Category Archives: Bournemouth

September 13, 2012 · 10:02 pm

Bournemouth Air Festival

We recently went to the Bournemouth Air Festival, to catch a sight of a few planes and choppers. The annual festival is a recent introduction to the British air show calendar, with the first event being held in 2008 – more than a million people turn up to watch. It makes perfect sense to host a big air show in Bournemouth. Firstly, the aircraft can do most of their manoevres over the sea, reducing the risk from accidents. Then there’s the plus point of having the show in a tourist hot spot, with all the facilities in place ready for an end of summer surge of visitors.

There are usually two stars of the show. The Red Arrows kick the event off with their high speed multi colour display. The finale a few hours later is the mighty Avro Vulcan. The delta winged bomber, which was a clear forerunner of Concorde, is an awesome sight. Just over a hundred and thirty of them were built in the 1950′s at huge expense, with a single purpose – to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc cities.

The last of them were retired in the mid 1980′s. What did they ever do to justify all the money spent building and maintaining them? Just one actual, real bombing raid. Just one. It was a hell of a raid though. A Vulcan took off from a British airfield and flew all the way to the Falkland Islands before delivering a conventional dose of explosives on to an Argentine controlled airfield. The story of the raid is remarkable and worth watching – it’s on YouTube here.  The Vulcan in the airshow is piloted by the same chap who flew that raid.

I shot a little bit of video from the airshow, and added a few photos to the album I created last year on Flickr. These days the Vulcan is flown rather sedately. It’s the last airworthy example, and once it’s gone, no Vulcan will fly again. A note on the video quality – at the end of the upload YouTube asked me if I wanted to ‘fix’ the video. Specifically to deal with hand-shake and lighting. I clicked yes. Why not? It fixed the hand shake pretty darned well. The lighting? Oh dear. The contrast fluctuates from hard to ridiculous, even blacking out at times. I think I’d prefer to have just the hand-shake fixed.

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May 27, 2012 · 8:00 am

The British Identity Problem

I took Mrs P for her first beach trip in England today. We had a picnic at Studland Bay, then jumped on a bus for the sandier shores of Sandbanks – one of the most expensive spits of land in the world. How to ensure she enjoyed herself? How can I make an English beach compare to a Mexican playa? Easy. Stick a bottle of Tequila in it. That snap, and the other photos I shot and uploading to Instagram, can also been seen on my Tumblr blog.

I wrote a comment on another blog recently, declaring my admiration for the continuing ability of the US to instil a sense of American idealism and identity in newly arrived immigrants. Many of whom come because of those ideals. I lamented the lack of a ‘British’ identity to promote to immigrants here in Britain.

Wandering through Bournemouth today, I took a closer look at what passes for Britishness in the 21st century. Foul-mouthed, drunken, anti-social slackers who soak up ill-gotten state benefits as readily as they soak up the sun. Sadly, only the sun leaves them red faced. Fortunately, they are still in the minority. But they do tend to make themselves more noticeable than Mr Average, and have been actively promoting this image of Britishness abroad for years.

So I have to retract my suggestion that there is no ‘British’ identity that is being promoted to immigrants to the UK. But luckily, it doesn’t seem to be rubbing off. Today, for the first time ever, I was served by a Briton* in Costa Coffee. Normally it’s an immigrant, more often than not a Pole. Today, for the first time ever, the assistant in Costa Coffee got my order wrong. Today, for the first time ever, my coffee sucked. Normally, the Pole gets my order right, and it’s a good cuppa.

The conclusion? We need more immigration in the UK, please. Not less. Let’s hope they don’t put too much effort into ‘assimilating’. Oh, and a little more emigration. Some ‘white flight’ wouldn’t entirely be a bad thing. Of course, it’s simply not acceptable to ask others to do something that one is unwilling to do. So I shall lead by example…. :)

* To be fair to the girl in question, she was sporting an ‘In Training’ badge, and was very polite and friendly.

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May 25, 2012 · 11:30 pm

An English Summer

It’s been as hot in parts of England as it has been in Mexico City this week. I’ve waited more than a year to be able to say that, and it won’t last, but I’ll enjoy the heatwave while we have it. Tomorrow we’re heading down to the beach. Bournemouth is just a twenty minute drive, but we’re planning on going to the slightly more exotic (and substantially less crowded) Sandbanks in Poole. And maybe on to Studland. The sands there are white, and when it’s hot you could, just for a moment, almost imagine you’re on the Mayan Riviera. That illusion will be instantly dispelled the moment your toes touch the chilly waters of the English channel.

The unseasonably hot weather we have suddenly, and belatedly, been blessed with is most enjoyable. It tempts one to wish we’d get a bit more of this global warming malarky. Not that everyone buys into global warming. I’m reasonably satisfied that we humans are having a significant and detrimental impact on the climate. The science is plausible, the evidence stacks up and the sources are credible. The opponents of AGW are, more often than not, nuts.

But those of us who are not climate scientists tend to have to rely on media sources due to our limited understanding of the complex data and models used. I do often come across sceptics who rely on a much older, tried and tested and easily demonstrable type of evidence – personal experience. They look out the window, and all is fine. Therefore the world is fine. Their couple of square miles of the globe are sufficient enough to be the basis of a judgement regarding the rest of the planet.

I find this bizarre, but quite interesting. Because casting judgements and making decisions based on personal experience has been such a reliable tool for human beings for millennia. The world isn’t local any more, of course. Nothing about any of our lives is terribly localised any more.

But anyway, using local climate conditions to come to a conclusion on the state of the planet probably wouldn’t work out for us Brits at the moment. We’ve had the driest and mildest winter for years. Followed by one of the warmest March’s on record. Followed by one of the wettest April’s on record. Followed by one of the coldest May’s on record. It’ll probably snow in June. The end of the world is nigh. The photo below, of Bournemouth’s pier, was taken on my Samsung Galaxy S2 with some filters added by Pixl-O-matic and Instagram.

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September 16, 2011 · 11:15 pm

Britain’s Acapulco

Bournemouth is the Acapulco of the United Kingdom. Acres of golden sandy beaches. Bars, birds and beer galore. And fabulous sunsets. It does have to be said though, that big ball of hot gas looks better setting over the glittering waters of the Pacific Ocean than it does disappearing behind the multiple peaks of housing and office blocks.

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August 21, 2011 · 11:52 am

Red White And Blue

I managed to get some video footage from yesterdays ill-fated air display from the Red Arrows. Just a few seconds worth. Captured on my Samsung Galaxy S2 cell phone. High definition video though. It’s not going to win me an Oscar, and it’s far from perfect in any meaningful way. But I am impressed with what you can get out of a cell phone.

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