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Columbia South Carolina

As already mentioned Columbia is the State capital and second largest city in South Carolina. But we were only staying one night and it was Saturday. The markets had taken over the down-town area so we went for a wander. The town was pleasant but our combined memory is more of the comfortable Home Towne Suites out on Columbiana Dr and the nearby shopping mall that provided food than of the City itself.

Saturday Markets Columbia - Click on this picture to see Meet Your Cremator and more

Most of the stalls were selling local produce like honey, cheese or jam. A number had handcrafts.

But the most innovative was Meet Your Cremator. This guy is a ceramic artist who makes personalised ceramic mugs that are caricatures of the client. He was chatting up some potential clients so I could only go by what he was saying to them. As far as I could work out he takes their photograph and possibly makes a sketch of what they might expect, then during the week in his studio/pottery he crafts a mug of their 'mug' and brings it back next week. They're a sort of modern Toby Jug.

It seemed to have a lot of downsides. Did they trust him enough to pay upfront? And if so what if they hated the thing? If not, does he trust them to turn up next week? Has he got a shed full of unsellable mugs? And how many people want a ceramic caricature of themselves anyway?

It was the stall's name that initially caught my attention. It seemed to suggest a change of business direction. Did he start out making crematory urns? I can see why that might've been an even harder sell than personalised mugs: 'It's the latest thing: an amusing caricature of your loved one to keep their ashes in... Got a photo of your mum on you?'

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Travel

Southern France

Touring in the South of France

September 2014

Lyon

Off the plane we are welcomed by a warm Autumn day in the south of France. Fragrant and green.

Lyon is the first step on our short stay in Southern France, touring in leisurely hops by car, down the Rhône valley from Lyon to Avignon and then to Aix and Nice with various stops along the way.

Months earlier I’d booked a car from Lyon Airport to be dropped off at Nice Airport. I’d tried booking town centre to town centre but there was nothing available.

This meant I got to drive an unfamiliar car, with no gearstick or ignition switch and various other novel idiosyncrasies, ‘straight off the plane’. But I managed to work it out and we got to see the countryside between the airport and the city and quite a bit of the outer suburbs at our own pace. Fortunately we had ‘Madam Butterfly’ with us (more of her later) else we could never have reached our hotel through the maze of one way streets.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Now I am seventy

On the occasion of an afternoon tea to mark this significant milestone...

When I was one, I was just begun;
When I was two, I was nearly new;
When I was Three, I was hardly me;
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*
*

But then I was sixty, and as clever as clever;
Wouldn't it be nice to stay sixty for ever and ever?

(With apologies to AA Milne)

Hang on! Now I'm seventy? How did that happen?

Opinions and Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)) has been a major influence on my life. I asked for and was given a copy of his collected Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell for my 21^st birthday and although I never agreed entirely with every one of his opinions I have always respected them.

In 1950 Russell won the Nobel Prize in literature but remained a controversial figure. He was responsible for the Russell–Einstein Manifesto in 1955. The signatories included Albert Einstein, just before his death, and ten other eminent intellectuals and scientists. They warned of the dangers of nuclear weapons and called on governments to find alternative ways of resolving conflict. Russell went on to become the first president of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and subsequently organised opposition to the Vietnam War. He could be seen in 50's news-reels at the head of CND demonstrations with his long divorced second wife Dora, for which he was jailed again at the age of 89.

In 1958 Gerald Holtom, created a logo for the movement by stylising, superimposing and circling the semaphore letters ND.

Some four years earlier I'd gained my semaphore badge in the Cubs, so like many children of my vintage, I already knew that: = N(uclear) = D(isarmament)

The logo soon became ubiquitous, graphitied onto walls and pavements, and widely used as a peace symbol in the 60s and 70s, particularly in hippie communes and crudely painted on VW camper-vans.

(otherwise known as the phallic Mercedes).