4.9.14
Clematis Hagley’s hybrid has bloomed at home in my absence. It has been chewed a bit.
Bournemouth is not a city you would wish to negotiate by car unless you had to, even if you could follow the utterly confusing signage failing to lead you to it. With further research it may be found to rival Southampton, but I don’t fancy carrying out the investigation.
My capacity for emulating Dan’s Grandfather was so extremely limited that I needed a trip to the seaside town to visit the O2 guru for him to take me through the basics of the Samsung Galaxy. On the phone Paul, the wise man, gave me the address and said it was ‘just down from Marks and Spencer’s’. With a print-out of the Google map, it should have been easy to find. It wasn’t. After driving round and round in circles for a while, we decided to abandon the car in a multi-story park. Jackie walked to the sea front whilst I ambled up the steep hill to find 5 Commercial Road, which wasn’t where the Google arrow indicated. A helpful woman directed me to the site in a pedestrian precinct around the corner. We’d never have found it by car.
Paul acquainted me with the simplest of operations offered by the device, then, figuratively, of course, held my hand while I phoned Jackie to tell her we were all done and I was on my way to meet her.
From O2, I walked through the Pleasure Gardens to the sea front for our rendezvous. Jackie then drove us home. That public amenity is most impressive. 
Sightseers sat on benches, walked around, played mini golf, ate ice creams; and, with camera lenses, their own eyes, or fingers, admired the splendid flower beds. Beautiful cosmos lined the railed footpaths.
Later this afternoon, taking the Shorefield/cliff top/Park Lane route, I walked to Milford on Sea and back. My link between the cliff path and Park Lane was The Beach House. 
This recently refurbished hotel/restaurant has a clear view of the Isle of Wight and The Needles. 
A dangerous footpath remains closed.
People sat on or walked along the beach, and a group of youngsters dragged rubber boats to the water.
I have often been confused about the correct spelling of the name of that establishment offering coin-operated washing machines and dryers for the use of members of the public who do not have the use of such facilities at home. The producers of the 1985 comedy-drama film ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ favoured one spelling.
Peg, in Milford, seemed to be slightly misquoting the film title in the name of her launderette. However, whoever painted the signs on the windows favoured film director Stephen Frears’s version. What does it matter anyway? Many people say ‘laundryette’ (my computer didn’t like that).
Our evening meal consisted of lamb curry, cauliflower baji, and boiled rice, with which we drank Cobra beer. I have never eaten a cauliflower baji as both crisp and succulent as this one of Jackie’s.
Tag: Bournemouth
Birthday Greetings
This morning I worked some more on the old negatives. There were another dozen of Sam, and three of my friend Giles. These latter would have been taken when I was living with him in Claverton Street, Pimlico, in 1973. 
We were playing chess on his glass board set into a coffee table. The shot was taken from the viewpoint of me, his opponent. Just for the record, he usually won. Maybe that’s why I wanted to stand him on his head. If it makes you feel disoriented to look at it, it may be helpful to stand your computer on its head in order to admire my friend’s face.
Whilst searching my old albums for help to date the Giles pictures, I found a newspaper cutting of a photograph of contestants in the Soho Festival cigar smoking competition and inserted it into the post featuring that event. For anyone wishing to see it, I’m the one with the dirty feet and clean armpits.
The weather today was splendid. Although the temperature reflected the fact that there was no cloud cover, the sun shone from a clear blue sky throughout the day. It brought all human life to the beach at Bournemouth where Jackie drove me this afternoon. She remained on the top of East Cliff whilst I walked along the top for a while, descended to the beach, and walked to the pier and along the length of it and back.
On the way to Bournemouth, I received a photograph on my Blackberry, of a birth that took place early this morning. It is only a few days ago that I wrote about running a race in aid of my nephew Adam Keenan’s day nursery. Now, he and his wife, Thea, have made me a great uncle for the sixth time; and, more importantly, my sister Elizabeth and his father Rob grandparents for the first time. Since it is the prerogative of his proud parents to display their infant to the world themselves, I will publish neither further details nor the delightfully peaceful picture.
In the top left hand corner of the beach scene above, stands the Red Arrows memorial sculpture. When I first photographed it last year the accompanying plaque was not in situ.
Eschewing the East Cliff Lift, which I would probably find more frightening than the steps down, although even they didn’t look too appetising,
I took the spiral footpath down to the beach. Slaloming among the other pedestrians, a jogger made a number of runs up and down the steep inclines.
Before descending, I noticed that another birthday was being celebrated in greetings in the sand.
A gentleman paddled a surfboard up and down. 
Up and down in more ways than one, 
since he occasionally disappeared beneath the gentle waves that ended their journey sliding up and down the sand in the ebbing tide, only to reform and reform and, like the surfer, repeat the process interminably.
Small families, groups of young people, lovers, dog walkers, and elderly gents occupied themselves in various ways along the sands.
People lined the railings on the end of the pier enjoying watching the sun subside beneath the waves.
During the waning afternoon the vibrant yellow horizon metamorphosed into a pretty pastel pink.
Once we had returned home, Jackie set about preparing a superb chicken and egg curry with savoury rice and parotas for us and Elizabeth, Danni and Andy, with which the rest of us drank Les Courlandes Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2012. Elizabeth said this meal would beat Eastern Nights, which is praise indeed. And true.
A Birthday Present
I spent this morning posting the delayed entry from yesterday. Jackie then drove us to Bournemouth for a visit to the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum. Along the sea front on the way there I was fascinated by a sculpture that carried no caption but seemed to represent three of the famous Red Arrows. Up on the railed-off high cliff top above the town’s pier, outside the Art Gallery proper, there was mounted a modern display of motifs representing the seaside. 
A gentleman I was to see inside the Russell-Cotes building photographing many individual exhibits, worked his way along the railings doing the same thing. 
Whilst tempted to photograph numerous wonderful paintings, ceramic, or sculptures full frame, I was fascinated by the pieces in their sumptuous, splendidly opulent setting, which is what I concentrated on. 
One iconic painting was, however, worthy of its own photograph. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Venus Verticordia is probably the most famous picture in the entire collection, but that is not the reason it warrants our attention. The Pre-Raphaelite painters’ female subjects mostly bear some resemblance to each other. Their particular coiffure is shared by Flo. She is not red-haired, like Alexa Wilding, this model of Rossetti’s, and perhaps therefore has more similarity to the dark-haired Janie Morris. 
We were both attracted to a sculpture of a male reader, possibly an author, but are not sure who he is. The Henry Irving sector has a warning stencilled on the glass. 
I wondered how many foreheads had sported bruising before this precaution was taken. 
The bust of a Moor seems to stand guard over his eponymous Alcove. 
In one room a marble female sculpture exchanges gazes with a wistful young lady. Or maybe she simply covets the ceramics in the stylishly inlaid cabinet. 
The gorgeous galleried landing, lined with splendid paintings, contains several well-filled niches. 
Access to the conservatory was denied. The tiles in this room, which could be seen through the glass door, although rather duller than those at Lindum House, seem to be very similar in design. Perhaps a sun-room floor is more exposed to fading than that of the entrance hall in our former Newark home. 
In 1901 Sir Merton Russell-Cotes gave his wife 
Annie this dream house on the cliff-top overlooking the sea, as a birthday present which they filled with beautiful objects from their travels across the world. Six years later, they donated the house, named East Cliff Hall and the art collection to the people of Bournemouth. Mrs. Russell-Cotes’s dress remains on display for us all to see.
Jackie’s juicy chicken jalfrezi with mushroom fried rice graced our dinner plates this evening. I drank a glass of Veluti primitivo.