Capability Brown

Calamity Brown

Urban Legend Brown

Surfing in the lounge with my laptop, I’m exposed to the highlights of the Idiot Lantern. One show on at the moment is “I’m a Celebrity, get me out of here!” and we get to hear the wit and wisdom of megastars like Christopher Biggins. Last night he expressed the opinion that probably more than 50% of people were swingers, i.e. enjoyed sex with multiple partners in some form or another.

Now maybe in celebrity circles (or Panto casts) that is the case but I’ve only met one couple who supposedly swapped partners and whilst I wouldn’t have kicked her out of bed I wouldn’t have wanted to subject him to anyone else of either sex. Most people appear to prefer serial monogamy.

A few years ago, I was informed that having Pampas Grass in your front garden denoted a swinging household. (It must be true, Wendy from Purchasing told me). There are odd references to it on ‘tinterweb, but nothing on Snopes.

I did hear one story, though, from a reliable source. When the original Jesus Christ Superstar Musical was running in the West End in the 70s, there was a scene where King Herod appeared from the back of the set with a number of concubines on a large circular inflatable bed, suggesting an orgy. (You can hear a snippet as an MP3). My friend was an electrician for the show and he had to supervise the bed which was on a motorised winch. Such is the tension of being a West End Performer that it was traditional for the actors to have a bit of a mini-orgy of their own in the two minutes or so before the wall opened up and the bed trundled onto the stage. That also probably explained why the cast looked a bit flushed…

Image attribution here.

It has been remiss of me not to re-link to the Witanagemot Club in my blog move. I have no desire to see our Nations disappear in order to become Regions of the EUssr.

I noticed a new vision spiel on the CP site:

It is also the height - and limit - of our ambition. We have no other agenda. There is no underlying social, political or economic “master plan” and we guard our independence keenly.

I don’t recall seeing it last month and there isn’t an obvious navigation to it either today. Curious. Maybe Lord Randy (Jerk) of Higham has them rattled?

-oOo-

My first visit to a Mine was in the mid 70s as a young Scientist, although we only visited the surface workings. It was a regular NCB Mine in full production and was a fascinating afternoon. Of particular interest was the visit to the Pit Head winding house, where the life of the men in the travelling cage was entirely in the hands of the man who worked the lift gear, watching out for markings on the ropes as the cables wound on and off.

Ten minutes down the road from our house is the National Coal Mining Museum at the former Caphouse Colliery which is well worth a trip and currently free admission. You get to go 450′ underground, although the lift cage is built to modern passenger safety standards. My first underground mine visit, however, was to a Colliery at Chatterley Whitfield, now sadly gone but not forgotten. This felt as though it had just closed the day before and we half expected to hear distant machinery in the tunnels.

As so often is the case, we were shown round by a retired grizzled old miner who was a bit curmudgeonly but knew his stuff. We went round a number of surface buildings first then eventually went to hand in our contraband and get our lamps, hats and pit check tokens. We then went to the outside of the pit head building and he told us that when we got into the cage, to go as far back as possible then turn round and face him.  We then traipsed inside to a small brick room with wooden doors and some of us went right up to the doors, squashed together and turned around. He followed us in, took in the scene, then exclaimed;

“Yer daft buggers! This is the fookin’ air lock!”

The pit cage was cramped and on two levels. As we squeezed in, he explained that the bells we heard signified that there were miners in the car rather than just coal trucks. On asking what would happen if this had not been signalled, he explained that some of us might have ended up with broken bones when it braked fiercely.

I revisited Chatterley Whitfield a number of years later and was disappointed to find that the tour had been grockled; instead of going hundreds of feed underground, we only went about 15′ down to sub-surface areas rather than the mine itself and the various seams & machinery layouts were faked. (Faked very well, but you don’t expect a seam of coal to sound hollow when you tap it).

There is a Mine at Beamish, although it is just a Drift Mine into the hillside  and a little disappointing, but it is worth a day there to see the Town, the Trams, the Station, the Home Farm and the Miner’s cottages. (The Bank is particularly interesting and there is a Masonic Hall, although I haven’t seen that yet)

When I was in Runcorn last week, I spent a few minutes looking at the prints on display in the Brindley gallery.

Their website describes it thus:

17th Nov - 5th Jan 2008
Paul Peter Piech: Work from the archive

An internationally regarded printmaker, Paul Peter Piech gave voice to his strongly held beliefs through the medium of hand printed political posters. His work also reflects his love of jazz and poetry and references sources as diverse as Martin Luther King and Goethe.
A Touring Exhibition from The Regional Print Centre, Wrexham.

I particularly liked this poster on the right, but haven’t been able to identify who said it, certainly not Martin Luther king or Goethe. It is paraphrased here and there, but I haven’t found an accurate source yet. I haven’t been able to match the flag either, the Iraq flag has three stars but Arabic writing as well. I’m more inclined to think it may be an African (or Middle Eastern) country, especially with the Palm Trees, but a quick look around the Interweb hasn’t matched the flag or the quote. I nearly bought an exhibition catalogue but got distracted by a phone call.

Just in case you are viewing this without images, the words say:

“We are strong but not arrogant, modest but not weak”

A much better position than some of the vision/mission guff we see in Corporate shareholder statements. It also seems to be diametrically opposed to the current position of our Government and all of the mainstream political parties.

Why is the blogpost entitled “diverse posters?” Well, outside of the sanitised clinical environment of the gallery, the real world has posters of its own in Runcorn. I was amazed to see a warning notice on the door of a sub-station that the contents were protected by Smart Water. For the benefit of not-so-smart copper thieves, it is also protected by 11,000 volts which I would have thought was a much more effective deterrent- summary justice capital punishment. The other poster that surprised me was the one shown in the window of a work clothing shop, a particularly specific example of a no refunds policy. The shop also sold bric-a-brac; I picked up a handful of ReadersDigest triple CDs for £1 each. Cheshire isn’t all northern stockbrokers and Company Directors it would seem.

We’ve just returned from a short blogging break in the London Area. We spent Saturday evening celebrating the marriage of two old friends, Janice and Martyn who finally decided to plight their troth, after much nagging from their 15 year old daughter. The event was in Sutton at a Holiday Inn Hotel (Rack rate £225 during the week and a much more reasonable £70 ish including breakfast for the do). During the day, we went into Central London to see a show (Les Mis) and have a meal at a nice Italian Restaurant in Jermyn Street. Karen had Frog’s Legs and I tried a thigh but didn’t particularly find them appetising. I didn’t expect them to look like truncated frogs which put me off somewhat.

Les Mis is in the Queen’s Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was severely damaged during the war and a new foyer was built opening in 1959. Whilst reasonably spacious, it is rather bland and the exterior is dull. However, there are plans to rebuild it in keeping with the Gielgud exterior which is the other theatre on the block. It belongs to the Delfont Mackintosh Theatres Group, the latter being Cameron Mackintosh, the original director of Les Mis. They intend to rebuild the auditorium on two levels (and one day put the boxes back, they have been removed for the current show) and introduce a new space above, to be known as the Sondheim Auditorium. It is old news, but I had forgotten about it until I saw the display panels & read the programme.

(You can get a Java 260 degree view of the Queens interior and Les Mis set here- note the lack of boxes).

The evening wheels of success were oiled by a free bar, cheers for that M & J. The ladies appeared to be trying to out-boob each other in posh frocks, although Karen was declared the winner on our table. (she has been watching how to look good naked and knows all about “banger enhancement”). David had a good time as well, but perhaps inhaled a bit too much helium.