ABC Wednesday - B for Brookwood

ABC Wednesday

Very late this one; very, very busy day.

I love cemeteries and the older the better. Not too many miles from where I live is Brookwood Cemetery and I wrote this about it for the Saturday Photo Hunt in September of last year:


This is a picture I took on a visit to Brookwood Cemetery last weekend. The cemetery was opened in Victorian times specifically for the purpose of burying London's dead, due to lack of space in the capital's graveyards. Trains ran from Waterloo Station directly into the cemetery and this length of railway track is taken from the original line. The cemetery is a wonderful, peaceful place with lots of grand examples of Victorian 'over-the-top' splendour. Now it is a multi-cultural burial site, serving many different religions and races. The American Military section was used for the final scene in the 1976 film The Omen. There is also a section which contains a monastery, home to the Saint Edward Brotherhood. This was established in 1982 to prepare and care for the church in which the sacred relics of Saint Edward the Martyr, King of England, are enshrined. A small community of monks hold daily services, joined on Sundays and weekdays by a number of Orthodox believers residing in the area.

And here are some pictures:











Sorry it's a bit of a cheat. Just didn't have time to be creative!!

Saturday Photo Hunt - Old Fashioned

Go on -join in. Just click here.

My offering this week is, once more, taken from the photo archives of the Ottershaw Players:

Firstly we have scenes from Dickens' A Christmas Carol - fairly old-fashioned, I think.

Scrooge counting his money

Bob Cratchit

A young Ebenezer Scrooge and fiancee

Next we have some Sherlock Holmes shots; a little bit later (and in a lighter vein) but still 'old fashioned'.

Show night at the Ottershaw Empire

Watson & Holmes

Singalong!



Acrobatistes

Great fun for EVERYONE!

Happy Saturday Photo Hunt, everybody.

ABC Wednesday

ABC Wednesday

Thanks to Siani I thought I'd give this a try so here goes.......

These lady archers are standing on the roof of a very impressive building in Tenerife.






This archer is not as glamorous but an angel in my eyes!

Plus..........

And I'm making a long coat for Long Dong Goldstein & a cloak for Blind Phew!!!

PS Sorry about my last post's font. Tried to change it but it wouldn't work.

Here we go again......

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. - Sam Ewig


No sooner have I caught up on things neglected for the past few months than along comes another show for the Ottershaw Players to perform and more costumes, ticket sales, etc., etc. are needed. This time it's Pleasure Island, based (loosely, very loosely!) on our Christmas production of Treasure Island so you'd think that the costuming would be a doddle, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong. Pleasure Island is our (sometimes) annual Farrago, an adult show, very rude, very funny and great fun for cast, crew and audience alike. If I tell you that my jobs for today are altering a pair of black leather , laced up the sides trousers for a character called 'Black Puss' and putting a flap on the behind of a pair of long johns on which the treasure map will be pinned, this for a character called Billy Boner, then you'll get the picture. Nudge, nudge... wink, wink.

Well, must go. Need some strong coffee to get to grips with it all.

Saturday Photo Hunt - Important

Haven't done this for ages so I'm very much out of practise but here goes:

These are pictures of a statue (known as the Copper Horse) of George the Third of Great Britain, dressed as a Roman Emperor) who was considered very important because he was a king. It was during his reign that the United States of America and the United Kingdom were formed and those two events were certainly important to all concerned. Unfortunately, he eventually went mad.
















The statue stands on the summit of Snow Hill in Windsor Great Park at the end of the Long Walk, which leads down to Windsor Castle, home to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second, a Very Important Person indeed.



Windsor Castle itself is a very important building because it's the largest, oldest inhabited castle in the world, dating back to the time of William the Conqueror in the 11th century. The picture here is not at all important because it was taken on a very cold and misty day and is absolute rubbish!


Happy Photo Hunting!

Service with a smile?.....You'll be lucky!!!!

Why is it that people who work in 'service' industries (shop assistants, restaurant staff, helplines, etc.) find it so difficult to actually give a service? Or if they do fulfil their obligations, as described in their job description, they do so with such bad grace and, sometimes, downright rudeness. Examples follow:

• On Christmas Eve I was shopping for a few last minute things in Tesco when I needed to be directed to wherever it was they kept the tomato juice. I'd looked in all the (to me) obvious places (mixers, fruit juices) but couldn't find it. Now, I know that I'm past my best and my brain isn't quite as sharp as it used to be and I knew that this elusive juice would be in a pretty obvious place (obvious, that is, to everyone except me) but I did expect a more 'helping old ladies across the road' attitude than the one I got, which was aggressive, rude and totally uncalled for. It's not as if it was halfway through the day and the store was extremely busy (this was approximately 5.30am and not all that many customers around) and I didn't interrupt this individual from building a festive pyramid of Christmas puddings in order to take me by the hand and lead me around the store. I just asked, very politely, 'Excuse me, please could you tell me where the tomato juice is?' His response was to roar 'WHAAAT??' whereupon I meekly repeated my request. With much eye rolling and waving of fingers he replied 'Over there' in a tone that indicated he was obviously dealing with a moron. Put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

• During my enforced absence from blogging I had the misfortune to lose my internet connection . All of the hardware, etc seemed to be in good working order so I assumed that the problem was with my service provider, (oh no, not again) Tesco. Obviously Tesco have a central charm training school to which they send all of their employees regardless of their role in that great and glorious conglomerate. However, in this section of their world domination, they charge you 50p/minute for their employees to be rude and unhelpful. The very lovely Pete was my advisor and mentor for this unwanted, hugely inconvenient disruption to my life (bills to be paid, emails and blogs to read) and he had spent 30 minutes talking to them without a result so add to it the 20 minutes or so that it took me to work out that they didn't intend to be of any use and there's £25's worth of no help and frustration. Anyway, it got fixed in the end (thanks, Pete) but don't it make you mad.

• Yesterday went out to lunch with Jo and Thomas. Ok, so it was a Harvester but it's only up the road and they have a 'help yourself' salad bar and Thomas likes it. All was reasonably OK (apart from the waitress dropping a knife on David's beer thereby depositing huge chunks of glass in it and then having to be asked to replace the drink) but then I thought I'd finish on a nice cup of coffee. Costa coffee was the brand advertised in the menu so I was envisaging a good rich, dark brown, aromatic drink. When it came the 'rich, dark brown' part wasn't obvious and a small doubt began to creep into my head. It was too hot to taste, right then, so I watched Thomas devour his double chocolate brownie sundae, relishing every morsel with him, whilst I waited for it to cool. When I eventually brought the cup to my lips the first thing that struck me was that it didn't actually smell of anything. So that was the 'aromatic' bit gone. Then I sipped it; I swear that if it was Costa coffee it was diluted with about 2 gallons of hot water! The manager happened to be passing so I explained my problem and he carried it off muttering something about it all coming out of the same pot but soon returned with a fresh cup. This, I'm sorry to say, looked very similar to the previous one and, on tasting, tasted exactly the same. We weren't charged but there was no apology just the the assumption that I was being unreasonable for not liking their undrinkable coffee.

So..... why can't these people be trained to say 'sorry' to the customer, even if they think they are right. It defuses any potential confrontation and costs nothing. More importantly, why can't companies INSIST that their employees are polite. Would make life so much more pleasant.