A somewhat surprising memory: the first time I consumed fish & chips from a chip-shop was while on a religious retreat in Staveley in 1977.

It feels oddly decadent to have a fridge that was made in the C21st (CE), rather than some gurgling relic of empire. It's as if I should be keeping the sort of brightly coloured putty-like grub they scoffed on Discovery One (when not jogging or arguing with HAL) in the thing.

Internet-based serendipity: This turned up (andrewducker again) while I had this ( Read more... )

Since I've used the phrases 'And also with you' and 'Brethren; be sober, be vigilant' in the last couple of days...

... Actually, I don't have a point. Funny business, unconscious cultural signifiers.

When you've been given secateurs and a bowsaw for Christmas presents, every problem looks like about five minutes hack and slash followed by several hours standing in the cold cutting up the bits of ex-shrub so they'll fit into the council-supplied brown bags ( Read more... )

The pottering continues.

Yesterday - Tyntesfield.

Bloody hell. None of the pictures I've seen do the place any sort of justice. (And all the ones I took are in the analogue camera) A large and rambling house seemingly cobbled together from several different ones, with a lathe room, gun room, electrical plant room and steam-heated billiard table ( Read more... )

(And not the Gloucester version - dijicul)

Mad dad mangles strad.

Portrait of the artist as a fat bastard.

Early furry.

Feral bollards.

Woolf vs. Dali.

The church at the edge of the world.

Big black cock chicken.

The dusty age of wireless. (Or is it HF/DF?)

What all the cool kids will be wearing.

Guns. Lots of guns.

Tank-fondling. (Well ( Read more... )

Even the internet sometimes doesn't want you to know things. Dawley new town. STD code 0399

Since there've been pleasing developments on the de-larding front, I'm now emitting snot like an over-enthusiastic Doris Stokes. I'd fondly imagined that I'd be otherwise unaffected, but no. I am considerably thicker than a woodshed stacked full of stout planks ( Read more... )

One of the odder things I did at big school (other than turn up regularly) was work at the school press. This was an ex-book cupboard (ex-cupboard, rather than store for things that had once been books and were now embarking on second careers as rocket salesmen or wing-loss adjusters) that ponged of printing ink, paraffin, cardstock and teenage ( Read more... )