Echoing the London elephants, Kingston is currently full of toads.

I found this one outside the Hull Truck Theatre.

Anyway, we found him yesterday, in the grounds of Chelsea Royal Hospital.

He wasn’t alone…

The carved stonework above the main entrance has the beehive logo, along with two corner roundels; one of  scales and the other a handshake (& what looks like a heart above) denoting fairness and cooperation.

It is very clean and modern, if a little utilitarian. Good to have the facility back though, as we had to do without for a couple of years whilst the new one was rebuilt on the site of the old one which was put up for a price in 1973 when Morley Borough Council knew it was going to be abolished and they didn’t want to simply give the assets to the newly formed Leeds Metropolitan Council (known as Leeds City Council for continuity).

This development is a Private Finance Initiative scheme, so we will still be paying for it long after it has fallen down…

If you are into shots of grinning councillors in hard hats then you can see some of the interiors here.

The book charted the social and architectural jigsaw of the rise and fall of the Cooperative Society in the town. At its peak there were five distinct sets of adjoining retail premises along with twenty-one branch shops in outlying areas, warehouses and even a pie factory.

The book can be bought at Co-op travel and Co-op pharmacy in town and you can read a review here.

There are still snippets of history around the town un-noticed to most. This photo shows where it all began 141 years ago on the corner of Albion Street and Commercial Street, the premises now belonging to a firm of Solicitors.

Karen knew Chris from her days as an audience member of the Oxford Road Show and later with her involvement at Radio HBS (Hospital Radio at North Manchester General). She persuaded both the Freshies and Graham Fellows (Jilted John,  now John Shuttleworth) to swap the BBC studios for the hospital ones, if only for an afternoon.

Here are pictures of a youthful Karen with Frank and Chris in the radio studios in 1985.

They charted with this one and later had to replace “Virgin” with “a certain Manchester superstore” to keep Beardy happy.

R.I.P. Chris, you were one of Karen’s heroes a quarter of a Century ago…

This new template seems to mung up the aspect ratios of pictures. Sorry the blog looks a bit like an MBI election leaflet at the moment.

I thought at first that the clock had survived from a distance but I hadn’t appreciated that the faces had gone and what I was seeing was daylight through the tower. Up closer, the bitter truth becomes apparent.

The fire is regarded as suspicious by many and there is a £500 reward from local Councillors.

I’ve upgraded the Blog to WordPress 3.0 and thought I’d turn on the 2010 theme.

I’m aware of Blogstipation round here at present. There are plenty of half formed posts in the ether, they just require opportunity and inclination.

In the meantime, here is a picture from Alton Towers that amused me…

I tried to persuade Deano into it a couple of years ago & he wasn’t keen, the moment had passed, it was a bit too close to the 25th anniversary.

Good things come to those who wait though. We just need to win the Muller Yoghurt New York jolly holiday to see Denise play in her occasional gigs uptown.

Now the Strand isn’t anywhere near Victoria by any stretch of the imagination and it involved a Tube change (or a taxi ride, or a brisk walk), but GEC got a Corporate rate there so it was the preferred choice. As I was going to be on-site for a total of twelve weeks, I eventually moved to the Grosvenor Victoria (over the station) for a cheaper rate which didn’t have quite as grand a public floor but the rooms were much more comfortable.

Now the Strand Palace celebrated its Century last year but the current building dates from the mid-twenties and it takes up an entire City Block (spilling to adjacent properties via a staff bridge in a similar manner to its former sister hotel the Regent Palace just off Piccadilly Circus). My impression from thirty years ago was smart public rooms (if somewhat marble-bland) but not up to much upstairs. The hotel had lots of single rooms, all rather pokey, generally far too hot and the ones I stayed in all seemed to face into a light well rather than out to the street. (Ditto most of my colleagues). If you opened the window, you got cooking smells & noises from the depths.

