York - Barring the Gates

If travels take you to the U.K. I recommend a visit to the ancient city of York.  Plenty of history, with an odd mixture of eras and linguistics.  Take for instance this little scene:

You have a street, but in York it would be called a "gate".  You have a gate, but in York it is called a "bar".  And of course just out of the picture you have bars, but they are called pubs.  Good so far?

Specifically this is Bootham Bar.  It stands on Roman foundations and in fact once was the northwest entrance to the Legionary fortress.  Most of what you see is 14th century or later.  It has seen its share of troubles, in times past the heads of traitors would be displayed here.  In one of those historical tidbits that can lure you off into detours I found reference to the Bar being unsuccessfully attacked in 1487 by "Lord Scrope, on behalf of the Royal impostor, Lambert Simnell".

The road, sorry, Gate that goes through it was once the Via Principalis, the main road that ran past the Roman headquarters building.  It continued on straight out of town.  If you stay on it long enough and hang a left on the Stanegate just short of Hadrian's Wall, you will end up where I did a few days later, at the Vindolanda fort site.

A sign on the side of Bootham Bar indicates that in times past any "Scottish persons" who wanted admission to York had to use a special door knocker to request entry.  This prudent precaution has been allowed to lapse in recent centuries.

At the other end of town we find a more elaborate barrier, the Monk Bar.  Not exactly on the site of the former Roman entrance it is also 14th Century work.  It still has the original mechanisms for lowering a wooden barrier called a portcullis.  Although I must report that the actual portcullis is a modern construction.

It is said that until the 1970s they would still lower this down to seal the gate at night.  The rather waxy looking fellow in the back ground is just that, a wax figure.  The Monk Bar has been converted into a museum commemorating Richard III.  He seems to have had a close association with York.  In fact I understand that there was an active movement to bring Richard's remains back for a proper burial. The slogan being:  "Leicester put him under a car park.  York will give him a royal burial".  Alas, recent tidings suggest that Leicester will have the chance to atone for their mistakes.....

A few more images of the Monk Gate...

 Gargoyles with big rocks.  Less intimidating with the bird on his shoulder....

Yes, York is an odd place.  How odd?  Observe.

This street is just slightly longer than its sign.....and apparently nobody knows what the name means.

Trebah - A Real Victory Garden

Near the village of Mawnan Smith, Cornwall, there are a couple of gardens well worth a visit. I personally prefer the funkier Glendurgan, but Trebah is very nice as well.

When you have been struggling through a long, cruel Wisconsin winter it is a very pleasant shock to the system to stroll about in April and see this sort of stuff:

House sized rhododendrons, carpets of fallen magnolia blossoms, palm trees, bamboo....heck, they can even manage a few bananas down there in the garden spot of the U.K.  You just get a sense of tranquility. As if it has always been peaceful here.

But that is not actually true.

In 1943 there were American troops about.  They were training in secret.  The groves and thickets of Trebah Gardens played their own role, they were a beautiful and effective camouflage for ammunition dumps.

American troops outside the Red Lion pub in Mawnan Smith...and the same spot today.

Finally everything was ready.  In the last few days of May, 1944 a road was quickly constructed from the heights above down to the tiny beach at the foot of Trebah Gardens. A concrete breakwater was assembled and 70 years ago today, on June 1st 7,500 men from the U.S. 29th Infantry Division clambered aboard 10 LSTs that were nosed up to the shore.

It is a quiet place today.  Most of the military construction work has been removed.  But I think this bit is a little remaining slice. Here the young soldiers of 1944 looked out towards a fateful destination across choppy seas.

They were on their way to Omaha Beach.

Those young men are now very old men, those that did not find death on June 6th or in the long years that followed.  I liked the sentiments found on a worn, humble memorial just above the breakwater:

Cornwall Goes to the Movies - The Birds!

You don't have to spend very much time on the south coast of Cornwall before you start hearing about Daphne du Maurier.  Although she was originally from London she vacationed in Cornwall as a child and adopted it as her home during a prolific writing career.  Many of her best known works such as Rebecca and Frenchman's Creek used Cornwall as their settings.

