CLASSIC CAR SHOW

Here we were again but the cars were quite different from those we saw two years ago (see 2006 post under same heading). The Bentley was my favourite car as even then it had electric everything - windows, seat adjustment, mirrors etc.

Below it this American built car was imported from New South Wales and was beautifully appointed for a dry climate. There were two seats open to the air in front of the picnic basket in which the kids could scream their heads off without disturbing the serenity of their parents.

The bluish coloured car had some contextual dummy food on a tray which was amusing if unhealthy looking.
The green MG had novel architecture revealing the foot well as well as the engine compartment when the bonnet was lifted up. Very spartan.
But not as much as the stripped down cockpit of the red vintage racing car, which was one of the first to reach 100 mph.
The brownish interior with the leather seats is part of the opulence of the car shown above with the picnic basket and al fresco rear seats.

And what is this ?? A steering wheel with loads of audio controls and no dials? Must be crazy. And look at the bodywork, open to the weather, low to the ground, one seat only, no boot. Has the name Lewis Hamilton on it. Must be a nutter.

A tour round the Most Beautiful Building in the world

REASONS FOR G&D TO......

...visit Australia. Sydney to be precise. Balmain, the harbourside village of Sydney, in particular. It has all the essentials to modern living. Some pleasant architecture and charming Australian eccentricity.

There is a good bookshop...and coffee drinks of a popular kind are available.

...............................................................................................There are numerous high quality restaurants - Thai, Morrocan, fusion etc - with reasonable prices. And apples are sold there. That is the fruit and the Apples containing Leopard - do I need to explain this?

The natives are very friendly and, I nearly forgot






......................................................................................................some exciting places nearby.

SQUIRREL WAR

You may recollect this photo of a cheeky squirrel occupying a bird box intended for blue tits. At first they used to take turns in sitting on the sloping roof and to counteract this I added a more severe sloping bit on top
but once they got the hang of sitting on this they - or was it a s/he only - mastered hanging face down from it and peering into the entrance hole. S/he then chewed at the hole over some weeks to make it bigger and then climbed in after much contortion to use it as a bolt hole in wet weather. So, no blue tit occupants last summer.

The enlarged hole can be seen more clearly in the second picture.









So now I have changed the slope of the roof and added a metal cover to form a bird sized entrance 0f 25 mm. Unfortunately my carpentry was not too good and so I had to add a very squirrel friendly horizontal strip on top of the apex to make it weather tight. To reduce the "friendliness" I have put in some screws into the top piece and hopefully even the agile squirrels will not find this comfortable. Within an hour of putting the new box up a blue tit was investigating it. My fingers are crossed for the bird.

GULLIVERS' TRAVELS

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny Sunday and so we decided to visit the Land of Passing Youth. This is a place where everyone is well off and younger than 40 years old, and where the faces and language of people from many foriegn lands can be seen and heard. We had a dispensation to visit by virtue of us celebrating a special occasion.

We parked our voyager close to Parliament Square and travelled by tube to the Tate Modern. Because I forgot I had my Oyster card with me I was invited to pay £4 for the privilege but when I exclaimed "What....!!!!" I was offered a Travelcard for £5.30. Little was I to know that we would not use the LPY's public transport again that day.

When we got to Tate Modern Barbara's sharp eyesight spotted an alarming crack in the floor but was unable to persuade the staff of the evidence of an earthquake in the LPY.





Undeterred we booked into the exhibition of Juan Munoz' sculpture's and we saw waxen images of ancients who had once lived in the LPY. They obviously were very animated and happy despite their immobile condition and inability to speak in foreign, or any, tongues.














We continued walking along the South Bank towards the afternoon sun surrounded by many people apparently moving in the opposite direction.

A few of them preferred to stay on one spot and had a very curious choice of clothing oblivious to the cold weather, perhaps because of their foreign origins. We have not seen such strange species on TV before, even on David Attenborough's programmes.















In Trafalgar Square there was much hooting of horns and waving of large orange flags alongside the Stars and stripes and Union Jacks. Many of these flags were waved from cars which were full of young men and the traffic moved exceeding slow. These people were Kosovans celebrating their independence. We had some difficulty understanding their language but we think that they said that Kosovo is a suburb of the LPY.

Further on in Gerrard Street there was a celebration of the Chinese New Year: of course we knew laready about this suburb of LPY.
Our journey took us to the Curzon where we saw "No country for Old Men", a theme of the LPY which we well understood by then. After watching the Coen Brothers' latest production we had become much incommoded by hunger and we turned into Greek Street to eat at the Thai restaurant known as Patara. The food from this suburb of the LPY is very tasty and the decor exotic.

Finally, tired by our long day we turned homeward thankful for all the celebration that had been put on for we two Gullivers to remember our wedding anniversary. I wonder what they will do for us next year?

Rumours...

We watched a TV prog the other night on the making of the LP of this name by Fleetwood Mac. I feel that it was one of the most complete pop records ever made. Great melodies, varied instrumental leads, varied rhythms, meaningful words, etc. And seeing how it was put together, accompanied by snatches of the songs, brought this all back to me. It topped the US charts for 6 months and sold 30 million copies. Not bad.

But what emerged from the programme was the emotional turmoil the five members of the group were in. The two partnerships were both breaking down and the fifth member, Mick Fleetwood, had recently gone through a painful divorce. The McVeighs only spoke to each other when absolutely essential.

Despite all this they focused on composing and recording for 15 hours a day over a six month period in a cramped and windowless studio. They were also well fuelled with the drugs of the day. They realised that they were dealing with their emotions obliquely through their songs and hence the title of the LP. Quite a story.

And then I remembered from the cover picture that I probably had a copy of the LP.

Yes, and many more, sitting obsoletely in a cupboard upstairs. No wonder I don't listen to music much these days. All the good stuff is trapped in old technology which would cost £100s to digitise in any way. And the music companies fret about downloads. Who has been ripped off here?

WANBOROUGH, Surrey

We came across this hamlet on a walk yesterday. It is tiny, but what a history!

It is situated on a spring at the foot of the chalk Hog's Back ridge and is thought to have been first settled in 8000 BC (no mistype) for this reason. It has a mini church (44 feet x 18feet internally) dating from 1060, the largest medieval barn in Surrey dating from 1388, and a Manor House dating from 1150 - all AD, of course. Oh, and there was a Roman temple nearby where £2million of coins were looted using metal detectors in 1985.

The manor - an estate - is recorded in the Domesday Book (1083) which mentions that it had belonged to two brothers of King Harold in Saxon times. The present stone church is believed to have replaced a wooden Saxon church on the site.

The manor changed hands over the years and into the ownership of the Cistercian (i.e. Roman Catholic) monks based at Waverley Abbey in 1130 to provide them with grain, fish and wool.

Henry VII's anti RC dissolution dissolved the Abbey in 1536 (G&D, remember visiting the ruins?) and ownership of the manor passed into secular hands. At one time a Quaker family owned it and, not having use for churches, they used the building as a carpenter's shop. The church was restored and re-opened in 1861. Two of Prime Minister Asquith's children are buried in the small church yard.

During World War II the Manor House was taken over by the Special Operatives Executive (SOE) which apparently features in Ted Allbeury' s spy books. Here agents from the Continent were trained in methods of disruption - an equivalent of terrorist training camps - before returning to their own countries' to join resistance movements.

There is more detail on the place, especially the Barn which has to be viewed internally, in Wiki or by googling. Here are two pictures of the church, taken in 2008 AD.