Wednesday 31 August 2011

By the seaside, beside the sea

Today has been a day of tourism. My son has been reading his child's guide to Venice and asked to go to the Rialto bridge. We had a gorgeous morning of cruising up the Grand Canal and then walking between Rialto an Piazza San Marco.











On our wanderings around Venice we found the Ferrari store and this led to endless rapture from my son who got to see this Formula 1 car.





As the Venice film festival is on we had to move to Lido di Jesolo which is a beach resort as we can't afford Venetian prices when the hotels can attract stars, hangers on and press on expenses.

This is where I'm sat. Blissful.




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Tuesday 30 August 2011

Arty Farty

Modern art.

The mere words are enough to provoke fear, anger and loathing in the average person. For many, it merely conjures up Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Banksy (none of whom I particularly like). I'm sure that many people feel that coming to the Biennale is a waste of time, money and effort. And you know, some is. I have a particular loathing of muddy looking video installations of a bloke hitting a tuna whilst a monotone ArtNoise blare sends the viewer half mad. But it's not all like that and at this Biennale my son and I saw and interacted with some really interesting pieces. He loved it, even though the walk is a good few hot and dusty miles and the Biennale and Arsenale sites took over six hours to complete.

These are our highlights:



Arriving in style.





An interactive room where you could play with plasticine. The colours red, black & white represent the flags of many Arabic nations.





Socks and Rocks.


I loved this cash machine which played organ music when used





Excellent pun: Track and Field.




They look like old records. But look closer.




A graveyard for mobile phones.




Beautiful geometric folded card.




An interactive exhibit from Russia - fabulous for 8 year old boys.




Big Korean panels. Look carefully at the camouflage.




Robotic pieta.




My son ignoring a load of kettles and twirling instead. Frankly, fair enough.




Fabric dragon.




A melted candle man.




Brilliant for kids: a mist installation.




Enjoying art in flight.




The juxtaposition of bizarre art & Venice.







And my favourite EuroSprog graffiti from the back of the toilet doors.

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Location:Venice Biennale

Monday 29 August 2011

Shopping for shoes in Italy

A lot of things have happened since 1997. I got married, had my son, got divorced, changed careers and changed clothes sizes. A lot. However, back then I promised I was going to go to the
Biennale of Art in Venice every other year of my life until death or infirmity stopped me. Today marks my 9th trip for the Biennale and my 10th visit to Venice.

People assume that trips to cities aren't good for kids but that's not what I've found. My son enjoyed the flight and it was a good opportunity to learn about glaciation and mountain building as we flew over the Alps.



We arrived into Venice and transferred to my preferred hotel here, the Helvetia. which has fabulous views of St Mark's Square and the lagoon.




We went for a walk and almost immediately my son's new canvas pumps started rubbing his feet. This led to buying plasters which alleviated the pain for a while. But, inevitably, they started hurting again so he ended up running barefoot along the lagoon edge on broiling Italian pavements and having to stop at every bench for a rest and to raise his chargrilled feet from the path. Not once did he moan or cry. So, we ended up in one of the most sacred places on earth - a Venetian shoe shop - buying him brand new comfortable sandals. It'll be worth it though as tomorrow we go to the Biennale.


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Sunday 28 August 2011

Scarborough, fair enough

Thursday was a good day. My kids' GCSE literature results were amazing and my actual kid got his second diving badge. To celebrate we went on an adventure: camping in Scarborough. Now, to many, nothing less than body-boarding the length of the Amazon counts as an actual adventure but my son and I see any unplanned trip as an adventure and this was our first two-handed camping expedition.




When we arrived I remembered that my kit does not class me as a professional camper. The average family appears to have a tent complete with fitted kitchen, double glazing and escalator, along with a selection of outbuildings housing their gym and fossil collections. My son and I had a tent, a plastic box with plates and a disposable barbecue. So we were pretty hardcore. We managed to get the tent up, our belongings arranged and dinner cooked in just two hours flat.





As you will observe it was a lovely evening and we relished the opportunity to eat al fresco and walk along the cliff path before clambering into our sleeping bags.

Of course, as is traditional, I awoke in the night to the sound of rain and it sheeted down for the next 24 hours. Undaunted, we went to Scarborough Castle for a heritage event based on pirates. There my son learnt lots of facts including that grog was water which had gone brackish and sailors used to pour rum in to sterilise it and drink it with clenched teeth to strain the scum out. They ate biscuit too which was flour, water and salt baked hard for two hours and dipped in ale to kill the weevils that infested it. Clearly, they would have made excellent modern day campers.







Finally, I gave in to the inevitable and we left the camping stove in the tent and went for pizza in town.







Overnight a miracle occurred. The rain stopped. This meant we packed the tent up in the sun and gave my son a chance to play cricket with some other kids on the site.



Monday 22 August 2011

This glorious sun of York

Today I woke up to a winter of discontent as I knew I only have two weeks of these summer holidays left and I don't like the idea that I'm letting any time go past me.

I decided to go to York for an English Heritage event at Clifford's Tower where my son got to dress up as a medieval king.








