Big thanks to those that came along.

Some pics of the Air Forces Memorial.

Full set of the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial.

Sometime last year we went on a big hike around Bledlow Ridge with Emily and Katie, while walking we kept hearing weird loud noises which we couldn’t place, eventually worked out it was a steam train on the Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway. Emily found an ad for a Nature journey so we planned a picnic and a trip along with Max, Fi and Caden. Unfortunately Emily and Katie couldn’t make it in the end.

Slightly disappointed to find out it was a diesel train rather than a steam train when we showed up (none of us had actually read the advert properly) but it was good fun. It was very different to our expectations, we had expected a planned tour with items of specific interest pointed out, what actually happened was the train moved very slowly for an hour or so and we were all told to yell if we saw anything exciting. We saw a deer and a shedload of red kites. Good fun really. Bit of a walk down the road to find somewhere for our picnic then we went home.

Full set of Chinnor & Princes Risborough picnic day here.

Our train

Went for probably the last proper expedition of the year with Scott a few weeks back. Torn between doing a tour of London or Salisbury Plain we decided it was far too hot to go into the city so escaped to the plain again. Tried out a couple of places we hadn’t been before, including the best pub-restaurant I’ve ever been to – The Boot Inn in Berwick St. James, the food, the service and the setting were all pretty much perfect. Didn’t take many photos on the firing ranges as covered them in enough detail in the past.

Crofton Beam Engines

One of those places we had seen tourist signs for ever since we’ve been visiting the plain. Stopped to have a look for the first time. Pretty interesting piece of engineering, as far as I can ascertain it’s a big steam powered engine in a building that was used to push loads of water uphill. I could be wrong, I did take a brochure/guide but it’s somewhere in my mess of an office. Lots of shiny machinery mixed with a picturesque landscape. Full set of Crofton Beam Engine photos here…

Scott interfering with the machinery

Berwick St. James

Pretty awesome little village. Could happily live there. Asked the nice lady who runs the Boot if she ever misses the noise of city/town life (she used to live near me), she looked at me like I was mental. We explored the church a bit then moved on.

The Boot Inn

St. Alban the Martyr

Another location we’ve driven past many times but never been inside. St. Alban the Martyr is a military chuch in Larkhill. Nice lady showed us around and pointed at items of specific interest, slightly awkward moment when she asked if we were military and what our interest in churches was (no & they look nice). Very impressive inside with some great windows. Full set of St. Alban the Martyr photos.

And finally…

Look at the size of this fish we spotted off a bridge in Marlow. Any idea what it is?

Recent favourites:

Noisy Tits in the garden

House by All Saints Cemetery in Maidenhead. Up for sale, very tempting.

Somewhere in Shiplake

In the woods…

Karen, Emily and Katie posing for their Indie-rock album cover (by the Temple of Venus in West Wycombe park)

Knowl Hill in the Snow:

Braving the wastelands of Knowl Hill in the snow:

Katie – Rescuer of abandoned Christmas Ornaments

Ed’s favourite ride

Full set of Knowl Hill Snow expedition photos.

Avebury:

Quick visit to Avebury for lunch with Dad and Jan.

Full set of Avebury photos.

Wargrave Commission, Maidenhead in the Snow

More shots of Maidenhead in the snow.

The Typaedia is exactly what it looks like, a great big book of index numbered typefaces which you could leaf through to order sheets of letraset-type font sheets to create layouts, negatives and all the other stuff a working print-shop may use typefaces for. There’s an introduction page:

Introducing Conways’ Typaedia*
Conway’s Typaedia is a unique collection of some 4000 display faces.
Each is shown in its entirety, with caps, lower case, variants, punctuation and signs, arranged alphabetically in two separate sections, and all available at Conways’ as headline photosetting.
The first section shows the bulk of the faces – 3300 in alphabetical order with the second section showing 700 faces in the Agency series.
There is an Introduction to each section, a Latest additions section and a comprehensive Index.
The first section of 3300 faces is enclosed along with with the full Index.
The Agency section together with the introductions and the Latest additions, all at present at the printers, will be delivered to you early 1980.
Altogether…a unique work of reference
* Typaedia,-paedia (Latin,fem), a doctrine or learning.

From there we just dive into pages and pages of fonts, no other explanation needed. It’s a lovely catalogue, nicely spaced with no unnecessary crap, no explanations, no sales pitch it assumes the reader knows it’s purpose and doesn’t need to patronise or hard sell at them. Lessons on simplicity could be learned from here (mostly by me).

It’s a great reminder of how stupidly easy it is for us these days even in comparison to 30 years ago. When we need a new typeface we can purchase it and be using it within a couple of minutes, back then you had to go collect them or wait for an order to turn up. Every character you used had a cost, if you knackered up your design there was no undo, it was back to the supplier to get another sheet. And most importantly you had to keep your stash of lettering safe from your 8 year old who found the whole concept fascinating and would happily apply your lettering to any surface given half a chance.

