Appropriate for a Sunday.
I’m not religious. I don’t go to church.
But I could live in one. If it was this one.
At £995,000, it’s a little out of my price range right now, but it is gorgeous.
Apparently, it featured on Grand Designs. I’m a fan of the show, but I haven’t seen this one yet. I’m sure I’d remember.
I’m not sure how long that link above will last, but maybe I’ll be able to find the listing on a archived website once it’s gone. <- NOTE TO FUTURE SELF.
Or…
Look, let me preface this by saying that I won’t be going along to this anyway. But as a 90s raver and a long(ish)-time resident of Oxford, I might give it a go if I was still there.
Because it could be amazing.
The words “Tribute to” could be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. But they seem to have lined the best tribute acts up for the four weekend shows this summer, and if it wasn’t terrible, and if you were in the right frame of mind for some potentially iffy music and some fun, AND you had nothing else on that weekend – well, I’d probably give it a go.
I mean, how bad could it be? OK. It could be very bad.
But equally, it could be amazing.
Kevin and Perry is a bit of an odd inclusion, as is “Special Guest – Gladiators Jet”:
Jet from Gladiators to host a millennium barn dance at Yeovil Aerodrome.
Properly policed. It must not, repeat, not turn into an all-night rave.
IYKYK.
Jet will be 56 years old when this event happens. It’s 30 years since her run on Gladiators ended. That’s over half her life. She’s a fully-qualified pyschotherapist now. It won’t be the same.
But the whole thing? Overall? It could be amazing.
Get a few friends together. £40 gets you 18 hours of entertainment with full weekend access, and… well… it could be amazing.
I learned yesterday that all the London Underground stations and lines with a double O in their name (and some popular ones that don’t even have a double O in their name) are now sponsored by Heineken 0.0.
It tastes terrible, by the way.
But that’s not really the issue here. Is this a bit of corporate marketing fun, or is this actually a bit rubbish?
Answer: It’s both.
What?
Oxf0.0rd Circus doesn’t even work. If you already have to start making crap up after you’re done with Bakerloo and Waterloo, then this is a campaign that probably shouldn’t have got further than the drawing board.
And to those who say that it’s not confusing and just a bit of harmless fun, that map advert above on the left has got Kilburn Park and Maida Vale in the wrong order.
Well done!
Is this a lack of effort? A lack of attention? A lack of just… caring?
Whatever. Maps are meant to be maps: to help you get from A to B (or to 0.0) as easily and clearly as possible. They aren’t meant to be adverts.
And yes, there are bigger things to be concerned about going on in the world at the moment, but I (and hopefully you) have the brain capacity to be concerned about more than one problem.
No. Less of this kind of thing, please.
Yeah. Ke Dezemba in ZA and we all know what that means. But the revelry it brings isn’t new and it certainly isn’t exclusive to South Africa.
Kegeesh Ommidjagh – the foolish fortnight – begins (began?) on Oie’l Thomase Doo (Black Thomas’ Eve) (that was 21st December) on the Isle of Man, and well… they got up to some naughtiness, back in the day:
Rampant fun & the relaxing of moral codes(!) were the norm across the Isle of Man throughout Christmas in the past. Barns were claimed for dancing across the Kegeesh Ommidjagh, with fiddlers hired by public money, where parties apparently got so wild that youths sometimes felt compelled to go outside to continue their ‘close celebrations of the festival’ in the hedgerows…
There’s even a passage from George Waldron’s ‘A Description of the Isle of Man’ , written in 1731 that recounts the scenes – surprisingly candidly for those days:
“There is not a barn unoccupied the whole twelve days, every parish hiring fiddlers at the public charge; and all the youth, nay, sometimes people well advanced in years making no scruple to be among these nocturnal dancers.
At this time there never fails of some work being made for Kirk Jarmyns; so many young fellows and girls meeting in these diversions, nature too often prompts them to more close celebrations of the festival, than those the barn allows; and many a hedge has been witness of endearments, which fear of punishment has afterwards made both forswear at the holy altar in purgation.”
The whole thing is quite a read.
But if nocturnal copulation in the local farmers’ fields in the middle of winter wasn’t foolish enough, then you really need to click here and read some of the astonishingly bizarre traditions of the Kegeesh Ommidjagh.
Groups of young lads roamed the towns making ‘a rare din’ singing, dancing and playing homemade instruments, carrying mollags – inflated sheep’s bladders – with which they hit anyone who got too close. The aim was to make money, but they were perhaps hounding it out of people more than receiving willing donations!
Ah yes – the old sheep’s bladder boinkers. Always a giggle.
In church was the Oie’ll Verree service which took place on Christmas Eve. Here the singing of carols was accompanied by young women throwing peas at young men.
Standard religious nonsense.
Amidst the final drinking and dancing there was the Cutting off the Fiddler’s Head, where the fiddler lay his head on a woman’s lap and made prophesies of who would pair with whom over the coming year.
But these festivities were interrupted by the Laair Vane – a person hidden under a sheet controlling a horse’s head. This ‘White Mare’ would go around attacking people snapping its jaws until it was chased from the room.
Ah. Simpler times.
Look. There was no Netflix, no internet, no football around back then. I guess that you just had to make your own entertainment, and it does appear that the Manx people, having saved up all their joviality (and all their sheep’s bladders and their peas) for 50 weeks, really went to town on making their own stuff up for the Christmas period.
But honestly, who was the first to come up with any of this stuff, and why wasn’t he or she immediately stopped at the first mention of decapitation of musicians or people hiding under bedsheets pretending to be bits of an equine?
They were clearly all rather mad over there.
Not much has changed.
I love a good storm. And there’s a really good storm over the British Isles at the moment.
I’ve had the Isle of Man webcams open on my second monitor, and while it’s amazing to watch the Irish Sea doing its thing as we approach high tide:
I’m missing the noise and the smell and the stinging cold of the spray on my cheeks.
It’s just not the same sitting in an office 6000 miles… away.
Some of the best visuals have been from the Scarlett Point cameras – based at the old Coastguard Station:
It doesn’t look quite as green there today, but it does look pretty amazing.
That is Scarlett Stack, the remains of an ancient volcanic vent, which – as the tide rises – is being repeatedly and more extensively overwhelmed by the incoming waves. Quite a sight, given that it’s a good 10m in height.
Beautiful. And I know that it’s far from everyone’s favourite kind of weather, but I really wish that I was there right now. (Like, on the footpath, not on the actual rocks: I’m just daft, not completely stupid.)
Also – on one of the other cameras earlier – fair play to this guy.
No better sort of day for a run.
EDIT: Still watching (with my sideeye) – suddenly (and briefly) – gorgeous sunlight.
