Puss in Boots

In our local branch of Boots they occasionally have a cat guarding their entrance.

Puss in Boots

Seems quite happy to sit there in the doorway.

Puss in Boots

It wasn’t raining either.

Puss in Boots

Puss in Boots

Is it a treehouse if it’s not built in a tree?

Canopy & Stars at Crane 29 is a unique treehouse built around one of the cargo cranes outside M Shed. The treehouse will grace Bristol’s skyline from June until September 2017.

I don’t know if you can really call it a treehouse as it’s not built in a tree, but it certainly looks very nice (see more pictures here).

To register for the ballot to stay in the treehouse, visit www.canopyandstars.co.uk/crane29. A night’s stay costs either £185 for a weekday or £250 for a weekend, with the final ballot open until July 3. All profits from Canopy & Stars at Crane 29 will go to Friends of the Earth.

The tide is coming in…

When I mention where I live, the talk often comes round to people getting stuck in the mud or cars getting caught by the tide.

Those who live in Weston-super-Mare will know that every summer weekend, a visitor or three gets caught in the mud trying to cross between Uphill beach and Break Down. The river Axe gets in the way, but it’s usually the mud that gets in the way first.

After the mud, the other thing that comes up in conversation is the tidal range.

Usually referred to the as the second highest tidal range in the world, it is actually the third, only the bay of Fundy (North America) and Ungava bay (Hudson straits) are bigger. The tidal range on the Severn can be as much as 15m (49ft). What this means for Weston-super-Mare is that the low tide mark in Weston Bay is about one mile from the seafront. For most of the time you don’t see the sea, which is why when I get the chance to see the beach with the tide in I take a photograph!

Grand Pier in the sea at Weston-super-Mare

Although the beach itself is sandy, low tide uncovers areas of thick mud, hence the colloquial name, Weston-super-Mud.

The other aspect of this long ideal range is that sometimes people get caught out by the fast rising tide having parked their car on the beach and their car gets swamped by the incoming tide.

This was the first time seeing the tide in at Uphill beach (just along from the main beach at Weston-super-Mare) that I saw a bus right by the high tide.

Bus in the sea

This wasn’t any old bus though, this bus served coffee!

Legoland: May the fourth be with you…

May the 4th is seen by many as Star Wars Day. Over in Legoland there is a whole miniland scale exhibit on Star Wars.

The exhibit covers the six films, the original three and the three sequels.

A recent addition was a Miniland scale model of the trench run from the first film. There is Luke Skywalker flying down the trench in his X-Wing followed by Darth Vader and two TIE Fighters.

There is a also a model of the Death Star in the process of firing its primary weapon.

I like how they have used air conditioning to add an icy feel to the Assault on Hoth display. Here the rebel forces face attack from the might of the Imperium.

No Star Wars exhibit would be complete without the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy! This is the Millennium Falcon that “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”

There is also an Endor display complete with Ewoks.

The three prequels make up quite a few models and includes this huge tank.

Virtually all the models have lights, like this palace from Naboo and the displays go from day to night.

Miniland scale droids.

As well as the Miniland scale exhibits there are also some larger Lego models too, such as R2-D2.

…and Lord Vader!

I wonder if at some future point the exhibit will cover episode VII or Rogue One?

Can you sing us a song?

A member of the audience of a Bruce Springsteen concert asked him and his band to play “You Never Can Tell”, that song that was used in Pulp Fiction.

This was the result.

Fun.

Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts 2016

Across this blog I wrote fifteen posts in 2016. As might not be expected most of the top ten posts that year were from 2016, and I was pleased to see how popular my 1990s photographs of the Bristol Harbourside were.

I visited Legoland in 2013 and felt that it was A bit tired and this was the tenth most popular post, dropping one place from last year.

Also about Legoland Miniland was the ninth post.

The eighth post was about Time travelling by train which was a post on the newly painted GWR High Speed Train in the classic 1970s blue and yellow.

Inter City 125

The seventh popular post was inspired by a newspaper article and talked about the many Changes at the railway station in Weston-super-Mare.

