Harrow etc

Abit out of date now as I haven't been blogging very regularly but a couple of months ago we went down to Harrow for Tara's school reunion. First we'd booked a tour of Harrow School, they do this once a term. Its a guided tour and all the better for that, our guide was very enthusiastic and informative. Got taken into the building that serves as a memorial to an old boy killed in World War One, Alex Fitch. His parents renovated the room on condition that his portrait was hung there and lit night and day, which it has been. The room itself is a composite of floorboards, walls etc from far and near. Some from a battleship of the Napoleonic era, fireplace from a stately home that was about to be demolished.
The Speech Room was very grand as was the chapel across the road. When this chapel was built the masters had to agree a design for the spire. All but one master, William Oxenham agreed and did he make a nuisance of himself  by flatly refusing to agree and so blocking the spire being put in place. Comes the day, in 1865 that Oxenham  shuffles off this mortal coil, and being a master of Harrow School (even women teachers are called masters here!) a memorial was erected to him. What better memorial could there be but to erect the spire on the chapel...…
The original school was just once room , called the Forth Form, this room is covered in graffiti where boys have carved their names, its also featured in feature films  such as Harry Potter, Young Winston and many more besides. It was a very interesting tour and one you could probably do again. I guess a different guide would tell you their favourite titbits of the schools history.
The main purpose of the exercise was Tara's school reunion. We were staying at a cheap & cheerful hotel in South Harrow (bizarrely it was a converted office block, an office Tara had worked in!) not far from The White Horse where Tara & her chums were to meet. It's very different inside the pub today. Its all one big bar rather than a public and saloon as it was 30 plus years ago! Food was excellent! Very good venison pie for me & veggie burger for T. I stayed just so Tara wasn't sitting there on her own but as others arrived I left for The Castle alittle higher up the hill to meet an old friend, Robert. We had a fine evening of beer and chat & eventually (chucking out time!) went back to the White Horse where their gig was winding up. Tara had had a very good evening with all her old school chums, about 20 there I think. It had been a great success and they've already booked for next year.
Back to our cheap and cheerful hotel. Brekkers in the morning...….the hot plate was interesting consisting of: scrambled egg, boiled eggs, baked beans and that staple of a cooked breakfast, sweetcorn! Odd to say the least but there was plenty of other things and gluten free for T so it was all OK.

Harrow School Speech Room

Ditto

Alex Fitch, killed in action during World War One aged just 19.

Window dedicated to him featuring his regiments badge, The Royal Garrison Artillery.

The chapel with the spire erected in memory of a complete pain in the arse!

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, former Harrow School boy and champion of the poor and oppressed of Victorian Britain.

Self and Memsahib in The White Horse

Venison Pie

Veggie Burger

At The Castle with Robert, an old friend

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Festival

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Festival: Rcently back from a brilliant weekend at the New Forest Folk Festival. You'll know that I'm not particularly a folkie but there&#39...

Festival

Recently back from a brilliant weekend at the New Forest Folk Festival. You'll know that I'm not particularly a folkie but there's some good stuff here! Our draw was the fact that the brilliant Oysterband were headlining Saturday night, neither of us are into camping so our big decision was whether we had a couple of nights under canvas.
We decided to bite the bullet & go for it, not least because the past two years have been scorchers, were we just about to jinx this weather!?
Luckily not! Although we had one night which was bloody cold (had 3 nights there) it all went well. Camping wouldn't be our choice in the normal course of events but it was that or don't go! Had the weather been completely karzi I suspect we'd have knocked it on the head, there was a short sharp shower one night but by morning all was dry again.
To my great joy Kas & Stan have a shower in their caravan that they kindly let us use. Not being able to shower is the thing I hate most about camping & this festival didn't offer any on site showers at all!
We got down there Friday afternoon after a tedious journey down there via the ever popular car park known as the M25, though we got held up on the M27 as well. Friday late morning/afternoon just ain't a good time to travel. Stan had very kindly erected our tent so we could be next to them as well as their friends Pat & Paul, all I had to do was put up the inner 'rooms.' This was especially good of Stan as they've bought a caravan to make life easier after the faff putting up a trailer tent but he still put up our tents!

Views in and around where we camped.

