Respected BBC expert talks of Medway filth

Would you be insulted by a respected BBC expert who turned up in the locality and went on to talk about Medway filth? That was exactly the dilemma we found ourselves in the other day? So how did we react? Walk away? Contact the BBC to register our complaint? Or laugh?

Antiques Roadshow recently visited Chatham Historic Dockyard. We've never had an attic full of old bits and pieces, so we've never had the opportunity to discover an old master or some other valuable artefact, but over the years we've acquired one or two things we were interested to find out more about. The Roadshow was the perfect opportunity.

Beautiful weather formed the backdrop to what was to turn out to be a morning's entertainment.

Waiting in the queue that snaked around the site, it was fascinating to watch the production crew well under way almost from the moment the gates opened. A camera on a boom swinging high over our heads capturing shots of the crowds while three cameras recorded another expert discussing a couple of watercolours. Visitors, like us, had trolleys and bags with weird and wonderful things poking out, all of us waiting to see what the appropriate expert would say. While we're not regular viewers of the programme, we saw some well known faces offering advice and filming short sequences which will ultimately be edited down to form the two episodes from the day.

We queued to see the "miscellaneous" and "ceramics" experts, the latter providing a valuable insight to the various pieces that we took. And then, with a warning, we made our way to the "glass" expert Andy McConnell.

"Madame, the next time I visit Chatham from my antiques shop in Rye, I'm going to bring something that Medway is clearly lacking." A pregnant pause... "Washing up liquid. Your glassware is covered in Medway filth." Rather than feel insulted, the lady, along with the rest of us gathered around his table fell about laughing. Andy had already dismissed another lady with a comment about her piece of mass-produced glassware. And now it was our turn.

He picked out our bud vase and studied the hard water staining that lined it before holding it to his ear. "This has been used as an ear trumpet," he suggested, "and now it's full of ear wax." His banter continued, a mixture of pure entertainment interspersed with information on how to clean glassware and facts relating to the period the objects where made in, where, and why the demand for similar objects existed.

And did we witness a special Antiques Roadshow moment? We think so. Two ladies described how their father found the glass bottle they were showing in a skip. After Andy explained some of the "behind the scenes procedures" and took the girls away to production crew staff, he returned to say that that was the most valuable glassware object he'd discovered on the programme. Entertainment for the gathered crowd or a genuine statement? We suspect the latter but will only find out when we watch the programme later this year.

A great morning out and wonderful entertainment - well worth the license fee. I've more pictures on Flickr.

After thirty years...we nearly end up right up the creek...

A couple of travel blogs - both venues come highly recommended.

Firstly thirty years on...

and then up the creek.

Two weeks on

Olympic stadium - Lego-style

I'm sure that two weeks ago I wasn't that bothered about sport...

Sports watching has always been something I could take or leave - certainly not something to organise my life around. However, last week I found myself watching rowing, basketball, handball, volleyball, horse-riding, swimming, canoeing, clay-pigeon shooting, indoor-cycling - probably missed something there! In fact the only thing that wasn't especially new was road cycling.

Slightly more self control this past week! What a fortnight...

Can you believe it?

A warm welcome home to Suntanned Daffy Duck. Daffy is one of our geocaching travel bugs - a little toy with an ID tag and a mission that is entirely dependant on the goodwill of fellow geocachers to achieve the mission. Daffy's mission was to travel the world and cover more miles than his fellow travel bug Suntanned Spider Man. Spider Man covered 28,209 miles - how many miles did Daffy Duck cover?

Spider Man was despatched in February 2005, returning home October 2006. His mission was to travel the world, visit New York and climb the Empire State Building. In those twenty months he achieved his main goal up the Empire State on a very misty day, (see right) courtesy of a fellow US-based cacher, and visited four countries South Africa, USA (eight states), Norway and Sweden.

Bear in mind that we had no control over Daffy Duck. He was placed in a "cache" (a lunch box hidden in the UK countryside), retrieved by a random cacher, moved to another cache, retrieved by another cacher - and so the chain went on. Daffy took a little longer - one month short of five years - and visited three countries Australia, Canada (six states), and Germany. At no time were we able to control his journey. So, the big question, did he beat Spider Man's journey and, if so, by how much? Yes he did - by one mile! 28,210 miles.

So here they are safely home.

A timely footnote. Sadly, not all travel bugs make it. On Saturday 9 July 2005, we despatched a travel bug to celebrate London being awarded the Olympics and to remember those affected by the 7/7 London bombs the day after London was awarded the Games. The mission was to visit each of the 2012 Olympics candidate cities - Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris (in any order) and return to London. Unfortunately this bug made it to America and was in Pennsylvania en route to New York when it vanished without trace.

Inspiring a generation...

Yep, we're inspired.

If Helen Glover can watch the 2008 Olympics, take up rowing and then win gold four years later, what's to stop us?  The last time Mr & Mrs W were out rowing was six years ago (probably to the week) on the Royal Military Canal in Hythe - that time we spent quite a bit of time going around in circles.

Just need to check whether there'll be a mixed doubles race, book our flights and then we'll be Flying Down to Rio. Keep an eye out for us...

What a way to start...

Follow that... Following Beijing was always going to be a challenge but Danny Boyle, his creative team, and the cast of volunteers rose to the challenge and exceeded it.

Even many of the Olympic cynics seem to have enthusiastically embraced the ceremony. Quirky and eccentric in places, the global media's reviews of the opening ceremony were equally supportive. Well done everyone.

This is the big one...

Today at 8.12 BST the BigBong kicks off the countdown to tonight's opening ceremony and the start of the Games.

London has been transformed with overseas representatives creating pop-up hospitality facilities and TV companies setting up pop-up studios anywhere and everywhere - Denmark TV (will Sarah Lund be one of the presenters?) even featuring a Lego version of the Olympic Park. Olympian teams and BMW official courtesy cars are everywhere.

My insider reports that the opening ceremony will truly reflect Great Britain, a spectacle not to be missed.

Did I say BigBong? There I go again, mixing fact and fiction. I'll leave the final words of fiction to Ian Fletcher, Head of Deliverance at the Olympic Deliverance Committee and his handover speech, reproduced below from an interview in the Daily Telegraph earlier this week.

From this morning onwards this is for real. Let the Games commence...

"Well, here we are at the finishing line. Which, as so often in life, is of course where the starting line is. So that’s all good. And what a journey it’s been to this point. 

It was a tremendous shock for all of us when we were awarded the Games back in 2005 – I can still remember the look on Kelly Holmes’s face now. But we recovered. Those of us who stayed on regrouped and we dug deep – quite literally of course in the case of the Aquatic Centre – and the really great news there, by the way, is that the leak is now basically controllable, so we’re controlling it, which is another big positive to take out of this whole thing going forward.

If these Games are about one thing then it’s not just Sustainability but also Legacy. But, of course, they’re about much more than one thing, more even than two things. They’re about many things, each one uniquely central to everything we’re about and everything we do. Who would attempt to say where Inclusivity ends and Diversity begins? Only a fool. And as we all know we don’t have time for fools in the Deliverance Team. Look around you.

Yes, there have been problems along the way. Of course there have. But in Deliverance what we like to say is that problems are solutions waiting to happen.

So let’s not be afraid today to acknowledge what it is that we’ve achieved. Seven years ago there was literally nothing. Now there’s definitely something. And we delivered that something out of that nothing. 

Let us take that achievement with us going forward towards a future beyond Deliverance, wherever that actually means. So thank you to each and every one of you and I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that basically, it’s all good."