A visit to Canterbury Cathedral

So next in our day was the enormous queue of traffic to get into Canterbury town center (multiple roundabouts following the line of the ancient city fortifications) we parked in one of the car parks just inside the city wall, checked the handy city map nearby and then walked, a little disappointed, through the historic city streets (which closely resembled Crawley - the town planners have a *lot* to answer for) -

- packed with huddling crowds of foreign students, clutching activity sheets, stopping for lunch in one of the few remaining picturesque parts of the town, the old butter market square (where we both had passable burgers - Flyingpops one was a bit too spicy and mine was overcooked - in the nearby pub)-

- and then into the Cathedral itself under the amazing entranceway ("donating" another £14 for the pleasure - this was turning into a rather expensive day!) -

- but it was worth our contribution for the spectacle, the place is absolutely incredible, founded in 602 AD by St. Augustine on his mission to convert the naughty Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, all it has done since then is expand in it's magnificence -






- it is a colossal building, through the doorway from the cavernous nave -

- you step into the Choir stalls, which alone could easily house many whole "normal" churches (with room to spare) -

- and then on to Trinity Chapel, scene of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket (in the north-east transept) following the famous outburst from King Henry II "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?", tragically misinterpreted by three over-eager knights, the Corona Tower was built at the eastern end to contain the top of St. Thomas's head (which was apparently sliced off during his murder), interestingly though, it was his death that was responsible for the massive income from pilgrims (of whose journeys are described in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales") which paid for the incredible Cathedral we see today...


Others are buried here, including the tomb of Edward, the Black Prince (of Wales), which sits nearby -

- although there is no evidence that he was ever called that during his lifetime, it is suspected that he earned the name from grumpy French historians stinging after the ruinous and numerous military punishments he rained down upon them during his virtually constant campaigns on the other side of the pond...we finished our visit with a little trip down to the Norman crypt (to examine the huge collection of silverware down there, complete with a snoozing guard), sorry, no pics, photography is forbidden down there, and then out through the gift shop (where Flyingpops bought a sliver charm model of the building to mark the occasion of our Anniversary and visit)...and then we had a little while to burn, so we decided we would head to the village where we were staying to ponder the menu in the pub for our evening meal (before checking in time at the B&B)...

Fink's Links #58

It having just recently passed I thought I would make the links this week April Fools related (look, a theme!) -

So lets start with a few of the April fools jokes from this year (I've already shared the BMW magnetic beam one with you), but did you see the Guardian announcing that they were switching everything over to Twitter (including their entire archive of stories stretching back to 1821?

A very nasty blogger in Japan ran a high profile piece saying that the latest and greatest Dragon Quest game had been released early, cue loads of frantic Japanese fans rushing to stores, their only reward being their own red faces (trust me, it's a very big deal over there)...!

Macworld announced that Steve Jobs was going to be taking part in the US version of Dancing on Ice...

The dogs trust pretended that a doggy dietary breakthrough resulted in the unpleasant aroma of K9 droppings being transformed into a pleasant waft of roses (if only)...

Oh and of course, Wikipedia removing "Gullible", suggesting instead that you may want to read an article on "Gullibility"....

None of these, of course, rank anywhere near these classics from years gone by, starting with a few *real* news stories that people *thought* were hoaxes thanks to the date, in April 2004 Gmail's launch was widely believed to be a joke (Google have a bit of a reputation for pranks), their cheeky behavior caught them out again on April 1, 2007, when Google's NYC office staff were alerted that a snake kept on an engineer's desk had managed to escape and was on the loose somewhere in the building, an internal email stated that "the timing…could not be more awkward" (but it was perfectly true)...!

Sir Patrick Moore fooled hundreds of listeners to his Radio 2 show back in 1976 when he announced that a strange gravitational effect would allow people to experience a floating sensation if they jumped in the air at precisely the correct moment (lots of people rang in to say that they had indeed felt the phenomenon)...

In 1965 the BBC pretended that they had perfected Smell-o-vision and asked viewers to join in with a trial broadcast, prompting huge numbers of people to call up and confirm that they had detected the broadcast odor and the trial was a success!

