Westwood Ho!

Goodbye, Blogger

2006-11-24T08:14:00.000Z

There is no such thing as a free lunch according to the saying. Blogger may be free and may like to boast about its exciting improvements, but I'm finally exasperated enough to start transferring all my posting to a 2-minute-website.com service. Requests to Blogger Help for advice have been ignored, photos won't load most of the time (even at 500k) but are rewarded with a "web site not available" message. The Dashboard page loses its top edge so doesn't display text-entry boxes properly, and the response time is at least three times as long as that for my 2-minute-website.com service.

Postings will go on to www.alanmachinwork.net

Good Impressions

2006-11-19T10:48:00.000Z

The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra was established in 1958. The large hillside park contains several exhibition and service buildings and around 50 historic buildings moved from places within the province. Some are well spaced within fields to represent rural communities and others grouped to make the nucleus of a 'town'.

Baird's Print Shop is within one such building, which also contains a newspaper room and a library that came from Andrews Mill in Comber, County Down. The collection of books had been provided for the workers and for any other townspeople who wished to use it.

The print shop has a number of small presses, including the Columbian shown here. Operating with movements like those of an ancient wine press, the hand-powered Columbian employed three men to position, ink and "pull" impressions on paper laid flat on the assembled metal type. To an audience often more used to computer inkjet printers, the demonstrations might appear to show a totally alien world, but of course it was the printed paper like this that spread knowledge and ideas across the land. The historic changes shown in the museum could only come about through the agency of this communications powerhouse.

Traditional and Distinctive History

2006-11-17T09:12:00.000Z

John McAtasney is the last handlook weaver in Northern Ireland. At the Ulster Folk Museum he can be found at certain times demonstrating damask weaving, making table napkins. He describes to visitors the intricate craft of the weaver and tells of his own, long commitment to the work over several decades.

John works in one of the museum's Open Air buildings which are now part of a growing, reconstructed 'town' which represents Ulster in days gone by. Besides the weaver's workshop there are a printer's shop and a woodworking shop, but elsewhere in the town can be found a police barracks and exhibition about the often dangerous and sometimes divisive life of Northern Ireland's police forces. The story of Ulster is complex and highly charged emotionally. Understanding it is just one way to redress the wrongs of the past and to restore the respect the province deserves.

Titanic tours

2006-11-16T07:40:00.000Z

Well, after a ... er, titanic struggle, Blogger has let me in again.

Belfast might have been more known for the sectarian troubles between the late 1960s and '90s, but as the home of the Titanic and a lot more besides it has other histories to offer. The slipway and dry dock where the ship was built and completed are easy to see though not to inspect close up. That will probably change as new developments alongside the River Laggan and Belfast Lough take shape. "It was perfectly all right when it left here" said our taxi driver on a Black Cab Tour, reminding us with dry humour that it was an English captain and a Canadian iceberg that did the damage, not poor quality workmanship. Troubles and titans depend on media reporting as part of the process that creates them. Going to see for yourself helps dispell the limited perceptions built by reliance on the media alone, and in the case of this fine city bring home the fact that these days Northern Ireland's future is looking far more positive.

Not For Want of Trying

2006-11-12T08:43:00.000Z

"The page you are looking for is currently unavailable". Text is possible, pix are not. The Dashboard page visible to users still gives an old message saying what an achievement the new Beta version of Blogger is - just a few problems to solve.

I noticed.

Blogger Still Failing

2006-11-08T22:08:00.000Z

My last posting was too optimistic. Every day since the entry below was added I have tried posting more, too find "Web site not available". Can't the Dashboard page be more enlightening about what is happening than a vague apology about Outages?

Blogs About Belfast

2006-11-04T09:25:00.000Z

After some weeks with a Blogjam, Blogger is again accepting photos. The failure to reply to emails requesting help and of Help pages giving no hint of acknowledging the problem was not impressive.

