Teaser Tuesday - June 30

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

I slept in bosomy clefts overlooking the ocean with my back turned to the mountains. From my sleeping bag I watched day melt into night and the waking eyes of ships' lights being brushed by the sleeping strobes of lighthouses.

From Nicholas Crane 'Clear Waters Rising' (A Mountain Walk across Europe)- a story of the writer's walk across the mountains of Europe from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul. Here's the good reads entry and another review. That teaser is a bit flowery, the next sentence has 'the milky light of dawn' but there's good story telling in this book and good historical snippets on the regions he passes through. I've just reached the Pyrenees with him so there's a little way to go yet and lots of walking to do, the goodreads reviews suggests it gets better. It sounds a wonderful experience to have but the practicalities for most folk would rule it out but here's the experience shared!

Teaser Tuesday - Sept 25

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

The lagoon is full of secret currents, shoals, clinging water-weeds. Over most of its expanse, if you lie in the bows of your boat in the sunshine, with a hamper beside you and an arm around your waist, you can see the slithery foliage of its bottom scudding obliquely beneath your keel: until, rashly taking a short cut, you find yourselves soggily aground, your propellor churning the mud around you and your idylls indefinitely postponed.

A last lingering look at Jan Morris' Venice - a reminder of warmth and sunshine on this cold very wet day here in NW England!

Teaser Tuesday - 4th Sept

Try not to laugh (too much) it's been a busy week!


Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

In the plushy cafés of St. Mark's (Regency stripes and spindly chairs) spruce listen with deference to the interminable reminiscences of immaculate uncles: and in the cafés on Christmas eve 20,000 families giggle before the television sets, drinking Cinzano and eating sticky cakes, while the favourite melody of the day is passed from shop to shop, from square to square, down one dark alley to another, like a cheerful watchword in the night. The Christmas services are warm, bright and glistening; the cribs are crude but touching; the choirs sing lustily; and Venice feels less like a grand duchess than a buxom landlady, enjoying a glass of stout when the customers have gone (except for the mysterious permutations of clergy, gold and crimson and misty with incense, that you may glimpse passing and repassing the open doors of the Basilica).

A wonderful extract from Jan Morris's Venice - in the off season (if it now has one) - irrestible and draws one back! Soak in the atmosphere - this is a re-read for me - but probably a little old as a guide book.

Prague

I'd missed this 18 gigapixel panorama of Prague from the TV tower
there were competitions running where if you spot the desired small feature (or rather 30 of them!) you won a prize. Wonderfully zoomable with incredible detail even down to cracks in the pedestrian crossings indentations in kerbs and contact telephone numbers on the sides of cars.

To everything there is a season

My annual rail season ticket expired today

clearly there was something I didn't know when I bought it twelve months ago, but I probably won't be renewing it - at least not yet! (I hope I've removed all the personal stuff from this image!)

English as she is spoke

Hadn't seen this book for years. The internet being what it is, there was bound to be a copy somewhere:

My most dear philosopher, I am induce to pray you to wake give to the M. abbot of Espagnac the panegyrist charge of saint Lowis for the next year. If you can it you shall do a good action, which I shall be too much obliged to you.

Just canny on marvelling at the above link.
Babelfish for the Victorians - hat tip to Kay

Teaser Tuesday - 22 Sept

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

'Who lives there?' I asked Sangye.
One nun.' He screwed up his face and grinned. 'But now not a nun because she make a baby.'
'Who was the father?'
'One monk.'

From Bruce Chatwin's (yes Chatwin for a second week!) 'What am I doing here'. A sort of combined anthology of travel stories, ancedotes and biographies.

'otpot

Blackpool tourist board strikes! But where are the 'ippets?

Tomorrow

I'm - unexpectedly - travelling on the Manchester to Leeds train tomorrow (and beyond) - maybe I should try wearing a white haired wig and see if I get feted.
I'm sure someone will understand this!

Tuesday Teaser - 3 Feb

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Abdul Haq unslung his barrel-chambered Kalashnikov and handed it to me. It was heavy.

.. this is a travel book! Rory Stewart 'The Places in Between' - walking through Afghanistan in Spring 2002! Photo of Abdul Haq and his treasured possession. New York Times review is here.I'm still only about 50 pages in...I acquired it in an unwanted and in this case also chewed stock sale at the local library. I shall see whether it gets fraught enough for me to chew the book a bit more!

directions

early morning
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Approaching Oxford Road Station (well it would be if there were a train there)

And this poem from a gravestone in Ely Cathedral in memory of 2 deaths on a railway in 1845. I don't think I've seen the actual stone but I was certainly given the postcard with a certain twinkle in David Isitt's eye.