Although several of her novels were made into successful movies - Rebecca won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941 - it is one of her short stories that has attained the greatest degree of cinematic fame.

The origins of her story The Birds is the subject of some controversy.  Dame Daphne said that the idea was inspired by two incidents.  In one she saw a farmer tilling his field being dive bombed by a flock of angry seagulls.  In another she herself was attacked by aggressive birds while walking her dog.  But there are also allegations of plagarism.  A fellow named Frank Baker claimed that while du Maurier was employed as a reader for his publisher she must have come across his 1936 novel that was also called The Birds.

Whatever the ultimate source of the idea Alfred Hitchcock made an iconic and very frightening movie from it.  He did move the setting from Cornwall to Bodega Bay, California.

So of course when we were walking the Cornwall coast we kept a wary eye out for birds.  And felt that at times they were doing the same for us.  One day we stopped at the public beach outside the city of Par.  Sitting on a bench for a rest we noticed that we had company;

Out of curiosity we tossed out a few biscuit crumbs to see what would happen:

And were surrounded by a pack of "in your face" avians!

The odd thing was that this was our last day of walking.  In our B & B the next morning we were waiting for our taxi to the train station.  I picked up a book about Daphne du Maurier and learned that the spot where she was attacked while walking her dog was exactly the spot shown above !

So, sorry Frank Baker, in the matter of plagarism for The Birds I find in favor of Dame Daphne.

Cornwall Goes to the Movies - Zombies !

As I was saying on Monday, Cornwall is a great place to shoot a movie.  Stunning scenery, lots of quaint villages that can be transformed to earlier eras.  But I admit to being a little surprised when I learned that last year's Brad Pitt zombie movie World War Z was partly filmed in Falmouth.  Zombies in general seem to be a more natural feature of gritty urban centers or of mist shrouded grave yards. Falmouth is just too.....cute for the apocalypse.

But the answer once again was the ships.

Here is a scene from World War Z.

This supposedly shows a helicopter coming in to land on the "U.N. Command Ship U.S.S. Argus". When we were taking a ferry across Falmouth harbor I spotted this:

You are seeing it from the other side in this shot, but it is indeed the Argus.  But the R.F.A. Argus. This is a converted container ship that is now a Royal Navy Auxiliary Ship.  It served in the Falklands War in an aviation support role and was converted by the time of the Gulf War to a Primary Casualty Receiving Ship.  It is based in Falmouth and now has a complete hospital suite with ICU, CT scan capacity and so forth.

The makers of World War Z were initially hoping to use an aircraft carrier but when one could not be made available for the filming schedule switched over to the Argus with general satisfaction.

Although there was a local call for extras it does not sound as if there were a lot of actual zombie scenes filmed in Falmouth.  But that does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of some, on our recent visit I snapped a picture of this converted Land Rover:

I am not a fan of zombie flicks.  They creep me out.  And it seems as if the genre has more or less run its course, as if there are no new creative avenues for the living dead to shamble down.  A few recent movies have actually tried to show the Dead in a sympathetic light, as if they were perhaps just misunderstood. Well, maybe.  I hope the Zombie Apocalypse never actually comes to Cornwall, but if moaning corpses start staggering through the picturesque cobbled streets I suppose they might simply be looking for this frozen entree that I saw in local markets....

Cornwall Goes to the Movies

One of the most popular destinations on the south Cornwall coast is Charlestown.  It is one of those odd little places that somehow fell into a slumber and was spared the damaging attentions of developers.  So it still looks like what it once was, a small working port from the late 1700s.

Fast forward to the 21st century and we find it doing well, partly from tourism but also, oddly, as part of the movie and television industry.

In a general sense it should not be surprising that Cornwall has been deemed highly photogenic.  It just is.  But sometimes the specifics will make you blink a bit.  This was outside our B & B in Charlestown:

Yes, it is a Greek trireme.  Our host said that the company that owns the harbor does a lot of work for the movie industry, and that this had been built for Clash of the Titans and Clash of the Titans II.  He also mentioned that it had been towed to the Canary Islands for filming and that the owners were keeping it around in hopes of a sequel.

