kimbofo

Hitler gets the wrong motorbike

As someone who very much enjoyed Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Round -- the book and DVD -- this little clip really tickles my fancy!

Whitby

Place: Whitby, on the north-east coast of England.
Date: June 21, 2007.
Camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-W1.

Last summer I was fortunate enough to visit Whitby, on the north-east Yorkshire coast, with my dad, who was visiting from Australia, and his cousin, who lives just up the road, for a quick day trip. I never got around to posting any of my pictures and, to be honest, I'd pretty much forgotten about them until I was reorganising my photographic archive early last week.

Whitby is one of those magical English seaside villages where the houses that line the steep cliffs look like they're about to tumble into the ocean at any moment. Their positions seem so precarious, you wonder how they've survived for so long without falling into the maze of cobblestone alleyways and narrow streets below.

From the top of the East Cliff -- where the parish church of St Mary's stands alongside the ruins of St Hilda's Abbey -- you can see all of Whitby and the River Esk spread before you, a sea of red roofs and grey cobblestones in the foreground, the green of the Yorkshire dales in the background. It's an amazing sight.

This was my second visit to Whitby and it had lost none of its charm from the first time I'd walked its streets and gorged on its delicious fish'n'chips -- possibly the best in the UK, I have to say -- back in 1998. 

Any Australians who read this blog may like to know that Whitby is the very place from where Captain James Cook set sail for Australia. He was also educated in nearby Great Ayton.

But the fishing village also has an important literary heritage, for it was here that Irish writer Bram Stoker began penning his classic horror novel, Dracula, while on holiday in 1890. In fact Whitby features quite heavily in the book, because this is the place where one of the main characters, Lucy, meets Dracula for the first time. Spooky.

You can view more pictures of my visit to Whitby via my Flickr account.

Australian reviewer pans U23D

I wonder if The Age reviewer Jim Schembri realised you were supposed to wear special glasses while watching U23D. Why else would he describe it in a paltry three-paragraph review as a "distinctly underwhelming experience"?

A weekend of wet and occasionally sunny weather

It's been one of those weekends where the weather has conspired to keep us indoors. We've had intermittent thunderstorms, accompanied by very heavy rain and light hail, throughout yesterday and today.

I made it to the supermarket yesterday afternoon for a quick top-up shop without getting too wet, but it wasn't so much the rain I was worried about but the cold. The temperatures have plummeted and I've resorted to sitting on the sofa every evening wrapped up in my fleecy rug. (T thinks it is hilarious -- I've told him it's genetic, as my late maternal grandmother was notorious for sitting in front of the TV, an assorted pile of handknitted/crocheted rugs tucked up under her chin to ward off the chill. I've now named my rug the "Florrie rug" in her honour.)

Today has been similarly cold and wet, but there have been bursts of occasional sunshine too. It was interesting watching the London marathon on my laptop, seeing the runners pound the streets under sunny skies while here, about seven miles west, it was teeming with rain. Some 15 minutes later the rain reached central London and drenched the athletes while outside our window the sun was shining brightly. It was like this all day -- downpours broken by short periods of clear skies -- so goodness knows what the rest of the week will be like.

My sister, who lives in tropical Queensland, arrives from Australia on Friday, so I hope she's packed something warm: she may be in for quite a shock when she gets to Heathrow, and I'm not just talking about the state of the airport!

Here's one for the Nick Cave fans

The University of Westminster is hosting a conference about Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave on July 5.

Cave is one of the most critically admired songwriters and performers of our time; his extensive body of work, produced over thirty years, ranges from the cacophonous intensity of The Birthday Party to the hushed reverence of The Good Son, and from the savagery of Murder Ballads to the melancholia of The Boatman’s Call. He has also worked very successfully in other genres, including fiction, scriptwriting and acting.

You can find out more here.

Old school journalism

There are too many choice quotes in this little gem of a film from the 1940s for me to quote here. Although I do like the idea that journalism was a young man's game and women were better suited to writing about cookery and fashion .... not!

(Via Mediations)

Inquest finds that Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed through grossly negligent driving

Shock horror. Princess Diana was killed in a tragic car accident caused by dangerous driving.

An inquest, costing £10 million pounds of taxpayer's money and lasting six months, revealed that the princess's death was caused by the "gross negligence" of driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi.

Why did it take 10 years and so much money for this to become "official"?

Mohamed Al Fayed pushed for the inquest because he believed Diana and his son, Dodi, were killed as part of a state-sponsored murder plot. Personally, I think he should foot the bill. Honestly, the man is a fool, and he needs to come to terms with the fact that his son was killed in a car accident, not some murky conspiracy involving everyone from M15 to Tony Blair.

Typically, he emerged from court today making yet another stupid statement with no bearing in reality. "The most important thing is it is murder," he said.

Um, no, Mr Fayed, it was manslaughter.

Let's hope this whole over-the-top circus is now put to rest, and those that died can finally rest in peace.

As if lost bags weren't enough, now snow adds to new airport terminal's woes

The fun just never stops at Heathrow's Terminal 5!

This week's media round-up #4

Sunday night already! It feels like I'm measuring the passing of time by the frequency of my media round-up posts, which seem to come around all-too quickly.

What I've been watching

The Sopranos marathon continues... We're onto Series 6 now. We're six episodes down, with another six to go. And no matter how many times I watch the intro (see the clip above) I still think it's brilliant, so brilliant I won't let T fast-forward it although I'm sure it drives him barmy.

I'm also ashamed to admit that I spent pretty much all of yesterday on the sofa watching trashy TV (I never do this, but my brain needed a rest), including possibly the worst "documentary" about celebrity chefs in the UK and USA I've ever seen (can't remember the title of it now), and half of the Home And Away Omnibus in which I did not recognise a single character (aside from Sally, but she doesn't count) because it must be a good two years since I've seen this show!

What I've been reading
Earlier this week I began reading Prime Time, a Scandinavian crime thriller which turned out to be more of a murder mystery. I finished it this afternoon and then dived straight into Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist (which I "mooched" last week from someone in California -- isn't the internet great?) and before I knew it I'd ploughed through 140 pages without pausing.

I'm beginning to think Flanagan, a Tasmanian and brother of The Age journalist Martin Flanagan, is my new favourite author. A couple of weeks ago I read his second novel The Sound of One Hand Clapping and was so in awe of his talent I had to give the book a five-star review. I've since gone on to order a second-hand copy of his debut novel Death of a River Guide, which should arrive sometime this week. (I read his third novel, Gould's Book of Fish, a couple of years ago.)

Meanwhile, I'm also reading Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy as part of my self-imposed challenge to read more books by classic Irish authors (as opposed to the modern Irish writers of which I seem to read so much). Someone very kindly sent me a first edition of the book and I'm almost enjoying the heady smell of the musty pages more than the storyline. This is exactly why I could never get into digital books: the smell of the paper is a quintessential reading experience, don't you think?

What have you been watching and reading this week?

Snow

I awoke this morning to find it was snowing and, unlike the snowy Easter weekend, a light dusting was on the ground.

Foolishly I didn't take any photographs. Instead I turned on the heating, made myself coffee and toast, and then snuggled up under the duvet with a good book.

By the time I got up the snow had stopped falling from the sky and everything on the ground had melted away. The sun was shining brightly and no one would ever have guessed it had been so cold and wintry earlier in the day.