I guess the only downside of where we were was our close proximity to the kharzas.  We had to be there to get an electric hook up to S&K's caravan, of course it was quite good being near in the middle of the night!
I managed to miss the ukulele workshop that I wanted to do but only because I'd gone on a really good walk with Paul. Not only is he a keen birder he's also into all aspects of nature so was able to point out butterflies,plants and insects etc, not only was it a very interesting walk but Paul is good company. Ida came along as well though she got bit of a shock running headlong into a bog! Needed to hose her down when we got back, she wasn't keen on that either!

There was music at this festival as well by the way, another good thing about our site was you didn't need to go into the main field to hear the music,it was all adequately loud from the tents. Stan managed to get hold of a fascinating football facts book. Both he and Paul are life long QPR fans and he regaled us with the odd titbit......much to Kas's chagrin I think!  We went into the main field for Ralph McTell. he sang his one hit 'Streets of London' and many others. he does come over as a nice bloke ( though so did Ashley Hutchings but was bit of an arse when being interviewed by Dan), Gigspanner were the headliners for Friday and were as depressing as when we last saw them I'm afraid!
Saturday's  music was better.The Urban Folk Quartet were very good and 3 Daft Monkeys were great,even though there was four of them! and the mighty Oysterband headlined who were fab! Although I think the sound was abit off on their first couple of songs. I was surprised how many of their songs I knew.
Sunday's offerings were OK.  Plaitford Common were a local folk group and IOTA featured Marion Fleetwood who's always good. Banter were fine and The Sandy Denny Project quite listenable. The Ashley Hutchings Morris On Band were good, with , as their title suggests added Morris Dancing though they seemed bit of a quite end to the festival.
Really enjoyed it, so much so that we took advantage of the festival book early offer and booked for next year.
Plenty of food to choose from in the main field, covering vegan as well as veggie. There was also plenty for us carnivores as well. It was our 35th Wedding Anniversary on the Sunday and I bought Tara a nice dress from one of the stalls, & I got two hippy ish shirts.
It was a great weekend with great company, plenty of food and drink and good music. What better way to spend a weekend?

Ralph McTell

Us with added festival hat

Dress for our anniversary

Stn the Man

3 Daft Monkeys

The Oysterband

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Moon

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Moon: With all the documentaries and news items about the 50th anniversary of the moon landings it made me think. I was very interested in all t...

Moon

With all the documentaries and news items about the 50th anniversary of the moon landings it made me think.
I was very interested in all the moon shots, I recall a school friend brought an Airfix model of the Saturn 5 rocket into school and somehow, a gaggle of us ended up taking it from class to class telling them about the Apollo missions!
 People talk about where they were when Kennedy was shot, or more recently on 9/11. I can tell you where I was in the early hours of the 20th July 1969, I was sitting with my Dad waiting to see Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, there was apparently a billion people around the world watching. Dad woke me up about 4am I think, I was only about 8 but I remember it vividly, watching the very grainy images. Just my Dad and I watching history being made.

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Roundup

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Roundup: Haven't blogged in a while my dear Blogateers so here's a lightening round up of dinners I've had and beers I've drunk........

Roundup

Haven't blogged in a while my dear Blogateers so here's a lightening round up of dinners I've had and beers I've drunk.....yawn.

                                                       Ham Hock somewhere in Wales

                                                     Lamb shank, very nice

                                                   Starbucks Raspberry & white choc cheesecake muffin and café noir

                                                    Two Dragons. A fine Welsh beer

                                                    Tomato soup

                                                   Welsh Faggots.....a mistake to have chips though

                                                   A rather nice venison pie in The White Horse, Harrow

                                                    Memsahibs Veggie burger in the same place.

                                                   Rather unimaginatively had another pie, this time steak in Devon

                                                    Garlic mushrooms. Cornwall I think

                                                    Steak. Cooked rare of course!

                                                    Another day, another Starbucks!

                                                    Salmon mousse thing

                                                    Pork Rouillard

                                                    Asparagus with a crispy poached egg

                                                     Burger with all the trimmings

I've been away a tad, do you see, although the venison pie in Harrow will feature in a future blog. I should state here that inbetween all the food and drink I was actually working, & bloody hard too! My time in South Wales then Devon & Cornwall clocked up nearly 2000 miles!