A recent flying visit to Belfast produced a remarkable tour of parts of the city from the Crown Liquor Saloon shown her, via the slipways where the RMS Titanic was built to the political murals on housing estates and finally the Ulster Folk Museum. Given that a few hours as a tourist is not an in-depth understanding of a complex city, the change in the atmosphere since my last visit in 1987 was remarkable. More pix and prose on the way.

Blogger Fails To Work

2006-10-21T13:05:00.000+01:00

This is a photo-plus-text blog, but Blogger continues not to accept photos. Since the last posting below all attempts have ended in "web site not available".

There don't appear to be any notes on the Help pages of an issue causing this. An email to Blogger has been ignored.

Is Blogger Beta a failure? Once adopted, you can't change back. It's nearly time for me to close this one down and to transfer the postings to www.alanmachinwork.net which is a reliable web site using the far better service given by www.2-minute-website.com.

Blogger Beta - Problems

2006-10-10T22:16:00.000+01:00

At the invitation of Blogger, these pages have been transferred to the new version of Blogger being tested in beta at the moment. Unfortunately for the last 48 hours the photo facility has not been working and currently says that the relevant web pages are not available.

I look forward to the problem being sorted and will again add postings when that is done.

Signs of the Times - AA Phone Box

2006-10-07T18:51:00.000+01:00

Where would our transport network be without electronic communications? The moving of people requires the moving of messages. Railways needed the telegraph. Airlines needed radio. Neither got far without the other.

As people took to the car they had to have some kind of means to summon help in an emergency. The Royal Automobile Association and the Automobile Association were set up to help the motorist. In 1911 the AA placed its first roadside telephone kiosk as Ashtead in Surrey. The first 'sentry boxes' had been for patrolmen to shelter in bad weather. They had telephones inside for their use. Soon AA members were able to have their own key to open the roadside boxes in order to use the phone to summon help from their Association. Fire extinguishers and maps were also available inside. Over the years a network sprang up around the country and the RAC followed suit.

In the 1970s the boxes began to be removed, slender post-mounted phone units taking their place. Almost as that happened, the mobile phone revolution was under way and it has meant that even those post-mounted phones have gone. No-one was using the boxes; people who are likely to be AA and RAC members are highly likely to have a mobile, and non-members too, the remainder relying on ordinary public call boxes, though they, too, are slowly on the way out in many locations.

Some 21 wooden AA boxes remain, often listed as being of architectural importance within their particular surroundings, such as the one pictured, seen in the Lake District in 1987.

Informing Communities - Abbey

2006-10-03T21:59:00.000+01:00

Whitby Abbey is associated not only with the history of Christianity but also the origins of the story of Dracula, the life of fishermen over the centuries and the early life of Captain James Cook, the explorer. It stands high above the east cliffs at the top of a long, long flight of steps climbed by thousands of tourists and people from the nearby community.

So it has many stories to tell. English Heritage care for the site and organise the interpretation of these stories through a visitor centre and guide books, and also an up-to-the-minute personal digital player. Carried by the visitor who holds an earpiece close to his or her head, the unit replays recorded words and sound effects chosen by the user according to at which point they are standing. Rechargeable batteries and no moving parts mean much more reliable units than the simple cassette players available in the last 1970s. The capital cost might be high, but it's relatively easy to revise messages. The human voice has a strong resonance for the listener. In addition, different languages and messages suitable for different ages can be added quite easily.

Informing Communities - Elephant Seals

2006-10-02T21:22:00.000+01:00

Near to San Simeon on the coast of California is a length of beach loved by elephant seals. They come ashore at certain times of the year such as July and August when they moult. These rather forbidding animals lie on the beach, throwing clouds of sand over their backs and occasionally bellowing their opinions to each other.

Drivers along the adjacent highway often stop here as there is a good little parking area. A short walk brings them to a slight drop down to the beach. Round their feet and in and out of fencing run ground squirrels, cheeky little grey animals out to steal any kinds of food they can find. Gulls land on the fence posts, eyeing the proceedings with old fashioned disdain.

