Bits and pieces, news, views, reviews and stuff
Back in 1998 I made a visit the Lake District, after quite a few years of visiting the place on a regular basis. These photographs are from that trip, I posted some other photographs from this trip in an earlier blog post.
Click the images to see larger versions.
This is on the way down to Wasdale Head coming from the direction of Buttermere.
On the way down to Wasdale Head.
In the late 1990s I made a weekend trip to Normandy, and we stayed in Caen having first visited Honfleur. On this trip I had taken my relatively new at the time, 35mm SLR and took some photographs.
All down the Normandy coast are marinas full of boats, this appears to be very much part of the culture of the place, but also they welcome hordes of visiting sailing boats from the south of England, as well as Spanish, Belgian and Dutch seafarers.
One of my overwhelming memories of that trip was a visit to the local market in Cane and the smell of tomatoes. You could smell them from some distance away from the stall.
Even today I have never found an English market come close to those that I found in Normandy on that trip. Certaiinly the Italian markets I visited at the same kind of time were similar, full of fresh produce.
There were things there that you would never find in the British markets (or supermarkets) at the time, but things have changed.
I wonder if these markets still exist?
I remember at the time noticing this jeep like car, only later did I know it was a Citroën Méhari.
The Citroën Méhari is a light utility car and off-roader produced by the French automaker Citroën, a variant of the Citroën 2CV. nearly 150,000 Méharis were built between the car’s French launch in May 1968 and 1988 when production stopped. This means that this car was at least ten years old, but may have been even older. In case you didn’t know a méhari is a type of fast-running dromedary camel, which can be used for racing or transport.
If your reason for not buying (or reading) the Harry Potter books was, there wasn’t enough pictures, then you will be pleased to hear that there are now new fully illustrated versions of the books.
All seven books will be made available. The first is the first one… and Amazon have it for half price.
I read them many years ago now, I found the first few books quite lightweight and actually didn’t read them until the films started to come out.. I did enjoy the later darker books which had more depth.
Looking over the samples, I am not sure how much these illustrated versions add to the originals, but I suspect if you are a Harry Potter fan, a completists, you will buy these copies to go alongside the different print versions you already have…
These versions are also available as digital versions from iBooks. These Enhanced Editions include J.K. Rowling’s full original text, with animations, beautiful artwork and interactions, bringing the unforgettable moments from the stories to life.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Back in 1998 I made one of my last visits to the Lake District, after quite a few years of visiting the place on a regular basis. These photographs are from that final trip, where in the Lake District, to be honest I have no real idea, but I think some of these are around Buttermere.
Click the images to see larger versions.
This was down by one of the lakes, no idea which one, but I think it’s Buttermere.
Even then I wasn’t sure where we were, just went with the flow with the group I was with at the time. This may have been after leaving Buttermere on the way to Wasdale Head.
This is from a walk around Buttermere.
Back when I was teaching at a college in Bristol, I use to undertake regular field trips to the Bristol Harbourside as part of a unit on urban regeneration. There was at the time to much happening down there after years of inaction that it was an ideal place to demonstrate the impact of investment and change of use. Bristol had been an important port for hundreds of years, this all came to a halt in the 1970s and regeneration plans were developed. Not much happened for twenty years, but in the last twenty years we have seen major regeneration of the area, massive building of offices, business, residential and entertainment, as well as visitor attractions such as at-Bristol (where incidentally I worked for a while when it opened).
During one of those field trips, I took my SLR camera with me, and digging around a box in the garage I found the prints, which I have since scanned in.
They show a different harbourside to what you can see today, but also different to how the working docks were in the 1950s and 1960s. Above you can see the Watershed, which is still around. Here is another view of the Watershed, it hasn’t changed, but the bars and cafés underneath do seem to swap and change on a regular basis.
This view hasn’t changed much in the last twenty years.
Whereas on the other side, we can see major construction work underway, on what is now Za Za Bazaar, but has been many different establishments over the years.