In 1962 Sweden's only TV channel fooled *thousands* of it's viewers into thinking they could convert their TV into a colour model by cutting up a pair of stocking and gluing them to the screen...

Anyway, if you like this kind of thing then the Museum of Hoaxes has (as you would expect) a rather longer list than mine for further reading...have a good weekend!

Canary Wharf G20 Protest

Well, yesterday was a bit of a let down after all, not a single protester made it as far as Canary Wharf, despite seeing on the Sky News Twitter stream that the person leading the "War on Want" marchers had a dead canary on a stick and were proclaiming loudly that "Canary Wharf will rest in peace" - absolutely *nothing* happened - well, unless you count Halifax mysteriously closing their branch in Cabot place...chickens... ;)

April Fools and G20 Summit Protests

Only spotted the one attempt at an April Fools joke so far (well, apart from a completely lame attempt by Waitrose to pretend that someone had managed to create a hybrid banana/pineapple - "If you find that all Waitrose pinanas have sold out, don't worry, there's 50% off Waitrose strawberries"), this *slightly* less lame BMW ad pretends that they have developed a system whereby one could piggyback (using a "magnetic beam") onto the car in front to save on fuel bills, given away by the inventors name "Herr Noitt All" and the email address for more information (Uve.Vollenvorit@bmw.co.uk)...all very funny...and I'm starting to think the protests in London are a similar affair, threatened with massive disruption London businesses have closed down and barricaded shop fronts, well-to-do bankers have been urged to either work from home or come in minus pin stripe, and even here at the Wharf we recieved a dictate to come into the office an hour earlier than normal to try and avoid any trouble...

What I spotted when I got to London Bridge? Nothing...

What I spotted when I got to Canary Wharf? 3 extra "special" police officers standing around joking about a shoplifter they had caught...

Not one single crusty anarchist dole-leech in sight (and I had even packed Flyingpops camera all ready to take snaps of the action)...perhaps their alarm clocks didn't go off...

Lullingstone Roman Villa

Back now! Lots of updates to come, starting with Friday morning...after doing a quick run into Redhill to drop off two thirds of the contents of the spare room to a charity shop (to calls of "Wouldn't you have been better off doing a car boot sale" from the old dears out the back) and one third to the dump (to amazed looks from the dump workers at the bin bags full of jewel cases going into landfill), we threw the weekend bags into the back of the bug, plugged in the tomtom and headed off in the direction of Canterbury -

- first stop, the lovely little village of Lullingstone, just outside Maidstone in Kent, more precisely, Lullingstone Villa, one of the best preserved examples in the country...After begrudgingly parting with £2.50 to park the car, entrance is by way of the gift shop, packed with Roman goods -


- we then parted with another £14 (to get into the building proper) -

- and were immediately impressed at the scale of the structure, "Villa" is a bit of an understatement...the ruins were first discovered back in 1939 when a tree was blown down in a storm, revealing a portion of the central mosaic, it took ten years before the excavation proper got underway, and another ten years before the extent of the site was fully understood, at this stage a (leaky) temporary structure was erected to protect it, the building you see today (paid for by English Heritage) cost just shy of £2 million, but should keep everything they found nice and safe for a few years to come...and the finds were considerable -


- two incredible busts (these were reproductions, the real ones being in the British Museum in London) found in the underground pagan shrine -

- (the lowest room) which had been dedicated to local water deities judging by the wall paintings-

- all sorts of building materials including intact hypocaust bricks -


- no less than three lead coffins (two of which had already been plundered, one of which was intact -

- complete with 24 year old (at time of death) resident -

- buckles, jewelery, gaming pieces -

- even a virtually intact padlock(!)...

Next up were a few things to do, trying on Roman clothing (which was heavy and scratchy) -

- learning to play Roman board games -

- then we climbed up onto the upper level (which affords a much better view of the plan of the house) -

- stopping to note the well (situated handily right next to the extensive bathing area - what is it with Romans and baths?) -

- and admire the detailed mosaic floor -

- depicting the abduction of the princess Europa by the god Jupiter (disguised as a bull, as you do)...

