Halloween photoblogging: post-apocalyptic holiday resort

Here's some spooky photoblogging just in time for Halloween. I'm just back from a week's break in Croatia, at a small resort near Dubrovnik. One bay up from where we were staying was another bay with a wide curve of beach and a massive hotel complex ... all of it abandoned and crumbling, with some of the facades pockmarked by gunfire. It was properly creepy after the zombie apocalypse stuff.

If this has been the in the UK the whole site would have been closed off with stern warning signs, fencing and barriers to keep the curious out, but this lot was just left open for the curious to wander round and explore. I figured it was atmospheric enough to be worth a few photographs, so here they are. On first visit I had no idea what had gone on here, or why the whole complex had been abandoned. A quick internet search uncovered the back story, as told by the good folk at Atlas Obscura - click the link here for details of the abandoned hotels of Kupari and how they came to be abandoned.

 

Random photoblogging

Idly scrolling through the snaps on my phone's camera...

Sculpture on a mound above Furzton Lake, Milton Keynes. The lake and surroundings are well-tended, but the mound has become a bit overgrown, giving this scene a faint air of those neglected Soviet-era sculptures in the former Eastern Bloc.

Although he's too young to know about Twitter, my son drew this picture of a rampaging robot flame-breathing egg in school, which sums up the state of the Twittersphere with uncanny accuracy.

Chickens. Because everything is better with chickens.

After seeing this I went home, took the vase of flowers off the mantelpiece and replaced it with a hammer drill.

Caledecotte Lake, Milton Keynes, in the evening sun.

The offspring hits peak peak in Peak District.

Snow in Newport Pagnell. Not remarkable in itself, but this was the beginning of March, for crying out loud.

"Goodbye, Mr Bond"

After Steve Mnuchin and his wife posed with a sheet of newly printed money for that photo, a few people commented that the couple looked like Bond villains. Was the multimillionaire former banker and hedgie embarrassed?  Of course not:

“I guess I should take that as a compliment that I look like a villain in a great, successful James Bond movie,” the treasury secretary told Fox News on Sunday.

Two things:

1. Who said anything about all Bond films being "great" or "successful"? Clearly, somebody's never seen Octopussy.

2. Talking of "successful", even the dimmest movie goer should have worked out by now that the salient feature of Bond villains is their total lack of success. Ever since Dr No in 1962, Bond villains have been reliably failing to realise their fiendish plots and coming to sticky ends, generally a few minutes before or after 007 destroys their life's work in a series of massive explosions.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the closest thing to not-a-complete-failure in the Bond-villain-verse, having at least survived several defeats. In his eight film incarnations to date, he has, however, lost comprehensively to Bond on at least seven occasions.

If you were being insanely generous, you could could call the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, when Blofeld manages to assassinate Bond's new wife, a score draw. But, as Bond has just comprehensively destroyed Blofeld's world domination plan, along with his supervillain base, this looks less like a draw to me and more like some sore loser knocking over the Scrabble table in a fit of pique.

I guess that when you've worked in a Wall Street that crashed the global economy, then for a guy who couldn't successfully make a profit out of the suckers queueing up to lose their money at casinos, your idea of a "successful" role model must be a little bit odd.

Blue planet in crisis

Doubts around Theresa May’s leadership trigger sharp falls in Sterling: sea turtles "concerned."

Probably just another headline/image pairing mismatch by Google News's algorithm, although I wouldn't be entirely surprised to hear that even marine reptiles in the far-off Pacific are shaking their scaly heads in disbelief at the sheer magnitude of the British government's omnishambolic implosion.

Northern office gets up itself

Back in the day, the North of England took pride in its no-nonsense, down-to-earth culture. So what's up with these new offices in Manchester boasting about being "peerlessly refined"? The daft buggers.

