sally_maria | Meme?

What I'd like people to do is to post pictures - no more than one or two - of interesting places, landmarks or buildings in their town. Either the town where you live, or where you grew up - somewhere that you maybe still associate with the idea of home.

Tell us a bit about the picture and why it's interesting. We all get to see the tourist pictures of the world, but not so much about the smaller special places that mean something to us.

I'll start it off, but I hope more of you will be interested to do it as well.

Pittville Pump Room, one of the last buildings created to dispense the spa water to visitors. (You can still try it today, but I wouldn't advise it, it just tastes warm and salty.) Not technically Regency, it was finished in 1830 or so, but still a great example of the beautiful architecture that turned Cheltenham from a small market town into a relatively major tourist attraction (they may have claimed they were drinking the water for their health, but really, they were tourists). We can see the dome from our bedroom windows, and as well as being used for concerts and dances, it's also our local polling station.

The Wishing Fish Clock, a considerably more modern landmark. Some of you may remember a book called Masquerade by an artist called Kit Williams, which hid clues as to the location of a treasure. The clock was also designed by Kit Williams.

The goose at the top lays golden eggs, the snake on the left chases mice that pop out every five minutes and every half hour the fish blows bubbles. :-) A wonderful sight for the young and the young at heart, you are likely to find yourself in the middle of a crowd of people and children waiting to chase the bubbles.

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Interesting meme, sadly I will probably have to google for pix as I don't have time to scan the old photos in. The icon is the local church to my parental home, where I was baptised and where 25 years ago I gave my sister 'away' to her husband (actually I didn't give her away: I said I owed him a fiver during my speech at the do afterwards).

I must admit to googling myself - I don't have many pictures of Cheltenham at all - I have far more of Portsmouth.

The church is definitely the kind of thing I was thinking of - and LOL at the bribing your brother-in-law. :-)

What a great idea! I've posted pics of Oslo, which has been my hometown for 10 years, but it's not really my hometown. I'll definitely follow up on this meme. :)

I like getting to learn things about smaller places too, things that aren't touristy and world-wide known.

Thank you - I look forward to seeing your pictures. :-)

gnar, you took the best bits of Cheltenham. I shall have a thunk and then may get around to memeing :)

But darling you're an interesting person with interesting places - not an interesting landmark.

Edited 2010-04-11 17:44 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I didn't think of that. Um...landmarks at your end of town... The Boys' College? The Devil's Chimney? The Hare and the Minotaur? ;-)

*hugs*

(edited because I do know how to use apostrophes really)

Edited 2010-04-11 18:24 (UTC)

Nice to see the Wishing Fish is still working; these sort of things often open with a big fanfare, but stop working after a few years. I never seem to get chance to go into Cheltenham when visiting my parents, so it's years since I've gone into the Regent Arcade.

I remember struggling past the Pump Room at the end of long cross-country runs at school. Strange how something that was awful at the time can feel strangely nostalgic many years on. My dearest wish was that the Queen Mother's annual visit would one day clash with an unpleasant PE lesson, but she always seemed to turn up during lessons I liked.

The Arcade had a refit recently and they took the goose away for maintenance, but the rest of the clock carried on working, and it's back now. By now there must be a second generation of Cheltenham children wanting to chase the bubbles.

Yes, of course, the cross country runs. Because we live so close it's had many happier associations over the years, that I'd nearly forgotten. I think I once didn't come in last..

Cross-country! What a nightmare! Especially when we had to run past the Indian Ambassador's Residence, where the guards used to watch us run past in our bloomers.

Er- I grew up in Canberra, Australia but there are some horrors that apparently are universal.

It definitely sounds like it. We were running in a public park, where people would feel free to tell us we were doing it wrong, but no diplomatic buildings. :-)

ladyofastolat says that the Irishmen going up to the races used to stop and look at their legs, but I guess I was too busy being bad at PE to notice.

I've done your meme! It was fun to do - thanks for suggesting it!

That's great, I look forward to seeing your pictures. :-) I'm glad you liked the idea.

I went to school in an area full of diplomats. We had to run up the back of the houses along the foot of a hill and then back along the street on the other side of the houses. In the last two years of school the route passed a boys' school, which was excruciatingly embarrassing when there were boys out on the oval. They were known to call out comments and by then we were too puffed to retaliate, despite the fact that they were probably friends and brothers! Or at least, I was!

Fortunately for us, the boys' school was on the other side of town, at least until I was 14, when they amalgamated us. They still didn't make us do PE together, thank goodness.

Interesting pictures and meme - I'll see what I can dig out.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you - and I look forward to seeing if you come up with something. :-)

Hm, this will be hard for me. I've moved around so much and lived in so many different yet lovely places!

That does make it more difficult, definitely. I enjoyed my 3 or so years in Portsmouth but Cheltenham has always been home, so it was much simpler for me.

I'd love to see what you come up with if you do manage it -

tetsubinatu did three different pictures from different places she's lived in.

Ooh, that clock (esp the bubbles and the red wheel thing) reminded me of our 'frog clock' here in MK, so I googled and sure enough that's a Kit Williams design too, I never knew that! (See here for pic/info if you're interested.) Also, although everyone calls it the Frog Clock, apparently it's real name is the Time Machine, which I also didn't know. So thanks for your meme :-)

Excellent - I seem to remember reading about another Kit Williams clock when I was looking for a picture of ours, the Frog clock must be it. :-)

I looked it up on You Tube and I can definitely see the similarities.

Edited 2010-04-25 17:41 (UTC)

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