The Beatles

It might not look like much, but this spot was a Very Important Place 50 years ago- because it's where I met the Beatles! They were staying at the Palace Court hotel on Westover Road in Bournemouth. The hotel was on one side of the alley, and the theatre where they were playing was next door (it's a cinema now).
On the Saturday afternoon, I begged, whined and pouted, as only a pre-teen girl knows how, with my parents to let me stand there til the group appeared.
My perplexed parents said OK. So there I waited, along with about two dozen other Beatles fans. Eventually John Lennon, Paul MacCartney and Ringo Starr emerged to be swamped by their adoring fanlets (we were all about 12 years old).
We all got their autographs.
It is one of the best memories from my youth!

Boscombe.

There's some great architecture around Boscombe, but 'Property Developers' are gradually knocking it all down.  I went out on Christmas Day to get some photos (while there weren't too many people around). The photo above used to be a bank, and the photo below is the Royal Arcade. I'll post some more examples of old and beautiful buildings in the coming weeks.

The Royal Arcade.

Inside the Royal Arcade.

This photo (below) is the new mall called 'The Sovereign Centre. I think it's a 'modern monstrosity', without too much going for it. It's not even built well; on rainy days, a veritable garden of buckets blooms inside, to catch the leaks! But on Christmas Day the glass entrance doors were closed and I liked the effect of the reflected sky.

Bournemouth Race for Life, 2011

Something strange happened this morning. Bournemouth seafront changed colour from the usual blue and gold, to....pink! The annual Race for Life was first run to raise both funds and awareness for breast cancer. It's become so popular that now it's to help fight all forms of cancer, but the tradition of wearing pink has continued. and the runners are all women







As the runners pass, you see that many of them have a pink square of paper on their backs. That's where they post the names of the cancer sufferers who they are running for, their friends and families; even themselves.

Sometimes, there are too many names, too much for one person; sometimes not even a name- just an empty wheelchair.

But the Race for Life isn't a sad occasion- in fact it's quite the opposite. These women run for love. Who knew there was so much love in the world?



You'll certainly find a tear in your eye- but then you'll find yourself laughing at some of the antics. The general air is of optimism and hope. It's more like a celebration of the lives lost and a tribute to the bravery of them and their friends and families. It is also a statment of determination that one day a cure will be found. This Marshal (below) 'high-fived' as many runners as he could- and there were thousands of runners.

Mothers brought their children in pushchairs......

.....and others even carried their kids!
Even having a cast on one leg couldn't hold this woman back; and look, she's smiling!

The little girl wasn't so well, but was still determined to be there, so her Mum pushed her in her wheelchair.
Lots of people dressed up for the run. You know it's going to be fun when the cowgirls show up.

They wore funny headgear.

Some of them may have been on a day pass....
And- OMG!- it's Jedward! (If you're not from the UK, you won't understand this one- but trust me, that's something to be happy about. You have been spared Jedward).

People brought their dogs, and some of them were dressed too.

And this band (below) played with joy the whole time, making happy music to raise your feet.

The event has become so popular that it's now been split into 3 races. The first one at 9am was 10K (about 5 miles) and the next two were half the distance. I took over 130 photos, and that was only one race. I would have loved to put them all on here, every single one- because they all deserve to be shown.

Oystercatchers!

One of my favourite birds is the Oyster catcher. They dress well in lovely black dinner jackets and accessorise with startlingly orange bills and legs. Their cry is a delicate 'peep'. They're very shy and it's rarely that you can get close enough to them to take a decent photo. ,P.But yesterday I was in luck! The beach was quiet and I saw these birds from some distance away. I took my time getting as close as I could and took about 100 photos. Thank heaven for digital. I won't bore you with all of them (OK, I heard that sigh of relief) but here's a sample.

19th January: the first sunny day of the year.

This is the first sunny day of the New Year, and what a relief it was to finally see blue sky and crystal, sparkling light.
Being in dire need of some cheering up, I headed for the beach and walked along into Bournemouth along the shore. These shots were taken from Bournemouth pier.

Snow!

Isn't this the most pathetic looking palm tree you've ever seen (left)? You can almost see it shivering, poor thing. It must be wondering where it all went wrong.

It's quite unusual to get snow in these parts (on the South coast of England). Typically, about every 3 or 4 years, there might be a sprinkle of fairy dust. Kids try to catch some on their tongues, adults have a good grumble, and wimps like me crawl back under the duvet and hope it goes away.

Then with any luck, at about noon the snow obediently shuffles off down the drains and life goes on. But not today. Oh, no.



Now I want to be clear about this: I do not do snow. I don't do cold either, at least not gracefully. But this morning when I woke up, the world was deeply, seriously white, and it it was evident from the forecast that it was staying that way. Well, if you can't beat it, you might as well enjoy it, so I took my camera for a walk. These photos were taken in the park on the clifftop.


