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DaithaiC

An Irish expat in London casting a cold eye on life.

Follow | Public Spot created by DaithaiC the 12/08/2008 | Visited : 21452 | Channel: Shopping | Abusive content

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SPOTLIGHT

DaithaiC says : According to the London Evening Standard a nightclub and banqueting hall are to be built inside a reconstructed Victorian monument at Euston station under plans announced today. The Euston Arch stood in front of the station from 1838 until it was demolished by modernist town planners in 1962. Built at Euston Grove, the station was for many years the only north-bound railway exit from London. Designed in the classical style, the most notable feature was the massive Doric Arch entrance. Euston Station was one of the glories of British railway architecture it served as the terminus for travellers to London from Birmingham and the North West. Its architecture, based on Greek temples, was deemed a fitting gateway to the capital and an introduction to the engineering marvels of the railway beyond.

Euston Arch

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 24/09 | Add or View Comment

STORIES

DaithaiC says : The last time I wrote about Waddesdon Manor (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/waddesdon-manor-buckinghamshire.html )the wonderful Victorian gardens were wrapped in their winter coat of repentance. This is not entirely an allegorical flight for the statues and garden ornaments are wrapped to protect them from the frost and the house is closed up for maintenance, conservation and a deep clean. The Parterre which is the last original parterre in England is dug out and in spring roundly 58,000 thousand fresh plants are planted according to a computer template in a design which like the labels of the Rothschild’s Chateau Mouton changes each year. So I thought it would be an idea to catch these lovingly tended gardens and plants in the Plant Centre when they are in their full summer glory.

Waddesdon in bloom

Daithai C: Waddesdon in bloom

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 08/09 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : For many years in England the only form of a gamble which didn’t involve going to a Betting Shop was the Football Pools where you had to predict the outcome of football matches. The main pools company was Littlewoods owned by the Moore’s family from Liverpool. The family have largely retired from business using their large cash pile for philanthropy. They endow and support John Moores University and today I was heading up the M40 Motorway to one of my favourite parts of England, South Warwickshire to see another fruit of the family’s philanthropy, Compton Verney Art Gallery.

Compton Verney, Warwickshire

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 08/09 | Add or View Comment

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DaithaiC says : Irish Railways have always had a bit of a Noddy status suffering from a toxic mixture of neglect and confused pork barrel politics. The neglect resulted in the system being starved of meaningful investment for years and gaining a negative public perception for shabby crowded trains particularly at peak times. I remember standing in a 40 year old coach from Mullingar to Dublin where the floor was the ashtray for a carriage full of chain smokers. Over the past 50 years a number of lines have closed to passenger services and gone into that euphemistic state “In the care of the Chief Engineer.” More seriously railways have been justified on social grounds with bottomless subsidies given as a PSO (Public Service Obligation) and pensioners, irrespective of means given the “right” to free unlimited rail travel. Well, as Ireland has certainly found out recently, there is no such thing as a free lunch and somebody has had to pay for “free travel.”

Irish Railway Safety Scandal

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 29/08 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : The death of Teddy Kennedy is no doubt a momentous event and the Kennedy Family have always produced mixed feelings in Britain. Kennedy battled a malignant brain tumour first diagnosed in May 2008, which greatly limited his appearances in the Senate; though he survived longer than doctors first expected, he died just before midnight on August 25, 2009 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Here in the UK there is the legacy of their Patriarch “Ambassador” Joe Kennedy who was seen as anti-British and having written off Britain before World War II. A more considered view may have been surprised that had he not reacted well to the British Imperial proposition that because they were “superior” they were entitled to lift up the “White Man’s Burden” and rule a quarter of the world. Their Catholicism was resented in a Britain which still had a certain sectarian undercurrent, all the more so because they were wealthy and successful, and their support for Irish Nationalism stuck in the Great British craw. Not that anybody, whatever their viewpoint, can argue that the partition of a Small Island which was always united has been anything other than a disaster for Irish People, whatever their persuasion. But just as Doctors tell us we can’t defy nature so we can’t undo history.

