I went to London and I saw ……

30 Dec 2023 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in London trips Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I love my trips to London and there are several posts on this blog to support this. My last two visits to the Big Smoke involved two music legends and my two sons.

Back in August I met son number one, Scott, at Paddington station and we made our way to Sotheby’s to see the exhibition of Freddie Mercury’s possessions “A world of his own”. Fans and buyers could visit to view the items for a couple of weeks before the auctions arranged and managed by Mary Austin, Freddie’s lifelong friend whom he described as his common law wife and was his closest confidant. During that time there were 140,000 visitors from all around the world and the auctions raised £40 million, a large proportion of that amount was donated to charity.

Freddie collected a lot of fabulous stuff in his short life and 14061 lots were lovingly arranged over three floors and each room had vases full of beautiful lilies to fill the air with the most amazing fragrance. Everything was in temptingly close touching distance and while no-one was looking I managed a little pinch on the bottom of the sleeve of a jacket Freddie wore on a visit to Japan. When I mentioned it to Scott, he shot me a look that said “if we get chucked out of here because of you, I’m going to kill you”! It reminded me of the time myself and both my lads went to Destination Star Trek and I was trying to get a sneaky photo of William Shatner instead of paying the extortionate fee to do so. I was told a couple of times to stop and move along, which I ignored and my youngest son, Jake, felt the need to drag me away hissing “you’re gonna get us chucked out”.

So with that in mind I decided to try and behave myself on my next trip to London with Jake to see the Elvis Exhibition. It was a wonderful collection of memorabilia from Graceland, lots of amazing personal items belonging to Elvis, stage outfits, documents, vehicles, instruments and his every day clothes in all their 1970’s glory. This time there was no chance of touching anything as it was all safely protected behind glass.

It was a relatively small exhibition so before we headed home we made our way to St. John’s wood and after a yummy lunch at the Drunch café we wandered to the Abbey road studio. We really didn’t have time to do the studio tour, so we visited the shop and tried to get a “walking across the zebra” photo without pissing off too many motorists!

I am so lucky to have shared interests with my lads, it makes my days out to London really special.

Tracks of Carole’s years: part 3

06 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

My 5th song is Way Down by Elvis Presley. Most of my childhood was spent listening to Elvis’s music as my dad was a huge fan. So I quickly joined him in that love of the great man.

Most people can recall where they were when we learnt of his death, we were on holiday in Weymouth when we heard the news on the radio in our guest house. At the age of 10 I don’t think I realised at the time how big a deal it actually was, but it was the first time I saw my dad cry.

Way Down was the last single released by Elvis before his death, it’s one of my favourites.

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The 6th song on my list is Good day sunshine by The Beatles. In my final year of primary school I had the most fantastic teacher, Mr. Parkin. He was so creative in the way he structured his lessons, helping us to learn with competitions and quizzes, he read us books like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. He also set up a disco every Friday afternoon.

Music and dance was very important to him and he created a dance group, I remember watching them perform in assembly and thought I definitely wanted to be a part of that. So when I was finally in his class I jumped at the chance to join when he set up a new group. We did a dance routine to this song.

I will never forget Mr. Parkin, he was the best teacher I ever had and I still remember a lot of what he taught me, even after 44 years! he was truly inspirational.

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Walk the walk

08 Sep 2020 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday I went on a blustery and at times, soggy trip down memory lane. When I first started my nurse training in 1985 I lived in the then new nurse’s accommodation tucked behind the general hospital at Uphill in Weston Super Mare.

In those days student nurses were the slaves of the workforce. Sometimes I needed to let off steam after being bullied by the nursing assistants who believed they were in charge, being made to clean the sluice with a toothbrush or just having survived long stretches of very busy shifts (often 10 in a row).

I loved to walk the length of the beach from Uphill sands to Birnbeck Pier, it was a long enough walk to dampen down the frustrations, have a blub and to talk myself back into continuing my training. Thankfully these episodes of doubt were few and far between so often I could just enjoy the walk.

The walk yesterday was full of children chasing the tide out and dogs chasing balls. As the tide was only just going out the causeway over to the pier was quite treacherously slippery, but I made it over with no broken bones or without falling into the drink.

When I got to my destination I was saddened to see the state of the pier, I hadn’t see it for quite some years. As a child in the 1970’s I regularly visited Weston Super Mare and the pier on day trips with my grandparents, and of course I would have a little trot on it at the end of my walks during my training.

Birnbeck pier was designed by Eugenious Birch and was opened in 1867, it is the only pier in the country to link the mainland with an island, Birnbeck Island. Since 1882 it was the base for the RNLI to launch their rescue boats as it is the only location for launching in any tide. Unfortunately due to safety they had to relocate in 2016.

This grade 2 listed pier has been closed to the public since 1994 and it’s been placed on the “at risk” register compiled by British Heritage as it’s in a very poor state of disrepair.

But all is not lost, rumour has it that the RNLI may potentially take back ownership of the pier and hopefully restore it to it’s former glory. In addition to this there is the fundraising organisation called Friends of the old pier, that are working very hard to help achieve this aim.

I really hope that the old pier can be restored and then maintained so it doesn’t get in such a state again. You never know who might visit, after all it was good enough for the Beatles in 1963!