Continuing my account of my Italian holiday, featuring Caravaggio, The Spanish Steps and a remarkable Pizza experience.
Welcome to the latest post in my series about my Italian holiday (2-11 September inclusive), which deals with the second half of the final full day in Rome before we moved on to Tivoli.
THE CARAVAGGIO
After finishing at Domitian’s Stadium we headed towards the Spanish Steps, and along the way we passed the church of Sant’Agostino, the main feature of which is a painting by the artist Caravaggio. It is very dark, and there is little light unless you pay 1 euro to have it briefly lit up. For obvious reasons flash photography is forbidden (I am in any case not keen on using the flash on my camera, so no hardship for me).
The Caravaggio painting – the first photo was taken with the lights off, the other two with them on.
Although the main feature of the church it was not the only one of interest, as this gallery, which covers from leaving Domitian’s Stadium to leaving the church should show:
THE SPANISH STEPS
We completed our afternoon’s activities with by walking to the Spanish Steps and then back to our apartment. There was, as always in Rome, much to see, as the gallery below indicates.
EMMA’S PIZZERIA
For that evening’s supper, our last in Rome before moving on to Tivoli the following morning, we were booked into Emma’s Pizzeria. I opted for ‘Bufala con prosciutto’, a pizza with buffalo milk cheese and prosciutto. It was a ‘white pizza’ – no tomato in the topping, which suits me fine. Roman pizzas have very thin and crispy bases, which I also approve of, so all in all this was a great success (indeed we had lunch there before heading to the airport for our flight home at the end of the holiday, and I made precisely the same choice).
My beer and the pizza
I end as is my custom with these posts with a waterfall video from Tivoli:
An account of running the NAS West Norfolk stall at the Downham Market Community Fair on Saturday.
INTRODUCTION
NAS West Norfolk were invited to run a stall at the Downham Market Community Fair, which took place on Saturday, with stalls setting up from 9AM and the event itself running from 10AM to 2PM. This post is my account from my perspective running the NASWN stall on the day. There will be plenty of photographs. I have stated elsewherethat while it is not ideal to have a stall covered by only one person if NAS West Norfolk are going to have only one person running the stall that person should be me.
GETTING THERE
I travelled to Downham Market by train (£3 return when making the journey at the weekend), selecting the 7:54AM, which would see me arrive at the station at about 8:10AM. I saw sufficiently much to take the eye as I walked through the town that I shall be putting up a separate post about that. I arrived outside the Town Hall at 8:35AM, giving me plenty of time to take some photographs of the outside of the building.
THE NASWN STALL
As arranged the person bringing the stall and some new leaflets arrived at 9AM, and the setup was swiftly accomplished. This was the first occasion in which the aspi.blog calendars for 2018 were on public display.
The stall – new leaflets/flyers, calendars and the display board.
A close up of the calendars.
AROUND THE HALL
Obviously, being in sole charge of the stall I did not have much opportunity for moving about once the event was underway, but I did get sufficient pictures from a combination of the occasions on which I did move about and those taken from the stall to give a feel for the event. We start with some general pictures of the inside of the building.
Two shots showing views of the hall
This parapet is presumably the front of an upstairs seating area.
The last two shots in this selection feature artwork on the walls just outside the hall.
Moving on to inidviudal stalls, I got pictures of the Downham Market Horticultural Society stall, the RBL stall, and various others. The most impressive stall of the day was that being run by the King’s Lynn and District Astronomy Society. They had a big screen displaying some very impressive slides as well their display board. The Cats Protection group had a stall, that like the NASWN stall was being run by a single person.Â
These are all the pictures of stalls other than the Astronomy Society one that I got, and it is to that group that I now turn:
Two shots of the KLADAS stall
The remainder are of slides that caught my attention.
THE NAS WEST NORFOLK STALL
The event was not massively attended, but I did see quite a few people at the NASWN stall, and the experience was overwhelmingly positive. My calendars impressed a few people but not sufficiently for any to sell. From an NASWN perspective, the main point of the day of course was to improve understanding of autism and to publicise the existence of our group. We succeeded as well as could have been hoped for in both regards, with a number of the new leaflets being taken, and quite a few people leaving the event better informed about autism than they had been before it started. I also got to explain about the rainbow coloured infinity symbol, and the fact that it is a symbol chosen by autistic people to represent the autistic spectrum. I consider that this event was a good use of a significant part of my Saturday. To finish, here is our stall for a second time:
The stall – new leaflets/flyers, calendars and the display board.