My Dad gave me this book recently, which was really cool. For most of my childhood he ran a print shop (and still does), and I have some really happy memories of laying into his assorted work materials and making crap with them. I have especially fond memories of letraset and some really sharp memories of sitting on the floor rubbing the letters onto whatever materials happened to be around. Not with any real creative intent, I just found the whole process amazing, it held an almost bubble-wrap type fascination. The Typaedia was never that far from hand.

The book itself is well used, covered with splatters of ink, random bookmarks, biro scribbles and the other assorted grunge of a workshop. It’s almost comforting to have on my bookshelf. I’m slightly annoyed that I forgot to photograph the back cover which has one of Dad’s promotional stickers on it as drawn by a local illustrator (Peter Classey), as they also form a strong part of my early memories.

Thanks Dad.

Full set of Typaedia photos on Flickr.

I picked this up in a charity shop in Newbury for about £3 along with a nice selection of arty books. I have no idea of the purpose of this book, assuming it had a purpose in the first place. It’s a lovely chunky hardback containing shedloads of text, some colour photos of Highrise buildings and a mass of intriguing floorplans for aforementioned buildings. None of the text is in latin script apart from the title on the cover and a couple of chapter headings, I’m assuming it’s all in a Chinese dialect. I don’t want to know what any of it means, that would ruin the magic, it’s probably an exceptionally dull text book, but it looks nice. It’s been rubber stamped on the inside cover (again in Chinese), which may be  a library stamp, or a school stamp or may not be. Enjoy the intrigue.

Disclaimer. I may be violating someone’s copyright here. If so, contact me and I shall remove this entry and photos.

Full set on flickr.

Brown Signing: Traveling in one direction until you see a brown traffic tourist sign, then following it to that specific tourist attraction regardless of if you’ve heard of it or it sounds interesting. It doesn’t have to be an official brown sign, just some indication of a touristy type thing.

There’s an excruciatingly dull story behind this, I expect you want to hear it. Being cretinously self-employed I don’t really have such things as holidays or weekends. My darling Lady K who is somewhat challenged when it comes to transport will on occasion ask me to drive her to work related events round the country, not usually that far from home that I couldn’t come back in the interim, but as an attempt to stave off the ever impending work related mental breakdown I’ll take the entire day off rather than come back and work. She get’s transport, I get a day off, everyone wins.

I suck balls at taking days off. I have no idea what to do with myself, I know I should write, draw, photograph and similar but usually end up dragging my arse around the nearest town centre slowing turning into some sort of consumer-zombie. I started trying to research the areas before we set out, but I either can’t find anything that sounds FUN or I leave my list of places to go at home (I am nothing if not a fucking idiot).

After spending an HOUR AND A HALF in Newbury town centre trying to find the public toilets (thanks Newbury council you fucknuts, considered a signpost or two?)  I left. I had planned to spend a while at Donnington Castle, but it was rainy, and pretty dull (comparative to other castle ruins). Bored shitless with no desire to haunt shopping centres or go home I drove in one direction looking for something to do, with the decision to stop at the first tourist attraction regardless of what it was. It was a disused 12th Century Church – St Margaret’s Catmore which is a pretty awesome find.

I have a minor (non-religious) obsession with churches, it was disused and mildly difficult to get to so completely devoid of people (I have  minor dislike of people).  There is no way I would have found this intentionally, the only tourist attractions I found on the web were the usual family friendly over-priced nonsense, this my friends if the power of the BROWN SIGN. Couple of hours poking round a disused (but still fully furnished church) in complete isolation for free was worth the journey. Afterwards a drive back towards Newbury stopping at the first signposted country pub for a very nice lunch in an otherwise empty pub (no idea what it was called or where it was) and set out again.

Next brown-sign find was Snelsmore Common. What’s better than empty churches with no people? Nature reserves with no people! Well very few people. Mostly wild ponies, which was nice. I did have a disturbing moment in the car park. There was a bus of disabled kids alongside me whose teacher was holding up items from the forest for them to name. As I stepped out of the car the teacher presumably held up a leaf as all the kids turned to look at me and chanted ‘Leave, leave, leave’. Good for them, I wouldn’t want some hairy angry web developer stumbling round my  common either.

Then we went home and nearly had three horrific accidents on the way, I am a shit driver. I took many photos, let me bore you with them:

Donnington Castle – (Full Set Here)

St Margaret Catmore (Full set here)

Snelsmore Common (Full set here)

Mostly close-ups of fungus. Mmm… fungus.

Pleasant day all considered, I’m happy I’ve found a way round my usual mental lethargy, hopefully I’ll have another crack soon.