Art Deco and NADFAS

I had to go to London yesterday to a meeting at NADFAS now that I am a NADFAS accredited lecturer. I took what we call the 'fast train' which whisks us from Canterbury to London St. Pancras in about 56 minutes. Historically, East Kent has always been linked to the London stations of Charing Cross and Victoria so arriving in the north of London was quite a change for me. Of course, had the Duke of Bedford not forbidden the London-Birmingham Railway et al from crossing his estates in the nineteenth century then Euston, King's Cross and St. Pancras stations would not have been called such because they would probably have been built somewhere near the Strand.

Trinity Court apartment building,
erected 1935.

If you are wondering what NADFAS stands for, it is the 'National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies' and in honour of such an affiliation, on my walk down the Grays Inn Road I stopped to look at Trinity Court which is a rather attractive (in my view) Art Deco building erected as an eight-storey block of apartments in 1935 to cater for the demand for service flats from the rising middle classes.

Detail of balcony

Our very own Desert Storm

During the period of atrocious weather which much of the UK suffered recently I felt that East Kent, the bottom right hand corner of England as viewed from Space, was being treated quite gently.  An interesting characteristic of this region is that it houses the UK's only desert, Dungeness.

When travelling through Court at Street a few days ago I saw the weather front moving in from the English Channel to engulf this barren spit of shingle and seagull and I realised that I was witnessing our very own Desert Storm.

Identical snowflakes

I think that, for many years adults have misjudged the reasoning powers of young children.  When we were nine years old our teacher recounted the conventional story about the discovery of bacon: the Chinese farmer's pig sty caught fire and as he tried to herd the pigs to safety he licked his hands to keep them cool. The repeated action of licking his hand and touching the pig's hot skin brought an enticing flavour to his taste buds and, hey presto! bacon was discovered. I thought it was a lovely story. The boy sitting next to me said, 'Well what was the farmer keeping the pigs for in the first place if it wasn't for eating? They don't lay eggs, you can't milk them. Did he have them as pets?' I thought that such a challenge to authority was disrespectful. And then I remembered the snowflakes.

Crocheted snowflakes frozen in mid fall.

It had happened when I was six years old and the teacher had announced that no two snowflakes were ever alike. It had been proven. To a child who had watched snowflakes melting on the sleeve of his navy blue gabardine raincoat this was astonishing news. How had they managed to check all the snowflakes against each other before they had melted?  The answer I quickly realised, even at the age of six, was that it was one of those silly things that adults wanted children to believe. It was patently impossible to prove or disprove and as an adult I can see no reason to change my initial assessment.

But if you want to try, go to the haberdashery shop in Tenterden High Street. There you will see a display of crocheted snowflakes suspended in mid blizzard. 
You can check for yourself whether they are all different.
LATEST UPDATE: Have a look at the snowman they did for 2015.

MyMateJohn was right after all.

Those of you who have read Hunting the Golden Lion (read the first chapter here: http://queenannesfan.com/files/2213/7396/6771/Text_Golden_Lion.pdf ) will know that I have a long-suffering friend called MyMateJohn. When he is not managing the Oxfam bookshop in Folkestone he sometimes comes out on a bicycle ride with me. His preparations and route choice are usually made after checking the weather situation on the satellite pictures and then ascertaining the local wind speed and direction from the meteorological broadcast of nearby Manston Airport.
I was busy yesterday morning so we arranged to go out for a ride in the afternoon. When I got home at midday MyMateJohn had left several messages on my telephone warning me that the weather would be unsuitable and that he was not going out and neither should I.
It is difficult to take seriously the prophecies of someone who can never tell whether the wind is blowing him along or slowing him down but just for once, I decided to accord him full oracle status. I stayed indoors. The wind destroyed my garden fence, snapping off at ground level seven 4" x 4" timber posts.

I think MyMateJohn was right after all.

A wind that can snap off 4" x 4" timber posts is
probably too dangerous to cycle in.

It's technology that slows down passport control.

According to a recent article in The Times, now that the new UK passport will carry the photograph of the bearer at the front it will remove, 'that quirk that used to allow us to stand out from the rest of the world,' and which, apparently, 'baffled immigration officials in America and many other countries.'

Avoiding the temptation to speculate on what would not baffle an American immigration official, I find it misleading and rather insulting to imply that passport officials waste time trying to find their way around passports. The passports of many countries in the Middle and Far East open 'at the back' and have done so for decades. Passport officials know this and work accordingly. What slows down passport control is not 'back to front passports' but the application of technology to the process.

A British family of five travelling on their joint passport could be checked by a British immigration officer in about five seconds. Now each family member must hold their own passport -- this earns more money for the government. The computer takes eighteen seconds to verify the microchip. That family of five now wait for ninety seconds and so does everybody in the queue behind them.

I've said it before and I shall no doubt have cause to say it again: we are teaching machines to do badly what a human can do so well.

Rue Amelie is now in Italy

When visiting Paris earlier this year with Pauline and Geoff I took them to Rue Amelie, the street in which my eponymous popular thriller is set, and Geoff took a photograph of me displaying a copy of the book which demonstrated how the cover art was an accurate representation of the actual street.



A few weeks ago they holidayed in Italy and what did they find in the hotel bookshelf? - a copy of Rue Amelie. So here is Pauline, reprising the earlier tableau.

And still it goes on. Look at my post of 12th April 2014 and you will see another happy reader in the Rue Amelie.

Australia wipes out Great Britain.

Before the Australian states federated, each state decided its own immigration policy and issued passports. Even after federation in 1901 this practice continued until the outbreak of the Great War at which point passport issue became the responsibility of the Governor General. 

Australian passports bore 

the legend, 'British Passport', on their covers and the holder's nationality was described as, British Subject'.

 As the country became more confident in itself, this became, 'Australian Citizen and a British Subject'. In 1967 Australia decided to remove the 'British' from their passports altogether. I can quite understand the wish of a country to affirm its own identity but have they now gone too far by expunging Great Britain entirely from their cognizance?

When I applied for my Australian visa recently, I trawled through the list of countries from which Australia declared that it would be delighted to receive visitors and was nonplussed not to be able to find mine. Every other country in the world was listed but not the United Kingdom. Nor was it described as, 'Great Britain'. I eventually discovered that my country is called, 'British Citizen'.