Back during my first stay, I went urbexing a couple of times and managed to explore the various rooftops and get into the hoist rooms for the Otis state of the art lifts (the sort that had neon touch pads in the cars for the floor buttons).  The lifts were rather small and thinking about it, it might have been the Esso lifts that were state of the art.

The only other memory I had of the hotel was the rather strange light fittings in the lower lobby, a glass globular structure not unlike prophylactics which I nicknamed Condoliers. In 2010 the Johnny-lamps have gone but the basic lobby shape  was vaguely recognisable.

Upstairs, a lot more fire doors have appeared in the narrow corridors, but floor layouts are helpfully shown on large panels in the lift lobbies revealing that there are actually six light wells in this large building. This stay, I had a club room which was on the corner facing onto the Strand and a scintillating view of a big shimmery sign for Legally Blonde at the Savoy Theatre opposite. (This hid the famous Hotel sign that inspired the Rolls/Royce radiator shape due to lots of scaffolding).

The room was visually stylish, very clean and the bed comfortable, but I seemed to have a lot of insomniac neighbours so had a somewhat disturbed night. The buffet food earlier didn’t have too much choice & was a bit dried out from the hotplate. Despite the shortcomings of the hotel, it has one thing terriffic going for it- location. It is next to the Lyceum Theatre, opposite the Strand Theatre and very close to Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House. The Covent Garden Piazza is moments away and it is but a short stroll to Trafalgar Square.

The Hotel remains very popular with tourists & mid-market business travellers. Whilst I’d hesitate to recommend it, rooms can be had for a reasonable price & I’ve stayed in much worse.

My Bosses’ Boss, though, thought it sucked- a pokey, drab, gloomy, too hot room on a high floor at the back.  Some things don’t change…

The hotel was famous in the thirties for its striking Art Deco foyer spaces, some of which apparently still exist behind the scenes. Elements were recreated for an exhibition at the V&A museum seven years ago, a taste of which can be seen here. (& in flash here)

I met the local UKIP Candidate on Saturday, he struck me as a bit of a Div.

The arena has 96 corporate suites on two U shaped levels between the lower and upper tiers of seating. Levels 2 and 3 are only accessible from VIP entrances and whilst it is hardly exclusive in that they must accommodate getting on for 2000 people,  the concourses feel spacious and quiet compared to the throngs below who paid good money rather than getting schmoozed.

Arriving at the suites themselves, they have a decent sized lounge with bar and sofas, with three rows of sets beyond stepping down to the balcony edge. Each row of seats (between 5 and 10 depending on the size of the box) has individual cupholders and are pleasantly comfortable, at least for an arena. Glassware is not allowed on the seating but you can take your drinks down in plastic glasses, or alternatively, there is a shelf and barstools if you prefer to hold on to your drink (& chat).

The staff from Virgin holidays told us that they share the box with Virgin Atlantic and it costs them a five figure sum as the catering and drinks are supplied by the venue, you can’t bring your own catering in. As it was a 21 seat box (three rows of seven) they chose nine lucky winners who could bring along a guest. We had specifically allocated seats and Karen and I were lucky enough to get the front row. (I had guessed that from the eTickets we had been sent, and also guessed correctly that the box would be almost opposite the stage rather than off to one side).

Our coats were swept away into the suite wardrobe and we were immediately offered drinks from their extensive bar and given free rein to the finger food. We had red wine before the show and in the interval, with a refreshing Magners iced Cider at our seats during the show (refreshed after the interval).

Now Karen loves Dancing on Ice whilst I am much more Blase’ about it (probably a side effect of relamping at the top of wobbly scaffold towers actually on the ice at Richmond Rink back in the 80′s.) I did, however, enjoy the performances of national treasures Torvill & Dean.

