Gossamer morning.

 

Gossamer cobwebs on the hedge at Lynsore Bottom

Renewing the carpet in Tenterden High Street

 The carpet of Tenterden High Street was renewed over two nights.

The operations were spectacular.

This machine is using a 360° laser level and laying the new carpet.

The equipment employed was almost balletic in its movements. Here the excavator is digging up a cast iron drain cover.

 

 Periodically this street sweeper would surge from a side road and scoop up all the millings.

 

The hot non-skid surface is being spread before the pedestrian crossing.

The entire operation was achieved in two nights – a tremendous feat of organisation to assemble and employ the range of equipment and remove it so quickly afterwards so as to cause the least inconvenience to the residents and road users.

A bridge at Bridge

The village of Bridge lies just to the east of Canterbury and probably derives its name from the fact that the high street provides the crossing point of the River Nailbourne for the A2, the main London to Dover road.

 But Bridge has another bridge, It carried the Elham Valley Railway over Pett Bottom Road which I cycle along most mornings. The railway no longer exists but the bridge remains.   

 If you think that calling a village with a bridge, 'Bridge' suggests a lack of imagination, I would point out that there is a 'River' near Dover and elsewhere it Kent there is a 'Ford' and two villages called 'High Street'.

BT - Always there to help

 

I shall not bore you with my struggles with BT and the 'Digital Voice' which they have imposed on my telephone (for customer convenience). Suffice it to say that they have replaced my telephones with gadgets which are too small to hold and which I cannot hear. They stop working if there is a power cut – I mean, it's unlikely that you are going to want to telephone anybody if the power goes down, isn't it? And they randomly filter my callers by cutting them off before my telephone has even rung but if I need help, BT are there for me. (see above) Of course, if my telephone is not working then I will want to email them, won't I?

Read the last line of the helpful email.

Happy Christmas

 

Just what I would expect to find in the middle of the countryside.

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.

Cattle and Sheep

 

 

 

 

Sheep in the mist at Upper Hardres

 

 

Cattle on the Minnis at Stelling.

Mist on the Minnis

 

Well, actually, more like fog.

That lovely breeze from the south is laden with moisture which turns into fog when it reaches the warm land mass.

Sunrise on a calm morning.

 

The breeze is a gentle southerly. The squirrels are scampering from under my cycle wheels which are crunching and pinging over a patchy carpet of fallen hazel nuts. Some of the corners are treacherous with a mixture of mud washed from the fields in the recent rainstorm and loose chippings from the potholes.

It did not fall on my head.

 

 

This bough fell 

 

from this tree 

 

and blocked the lane.

 

Luckily, I cycled along later.

 

 

Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no. 52

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

Harold Valetta Chapin is the child of theatrical parents: Harold Chapin, actor & playwright and Calypso Valetta, actress. Before young Harold reaches the age of four, his father is killed at the Battle of Loos where he was serving with the London Field Ambulance section of the Royal Medical Corps.

This photograph is of Harold now at the age of seventeen. Presumably having finished his academic education he obtains this British passport in 1928 and then undertakes a journey to Greece, travelling overland through the newly named Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He returns by ship to Venice, then by train through Italy, Switzerland and France to London in time to appear as an extra in Hamlet at the Queen's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue in 1930. The following year he is a messenger in King Lear at the Old Vic. Whilst acting in 1066 And All That at the Birmingham Rep. in 1936 he visits Germany, Austria and Switzerland and continues his acting and stage managing career until his death in 1950.

Just in case you did not believe me.

See previous message.

 

Early morning sun in Lynsore Bottom

 

Yes, Lynsore Bottom truthfully is the name of the locality.
I'll take a shot of the road sign next time!

Toy Trains in Canterbury

 

Model railways have changed a bit since my childhood of 'O' scale clockwork. The locomotives now have working lights and generate, in the case of the diesels, an engine noise which relates to the speed at which they are travelling.

Electric multiple units make the, 'beep beep beep,' signal before closing their automatic doors and the control of these sophisticated models is not effected by turning a great big bakelite knob on a mains transformer, the operator wanders around with a hand held remote control unit and presses buttons.

Nevertheless, the trains still sometimes need a prod with a finger to get them started. It's good to see that not everything has changed.