"No, Not the Mind Probe!!?!"

Another one taken during my holidays in July this year. This one is basically testimony to my ability to be amazed by actually not-all-that-amazing things and to make up stories about things I'm unfamiliar with.

Apologies for the quality of the photos; they were taken through the windscreen of a car parked behind Carlisle Castle:



Yeah, so basically the railway lines run not a stone's throw from the back wall of the castle. We were just getting ready to get out of the car and go and have a look at said castle when this train started rumbling past. It drew my attention because it had about three or four locomotives all coupled together at the front end to pull it and a lot - a lot - of these big boxy weird-looking carriages of a sort I didn't recognise. I don't know how many exactly, I lost count at about twenty, but it was more than that. So naturally, faced with something I couldn't identify off the top of my head (and bear in mind I know next to nothing about modern day rail transport), I said to my stalwart companions, "do you reckon they're full of nuclear waste or something?" Once said, of course, this could not be unsaid and it naturally became our favoured Fox Mulder-esque explanation for the whole troubling incident. So we took photos. You know, for evidence.

So when I got back to somewhere that had internet access, I of course set out to make it my business to discover the true, shocking nature of the mysterious train cars. And now, here for the the first time, I can reveal the Awful Truth...


( The Truth - If You Can Handle It! )

So, er...mystery solved. You can stop laughing at me any time now.

Well, I have returned and, to be honest, despite my dire expectations the weather last week in the vicinity of Penrith and Keswick was much better than we could have hoped for; grey but dry last Saturday, Sunday, Monday, admittedly peeing down on Tuesday, but really rather bright and sunny for the rest of the week (although on Thursday I was trudging along an extremely exposed ridge on the Cumbria-Northumbria border following a mostly-surviving section of Hadrian's Wall, which while sunny proved to be blimmin' cold too).

Anyway, sights were seen, ale was quaffed and photos were taken, so I reckon I'm counting that one as a result. To get back on-topic, anyway:




( Read All About the Violent and Interesting History of Pencils! )

I will just leave you with a book rec. I am currently reading State of Emergency by Dominic Sandbrook, a social and political history of Britain between 1970 and 1974. The author is perhaps a bit softer than I would like on the Conservative Party in general and on then-Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher in particular (but then again, looking at the newspapers he writes for as a day job, this might not be wholly surprising), but not to the point where I'd say it was a one-sided view of the period. The stuff about contemporary popular culture is pure gold, and very interesting for the Doctor Who fan. The chapter about the rise in popularity of environmentalism during the period is even entitled "The Green Death", and features a detailed analysis of said Who story and a couple of others in the context of the period. I haven't got to the chapter about what many people at the time called "women's lib" yet, but a quick flick forward reveals repeated mentions of Sarah Jane Smith in the first couple of pages. ;D Good stuff.

Back in the summer of 2007, myself and a couple of like-minded associates, still flushed with the success of our epic daytrip to the Imperial War Museum site at Duxford the previous year (Liverpool to Cambridgeshire and back again in one day, by road - don't try it!) decided that the next obvious step was an expedition to Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset. It ended up being a week-long "experience", a sort of nightmarish, occasionally drunken, parody of the British holidaymaking paradigm. A bit like Withnail & I but without the sparkling dialogue. Or the cake. Or not one, but two Doctors.

I may (or may not) share some tales about it as I post about some of the photographs I took during this week (all I can say is, I hope you all like looking at tanks). For now, get a load of this, taken in the heart of the good old New Forest:




( Read more... )

For lost_spook, we open with a picture of Rhuddlan Castle, in northeastern Wales, taken iirc sometime during the summer of 2010:




( READ ON...! )