I like this archipelago and this water tower

Firstly, this image of Værøy in Norway. It looks like somewhere I’d like to go.

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It turns out that Værøy is the last island in the Lofoten archipelago in Nordland, Norway.
It has a lighthouse and a whirlpool. Yes, really:

The Moskstraumen (whirlpool) is located between the Lofoten Point of Moskenesøya (Moskenes municipality) and Værøy, at the small island of Mosken. It involves strong tidal currents flowing through the shallows between these islands and the Atlantic Ocean and the deep Vestfjorden, creating eddies and whirlpools, the largest one having a diameter of some 40–50 meters (130–160 ft) and inducing surface water ripples up to 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) in amplitude.

And then (in old news for people in the UK), this converted water tower in Kennington, featured on the 100th episode of Grand Designs – which was screened yesterday in South Africa. And I fell in love with it. Just wow.

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I know it’s been up for sale for a while, so I don’t know if it’s still available. But the longer it stays on the market, the better, because if I’m honest, I’m struggling with the last little bit of the R75,717,850.00 asking price. *weeps*

Poor Misguided Fool

I’m not sure what brought this song to mind today – perhaps people on twitter telling me what I must think about feminism, or perhaps it was the comments on the article on vaccination that I was reading.
Either way, the listening experience was far preferable to either scenario.

Starsailor deserved to go far further than they did. Their debut album Love Is Here was superb, and this was the fifth Top 40 single from it. The great news is that they’ve never actually split up:

On November 13, 2009 it was officially announced by Lancashire Evening Post that Starsailor was on hold and that James Walsh was concentrating on his solo career.

I’ve been regularly checking the Lancashire Evening Post since November 14, 2009 and I can categorically state that there have been no further updates on the Starsailor situation.

Watch this space. Or that space. Your call.

A wee stop

After a monumental journey home from Agulhas which included a reluctant car, some fish & chips, a MASSIVE traffic jam over the mountains, a highway blocked by protesters and loads of other stuff which my mind has already blocked out, I do at least have this:

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This was the view somewhere just off the R316 between Napier and Caledon, where we made a “comfort stop” for the kids. I won’t share the view the other way.

The rest of the journey was really not worth sharing either. There’s five and a half hours of my life I won’t get back.

And so, once again, I turn to beer for comfort and relief. And it’s working.