Rogue Mail Part 2

A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year to all my readers. 

Rogue Mail

So, farewell then Ronnie Biggs. The BBC must collectively be going "Well I never", considering the boost this news gives their drama on the 1963 Great Train Robbery that, amazingly, starts tonight. Back in those far off days I was returning home from the Chilterns in my dad's apple green Ford Popular, my mum in the front saying things like "Watch that cow Arthur" and me glowering and spotty-faced in the back. Suddenly, somewhere south of Leighton Buzzard, my mother says "Ooh, I know that bridge" pointing across a field to a railway embankment on the London-Euston mainline. "We were all in a charabanc going to Grandad's [a Chiltern strawberry farmer in Lee Common] and we went under that bridge and then it went off the road and tipped us all out into the ditch". My father looked at me in his driving mirror and we said nothing. "Were any of you hurt?" I eventually said. "No I don't think so. It went so gently down the bank we were just laughing in a big heap". And do you know, dear readers, that very night, at this very spot, the train robbers relieved the Glasgow to Euston mail train of what would be today around £40 million. Quite what the charabanc and the outing from Wellingborough's Strict Baptist Tabernacle were doing on this lonely lane I will probably never know. Anyway, that's two coincidences for today, three if you count my very recently taking the above picture at Quorn station, courtesy of the Great Central Railway. 

Bare Bones

So, it's Saturday and I'm on top of a hill in a disused radar station, remote on the North Downs above Bearsted in Kent. Nearby is a room humming with activity, an art exhibition featuring amongst other great things the stunning abstracts of Margaret Shepherd and exquisite jewellery by her daughter Nancy Rose. The space was kindly given by Nick Veasey, and close by another room hummed with even stranger activity. In here is a big X-Ray machine, and in the dark Nick produces simply amazing images, which you can see here. Well, I say in the dark, I think for much of the time he has to stand outside whilst the humming is going on. Anyway, being very nosey, I had to snoop about amongst the detritus in the immediate environs, and came across this extraordinary sight, a VW Beetle turning itself into its own X-Ray, wedged between two peeling MoD brick walls.Perhaps at night, after the big steel security gates are chained and all the humming has stopped, the Beetle carapace lifts up and puts itself back on the chassis. And like that scene in Woody Allen's film Sleeper it starts first time ('wouldn't you just know it?') and gently cruises around the skeletal radar masts on the dark hill top.

Down In The Woods

This is the time of the year I go rummaging in the woods. Seeing if a shaft of early morning sunlight will search through the lessening canopy of leaves to show me something I still find extraordinary. Flowerless Plants, as my fungi book designates them, are amongst the most fantastical living things. All that huge web of mycelium threading its way underground, to suddenly erupt in science fiction fruit that can look deceptively benign or downright evil. Not that I go in search of them to casually toss into a frying pan, unless it's slices of a big fresh puffball. My neighbour says "You've got to get up early to get those round here", meaning up before him. No, I just love photographing them, even though for the most part I'm doubtful as to what I'm looking at. I know Fly Agarics and Death Caps (fortunately), but the advice must always be rigorously followed- When collecting fungi to eat, only take those which you can identify with certainty. My Glamorous Assistant said these were Field Mushrooms. So what were they doing deep in a Kent wood, I pondered. Or did she have an ulterior motive? (Cue plaintive oboe music). 

Out The Window

So, there we were bowling down the A303 on the way to Cornwall, more of which later. Suddenly we came to a screeching halt at the end of a queue for roadworks traffic lights, on that stretch leading down to Honiton that is more like a trunk road from the 1930s, after those gloriously sweeping dual carriageways across the Wiltshire downs. We called this The Blind House, and after taking a quick snap through a break in the incessant traffic we carried on. On our return in the gloom and rain of a late afternoon, we looked more carefully out for it. All I know is that it's after Honiton but before a crossroads I think was Eagle Cross. So can any of you out there remember what the pub was really called? Indeed, have you partaken of drink in there, or pulled out in front of someone from the car park?

Unexpected Alphabets No 21

On Sunday afternoon the skies above Bedfordshire were awash with vapour trails and echoing with the evocative engine noises accompanying the last flying day of the year at the Shuttleworth Collection. I get very excited by flying machines and the magnificent men who fly them so well, but you can probably guess by now what it was that had me running about pointing with childish enthusiasm. This is a 1913 McCurd, a 5 ton box van that is very likely the only survivor of its kind. Look at that stunning script flowing over the top of the radiator, marvel at the beautifully drawn packs of sugar and the Afternoon Tea box. It is, quite simply, one of the the best signwritten vans I've ever seen, and apparently it still belongs to Tate & Lyle. Imagine it, rumbling on its solid tyres out over the cobbles at the Silvertown Refinery in the East End of London. Very sweet.

Crystal Gazing

The good news today is that the Crystal Palace may be built again on Sydenham Hill in South London. Almost the only thing left of the original is a pair of stone sphinxes that once crouched inscrutably next to one of the entrance staircases. The rest of it burnt down in 1936, the inflagration watched by my girlfriend's mother looking out of a bathroom window in Peckham. I remember asking her if she had to stand on the toilet seat and she gave me a funny look and said "Probably." Although smaller in plan, the building had as its core the original Great Exhibition building built in 1851 by Joseph Paxton, erected in Hyde Park and visited between May and October of that year by over five million people. 

But what will the new one look like? Some bloke on the wireless this lunchtime said he expected there'd be some glass and iron in it somewhere, as if acres of glass wasn't a prerequisite. Ten years ago I remember seeing a design by Chris Wilkinson of Wilkinson Eyre at an RA Summer Show, and it would certainly suit me. A real new Crystal Palace for our own age, something we should've insisted on for the Millennium instead of that bloody awful tent in Greenwich stuffed full of tat. I couldn't find a decent photograph of the Wilkinson proposal to show you, but here's another BBC report from 2003 with a murky image attached. The brilliant thing about this Dan Dare spaceship is that it doesn't take up any parkland space, being mostly suspended in thin air as it were. Dust off those plans Chris please.