Its best for the elephant seals if they are left in peace and visitors stay on the higher level. And its better for the visitors if they don't tangle with the characters down near the shore line, who can get pretty irritated with those pesky tourists. So interpretation panels have been provided explaining who these animals are, what they are doing and how they should be treated - with care. The public gets its questions answered, the fellers on the beach are left in peace, and everyone goes home a little wiser.

Oh, and the ground squirrels probably get a little fatter from anything dropped by the tourists.

Informing Communities - National Pride

2006-10-01T21:42:00.000+01:00

Well, not only national but international, and not only pride but understanding. Stockholm's open air museum (with a few touches of zoo thrown in) called Skansen is reckoned one of the first of its kind. Artur Hazelius, who founded it in 1891, had been impressed by the Great Exhibition forty years earlier in London and thought of the idea of a permanent collection of buildings drawn from all over Scandinavia and Finland in order to show visitors what things were like in the old days.

Interpretation panels here were used to explain what was rather than what is (the Cardiff Bay example of an earlier posting was of what will be). This example is graphically neat though a tad dull in its white and grey, and it would be interesting to know how far the average visitor gets through the text before moving on. Some museums and nature centres use 'adult' and 'child' versions of text - it's often kid's versions that get read most - they're usually shorter and more colourful. Interpretation schemes often encompass a visitor or orientation centre, and set of panels, a number of small exhibits to explain detailed points, some guide books and possibly a guided tour or two. And maybe a video, interactive computer screen, audio recording played through headphones, possibly some outdoor theatre with actors ... well, there are lots of interesting methods. Audio systems can play the sounds of war, the songs of birdlife, the clank of machines and the evocative speech of human beings.

Much more fun than looking at a something locked in a glass case with nothing to bring it to life!

Informing Communities - Cardiff Bay

2006-09-29T18:55:00.000+01:00

When the City of Cardiff was moving towards creating a barrage across Cardiff bay in order to regenerate the former coal docks area, a special visitor centre was opened. The unusual 'flattened tube on stilts' building housed a model of the proposed bay area showing the various developments, Printed information could be obtained and staff were on hand to help with questions. Though only a temporary unit, the visitor centre became for a while one of the tourist attractions along with the new interactive science centre and industrial museum. Visitor interpretation was used here to describe plans for the future, rather than dwell on the past. There should be more such projects.

Informing Communities - Reservoir

2006-09-28T06:57:00.000+01:00

A visitor centre at a reservoir in Staffordshire in the UK is one of many examples of public information about utilities. For thirty or more years Water Boards - succeeded by water companies - have used their resources of space and budgets to add new facilities - effectively, tourist attractions. Environmental concerns which grew during the late 1960s took on the techniques of visitor interpretation being developed in the United States and elsewhere in order to raise awareness of many issues.

At the same time these utilities found an effective public relations channel that boosted their image. Their importance could be recognised as not just being as water suppliers to the community, but environmental conservationists on the one hand and providers of a pleasant day out on the other. Signposting, car parks, footpaths with information panels and small exhibits were added to the guide books and galleries in the visitor centre. New leisure activities from bird watching to windsurfing were often added.

Perhaps it should be recognised better that these forms of communication channel, an important and growing part of the tourism infrastructure, are also a vital part of the democratic process. An electorate has to be well informed in order to influence the adoption of policy. This kind of tourism can do what the mass media and classroom education cannot do - allow people to see for themselves what their world is about.

Paris - The World As Plaything

2006-09-23T18:52:00.000+01:00

In 1783, only six years before the start of the French Revolution, work began to build a village for Queen Marie Antoinette.

The Queen had a part of the vast estate at Versailles for her own use: even her husband, Louis XVI, could only enter with her permission. Her main possession there was Le Petit Trianon, a house begun twenty years earlier, where a formal garden with fountain and flower beds gave the Queen her own small world to command. But formal gardens - the 'French' style - were going out of fashion as Rousseau talked about the virtues of 'going back to nature' and the 'English garden' style was becoming popular. Marie Antoinette has such a garden laid out in the mid 1770s. Then she added a theatre in which she and her friends could perform plays - in some she acted the part of a shepherdess.

