My body didn't work quite like it should

[venta]

Boojum, my occasional rapper team, was 3 this weekend. We had cake to celebrate. And wine. And practised like bastards, and took our new dance out round the pubs of Guildford on Saturday night.

Guildford is surprising. For no obvious reason, I've always assumed it to be a rather grim and grotty new town. Only it turns out it actually has oldish buildings, and narrow, steep little alleys. And names like Porridge Pot Alley, and Rosemary Lane. OK, so maybe we walked through the only nice part, but there is at least one.

And Guildford Cathedral. What's going on there ? As far as I can tell, the good people of Guildford had a conversation with the architect that went something like this:

<GPoG>: Can you design us a cathedral?
<Architect>: Er, I only do Victorian mills. What does a cathedral look like. Big brick building ?
<GPoG> Yes, that's right.
<Architect>: Chimney in the middle ?
<GPoG>: Er, no. Cathedrals have towers in the middle.
<Architect>: Oh. A tower... that's just like a big chimney, yes ?

... and so on.

It has all the necessary elements for a cathedral, but somehow looks just like a mill. Sadly, a bit of googling has failed to produce an image taken from the angle you see from Carolyn's house, though this probably comes closest to conveying its mill-ness. Having said that, I tried my Victorian mill theory out on Angi, and she said it was more 60s comprehensive. Since google tells me the cathedral was completed in 1961, I suspect she might be right.

Not a good weekend for injuries, though. I've knackered the tendon in one elbow, and have a rather bruised foot. Everyone else produced a selection of pulled muscles, black eyes, scrapes and bumps. Most spectacular injury was following a dance in the Three Pigeons, when we finished to find some of the swords had blood on them. I checked my hands: yup, blood on them too, but it's not mine. One by one, everyone denies being injured. We were just beginning to wonder about the Miracle of the Bleeding Sword when someone finally produced a split thumb. Once she'd realised it was cut, apparently it immediately began hurting :)

And multimap hates me: the directions it gave me to drive to Carolyn's house contained one instruction that was just wrong. In accordance with the directions, I was proceeding west along York Road. "Leave the roundabout on the A322 Woodbridge Road", it said. I leave on an exit with that number and that name... all further directions cease to make sense. Having foolishly not printed out a map, I have no idea beyond the written directions, and assume that the mistake has happened later, since I know that I left the roundabout on the correct exit. I should have taken the other exit (Onslow Street, presumably still the A322, though it wasn't labelled as such) I now find, with hindsight.

I know multimap says its directions should be a guide only, but they've always been spot-on before. Won't be trusting them quite so blindly in the future :(


And in other news, I believe this is the first time since about Saturday morning that I haven't been incessantly humming Satellite of Love. This is something of a relief.

PS: Anyone who's read comments by "Richard" on here at various times, say hello to broadmeadow :)

Comments

[uitlander]

Hey, you should have mentioned you were heading Guildford-wards, jennyh, I and Mr Grist could have come over and observed from the sidelines. Guildford seems pretty neat overall, althought I thought the cathedral was more the 1930s school of 'oh just hang a swastika on it and it'll look OK' architecture.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Rats :( I remember now that I was supposed to tell you if we were going to Guildford. Sorry.

By coincidence, Mr Grist did see me but not, er, in action, as it were.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Having said that, I tried my Victorian mill theory out on Angi, and she said it was more 60s comprehensive.

Have to say, I second the 60s comprehensive stuff.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

> It has all the necessary elements for a cathedral, but somehow looks just like a mill

We could have a whole new thread here of church architecture. I'm not 100% sure where this is (probably in or around Bournemouth) but I found this extremely depressing example in my Dad's slide collection:

http://botech.co.uk/sfn/0000/016-017.html

I'm sure that's either a converted factory or a converted prison.

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

To me it looks like a Mill, mostly because it looks like Trencherfield Mill, Wigan.