Strawberry Harvest 2012

If we hadn't been away in Purbeck last week, we'd probably have picked some of our strawberry crop then, and thus not noticed how large it actually is....

Plastinated Camel

This afternoon we went to the Natural History Museum, to see "Animal Inside Out", an exhibition of dissected and plastinated animals by Gunter von Hagens. Plastination is a method of preservation he has developed which "involves extracting all water and fatty tissues from the specimen and replacing them with polymers in a vacuum. The plastination process stops the decay of dead bodies and prepares specimens for scientific and medical education. It is an odourless form of preservation and lasts a long time." Or to put it another way, seeing the exploded musculature of an male adult elephant, or the body of a shark represented solely by its preserved capillaries, is bloody fascinating. (So fascinating that we signed up as members of the museum, which among other things entitles us to free entry to special exhibtions like this, but that's another story.)

Photography isn't permitted in the exhibition itself -- they'd rather you bought the exhibition book, of course -- but as a teaser there's a plastinated Bactrian camel displayed in the central hall, which can be photographed. The five images below show, in order, two general views of the plastinated camel, from the front -- the head and neck have been split longitudinally into three, so that they can be separately posed and the inner structure seen to best effect; a closer view of the inner part of the split head, showing its tongue and teeth; a view of the preserved internal organs from the right-hand side; and a view of same from the left-hand side, where the stomach has been cut open to show the digestive process at work, producing what will eventually become camel dung. As I said: bloody fascinating!

Mutant Peace Lily

These plants normally produce one white flower, but this one bears three. Look closer, and it will be seen that the larger has two petals. Look closer still, and the smaller flower actually has three petals (two upright and one curled underneath). The plant also has a split leaf -- not a natural tear, but a leaf which divides halfway along to form two points -- and a couple of fused stems. What mysterious source of radiation lurks beneath our living room windowsill to have caused this?

Fox at the Allotment

At the allotment yesterday, early evening: I'd spilled some peanuts when refilling the bird feeders, and expected pigeons to hoover them up. Instead, a mother fox appeared, and spent the next fifteen minutes eating them, blithely ignoring us weeding and watering only a few metres away.

A Day Out for Mutti (6)

The sixth and final set of photographs from yesterday. The first three concern the Great Vine, planted in 1768 by the famous landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown; when its stem (not shown here) was last measured in 2005 for the Guinness Book of World Records it had a circumference of 3.8 metres. The longest of the branches (which are shown here) was 75 metres when measured in 2005. The vine continues to produce grapes, which are harvested in August every year.

The photograph below shows another bit of architectural detail, being an ornamental wotsit on one of the ornamental towers attached to the Tudor tennis court (built by Henry VIII, who until he became fat and old was a great sportsman); and the final photograph shows Mutti, Judith and Lynn enjoying a cup of tea at the end of our visit. Well, not the same cup of tea, obviously (straws would have been extra), but I'm sure you get the general idea.

A Day Out for Mutti (5)

The fifth (and penultimate) set of photographs from yesterday. These show, in order, the south facade, from the end of the knot garden which it overlooks (and which runs down to the river); the interior of the pergola which runs along the western side of the knot garden; the point where the baroque wing is joined to the Tudor Palace (included because this is the sort of architectural messiness which I enjoy); one of the pond gardens, which would have been original to the Tudor Palace, with the orangery beyond it; and the Banqueting House at the end of the pond gardens, which although built in Tudor-style brick is clearly late 17th-early 18th century in origin and would have been used for al fresco dining in the summer months (and isn't open to the public, chiz chiz).

A Day Out for Mutti (4)

The fourth set of photographs from yesterday, mostly taken in the gardens around the baroque wing built in the 1690s for William and Mary. The "mostly" excludes the first, which was taken in the rose garden and shows a curious tower-like structure (presumably of Tudor origin) in an area not open to the public; a close look will show that it is indeed leaning slightly to the left. The remaining four photographs show, in order, the very grand central section of the east facade; the slightly less grand central section of the south facade (the round windows next to the parapet at the third storey level are trompe-l'oeil fakes, necessary to maintain continuity with the real round windows along the rest of the third storey); a monumental ornamental urn in the Great Fountain Garden, which the east facade overlooks; and a bed of thyme (I thought it was lavender, but Judith says otherwise) in the Great Fountain Garden. Gail, Chris, Lynn, Mutti and Judith are on the path on the other side of the bed; I had fallen behind (and kept falling behind) because I kept pausing to take photographs of the architecture.

