bigbluemeanie

Navigation

Home | Links |

About This Site

About | Bluemeanie | Scarlett
A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

• Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window - Steve Wozniak

Members

Login | Register | Why?

Most recent entries

• Artificially green
• Watching the traffic
• London Mayor
• Wet and muddy
• Looking Greenwich up and down
• On my bike
• Making Hay
• The previous cycle route
• Back to Woldingham Viewpoint
• The nasty way to travel
• Heaven and hell
• Berlin cycle lanes
• Kurbelstange (deformiert)
• Ebbsfleet International Railway Platform
• Police incident in Tandridge

Recent entries with comments

• London Mayor - (1)
  
• Looking Greenwich up and down - (2)
  
• Police incident in Tandridge - (2)
  
• British War Criminals - (2)
  
• Checkpoint Charlie - (3)
  
• Oxted from the “Woldingham Viewpoint” - (5)
  
• A figure of defiance - (1)
  
• What really happened in Croydon? - (3)
  
• Bike hire in Berlin - (1)
  
• Brandenberg Gate - (1)
  
• Three Way Chess - (1)
  
• Gamelan instruments - (2)
  
• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
• “Bells and Smells” Mass - (1)
  
• Turn cash into less cash - (6)
  

Feeds

• RSS 1.0
• RSS 2.0
• Atom

Categories

• Europe
  • Czech Republic
  • England
  • France
  • Germany
  • Ireland
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • Scotland
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Wales
• Asia Pac
  • Australia
  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Middle East
• Americas
  • Cuba
• Africa
  • South Africa
  • Swaziland

Monthly Archives

• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• February 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005
• February 2005
• January 2005
• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• August 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• May 2004
• April 2004
• March 2004
• February 2004
• January 2004
• December 2003
• November 2003
• October 2003

Links

• Full linklist
• Bluemeanie.org
• Scarlett's weblog
• GeoURL
• Blogflux
• LS Blogs
• Blogwise
• Wikablog
• Technorati
• Blogarama
• Oxted Frappr
• Bloggernity.com
• The Blog Directory
• 
  
• 
• 
• 
• The Green Providers Directory

Lately listening to

Site Statistics

• This website has been viewed 365552 times
• Page rendered in 1.1164 seconds
• 43 queries executed

Site Credits

• Powered by: ExpressionEngine
• Based on a design by:
  BlogMoxie
• 
  The original content of this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

I was out walking with Miney and Meanie this evening when we saw this coach from Skinners of Oxted come past.  It reminded me of one of those caterpillars with the eyebrows.  Skinners is a family-run coach business, based in Oxted.

Another photograph from the By Design exhibition at the Grace Barrand Design Centre. This is where I normally get my caffeine fix on a Saturday morning while Miney is down the road at SESAY rehersals.  And lately I have been using shots from my mobile phone to build up composite “panoramas”, with mixed results. 

I think one of the problems with the above shot is that I moved around a bit too much while composing its parts.

This is the photograph of the Oxted Corn Stores building taken from The Homeland Handbook for Oxted, Limpsfield and Edenbridge (1st Edition, 1904), which I referred to yesterday.

This is the former Oxted Corn Stores building in Station Road West, Oxted, Surrey.  Another name on the building is Berry & Sons who may have been the original owners.

According to The Homeland Handbook for Oxted, Limpsfield and Edenbridge (1st Edition, 1904) Berry & Sons were corn, coal and flour merchants, railway carriers and contractors.  This was their building next to Oxted Station.  They sold anthracite pea nuts for radiant stoves, linseed and cotton cakes, artificial manures, hay and straw, peat moss litter, dog biscuits, linseed, birdseed, poultry food, game meal, silver and other sands, manure, wood, gravel, peat, rock and agricultural salt.  At their premises at the Post Office, Limpsfield, they advertise themselves as Bakers and Confectioners.  Their full-page advertisement has a photograph of this building with a horse cart and a carriage outside.

