"And then he said..."

Publicity whore
The Eden Project, one of Cornwall's biggest tourist attractions, has an education centre with a wall made up entirely of refridgerator doors. If there's a teaching purpose to it, I missed it - as far as I could see it existed mainly to give people the chance to play with the hundreds of letter-shaped fridge magnets on it.
I couldn't resist the opportunity to promote my website address - as high up the wall as I could reach so it would stay there and not be broken up by other people searching for those hard-to-find “Ws”.

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Love rocks the universe…
…at least, it does on the wall of a public toilet in Helston, Cornwall.

This rogues' gallery all stood for sabbatical elections at the University of East Anglia (UEA) between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. These photos all came from their election literature.

If you look hard enough I'm in there, and one or two of the faces went onto greatness of a sort. There's a stand-up comedian in there, the head of a domestic violence charity, at least three people who joined the BBC as journalists, at least one with an entry in the IMDB, a university lecturer in war studies, and someone who may be the founder of Wagamama - or who may just share his name, I'm not sure.

Surprisingly few seem to have gone into politics, but one who did has been in the news lately - in fact, I saw him interviewed on the Beeb's 10 o'clock bulletin tonight. He wrote a controversial piece in the Independent a few days ago that has been widely (and I suspect inaccurately) interpreted as a stab in the back for an old friend called Charlie. See if you can spot him… (Hint - the alt text to the images will help.)

Note - if you're one of the people pictured here and you want your photo removed, just email me to say so and I'll do it at once.

And what happens the very first day I go back to the Royal Mail? One of my former colleagues avalanches a whole load of photos he took during the Bastard Project From Hell onto his Flickr account - including at least three with me in.

Now, did that bring back memories, or what?

IMG167 copy
Originally uploaded by Imagestreet.

So far, so good in my return to office-based work. The transport network seemed pretty quiet to me, although the Standard was claiming that was because it was the first day of the school holidays.

Whatever the reason, rail and Tube both seemed to have fewer passengers in general, and in particular fewer older people, middle-aged businessmen in suits or ethnic minority members: I've never seen it so white and so young. But, to coin a cliche, it was definitely business as usual, and the Angel was bustling.

Ah well - off there again in half an hour. Still would prefer to be asleep, you know…

That's £550 with a hotel
I've been visiting the Angel, Islington, for years, but this is the first time I'd wandered into the bit with this impressive interpretation of the area's name.

Free parking
The police presence wasn't huge, but what there was seemed more obvious than usual - bulletproof vests here despite the mundane nature of the call-out.

Grim reminder
It was all pretty normal on the Tube - until you emerged at Angel and were hit with this pointed reminder that all was not well.

Higher, ever higher
The escalator at Angel Tube, from the bottom. Apparently it's no longer the tallest escalator in Europe, but at 60m (197ft) with a vertical rise of 27.5m it's still comfortably top on the Tube network

Not many people
Commentators said Tube traffic was normal for the first day of the school holidays, but to me there seemed fewer people - I'd normally expect to see a larger crowd than this leaving the Waterloo and City Line, even if it was late in rush hour

When I was a child, it was axiomatic that all small boys were supposed to want to be train drivers when they grew up. The truth, of course, was that none of us actually did hold that ambition and probably no small boy had done for a least a decade. It just took a while for the grown-ups to catch on.

It doesn't take a genius to work out why we all wanted to be footballers instead. It wasn't hopeless admiration for Kevin Keegan's haircut, and nor was it a precocious understanding of the parlous state of British Rail and its management. It wasn't even the constant drip-drip of derision levelled at the venerable British Rail sandwich.

It was, quite simply, the death of steam.

Certainly, at my primary school we enjoyed having a major rail line run past one side of the playing field - we all owned copies of Locoshed, the train spotter's bible, and we gasped in wonder when the new InterCity 125s were introduced (HSTs, we knew them as) because their streamlined looks were so different to anything we had ever seen before.

Like Concorde and the Triumph TR7, they represented the bold, bright future of the late 1970s - but they weren't steam trains, and they never could stir a young boy's soul in the way the Flying Scotsman and its brethren had stirred our fathers. Looking at them didn't make you want to be a train driver or a pilot or Tony Pond, it made you want to be a graphic designer.