This is the British Government's answer to snow clearance (left). What's that you say, it doesn't look like anything has been done? Really? Well, you're right. The roads are like ice rinks. Staying home is the smart thing to do.
And look, here's White Van Man. For once, he really DOES own the road.

Throop Mill in Autumn.

Yesterday was a lovely day for a walk down a country lane or three.

So I went to Throop Mill (which I wrote about earlier in this blog). Last time I went it was summer; now it's autumn, and of course everything looks a bit different.

Here's Squirrel Nutkin enjoying his nuts. And why not?

If you look carefully in this photo below (I believe if you double click on the photo it'll come up larger), you can see a pheasant running across the field. He was really motoring, maybe he was worried I'd got a gun.
He needn't have panicked - I've eaten pheasant and I have to say, it was one of those 'first and last' experiences.

But these guys here- the Saddleback piglets with Big Momma looking on- well, that's another story. (The Saddlebacks are the black and white ones. Oh, you figured that out already. I dunno what the brown one is - sausages, maybe?)

Pigs are clever animals- and if these piggies ever find out what their address is (below), they'll be moving on out PDQ.

Pork chops, anyone?

The Bench Mark

Bournemouth is a popular holiday destination in the UK, especially known for its miles of lovely beaches. In summer time, on a hot day, the sands get so crowded with holidaymakers that if you want to walk along the shore, you have to carefully pick your way through the basking bodies.

However the clifftop and promenade are wonderful places to stroll and there are benches at frequent intervals, so walkers can rest and enjoy the beautiful views across the bay. The seats on the seafront are mostly painted in the town colours, either bright blue or yellow; the ones on the clifftop are stained and varnished wood, which happily blend in with the woodland surroundings. They are all well used.



Many of them have a small engraved plaque bolted into the seat back. They are memorials, which consist of a name, some dates and a few poignant words and are sponsored by friends and family.


These plaques never fail to move me. They make me think about the life remembered there, and try to imagine how that person lived. The one below is dedicated to Philip Jones, 1924-1997. Just look at those dates- I bet he had quite a tough life. He most likely fought in a war; and afterwards worked hard in battered post-war Britain, with its shattered towns and shortages. That's the common experience of people of his age. When he finally reached retirement and could just sit and enjoy the peaceful horizon, what a simple pleasure it must have been for to him.

I like this one too, for Carole Humby- a woman who built a nest of love that holds her still. Every year, on the anniversary of her death, a lovely bunch of flowers appears, tied to the bench. What generosity of spirit, how many selfless acts of kindness must she have performed to have inspired such reciprocal love.

There's one that always gives me a lump in my throat. 'Jack and Daisy Higgins, 1903 and 1912 to 1996. Loves last word is spoken.' To me, those dates tell of two lives begun separately but ended nearly together, the time in between filled with love and all it's struggles, a life not worth living for one after the other had gone. You can almost see the old couple sitting there, walking sticks propped against the bench, two grey heads close together, frail, blue veined arthritic hands still clasped.

There are many of these plaques and they have one thing in common; they all celebrate the lives of 'ordinary' people. No superstars- just people like you and me. Each plaque has been thoughtfully placed with love.

Along with the life lived , these plain metal badges also speak quietly about a part of life that most of us prefer to forget; and that's its unavoidable last chapter. Because where you have life, you have death.

All too often, death is pushed away from the mainstream of life. We like to put it in its place, in the cemetery, buried underground, or scattered away in one day of special ceremony. But death, however much we might wish it away, well- it's an inevitable part of life. It's the one experience absolutely no-one escapes. By placing these memorials on mundane benches which are used every day, the whole subject becomes somehow more acceptable, less shocking. More human. More alive. Some cultures hold that a person doesn't really die as long as their name is on someone's lips; and in that way these plaques help to cheat death just a little bit.

I already know what I want to happen when I die- I want to be rolled in a sack or a cardboard box and buried in a Woodland cemetery with nothing but a tree for a marker. I want to feed the worms and 'push up the daisies', just as nature intended.

But if I was to have any kind of a memorial, I can think of nothing I'd like better than a simple metal plate, with some kind words inscribed on it, screwed into a bench, somewhere where the wind blows and the sun shines. Some place where anyone passing by could read it. It would mean someone cared enough about me to put it there. It would be a clue that maybe I didn't waste my life, as I sometimes suspect I may have done because someone cared enough to keep my name in the arena of the living.

A reader might enjoy the moment, and their own lives, a little better for it. That's the effect those plaques have on me, because every time I read one, I get a little jolt that reminds me of something it's too easy to forget. Life is for living. Every moment of it. Carpe Diem. Sieze the day. I think Vernon Wilcox did, and that's why someone cared enough to place his name where everyone can see it. Still here in spirit, it says. I just bet he is!