Also works as a band name generator

@CorrectNames is on a mission to uncover "The correct names for things, not the other ones", generating better-than-average band names as a byproduct. I particularly like "Acoustic Motorcycle", although this itself may be a mere byproduct of too much times spent listening to indie bands on the John Peel show as a lad:

Acoustic Motorcycle pic.twitter.com/vLzH6TUdUp

— Correct Names (@CorrectNames) 18 July 2017

Here are some more that tickled my fancy:

Limousine Dog pic.twitter.com/jD7SGxEfXv

— Correct Names (@CorrectNames) 23 July 2017

Cloud Juice pic.twitter.com/2wCjEEtPRM

— Correct Names (@CorrectNames) 19 July 2017

Tuxedo Duck

Credit: @futureidentity pic.twitter.com/XWFAm7yU28

— Correct Names (@CorrectNames) 25 June 2017

This one, however, is a bit less snappy, but contains a bigger grain of truth:

Procrastination enhancer pic.twitter.com/nDZwYfX4ss

— Correct Names (@CorrectNames) 11 April 2017

via

The man who fell to Earth

Google News headline/image pairings - the gift that goes on giving, at least for lazy bloggers...

"Nasa forced to deny there was a long-lost 'civilisation' on Mars after questioning by Republican congressman"*

If the MC who presides over that parallel universe called Eurovision came from a habitable planet Mars which exists in a slightly alternative reality, rather than from the Dublin suburb of Clondalkin, as he's always claimed, that would explain a few otherwise inexplicable mysteries. Including, for example, 2006 Eurovision winners Lordi:

  "On May 14, 2016, Lordi appeared in the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016, in a musical number satirising Eurovision songs."

The truth is out there.



Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC BY-SA 4.0



* If it's inadvertent hilarity you're looking for, do follow the link to Andrew Griffin's piece in the Independent:

California Republican Dana Rohrbacher asked whether the fact that Mars once had a vastly different atmosphere meant that it could also have supported an entire civilisation that was now lost.

"You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago," he said. "Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?"

His question was answered by Kenneth Farley, who is a project scientist on the Mars 2020 rover mission and a professor of geochemistry at California Institute of Technology and was one of the scientists answering politicians' questions.

He pointed out that the "evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago. Not thousands of years ago".

He also said that there is "no evidence that I'm aware of", that the planet was once inhabited.

That wasn't enough for Mr Rohrabacher, who asked: "Would you rule that out? See, there's some people... Well, anyway."

Professor Farley said that such a possibility was "extremely unlikely".

It isn't clear who Mr Rohrabacher was referring to when he suggested that "some people" think there was a civilisation on the planet. But there are a limited number of people who have proposed what they believe to be proof not only of ancient civilisations but existing ones – including a guest on Alex Jones's InfoWars programme who suggested that Nasa has put child sex slaves on the red planet.

In the light of this performance, maybe they need to change the boilerplate strapline which follows American political campaign adverts ("I'm Dana Rohrbacher and I approve this message"), to something more useful, like "You can't win. If you vote me in, I shall become more stupid than you can possibly imagine."

Photoblogging Ely, 2017

With so much grim and ominous news about, I'm going to blog about something completely different. Following on from last year's visit to Ely:

This year, a slightly better picture of the famous octagonal Lantern...

...built to replace the former central tower, which collapsed in 1322 "possibly as a result of digging foundations for the Lady Chapel." Which ties in with what Tracy, the tour guide, told us about the foundations of this enormous building being only six feet deep (about 1.8m), due to the constraints of the local geography. The Lantern was designed to avoid another collapse by being lighter (made of oak beams with lead cladding, rather than stone and designed in such a way as to transfer the weight onto the main body of the building).

You must be ten years or older to take the 170-step tour up to the lantern, so this year we get to go up.

Up close and personal with the interior of the Lantern...

And looking back at the west tower from the parapet that surrounds the Lantern.

West Tower

Ah, the memories...
"Sitting in a sunken garden,
Pinking in a sinking sun,
Thinking of a summer long ago
When one was twenty-one;
Naming all the flowers so friendly.
Shouting at the shrubs so thick.
Lo, behold lobelia –
One bite and the bishop was sick.
How nice to be in England
Now that England's here:
I stand upright in my wheelbarrow
And pretend I'm Boadicea..."