The Queen loved her little world, which was one of make believe. She could act in her theatre and she could act in this, her corner of the Versailles Estate. Marie Antoinette wanted a world of her own. so it was that in 1783 the architect Richard Mique began to oversee the building of eleven 'village' buildings that he designed in a picturesque style which seem to have blended real traditions with fictions from the royal imagination. A house for the Queen, a mill (pictured here), a farm, a dairy, a barn and others were placed decorously around a lake. The farm has cows, sheep and goats and crops of cereals and fruit. Here, Marie Antoinette could entertain her friends, serve food from 'her' farm - its production owed nothing to her own hand - as well as act as the lady of the village.

It was a life whose days would be numbered. Deeply unpopular with the wider French public, she and her husband, Louis XVI, died under the blade of the guillotine in 1793.

Now, her village, L'Hameau de la Reine has been restored. surviving buildings again appear as they did more than two hundred years ago. Crops, fruit and flowers are growing and animals graze in fields. There is a wonderful sense of the private, safe, fictitious world that the Queen inhabited, cut off from the harsh realities of rural France. The restoration and presentation has been thorough. Hardly any presence can be felt of attendants or curators, so that ordinary visitors are able to enjoy the little world in a way that they never could in the 1780s.

Marie Antoinette's village is one of the earliest - perhaps the earliest - example of an aspect of the world being created to preserve, present and perform a particular way of life for visiting people. It is part museum, part 'living history', now part educational project. At one and the same time it is both real and fake, as it always was. We can understand more of the way of life of the French monarchy when we see it and glimpse into the mind of the royal system that ruled France. It is possible to visualise life in farms and cottages on the eighteenth century while at the same time begin to measure the gap between Marie Antoinette's fantasy and life as it really was, a gap so wide and destructive that it helped bring about a revolution. And we can see an early example of those showcases that included the great museums and world expositions, through the open air museums and theme parks to present day conservation areas and discovery centres, all of which seek to entertain, explore and educate in varying proportions.

Paris - The Unexpected

2006-09-22T19:25:00.000+01:00

The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Paris Opera ... the big attractions are on the map and always to be found - and enjoyed. A city like Paris has always got hundreds of events under way, big and small. Music and arts are everywhere: painters with their easels reproducing a view, or musicians playing alone or in bands.

At the Arc de Triomphe Du Carroussel a steel band from Trinidad and Tobago entertained with driving rhythms and mellifluous petrol-drums tuned and played almost to sound like brass instruments. Caribbean music alternated with American big band jazz and European romantic tunes. Dancers paced around the edge, banner wavers stepped in procession after them, though the musicians themselves were both a dance troupe and a choir as well.

Travelling is fun when you find famous landmarks, but even better when you meet people from different nationalities and cultures who are able to appreciate each other's traditions. At that moment they become one group enjoying what the world has to offer, with no distances to divide them, just sharing human warmth and expression.

Paris - Tourist Traces

2006-09-21T21:58:00.000+01:00

On the Rue St Honore, close to the Place Vendome, is the shop of Goyard, Malletier, or in other words Goyard: Trunk Maker. The fascia still shows in gold letters the travel goods for which the shop was famous: steamer trunks and baskets, and the claim "dresses carefully packed". Around the area are other shops serving the wealthy, many of whom come to Paris as tourists.

Maison Goyard is the oldest maker of trunks still in existence, having been a company under that name since 1853. Edme Goyard had joined the Maison Morel which itself dated back to 1792. When his son Francois bought that shop in 1853 it was renamed for himself and his father. Although no longer owned by the family (in the 1990s it was bought by the Signoles family) the business still makes trunks and sells them through a small number of outlets world wide. They are made to order in Carcassone in the south of France. Famous customers have included Madonna, Karl Lagerfeld, Gregory Peck and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom it must be said was also quite famous for his cases.

