Admittedly, I don’t pay much attention to the goings-on of the British Royal Family, but I won’t hesitate to give HM The Queen a royal salute for having her Diamond Jubilee this past weekend. As a result, we got two bank holidays in a row, and the four-day weekend was most welcome, indeed. When in the moment, I feared I wasn’t getting much done during this block of free time. But looking back on it, I accomplished quite a bit: a trip to Colindale to find some long-lost newspaper articles for book research; an interview with Australian actor Trader Faulkner, who told of some memorable weekends at Notley Abbey in 1955; arranged for tea with 97-year-old actress Renee Asherson; went to a screening of Prometheus; and finally, got out of London for a day!
With the seaside in mind, I boarded a train bound for Canterbury yesterday morning with my friend Anthony and his partner Tony. Canterbury is a lovely, medieval walled city famous for its massive cathedral, Chaucer’s stories and Eric Portman putting glue in girls’ hair during the blackout. After lunch at a little French cafe, we went to visit the site of many a religious pilgrimage before boarding a bus to Herne Bay.
The countryside was lovely, but Herne Bay is one of those seaside towns that looks much better in photos. The horrible weather didn’t help the already slightly depressing ambiance. What was once a bustling Victorian beach resort is now little more than beach-front ice cream shops, a shopping centre and a really ugly pier (the remains of the burnt-out Victorian pier are isolated out at sea). Rather disappointing, but all in all it was a fun trip and I managed to get some decent photos armed only with my camera phone.*
*This post is image-heavy.
Decent photos?!! Well, armed only with a camera phone, these photos are major friiken awesome!An interview with Trader Faulkner, tea with Renee Asherson! Wow, what a weekend, woohoo!
Thanks, Sylvia! It was a nice, long weekend 🙂
Impressive photos along with a nice article. You did a super job and seemed to have a pretty good time! One thing – next time bring me!
Canterbury was one of the few places I actually travelled to while I was in London- and I really liked it. I didn’t go to the Bay though.
Beautiful pictures! And considering they’re phone pictures- they look of very good quality 🙂
I gushed about your ‘pants’ already, but I love your whole outfit!
I want to live at n°25… Love the white door and the rose bush on the wall ! What fantastic and wonderful photos. I’m very jealous of your telephone camera… Mine gives the impression I’m taking a picture from deep waters…
Your photos are very good, even an ordinary looking flower looks fantastic. Did you go to school for photography? do you just wing it or do you have certain numbers on your camera and certain time of the day best to take pics or are you really good at photoshop?
Have you gotten the chance to read some of the letters from Vivien to Laurence Olivier that they have at the British Library? I would love to read them, but not quite sure if open to the public.
Have found the beautiful photos of C. only now coming back from hols,thank you so much, I wonder what camera you use, could it be in your handy, no, impossible, it must be more sophisticated,right.?Regards, Renata