The sixth placed post was from my 2012 series of Cinematic Advent Calendar posts, this one was #07 – The Eagle has Landed. There were quite a few films in the advent calendar that have significant memories over and above the film itself. Queuing for Star Wars was significant for example. With The Eagle has Landed I went to see it at the Aldeburgh cinema with my grandparents.

When I used film, I didn’t take than many photographs, but I did take a fair few of the Bristol Harbourside, so the fifth post was of the Bryan Brothers’ Garage Demolition, Bristol, circa 1999.

Three of the next four posts were similar and all contain photographs from the Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s.

Construction in the Bristol Harbourside

Fourth was this post Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s and third was this one: Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s (second part).

The second most popular post was a comparison of Trenchard Street, Bristol, circa 1970s and the view today.

The most popular post of the year on the Stuff blog was a series of photographs of Bristol Harbourside in the 1990s.

So quite a few posts from 2016 in the 2016 top ten.

1953 storm surge: how Britain’s worst natural disaster kicked off the debate on climate change

By Matthew Kelly, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Towns and villages along the east coast of England were put on red alert on Friday 13 January. A combination of strong winds and high tides led to fears a “storm surge” would wash over flood defences, and residents of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and Jaywick, in Essex, were among those ordered to evacuate.

In the end, the worst was avoided. The winds, tides and waves didn’t quite combine to cause serious flooding, and people have returned home. But this was not the first time the region had been threatened with inundation, and the flood defences that held firm in 2017 were largely built in response to a previous, more deadly, storm surge.

The worst natural disaster in modern British history occurred on the night of January 31, 1953. A tidal surge caused the North Sea to rise up to five metres above its average level, which led to widespread flooding along the east coast of Britain, particularly south of Yorkshire. Some 30,000 people were evacuated, 1,000 square kilometres of land was inundated, and 307 people in England and 19 people in Scotland died. The death toll was particularly bad on Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary.

In the low-lying Netherlands the consequences were much greater – more than 1,800 deaths. Soon after, the Dutch began to construct their huge and very costly system of flood defences.

The response in Britain was less decisive. Former chancellor and home secretary Viscount Waverley oversaw an inquiry, publishing a very effective report later that year. Waverley sought expert opinion on how best to renew flood defences and his recommendations included the creation of a new early warning system, quickly established, and the construction of a retractable barrier to protect London.

The long political machinations that eventually led to the passage of the 1972 Thames Barrier Act are fascinating in themselves, but what is more immediately arresting is the explanation Waverley offered for the tidal surge itself. For the first time, Waverley’s report made climate change a concern of government.

What caused the storm surge

Waverley explained that the flooding was caused by a combination of factors. Strong northerly winds coming in off the Atlantic coincided with a relatively high tide, thereby forcing an unusually large quantity of water down the narrowing north-south axis of the North Sea to the bottleneck at the Straits of Dover. The rotation of the earth ensured that the water was deflected to the west of the tidal currents, thereby hitting the east coast of Britain. A significant quantity of excess water was forced up the Thames Estuary, threatening to spill over London’s flood defences.

Waverley was at pains to point out that the high tide and the surge were distinct phenomena. Had the surge occurred at low tide, its effect would have been little noticed. Also, inland rainfall had been below average. Had east coast rivers been at their strongest, the destruction caused by the tidal surge would have been much greater, causing significant loss of life and damage to the capital’s infrastructure. Indeed, the risk to the London Underground conditioned much of the debate that followed.

The data presented to Waverley suggested that floods like January 1953 were becoming more frequent and that the combination of factors that produced them were likely to happen more often. There were three reasons for this. First, water levels were rising. By the 1950s scientists had known for a generation or so that the climate had been warming for a century, and that this was causing glaciers to melt.

Second, the phenomenon of tilt: the north-west and north of England was gradually rising and the south-east was gradually sinking – or downwarping – a notion that had some popular traction, especially in East Anglia. Downwarping compounded the effect of higher water levels and was also caused by climate change. At the end of the last ice age, glaciation had reached as far south as the line from the Bristol Channel to the Wash. With the weight of ice no longer acting on northern Britain, a gradual correction was taking place – and continues to.