- and then we had a short wait while all the lights around the site turned blue (to indicate that the video was about to start), and then watched the ten minute presentation, explaining how the site was constantly being upgraded and extended right up until the time of it's destruction (by fire - only the foundations were made from rock and concrete, the upper structure was all of wattle and daub) in the early 5th century...

I guess, in all, we were in the place for about 45 minutes, there was a lot to read and see, and the clothes to try on (etc.) but if you are planning a day out, this is really only going to fill a very small portion of it, there is a castle just up the road (about a ten minute walk) -


- but on the occasion of our visit, was closed (it actually just looked like a gate house castle anyway, the main building being much more like just a house)...so make Lullingstone "a morning" in your itinerary, at most...

Just in the queue...

...for Canterbury tales, having a great time, lots of pics to follow :)

Happy Anniversary

Flyingpops here! As we celebrate our wedding day this weekend, we wanted to share some of our links...Happy Reading and Happy Anniversary Fink!

The day before the wedding
Wedding Pictures
Poem (on your wedding day)
All that I have I share with you
Two Gold Rings
Back from the honeymoon

Off to Canterbury soon!

Fink's Links #57

Let's kick things off by watching how the Batman logo has evolved over the last 65 years (who knew there we so many variations?!) [vid]

Do NOT miss Google's Chrome Experiments (go and install Chrome, it's faster than IE and Firefox, and then play away) - the internet is evolving!

Hehe, this one made me laugh out loud, another excellent fake information sticker, this time on the Gatwick Express... [pic]

An extremely clever advert for flea spray... [pic]

Check out this guy, scratch building a turret that fires paintballs...why not? ;) [vids]

Take a look at a hotel where you sleep inside a wine cask (*much* better than it sounds)! [pics]

Discover why jpegs are a referred to as a "lossy" format (although this demonstration is an extreme one, it does show that you must be careful) [vid]

Watch Jupiter moving behind the sun (noting it's moons accompanying it)...awesome... [vid]

Check out the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (only sold between 1950-1951), yes, a radioactive play set for kids! <:0 [pic] Enjoy some great pictures of the worlds biggest train set (12,380 square feet)...!

Meet Tyrone, a guy with extremely good reflexes...

...and to finish the links for this week, a funny cat toy fail and a good Vatican Fancy dress fail...

The archive of links is here if you still fancy seeing more ...!

Until next week, adieu...! ;)

1st Wedding Anniversary

Wow...It's been a year already - our first wedding anniversary is this weekend! I've still got the day so clear in my mind, just as if it were yesterday, I guess things quite so intense and personal get extra weight when the brain is burning them into long time storage...which is nice... ;)

Anyway, by way of celebration we have got Friday and Monday off as holiday and are paying for each other to get away to Canterbury (actually, more specifically a tiny bed and breakfast in a cottage near a nature reserve to the east of Canterbury)...the visits we have planned are to the "Canterbury Tales Experience" (a sort of medieval theme park), the cathedral (and the rest of the town centre), then a little trip to Whitstable, where apparenty they are currently enjoying the start of the local oyster season (not that Flyingpops will be able to join in as shellfish are off the menu for pregnant persons)...and then back home, perhaps, via Dover to check out Dover castle and the secret WW2 tunnels underneath...should be a good weekend (even better if the forecast bad weather doesn't affect us too badly, but a lot of the stuff we had planned was indoors/underground anyway)!

Anyone been to this part of the country? Any suggestions for cool things to do over a long weekend?

Ad Placement Fail

Sorry for the terrible photo quality, only had my phone and fluorescent light to help me snap, however, the subject is rather a good ad placement cock-up (well spotted mother!) by the guys that put together the local paper for Oxted...in fact, they probably couldn't have done it any worse if they had tried to sabotage it deliberately... ;)

Oh and tonight, the next season of "The Apprentice" kicks off, giving me an excuse to show you this badge I was given, without any explanation, at London Bridge a couple of weeks ago...and yes, I'm still a little confused as to exactly what they thought I was going to do with it, certainly not put it on my coat...had it been something *useful*, like a ticket holder, then I would have probably helped them virally convey their "message", but if I actually wore this I would just look like a bit of a prat...so (sorry people who want to promote apprenticeships) an advertising fail here too...

