Leeds as we've never seen it

It it relentless this sun, been out now for a week. The good folk of Yorkshire are lapping it up. This is not always a good thing as the number of beer bellied white male whales basking on every bench ad strip of grass quite puts an aesthetic dampener on the visual enjoyment of a vista. More than made up for though by the summer frocks and the minimal outfits sported by the Leeds lovelies. We saw on the local news that Leeds had attracted it's very own open top double deck red tourist bus this year.... Had to have a go and got on for it's first lap of the town last Saturday. I will not try and relate all the facts the recorded voice delivers but it is an hour of solid infotainment the likes of which I was unaware Leeds could support. We got all drowned in history, fame and interesting stuff.

For example Leeds ad the first mobile steam engine, they used it to haul coal from the mines to the foundries and mills. The rail thing got so important they even dug up a graveyard to run it into Leeds city. The shot above shows the only 45degree graveyard in the world which resulted after the vicar demanded the stones be re-laid over the grave sites after the embankment was built.

What I will do is just make some notes next to the shots Gal took so you can take an abbreviated ride of our days out. reflections in The Bourse windows

This bloke is the Black Prince, father of Richard II who was killed in Pontefract Castle in 1399. The black prince at age 16 defeated the French at Cresy in 1346 but there is no link to the city of Leeds other than the Mayor in 1902 at his own expense commissioned a foundry in Belgium to make the thing, shipped it to Hull then up the canals to Leeds. One interesting thing the Mayor did was insist that the statue travel all the way, from the moment it left it's molds in the Antwerp foundry to its plinth in Leeds City square, with the horse facing the direction of travel, to the point that it was mounted on the plinth from the end rather than from the side.

The Civic hall with it's gold clocks and Owls. Built during the Depression of 1920's-30's as a civic project to give local trades something to do. no expense spared, the best of materials. Magic inside and out.

The square in front of the civic hall

This old barge gives reference to Leeds/Liverpool canal history and is now DryDock, a popular University bar. Leeds Univesrity employs about a third of the Leeds workforce and covers over 100 acres of the city.

Broadcast House, known as the rusty building or the rusty nail. High grade steel exterior rusts only on the surface and self-forms a barrier to further corrosion.

Kids benefiting from the fountain in city square

Corn Exchange building and

Kirkstall Markets, the largest covered /open city markets on the planet, or Europe,,, anyway they are big and lots of fun.

As Part of our Saturday Bus fare , seven quid for the two of us (until June) we also got a trip on the Black Prince river barge which runs from Clarence Dock to Granary Wharf. We spent Sunday getting on and off it and walking Leeds before using the barge to get back. This is a shot of the Armouries from the Canal. We have been there, it is England's historical weapon museum and another mind-blowing day out. They do jousting and falconry exhibitions and have an elephant in full armour among other things.

Leeds is Yorkshire's biggest city and its canal warehouses and vacant lands are slowly being converted to offices and apartments.

Bridgewater Office tower, currently leeds tallest building.

The arches of the River Aire beneath Leeds Railway terminus.

Granary Wharf

Lunch at Zizi's outside the Corn Exhange

Brewery Wharf

A horse in the city.... not every day but this stable hand is taking it for a stroll through Clarence Dock after the jousting exhibition at the Armouries field.

Anyway that's it for the photo tour, we both got a lot of sun, had a go on a boat and are happy little Aussies again.

Election, Nidd, Temple and more spring.

It has Happenned. Warm weather. Days of it. All in a row. I can only assume it is because the Great British public got a new Government. It should be noted though once again the political process failed to elect in a new Prime Minister. In fact the voters (Gail and I included this time) failed to vote in anyone. This has meant that first runner up and third runner up suddenly realised that rather than having absolutly nothing in common and being life long enemies they have now, so we are told after a week of secret romancing, got lots and lots in common are are really very very good friends. To prove it to the people who think it is important, the first place politician got married to the third place one. It was a garden wedding in the sun behind their new city home at number ten Downing Street. They declared their troth for five years. Which is a long time for modern marriage. The couple are now called "A New Politics". Everyone is happy especially the people who like it when there is a Government. Those people went to market and bought lots of Pound notes. So England has a new Left-Right coalition government of new Conservative Liberal Democrats doing what the omnipresent civil service tells them. I think that neatly ties up all the available political manouvering space and I wonder what the new opposition (Labour ex-government) can do to differentiate itself.... It seems obvious new Labor is wondering about that too. Gordon, the bloke who got them only second runner-up place in the election was sent home to Scotland..... A bit harsh I think. He said he didn't want any more politics and wasn't going on the business circuit of directorships and speeches at conferences.....Smart call, given the likely demand for his services. Anyway now Labour have to pick a loser leader, that will be fun to watch. It is interesting being able to watch the original Westminster system working from up close. A bit disconcerting that Australia has based it's structure on it, but thankfully we seem to be able do it better. While Australia has had coalition as a norm for years with the Libs/CP, the concept of coalition government doesn't seem to sit so well here. All rather interesting as a diversion but much more importantly, it is so nice to have the sun in which to sit and sip Pimms. As you can see when the seasons change so do our back yard visitors, pheasants are an unusual frequenter of our yard and rarer still to get a female. This one stayed for an afternoon but failed to become as brazen as the grey squirrels. Squirrels are considered vermin by us locals, except Gail who can't get over their little furriness....