Today the building is occupied by several tenants:

1. The French confectioner L’Orme de Gisors (this roughly translates as the Gisors Elm Tree, Gisors is a town in Upper Normandy, France.  Her products are flown in from France.
2. The Oxted Design Studio, which seems to sell kitchen units
3. Finishing Touch, a dry cleaning business which has recently moved out leaving only a We Have Moved sign in the window
4. The dental surgery (upstairs) which has likewise recently moved to bigger and better premises, leaving their old sign behind them.

This is a photo I took in Canary Wharf in London this morning.

Wikipedia has some interesting information about Canary Wharf. This includes:

• Canary Wharf is a large business development on the Isle of Dogs.
• Canary Wharf contains the UK’s 3 tallest buildings.
• From 1802 to 1980, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world.
• Canary Wharf itself takes its name from the sea trade with the Canary Islands, whose name comes from the dogs (Latin canis) which the Spaniards found there, producing the linguistic coincidence of trade between the Dog Islands and the Isle of Dogs.
• The Radiohead song ”Fake Plastic Trees” is about Canary Wharf - although the trees on the estate are real.

This is the Just Bikes shop in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. What caught my eye was the metal plaque on the wall between the windows.

This is the plaque I found on the wall in front of the Just Bikes shop in The Green Ashby-de-la-Zouch.  There must be some mistake: Janes Health Foods is some way away in Rushton’s Yard.

I also looked around and didn’t see any green. Perhaps it is behind the shop.

Continuing the dog theme of yesterday, although there is no lost dog in this photograph.

I spotted this dog in a van in the road outside my workplace this evening. I stopped and took two photographs, and was lamenting the fact that I only had my mobile phone and couldn’t do the scene justice, when the owner of the white van returned. He was an ugly man with lank and greasy hair, and looked at me shiftily as he climbed in next to rover.  I was happy to get back in my car and drive home. As I accelerated away I glanced in my rearview mirror: he did not look like the kind of person I would like to follow me.

We tend to blame the media such as magazines, films and books, for cultivating prejudices based on looks. And yet if I know this is unfair, can I as an adult continue to blame my socialization?

This month, according to The Times the author JK Rowling wrote on her website

that she had become irritated while “reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder”. The writer added: “She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world�s fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story.

“This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they�re sticking her on magazine covers instead.

“I don’t want [my daughters] to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I�d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny - a thousand things before ‘thin’.”

The Telegraph also had a detailed report on Rowling’s pronouncements.

Louisa O’Conner of Kent wrote in to the Telegraph that Rowling

does not help matters by the way in which characters are portrayed in her own books.

Unattractive characters in the Hogwarts series are almost always physically unattractive as well. Harry’s horrible cousin, Dudley, is routinely described as fat, and his eating habits are criticised.

Most of the members of Slytherin house are described as ugly, Pansy is said to have a face like a pug, and ugliness and evil are clearly linked together. It would be more interesting if Pansy was stunningly beautiful, to contrast with her nasty character.

If Ms Rowling is really concerned that children should value personality above looks, then perhaps it would be more helpful if she did not consistently make most of her bad characters physically repulsive, and if she didn’t dwell so much on Dudley’s fatness, as if that were the worst thing about him.

The next day another Telegraph reader, Madeleine Hurd, responded that this was unfair:

although Dudley Dursley of the Harry Potter books is portrayed as being both cruel and overweight, the two female Death Eaters, Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy, are both thin, beautiful women, Harry Potter’s friend Neville Longbottom has been described as plump, the bigoted Draco Malfoy has a skinny face, and Lord Voldemort himself is first seen when he is completely bodiless and later remains no more than cadaverously thin.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I discussed the matter with the biggest Rowling fan that I know, Miney. She put forward the same arguements to me as Madeleine. However I still tend to think it is a touch hypocritical of Rowling to make such a big issue of her character’s looks and link it to their personalities and then complain at the way other writers and journalists do something similar. At the same time I would like to be the last pot to call the kettle black.

