Breaking records

We don't need the Olympics in this country to break records - we have the weather. The month just gone has been awarded the title of "wettest June in the United Kingdom since rainfall records began in 1910" and "coolest June since 1991" (not as impressive that, but still). It's also been extremely dull, with just 119.2 hours of sunshine - that's on average under 4 hours of sunshine per day during a month with more than 16 hours of daylight per day. How depressing.

Looking at Met Office figures released a couple of days ago, there's not much to smile about. We've had twice as much rain as you'd expect for the time of year, appox. 9 mm more than we had in the incredibly wet month of June 2007. And the mean temperature was a very fresh 12.3C or 54.14F.

The only positive bit of news is that when looking at individual countries, this has only been the second wettest June in England (yay). So maybe my friend Josef was right when he said that we've had worse - although personally I am inclined to blame his newly-found sunny personality for this comment rather than attribute it to astute observational powers. After all, we've only had worse once before and it might not have been in our lifetime.

In case you're wondering, the Met Office speculates that movements in the track of the jet stream, a narrow band of fast flowing westerly winds high in the atmosphere, have contributed to the unseasonal conditions. I'd have a lot to say to that jet stream if I was ever to come across it!

By the way, I think the Olympic logo sucks - but not as much as the two mascots.

Jack-in-the-Green

Yesterday we celebrated May Day by attending a Jack-in-the-Green procession. I imagine you have no idea what that is, so let me give you some background information.

Jack-in-the-Green processions have their roots in the milkmaid May Day celebrations of the mid 17th century. At that time, milkmaids would go out with the utensils of their trade (cups, pots, spoons) decorated with garlands and piled into a pyramid, which they carried on their heads. Later on, other groups such as chimney sweeps also started taking advantage of May Day as an opportunity to collect money.


At some point during the 18th century, the separate garlands of flowers and leaves were transformed into a structure, like a large beehive, covered with foliage which was carried by a man and which became known as a Jack-in-the-Green.


By the 19th century, May Day had come to mean chimney sweeps with a Jack and music provided by drums, fiddles and whistles. However, by the end of the century, these celebrations had come to be considered too disorderly and were often suppressed by the police. Jacks became a rarity after the First World War.


A revival started in the 1970's and there are now two well-known Jack-in-the-Green celebrations in South East England, one in Rochester and another in Hastings. London has its own Jack-in-the-Green procession, organised by the Deptford Fowlers Troop. This is the one we attended.


The route we followed took us along the South Bank and over the Millennium Bridge to a pub opposite St Paul's Cathedral, where we stopped for a well-earned drink or three.


Along the way, we met a group of Morris Men (folk dancers) heading in the opposite direction. They kindly stopped to be photographed.


The man inside the Jack also came out when we reached the pub and posed for photos. I also took a short video showing him twirling to the music. The big structure in the background is St Paul's Cathedral.



Tradition says that as long as the drum can be heard, the rain will hold off. I took this photo shortly after the procession finished, so perhaps there is some truth in that belief. Funnily enough, it started raining an hour or so later - and hasn't stopped since.

The historical information for this post came from a booklet titled "Fowlers Troops and the Deptford Jack-in-the-Green: A history of an old London May Day tradition" by Sarah Crofts.

Wordless Wednesday 89

West Country carnival

The West Country Carnival is an annual celebration in SW England which features a parade of illuminated floats . The first celebration was held 404 years ago, to mark the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It started as a procession with wax torches and over time evolved into a series of fabulous nighttime parades.


There are at least two different circuits that I'm aware of, one in Wessex and another in Somerset. The Somerset one (also known as the Bridgwater circuit) is by common admission the better one, with a larger number of illuminated floats, whereas the Wessex carnival has more walking entries.


There are more than 100 floats in the Somerset carnival. They move to a different location every day until they have appeared in 8 separate local carnivals, namely in Bridgwater, North Petherton, Highbridge & Burnham, Shepton Mallet, Midsommer Norton, Wells, Glastonbury and Weston-super-Mare. The photos are from this year's Weston-super-Mare finale.


There are two types of float, tableaus (motionless pose) and features (dancing and movement). I've already shown you pictures of the best tableau (To The Trees) so for this post I have used only pictures of features, namely Parade, Check Mate and Joust. Gremlins CC's Joust and To The Trees were voted joint overall champions by the judges. According to the local press, Joust took 12 months to construct and features 20,000 lights.