Paris - As Old As You Feel

2006-09-20T08:16:00.000+01:00

In the left bank area of St Germain-Des-Pres is what claims to be the very first coffee shop in the world. Named after its Sicilian founder, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, it is known now as Le Procope. The cafe began life in 1686. Over the years it witnessed many changes in France and was used by the people who helped bring them about, such as Voltaire and the young Napoleon. Benjamin Franklin came from America to drink coffee here. In 1989 the restaurant was redesigned in the style of the eighteenth century. It has inside the feel of a spacious - and quite opulent - house, with several rooms set out for diners to use. The area around is lively and full of interest, with the Sorbonne university close by and numerous bookshops and publishing houses. It may be over three centuries old, but it's as full of life as ever.

Captured And Kept

2006-09-19T21:51:00.000+01:00

On the Grand Tour the rich nobleman could buy a piece of sculpture or a painting in Paris or Rome, or a book of architecture with classical illustrations after Palladio. When George Eastman invented his cheap camera and photo developing service the sales slogan "You push the button and we will do the rest" let everyone capture a scene and take it home. It was as if the traveller had physically removed a view and added it to their personal possessions back home. Now, digital photography lets us take a hundred photos where we used to take a dozen. Video recording adds movement, changing perspectives and soundtracks, as if whole events are being snatched from the scene encountered. Real life is being turned into a permanent, personal record on tape or disc. Sociologists have pointed out that taking photos or film is often the central activity of visiting, even more than studying the view direct, since some travellers want to speed around a destination and leave the studying until they are back at home - boring the pants off the neighbours invted round to see the show.

Taylor, John (1994) A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography, and the Tourist's Imagination, Manchester, Manchester University Press

Tourism Traces - Rothesay

2006-09-10T19:19:00.000+01:00

In the old days .... of tourism, that is .... it was Not Done in Britain to be seen removing clothes in order to put on swimming costume. Hiding behind a towel on the beach was not enough. Bathing machines like this one in a display at Rothesay on the Scottish Isle of Bute had to be used. They could be wheeled down to the water so that the ever-so-discrete bather could change inside and step down straight into the sea. Horses would pull the shed-on-wheels back up the beach after being used.

Some women's garments were designed to spread out on the water to act as a kind of umbrella, hiding any fabric clinging to the body in the water. Both sexes wore neck to ankle attire. It was all part of the effort at selling the seaside to the middle classes in Victorian Britain. The Georgian ruling classes of the days before had gained a reputation for immorality savagely criticised in cartoons of the day and Victoria and Albert led a movement aimed at being seen to be clean living. Well, sea bathing would have helped that.

So long as there was no hint of public nudity, of course.

Bookshelf - Air Travel 2

2006-09-06T06:36:00.000+01:00

Diamonds In The Sky
Kenneth Hudson and Julian Pettifer
Bodley Head/BBC
1979
ISBN 0 370 30162 5
£7.95

Probably out of print and getting on a bit, but still useful if you can find it in a library or second-hand. This book grew out of Hudson's earlier Air Travel: A Social History and was revised to accompany Julian Pettifer's BBC TV series of the same name. Read it first and then move to Simon Calder's No Frills and then Pat Hanlon's Global Airlines for an excellent coverage of the growth and current situation of the world passenger airline industry. The late Kenneth Hudson's work in the field of industrial history gives the book its solid, knowledgeable base, and Pettifer's quality journalistic approach combine to produce an excellent account.

Global Airlines
Pat Hanlon
Elsevier/Butterworth Heinemann
1999 (2nd edition)
ISBN 0 7506 4350 1
£29.99

Illustrated is the second edition of an excellent book which is packed with useful background, facts and figures and discussions of issues. For all its size and importance, there are not so many text books on passenger services by air (and certainly not many on airports). Plane spotters' books and works on military aircraft are two a penny (well, you know what I mean). This book packs a lot in to a small space. As the second edition it is getting out of date compared with the fast-changing state of the airline industry, but the author's May 2006 book Global Airlines: Competition in a Transnational Industry pushes the story forward.

