(no subject)

In the last week, I have had a great time. I have also been a little, weirdly, ill.

I…

• drove down to Bristol, rushing down the A701 through hills and heather, to get caught in a long traffic jam on the M6
  
• lost all adequate sense of balance, whilst sober, leading me to collapse to the right
  
• spent an evening and a morning in bed, lest I fall over
  
• spent a good couple of days in the company of old friends
  
• visited two cathedrals – one in Bristol, one in Oxford
  
• went to the Tudor House and Bristol City Museum, where I looked at glass and silver and dinosaurs and pianos (all at the same time!)
  
• wandered through the stones of Avebury, my heart breaking
  
• found some old, fascinating family history
  
• had dinner at All Souls with A. and lunch at Blackwell’s with white_hart (a bit dangerous, I thought, meeting in a bookshop…)
  
• finally saw the Killing Machine, “a theatrical meditation on capital punishment, inspired by Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony”, which wasn’t working the last three times I tried to see it
  
• drove up the east coast back to Edinburgh
  
• sopped off for a few hours at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I have meant to visit for many, many years; it was brilliant, wonderful, and I had a really good time. Lunch was good, too…

I took 325 photographs; so over the next few weeks, I may even write about all this a little bit more.

(no subject)

In the last week, I have had a great time. I have also been a little, weirdly, ill.

I…

• drove down to Bristol, rushing down the A701 through hills and heather, to get caught in a long traffic jam on the M6
  
• lost all adequate sense of balance, whilst sober, leading me to collapse to the right
  
• spent an evening and a morning in bed, lest I fall over
  
• spent a good couple of days in the company of old friends
  
• visited two cathedrals – one in Bristol, one in Oxford
  
• went to the Tudor House and Bristol City Museum, where I looked at glass and silver and dinosaurs and pianos (all at the same time!)
  
• wandered through the stones of Avebury, my heart breaking
  
• found some old, fascinating family history
  
• had dinner at All Souls with A. and lunch at Blackwell’s with white_hart (a bit dangerous, I thought, meeting in a bookshop…)
  
• finally saw the Killing Machine, “a theatrical meditation on capital punishment, inspired by Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony”, which wasn’t working the last three times I tried to see it
  
• drove up the east coast back to Edinburgh
  
• sopped off for a few hours at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I have meant to visit for many, many years; it was brilliant, wonderful, and I had a really good time. Lunch was good, too…

I took 325 photographs; so over the next few weeks, I may even write about all this a little bit more.

Trains

There has been a long series of programmes on BBC4 about British railways; I have seen a few of them.

Tonight, there was a fascinating programme about the British Transport Film unit – wonderful, artful propaganda – brilliant films; a film by BTF about the Elizabethan, a non-stop express between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverley – yes, non-stop, which you don’t get now (still, it is a couple of hours quicker today) – a lovely film, although the rhyming script was irritating – but they took some lovely footage, especially of the cliffs between Berwick and Waverley (the houses are still there!); and now, an old Michael Palin film, travelling from Euston to Kyle of Lochalsh – a very young Michael Palin.

It almost makes me feel nostalgic…

Although the footage of men checking the rails before the Elizabethan sped through fifty years ago seemed a little tasteless given that the report into last year's train crash in Cumbria accused train companies of not doing this now.

(These programmes are on over the next few days, as well, at obscure times of night. I'd have posted a link to the series, which as been running for a couple of weeks, but the BBC seem not to have a web page for it.)

Trains

There has been a long series of programmes on BBC4 about British railways; I have seen a few of them.

Tonight, there was a fascinating programme about the British Transport Film unit – wonderful, artful propaganda – brilliant films; a film by BTF about the Elizabethan, a non-stop express between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverley – yes, non-stop, which you don’t get now (still, it is a couple of hours quicker today) – a lovely film, although the rhyming script was irritating – but they took some lovely footage, especially of the cliffs between Berwick and Waverley (the houses are still there!); and now, an old Michael Palin film, travelling from Euston to Kyle of Lochalsh – a very young Michael Palin.

It almost makes me feel nostalgic…

Although the footage of men checking the rails before the Elizabethan sped through fifty years ago seemed a little tasteless given that the report into last year's train crash in Cumbria accused train companies of not doing this now.

(These programmes are on over the next few days, as well, at obscure times of night. I'd have posted a link to the series, which as been running for a couple of weeks, but the BBC seem not to have a web page for it.)