So, that’s it for another year, and the end of the road for this particular blog. There will be another, at a different WordPress address, coincident with the start of the Chinese New Year on 31 January 2014…
All that remains for me now though is to say thank you to a few loyal visitors to this site over the past twelve months, specifically to gpcox, Frivolous Monsters, and to my sister Chris…a very Happy New Year to you all :).
Excuse me, Dear Reader, there’s something I need to get off my chest, some detritus left there by gale force winds and torrential rain…
Ah, that feels better; that was some audio therapy from a Welsh band called Budgie, from their 1972 album, ‘Squawk’, the track being ‘Stranded’, and an epitome for the frustration of being marooned on Portsea Island over Christmas, when I should have been celebrating the festival with family in faraway Kent…
But never mind, let’s take some positives from it all; it at least provided me with an opportunity to watch a few films I otherwise wouldn’t have watched, including ‘The Bishop’s Wife’, ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘Love Actually’, while today I wandered down to Canoe Lake in Southsea, and enjoyed a ramble along the seafront under beautiful blue skies, to Southsea Castle and the nearby D-Day Museum…
Southsea seafront near Canoe Lake…
Canoe Lake has plentiful swans, and here’s one of them…
And in homage to ‘The Red Shoes’, with Moira Shearer in all her Technicolor beauty, here are a couple of swans enacting pas de deux in ‘Le Lac des cygnes’… 😉
And here is one final photo of a swan on this photoblog, which now has less than a week to run…
Wandering westwards along the seafront, the wonderful South Parade Pier soon comes into view…
Promenading (and jogging) along the seafront is a popular activity among both locals and visitors…
There’s very obviously some lens flare here to the right of the pier, but I thought I’d post it nonetheless…
Wasn’t doing any business today, but it’s a lot more popular in the summer months
Nearing Southsea Castle, with its lighthouse, and visible in the distance are both the Naval War Memorial and at the extreme right, the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth Harbour…
The Castle Lighthouse, done in sepia…
In front of the D-Day Museum, near Southsea Castle, are a couple of restored Second World War tanks…
A British Churchill Crocodile tank …
A Canadian Sherman Grizzly tank…
From the D-Day Museum, I wandered up to Palmerston Road, for a pint in The Lord Palmerston (Wetherspoon’s) pub, before heading on to Debenhams, to have a look at the Boxing Day Sale items. I didn’t buy anything, but this rather appealed…
‘Nancy’ one of the ‘Pretty Ladies’ figurines in the Royal Doulton series…
As did this Christmas gift from my boss at work, which I drank this evening…Cheers!…and just two more posts to go :)…
A Lakeland Pale Ale, ‘Cocker Hoop’ from Jennings Brewery
Gerrard Street is the main street in London’s Chinatown, bustling with tourists and visitors most weekends of the year, so this solitary erhu player, photographed on Sunday afternoon of last week in Gerrard Street, is somewhat untypical, but here he is anyway, one of the very few erhu buskers on the streets of London…
Busking with an erhu, in Gerrard Street, Chinatown, London…
On Tuesday afternoon, I was down at Portsmouth Hard, supping a pint in The Lady Hamilton pub (where incidentally, I chanced upon Adam Ant in the bar around three years ago; he was staying in bed and breakfast there at the time) as I awaited a coach to London’s Victoria Coach station at half-four. Following is a photo of HMS Warrior I took that afternoon; it’s a ship that I never tire of looking at…
HMS Warrior, the world’s first ironclad warship, 1860, at Portsmouth Hard
The trip to London was to take me to a gig in the Purcell Room on South Bank, part of the London Jazz Festival this year, and specifically to a concert by Christine Tobin, singing The Songs of Leonard Cohen. I very rarely buy jazz records, but I’ve seen a lot of live jazz in London over the years, including a few years ago, gigs by both Christine Tobin and Huw Warren, who accompanied her on accordion (and piano) on Tuesday evening.
First up on Tuesday night in the Purcell Room though, as support act, was the Georgia Mancio Trio, who performed half a-dozen songs, including a version of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’, sung with a Brazilian Portuguese lyric…and there was also a song by Simon and Garfunkel ;)…
Georgia Mancio Trio, with Gareth Lockrane on flute, and Geoff Gascoyne on bass
Christine Tobin’s set consisted almost entirely of covers of Leonard Cohen’s songs, material for an album she’s releasing next spring called ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’. (The only exception to Cohen songs on Tuesday was a John Martyn song from the 1970s, ‘Go Down Easy’ which she did as an encore). It was interesting though to hear Leonard Cohen’s songs interpreted in a jazz context, and the highlight of the evening for me was her take on ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ from Cohen’s 1967 album ‘The Songs of Leonard Cohen’.