All squirrel shots on this blog appear by dint of Gail's photographic infatuation and my lack of resolve not to include them. I mentioned in the last blog that I have joined a writers/artists group http://www.leedssavages.com/ and they held their launch at a place called Temple Works of which I now add a couple of inside shots. The main space shown behind Gail here is some 2 acres (about point eight of a hectacre) and when built was the largest single room in the world. This is a ground floor space made available for free use by anyone artistic. The building is being put structurally right by the owners but all internal works, cleaning, painting, electrical, plumbing, heating, are done by groups who have some cultural or artistic proposition in return for free use of the space. Right now the building is achingly cold to work in but hopefully in time and with use the warmth will infiltrate. Gail and I are still getting out to Yorkshire places we have not been to. There are millions of them. The shots that follow here are of Nidd Hall, in Nidd, in Nidderdale. It is a Victorian home of opulent hideousness and over the top plaster decoration which was the fashion a hundred or so years ago. The whole place with it's huge grounds, stables and worker's village is now part of the Warner Group of Hotels where rich old people go for hlidays. We should have felt very out of place. It was nice though to have a drink and burger and while we enjoyed the stroll through the grounds and around the lake, there are better places in Yorkshire. Good news is it is close to Ripley Castle, one of those better places, where they sell the nicest soft serve ice cream in the universe, according to Gail.

Hopefully there will be more nice stuff to tell you about over the next few weeks, I expect so.

Spring and houses

Oh yes!!!

Spring arrived in our backyard for an afternoon and we rushed to make our first Pimms in a jug.... We got the mixing instructions on the bottle wrong and ended up mixing it way above recommended octane levels resulting in us getting well and truely in rapid time. It was about halfway through this process we decided it would be a great idea to set up a timed shot of us both....It says 1 part Pimms, 3 parts mixer, I sort of read it as 1/3 Pimms and 2/3rds mixer. And gave it a glug or two extra Pimms....probably ended up 50/50. Which was how we felt hence the somewhat less than level photo and stupidly grinning posed result.

The days have been bringing some pleasant sunshine, we even had a few days where it was over 13 degrees.... maybe nothing to write home about but we think of these events for days afterwards. You will see from this shot that the season has bought new visiters to our landscape. Along with their happy quacking when we enter into the yard there is the ever present downside of what they leave behind.... All duck feeding has ceased. It is heartwrenching trying to get them to understand they should return to the river or wherever their natural food is. I think they have fallen in love with our place.

This strange sculpture of a telescopic sheep with wool of flax rope and the shot of the fascade of the building below both have quite a bit to do with the fact that Greg has become an early start member of a writers group called the Leeds Savages http://leedssavage.com which has as its occasional base the Temple Works Building which by happenstance is not far from where we first lived when we came to Leeds three years ago. http://www.templeworksleeds.com/tw/ All of which may be interesting but not as interesting as why a sheep has telescopic legs and flax hair.

The building is quite famous because for a while it was the largest undercover open workspace in the world. As it was used for flax production and weaving there was a need for constant temperature which was acheived by putting soil to some depth on the roof. Well, naturally grass and trees took root and it was decided in order to keep the forest from re-sprouting and the grasses overgrowing the roof windows they would put a bunch of sheep on the roof. Now sheep have to eventually get down from roofs to go to market, get sheared and that sort of rural stuff. It was a problem which saw the world's first lift invented to take the sheep up and down from the roof. This is not the world's first sheep lift you understand. It was the worlds first mechanised lift of any sort. Think of this next time you are waiting in line for a elevator...... I tell you the things we love about Leeds gets longer and longer...... Now at least you can understand about the telescopic flax sheep sculpture.... We had been wondering for some time.

What you see here are a numer of shots of houses we have been looking at around Manchester. There is a thought between us that we may rent out Wetherby and buy another place closer to Gail's work which seems to be mainly based oer that way. Yes another property renovation..... Will it ever end? Really we don't know as Gail may decide to change employers i which case we would be closer to her work here then.

It is key to us that if we move it has to be to a canal side home where we could benefit from the network of national waterways...... more on that in later blogs if the move ever comes off.

You will see from the snaps the size of home is not going to be huge for our budget nor will it be in great shape (again). But we have found places with fantastic views, good sized frontages or rear-ages to canals and yet agai we are getting the smell of dust and cement in our nostrils and have started pawing at the doors of banks and real estate agents in anticipation of that ellusive deal.

Not suprising then I guess that we also find ourselves pausing for thoughts over the odd margharita and ales in various bars and nightclubs across the country. I can't tell you much more at his stage but I will when something wondeful happens or even if it doesn't. Oh and Gail was quite tickled to find these springtime boot-thongs in a shop in Warrington. Thankfully the shop was closed or they would have walked , so to speak. I ask you, legwarmers and toe straps? Only in the UK I think.