in 1531 and is buried in the church (presumably, right here under this thing).
Things we know about him that are probably not true: he was seven feet tall and he ate children. He had a crow for a familiar and was enormously strong. He could not be harmed by metal weapons.
Children from all over Sussex disappeared without a trace for years and reappeared on his table, but Oxenbridge was so powerful that no-one dared complain to the king.
So one day the children of the county took matters into their own hands. They rolled a huge barrel of mead (or perhaps beer) to the Groaning Bridge on Stubb Lane and lay in wait. The giant loved him some booze. He found the barrel, drank it up and passed out dead drunk in the middle of the bridge.
Then the children leapt out with a special saw they had made out of wood — the children of West Sussex took one end, the children of East Sussex took the other — and sawed that sonofabitch right in half. You can see the blood stains to this day.
Mmmmm…okay, it’s rust. And the story probably comes from the smugglers who used Oxenbridge’s old estate, Brede Place, to store contraband when it fell into disuse in the 18th Century. They put it about that Goddard’s ghost still haunted the place to keep people away.
But there he is in the church. And the Groaning Bridge is still there. And Brede Place is still there, and persistently reported to be haunted over many years. So hold a happy thought…
August 31, 2010 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 7
I think the vicar sleeps in it
An old chest in a church we visited today. No idea what they use it for or how old it is, though this is an old, old one. Parts of this church are apparently Anglo Saxon — the parish was mentioned in the time of Alfred the Great (848-900) — but most of it was merely Norman. Ha!
It’s a three-day weekend here in Limeyland, so today continued our rounds of the Summer festivities. In addition to village fêtes, there’s also a tradition of church flower festivals, and some villages may have both a fête and a flower festival as separate events. Today we went to a flower festival.
This is an odd one. The church picks a theme — the one we saw today was “nursery rhymes” — and the ladies (presumably) make little tableaux and flower arrangements on the topic all around the inside of the church.
You’re handed a program explaining what’s what and by whom, and you walk around the church eyeballing stuff. Then you sit in the pews and drink tea and eat cake.
The cat and the fiddle on the high altar and fruitcake on somebody’s grave.
The English are weird.
August 30, 2010 — 9:43 pm
Comments: 24
Satan’s Circus is back in town!
Okay, okay…it’s really Santus Circus. Still, it’s awfully Bradbury.
Went tonight. Loved it.
This funky little troupe tours all over Southeast England in Summer. Has done for more years than we’ve been here. We go when it reaches Rye, which is always late August. It pretty much heralds the end of Summer for us.
As the circus hardware has gotten scruffier, the acts have gotten better. It’s the opening up of Eastern Europe and the Far East, I think — they have powerful circus traditions and lots of people looking for work.
This year, the stars were a troupe of acrobats from China, and man did they earn their billing. They did, like, six different performances in between the other acts.
Adorable little monkeys. I really, really wanted to take them home as pets, but Uncle B said they eat too much.
Poor Uncle B. He’s having a shit time of it lately. This morning, he woke to find his laptop computer had fallen six inches off the foot-stool and his brand new hard drive seized up tighter’n a tick. Stone dead. That’s his second new one this month; the first was faulty. (Yeah. You remember how much fun it is to reload your operating system from scratch).
Don’t get me started about the exhaust system falling off the car.
In conclusion — SQUEEEE:
Have a good weekend, everyone! Hey, our friend Monotone the Elderish has started a blog. Go pester him for a while.
August 27, 2010 — 10:29 pm
Comments: 19
Join us, won’t you?
Here you go — courtesy of Uncle B — six minutes of our adventure on the Kent and East Sussex. All the good video editing software was on the desktop machine, so he had to cobble this together using free crap. There was much growlings and swearings.
The videos in the YouTube sidebar aren’t ours, but there’s lots of good locomotive porn in there if you’ve a mind to see more of the K&ESR.
Not into trains? No problem! How about this adorable orphaned baby stoat raised in captivity and then released in the wild?
Yes, putting in all these text links was a huge pain in the ass, but WordPress auto-embeds the video if you don’t.
August 26, 2010 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 23
Awesome train set is *awesome*
What, geeks like trains? Huh. Who knew?
It rained like a bastard all day today and we did exactly Jack and Shit, so have some more trains, Poindexters.
This here is from the Romney Marsh Model Engineering Society, which we visited last year and I somehow never got around to writing about. It is huge. They have six permanent tracks in three gauges.
On the day we visited, they were running about five of these little steam engines and one electric. Plus a bunch of tiny models on the track in the center.