If you're interested, you can see (lots) more photos of the carnival on my Flickr account. I took 600 in total, and of those 436 made the Flickr mark.

To The Trees

Last Monday the weather was much more amenable that it's been today, so I was able to attend the finale of the Somerset Illuminated Carnival that took place in Weston-Super-Mare, a pretty seaside town in SW England.


There are mainly two types of float taking place in the Carnival, tableaus (motionless pose) and features (dancing and movement). All floats are illuminated, as the Carnival takes place at night.


By far the most impressive tableau was Gemini CC's To The Trees, with a Robin Hood theme. The detail in presentation was amazing, and the poses were challenging and very well executed. I mean, how long can anyone stay with their mouths open, staring into space?


Apparently, some people can keep going for more than two hours!


Unsurprisingly, To The Trees won first place in the best tableau category and were also joint overall winners.


I generally prefer features, but couldn't fail to be impressed by this particular tableau. I stood really close to it at the end of the procession and I swear it was like looking at waxworks.


It was only when you looked into their eyes that you could tell they were definitely humans.


I bet they were really happy when they heard the STOP command and could finally relax their poses and give their poor muscles a rest!

It's not a cottage, it's...

...a signal box on the side of the railway line, somewhere in East Sussex - presumably not far from Rye.

A signal box is where the signal man used to manually operate levers and handles so that various pieces of equipment were set in the required position for each train that passed. The raised design also provided the signalman with a good view of the railway under his control. These days, signal changes are managed remotely, so no idea what the signal boxes are used as, but there are several dotted around South East England, and I reckon this is one of the prettiest.

If you're a railway enthusiast, you can read (a lot) more about the Rye signal box here and about signal boxes in general on Wikipedia. Apparently, signal boxes are called signal cabins in Ireland, interlocking towers in the US and postes d'aiguillage (literally "shunting stations") in French.

Never let it be said that blogging isn't educational.

The food diaries: part 2 - England

Last weekend we decided to pretend it was summer, so we visited a country pub with riverside seating. As it happened, the weather was pretty dire (considering it's allegedly the middle of summer) and we weren't brave enough to sit outdoors, but we enjoyed a traditional pub meal inside the restaurant. Here's what we had:


Grilled 8oz British Sirloin Steak, served with roast tomato, fried mushroon, garden peas (in their own colander, no less!) and French fries.


Steak & Tanglefoot pie with mashed potato, parsnip and carrots. Tanglefoot is a type of beer.


Goat's cheese salad: marinated goat's cheese, homemade cheese croutons, roast tomato, roast red pepper, courgette, aubergine and red onion, tossed in an olive and balsamic dressing. Mmmm.


Glazed beed lazagne, topped with melting cheese and served with chunky chips.

We were pretty stuffed when we finished eating all that, but we couldn't not have dessert, so we decided to share:


"Proper toffee" pudding with hot toffee sauce and vanilla ice-cream.


Chocolate pudding (steaming!) with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice-cream.

As you can imagine, we had a very enjoyable lunch - and the view from our table wasn't bad either.


The River Arun flows right outside the pub and we could see Arundel Castle in the distance.

If only it had been a brighter day, this would have been the perfect outing, but the weather in this country often gets in the way of the best laid plans. Still, we enjoyed some yummy food, and it only started raining heavily after we left the pub, so, all things considered, I shouldn't really complain...

More than a Christmas market

Lovely as the Christmas market was, I'd be doing Birmingham a disservice if I didn't show you some of the prettiest sights the city has to offer. Admittedly I'd never thought of Birmingham as a sightseeing destination, and was very pleasantly surprised. It's obvious that a lot of the city is less than charming (this is no Bath), but even so, there was plenty to look at (and take pictures of) in the city centre. What's more, it's all within a short walk of Birmingham New Street rail station, so very easy to get to, even if you're only there for a short time.

Here are some photos to prove the point:


If you're in London, Birmingham is just 1.5 hours by train, which makes it an ideal day trip destination. If you like a bit of retail therapy, so much the better, as it's got a fantastic selection of shops, including a large Waterstone's bookstore and a very futuristic-looking Selfridges.

Shopping-wise, you'll be spoilt for choice. The city centre's easy on the eye, too. If you find yourselves in this part of the world, Birmingham's definitely worth a pre-Christmas visit.