At this time, there was no Pero’s Bridge either, so it was always a long walk from the LloydsTSB building amphitheatre to the Arnolfini round by the top of the harbourside. Another view, a bit further down the water.
Looking back over the photographs (and I may post more in a later blog post) shows how things have changed over the last twenty years (has it really been that long) and how somethings change and something remain the same.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s we would go on family holidays to Normandy and Honfleur was one of those places that stuck in my young memory. It was so very different to the English towns I had experienced, with it’s tall buildings, narrow streets and strange shops. Back then I didn’t have a camera at first and when I eventually did get one it was a 110 film instamatic style camera. This was a terrible camera (from Boots I think it was) and the quality of the prints were awful, covered in all those stickers and usually blurred. Well you could blame the photographer.
In the late 1990s I made a weekend trip to Normandy, and I did want to visit Honfleur again. This time I took my 35mm SLR and took some photographs.
It was very much as I remembered from my childhood visits, not much had changed.
The harbour was still the centrepiece of the town and had a range of boats moored within it.
The streets were still narrow and crowded with cars, trucks and people.
Off to the sides were narrow streets and alleys.
This building sticks in my memory, it always looked as though it was thrown together over time.
Would I like to go again, yes I would. One day…
Well this is one way to get rid of troublesome door to door salepeople and canvassers….
Wonder what the Jehova’s Witnesses would think of it though…
Though the Shauns have now left the centre of Bristol, I am still catching up posting my photographs of the ones I managed to capture with my camera.
We were passing by 40. On the Waterfront when I managed to find us a parking place, and over we went to get a photograph.
Reminding us of the waterfront with pictures of the docks, this Shaun was very much at home next to the water.
This was a very shiny sheep, 46. Shaun Bean was covered in chrome and was next to the Arnolfini.
Not sure of the connection with Sean Bean though.
Looking very much like Johnny Depp, 45. The Pirate Captain had a tricorne, flintlocks and a cutlass.
He was guarding the M Shed, or was he looking for buried treasure?
Over on the other side of the water, looking rather lonesome was 39. Air Fleece.
Very much a Red Arrows sheep, bright red and RAF symbols all over.
Out of the 70 Shauns across Bristol we managed to capture 62 of them.
These are the eight we missed. Luckily other people managed to capture them on film.
We did in fact find 12. Bumble but we were driving pass and decided it wasn’t safe to stop and we would go back at some point, we never did.
Over on Henleaze Road was 14. The Tale of Peter Rabbit™ a somewhat scary looking rabbit-sheep hybrid.
The very 1970s looking 15. Groovy Baby!
We had intended to visit Ashton Court to see 16. Buttercup and 17. Flora but it was pouring with rain on the two days we thought we might have time to do this. So both sheep were missed. Buttercup was in the courtyard next to the cafe.
17. Flora was also at Ashton Court, up by the Golf Club.
32. Sparkles the Unicorn was hiding away on Horfield Common, what stopped us was the sheer amount of traffic around Bristol, on what should have been a quiet day for vehicles.
Looking very tasty is 33. Star Bake next to the Boston Tea Party on the Gloucester Road,
Another one where the amount of traffic contributed to missing them, this time it was 34. Primrose at St Werburgh’s City Farm.
Photographs by Mary Kelly on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 who managed to capture all seventy.
Yesterday saw the end of the great Shaun the Sheep hunt.
In the end we managed to find and photograph 62 out of 70.
A combination of weather and traffic in the end stopped us from completing the challenge. Thoiugh we did do it, it wasn’t that much fun to trudge through the rain and the mud finding Shauns. Also we had to go to Bristol to do it, and the M5 was too often a slow moving car park.
Over the next week or so I will post the photographs of the Shauns we did managed to capture.
There is an opportunity to see them all (with the London Shauns) in both Bristol and Covent Garden over September.
