What a load of tosh that Thomas and Friends lark is on the TV, I grew up reading the books don'tcha know, nothing wrong with reading the books. At least in the books Annie and Clarabel were proper bogie coaches and not the four-wheeler miscreations depicted by Britt Allcroft and Co. on the telly box. … Continue reading Thomas and…
Welcome aboard, we're going on a journey… When I was 9 or 10 or so years old, the school library contained a small set of softback books about notable ships. Amongst the titles as I recall were Titanic, Royal Sovereign, Cutty Sark and Gipsy Moth IV. Recalling now from this distance in time is a … Continue reading Not the Chelsea Flower Show.
I wrote a shorter version of this as part of an earlier blog piece in which I started out to write about my liking for railways but it turned into a sort of potted life story. Anyway, I thought I'd flesh out the part about my journeys to the Assay Office a bit, so here's … Continue reading Bag of gold.
It was minus five the garden this morning, minus five Celsius that is, not garden chairs or bamboo bean-poles. Judging by the cloudless sky it looked like it was going to be a nice sunny day but the clouds arrived in short order and put paid to that. In a way I’m glad I suppose, … Continue reading Staying at home 3: A brief spell of normality in a crazy world.
In Poznań the sun is shining, the sky is studded with clouds but not enough to detract from the overall sunniness of the day. I'm at Poznań Główny railway station waiting for a train to Kołobrzeg, a small seaside town on the Baltic coast. I'd just walked up from ul. Rybaki where the hotel I … Continue reading Kołobrzeg – a trip to the seaside. Part 1; Long day’s journey into rain.
I grew up in the Hertfordshire town of Berkhamsted where for the early part of my life my parents and I lived with my mother's parents in George Street at number 130. There are two roads here, in this particular part of the town, not in the town itself, George Street and Ellesmere Road, both … Continue reading Railways
It's Thursday 28th April 2011 and I’m sitting on the 05.51 departure from Chesham, staring up at Chesham’s disused signal box, it’s a grey morning but I have planned a rendezvous with a lady in red. The train doors rumble shut and we’re off, winding up the hillside to gain the Metropolitan main line at … Continue reading A spotter’s tale.
I almost went to Poland a month ago, almost... I was going to Łódź to see a band called "Beyond The Event Horizon", I'd just taken delivery of their latest, indeed their first album and was delighted to find out that as part of the tour promoting the album they were playing at Łódzki Dom … Continue reading The Vagaries of International Travel, a lone tree and a Cornish Pasty.
Trainspotting in Horse Town - part 1. After the concert had finished I was led out of the auditorium and downstairs to a room underneath the stage, I think it was underneath the stage, I will admit to being a little disorientated but it was definitely underneath something. There was a bar and another smaller … Continue reading Trainspotting in Horse Town. Part 2
On my very first trip to Poland I met a German cyclist at a railway station. I'd arrived in Warsaw five days earlier and spent three full days in Warsaw, immersing myself as much as I could in things Polish but the real object of my visit was about 190 km west in the town … Continue reading Trainspotting in Horse Town. Part 1.
A Point of Views, A Polish Odyssey and Other Stories. 