landscape

A day out on the Thames

~ cloudytype ~ 2 Comments
My surprise find of fossil sea-urchin. St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium bridge in the background
Thames swans ( they all belong to the King, technically, as an old rule says he’s the only one allowed to eat them. ) Pigeons also and a few black headed gulls. Blackfriars bridge in the background. What you can see is actually the train station platform windows
Looking back from those windows, you can see the banks of the Thames along Southbank, and the little bit of beach where I found the fossil. Further along is the Tate Modern Gallery
And a wider view from the station window at Blackfriars. Sitting on the bench waiting for my train home, I could hear the waves of the Thames crashing beneath me as the tide came in.

Bikecast!

~ cloudytype ~ 2 Comments

I have wanted to take a typewriter for a ride for a long time, and finally got around to it. Unfortunately a dog scared the birds away almost as soon as I sat down to type a picture of them, so I’m afraid this trio is all I can offer. However not to worry, I brought my swimming kit, so all is fine and dandy.

The water is 16.6 degrees C, about as warm as it will get this summer. The safer seas and rivers app tells me the water is also clean enough to swim in. I never venture in these days without checking. Southern Water has an abominable reputation for dumping untreated sewage into the sea, and this year was fined millions for its misdemeanours. But today all is looking pretty nice.

Autumn beach

~ cloudytype ~ Leave a comment

That’s the pretty part of my visit to the beach yesterday. This is the not so pretty bit of my beach walk:

These I picked up and disposed of, along with other bits of rubbish, Yuck. Fortunately there are plenty of rubbish bins at regular intervals all along the beach both on the beach and on the promenade, so you don’t have to carry the tat very far.

Yes, those last two are single use plastic tampon applicators. Again: YUCK! Ten seconds of use for a thousand years of pollution. Ok beach clean done. Let’s look at nature again .

The gulls were pulling razor clams and mussels from the pools here.

I bought a haiku

~ cloudytype ~ 2 Comments

I’m in London today. Walking along the banks of the river Thames I came across a poet with his typewriter, a blue silver reed. so I bought a haiku on the subject of rivers. I turned my phone on to take the pictures and write this post 🙂 It was good to see the typist had a steady stream of customers too.

April 12th…

~ cloudytype ~ 5 Comments

A day out yesterday in the chilly April air…

The Long man of Wilmington is not made of chalk like the Cerne Abbas Giant ( bagged both these guys now!). Neither does he show off his best bits like the Dorset giant. Wilmington long man is made of white painted bricks placed along the original design on the hillside which was once only visible in certain light conditions. If you get up close apparently his proportions don’t look so odd from below! We sat and admired him from afar and raised a glass to the preservation of enigmatic drawings on British hillsides.

Then we went hunting and I spotted…

None of which took my fancy. Then I saw this

And delved into my bag for some paper, and got to work manually moving the platen along as the drawband was broken. The mainspring was still intact and I pondered…

I’ve never typed on it handled one of these though I’ve seen a couple in better condition with much higher price tags in antique shops. It was nice to get intimate with it but its price was too high and they would only come down by a tenner!

Just not quite screaming “take me take me take me” I left it muttering to itself about its nice blue detail and the fact that it was a Special … ah well!