Google Street View UK - Horrific industrial accident?

View Larger Map
Heheh, spotted this the other day, better look at it if you click here -

- almost looks like the very split (if you'll pardon my use of the word) second of a terrible industrial accident taking place... ;)

Tell you what though, apart from just tickling the inner voyeur in me, this is actually going to be one of the most useful things ever to come out of Google's industrious labs...it marks out absolutely the last time Flyingpops will ever ring me up for directions, and the last time I will ever emerge from an unfamiliar tube station and feel a bit lost, as now, in preparation for any impending visit, instead of just printing out or drawing a little map we will be able to zoom into it and actually do the required walk, right there in the browser, picking out the landmarks, counting the turnings so we will already know exactly where we are going...it's just genius!

Not everyone is happy though, someone here in the office pointed out that as the data is only a year old, if anyone were interested in stealing a car to order, it would be a much simpler matter to search the well-to-do streets of London from a web browser than to drive around the place looking shifty and perhaps attracting unwanted attention from residents/police, and as if to prove his point (as he has quite a nice car), he navigated to his home address, and lo and behold, there was his pride and joy, sat in his drive, advertising itself to the potential carjacker (although he contented himself with the fact that Google had, at least, managed to blur out his number plate)...

I'm not going to let that bother me though (I don't have an extremely valuable car anyway), I just think you should kiss goodbye to any claim for privacy the minute you step out of the front door (becoming "in public")...although I do extend some pity to the poor guy clearly pictured emerging from a sex shop (who promptly made the newspapers)...that would be a bit tough... ;)

More amusing captures over at Street View Fun... ;)

Horley Police Neighbourhood Watch Alert Feb 2009

Found a little sheet of paper posted through the front door late last week which made for rather interesting reading...it was a list of all the reported crimes in the local area that took place during February 2009, distributed for the dual purposes of neighbourly awareness and crime prevention...

Apart from our resident flasher (who managed to expose himself only the once (managing to make the headline in the Surrey Mirror) before being arrested and handed over for psychiatric evaluation after claiming he was a torture victim in his native Sri Lanka)-

-and our resident arsonist (who has been twice as busy as the flasher, appearing to have something against motorbikes, although currently still on Earlswood's "most wanted" list) the *vast* majority of "serious" unsolved crimes in our area seem to be "theft from a vehicle" (there were six), next most common were examples of criminal damage (mostly to vehicles, which one would imagine *usually* go hand-in-hand with the aforementioned theft)...following those were (and I'm struggling now to use the word "crime") incidents like "Kids knocked on door and ran away", "Kids rowdy nuisance behaviour" (yes, a little annoying, but I'm sure I did a little bit of that when I was young, to no lasting harm), kid "threw lemonade on a car", "Kids playing football in road" (Whatever NEXT!  Summon the SWAT team!) and the slightly bewildering "youths changing(sic) sheep in field" (which must be some sort of error, as I can't quite imagine what they may have been managing to change them in to)...dressing them up as lamb?  Turning them into slightly alarmed sheep?  All fairly temporary (well, I hope so anyway)...oh and then (of course), the rather intriguing "inappropriate use of a vehicle in fast food car park" (must have missed that one in Law class) on the Brighton Road (Doughnuts and burn outs?  Dogging?  Using it as a novelty toilet?) - the mind boggles... ;)

Anyway, the sagely advice offered to us (off the back of all this) is simply to stop leaving anything of value in view in your vehicle (which should surely be common sense), then also taking the time to make sure it is securely locked (and all the windows are closed) - do people really need to be told these things?  Anyway, if everyone manages to do these simple things, then I guess the police will have little else to do other than corral feral youths, confiscating their lemonade and footballs and making sure that sheep everywhere are kept just the way they are... ;)