As it happens he got most of this correct.

The company is called Square Sail and they do provide a wide array of services.  Basically you can use their sailing ships and harbor to recreate past eras....or they will custom build/convert a boat for you.  The above craft seems to be one called the Nomos, built for a remake of sorts called Wrath of the Titans.  IMDB only gives it a 5.8 rating so further installments are not likely.  Here is a scene from the movie on board this ship:

Charlestown harbor has had quite a bit of screen time over the years. Here it was on our recent visit:

Keep an eye on the yellow pub building at the far end of the harbor, it was somewhat obscured by construction scaffolding in this image but makes the best reference point.

This is from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Here is the pub in a 1976 movie called The Eagle has Landed.

And here the town is taken over for a night time shoot of a Dr. Who episode.

It is a fun little business for the area, one that takes advantage of the natural beauty of Cornwall and of the state of historic preservation.  We were a little disappointed that during our stay none of the Square Sails fleet were in the harbor.  We were told that they winter over at another port nearby where they undergo routine maintenance.  But as we walked the windy headlands east of Charlestown I think we caught a glimpse of one out on a shakedown cruise:

Life in the ER - Welcome to The Show

Ah, the long Memorial Day weekend.  For my non-US readers I should explain that this is really not a solemn time of remembrance and reflection.  No, it is the first exuberant three day holiday of summer, a time when the grim memories of long winter are thrown off.  A time to pop open a beer and toss some bratwurst on the grill.

Or in the case of my patients in the ER, to chug down a bottle of Jaeger Meister and stick their hands on the grill.

I am gearing up for three straight days of long, busy work.

But I like it.  The ratio of Silly to Serious shifts towards the former on such occasions.  And like most clinicians I would prefer - up to a certain point - to be dealing with acute illness and injury. So often we are by default the place in the health care system that is always open, and so becomes the destination for folks with the Incurable, the Incomprehensible and the Indefinite.

On a busy summer weekend the ER staff brings the A Game.  We brew the coffee a little stronger, and move from room to room with a bit of spring in our step.

It is all about being organized.  Do we have enough suture sets ready?  Do we need to pull in a bit more staff from the floor?  How many ambulances are out and how far out?

When I arrive for what promises to be a busy shift I stop in the parking lot and take a quick census. One point for each out of state licence plate ( welcome visitors but good luck getting any medical records if you need them ).  Five points for each law enforcement vehicle.  Fifty points if the helipad lights are turned on anticipating an air transport.

Busy times, busy times.  I never complain after these shifts, even when things get bad.  One Fourth of July weekend I had three stabbings and a baseball bat beating all arrive from a party gone bad.  We keep moving, we apologize to those with lesser issues who have to wait.  "Worst Come, First Served" I tell them.

As I get into the last few years of my ER career I suppose I could count on my fingers the number of times I will have to gear up for one of these.

In whatever puttering about mode I find myself eventually, I will certainly look back and miss these times....

Things are Looking Up for Vincent Van Gogh

An Authoress of our acquaintance is working on a book dealing with the time that Vincent Van Gogh spent in an asylum near Saint-Remy, France.  He was there for a year, starting soon after he cut off his left ear.  This is considered the most productive period of his career.  Many of his most famous works including Starry Night were produced while an inmate there.

The Authoress is heading down there for a visit, and I was happy to report to her that I had already been there on a trip some years ago, and had toured the Saint-Paul Asylum while there.  It is a quiet and contemplative place, but did contain one jarring scene.

When our little party of travelers visited the room in which Van Gogh received his hydrotherapy treatments we saw this:

All of us had the same mental image flash, one that I should think would be universal among anyone exposed to the United States advertising market:

Hmmmm.  This ad for Cialis seems to have been based on something.  But the guy in the ad still seems to have his left ear so it might just be a coincidental similarity.

But happy travels S, and hope you find great material for the book.  I offer no apologies for the double entendre of this post title, you heard lots worse during your time down in the excavation trench with a bunch of muddy guys!