The line to Heaven by Christ was made,
With heavenly truth the Rails are laid,
From Earth to Heaven the Line extends,
To Life Eternal where it ends.
Repentance is the Station then,
Where Passengers are taken in ;
No Fee for them is there to pay,
For Jesus is himself the way.
God's Word is the first Engineer,
It points the way to Heaven so clear,
Through tunnels dark and dreary here.
It does the way to Glory steer.
God's Love the fire, his Truth the Steam,
Which drives the Engine and the Train;
All you who would to Glory ride,
Must come to Christ, in him abide.
In First, and Second, and Third Class,
Repentance, Faith, and Holiness,
You must the way to Glory gain,
Or you with Christ will not remain.
Come then poor Sinners, now's the time,
At any Station on the Line,
If you'll repent, and turn from sin,
The Train will stop and take you in.

And as a result of searching for that poem, I found this page of railway related music.
(Yes I know I've lost a day, I do hope to catch up!)

From the canal

dscf7215
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Been away - and today enjoyed a trip on the Kennet and Avon Canal using the Kennet Horse Boat Co for Andrew and Wendy's Ruby Wedding. More photographs to follow!
The wall instription says 'specialists in pork and bacon products but I wasn't quick enough on either occasion to get a full on photo.

Wordsworth St

Wordsworth St
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

.. I guess the local inhabitants liked the rename too!
Spotted in Hawkshead
Surrealy next day we had lunch the next day at The Royal Hotel in Dockray near Ullswater - with hens looking through the window and Italian pop music piped into the bar (there may have been a veer into Spanish at some point)

Bowling

A trip bowling followed - in my case - by the first course at an Indian restaurant.




Have you seen the train schedule between East Didsbury and Wilmslow in the evening!?

Leg 1 of 3 Rail replacement bus		East Didsbury (EDY) to Manchester Airport (MIA)
Departs	Arrives	Duration
00:02	00:20	0:18
Leg 2 of 3 Rail replacement bus		Manchester Airport (MIA) to Manchester Piccadilly (MAN)
Departs	Arrives	Duration
01:00	01:25	0:25
Leg 3 of 3		Manchester Piccadilly (MAN) to Wilmslow (WML)
Departs	Arrives	Duration
05:20	05:37	0:17

I suppose that's late evening....but two replacement bus services taking you round in circles. Fortunately the train was running last week and I caught one before this!

Targeted spam

Following last week's trip to Rome, I received a spam yesterday with the subject

Have you been to Rome?

to an email that isn't immediately associated with this weblog - has the spammers subject line random generator come up with this by coincidence? I wasn't responsible to booking the flight but the airport transfer firm looks like a possible culprit? - (later) looks as if I was wrong though - two other messages with this same subject line sent to totally different email addresses - coincidence then!
Then after this announcement

The Federal Communications Commission is set to announce the launch of a national alert system, using text messaging and other mobile technologies to tell Americans when to panic.

I've already received a spam - at my gmail address purporting to be one of these alerts

View from the room

View in the early morning of the orange tree.
I had no part in the booking of the hotel for the week - and it was only after walking around on the first evening I decided that it must have been the same hotel the Hotel Piedmonte that I also stayed in on my last trip to Rome in June 1989 in a week when happened, and the death of this man, not to mention this disaster - I did wonder if there was going to be anything left on my return to the UK. I was there (in 1989) to present a paper at the European Simulation Multiconference. This time it was uninterrupted tourism! The restaurant I used a lot the last time was still there - just down the street, I Leoni d'Abruzzo, though rebranded and slightly upmarket - I recommend their vegetable antipasto!

How to lose your car

..gone
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I suppose there ought to be a pointer to this picture on the blog. Car started making a knocking noise, overheated and... I was too busy recording the event to remember the stuff that wasn't in the boot and hence I lost a few things as well as creating a culinary delight in a most scenic Leicestershire(?) village (this was way back in 1981..)

And back again..

12-26-2007_046.JPG
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

In Belgium/Luxembourg on the return journey of the 1975 European trip. Photos of the complete trip are now in a set on flickr, though I might add a few more!
The van became unwell when we got to Calais and had to be pushed on and off the hovercraft!

Be afraid!

12-28-2007_004.JPG
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

At least those of you who recognise this photo, there are more to come!

The train now leaving...

is two years late. From
this BBC travel page
last updated 27th Nov 2005 - I really was looking for train news when I found this via google!