The tracks are huge. Did I mention huge? Here’s a screencap from Google maps. I’m pretty sure those houses at the bottom are semi-detached (what we would call duplexes).
I was going to call it the awesomest train set ever, but this being England, undoubtedly…no.
August 25, 2010 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 20
WOOoooooWOOOO!
We went and rode the puffer-trains today!
There are “heritage railways” all over Britain. This one is the Kent and East Sussex, which runs ten whole miles, from the lovely old town of Tenterden to the lovely old castle of Bodiam.
A long drive to a short train ride — which somehow abuses the very notion of transportation — but this one is a lovely run across open fields. And we had sammiches and tea and sunnenshine and…it was very nice.
Most of the things we do for fun here are almost entirely run by volunteers. From the steam lines to the old country houses, most of the work — including the really back-breaking work — is done by armies of unpaid staff.
I wonder if that’s taken into account when they tally up which countries give most to charity.
August 24, 2010 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 29
Cram school! Yay!
My books arrived today! And no, they weren’t free!
I’m coming up on two years in the UK — time to prepare for the next (and final) visa. To clear that hurdle, I’ll have to pass an exam called the Life in the UK Test. This delicious morsel was whipped up by Labour in 2007 in the hope it would convince the wider British public that honest to god we haven’t just thrown open the doors and walked away.
Didn’t they, fuck.
Anyhow, the joke is, most Brits would have a hard time passing this thing. Free sample:
True or false: you should not ask questions in an interview.
True or false: half of all young people in the UK have taken part in fundraising or collecting money for charity.
Since 1979 the number of refugees from South East Asia who have been allowed to settle in the UK is: a) less than 2,500 b) between 2,501 and 10,000 c) between 10,001 and 25,000 or d) more than 25,000
And on and on. There are a stupidly large number of questions about Scotland (the last government had an inordinate number of Scots) and about school (honestly, I am never going to need to know at what age to take which exams) and about how to apply for various kinds of benefits (what every new citizen needs to know). Still, I suppose I’m learning stuff.
Did you know the head of the Church of Scotland is called the Moderator? Makes the church sound like a gameshow or an online discussion forum.
¡Noticia! tonight is the peak of the Perseid meteor showers. Look to the Northeast between midnight and dawn.
August 12, 2010 — 11:07 pm
Comments: 19
Oh, and there was this seagull, too
Today, we dug up all the potatoes — got a good haul, too — and braided the onions together to dry. The kitchen smells distinctly French.
Then I sat in the garden, reading a book and feeding bits of my lunch to the chickens. They’re partial to meat, god help us all. Suddenly Lucia — who still makes peeping noises like a baby chick, as a rule — let out two thumping great grown-up BE-GACKs.
Not twelve feet away was a great handsome fox, padding steadily toward us. I said something intelligent like, “whoa, dude — you’re a fox,” but he wasn’t impressed. Not until I got up and headed toward him did he turn and saunter away, waving that bushy red tail.
Funny she recognized the threat. The chooks don’t seem the least bothered by cats, including that feral lad who would happily take a swipe at them if I turned my back.
Anyway — have a good weekend, all. I leave you with this lovely sentiment, what Uncle B ran across while shopping online for new tires. Engrish is the ranguage of ruv.
The Kumho KH 31 is in the four fragrances orange blossom, rosemary, lavender and jasmine. The tyres are not well known to smell is one thing that is not only with a car and thicknesses much hp under the hood can specify, is the other thing. How about times with the opposite sex instead of roses, with beguiling smells of jasmine or orange on points. Let simply Kumho KH 31 and assemble a balance of fresh scent.
August 6, 2010 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 21
Oh, Pooh!
We drove home by an odd, roundabout route yesterday, trying to avoid a certain traffic bottleneck out of London. This took us into the Ashdown Forest, where I have never been (and where there doesn’t appear to be much forest, at least where we were).
When we got to the little town of Hartfield, I said, “look at that — there’s a tea room called Pooh Corner!”
And Uncle B said, “no, that’s probably the actual Pooh Corner.”
And I’m like, “fuck off!”
And he’s like, “no, really!”
Turns out, we’re both right. The Milnes lived at Cotchford Farmhouse, which is about a mile outside Hartfield. But Hartfield was the town they came into and it looks like this cottage — the website is a bit ambiguous on this point — might have been the shop Christopher Robin and his nanny always stopped into for sweeties.
Anyhow, they sell souvenirs. And tea. And maps to all the local landmarks which feature in the Pooh stories.
Meh. Not a big Pooh fan, me.
August 4, 2010 — 9:58 pm
Comments: 27