My Favourite Shop.

Robyn and me are searching for a certain shade of card (don't ask) and of course we can't find it.

So, because I had to hand some applications and documents into Hounslow Civic Centre, we went to the 'Art and Stationery' shop on Henleys Roundabout where The Great West Road turns into The Bath Road.

It's amazing!

It's my new favourite shop.

It has art supplies and errrrr, stationary.

But it has everything from water colour squares and oil paints to sealing wax and colour wheels.

We didn't find what we were looking for;

But we spent a happy 45 minutes looking at art papers, receipt books, treasury tags, paper clips.....darn near everything you could imagine all the way up to a jar of red magnets.

Red Magnets?

If you need anything it is there.

Although in fact we didn't actually buy anything.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Being Inspired in Hounslow.

There has been a hole in my universe this weekend - for the last two years I've been lucky enough to go to a jazz festival in Chelsea. I still have hopes it might be going ahead but for the last three weeks I've been checking out the web site every day without success.

So this weekend I headed back to my Borough which was having a festival to welcome in the rugby world cup.

 

I don't have any interest in rugby - we were there for the music.

 

We'd checked through the line up and timed it all just right - we got the three best acts;

 

 



That was Tyler Rix, playing Funk and Soul. He did it very well as did his band but for me it was a bit too slick and a few too many mash ups.

I don't like backing tracks either and as he had a full band I don't see why he needed one.

No need for a backing track for this;

It's 'The Dhol Foundation' - a Hounslow legend.

They play traditional Punjabi drums and if you've been around the borough any time you've heard them.

Thundering rhythmic drums; today with a deck for scratching and a rapper. It's Hounslow for goodness sake - they even played a traditional Irish dance number.

I've seen The Dhol Foundation about three times - the best was in the Treaty Centre where they marched into the centre, up the escalator and along the balcony by Debenhams - their drums filling the whole building and pulling everybody out to watch.

Amazing.

These days they are more electric and they travel all around the world - next week in Florence, playing at a millionaires wedding!

We had Bhangra and dancers from Birmingham;

But there was no doubt who we all came to see;

Billy Ocean, 1980's Soul star, singing in front of his full band including three backing singers and a saxophonist;

We got the full range of hits - from 'When the tough get going' to 'Carribean Queen'

When he played 'Love train' I joined in with a giant Conga that danced it's way around the park until the music stopped....then everybody remembered they were British, got embarrassed and immediately melted back into the crowd!

As I looked around all the people who were watching I was struck by the number of people of a 'certain age', who may well have bought a Billy Ocean record from me when I worked in 'Our Price Records' on Hounslow High street.

It was a really great afternoon and probably only Hounslow could have put it on.

How do you top that?
We went to Hounslow West for a vegetarian curry;

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

The Sarsen Stones of Stonehenge and Hounslow.

Last month Robyn and me, we spent the night at Stonehenge, waiting to see the sun rise between the magical stones at the summer solstice.

It was quite an experience and the stones really are magical.

Here's the moment of sunrise;

Some of them, the 'Bluestones', are believed to have been brought from Wales which is a very long way for Stone age people.

The majority of the stones are known as 'Sarsen' stones  which is a corruption of an old English word 'Saracen' which once meant 'foreign'. They came from about 20 miles away on the 'Marlborough Plain' and they were considered foreign because they didn't seem to fit in.

So, I thought I'd go to Lampton park in Hounslow to uncover where those stones came from.

That's because boring old Lampton park has its very own 'Sarsen' stone and here it is;

Not so boring, is it? The weird patterns are caused by erosion and are very similar to patterns you can see in the Sarsen stones at Stonehenge;

And actually, Lampton Park isn't so boring either - it features in the movie 'Bend it like Beckham'.

Here's the sign;

 

 

It doesn't look as though the stones got here via alien spacemen or left behind by glaciers. This one was found in a gravel quarry in Heston and brought here. We saw similar stones when we were looking for fossils in the London Clay at Sheppey, last September.

 

 

Sarcens seem to be formed as a layer between sands and gravels and clays, when sand layers are subjected to pressure and turn into quartzite. There must be something else going on too, because it's reasonably rare.

 

Erosion then wears away all the other layers and breaks up the quartzite layer, removing most of it so that just odd stones (which happened to be harder than the rest) remain.

 

 

The 'Plain of Marlborough' must have seemed like a mystical place to Stone age man; littered with strange, giant stones amongst the chalk.

 

They would have been ideal for building. Because they were formed from a layer which was then broken up means they were naturally rectangular.

 

What interested me about the Hounslow Sarsen is that the quarrymen must have been sufficiently entranced by the stone they found that they brought it over to Hounslow for display - the old magic of the stones was still working!

 

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

 

Home; helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

 

Contact me:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

 

 

Olivier Grossetete; The Cardboard Tower of Hounslow.

It's quite an impressive sight - we saw this as we drove through Hounslow, I dropped Robyn off and then came back to do some shopping. Robyn thought it was standing when we drove past, I'm not so sure.

Either way, this is what I thought of as I approached it;

                                 "Ozymandias"

            I met a traveller from an antique land
            Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
            Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
            Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
            And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
           Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
           Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
           The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
           And on the pedestal these words appear:
           'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
           Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
           Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
           Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
           The lone and level sands stretch far away

                      Percy Bysshe Shelley.

A lot of work went into that and quite a lot of sellotape too;

 

 

 

It was actually a work of art by Olivier Grossetete who is a kind of performance artist; he builds castles, fantasy buildings or monuments out of cardboard. They last for about a day and then they are demolished.

 

 

It was a replica of the top of the tower at Kew Bridge Steam museum which was a 19th century water pumping station.

 

It was due to be destroyed at 2 pm so it's rather sad that people didn't get to enjoy it on Sunday.

 

It was still quite an achievement.

 

 

 

 

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

 

Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

 

Contact me:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com