Two shots showing views of the hall
This parapet is presumably the front of an upstairs seating area.
The last two shots in this selection feature artwork on the walls just outside the hall.
This post was inspired by a comment posted on my ‘about aspiblog’ page by faradayscandle. I will be returning to this theme in future posts.
A SELECTION OF BUILDINGS
We will start with the most iconic building in King’s Lynn…
THE CUSTOM HOUSE
For more about the inside of the building visit this post. Here are two outside pictures both taken recently (the second of them today)…
KING’S LYNN MINSTER
This 12th century church, formlery known as St Margarets, has its own website where you can find out lots of information about it. Here a couple of pictures…
The frontage of this colossal edifice.
A closeup of the tide clock
THE OLD GAOL HOUSE
Still on the Saturday Market Place, this handsome building possesses one very interesting external feature. The building is currently closed, but will reopen as Stories of Lynn around Easter time. Meantime, here are two external pictures…
An interesting outdoor timepiece.
THE GUILDHALL
This remarkable building, right next door to the Old Gaol House, is chiefly known for its checkerboard frontage, but as this post shows, the inside is not too shabby either! Here are some pictures of the outside…
The remainder of the buildings will feature only single pictures. Having finished with the Saturday Market Place, we head towards the Tuesday Market Place, by way of King Street where we feature the Arts Centre…
Frequently when featuring the Tuesday Market Place the Corn Exchange dominates, but I am featuring just one building, The Dukes Head Hotel, home to Philanthropic Lodge 107. Of greater significance at the moment, this building will be hosting a Positive Autism Awareness Conference, organised by NAS West Norfolk. Here is the outside of the building…
ST ANN’S STREET
I am saving St Nicholas’ Chapel for another post, so I offer you St Ann’s House and the upstairs of the barber shop…
Our next brief port of call is…
THE RED MOUNT CHAPEL
This chapel, which is entirely surrounded by beautiful parkland always repays attention. here is a recent picture…
From here we head down the Broad Walk to…
THE LIBRARY
This is the only building in this part of the post of which I am posting more than one image, and both were taken recently. This is one of three libraries that I use on a regular basis, the others being Fakenham and The Millennium Library, Norwich.
The whole building
The frontage
HILLINGTON SQUARE
On our way down to the river, where we will finish, we pass Hillington Square, where improvement work has stopped since the £10 million that was allowed for this project has all been spent. Here is a glimpse of one of the new blocks…
SOMERFELD AND THOMAS
A disused warehouse, in need of renovation. The building is still fundamentally very attractive, and could be turned into something very good.
Before heading towards Lower Purfleet and the end of this post, a little look upriver to…
PALM PAPER
The direction in which the smoke is travelling in this picture (straight towards town) provides one reason as to why we objected to the building of an incinerator there. What we knew of the company who would have built it had we not put a stop to the idea was all bad (no contracts for anything in their native land since 1995, banned outright from operating in 29 of the 5o states of that native land). Also, incinerators are not a good idea anyway (I, and I suspect a majority of the 65,000 of us who said no, did not think it should be built anywhere). The fact that we prevented this should provide encouragement to others faced with greedy politicians trying to force hare-brained schemes on them (see here for a classic example).
MARRIOTT’S WAREHOUSE
A warehouse that has been given the necessary attention. As well as good cafe and restaurant this building houses a small exhibition of models of King’s Lynn buildings. From the outside this is what you see…
THE BANK HOUSE
This hotel his some interesting stuff inside it, and from the outside looks like this:
THE LOWER PURFLEET
We finish the post with a glimpse across the Lower Purfleet from The Bank House, where these buildings can be seen (a stone’s throw away is the Custom House where we started).
I am treating this as the first of a series of related posts owing to the fact that time restrictions on Wednesday when I took the photographs that are its raison d’etre meant that we (my mother and I) accounted for barely a tithe of the interesting buildings in the village (East Rudham).
We had hoped to start with the Manor House but this was not accessible, although the publicly accessible part of its driveway provided an angle to capture the rear window of The Old Reading Room and also a section of brick and flint wall…
Brick and flint walls are classic for the part of Norfolk.
The rear window of The Reading Room
Having got a shot of the rear window of the building, The Old Reading Room was an obvious next port of call…
The front door of the Old Reading Room
A close up of the name plate.
Just across the road from the Old Reading Room, is the Wesleyan Chapel, these days a private residence rather than a religious building…
The Wesleyan Chapel
A close up of the name and date plate.