Multiple Signal Failure Canary Wharf

Grrr!  Just spent almost 50 minutes underground stuck squashed onto a packed Jubilee line train...the ever-so kind driver was doing his best to keep us up to date - every 3 or 4 minutes he came back on the public address system to tell us that he *still* hadn't managed to get in touch with anyone from the control centre and had "no further information"...I suppose at least that sort of counts as communication...turns out it was multiple signal failure at Canary Wharf (for what it's worth)...I do wonder, when this happens why they can't just count the trains in and out of stations by radio communication, it's not like they don't have them, and it should be quite easy for the drivers to report their location, like a sort of "Train 3, now move up one stop and wait for further instructions" kind of thing?  Or am I missing something?

Thank goodness I was on the super early train into London Bridge, that meant (despite the delay) I only walked into the (completely empty) office 4 minutes late...there will be an awful lot of people crunched up behind me, hope the Thames Clipper has more than one ticket person working this morning...!

Way to ruin my happy, sunny Friday feeling, TFL! >:(

Fink's Links #56

Goodness me, what a week, so little time for blogging and so much to say, I've just been way too busy, links have gone just a tiny bit to the wayside...!  Still some quality items, just not as many as usual... ;)

First up this week read the incredible untold story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist...(the loot was never found, and the mastermind behind it got out of prison last week)!

An incredible ski-jump themed japanese toilet! [pic]

Discover electric lasers are ready for war!

The Arcology is coming...

Some school kids manage to take images of space using a £56 camera and a £43 weather balloon! [pic]

Seven ways to fool your sense of touch (via New Scientist)...

A visit to the lightning lab (check out the pictures too) where they test out lightning hits on (models of) commercial airliners... [vid]

Check out some spooky stick figure aliens caught on CCTV (from various countries around the world)...the start of an invasion, or Adobe After Effects? You decide... ;) [vids]

Discover that the Russians had mobile (self powered) nuclear power stations they could drive around the place! [pics]

Meet Beer2-D2... [pic]

The best Star Wars figure ever... ;)

Check out some really hot chicks...SORRY! ;) [pic]

...and to finish the links for this week, a very nasty Extreme spelling fail and a hilarious Breakfast fail

The archive is over here if you still need to see more, and more links next week... ;)

Strange Flickr traffic spikes

I usually check my Flickr stats 2 or 3 times a week, just to see what pictures are being popular with visitors...I like doing that because it's a good excuse to look back through my shots (which I am otherwise a little guilty of neglecting)...It helps to remind me of good times I've had and good memories too (which is always nice), for example a couple of weeks back there were quite a few hits on shots of food from the honeymoon -

- which took me back to those amazing breakfasts we had, and at this time of year, with people planning their summer holidays, pictures from other resorts get a bit of a spike as organic visitors arrive from the search engines looking for reviews...

All this "organic" traffic is quite normal, I get between 500 and 700 hits on my photos per day (from various sources), and have done for a few years now (just ticking over gently and comfortably)...that is, until the 8th of March this year (check out the graph from Flickr stats) -

- when I guessed I had been properly cyber stalked, over a thousand individual views, sequentially, covering absolutely everything I had flickr'd for about the last 2 years...fair enough, bit unusual, I even think I mentioned it to Flyingpops (and promptly forgot about it)...but then it happened again on the 16th of March, except this time it was over 2000 extra views...and now I check my stats this morning and yesterday I got over 10,000 (sorry, that's a meme thing) extra views! That's one view on every single picture, and then a third of them over again for good measure!

Most odd... :S

Baby and Pregnancy Magazines

A lot of this sort of thing has started to appear around the house alongside the tomes that have been practically stolen (we have had them withdrawn for so long) from the library...I had a quick flick through a few of them, and what a brilliant caper!

Keep recycling the same old core material/advice (carefully re-worded, slightly updated when required) that already exists in the library books, but do so over a 9 month period (throwing in the odd "my story" and a picture of the latest Mothercare crib) and then just rinse and repeat, safe in the knowledge that the audience is going to be, by it's very nature totally transient...meanwhile, employ a couple of sales guys to just sit around answering the telephone to all the regular advertising re-bookings from Cow and Gate, Johnsons, Fairy non-bio and Pampers - it's genius!

