Tuesday, 30 March 2010

DoodleWander1 (Redux)

Following in the footsteps of Thom and Wombat, or 'Thombat' as they shall now be known, I set out on a wander of my own, a 9.6ish miler taking in Edwinstowe, Ollerton and Rufford. I walked. I photographed. I popped into a Tesco for assorted groceries. Behold the manifold shiny images wot came out of the magic takeypicturebox. Shock and awe, ladies and gentlemen. Shock and awe...

1) The route

2) Road sign budget cuts around the village

3) Passing by the tracks at Thoresby Colliery

4) Ramshackle

5) The Graffiti Express

6) Church in Ollerton

7) Ah, the oddly unnecessary Union Jack signage addition. A tongue-in-cheek caption about a 'potentially racist car wash' ("we don't wash your mucky foreign cars 'ere, mate") which provoked some debate as to how the BNP have indeed stolen the flag, and anyone using it randomly out-of-place like this seems to be tarred with the racist brush. In conclusion: A new BNP flag is called for – a crisp, white flag with a picture of a steaming turd in the centre.

8) Ker-splash! Finally, a car bombs through the ford at Rufford, egged on by small children, after booooos for the overly cautious previous stream-crossers

9) Rufford Country Park

10) Daffs in Edwinstowe

11) Back into Edwinstowe. That Chinese takeaway used to be Wok This Way. They changed it. For shame.

Friday, 26 March 2010

A Vertical Wander

It doesn't happen very often, but everything came together nicely today. A Friday, good weather, manageable workload, well-behaved children and a compatible schedule... so my lovely wife met me at work, at lunchtime. After showing the boys off for slightly too long, we took them into town to get some lunch.

We weren't especially hungry, and as as we walked into town, the looming shape of the ferris wheel above Market Square gave us a much better idea of what to do. After the briefest of queues (it is term time) we were on our way, upwards. The Boy loved it, he was totally without fear (in the tiny wind-rocked gondola), and Helen gripped the baby as if he was the only thing that would save her from a terrible, plunging, death.

A city might seem chaotic at ground level, but it is only from the air that we can truly appreciate how organic and thrown-together it truly is. New buildings wedged between older ones, walls and windows now only visible from private courtyards, and endless alleys and snickets. The exotic gridded cities of the new world seem almost impossible here.

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Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Black pudding & chips

This is the first #wander tweeted by Wombat, following Thom’s fine example. I wandered down into the nearest town… 01 market That’s the market sign. The second item is a black pudding, which should give you a clue as to where I was wandering. Or you could just look at the tag for this post.

02 Respect the past and look to the future The motto here translates roughly to “Respect the past and look to the future”, which is the motto of the Royal Grammar School in Worcester. Oddly, this is on a bank. Nearby, was this -

03 1874 “1874” proclaims this rather nice window on what used to be the Co-op bank building, and now houses Swinton Insurance. Not sure of the meaning of “Union Club”, and a quick Google search has discovered nothing.

04 Church

The church, from whose churchyard I took the previous shot, looking impressively solid. I waited ages for the wind to take the flag out enough to see the cross of St. George, and took about a dozen photographs in the process, but this was the best one of the lot. Sometimes you just have to bow your head to fate and give in.

 

 

05 commerce This proud young lady wearing what looks like a designer scarf apparently represents Commerce, and can be found on the plinth of a statue of Robert Peel near the church. Not that I often consider the gender of abstract nouns, but I never thought of Commerce as being female.

 

 

 

 06 tiles Some interesting tiles on an otherwise completely ordinary red-brick building. Odd decision to place them there.

07 escape

I call this piece “Escape”, although I haven’t the faintest idea what’s meant to be going on. Twitter opinion was that this was a creepy demon child and I should leg it forthwith out of what wa obviously Satan’s Garden. There then followed some amusing by-play about Satan gardening in his spare time, but I’ll not bore you with it here.

 

 

08 memorial

The memorial by the Royal Fusiliers Museum, which I didn’t bother to go in because they charge a fair whack for entry. Museums, like Art Galleries, should be free and ask for contributions to provide funds. Speaking of Art Galleries, the next photograph is of a window in the gallery across the road from the Fusiliers Museum. I can identify the anvil and the weaving shuttles, but why are they torturing the poor ram?

 09a window Not sure what’s growing in the bottom right hand corner, either.

 09 the cruel sister I adore this painting – The Cruel Sister by John Faed. Which of the ladies do you think is the Cruel Sister of the title? As I write this, there’s a better image here.

Lunchtime – I seem to have quite the choice here -

10 menu Tony and Tony use different fonts for their signs, and given how particular food outlets are about their font-usage, Twitter opinion was that they were not related. However, they probably unite to make Mr. Second Base’s life a misery. There was also some gossip about whether Second Base, given the suggestive name, might be an establishment of quite a different nature altogether. The chippy, though, was closed :-(

11 pies But luckily here’s Mrs. Ogden to the rescue, with her butifull meat & tater pies.

 12 saint This is St. Wilfride, and he can be found outside the Catholic Church. Thanks to the delightful @rosamundi (follow her on Twitter for laughs and thrills and spills), I can point you to this page of information, where St. Wilfrid appears to have a weirdly-shaped head.

 13 bank Extreme flower-pressing, again found on a bank. What is it with banks and unusual decorations on their buildings? 13 market square And finally, here’s the memorial in the triangle on Market Street, atop which an angel is waving I-have-no-idea-what.

This #wander malarkey is great fun, and the feedback has been dead encouraging, so I’ll definitely be doing it again. Meanwhile, the next time you go into town try looking up instead of straight ahead, and you might see something interesting. Maybe you’ll even have a #wander, eh?

Friday, 19 March 2010

Another Wander

I did another #wander with my camera.

I'm not particularly happy with these pics - not just because the light wasn't great - but because I felt far too self-conscious taking, and tweeting them. My first wander had been a spontaneous walk, born out of a need to clear my head. It just happened to to take me past all my favourite places in Nottingham.

Today was different. I'd sort of promised myself and others that I would repeat the relative success of the first one. Big problem: I'd already visited all my favourite, photogenic places.

Last week I started a wander, but cancelled it, citing poor weather and unreliable Twitter. They were both true. but my heart wasn't really in it - I didn't feel confident jumping up and down on Twitter, shouting "look at me, look at the pictures what I took!" when I didn't really have anything good to photograph. I was cross with myself all week.

So I made myself go out today. I took a similar route to last time, but focused differently - and there were lots of interesting things to see. I could do that route again tomorrow and still find 10 great things to show you. In fact, I really need to stop being so fucking precious about it really.

Finally, the #wander hashtag isn't just for me. Go out, go for a walk and take pictures - and tweet them. There is so much to see and share.

A very, very old doorway A 250 year old spelling mistake Robin Hood - Terrorist or hero image image image image image image image image The wrong lion