Skip to main content

Chester

Ed Alleyne-Johnson plays his electric violin.
Thursday saw me in Chester, having a day's break from proofreading Tamsin.  After a pleasant lunch of chicken escalopes with prosciutto di Parma and mozzarella, I wandered onto Eastgate Street and immediately recognised the distinctive sounds of Ed Alleyne-Johnson's electric violin.  He was busking by one of the short flights of stone steps leading onto the mews, which are something of a tourist magnet because of their 'olde worlde' charm.

So, after enjoying the music for a while, I wandered round the shops.  Why are Xmas decorations up already?  It's November still!  I really dislike the gradual spreading-out of this festival, with all its attendant kitsch.  If it was contained to the main fortnight it would be far less tedious.

Each year at Riverside Writers, when we're setting our monthly writing project, someone will try to push for December's story or poem to be on a Xmas theme.  By far the majority of us groan at the prospect.  My response has always been to point out that if a person wants to give their story a religious (or political) theme then they're 100% free to do so - just don't try and inflict the theme on the rest of us.  Anyway, I digress...

Chester.  I've probably mentioned before that Chester's one of my favourite places.  It has an attractive energy; a fusion of the historical and the contemporary.  As cities go it's a pretty small one, but it's got a river and a canal winding around it, and those lovely old Roman walls, and a heavy scattering of cafes and coffee bars...  At the height of summer the throngs of shuffling tourists can be a nuisance if you're in a hurry to cut through the city centre, but if you're smart you'll zip along the lesser-used sidestreets lined with lovely old buildings, which are a visual treat in themselves.

Chester's a place where I can easily see myself living.  Venice has great appeal, but Chester's probably more practical.  Ahem.

Share   Subscribe
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...
15 comments
Read more

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Diary...

Do you keep a diary? Why did you start it, and, if you started one then stopped, why was that? What sort of things do (or did) you write about? I ask as, as a long-time diarist myself, there is an interesting piece in The Guardian today which talks about one woman's diary habit, which she began at the age of fourteen. I started a diary around that age too, but destroyed it after my mother accused me of using cocaine.  A stern scene followed, with both parents perched ram-rod straight in their armchairs, while I was subjected to a heated inquisition. Where had I bought it, and who from? Didn't I know such things led to death and doom? I struggled to decipher their bewildering accusations, until Mum blurted out, "I read it in your diary!" To find my diary, Mum would first have had to rummage through my dressing table, obviously when I wasn't around to protest. Her intrusion on my privacy was assumed by both parents to be acceptable, and now, with this handwritten c...
Post a Comment
Read more