Next time: more architecture!

A Day Out for Mutti (3)

The third set of photographs from yesterday, showing (in order) the place we had lunch; the party waiting to order (minus myself, since I can't be in my own photograph); the main entrance to Hampton Court; the facade of the Tudor Palace (originally constructed by and for Cardinal Wolsey, who fell from grace in 1529 following his failure to obtain the Pope's consent to Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and had all his properties and possessions confiscated by the king); and Gail, Mutti, Lynn and Chris strolling in the rose garden (Judith was there too, but had just darted away to look at some other flower).

A Day Out for Mutti (2)

As you might just possibly expect (especially if, like Zena, you have a desirable harbourside view), houses along the river cost a large amount of money (but they'll all be flooded out by global warming, thus demonstrating that money can't buy total immunity, ha ha) -- and if you can afford such a house then (as the first two photographs below show) you can afford to park a boat at the end of the garden as well. Although if you look closely, you might notice that some of these houses appear not unlike heavily modified beach shacks....

The third photograph, by contrast, shows a slightly grittier side of river life -- it may call itself a marina, but it seems unlikely that champagne would be quaffed in any quantity in such an establishment.

The fourth photograph shows our first glimpse of Hampton Court -- specifically, the baroque wing built in the 1690s for William and Mary -- and the fifth shows people disembarking from the boat at the Hampton Court landing stage (while others wait to board for the journey back to Kingston).

A Day Out for Mutti (1)

Vati died a year ago this weekend; so for a commemorative event yesterday, we and (some of) my siblings went to Hampton Court for lunch and a stroll in the gardens. Mutti was staying with Gail and Frank in Kingston-on-Thames; it therefore made sense for us to make the journey to Hampton Court by boat. Here's the first set of photographs of the day, showing (in order) Chris (Lynn's husband), Mutti and Judith; Lynn and Gail (Frank had to stay behind to take their daughter to and from her stage and ballet lessons); the bridge at Kingston-on-Thames; and two boats seen along the river. Hampton Court is in fact just across the river from Kingston, and one could drive there in a couple of minutes; but the river (running north-south at this point) makes a big curve away to the west, meaning that the journey time by boat is around 35 minutes. But on a cloudless sunny day like yesterday,a trip on the river seemed like a very good idea indeed.

In the next set of photographs: some views along the river.

Photographs of Whitstable (3)

A third tranche of photographs from our visit to Whitstable a couple of weekends ago. All of the buildings in these images exist along the sea wall which was built to protect the town against a recurrence of the 1953 flood event, referred to in the notes which accompanied the first set of photographs. The wall isn't very high, but then it doesn't need to be: this is a flat estuary landscape (created during the last Ice Age, in fact) and when the tide goes out it goes out a ver-r-r-y long-g-g-g way-y-y-y indeed. Ergo, any tidal surge is only a metre or so high.

The first photograph (directly above this text) shows the yacht club, with Judith lounging against the sea wall as she waits for me to take its picture. The second photograph (immediately below) shows a couple of old clapboard houses (and a couple of tourists eating ice cream in the foreground, but we won't mention them); and the third shows one of Whitstable's "lost shipyards", one of the places just behind the beach (and now just behind the sea wall) where the houses were set far enough apart for an inshore fishing lugger to be constructed (although if you zoom in on the name of the old boat now hauled up there you'll see that it's actually registered in Faversham, an inland town further to the west which was an important medieval port until the silting up of the river on which it lies).

Immediately below this caption is the restaurant where we had an early dinner of oysters and, er, oysters before returning to London (as written about in my first post about our visit to Margate and Whitstable). The final photograph shows what may be the oldest pub in the town, built almost on the beach, where the sea wall is thus required to loop around it (because it was of course Much Too Historic to demolish just because the sea invaded the ground floor half a century ago. And quite right too!).

Photographs of Whitstable (2)

Rapidly following up my previous five photographs of Whitstable, here's five more: a Thames barge drawing into the Old Harbour; a photograph of the Old Harbour itself; former net sheds now used for the display and sale of crafts and other yuppery; and fisherman's huts converted into bijou holiday accommodation. The last three are perhaps the finest demonstration imaginable of the collapse and implosion of British manufacturing: once we sold people actual things, now we sell people an ersatz experience of encountering things. How are the mighty fallen, etc. etc..