Kinder Surprised

I have always thought that Britain and America were the home of legislation protecting the stupid, thus preserving and nurturing the 'moron' gene and lining the pockets of litigious lawyers whilst stamping out anything which smacks of "fun" or "thrill" and which might appeal to normal members of society. It was, therefore, somewhat surprising to read (in 'The Times') that Germany has decided to ban "Kinder Surprise" chocolate eggs. On the grounds that children might choke on them.

Despite the fact that no child has ever choked on them.

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The Tinsley Cooling towers are being demolished:





These are amongst my favourite buildings in the UK, being both monumental and elegant. I'm not really sure why it is that the UK is so completely obsessed with destroying the "dark, satanic mills" upon which the modern nation was built.

I like to imagine it is some sort of collective embarrassment at the fact that the country no longer makes anything, preferring instead to toady about in the 'service industries', doing pussy-nancy paperwork jobs as wage-slaves and pretending to be superior because nobody has dirty hands and nobody works up a sweat.

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Who rattled my cage?!

Back Home Again

Well, that's the summer officially over for me. I am back in glasgow with work again on Monday. Not that I'm really bothered about that: I've found loads of new materials to work with (pictures soon) and have a couple of orders to complete. It is always a bit of a wrench to leave Brighton at the end of the summer, though.

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In case you don't follow Dingo's blog as well as mine, I thought that I would draw your eye over to his latest picture entry!

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Early night for me.

Now With Titles!

Dingo pointed out that my blog was very difficult to navigate in a reader because of the lack of titles. I've remedied that now!

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Back in Brighton from Bournemouth.

It has to be said that I am giving the return to the "British Holiday" this year only. No matter how expensive flying becomes next year, it would still have been cheaper by far to take a holiday abroad. Lunch for two (sandwiches and a non-alcoholic drink): £15. We spent over £25 in parking fees for two days. Entrance to Corfe Castle: £7.50 each. The holiday was most enjoyable and I don't regret doing it but there is no way that it was worth the money spent.

I've finally got full internet access back. We've been touring round Dorset for the last few days and were staying in the lovely RNLI College, which doubles as an hotel out of term time. It was quite luxurious and good value, but the internet access was filtered and I wasn't allowed to upload photographs, which is annoying. The views from the room were all over Poole harbour:





We've been all over the place on the Purbeck peninsula, which is beautiful and very interesting. Lullworth Cove is beautiful and there is a fossil forest:







The weather has been really odd, alternating very hot days with cool and wet ones. Today looks like a cool and wet one. It was SO hot the day we went to Arne that I had to have a sleep in the middle of the day:





That was the same day I got really excited about finding some "Dodder", the marvellously-named parasitic plant on gorse. It was in flower too. This is a plant I have only ever read about before:





We also went to Tyneham to see the "ghost village" which was surprisingly dull after the initial shock of finding a whole village with nobody in it! Dingo tried to play the piano in the schoolroom: most of the keys were silent:





I got a lovely mail today from Giuseppe in Genova, enclosing a picture of the bracelet I made for him earlier in the year:





It's really nice to get feedback from people who wear my jewellery.

Loads more photographs on my Flickr pages, link on the left.