Christine Tobin, in monochrome
Christine Tobin, in glorious redheaded colour
I got back to Portsmouth around midnight that evening (having endured the dubious pleasure of some inebriated teens or twenty-somethings, misbehaving on the homebound train, but mercifully they got out at Woking) and I took the following day off, to accompany my partner to couple of meetings she had in Portsmouth and Southsea that day. All the following photos were taken in Albert Road, Southsea on that Wednesday…
Indepedent Republic of Albert Road (Southsea)
‘Bored of Southsea’ is a shop on the other side of the street….
A row of shops on the south side of Albert Road
Above ‘The Vaults’ pub, on the north side of Albert Road
SoundZ record shop, on the south side of the street
One of several different Albert Road banners in the street…
Not my usual journey into work, but the bus I normally catch didn’t turn up this morning, so I thought I’d take a more romantic journey to my workplace, via Portsmouth Harbour, the Gosport Ferry, and Fareham. To be sure, it wasn’t as quick a journey as usual, but it was a lot more satisfying one…:)
HMS Warrior, The Hard, Portsmouth, around 8 o’clock this morning..
Aboard the Gosport Ferry, leaving The Hard, Portsmouth…
Heading for Gosport, with the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth on the horizon…
A Gosport Ferry, heading for Portsmouth…
Poppy Appeal Stall, outside Boots, in Fareham Shopping Centre…
Snow White figurine, in the Disney Collection, in H. Samuel, in Fareham Shopping Centre…
Lasered block, on a stall in Fareham Shopping Centre…
Happy Halloween, schoolchildren’s display in Fareham Shopping Centre…
Another stall, in Delme Square, Fareham Shopping Centre…
Had an interesting week in Hampshire last week, beginning on the Sunday with a trip down to New Milton to lend some moral support to a friend who was running her first Marathon (the New Forest Marathon) and I’m pleased to say she got round okay, despite suffering from calf cramps from the half-way point, so well done Jenny :)…
I actually got to New Milton at elevenish, and with the Marathon runners not due to finish until early afternoon, I decided to wander down to nearby Barton on Sea to have a look around. There’s not an awful lot to do in such a sleepy seaside town, although there are a few good cliff-top/beach walks to be had…
Looking eastwards along the cliff-top towards the Beachcomber Cafe…
And here are a few random shots from the race itself…
About 200 yards from the finish line, in The Arnewood School…
Looks in pretty good nick considering he’s just run 26 miles… 😉
‘Come on Dad!’…some young kids have just spotted their dad (in the yellow top)…
And on the wander back to New Milton railway station, this cartoon caught my eye, in a Dentist’s in Osbourne Road…
Yes, quite…one for cat owners 😉
On Wednesday evening I made one of my occasional visits to the Ferneham Halls in Fareham, to see a gig by the Manfreds, who I’d also seen (with a slightly different line-up, that included Mike d’Abo) at the King’s Theatre in Albert Road in Southsea, during the Manfreds’ 50th Anniversary Tour in 2012. That was one of the best live gigs I’ve seen in recent years, so it didn’t take much self-persuasion for me to get a ticket for Wednesday’s event…
Paul Jones, lead singer and bluesy harmonica player…
Simon Pegg, on keyboards…
Tom McGuinesss, lead guitarist…
The final two songs the band played at this gig were ‘Pretty Flamingo’, and ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ (duly sung-along to) but I have a particular affection for the third last song that was played on Wednesday night. When the 1960s’ incarnation of Manfred Mann disbanded in 1969, Tom McGuiness went on to form McGuinness Flint, whose most successful song was ‘When I’m Dead and Gone’…
The gig ended at half-ten, after which I headed back home in light drizzle…
On my way back to Fareham railway station after the gig, a rainy West Street…
On the Saturday lunchtime before the New Forest Marathon, I’d watched, on BBC-1, England’s Women Football team World Cup qualifier against Belarus, which England won 6-0. And as soon as I discovered their next match would be at Fratton Park on Thursday evening I didn’t waste too much time in booking myself a ticket for the game (it cost a fiver on line, plus a one pound booking fee).
And thus it was, after work on Thursday evening, I made my way to Fratton Park, and joined some six thousand other spectactors at the game. Following are some photos taken at the match, but first are a few pictures of some of the rather artistic graffiti that surrounds Fratton Park. A couple of these feature stuff done by a chap who uses the tag Fark, who I chanced to meet walking his dog around the football ground one summer’s evening last year, so we had a ten minute chat about his work…
Artwork by Fark 1
Artwork by Fark 2
Abstract Pompey graffiti
England v Turkey
England pre-match bonding…
The number 4 here is Fara Williams, who has played over a hundred games for England, and scored three dozen goals. I mention her here because we are actually related to one another; her paternal grandpa was the brother of my maternal nan, so I guess that makes us second cousins or something…;)
Play underway…
England attacking in the second half…
A bit one-sided, but entertaining all the same 😉
The match programme…
Before ending this post I might add that this game was in fact the second women’s football international I’ve attended, the other being the London 2012 Olympics semi-final at Wembley, between France and Japan, which I was fortunate enough to get a ticket for last year…
A Weekend Diary 