The trouble with ice shows is that they are a vast open stage and very difficult to fill, although they had a valiant effort at the start with large tent style cloths doing an impressive Kabuki drop afterwards . It was ten years since we had been to the Greenwich Peninsula (it was the millennium dome then and a bit of a touchy feely PC flop when crowds stayed away in their thousands but it did have one massive success – the opening ceremony Millennium Drop). Now the O2  is vibrant and thriving, the entertainment avenue feeling a little like Universal Citywalk, although the dome is still only half full in the doughnut around the arena and the British Music Experience was only drawing a trickle of people, probably because the tickets were £15. (It sounded a bit too much like an online interactive version of the ill fated pop museum in Sheffield that we managed to visit before it bombed.

As we had been to see a Matinee, we squiffily made our way to the Leicester Square TKTS booth and picked up some (slightly) cheap(er) tickets for Sister Act at the London Palladium, Stalls Row C right at the side. It doesn’t have any of the songs from the movies so if you went expecting that you might be a little disappointed but we already knew that and the new Alan Menken songs certainly rock. I also got a big scenery fix as the set changes are stunning. The wine wasn’t as good as Branson’s though and also rather expensive, stinging my Mum £21 for three glasses of red ordered for the interval.

Here are some low quality pics from the O2, they don’t let you take decent cameras in.

Last week, I saw a cracking blockpost about the four elephants in the room that none of the Political parties are mentioning. Trouble is, I can’t find it again. Does it ring any bells with either of my readers?

It wasn’t anything to do with Discworld and the great A’Tuin. The elephants were the EU, the National Debt, the Energy Crisis & something else that will be obvious with hindsight.

EDIT- Found it- Christopher Booker in the Telegraph.

I have a strong dislike of political parties based on experiences back in the 1970s, when my Dad Neil turned his local no hope seat around to within a handful of votes, at which point the local party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by parachuting in a party hopeful (who did even worse than the paper candidate who preceded Neil). Parties trample over people and the politics of the schoolyard abound.

Seeing the Tories in action thirty years later, I suspect that not a lot has changed in the Committee rooms, although they are no longer smoke filled.

The launch evening featured four of the five local prospective Councillors, the leader of the Conservative Group on Leeds City Council (whom I heckled!)  and, eventually, Antony Calvert, the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. I’ve met Antony several times and he stands up to my robust challenges very well, being an increasingly rare breed- a Libertarian Conservative.

The surprise event of recent local politics was fiercely independent Stewart McArdle announcing he was to stand as a Tory in nearby Ardsley & Robin Hood. Whilst he isn’t big on speeches or self-aggrandisement, he held his own with an off the cuff speech considerably more interesting than his predecessors.

Morley & Outwood is going to be very much in the eye of the Press over the next three weeks; it is a new seat and whilst on paper it is a Labour 9,000 majority safe seat, Calvert is being quite well received in Morley (for a Tory) and the Bookies odds are getting closer.

Antony is keen for me to put up a Poster, but Karen distrusts all politicians as being all as bad as each other. So, between us, we have come to a workable compromise…

It is a couple of decades since your Shadester held a Tiller but it didn’t take long to get back in the groove. I ended up Skippering most of the time as the first Mate and Billie no-mates seemed to be good at zig-zagging between banks (and occasionally into them).

There were only two locks on the stretch we covered which we locked down through on the Saturday and locked up through again on the Sunday. This meant that it wasn’t too strenuous for the crew.

We headed from our base at Chirk to Llangollen on Saturday afternoon, being on the world famous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct within an hour or so of setting off.

We went up to Llangollen on the Saturday morning, winding there and returning back, cruising steadily through the day and mooring up at Ellesmere. On Sunday we chugged along a bit further to look at some wildlife sanctuaries before returning and mooring up an hour or so south of Chirk (after a brief stop for a late liquid lunch).

On Monday morning, an early start gave us a clear run through the Chirk aquaduct & tunnel before returning the boat to Black Prince, intact other than a broken glass from the washing up and a few extra scratches on the hull (& a light coating of brick dust on the roof- those tunnels & bridges are tight…)