Well, now I'm 37 years old, not seven, and I've missed my chance to fly on Corncorde - but I've won a design award (of a sort) and driven a TR7. And, from time to time, on holiday, I like to travel on steam trains.

Because that's what boys do.

Anton the Anonymous Engine
Don't ask me what type of engine this is - I don't know that sort of stuff. All I can tell you is that, like all the photos that follow, it's on the West Somerset Railway.

The train now arriving…
A scene from decades long gone - apart from the gaudily-dressed tourists - as the Bishops Lydeard service pulls into Minehead station.

First Class
Trains on volunteer-run lines tend to have a mis-matched assortment of carriages - whatever they've been able to beg, borrow or otherwise accumulate. This is the WSR's first class accommodation.

Tickets, please
The WSR uses wonderful stiff cardboard tickets, of a sort unseen for years. It's a pleasure to produce them for inspection - whoever you are…

“Back her up a bit, Ted”
At Bishops Lydeard, the volunteer engine driver does technical engine-driverish things under the gaze of entranced tourists.

Briefly encountered
Outside the Bishops Lydeard waiting room, waiting to see if anyone needs a cinder removed from their eye.

This is what it's all about
Nothing on earth looks, sounds or - especially - smells like a steam locomotive. (This pic, like the last, by Astrofiammante)

Some photos from the recent camping trip. Despite being cut short, this was an unexpectedly refreshing and much-needed break - even if I did seem to spend most of it on the phone, juggling different bits of work that suddenly started mounting up. Before we went away I was enjoying not having any work on, but was also starting to worry where I might find some for the future. Those problems seem to have evaporated now, and I have meetings in town tomorrow and Wednesday.

While away, we spent four nights camping and then two in a B&B, and had been planning a few more under canvas before the recall home. We had extremes of weather, walking 10 miles in fierce sun one day, then enduring thunderstorms and thick fog a day or two later. Beloved Other Half is writing about it in detail, so I'll not repeat her here, I'll just content myself with bombarding you with photos at the end of this post.

Since we got back, most of my attention's gone in two directions. I'm trying yet again to kick-start the rebuilding of my personal website, which has been two years in development and is still no nearer completion - can anyone recommend an easy-to-configure CMS or templating system that produces standards-compliant code for 100+ static content pages? I'm also engaged in the serious nostalgiafest represented by plugging a turntable into the PC and digitising all the vinyl I bought when I was a hormonal teenager. There's some weird stuff in there, and some cringeworthy stuff, and some long-forgotten gems. Anyone remember Neasden's Queen of the Beehive, Mari Wilson?

Exmoor sunset
Midsummer's night, and the sun finally sets over Porlock Bay

Helping hands
This statue of giant hands opening a map sits at the start of the South West Coast Path, the 630ish-mile long footpath that we've been walking in stages since 1997.

This way, chaps
And in case you're in any doubt which way to go, this helpful sign points you in the direction of the first steep climb.

Occupational hazard I
Given that goats will eat anything that doesn't eat them first, it was always a nervous moment when this pair broke into the campsite from the neighbouring field.

Fog on the moors
From high up at County Gate, where Somerset and Devon meet, the fog hid pretty much everything.

Valley of Doone
Down in the valleys, visibility was clearer - this is Badgeworthy Water, the inspiration for Doone Valley in RD Blackmore's Lorna Doone.

Oi, you
A sheep grazing. It never ceases to amaze us how those cute woolly lambs turn into bloody great lumps of eye-rolling uglyness when adult.

Cliff!
The water-powered Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway climbs 500 feet up the cliff between the two villages - saving you from having to…

Occupational hazard II
March out of Lynton on the coast path and the first thing you encounter is a herd of wild goats - loved by locals for the tourist money they attract, but hated for the way they shit on the cricket pitch…

Be it ever so 'umble, this is home for the next few days…

A fine summer day here, and the clouds have been doing things that only a poet could properly describe, only a meteorologist properly explain, but even the stoniest heart csn properly enjoy.

Summer sky over St George's Church, Hanworth

Cloud formation over Tudor Court, Hanworth

Yay - one of these photos just got featured on the Rising Slowly blog!