Enjoy the Christmas lights with Storm Bram
Bournemouth Pier
Pier Approach
Nobody wants to knock the elf off the shelf.
This way for more fun…
Elves on strike
Just time to dash across the road before a bus comes along.
Be careful, The Square ( that’s round ) is very slippery when wet. Now you can slip into the Alpine Bar.
He’s Back!
When you get carried away with your Christmas lights…
A Heavenly message ?
Or a Harbinger of Doom?
It’s raining here, but thanks to digital magic here is my favourite brightest Christmas tree from Australia.
Don’t know how I managed that, the bottom 12 % must be really rubbish! Minutes spent includes being distracted, playing with your phone, answering the doorbell and falling asleep – discovering the next morning you are still in the middle of a lesson.
And finally – Home of the Week
Have you got any elves on your shelves?
What décor do you favour for your home?
…and then the snowman starts singing!
Thank goodness he’s shut up…
Escape to somewhere magical…
Oh you mean it’s not real!
Follow the path to the first point of historic interest.
He was the first Briton to be killed in an aeronautical accident with a powered aircraft, when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off during a flying display in Bournemouth. He was aged 32.
Nearby is the popular Hiker Café, popular with the many dog walkers, but as we discovered when we went with my friend’s dog on a very windy rainy day, dogs are not allowed inside the café. Plenty of seating outside and very pleasant inside. Considering how many places let dogs in you might be surprised, but with the strong possibility of dogs getting wet and muddy you can see their point! A short walk takes you to the visitor centre where you can see the history of the headland back to the busy days of the iron age.
‘Long before the arrival of the Romans, Hengistbury Head was a thriving trading port. Some have commented that Hengistbury Head was probably the first urban settlement in England. It was without doubt one of the the most important sea ports in the the whole of England.’
Reassuring to know nature can take back urban areas.
It’s time to make our way up.
Did you guess anything about this monolith in Friday’s blog? It was hard to find anything about it; alas it is neither ancient nor extra terrestrial, but still interesting. Created by sculptor Briony Marshall in 2016.
‘Layers of Bournemouth is a rammed earth sculpture that invites passers-by to slow down and contemplate the beauty and age of our precious natural world.‘
https://briony.com/project/layers-of-bournemouth/
Time to walk up to the top and enjoy the views of Christchurch Harbour..
Then return another way for sea views as the short winter day draws in.
You would have had time to walk further if you hadn’t stopped for coffee and cake at the café! Come back another day to explore more.
PS At one stage Henry George Selfridge bought Hengistbury Head with plans to build a magnificent castle. Fortunately the plans never got off the ground.
Have you been here, or do you have a favourite hill or iron age fort to walk round?
Random ponderings on First World Problems and out of world experiences.
Miserable November afternoon
Happy November morning, welcomed by a Robin singing his heart out.
It has been a discombobulating month so far. WordPress would not let me download new photographs; how could I go on any walks if I couldn’t use my photos! The naughty elf who runs WordPress seemed to be suggesting my gallery was too full. I deleted lots of pictures to no avail and causing havoc to my posts and pages. To be fair to WordPress this was on my desk top computer which is still on Windows 10, now no longer supported, whatever that means. Cyberson2 had suggested I didn’t need to worry or at least there was no point in doing anything, as my old computer would not cope with Windows 11. He had downloaded extra protection when they were visiting recently… And hey ho, I have heard scary things about Windows 11… So I created a test blog on my iPad and whoopee, pictures were accepted, so now I download pictures to the gallery then do my blog on the computer where my word documents are…
Anyway, back to real life. One of our local towns is in lockdown or gridlock… there are always road works somewhere, but this is work on the bypass that does not bypass the town, but ends at the roundabout. Only one side at a time is being closed over the next three weeks, but apparently locals could not drive or catch a bus with any hope of getting there. No problem for me, I don’t drive, don’t live in the town and I walk there. But it turns out walking across the river to your writers’ group or coffee morning is not much good if nobody else is there. Like any group we arrive from all directions to a central point.
Meanwhile, no such problem in Southbourne for our monthly book club, only one person absent. The only problem being half of us had not read the book and only one person loved it, nobody else liked it! After the previous month’s enjoyable hardback in good print size, we were faced with a thick paperback in small print. This is a famous novel many people have loved over the years. Find out what it was at the end of this blog. With two lots of visitors staying and blogs to write, I started reading, but decided I must abandon it. I met one of the other members out and about and was relieved to hear she had not read it either.
It is looking like autumn, but too mild. I have just given my so called lawn its third final mow of the year. Talking of global warming, we seem to have heard too little about Prince William’s Earthshot prize and ten year project. While world leaders preside over wars and destruction, clever people are working and innovating to look after the planet.
