217 Lemurs

The Thames at Kingston. There are a range of different boats moored up including old canal boats as well as yachts.

A nature reserve on the edge of the Thames. Very small but lots of swans and wading birds.

The old Next store at Kingston. Obviously it wasn’t always a Next as it lists the 7 kings crowned at Kingston (including Edmund, Aethelred the Unready and Edwy).

The actual “Kings’ Stone”. One of the supposedly possible sources for the name Kingston. It seems like a possibility. This is set on a plinth from the mid-1800s and is the third location for the stone in Kingston. The coin donations on the stone itself are interesting too. The Celtic custom was to throw offerings into water but clearly this is a ‘special’ case.

I had a chat with a woman from Grappenhall in Cheshire but who now lives in the Midwest of the US and is about to move to California and a man who lived locally but is a keen railway enthusiastic and has shovelled coal for trains on the Settle line and the Bury line. It was a fairly lengthy conversation in hindsight…

Just below the the “Kings’ Stone” is the Hogsmill River. While it is a bit grainy and unclear there are obviously fish, big fish in the River. This is right below the main road bridge over the Hogsmill and out of the town centre.

Another view of the Hogsmill River further upstream between Kingston and Surbiton. Very idyllic for such a densely populated area although the (small amount of) rubbish in the river does give it away.

I just liked this metalwork…

And this seemed like quite a grand gatehouse for a suburban street… Although I did notice quite a few gated communities but this seemed to define the concept “gate”.

The Surrey County Hall - opposite Kingston University’s Penrhyn Road campus… The photo doesn’t get across the scale of the building.

So does everybody else? But perhaps the real estate agents are trying to prove that they are human afterall.

I was sort of hoping to see Tom and Barbara … but even without the Good Life references Surbiton proved that it is pretty odd down South.

The MoD has put the Ark Royal up for sale on the Edisposals website - which needs some seo attention and optimising at the very least.

There seems to be a bit of debate floating around about alternatives uses - support base for the Olympics, a casino, a hotel or nightclub. There is also the tongue in cheek suggestion that it should be moored up at Salford Quays.

So my 10 suggestions for alternative issues for the Ark Royal are

1. A new really really big Wacky Warehouse - why should repurposing a naval ship be restricted to the over 18s.
2. A new country - Sealand is based on an old defence platform well here is another one. The world needs more micro-nations.
3. A bridge. Somewhere always needs a bridge. It looks pretty flat and long, pretty much the two basic criteria for a bridge. Perhaps sorting out access for a territorial exclave.
4. Pirate radio station - a little bit 1960s old school but I like the idea of a former naval ship becoming a pirate ship (of any description) 
5. DIY Navy - I think this might be illegal in most bits of the world but what an advantage after all most mercenaries are just a bunch of pumped up guys with guns. 
6. Grass ski slope - this would probably require jacking up one end and adding (a lot of) Miracle Grow grass seed
7. Budget cruise ship - just leave the whole thing as is and go for it. A kind of backpackers of the sea.
8. A Dam. Sinking the whole lot down - a ‘bit’ - would prosumably create an instant dam. I think.
9. Mobile self-storage units. Lots of space, mobile, hmmm it could move around to meet shifting demand. The added advantage would be higher security than the usual industrial estate effort.
10. A reef. Probably the most likely given that this has happened in the past and perhaps more fitting than just being scrapped.

I think I am normally a fairly calm person. It takes a fair bit to get me wound up and I absolutely refuse to get worked up about day-to-day activities that you have to do. But today even my patience was tried by shopping madness.

As Sundays in March go in the UK today was a pretty good one - less than memorable for being census night but pleasant enough weather wise. A walk to the local supermarket was in order to pick up a couple of missing items (coffee and something for dinner). 

The evidence that it was going to be a bad day was already evident in the car park. Obviously parking in an actual space was too much of an effort for the local residents so someone had parked in front of a coned off section of road that would normally be a through way and a number of other cars were just randomly parked on the main access road in front of the supermarket.

I was then taking in the Sunday specials - you know the marked-down ‘stuff’ of dubious expiry date. ‘Excuse me’, ‘EXCUSE ME’, the rather insistent woman standing to the right seemed to want to stand on the left. She then starting rummaging, blatantly rummaging from the left to right across the face of the chiller. Effectively everybody else was moved on while she pored over every item carefully handling ever item with her right hand (which was also holding a clearly used tissue). ‘This looks interesting’, I said as I placed down a beef based ready meal only to have it snatched up by the said woman.

So then it was a case of having people randomly open freezer doors on you while looking in through the door and people zig-zagging their shopping trollies in front of you as you attempt to walk in a straight-line. It is easy to believe that the supermarkets use this as a strategy to try and keep those of use who do know where they are going from getting shopping tasks completed in anything less than an hour.

In all of this mess facing the checkouts was going to be a challenge. So dodging the staffed checkouts for the self-checkouts was just asking for trouble. The warning signs were already there. There was something with a full shopping trolley using the self-checkout and failing to understand that each scanned item needs to be weighed rather than going straight back into the trolley. Someone else was just repeatedly scanning the same item and ignoring the red light and the warning messages. Then behind me while I was waiting for the carnival to end someone observed, “Oh, they do single queuing here.” Smugly they were suggesting that somehow here in the boondocks no-one had ever thought of one queue per checkout. What annoyed me was their unflappable believe that a single queue for a group of checkouts would somehow be less effective.

By this time I had got to the service checkout with sandwiches and ‘stuff’ for lunch. The queue of 8 of us all then could witness a man with a bunch of roses march up to the cash register clearly intent on being next customer. The assistant, to her credit, pointed this out to him and then a disagreement without being a disagreement occurred. Ultimately it would have been quicker for him to get to the back of the queue.

I really didn’t want to go anywhere after that.

I stumbled upon Incognito today. A new shop in Stevenson Square in the northern quarter. Many of the buildings around the square are quite grand and it is good to see more of them put to good use. There is also the Koffee Pot (which is a breakfast and lunch venue so it is always fun to see people trying to get in after 3), King’s College of Manchester (although they may not be there too long if the new Visa restriction have any teeth) and Glorious (who have done some really good design work - despite my often vague briefs - including the infamous playing cards and mousemats).

Finding Incognito was a bit of an accident - I overheard someone walk up to a group and ask if they were lost. A bit unlikely but true. The group then said they were looking for the University (presumably the University of Manchester) and the kind soul’s face immediately went blank - whoops. I was so busy taking in the nuances of this exchange that I nearly fell over the stands outside the shop.

Inside you have a lot of items that I have previously only seen online. You are greeted with edible animals products - ants (as pictured above) as well as tarantulas. 

There is a big emphasis on photography and particular the second life that has been given to Polaroid through the Impossible Project. Some of the possibilities with this kit are very interesting and the website is quite extensive but it is still useful to actually see the products and with something like this which is a bit more experimental I think I would be inclined to buy from a shop rather than online.

There were also jelly baby cards - can’t find a link but these are greeting cards with an actual jelly baby (or 4) stuck onto the front of the card.

There is also a large range of Mr P. items - including the lampshade…

Incognito feels like an upbeat museum but they will need to sell ‘stuff’ (to quote the princess from the Virgin Broadband ad). No website yet either.

And no, I didn’t.

An interesting research project… if you were going to do to research about Manchester Airport would you live there for a year? That is what Damian O’Doherty is doing… If you were a traditional anthropologist this is what you would do… The question is, is that what a traditional anthropologist needs to do?

Axis of Awesome recently have been popping up on late night UK TV (including Red Nose Day/Night)… There are quite a few videos (some are more dubious than others though - be warned if you go exploring).