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to constantly republish (basically) the same information (it's obviously critical for other mums-to-be  in our area as we have all the pregancy related library books reserved for the next six weeks so they would have to look elsewhere for advice), I just think it would be terminally dull to actually work on a magazine like that - "What feature are we running this month?", "Urm, let me check the schedule...yes, here we go - nappies again"..."Ah...nappies, anything new in the field?", "Ah...nope, not really...well Pampers have a new one with a slightly different name? It's pretty much just a nappy though", "Ok - lets run that on the front page"...!

Choosing a Pram - Volkswagen Beetle

Well, it's all starting to come together, items are being checked off Flyingpops' baby checklist with frightening rapidity - the cot arrived over the weekend (came from a friend of Flyingpops' sister and looks like it's never been used), that's now stashed up in the spare room behind the freshly reassembled futon/sofa bed, two boot-sale bargain brand new, still boxed (£35 in the shop) stair gates (for a fiver each) are now sitting behind the sofa in the living room-

- pregnancy cushions have materialised, the assorted parts of a (as my mother dubbed it) "baby torturer" -

- or (sit in) activity centre are upstairs in the nursery-to-be - this sort of thing- absolutely heaps of clothes next to it and more are overflowing from the baby bath (that I already mentioned)...and soon to come is the pram/push chair...

Before all this started I had heard Flyingpops talking about the Bugaboo range and remained completely neutral on the matter - surely, a pram is a pram? - however, when (a few weeks back) we took a little trip out to the A3 Baby Barn to physically check some out (and more importantly see if we could find one that would actually fit in the boot of Poppy the Beetle), it quickly became apparent that not all prams and pushchairs are equal. Some of them barely fold up at all, being just as clumsy, heavy and bulky whatever button you push, or catch disengage...perfectly alright if you have a MPV to heave it's massive bulk into the cavernous depths of, but totally impossible with the space we have to work with (getting the weekly shop home can be a tetris-like exercise)...

It was impressive, not only was the Bugaboo extremely light, while feeling unshakably sturdy and almost impossibly maneuverable it also folds up into an incredibly tiny space (even the wheels pop easily off, if required, and the whole thing goes flat)...In fact the package was so well thought out (it actually feels like playing with a transformer toy!) I would have said "Go for it" straight away...apart from one tiny little sticking point - the £900 price tag - oh and the wait while they hand-make the thing especially for you (you even pick the colours)...it's the Rolls Royce of the pram world but how on Earth could we justify paying all that money for a pram? I mean, that's almost one month's rent, and before long we are only going to have one salary to count on (for a while, at least)...

We continued discontentedly looking at, and half-heartedly pushing around a succession of other prams, all of which felt like they weighed a ton and steered like a wonky shopping trolley (in comparison), none of which would allow you to position the seat backwards or forwards with a flick of a switch, all the while spotting yummy mummies (apparently everywhere) dining al-fresco swivelling their little ones around in their transforming seats and adjusting their coffee cup holders and then effortlessly gliding off over the uneven pavement with their gel-filled wheels and active suspension...The word "compromise" seems awfully difficult to form on the lips when the difference is so pronounced...

So Flyingpops started watching ebay and they did come up for sale, frequently already serviced (yes, like a car, except they go back to the manufacturer), if you were lucky you could get one for £400 or so...still rather expensive...we were almost to the point of biting the bullet and actually bidding on one (as we were saving so much money everywhere else), when Flyingpops went to visit a friend of hers (who had the pleasure of using one for her "first") just to get an honest opinion as to whether it really was worth the extra cash (although, if I am honest, I think we both were really only seeking someone (anyone!) else's permission to spend so much money)...

If this comes to pass MJ is going to enjoy being taken on quite the most upmarket of strolls in all of merry Earlswood... ;)

Update - We got a Bugaboo Frog, fits perfectly, see here...