Month: December 2005
Winter Solstice at Stonehenge
Dave escapes the gravitational pull of London, stopping off for a mid-winter visit to Britain's best-known megalithic site... I should have had these photographs online a week ago, but a series of events - some unfortunate - conspired to prevent me from doing so. I had to endure moving back London to Dublin (utilising a car ferry), a broken exhaust, a bad cold, moving house in Dublin, Christmas, and hell knows what else. After having spent the last quarter of a year in England, it's early on the night of the 20th that I finally escape the gravitational pull of London. Once beyond the M25, and plugging along the M4, I achieve escape velocity, make for Devizes. The next morning, 7am, I'm riding shotgun in Neil Mortimer's car. Neil's a resident of this neck of the woods, and an expert on the surrounding antiquities. Salisbury Plain was enveloped in fog....
Christmas in America
'Christmas in America. Or is that Holiday Season? What the fuck am I supposed to call it again?' Amber Brown reports from Stateside. Well another year almost over and the dark shadow of Christmas, or the Holiday Season, looms above us. Normally, this time of year is anticipatedwith cheer, charity, gifts (wanted or not), booze and the hilarious possibility that your boss will drink too much and publicly make an arse out him or herself that will forever be immortalized on video. But not this year. More and more people I talked to claim they just don't seem to have that Christmas spirit. Should they call it Christmas Spirit? It's no wonder that people are finding it harder to that special seasonal feeling this year. Seems you can't step outside anymore without offending someone. Wish them a Merry Christmas and you are politically incorrect. Say Happy Holidays and you are...
Charles Fort’s House in London
Last weekend, I went to see Charles Fort's former home, at 39A Marchmont Street in London, now a hardware shop. I took some photos of the building, and off the silver plaque on the wall. Charles Hoy Fort (1874 - 1932) was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena, known for his tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and his studies into strange events. Without him, there would be X-Files, or no popular accounts stories of rains of fish or frogs. Really. He even coined the term 'teleport. More here » So, I'm outside his house where he lived between 1921 and 1928, close to the British Museum, fiddling with my camera and tripod. A young guy came out of the shop, and walked across the street towards me. 'Damn it, I thought, he wants to know why I'm making photographs of his shop, and is going to try and chase...
Treadwells’ Bookstore
Let's face it: xmas shopping is as dull as fuck. So, it's a rarity that you stumble across a shop that has stuff you like and friendly people staffing it. Like we did the other day. Allow us to introduce you to Treadwells' Bookstore: a fortean haven. This saturday past, Blather went xmas shopping. Not that we normally do this sort of thing as a group activity, you understand. It's just that two of us are in the same city for once and we figured a quick trip round some of the more interesting bookstores of London might actually produce some xmas presents above the standard garbage that we hand out every December. Where's the Fruit and Veg? First stop Forbidden Planet. Now, I'm sorry, but the current owners and managers of Forbidden Planet can go and fuck themselves from a height. I distinctly recall when Forbidden Planet was a...