Timewasters Extraordinaire!

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It hit 35.1 °C at Kew Gardens on Tuesday afternoon, breaking the previous record that had stood for all of 24 hours. The new record is less than a degree below the all-time UK June maximum, which was set in the extreme drought conditions of 1976. Here in Bewdley we "only" made it up to 32 °C, a degree lower than on Monday, but it felt more oppressive owing to slightly higher humidity and some clouds around.

I haven't forgotten about my Scottish travelogue and photos, by the way! It's just that it's been too hot to work on that lately. It will be back before long, though. :)

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To Great Malvern today for a very pleasant pub lunch with several friends. The WMR train strike was irritating, but fortunately GWR wasn't affected; the bus to Worcester in the first place was a bit of an oven, though! I like the Foley Arms in Great Malvern, which is a bit of a rambling place with plenty of quiet corners to set ourselves up in for a few hours.

Thank Frith the real heatwave hasn't hit yet. There now looks like there's a very real chance of the all-time UK May record (32.8 °C) going in the next few days. There are also likely to be some very warm nights, which isn't ideal in our largely AC-free homes. This was barely picked up by the computer models until midweek, so please be aware that it's coming.

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Here we go with the first major post about my recent Scottish holiday. The journey up was pleasantly unventful, with every train being dead on time. Three and a half hours on one train (Stafford to Glasgow Central) was a long time, so I chose to upgrade to Standard Premium, which basically means you get a bigger First Class seat but none of the other upgrade benefits like food. Being an Avanti Pendolino, it tilted around corners at speed, which was fun as it's not something West Midlands Railway can manage! :P


My room was at the far end on the top floor
I checked into my Premier Inn just a few minutes after three, and naturally I went for a quick walk. I'd made sure to book a room on the harbour side – the rooms on the other side had a lovely view of the car park and the entrance to McDonald's! Actually I had a bite there, as the hotel's own basic restaurant isn't open in the afternoons. In this picture I'm looking west. There's a cruise ship terminal in Greenock, hence the gigantic floating brick in the distance. Still, the weather was pretty decent for this part of Scotland at that point. A good start!


Paisley Gilmour Street station
I didn't want to waste six hours of daylight on such a short holiday, so it was back to the station almost immediately, to head for Largs! On the way I needed to change at Paisley Gilmour Street, which is far larger than it needs to be these days but was once immensely busy. This is the frontage; there's a Wetherspoons (the Last Post) just to the left, but it was unsurprisingly very busy late on a Friday afternoon, and in any case I'd have had to rush anything more than a quick drink. Onward!


A cove on the Isle of Cumbrae
I arrived at Largs and walked the few hundred yards to the Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) terminal. I bought a ticket – paper, which was a throwback! – and boarded the little car ferry for the Isle of Cumbrae, just a ten-minute crossing away. The weather was superb, and I was a bit sad I'd only have an hour to walk around on the island, but it couldn't be helped. It's a beautiful, peaceful place (the only town, Millport, is three miles from the ferry slipway) and the photo above gives you a good idea of what it's like.


Magnus the Viking, Largs
The crossing back to the mainland was very quiet: I think there were about three passengers and no cars at all! I had a little while in Largs, which was the location for the Battle of Largs (oddly enough) in 1263, an indecisive engagement between the Scots and the Norwegian Vikings. Three years later, the Treaty of Perth saw the Hebrides leased to Scotland by the Vikings, the start of the process which about 200 years later finally saw all of present-day Scotland leave Norwegian rule when Orkney and Shetland became Scottish. This is Magnus the Viking, who stands on the beach near the town centre.

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Actually I got back yesterday evening, but I was too tired to post. I've been in Scotland since Friday, based in Greenock a bit west of Glasgow, and I had a wonderful long weekend. I'll write about it over the coming days. I really did need that. :)

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Excusing "visionary" directors for mistreatment, exploitation, abuse or – as in this case – child endangerment on set is something that still happens much too often. Sarah Polley should never have been exposed to the risks she was, and it's only because of her explicit blessing a few years ago for fans to enjoy this film that I feel comfortable doing so at all.

So, the movie itself? It's a sprawling thing, perhaps just a little too long but full of whimsy and imagination and, yes, remarkable sets. The practical effects are often stunning, and the artistry that goes into the design is too. The story sometimes pushes its PG rating on its sex references, and much as I love Robin Williams he does go overboard a bit as King of the Moon. Polley herself is both brave and often amusingly grumpy as Sally Salt, while Oliver Reed makes a fine Vulcan.

The titular Baron himself is well portrayed by John Neville, and it's good that at least the animal cruelty of the original stories is not simulated here. Uma Thurman was only 17 here, which makes Munchausen's interest in her rather queasy, but she has presence already – and she was apparently kind to Polley off-camera, as was Eric Idle. You can fault the story for orientalism, but then it is a 1980s film. If you can cope with that, then it's a fun two hours. ★★★½