the most glorious holiday destination in all England

Man alive we've had a lot of press over the past couple of days (we as in Folkestone, rather than me personally), it's been great. The weekend of Triennial events itself was good and there was a real buzz about the town. I'm not entirely sure that it'll last beyond the weekend though, once the street entertainers are gone I don't know how many extra tourists will be drawn in by the new art works, but a few I hope. Plus a lot of people would have seen the town on a good day in a good light and it might make one or two of them think about coming down here and starting something. All of the journalists seem to have had the same idea, and run with the same cliches just like this from the Guardian:

Poor Folkestone. A seaside town with so very few visitors, and a port with no great ships, it is as ghostly a place as I've ever visited, the melancholy only made the more piercing by the fact that it was once the most glorious holiday destination in all England.

2008 :: Comment / reply

Yesterday's news

BAH, wrote a huge posting, to compensate for several days of blog neglect, and Firefox only done went and crashed on me didn't it... that's literally several paragraphs of finely thought out prose that are now lost forever. I need to write an "autosave" type feature like Google Mail does. So where was I? Ah, LOVELY day today, I took an early stroll down town, and it was a delight. Usually the town centre is a bit cluttered with pushchairs and loonies, but being a bit early today, I seem to have missed most of them. I headed back via The Bayle and the churchyard, and that too had a lovely silvery quality to it, a mix of the bright sunlight and the barely-there mist. Only the sudden thought that a) there were no loonies in town and b) this church yard is were the bad element might well hang out quickened my step at all. I took to The Leas, and found a tiding of magpies:



Yes, that's only two and not really a collective noun's worth, but that was just the picture I happened to grab, there really were a lot about. I tried to video some, but it seems I didn't catch much other than wind noise, I need a spoffle. They seemed to be arguing to me, but that doesn't really show up.



On spoffles and collective nouns, we've been watching lots of QI the last few days, it's great, but I picked up on some of their research that I thought was a bit off. Fry mentioned how the joke collective noun a flange of baboons was now overtaking the official term, and referenced a review on Amazon as proof of this. Amazon reviews can be written by anyone and say anything, does that really count as an official review? I formulated these thoughts without checking though, and it seems there really are a lot of mentions out there, perhaps it will take over. Good work Not the Nine O'Clock News. Spoffle of course is the name for a sponge microphone cover that was invented by Hugh Laurie and then became law.

Weekend, great, we had a visitor from London, so took in The Ship Inn (Sandgate), Escondido, The Ship Inn (the harbour), The British Lion, and Chambers though none of them were that great. Played a lot of pool this weekend too, here and in the pub, I've still got it...

On pubs, I had a rare night out in London last week, met The Ushers in Gordon's wine bar, a new one on me. This is a great place, proper cosy cellar bar, and couldn't be handier for Charing Cross. I tried to get a pint in The Sherlock Holmes before this, a pub confusingly signed "Est 1732" or some other such date long before the Sherlock Holmes books were written. But it was closed for refurbishment. Seems the pub was renamed this in some modern year, though it's on or near to the site of a hotel mentioned in the books.

Watching: Apart from QI, How Do You Want Me, as recommended by bro-in-law Dom, and it's actually very good. A medium gentle comedy starring Dylan Moran and Charlotte Coleman. There's only two series of it so I hope we don't get really into it. Also about to start Dexter, some crime thing set in Miami.
Reading: Just finished a Rebus, The Falls, and am debating wether to plough back into the Reg Hill / Dalziel and Pascoe novels that I'm really enjoying, or to give Cryptonomicon a go. Looks a bit intimidating...
Listening: Pioneer Soundtracks, I just heard it's getting reissued, that's one of my favourite albums.
Eating: Sausage and mash for tea, I'd better get on with it...

2006 :: Comment / reply