And even hotter today.

 

 

21°C at 05.30 at Upper Hardres

15.8°C in cold air pocket below Stelling Minnis at 06.35

It's going to be hot today.

 

Hollyhocks on the A2 at Canterbury

The last five years of sowing hollyhock seeds from the window of my car and from my bicycle on the overbridges is now beginning to take effect.

The central reservation on the A2 is showing results.

Right, is the dense garden which I created under the pedestrian overbridge at Bridge. The hollyhocks seem to have managed to suppress the other vegetation which was present.

Left, this display is a result of my return journey from the swimming pool. I threw the seeds from the car window.  You have to be careful otherwise they blow back inside the car. The pool closed three years ago.

So, as you drive around Canterbury on the A2, either going to, or coming from Dover, have a look out for my hollyhocks. My plan is for the flowers to be so successful that they spread all along the road. I think they look prettier than the scraggy stuff which usually grows there.

Wild hen's nest in my garden?

 

Perhaps I should spend more time in my garden then I would not make discoveries such as this. There are over a dozen eggs in this makeshift nest hidden between my garage and my shed.

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no. 53

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.
Peruse and wonder.

Celeste Grijo Junquera in 1955 is a theatrical artiste known as, 'The Spanish Betty Boop'. In reality she is not Spanish but Portuguese, having been born in Lisbon in 1920. 

 

This is her portrait in her Mexican immigrant passport which allows her to stay in the country to exercise her profession of, 'vedette of theatre, radio and television; recorder of discs and performer in cabaret and in cinema'.

She stays in Mexico for eleven years, eventually leaving for Argentina in 1966.

Broken crockery in Beverley

 

The ceiling light in the dining room at the Beverley Arms Hotel.
An explosion of broken crockery and cutlery. 

 A petrol pump dating from the 1920s, still in place a century later.

Aviator Hotel at Sywell

We needed somewhere to stay between my delivering two talks in Northamptonshire and we made this discovery.

 

It started out life as the Northampton Flying Club on the land of Hall Farm.

It has been extensively renovated, retaining and enhancing its original art deco architecture.

 

 

(left) Entrance to the hotel. Note the large doormat which appears to be a diagram of the runways.

 

 

 

 

(right) Stairway to the upper floor. Note the inricate metal bannister screens which upon closer inspection resolve themselves into outlines of aeroplanes in a clouded sky.

 

 

 

(left) Direction signs to the rooms.

 

 

(right) The dining room in the terminal building. Decorated with many aeronautical images, it flaunts a stunning mural of a 1930s plane flying over the field.