Teddy Kennedy

Daithai C: Teddy Kennedy

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 28/08 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : Once upon a time, not too long ago, there were 27 unique narrow gauge railways and tramways in Ireland. The last of these to close was the West Clare Railway in 1961, a line immortalised in song and remembered by railway enthusiasts as a special railway with more than its fair share of lore and colourful stories which ran from Ennis, the county town of Clare through a unique landscape to the wild Atlantic coast at Kilkee and Kilrush. There it stopped for the next station would have been America! Ireland in the 1960’s was in a grip of an urge to modernise and railways were just so yesterday as the pork barrel politicians concentrated on road and buses and turning Ireland’s Georgian Heritage into a quarry for the client builders and developers who contributed to their political coffers. The legacy of these short sighted and economically illiterate policies can be seen today in “Gridlock Ireland” and the over 90 Bn Euros of toxic property “assets” the state is having to nationalise to preserve the Irish banking system. The Celtic Tiger has gone to the great cattery in the sky and the hapless Irish taxpayer is left holding worthless “assets” in Dubai, Bulgaria, London and the States whilst property speculators bellow from their mansions at the end of half mile long driveways that their “family homes” are sacrosanct!

West Clare Railway

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 27/08 | Add or View Comment

West Clare Railway

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 21/08 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : Visitors to London invariably gravitate using some secret magnet to the bustle of Piccadilly Circus and gaze in admiration at “Eros”, actually meant to represent the winged angel of Christian charity in honour of the Victorian reformer and Philanthropist, Ashley Cooper later Lord Shaftsbury after which Shaftsbury Avenue is named. Indeed Piccadilly Circus is NOT a Circus; Oxford Circus is the only one in London which is actually circular and not many Piccadilly’s are sold around here today as this was the oversized flounced collar worn by Regency gentlemen, the precursor of the shirt making tradition in nearby Jermyn Street. But after their initial amazement their eyes come to rest on a tatty development in a prime site, the perpetually reincarnated Trocadero Centre which is directly connected to the famous Piccadilly Circus Underground Station and incorporates the Pavilion Theatre and what was the Trocadero Restaurant.

Trocadero; the rotten heart of London

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 11/08 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : The iconic photo of the Beatles on the crossing outside Abbey Road Studios was taken 40 years ago on Saturday. The photograph, taken by Scottish photographer Iain Macmillan, features John Lennon in a white suit and a barefoot Paul McCartney. Ever since the image appeared on the front of their Abbey Road album, the crossing has become a place of pilgrimage. Scores of Beatles fans visit every day to recreate the famous pose. A Day in the Life is a song by the British rock band The Beatles written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, based on an original idea by Lennon. It is the final track on the group's 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the 26th greatest song of all time. As you know the Beatles were from Liverpool, sometimes known as Dublin West, for its strong Irish population and connections and there is an Irish connection to the “A Day in the Life.”

A day in the life of Abbey Road

Daithai C

by DaithaiC

daithaic.blogspot.com | the 09/08 | Add or View Comment

DaithaiC says : It has long been the contention of the Celtic sage that there may be more wonderful actresses than Audrey Tautou but there is none more wondrous! I had wanted to see the French actress as the iconic couturier Coco Chanel, who died aged 87 in 1971, in her new movie ‘Coco Before Chanel’ -“Coco avant Chanel.” Alas, due to the machinations of the evil big distributors our local Multiplex was full of the usual popcorn movies. So I consoled myself instead with a DVD of the comedy Priceless (Hors de prix) in which Tautou plays a character who echoes Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and where she does at least wear Chanel little black dresses. Pierre Salvadori’s Priceless is a sexy and thoroughly charming romantic comedy, and a fresh re-imagining of the cinema classic, Breakfast at Tiffany's.