Bookshelf - Air Travel 1

2006-09-04T22:20:00.000+01:00

No Frills: The Truth Behind The Low-Cost Revolution In The Skies
Simon Calder
2002
Virgin Books, London
ISBN 1 85227 932 X (hb)
£16.99 (hb)
Paperbook edition available

Despite the specific title, this is one of the most useful books about air travel over the last few decades. Simon Calder is the Travel Editor of the Independent newspaper in the UK, making a point in his travelling as a journalist never to accept freebies from operators. His style is crisp and readable, though sometimes so concise that it takes a couple of re-readings to get his exact meaning clearly. This is not an academic text book but has solid information built up from years observing the industry, and is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand just what is happening in the industry - and why - and where it is going.

Naked Airport: A Cultural History Of The World's Most Revolutionary Structure
Alastair Gordon
2004
Metropolitan Books, New York
ISBN 0 8050 6518 0 (hb)
$27.50 (hb)

You might want to quibble with Gordon's referring to the airport as a single structure and the claim that it is the most revolutionary. It demands cries of 'what about railway stations - religious buildings - what about the wheel?'. Leaving that to one side, this is a fascinating and revealing book about the evolution of airports. The examples of very largely American, but it is undeniable how influential those have been. Understanding the lure, acceptance and growth of air travel is made much clearer by following how thinking about airport designs has changed. New York's La Guardia was originally to be a combined flying boat and land aircraft base: there were designs for virtually assembly-line style servicing. If you want to know the future, read about the past, said someone. Then we know where we're going - by plane.

Link to my main web site

2006-09-04T14:10:00.001+01:00

I run a web site related to my teaching work in tourism management at Leeds Metropolitan University. It has longer discussion pieces, investigations and ideas as well as photos from the course of interest to alumni and news of the alumni themselves. Some postings from this blog can also be found there. Click here to be transferred to the home page.

Tourism Needs Transport - Cruising

2006-09-03T08:57:00.000+01:00

The cruise liner Costa Mediterranea makes its careful way down the Canale della Giudecca in Venice. Love 'em or loathe 'em, cruise liners are bigger and better and the business is booming. The Freedom of the Seas, launched in April 2006, weighs 160,000 tons and carries 4,375 passengers. Size might matter for many things, but design is also important in providing what the customers want - luxury, entertainment or private space viewing the sea. At the other end of the scale the part-sailing, part engine-powered Wind Star is only 5,300 tons and takes 150 people on something like an old-style clipper ship.

The cruise ship pictured looks like a gross intrusion on Venice's incomparable architecture, but the city only exists because it has always been a maritime hub. In 1574, Henry III of France popped in for dinner and the city's arsenolotti knocked out a complete galley from keel-laying to launching in the time it took him to eat. The huge modern cruise ship terminal is one of the world's busiest. While Venice's population is declining fast the importance of the trade done there is very high. Of course the city's water-borne icon is the gondola, closely followed (and overtaken at speed) by the vaporetto, the motoscafo and the motonave, diesel-powered water buses serving the city and islands of the surrounding lagoon.

Touring by cruising is increasingly popular as the ships become more like little cities, with huge restaurants, theatres, cinemas, swimming pools and shops in addition to the privacy of the cabins and state rooms. The simplicity of seeing the world from the safe world of the ship while all your needs are met is only one attraction. You are more likely to get to know people when you share the space of the ship with them for a week or two. It's likely they share your interests and outlook on life, and there are opportunities for building up friendships. The hawkers, beggars and pickpockets who operate within a ordinary city are not around.

The detractors say it isn't really touring, just staying in a resort that happens to move around a bit. They might say that one bit of open sea is just the same as the next, and the trips ashore, if taken at all, are nearly as insulated from the real world as the ship is. Being loaded onto a coach and taken to some carefully-chosen market place or tourist entertainment is no way to interact with local places and people. Both the ship and the coach are steel cocoons where the textures, sounds and sights of the real world are kept at a safely controlled distance.

On the other hand, as every other traveller has found over the centuries, you've got to start somewhere.