The view from the Palace Green, opposite the west tower - as per last year, note the Open University graduate, gowned up for one of the OU degree ceremonies being held on the 3rd of June. The marquees and stalls on the green aren't part of the OU event, by the way, but the annual Etheldreda Craft and Food Fair, which has taken place on this spot since time immemorial (only kidding, it started in the 1990s).

Saint Etheldreda (AKA Æthelthryth, Æþelðryþe, or Audrey), was the Northumbrian queen credited with founding the first abbey church on Ely in 672AD. It was Etheldreda, via her pseudonym, Audrey, who gave us the word "tawdry":

 .tawdry (adj.)
    "no longer fresh or elegant but worn as if it were so; in cheap and ostentatious imitation of what is rich or costly," 1670s, adjective use of noun tawdry "silk necktie for women" (1610s), shortened from tawdry lace (1540s), an alteration (with adhesion of the -t- from Saint) of St. Audrey's lace, a necktie or ribbon sold at the annual fair at Ely on Oct. 17 commemorating St. Audrey (queen of Northumbria, died 679). Her association with lace necklaces is that she supposedly died of a throat tumor, which, according to Bede, she considered God's punishment for her youthful stylishness:

Online Etymology Dictionary

I'm guessing that etymologists weren't the target demographic when they launched the Etheldreda Craft and Food Fair.

But never mind Etheldreda/Audrey, the lucky Open University graduates and their friends and family were treated to a graduation speech (or commencement address, as they call them in the U S of A) from none other than Professor Mary Beard:

Oh go on then just one more! Celebrating with Mary Beard in the beautiful sunshine outside Ely cathedral #OU_Ceremonies ☀️ pic.twitter.com/Xbxq2EScQy

— OU_Classics (@OU_Classics) 3 June 2017

In a thoughtful touch, Mary Beard ditched the usual formulaic rhetoric about believing that the new graduates would now go out, change the world and follow their dreams. Not that there's anything wrong with that stuff, but she had noticed that these were Open University graduates, most of whom had already gone out into the world of work, perhaps raised a family, been carers and done all sorts of worthwhile things before gaining their degrees. I was impressed with the sensitivity of framing the day as an integrated part of a process of life-long leaning, rather than a stand-alone Year Zero, after which things are transformed utterly.

From the wonderful Mary Beard to Bloody Mary and, not far from the cathedral, a terrible beauty is born (actually, just something terrible):


Ecumenical outreach fail. "Near this place on 16th October 1555 William Wolsey, constable of Welney, Upwell and Outwell, Robert Pygot, painter from Wisbeach, were burnt at the stake for their Christian faith."

Yes, definitely just somthing terrible - if there was anything like terrible beauty coming out of those times, it came from Oxford, rather than Cambridgeshire, with Hugh Latimer's famous last words:

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

It seems pretty certain that the Reformation and the horrible religious conflict that followed  was driven by the advent of printing, from vernacular Bibles to the spread of propaganda works like Foxe's Book of Martyrs, but I wonder whether the apparent steep rise in inequality from the mid-1500s also played a part in stoking the social grievances that sustained the religious conflict through to the English Civil War and Thirty Years' War.

The Cathedral was also hosting the Ely Cathedral Science Festival.

"Touch the meteorites! They are the oldest things you will ever touch." Now that's what I call hands on.

It was nice weather for ducks. But only for ducks that could find a bit of shade.

"...pinking in the sinking sun..."

Shocking, but predictable

"Poll firm predicts shock losses for Theresa May’s Tories at general election"

If YouGov has correctly predicted a shocking thing, this would be a predictably unpredictable result. If they're wrong, it would be unpredictably predictable.

You could spend time thinking about what the polls mean but, if you have any coherent political preferences, this information will probably do nothing to change the way you vote. So you might as well fill your mental bandwidth with something less pointless, like learning how to create a vintage teapot cake and decorate a sugar teacup. A sugar teacup would be about as robust as many recent polls and, at the end of the process, there would be a fighting chance of cake, rather than a high probability of crushing despair.

In fact, I'm sorry I even mentioned it...