While Miney and I were pamphleteering leafleting today for a local council election candidate in Oxted South I spotted the poster above, concerning a lost dog:

Bee went missing from a secure garden in Brasted,Kent on the 12th February along with a Lurcher dog and 2 red Lakeland Terriers. Please look out for these dogs appearing in your area.

The poster also provides a link to a website where I was relieved to find that Bee has been found. 

I experienced three serious traffic jams on Friday afternoon driving from the Midlands down to Surrey. The first (pictured above) involved a vehicle fire, according to the traffic report on the radio. In the second accident I saw an overturned truck.  The third traffic jam involved a normal Friday afternoon situation on the M25.

Tomorrow is the London Marathon. Most of us might like to briefly consider why we don’t run these things. Visitors to England at this time might want to consider reading travel advice. The tourist body Enjoy England responded to the description of the English nation as

overweight, alcopop-swilling, sex-and-celebrity obsessed television addicts

There are a number of places in the world known as Mitchell Park: a park in Milwaukee (and various other parts of the USA); a suburb of Adelaide, Australia; and this park in eThekweni (Durban, South Africa).

According to the official city website:

Mitchell Park, once an ostrich farm was named after Sir Charles Bullen Hugh Mitchell who came to Natal as Colonial Secretary in 1877 and 1889 became Governor of Natal for 15 years.

Displays of amaryllis may be seen in season and refreshment facilities, bird aviaries and children’s play facilities attract the visitors. Park rangers are on duty with a security guard service during the night. There is a small charge to enter the zoo, with group tour concessions available.

I added the link to a rather sparse article on Charles Mitchell at wikipedia. There’s a photo of him here. It seems that the park is about 105 years old this year.

Spring is here at last. Now if only that pesky rain would go away so that we could enjoy it.

Summary: Mild tonight with scattered showers tomorrow.

This Evening and Tonight
Mild and fairly cloudy with just the odd shower continuing. Minimum temperature 8 deg C (46 deg F).

Friday
Bright with some sunny spells but scattered showers developing, some heavy in places. Feeling pleasantly warm with light winds. Maximum temperature 16 deg C (61 deg F).

Outlook for Saturday
Dry with early fog clearing to leave some warm sunshine.

Text issued at: 1800 20 Apr 2006

This is the high street in Oxted, Surrey, known as Station Road East.  The notice in the window reads:

Customer Information
We wish to advise customers that this store will cease trading on Saturday 3rd September.

The shop has therefore been empty now for over seven months.

My blogging feels like it is slowing down at the moment. I have been busy laying wooden floors in my life.

I was interested to read the New Scientist article that suggests that the Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children:

About half of teenage goths have deliberately harmed themselves or attempted suicide, a new study suggests. But joining the modern subculture – which grew out of the 1980s gothic rock scene – may actually protect vulnerable children, researchers say.

The study followed 1258 young people who were interviewed at ages 11, 13, 15 and 19. It found that of those who considered themselves goths, 53% had self-harmed and 47% had tried to commit suicide. The average prevalence of self-harm among young people in the UK is 7% to 14%. Self-harm includes behaviours such as cutting or burning oneself. And about 6% of young people admit suicide attempts. Some studies suggest the incidence is rising in society.

Researchers at University of Glasgow found that while most self-harmers started the practice at age 12 to 13, they did not become goths until they were a couple of years older, on average.

This is the view inside the Theatre Royal which is the reflective building that I noticed the other night.  I took several photos on my camera phone and merged them to form the panoramic view above.

On Friday night we went to see a gala performance by the Bolshoi Ballet:

This Gala is a celebration of the greatness of the Bolshoi Ballet and will feature fully staged elements of the Company�s most spectacular and lavish productions such as Act 3 of Swan Lake and excerpts from Spartacus, as well as exciting divertissements including Le Corsaire and Don Quixote.This unique programme will only be performed to Nottingham audiences and is certain to attract ballet lovers from across the whole country. Book now to avoid disappointment!

Contrary to the above information, taken from the Royal Centre website, they performed Act II Scene I of Swan Lake and Act II of Spartacus, with the divertissements in between.