Third, was the idea that changing weather patterns made tidal surges more likely. Sou’westerlies dominated the weather patterns of the region, but strong northerlies were becoming more prevalent, possibly as part of a 200-year cycle. For all these reasons the east coast, and London particularly, faced an increasing threat from the North Sea.

Natural climate change?

Thanks to Waverley, this thinking held sway in Whitehall in the decades that followed, shaping the tortuous process that led to the construction of the Thames Barrier. But if climate change was understood to be a factor in the growing threat to the east coast, there was little suggestion that any of it was caused by human activities. Instead, scientists pointed to the shift in and out of ice ages that occurs naturally over many thousands of years. Climate change, considered a force of nature, had yet to be politicised, even as it became a factor in policy making.

The threat climate change poses a given population depends as much on the capacity of the state to build adequate defences as it does on geographical good fortune. The debate of the 1950s and 60s also throws into sharp relief how politically significant anthropogenic notions of climate change have become.

Then, it was a question of defending vulnerable people and infrastructure against apparently natural phenomena, now the question of causation has hugely complicated and politicised possible government responses. This raises profound questions about environmental justice at both a national and global level. As the terrible flood of 1953 and recent events throughout the world have shown, it is poor, marginal people who drown in floods, whether in Britain or elsewhere.

The ConversationMatthew Kelly, Professor of Modern History, Northumbria University, Newcastle

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

My top ten tweets of 2016

WHSmithSo here are my top ten tweets of 2016, ranked by the number of times it was seen on Twitter.

In 10th, 9th, 8th and 7th position are some random tweets of photographs taken in various branches of WHSmith.

These tweets were re-tweeted by the amusing @WHS_Carpet Twitter account. If like me you grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, WHSMith was a real high street institution, which though surviving today still seems to have lost its way somewhat.

My 6th most popular tweet was an image comic strip of a Dara O’Briain routine on video games.

I was surprised by how popular the 5th tweet was, which was about some great images from JD Hancock on the Flickr.

A reply to Google was number four.

I was disappointed that NERC did not name their boat BoatyMcBoatface, but I did like how they embraced the whole thing, as I said in my third most popular tweet.

A work tweet was number two…

And my most popular tweet of 2016 was a silly comment for #WednesdayWisdom

Changes at the railway station




Though I am more likely to spend time at Worle station, I have been known to catch trains from the main station in Weston-super-Mare. Despite being a smallish town, Weston has three railway stations. The main station which opened in 1884 replacing the original station which opened in 1841. Weston Milton opened in 1933, a small halt to serve the then expanding Milton area. Worle station was opened in 1990 and unlike the other two stations, which are on the Weston loop, Worle is on the main Bristol to Plymouth line.

Over the years the railway station at Weston-super-Mare, well in terms of tracks, has changed quite a bit, even if the buildings and platforms have remained as much as they have since the line was built. This photograph from the local paper reminded me of how much has changed.

Weston-super-Mare Railway Station

Back then there was an up and down line on the Weston loop. There was also multiple sidings for good and carriages. I suspect a lot of the coal wagons for the local gas works were stored there awaiting return to the Welsh collieries.

By the late 1970s (the BR HST is still in blue and grey), when this image was taken on 28th March 1978, most of the sidings have now been taken away and replaced with a coach park. Lots of visitors to Weston-super-Mare were now coming by coach. The light brown building on the right of the photograph in the background is the Odeon cinema which is still there today, but Weston is getting it’s own multiplex at Dolphin Square.

Weston-super-Mare Railway Station Copyright Roger Winnen

You can see a lot of the points had been removed too.

By the time of this Google Street View image, the sidings have all been removed and replaced with a Tesco store and car park (which was the focus of the story in the local paper). Hildesheim Bridge was built in 1991 and crosses the eastern end of the platforms.

Weston-super-Mare Railway Station

Hildesheim is the German town which Weston is twinned with.

Change happens and over the next few years I suspect we will see more change.