After the Wesleyan Chapel came several very quirky specimens of local archiecture at the near end of School Road…
The lines of brickwork show the original shape of this building.
A modern version of a brick and flint gable end.
This outhouse roof section was a real curio.
Another gable end whose history can be read clearly!
Brick and flint is the regular mix in this part of the world, but this building features brick and carr (the dark brown stone)
From the near end of school road, we proceeded round the south side of the village green, starting with a shot of a section of brick and flint wall and continuing with a couple of a large barn behind which lurks a modern house…
Before proceeding to take front on shots of the barn and the cottages that adjoin it, I took a couple of panoramic views from the green…
The line of properties on the main road ends with one that until recently was both an eyesore and a health hazard (years of neglect had left it so run down that even the rats had moved on)
The village pub and the tea room next door to it.
The barn has a very fancy weathercock above it…
Next we come to two cottages painted in pastel colours (one yellow, one blue)…
The yellow cottage
Both cottages in one shot
The blue cottage
These two properties are separated by the width of what I have called “Fox Gate” from the detached cottage called Caradon…
“Fox Gate”
Caradon
The name plate
Between Caradon and the old post office (a very short distance) were a number of other properties to be photographed…
The building that used to be the post office is now much improved from the mouldering wreck it had become before restoration…
From here, via a shot of the side of the pub it was on to the church, the approach to which goes past an old cottage…
I took several shots of the church, was is almost entirely 19th Century, with a few hints of older stuff around…
The entrance ti the building.
I spotted this quirky window on the way out of the churchyard.
Although it involved some mildly unpleasant walking, the churchyard provided a few other good brick and flint shots and a slightly tree obscured shot of the Manor House…
The penultimate phase of this picture gathering expedition involved taking close ups of London House and the adjoining building that had not so long ago been an eyesore and a health hazard – there were loose tiles on the roof, and a not terribly wide pavement between the front of the building and the A148 (and for all that for that part of its length IT IS THE VILLAGE STREET not many motorists take due note of this important fact)…
This is the replacement for the derelict shop which had become an eyesore and a health hazard.
And this is London House
The name plate.
The final picture was this ‘home shot’ – on the right of the shot as you look is Mulberry Coach House and straight ahead is part of Mulberry Barn (this property now forms a right-angle, as two loose boxes have been converted into extra rooms)…
As I prepare for another day at work, I am listening to commentary from the Cricket World Cup. Bangladesh are giving a good account of themselves against New Zealand in Hamilton, while in between rain breaks in Sydney England look like finishing a truly appalling world cup campaign with victory over Afghanistan (maybe they should accept Cricket Japan’s invite to stop by for a few games on the way home!)
The pictures I will be sharing at various points in this post are from two sources, imaging for the March Auction (now practically complete) and some pics from in and around King’s Lynn. At some point in the future I will be putting up a post about architectural features to be found in the village of East Rudham, having recently taken some good pics there.
A lot of the imaging I did on Tuesday was of banknotes in albums, but a few other bits got in there as well…
This was one of a quantity of these that made up lot 349
This lot could appeal to postcard collecotrs, but also to those interested in stamps and postal history, so I have covered all bases!
My Wednesday morning walk was fitted in between the cricket commentary finishing and meeting my mother to go to East Rudham for lunch, photographing architecture, providing a tutorial in MS Access and finally playing bridge at the Jolly Sailors. This latter was enjoyable in spite of the fact that I had the kind of luck that should be toasted in extra bitter Fernet Branca!. At 5p a hundred I ended up £1.30 down on the evening – and on the three hands on which I was declarer I made two of the contracts and went one down undoubled on the other. Here are some of the highlights from the walk…
I will  finish by showing you some images from yesterday’s mop-up operation…
I don’t normally image single coins, but the person who usually does them was not around at the time I located this one, so I did it.
Imaging it the way I did meant I automatically had close-ups of each face – and if you’ve got ’em, use ’em
The next three items, lots 419,428 and 429 are sold with the usual caveats attendant on German militaria – at the buyer’s own risk.
Now come two lots of scenic postcards for each of what I produced two images.
This map is lot 719
Lot 726 (This, and the remaining three pics) is very nice.
To start with the second part of my title: VJB Day stands for Victory over Julien Blanc Day – it has been confirmed today that this vile specimen of Homo sapiens will not be admitted to Britain.
Today has been ridiculously sunny for November, so I have been out and about taking photographs, many of which my twitter followers have already seen. I now share some of the finest with my blog readers…
aspiblog 