Tuesday 15 September 2009

Cornwall Holiday Pictures Part Two and Three: St Ives, Lands End, Doctor Who Exhibition, Padstow and Tintagel Castle

After the Eden Project and various other little towns on day one, the sun really came out on day two and we headed down to St Ives, which is a beautiful little fishing village that Cornwall does really rather well. The beach was pretty crowded and we ventured out onto the sand so Amanda could paddle and I could take some photos of the boats, a few of which are reproduced here...
After that we drove down to Lands End via some seriously circutous small lanes, and before heading down to the coastal path, we had to take advantage of the Doctor Who exhibition there. We've done the Cardiff and Earls Court one, and this one held up pretty well in comparison. Some excellent exhibits there, including some Cyberman stuff from the last Christmas special, series four and crazy old Dalek Caan in an excellent Dalek room at the end. Here's some pics...


...and to Lands End. Despite the blue skies, it's seriously windy out there!
On day three we headed down to Padstow, home of chef, Rick Stein (whom I have no real knowledge of, but Amanda assured me he was a chef of note). Pretty little place, but not hugely exciting...

And then onto Tintagel, the village and castle being associated with the legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. It's a beautiful little village, filled with tourists from all over the world, and although the trek down to (and back up from) the ruins of the castle is back breaking work, the view is dizzying; it's all sheer clifftops and wild landscape and roaring sea far, far below. Very windy, very knackering, but well worth the trip down the lost little lanes of Cornwall. I also got a cool dragons head for mounting on the wall (it'll make sense to those of you who visit the new Avery Towers in the near future).


Sunday 13 September 2009

Cornwall Holiday Pictures Part One: The Eden Project

We had an excellent week away down in Cornwall last week, and I naturally took a shedload of pictures while we were down there so here's the first batch that cover what we did and where we went. The first day was the only overcast day. The rest of the week was all blue skies and ridiculously hot weather, so we were pretty lucky considering the usual state of the British weather! It being overcast we decided to head to The Eden Project as it's all pretty much undercover and, as one of the biodomes is of a tropical/rainforest kind of heat, the cooler it was outside, the more bearable it'd be inside! That said, it was still pretty heavy going, heat-wise, but was well worth the visit. The setting, even in the dense kind of fog that surrounded the area that day, was visually stunning. The domes themselves are strangely beautiful, alien things, and you really feel like you're stepping into some science fiction landscape. Here's some pics from the day. It was difficult to get clear pictures as the lens would mist over if you left it open for too long!
I liked this pic of 'The Seed', a structure in the central area, purely because it put me in mind of something from a Kubrick movie. It's about 20-30ft high, and again, feels deeply alien. Whoever comissions the art and sculptures at the Eden Project is someone after my own slightly twisted heart and mind. There's some splendidly weird stuff as a bonus to the spectacle of the biodomes.

And this was very cool. Constructed out of 'found items' such as washing machines, vaccum cleaners and PCs, it was a huge, huge structure that put me in mind of something from the heady days of 2000AD...
In the Mediterranean dome, my eye was caught by these stunning, almost Barker-esque sculptures by Tim Shaw of Bacchanal Dionysus rites - scenes of divine madness, possession, sacrifice and orgy. It didn't seem to find favour with the older folk in the dome, but I absolutely loved them, and gave me some ideas for my next novel which I'll be researching soon.
Next post will be St Ives and Land's End, which may contain scenes of a Doctor Who nature, as there was an exhibition that, being the geeks we are, we had to visit...

Friday 4 September 2009

Ukraine Has Got More Talent...

This is really quite astonishingly good and puts to shame the standard of our variation on this show. Kseniya Simonova, the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent doesn't do dog tricks or karaoke versions of Mariah Carey songs. Instead, set to music, Simonova depicts - by drawing in sand - the invasion of Ukraine by Germany in World War II. And if that doesn't sound all that impressive, you'll change your mind pretty quickly. It's eight mesmerising minutes, ending with the message "you are always near." Watch it and despair at what Britain parades as 'talent' in these kind of shows...