Afterwards, I used my brilliant O2 Moments app to find a 50% off deal at Ask Italian restaurant. The restaurant is beautiful as it's in the old Assembly Rooms and we had a very pleasant lunch.




We also visited two free art exhibitions. At York St Marys we saw Cornelia Parker's Thirty Pieces of Silver installation which is on loan from the Tate. It's a beautiful piece of work comprising over a thousand silver objects, squashed and then hung by fine wire to seem as if they hover above the flagstones on the ground.




We also went to York Art Gallery to see the William Etty: Art and Controversy exhibition. I've not been to this gallery for a few years and was really impressed by how the square had been improved to be a really pleasant place to sit.



And then, by serendipity, we went to the Richard III museum on the city walls. Many years ago I attended the University of St Andrews and studied Medieval History. Richard III and the Wars of the Roses were my specialist subject and I realised that today, the 22nd August, is the 526th anniversary of the Battle of Bosworth and therefore the death of Richard III. As a student I always felt that Richard of Gloucester had a tough time of it: particularly because of Thomas More and then Shakespeare's hatchet-job. In fact, most people can misquote the first line of that play ('Now is the winter of our discontent') but far fewer finish the couplet with the second line ('Made glorious summer by this sun of York'). It seemed really appropriate to be in York on a sunny anniversary and to pay our respects to the House of York. Firstly, we voted 'not guilty' in the Richard III museum to the charge that he murdered his nephews, the so-called Princes in the Tower.




Then we walked round the city walls to Micklegate Bar where Richard III father, Richard duke of York's head was displayed after his death at the Battle of Tewkesbury. It is also where Richard III's head ended up after Bosworth to warn the north not to rise against the Tudors.



Finally, back in June I'd promised myself and my son that we'd go to Towton Moor where the bloodiest battle on English soil occurred on Palm Sunday 1461 which saw the start of the reign of the Yorkist kings. The battlefield has a special 1.7 mile path built around it with lots of informative boards. On a bright sunny August day it was hard to feel the horror of that battle: the snowstorm that blew against the Lancastrian lines meaning their longbow shots fell short and the bloodthirsty rout at the Cock Beck where the fleeing armies of the Lancaster faction had to climb over the drowned bodies of their comrades to escape. The waters of the Cock Beck and the nearby River Wharfe ran red with blood.




The Dacre cross commemorates the slaughter. I enjoyed teaching my glorious Yorkshire son about this period of history and discussing with him the great mystery of the Princes in the Tower. It was a summer day of great contentment.


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Location:York and Towton Moor

Tuesday 16 August 2011

A seven hour detour (which took 5000 years)

Yesterday my son and I had to leave Dorset as this week I need to get ready for the next term at school. It seemed really sad to go as I love it there and it does feel like 'home' in a way that Leeds simply doesn't. The journey from back home takes about six hours and is an unremittingly dull drive (although my friend, Highwaylass would be more happy on the open road than I). So I decided to go cross-country and use my English Heritage card to the max.

The first detour was to Stonehenge which is a must-see for any person but so madly disappointing. The whole site is a national disgrace: the roads are congested, clogged and pass within a few yards of the stones. The visitor centre is worse than the average blighted urban underpass. The cafe facilities are laughable. It's cramped, untidy and crammed with people. The fencing is ugly, intrusive and looks like the stuff we put round schools in the 1970s. And you only have to go up to the stone circle and see what could be achieved 200 generations ago with desire and common purpose, to realise all the hand-wringing and excuses about cost are pointless. If 5000 years ago our forbears could build it and make it a monument of stark beauty and awe in the landscape and we, with our riches and technology, can't present it properly. Shame on us.














Afterwards, my fury with the whole set up abated and we went to Avebury which is older, larger, less-visited and far better presented by English Heritage and the National Trust than Stonehenge. En route we passed the glowering mystery that is Silbury Hill (and I took a fairly rubbish iPhone photo which makes it look like Silbury hump). I love the fact that we know virtually nothing about this site and that it is of a similar date and size to the pyramid of Saqqara. What was its purpose? Even Daphne from Eggheads doesn't know.







Then on to Avebury properly. This is well worth the visit. The site has been conserved and presented beautifully. The two museums there are the correct mixture of fact and interactivity and beautifully located in medieval barns. The scale of the achievement at Avebury beggars belief, started before Stonehenge, it had more than 170 Sarsen in the main circle alone, quite apart from the processional way and the sanctuary. The ditches are inconceivably huge considering that the technology at the time was reindeer horn. I'd like it if the roads didn't travel through the centre of the circle but the whole site is far more appropriate than Stonehenge.














Finally, we started our long route home and Pippa, my satnav, ignored the sensible M4 - A34 route and took us up a lovely road via Cirencester where we stopped for dinner. My son was really excited that we were going to a Roman & Medieval Market town as 'that's my sort of place'. It makes me furious that Cameron was blaming the riots on absent fathers AGAIN yesterday: we are a lone parent family and my son is more emotionally and culturally aware than many adults. It's not the number of parents, Mr Cameron, but the quality of the parenting that matters. But I rant and digress. We found a gorgeous Thai restaurant and had an amazing meal together. A fitting end to a wonderful day.








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Location:Stonehenge, Avebury and Cirencester