And talking of the planet…
Years ago my husband came back indoors one night and said he had just watched the space station fly over Ken’s garage. He had asked another neighbour why he was staring above Ken’s garage. We hadn’t known we could go on line and track its many differing orbits. After that we were obsessed for the period it was passing over Southbourne, or Dorset or England…
The International Space Station, that shining beacon of humanity, science and international cooperation is coming up to retirement or abandonment. My scientific knowledge usually comes from tuning in to the middle of intelligent radio programmes, so it may or may not be true that a space station does not stay in orbit of its own accord and is reliant on the occasional blast of propulsion, worked by the Russians. To bring it down safely to some remote Mexican desert is not guaranteed, dependent as it is on international cooperation. Russia’s MIR was successfully brought down in the desert, but Skylab was scattered over Western Australia in 1979. To have a piece of ISS come down in my road would be blogworthy, but possibly more inconvenient than work on the bypass.
Possible scenario of bits of ISS falling on Bournemouth seafront.
The novel was Catch 22 and the person who loved it also loved my novella Pandemonica and gave it a five star review on Goodreads, so she is obviously a good judge of books...
Have you read Catch 22… or Pandemonica?
Have you spotted the space station or perhaps even been to the space station?
Where might you see this mural? Answer further along...
Where might this lead?
Is this art?
Is there a painting hiding here?
If you emerge at low tide from the sea, what will you see?
Nearly finished…
Pity the bins are in the way!
https://www.facebook.com/people/Miroslav-Lucan-LucanArt-/100063777633781/
Where is your favourite place to see art?
Following on from yesterday’s Halloween theme tale, take a stroll through the setting.
You can read yesterday’s tiny tale here.
https://tidalscribe.com/2025/10/31/friday-flash-faction-moving-on/
Do you like wandering around graveyards, do you have a favourite? Are you as fascinated by the lives of writers as much as in what they wrote?
Wander down here, look left, then turn right.
Can you spot the landmark that you can see for miles around? Answers at the end of your walk.
Plenty to do along the way.
Which famous poet sat here and wrote while convalescing? Answer at the end.
Which direction is he pointing? Answer later…
It’s low tide, how far out will you dare wander?
What building are you looking at? Answer in a forthcoming blog.
Turn around and who do you see?
Find out in the next blog.
Who is this lady and what is she looking at?
The landmark you can see for miles around.
‘Arlington House is an 18-storey residential apartment and commercial block in the Brutalist style on the seafront of Margate, Kent, England, next to Margate railway station and Dreamland Margate. It was developed by Bernard Sunley and designed by Russel Diplock, and is known for every apartment having a sea view.’
T S Eliot wrote The Wasteland while sitting in the Nayland Rock Shelter
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
The soldier nearby is pointing north across the Thames Estuary.
The Lady is Mrs Booth, JW Turner’s landlady.
https://www.visitthanet.co.uk/attractions/mrs-booth-shell-lady-113494/
Visitors coming and going Chez Tidalscribe, but here’s something to think about while I’m busy…
While I was away I was idling away a few minutes on my phone and was surprised to get on ChatGPT. I had no intention of asking it to write my novel for me, but I would just see if it would make a picture of flowers and bees, perhaps a picture of a woman enjoying gardening ( age inserted ) – doesn’t look like me.
How about a beach hut, me at my beach hut, ask for purple hair and round down my age...
She looks fun, but it’s not me.
I’ll ask Chatterbox how to use my own photos… oil painting that looks better than my real garden.
Now my nineties friend wants a painting of her garden and thinks I’m very clever… I tell her AI is the clever one.
This is fun, could be addictive…. I have so many photos I could transform into art.
Or I could become an avatar. This really is addictive, I could turn all my family into Avatars, all my local scenes into an art gallery…
BUT of course this is dream land and it comes with guilt. We’re all using electricity and The Cloud is not really fluffy white and Artificial Intelligence uses a lot more power and water for cooling… Not to mention the ethics of presenting ChatGPT’s words as your own. Chatting to real people, it seems people are using ChatGPT for all sorts of useful things; asking it questions instead of Googling information, writing reports…
The above is all I have done on ChatGPT, using my own photos, except the one of me…
A real drawing by a human boy, Alex.
Have you used ChatGPT, if so how? Is it any different from all the other tools we use on line to create our blogs etc?
I have been away from the Blogosphere and dipping into real life. Here are some surreal pictures which should hopefully give you no idea where I have been and what new things I may have discovered. Let us know if you can guess any clues.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 